by David Moody
“I think you’re wrong. I actually think Rod Hazleton’s onto a winner here. It’s a solid business model. He’s got the transport sorted, a fairly reliable power source, and he’s got the infrastructure left by the army and the scientists to build on. They’ve already done the hard work for him. Should net him a decent return in the long run.”
“Fascinating. Are you this interesting at home, Matt?”
“Are you mocking me again?”
“A little. I just wonder how Jen puts up with you. You check out every little bloody detail before you do anything. It must drive her crazy.”
“It’s called due diligence.”
“It’s called being boring as hell. Are you like this about sex too?”
Matt ignores him. He’s used to this. “I make no apologies for being rigorous, Paul. I’m an accountant, and Ronan hired me because I’m a safe pair of hands. Your problem is you struggle to tell the difference between being boring and being cautious.”
“I reckon it’s the same thing.”
“It’s absolutely not.”
“I’ll ask your missus when I see her. If I ever meet her, that is. If she even exists.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“No one’s ever met her, that’s all.”
“She’s not been well.”
“It’s being with you that does that.”
They’re at the top of the climb now. They pause next to the abandoned army lookout: a squat, two-meter-square rough concrete cube that would be the ideal place to look out over the ocean if it weren’t overgrown with weeds. A bunch of huge white-tipped tufts hang out of the front of the structure like hairs in an old man’s ears. Matt can’t resist peering inside, ever curious. It’s damp and empty. A gun turret without a gun. Barely even a turret. He fumbles in his pocket for his inhaler before they continue on their way. The damp is really getting on his chest this morning. “So what does Ronan want?” he asks, wheezing.
“One more group task, apparently.”
“Another one? Shit, I thought we were done.”
“Not quite. And he wants to do a postcourse debrief afterwards.”
“Didn’t we do that after breakfast?”
“No, that was the course preclosure assessment and evaluation session. Come on, mate, keep up. You know what he’s like. There’ll probably be a post-postcourse debrief when we get back on the ferry, then a post-post-postcourse debrief when we’re back at work on Wednesday.”
“Ronan can be such a dick.”
“Yes, but he’s the dick who pays our wages.”
It’s a short walk back to base from here. It’s a short walk to anywhere on Skek. The island is just over three miles long and two miles across at its widest point. The main buildings sit grouped together on grassland just left of center: almost smack-bang in the middle, but not quite. The angular, rough gray shapes look at once both out of place and completely at home here. The barnlike stores building is nearest. The office, dorms, bathrooms, and kitchen are housed in the largest building, another couple of hundred meters away. It’s rectangular with a flat roof, like a cinder block with windows, weirdly monolithic. Close by is a small shed with room for the generator and not a lot else. A little way over to the east—far enough to give the illusion of privacy but still close enough to be in shouting distance—is the prefabricated bungalow that is home to Stuart and Ruth Phillips, the island’s only true residents (for eight months of the year, at least).
Distances are deceptive here on Skek. It looks like Matt and Paul still have a fair way to go, but in a couple of minutes they’re there. “Everyone else already here?” asks Matt.
“Everyone but you.”
Paul opens the door and ushers Matt inside. There’s no escape—the door opens straight into the mess hall—and he enters to a sarcastic round of applause.
The slow clap is led by Ronan, their diminutive boss, standing center stage, all togged up in his designer survival gear. “Finally, Matthew. Glad you could find time in your busy schedule to join us.”
Matt finds himself an empty chair and sits down between call-center team leader Rachel and Natalie, one of the Hazleton Adventure staff. “Sorry, Ronan, I didn’t realize how long I’d been gone. I was checking out the sights.”
“Sights?” IT manager Gavin Taylor mumbles. “Did you find any? We’ve been here since Friday and I’ve seen nothing worth writing home about.”
Rajesh, another of the island team, quickly counters, “To be fair, Gavin, you’ve done everything you can to avoid leaving this building since you got here. You’re never gonna see much if you spend all your time indoors looking at the walls.”
“Gavin doesn’t get out much,” Frank Hall, Ronan’s business continuity manager, says. “Typical IT nerd. He likes being on his own in the dark. He gets up to all kinds of things.”
“Give it a rest, Frank,” says Gavin. “Blokes like you are all the same.”
“Blokes like me? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Homophobic arseholes.”
“I’m not homophobic. I don’t care what you do, as long as you keep it to yourself and I don’t have to get involved.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, love,” Gavin says, cranking up the camp. “I wouldn’t touch yours if it was the only one left.”
“I just wouldn’t touch his full stop.” Rachel giggles.
Ronan clears his throat the way he always does when he’s struggling to keep control and make himself heard. “All right, all right, that’s enough,” he shouts over the hubbub, attempting to bring the rabble to order. “You’ll be pleased to hear that we’ve got one final activity planned before we head home.”
Cue groans of protest.
“I thought we were through with all this,” office admin queen Joy grumbles from the corner, making no attempt whatsoever to disguise her displeasure.
“Not quite. I want us to maximize the limited time we have left on Skek, so Rajesh and Nils have arranged one last team-building and communication exercise.”
“Team building, that’s a joke,” Stephen Hughes, the other call-center team leader, mumbles to himself. He looks directly across the room as he speaks, glaring at his manager, Vanessa, with his piggy eyes. “Yeah, right.”
Vanessa hears him, but she doesn’t react. Natalie does. She tugs Matt’s arm and pulls him closer. “What’s his beef?” she whispers. “He’s been goading her all weekend.”
“She just got the promotion he reckoned he’d been promised.”
“Ah, right. Say no more. I really do not miss office politics one bit.”
“Tell me we ain’t going outside again,” Joy says. “I’ve only just got dry from last time.”
“No one cares what you look like out here, Joy,” Gavin says. “No need to worry about your public image.”
“Public image? There’s no public but us on this damn island. Let’s just get out there and get this over with. I’m ready to go home.” She crosses her arms defiantly and slumps back in her seat.
“You’re a real ray of sunshine, Joy.” Rajesh laughs. “I swear, I’ve never met anyone with a more ironic name than you.”
“I just tell it how it is, is all. I ain’t got time for bullshit and corporate mumbo jumbo.” She doesn’t take her eyes off the boss.
Ronan looks away, embarrassed. “Right then, I’m off to the gents before we get under way. I’ll leave you in Nils’s capable hands and I’ll see you all out front in a minute or two.”
And with that Ronan’s gone. His staff visibly relax.
Nils swigs his coffee, then gets up from his chair. “Right then, folks. Who wants to murder a workmate?”
* * *
Wrapped up in waterproofs, the group assemble outside as instructed. The wind’s whipping up, but Nils is used to the weather here. He’s a distinctive-looking bloke: sinewy and trim, with long silver hair tied in a ponytail and a neatly trimmed goatee. He has to shout to make himself heard. The louder his voice, the stronger his Da
nish accent. “Okay, we started the weekend looking at trust and communication, and I want to see how far you’ve come in the time you’ve been here. I’m going to split you into two teams. Outside the stores building we’ve marked out a base that one team needs to defend from the other team’s attacks.”
“I wanna be on Joy’s side,” Paul says quickly. “No offense, Joy, but you terrify me.”
“The attacking team will be given an object to smuggle into the other side’s base, okay?”
“What kind of object?” Vanessa asks.
“That would be telling.”
“It all sounds a bit childish to me,” Rachel says. “Can’t you boys play and the rest of us watch?”
“All of you are involved, no exceptions. If you have a problem, I suggest you take it up with your boss on the ferry home later, okay?”
“Waste of bloody time,” she grumbles, then she looks up as Rajesh ties a length of lime-green wool around her arm. He’s working his way around the group doing the same to everyone else. “What’s this?”
“Your life,” he tells her. “This breaks in the game and you’re out. Dead. Kaput.”
“Can’t I just rip it off now and commit suicide?”
“And how exactly is that going to help your team?”
Nils continues, “If you lose your life, you must head back to your base to get a new one, understand? We’ve already split you up so Paul, Rachel, Ronan, and Frank—you’re in defense. Stephen, Vanessa, Matt, Gavin, and Joy—you’re the attackers. You five go with Raj over to the old fishing cottages. He’ll show you what it is you need to smuggle in. When you’re ready, Raj will fire a flare to start the game. I’ll fire a second flare once the game’s over.”
“How long’s it last?” Stephen asks, clock-watching. “Until we get it in?”
“You’ve got to get past me and Frank, first,” Paul says, sounding more enthusiastic and competitive than the rest of them combined. “No chance, eh, Frank?”
Frank just grunts. He’s had enough of all this now. He just wants to go home. “I’m too old for this shit.”
“No hiding in buildings, no physical contact, the game lasts half an hour maximum,” Nils tells them. “Any questions?”
Silence.
“Come on then,” Vanessa says, resigned. “The sooner we get started, the sooner we get home.”
3
The flare races up toward the clouds; searing, incandescent orange-white against countless shades of muted gray.
This reminds Matt of when he was in the Scouts, way back when. He might well be playing games with his work colleagues, but something about the location and the setup of this exercise has given him a genuine adrenaline rush. He’s not the only one. Gavin’s feeling it too, Matt can tell, and when Rajesh just now told them what they needed to smuggle into the base, the entire team talked tactics with childish enthusiasm. Now that they’re on the move, on the attack, Matt’s pulse is pounding.
“I bet they’re shitting themselves,” Gavin says as the two of them jog down the west flank of Skek.
“You reckon?”
“Absolutely. Ronan’ll be telling Paul what to do, he’ll be telling Ronan what to do, Frank will be doing whatever he feels like doing … between them they won’t have a frigging clue what’s going on.”
They approach the main buildings and pause parallel with the narrow archery range to catch their breath. The archery targets, perversely, provide them with some welcome cover. “Nils said no hiding inside buildings, he didn’t say anything about hiding behind them,” Gavin whispers as they edge closer to the generator shed. They both press themselves against the back wall of the building like they’re caught in the middle of a shoot-out.
The chugging noise of the machinery makes Matt feel safe and vulnerable at the same time. “Bit mad all this, isn’t it?”
“Totally. Andrew’s never gonna believe me when I tell him what I spent the morning doing,” Gavin says.
He’s about to step out into the open and start running again, but Matt pulls him back. “Wait. We’ve got plenty of time. Give them a minute longer.”
“You think?”
“Absolutely. Paul and Frank will expect us to go steaming straight for them, screaming and shouting, all hell-for-leather. The longer we keep them waiting, the more agitated they’ll be when we make our move. Keep them dangling long enough and they’ll tie themselves up in knots.”
“Very devious,” Gavin says. “I like it.”
Way over to the east, Stephen and Vanessa can be seen edging down the length of the island too. They’re matching Matt and Gavin’s progress, their fluorescent cagoules making it all but impossible for them to hide even from this distance. Stephen’s rotund belly makes him look comical, like an escaped life buoy. Regardless, Matt finds seeing his teammates moving into position strangely exhilarating. It gives him an undeniable buzz being part of a group making a coordinated attack. It makes him feel like he’s part of a tribe.
“Right, let’s do it,” Gavin says.
As they’d planned, Gavin and Matt sprint in the direction of the stores. They start together but quickly diverge, and a distant yell from Vanessa indicates that she and Stephen are doing the same (although she’s already left her portly colleague in the dust). Four of them are now coming at the stores building base from different angles.
The defenders have been waiting for this and are primed.
Rachel runs at Gavin. She tries to catch hold of him, but although not at all athletic, he’s tall and willowy and he slips her easily. Her feeble attack is less than convincing. Off-balance, she stumbles in the wet grass and gives him a mouthful.
Paul’s in hiding. He’s dumped his cagoule in the grass to make it look like he’s somewhere else. He’s done well to stay out of sight because places to hide are few and far between on this barren rock. He spots Matt and leaps up, adjusting his trajectory to cut him off. Matt tries to accelerate and change direction, but it’s hard and his chest is rattling. A shimmy and a mistimed side step and the two of them end up face-to-face, just a couple of meters apart. “Gotcha,” Paul says.
Matt holds back. “This is weird. We share an office. Don’t you think playing games like this is weird?”
Clearly not.
Paul dives forward and takes Matt’s feet from under him. The two of them roll over and over.
“No physical contact, Nils said,” Matt complains.
Paul holds him down then snatches at his woolen life and yanks it from his arm. “Tough luck. You’re dead, mate,” Paul says, panting with effort.
“So are you,” Matt quickly counters, and when Paul looks down, he sees that he’s lost his life too. He was so busy killing Matt that he didn’t notice Matt killing him.
“Jammy bastard,” Paul says, genuinely annoyed. He gets up and runs back toward the base he’s supposed to be defending, desperate to be back in the game.
Matt climbs to his feet and brushes himself down. He sees that Gavin’s lost Rachel and is still managing to avoid being caught, despite now being pursued by both Frank and Ronan. He changes direction repeatedly, zigzagging, slowing down, then speeding up, taunting his unfit pursuers.
“You dead, Matt?” Rachel shouts to him.
“Yeah.”
“Me too. What are we supposed to do now?”
“Go back and get another life, I guess.”
“We should take our time. I’m in no rush.”
Gavin is still managing to dodge Ronan and Frank, and everyone else is momentarily out of view when the second flare is fired into the air unexpectedly. Matt and Rachel look at each other, confused. “What? Is that it?”
“Must be,” she says, and the two of them walk back toward the stores building.
Paul gets there before anyone else. “What happened?” he asks Nils. “Why did you stop the game?”
“Because you lost,” Nils tells him.
“Bullshit. We can’t have.”
Nils moves out of the way so Paul can get
a better view. Joy’s casually sitting in a deck chair in the middle of the cordoned-off base area, an enormous grin on her face instead of the usual scowl.
“That showed you,” she shouts. “You boys are all mouth, no trousers.”
“Nice one, Joy,” Gavin says as the others congregate.
“How the hell did you manage that?” Paul demands. “You must have cheated. Where’s the thing you were supposed to be smuggling in?”
She waves at him again. “Here.”
“Where?”
“It’s me, dummy.”
“What were you expecting?” Nils asks. “A bomb? Something valuable?”
“That’s what this exercise is all about,” Natalie, who has been observing, explains. “Challenging assumptions. You all assumed you’d be looking for something, not someone.”
“This is bullshit. That’s cheating,” Paul says.
“No, tying your life around your arm again after you’ve been killed is cheating.” She pulls at the luminous yarn he’s miraculously reattached.
“I’m a zombie,” he grumbles. “Deal with it.”
“Face it, the other team got you good and proper. You assumed they’d all be as aggressive as you. You defenders were so busy attacking that you didn’t notice Joy stroll around the back, quiet as anything.”
“Bullshit. It’s a con.”
“You’re a sore loser, Paul. Like I said, you were supposed to defend, not attack.”
“You lost sight of your goal, mate,” Nils says, laughing.
“Why have we stopped?” Ronan, late to the party, breathlessly asks. He takes off his glasses and wipes them clear of mist.
“Because they cheated,” Paul says.
“Because you lost,” Natalie corrects him.
“But that’s impossible. They hadn’t even started to—”
His words are abruptly truncated by a yell for help. Noises can be strangely difficult to pinpoint on Skek—the swirling winds and the general flatness of the landscape combine to make sounds seem directionless and camouflage their source.
Another flare. Fired from over toward the cliffs to the east. Rajesh is on the horizon, waving his arms wildly to the others.
Natalie and Nils look at each other momentarily, then sprint across the island to their colleague.