One of Us Will Be Dead by Morning

by David Moody

  “So you could get us back to the mainland if we had Rod’s boat?”

  “Maybe. We haven’t got Rod’s boat, though. Rod’s got Rod’s boat, remember.”

  Matt’s had enough of talking. He picks up his book and heads for the kitchen. His heart sinks when Paul follows him out like a tireless puppy.

  “Want a coffee?”

  “If you’re making one. Look, Matt, I don’t know why you—”

  A sudden noise comes from near the entrance to the building. It’s loud like a gunshot, and it’s followed by a few seconds’ calm as all stop what they’re doing to listen. Paul goes out to the mess hall and Matt follows, but they’re both held up by a sudden stampede of people trying to get the other way. Ronan, Frank, Rachel … they all fight to get past Paul as he tries to get through. He knows in his gut that whatever’s happened is bad. Really fucking bad.

  But when the two men finally push through the crowd and see it, it’s far worse than they could have imagined.

  Nils has Gavin pinned up against the door. At first Matt thinks Nils is repeatedly punching Gavin in the stomach like they’ve just fallen out and are having a dustup, but when Matt sees blood, he knows it’s far more serious than that. And the longer it goes on, the more blood he sees.

  Nils isn’t punching Gavin, he’s stabbing him. He’s driving a shiv up into his gut again and again. Shredding his flesh, calm as anything. Both men are soaked with gore from the waist down. Innards splatter on the linoleum like someone’s emptying a slop bucket.

  No one tries to stop Nils.

  No one does anything to intervene.

  Instead the entire group moves farther and farther back—Paul and Matt too now—putting maximum distance between themselves and the unnervingly calm and controlled attack. Ronan finds himself pressed up against the wall with Frank tight on one side and Rod on the other and can’t move. Ronan starts to panic, grabbing hold of other people to try to get away, but they’re all doing the same and there’s nowhere left to go. “Do something,” he hisses, but no one does and no one will, because each of them is thinking, I could be next.… Please don’t let it be me next.

  Back at the entrance door, Nils has finished with Gavin.

  Panting hard with effort, he lets go of the dead man. Gavin slides down and lands in an uncoordinated, blood-soaked heap at Nils’s feet. For several more interminably long seconds Nils just stares at the corpse.

  Rajesh watches his friend Nils—ex-friend … enemy?—and tries to make sense of the incomprehensible scene he’s just witnessed.

  Still no one moves. They’re all frozen in position. Too scared to react. Watching. Waiting.

  Nils lets out a deep and sorrowful sob and wipes his eyes.

  Then he looks up.

  He sees them all watching him. The expression on his face is hard to read: equal parts terror and rage. The distance between Nils and the others is just a few meters. They each know he could go for any of them in a heartbeat, and they also know there’s nowhere for any of them to go. He’s between them and the building’s only exit.

  Nils charges at the rest of the group.

  Frank yells and Ronan squeals as the newly turned killer comes at them, but Stuart remains impossibly calm. He’s got hold of one of the bows and arrows from the back of the room, and he pushes his way through the group. He pulls back the string and lets the arrow fly before he can talk himself out of it.

  Point-blank range.

  The arrow hits Nils’s chest with a loud thump, sinking deep and piercing his right lung. He stops, looks down, then tries to pull the shaft free. His hands are greasy, still drenched with Gavin’s blood, and he can’t get a grip.

  Progress slowed but not stopped, he lumbers forward again, legs a little heavier now.

  Another arrow. This time Stuart aims higher. Straight through Nils’s neck, front to back.

  Still he keeps coming, but after a couple more half steps his legs finally buckle. He falls forward onto a table, then slides off it and crashes facedown to the floor. His head hits the deck with a nauseating crack. The arrow in his throat snaps. The other one is shoved right through his chest and is left sticking out of his back like an antenna.

  Stuart’s shaking. Ruth weaves through the crowd of dazed onlookers and puts her arms around her husband. “You had to do it, love. He wasn’t Nils anymore. He’d have killed us all if you hadn’t done it. All of us.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel any better.” Stuart shakes with nerves and is unable to look anywhere but at the corpse lying just in front of him.

  He was my friend.

  People are milling around the top of the mess hall in a daze.

  Two more dead.

  “You believe me now?” Rod says to Ronan. He gestures to Paul and Frank, and the three of them carry the fresh bodies outside.

  16

  Matt has a scrap of paper and does all he can not to let any of the others see what’s on it. He’s trying to work out who’s what and who’s where. He’s divided his scribbling into three columns: Rod’s people, Ronan’s people, and Dead. He adds a fourth column as an afterthought: Others. He writes Louise under that heading.

  Dead: Gavin, Nils, Joy, Vanessa, the killer kid, all the passengers and crew of the Heavenly Vision (apart from Louise).

  Rod’s people: Rod, Jayde, Stuart, Ruth, Rajesh, and Natalie.

  Ronan’s people: Ronan, Paul, Frank, Stephen, Rachel, and himself.

  We’re all even, he thinks, six a side. He wonders if a slight numerical advantage might have come in useful.

  But the real purpose of his idle scribbling is to look for connections, because he thinks they have to be there. This can’t be as random as they’re being led to believe, can it? He looks around at the people he’s trapped in here with and draws a few exploratory lines on the page … people who are a similar age, people with similar beliefs, people with the same hair color, ethnicity, overweight or underweight. He tries any and every link, no matter how obvious or how tenuous, but gives up quickly. He realizes there’s no point, because for every similarity he finds between two people, he can just as easily find half a dozen differences. Living, dead, male, female, Christian or Muslim, short or tall, a Rod Hazleton employee or one of Ronan’s staff, none of it seems to matter. The only thing of which Matt is certain now is that this does make as little sense as he originally thought.

  He starts idly ticking off the names of the people he can see. There aren’t too many of them, as it happens. Ronan’s sitting at a table by himself, still distracting himself with his laptop. Jayde’s sitting at another table, playing games on her phone. Rod, Stuart, and Rajesh are in the kitchen, thick as thieves. Stephen’s sitting on his own and hasn’t moved for hours. Paul emerged from the bathroom a few minutes ago, and Frank’s just disappeared into the one of the dorms. Elsewhere he can hear Ruth on the radio again, still trying to make contact with the outside world, and Rachel’s with Louise.

  Wait. Someone’s missing.

  Matt gets up to double-check. He acts nonchalant, trying to make it look like he’s lost his book or something equally trivial, not that he’s checking up on his captive colleagues.

  Everyone’s on edge. He notices Jayde flinch when he nears her, even though she does everything she can not to let him see. He realizes he flinched when she flinched. It’s getting so they’re all afraid of one another.

  He looks through the small square windows in the doors of each of the dorms, then goes back to the mess hall. “Anyone seen Natalie?”

  “I thought she was in one of the bedrooms,” Rajesh answers.

  “I just checked. She’s not there.”

  Matt looks in the bathrooms and checks all the individual cubicles and showers, then returns to the mess hall again.

  “Any sign?” asks Rod.

  “Nope. She’s gone.”

  People start hunting around, calling out for her like they’re looking for a missing pet. They check all the places Matt’s already looked, even under tables
and behind doors, but she’s nowhere to be found. “She must have gone outside,” Frank says, stating the obvious.

  “That’s a pretty safe bet if she’s not in here,” Paul quickly responds. “Shit, Frank, no wonder you’re head of security.”

  “When did anyone last see her?” Ronan asks.

  “Can’t remember,” Matt replies. “An hour ago? Maybe longer?”

  “Just after Nils,” Frank adds. “She must have left when we were getting rid of the bodies.”

  “Don’t you think we should try and find her?” Matt looks around, but the reaction to his question is muted at best.

  “Suppose,” Franks says, sounding less than enthusiastic.

  “What if it’s her next?” Jayde says. “What if she’s one of them?”

  Matt shakes his head. “No way. She’s no more a killer than I am.”

  “This time yesterday I bet Nils would have said the same thing,” Rajesh says in an almost accusatory tone. “And Stuart’s a killer too now, if you want to be pedantic about it.”

  “Why are you so keen to find her?” Ronan asks.

  Matt regrets having spoken out loud. The others are looking at him weirdly now. He imagines that their minds are working overtime. He can almost hear the cogs turning.

  “She can look after herself,” Rajesh says quickly.

  “I know that. It’s just…”

  “Just what?”

  Matt shakes his head. “Nothing.”

  Everyone’s back in the mess hall now. Rod’s looking directly at him. “What have you done to her?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Are you serious? You think I’ve hurt Natalie?”

  “I don’t know what to think. I don’t even know you.”

  “So let’s rewind a second. You think I’ve attacked her, maybe even killed her, dumped the body somewhere, then started asking questions to throw you off the scent?”

  “Like I said, I hardly know you. I don’t know what you’re capable of.”

  “Matt’s not capable of anything,” Paul says a little too quickly.

  Matt laughs involuntarily. “You think I’m one of them? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Maybe Gavin was right about him,” Frank says, now talking about Matt as if he weren’t even in the room.

  “Wait, I need to get my head round this. We’ve got people on this bloody island dying all over the place, Nils turns out to be a killer, Stuart’s a killer too because he dealt with Nils, Natalie’s gone AWOL, and yet I’m the one who’s getting another character assassination? For Christ’s sake, this is an absolute bloody joke.”

  Matt laughs again in disbelief, but no one else thinks it’s funny. Stony, emotionless faces all round.

  “What have you done to her?” Ronan demands, deadly serious.

  “Come on, Ronan, get a grip. This is ridiculous even by your standards.”

  Matt starts to question himself now. Normally that’s the kind of comment he’d wish he could say but would keep to himself or would mumble deliberately quietly so no one else could hear. Talking back to Ronan like that was out of character. Are they right? Am I changing? Did I do something to her?

  “This is crazy,” he says, his head clouding with confusion. “I haven’t killed anyone and I’m not about to. Just listen to yourselves. Bloody ridiculous.”

  “So where is she?” Rod asks, deadly serious.

  “I told you, I don’t know. I was the one looking for her first, remember?”

  “We should lock him up,” Frank suggests. “Just to be sure.”

  “Makes sense,” Stuart agrees, and because he’s nearest, he goes to take hold of Matt.

  Matt snatches his arm away. “Get off. Leave me alone.”

  He’s acutely aware that the balance in the building has shifted. Whether they realize it or not, the others have closed ranks on him.

  “Keep calm and you won’t get hurt,” Stuart says. “This is for your own good, just until we’re sure what’s what.”

  Stuart comes at him again, but Matt slips out of the way. He weaves between tables and chairs, backing away from the other man. The rest of the people gathered in the mess hall are reluctant to get involved. Whenever he gets close, they scatter as if he’s infected.

  Matt’s backed up against a wall with Rod, Stuart, and Rajesh closing in. His head’s all over the place now: panicking that he’s about to get a beating, and trying to work out an exit strategy. He can’t focus. Can’t think straight.

  “Get hold of him,” Stuart says.

  Matt scrambles to the entrance door. He unlocks it and yanks it open.

  One foot in and one foot out.

  “You go out there and you’re not coming back in,” Rod warns.

  “I’ll go and find her,” Matt says, his confidence gradually returning now he thinks he’s found a way out. “If that’s what it’s going to take to sort this out and prove I’m not a Hater or whatever you call them, I’ll go find her and bring her back.”

  “Dead or alive?” Rajesh says with no hint of irony.

  “Alive,” Matt immediately answers. “Either that or I won’t come back at all. I’ve got nothing to hide. I’m just like the rest of you, just trying to get through this so I can go home to my missus. That’s all I’m interested in right now. I just want to get back to the other half and put this whole bloody mess behind me.”

  Surely they’ll see sense now, Matt thinks, still quietly surprised by his sudden confidence. But they don’t.

  Stuart forces Matt’s hand. “We can’t afford to take any more chances than we already have. Get out, Matt.”

  Matt knows that if his options were limited a few seconds ago, they’re virtually nonexistent now. He tries to convince himself he’s doing the right thing by going out and looking for Natalie, but what if she has turned? What if he finds her and she tries to kill him? Every available option feels like the wrong choice.

  “I need my jacket.” He takes a couple of hesitant steps forward. Jayde visibly recoils and Rod blocks his way.

  “Leave. Now.”

  “Come on, this is a bit extreme, isn’t it?” Matt hears Paul say, just about coming to his defense. “Matt wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “The kid Nils killed was the same, and look what he did to Joy and the people on the boat,” Rajesh reminds Paul.

  Matt knows the decision has been made, and that to fight or protest would only make matters worse. He braces himself against the wind and rain, then starts walking and doesn’t look back.

  * * *

  It’s not the end of the world, Matt thinks, but he’s starting to wonder if it might actually be. He’s only been outside a few minutes, and already he’s soaked and shivering with cold. He surveys the barren landscape he’s a prisoner of and considers his depressing lack of options. Looking for Natalie is his obvious priority, but he can’t risk being stuck out here alone for too long. He could try to break into Stuart and Ruth’s bungalow and shelter there if needs be. Or, if it comes to it, he can hang out with the growing crowd of corpses in the stores.

  He stops when he literally stumbles upon Nils’s and Gavin’s bodies, which have been dumped in the long grass not far from base, wrapped in blood-soaked sheets. He’s suddenly found himself in a situation so bizarre it feels unreal—the baseless accusations and his unplanned eviction being the cherry on the cake—but seeing the corpses again helps him focus on the seriousness of what’s happening. He crouches down and peels back a corner of the sheet covering Gavin, feeling compelled to check it’s really him. His dead colleague’s face is gray-white and splattered with blood from his eviscerated torso.

  Should I take his jacket? He doesn’t need it now.

  If parts of it weren’t as slashed and torn as Gavin himself, Matt thinks he probably would.

  Back to Natalie.

  Where the hell did she go?

  Matt walks a circuit around all the other buildings. It’s slow going because whichever way he walks se
ems to be head-on into the breeze. In the absence of trees and other natural windbreaks here, the weather is relentless, constantly blustery. The wind races across the island virtually unopposed, and now that Matt knows there’s no way back into the main building, he’s feeling the cold more than ever.

  He reaches the stores and lets himself inside. The doors are permanently unlocked. No matter what the value of the equipment the Hazleton Adventure staff keeps in here, until now it’s always been safe. Until Monday morning there’d never been any real trouble on Skek, save for the petty pilfering Stuart mentioned a while back. Matt looks around the building for as long as he can stand, helping himself to a spare waterproof and gloves. There’s probably more here he could take, but the stench and his nerves get the better of him quickly and he has to get out.

  Back outside again, Matt slowly trudges north, retracing his steps back toward the bungalow. When he looks up this time, he sees that the people in the main building are watching him. Their faces are pressed against the windows. What do they think he’s going to do? Crack up? Go crazy? Try to break back inside so he can finish the job Nils started and kill the rest of them? He skirts around the building at a distance, then stops at the bungalow. The out-of-place, strange-looking building is locked tight. No lights, no life, no one home. He moves on, figuring he might come back after dark when he’s not being watched.

  The day is being steadily eaten away. He decides to head for the ruined fishing cottages up near the northeast of the island. Maybe Natalie will have reached the same conclusion and she’ll be sheltering there too? Better the protection of crumbled walls and weathered stonework than no protection at all. Or maybe she knows about somewhere he doesn’t? The overgrown army lookout near the beach perhaps? He resigns himself to doing a complete circuit of Skek before nightfall. But what if Jayde was right about Natalie? What if she’s turned and now she’s following him, poised to attack? He’s tying himself up in knots again. He doesn’t relish the prospect of being stuck out here on his own overnight. If the cold doesn’t get him, then something or someone else might. For Christ’s sake, he orders himself, man up.