by David Moody
“Watch out for the kid, she could be anywhere,” Paul whispers. He’s hanging back near the doorway, looking around for something to use as a weapon and feeling hopelessly underprepared.
Matt walks farther into the building. It’s deathly silent in here. The occasional creak. Dripping. Natalie calls him back. “Wait, Matt. Be careful.”
At the end of the dining area he finds a table that’s awash with blood. There’s barely an inch of its surface that’s not been dyed deep red. Everything’s coated. There’s an abandoned mug and bowl. The bowl’s half-full, and the blood looks like soup, unidentifiable lumps floating in the semisolid liquid. He walks around to the far side of the table and finds a chair on its side, two of its legs broken. More blood, too. A snail trail curves out past the chair and along the walkway like someone’s been dragged away. He wonders whose blood this is. It could belong to anyone. Could be from more than one of them.
Natalie’s on his shoulder, but he’s so preoccupied trying to make sense of everything he’s seeing that he doesn’t notice her until she touches him. He jumps out of his skin and slips in the gore. “Christ’s sake,” he gasps, heart racing. “Don’t do that.”
Natalie has more important things on her mind. “Louise might still be here,” she whispers ominously, and she points out a trail of bloody footprints that snake away toward the kitchen and the dorms. They’re smudged and hard to make out. Some look like they were made by boots, others by the soles of bare feet.
Instinctively, Matt follows the prints. He glances around and sees a bread knife lying on the counter just inside the kitchen. He reaches in through the serving hatch and snatches it up, then carries on.
“What are you doing? Are you out of your fucking mind?” Paul hisses at him, standing his ground from a relatively safe distance back. “Have you never seen a horror movie?”
“Grow up,” Matt tells him, but Paul’s too busy remembering all the horror clichés he’s always joked about before. This is no joke, though.
“Don’t split up, don’t go into the dark … for fuck’s sake, just don’t.”
Now Natalie’s the one who’s holding back. “He’s got a point, Matt.”
Matt stops. Did he just hear something? It could be a rat or some other vermin, he thinks, but he knows he’s kidding himself because there are no rats or any other similar-size animals on Skek. There’s just people, and right now those people seem intent on tearing one another apart.
He braces himself for an attack, which doesn’t immediately come. “Where are they all?” he asks, thinking out loud. “If they’re all dead, where the hell are they? The kid couldn’t have moved them, could she?”
“Why would she even have bothered?” Natalie asks, reluctantly edging closer.
Matt continues toward the dormitories. Natalie checks that her arrow is correctly loaded onto the bow and takes up the tension in the string. More blood is on the linoleum here.
“I don’t reckon there’s anyone here,” Paul says.
“There must be,” Matt whispers, and he peers around the first door. The dorm he and Paul slept in is empty. The dorm next door is too, as is the third—the room where Louise was being kept under sedation. His heart’s in his mouth for a second when he uncovers a body-shaped bulk on the floor, but it’s just pillows and bedding, turfed off the mattress in a hurry.
One dorm left. It’s the only one with a door that’s closed. The key’s still in the lock, and the back of a chair has been wedged under the handle to make sure it stays shut.
“Leave it, mate, just fucking leave it,” Paul whines.
“She in there?” Natalie asks. Matt looks through the small rectangular window, but he can’t immediately be sure. The lights are off in the dorm. He squints into the gloom. The room’s a maze of tall bunks and wooden wardrobes.
“This is a really fucking bad idea,” Paul says, and Natalie can’t help but think he might be right.
“We have to check,” Matt tells them both. “Don’t see that we have any choice.”
His hands clammy with nerves, Matt grips his knife tight, then moves the chair, trying to make as little noise as possible. Natalie stands a short distance back with the bow and arrow, ready to fire.
“You sure about this?”
“We have to be certain.”
“Just do it,” Natalie says before she can talk herself out of it. “You’re right, we’ve got to deal with her one way or another.”
“The kid’s a fucking killer,” Paul protests. “We’re better off leaving her locked up.”
“Do it,” Natalie says again.
Matt turns the key, then drops the handle and pushes the door open. There’s a rush of stale air, but the immediate rush of violence they’re fearing doesn’t come.
“Anybody in here?”
Knife held ready, Matt takes a few tentative steps forward.
“What’s happening?” Paul asks, his view restricted.
“You’d be able to see if you weren’t hiding,” Natalie sneers.
Matt treads in a pool of something tacky on the linoleum floor, then notices a bloody trail snaking away around a corner, disappearing between two bunks. “Looks like she’s hurt,” he whispers.
There’s that noise again. Someone moving?
“Careful, Matt,” Natalie says.
Another noise. More movement.
Matt panics and starts to reverse. “Get back, get back.”
But it’s too late.
Natalie’s already followed him into the room and Paul’s close behind, and between the two of them, they’re blocking the way out.
“Move!” Matt yells at them both because he can hear her coming for him now. “The kid’s in here. Get out!”
There’s a sudden burst of movement from the other side of the dorm. A frantic flurry of arms and legs as the killer kid picks herself up and comes at Matt.
But it’s not little Louise.
Too big. Too heavy. Too powerful.
It’s Ruth.
She’s hurt. Lots of blood. Dragging one leg behind her.
Weakened. Wounded.
“Thank Christ, Ruth. We thought you were—”
She hurls herself at Matt with vicious intent but barely controlled direction. She skids in the blood, then smacks her knee on the corner of a bed and crashes into Matt off-balance, forcing him back up against the wall, winding him. She’s carrying Nils’s serrated hunting knife and holds it up high, ready to bring it thumping down into his unprotected flesh.
Yet she doesn’t do it.
She freezes and stares at him, eyes fixed on his and filled with hate, time slowed down to a virtual stop.
Matt pushes her away and she staggers back with the kitchen knife he’d been carrying sunk into her gut at an awkward angle, just below her sternum. Buried to the hilt.
One lung punctured and filling with blood. Deep, rasping breaths.
“I didn’t mean to do it,” Matt says quickly. He’s instinctively apologizing and overcompensating, worried that the other two will think he’s something he’s not. “I’m not a Hater, I swear.… I was just holding the knife … she ran onto it … she came at me.”
Coordination gone, legs numb, Ruth trips farther back into the dormitory. She’s trying to pull the knife out of her flesh, but it’s in too deep and the angle’s all wrong, and with hands slippery wet with blood she can’t get a grip. She topples over and hits the deck hard. She tries to scream, but can only make a sickly wheezing sound as the air escapes through the hole in her chest before reaching her throat. Blood pools across the floor, spilling out from underneath her like an oil slick, an unstoppable flow. Her arms and legs flail furiously, slipping in the flood, splashing and splattering.
Gurgling. Gasping. Another half-choked dry scream. Then silence. No movement.
Ruth somehow maintains eye contact with Matt, who’s standing over her now, feeling confused—terrified and guilty in equal measure. He wants to tell her he’s sorry, but he’s not. He knows if his
knife hadn’t come between them, hers surely would have.
A couple more twitches. The death rattle. A split-second strained face, then nothing.
Matt looks up and sees the other two watching him from the doorway. “What does that make me?” he demands. “I killed Ruth. What does that make me?”
Paul’s not sure what Matt means. “What?”
“What does that make me? I’m a killer now.… Does that mean I’m one of them? Like Nils? Like the girl?”
Natalie marches up to him, bow now slung over her shoulder. She’s face-to-face with Matt, holding his chin up to keep him from looking at the still-spreading wave of gore. “Look at me, Matt. She attacked you. You didn’t set out to hurt her. You didn’t have any choice. You had to do it.”
Matt’s voice is unsteady, full of emotion. “You think? I don’t know if it was an accident or if I did it on purpose … if I wanted to do it. I don’t know if it was self-defense or if I just knew I had to get her before she got me. I don’t know if I hate myself for doing it, or if I’m proud.…”
“She was a Hater,” Natalie says, connecting the dots and vocalizing what all three of them are beginning to think. “That’s the only explanation. Why else would they have locked her in the dorm? You just did what you had to do.”
“It was luck.” Paul tries to sound more confident than he feels. “Whatever the reason, you did it, and it’s just luck that she’s the one lying dead at your feet and you’re still alive.”
Matt’s panicking. “Yeah, but what if I do it again? What happens if it’s one of you two next time?”
“What, you think you’re going to get a taste for it?”
“I don’t know. How am I supposed to know?”
Natalie wraps her arms around him and whispers, “I reckon I’m safe with you, mate.”
What starts as a casual hug lasts longer and feels more important than either of them expects. It makes them both realize how fucking terrified they are. Physical contact—friendly physical contact—with another human being says more today than a thousand words ever could.
“Very touching,” Paul grumbles, feeling excluded and less than impressed. “So what’s the plan now? Clean this place up and hunker down, or try to find the others?”
“We need to hope they haven’t all crammed into Rod’s boat and fucked off without us,” Natalie says.
“Think they have?”
“I think they might have. If I was in their position, I reckon it’d look like a pretty good option. What do you think, Matt?”
Matt doesn’t answer. Instead he just walks back to the mess hall in silence, his legs feeling heavier with every step. He makes it as far as the nearest blood-free table and collapses into a chair, no longer able to support his own weight. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.” His voice echoes around the alien stillness of the building. “I think I’ve got my head around what’s going on, then it all goes to shit again.”
Natalie fetches a drink from the kitchen, then sits down with him. “It’s shock. Here, have this.”
Overstrong fruit cordial. Matt winces at its unexpected sweetness as he stares at Frank’s body slumped at the other end of the building near the front entrance. “Every time I think things can’t get any worse, they do.”
“It just feels that way because it’s been so relentless. It’ll slow down soon. It has to.”
“Yeah, when there are none of us left,” Paul unhelpfully suggests.
Matt sips his cordial, beginning to regain his composure. “I’ve lost track. Who actually is left?”
Paul’s been asking himself the same question and has the answer ready. “Assuming they’re in hiding and not dead, from our side there’s Ronan, Stephen, Rachel, and us.” He looks at Natalie. “From your lot there’s you, Rajesh, Rod and his kid, and Stuart.”
“Jesus Christ, Paul, sides?” Natalie says.
Matt’s keen to head off another pointless argument before it begins. “So there’s nine left in total.”
“And Louise,” Natalie adds.
“Forget that little freak,” Paul says. “So, if they are still here, do we try and find them and stick together, or do we keep our distance?”
“We stick together,” Matt answers without hesitation. He sips his drink again and swallows hard. “It makes sense.”
“You reckon?” Paul says, obviously not impressed. “I think Natalie had the right idea last night.”
Matt shakes his head. “I’ve changed my mind. Think about it.… So far the three of us have managed to not kill each other, and the longer we don’t, the more chance I think there is that we won’t.”
“That’s just speculation,” Natalie says.
“I know, but right now that’s all I’ve got.”
“And you just killed Ruth,” Paul adds.
“Yeah, but I didn’t kill you, did I? I don’t know about you pair, but I’d feel better knowing where the rest of them are. Let’s find out for certain if they’ve gone. There’s so few of us left now it should be easy to keep an eye on everyone.”
“Fair point,” Natalie admits. “And with fewer of us we should have a better chance of working out who’s who.”
“Or who’s what,” Paul corrects her.
“I think we need as much information as we can get,” Matt says. “I know that’s not going to be a lot, but knowing where the others are is a start. Otherwise we’ll just be sitting here waiting for them to find us.”
“And kill us?” Paul asks.
“Maybe. Who knows.”
“Or maybe we’ll kill each other first.”
The conversation stalls. No one has anything to say. It all sounds ridiculous. Or it would if it weren’t so fucking terrifying.
Matt looks at the other two, almost demanding answers with his stare, but there’s nothing coming. It’s an impossible, illogical situation they’ve found themselves trapped in, with no obvious way out. When the lack of response becomes too much to stand, Matt tries again. “Okay, I reckon we need to get what’s left of us together, see what’s what, then work out how we’re going to get us all off this bloody island.”
“And how exactly are we going to do that?” Paul asks.
“Like I said, Rod’s boat,” Natalie says. “It’ll be down at the jetty. We’ll take it. He said he wasn’t ever going back, remember?”
“He also said something about being light on fuel.”
“We can use kayak paddles,” Matt suggests.
“For now I think we should just get down to the jetty and stake our claim, make sure no one can leave here without us.”
“How?”
“I don’t know … sabotage maybe? We steal something that’ll make a difference. Something crucial. Something that’ll stop them sailing.”
“Like what?”
“It doesn’t matter. A part of the motor, the rudder … whatever it takes.”
“Spark plugs?” Matt suggests.
“Something like that. Anything. Just enough to disable it and stop anyone getting away and leaving us here. Something we can put right when we’re ready to leave. As far as I can see, the person who’s got control of the boat right now is the person who has all the power. We just have to make sure it’s one of us.”
* * *
They make their way down to the jetty at speed. Natalie outruns the two men. She’s naturally quick as it is, but she’s even faster when her neck’s on the line.
She stops on the brow of the hill and looks down. Matt and Paul catch up a few seconds later, and they both see what she’s seen.
Nothing.
There’s no point running any farther.
The jetty is empty.
The boat’s already gone.
19
If anyone else is left on the island, there are only a few places where they’re likely to be. They could hide in the crumbling ruins of the cottages to the north or the abandoned and overgrown military defense turret near the south coast, but neither option seems particu
larly practical. With both the main building and the stores being filled with corpses, Stuart and Ruth’s bungalow seems to be the only sensible choice remaining.
Someone’s definitely been here recently, that much is clear. Fresh muddy footprints are in the well-worn path that leads from the base to the front of this neighboring building. Quite a few footprints. Different sizes, different directions.
Neither Matt or Paul have given the bungalow much thought before now. The squat, shoebox-shaped, grim-looking building is quite a distance from everything else, and Matt can’t understand why it wasn’t built closer when the buildings are already so far from the rest of civilization.
The cottage sticks out. It looks like a bland 1960s-era prefab that was cast out of concrete before being literally picked up and dropped onto the middle of Skek. It’s a surreal, almost comical sight. During the time they have lived here, Stuart and Ruth have clearly tried hard to imbue the place with some of the comforts of home. “It reminds me of something out of one of those fake villages the army used to build so they could practice blowing the shit out of stuff,” Paul says, and Matt knows exactly what he means. Matt’s seen the footage on TV documentaries: fake houses lining fake streets filled with cardboard-cutout pedestrians, the artificial calm frequently being shattered by squads of real gun-carrying soldiers practicing fighting, and by very real tanks firing very real mortars.
A low picket fence defines the (presumably arbitrary) extent of Ruth and Stuart’s smallholding and keeps the (almost nonexistent) neighbors at bay. The cottage has a pea-green front door, and a weather-faded, hand-painted wooden sign has been hung next to it: WELCOME TO OUR HOME. But when Matt looks at it, he feels anything but welcome. He tries to remember the self-assured, effusive, and hospitable Ruth he met last Friday evening, not the crazy, psychopathic bitch who attacked him less than an hour ago. The crazy, psychopathic bitch he then killed. How the hell’s he going to explain that to Stuart? If the others thought he was trouble before, they’re going to want to crucify him now.