by David Moody
“Stacey,” Matt corrects her.
“Whatever. She’s the only one of you who’s got a child, isn’t she?”
“So?” Paul asks, annoyed. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“So maybe she feels some kind of affinity for her, have you considered that? Maybe she’s just looking out for a child who’s been through an unimaginable trauma and who’s sick?”
“She wouldn’t think that if she’d seen the CCTV footage.”
“No, maybe she wouldn’t, but she hasn’t seen it, and chances are she never will. Right now that little girl is virtually catatonic. If it makes Rachel feel better to fuss over her a little, so what? Believe me, if anything happens, I’ll be the first in line to sort the kid out if she starts.”
“You’re not listening, are you?” Stephen says. “You’re only seeing the parts of this you want to see. Since you found that girl and brought her back to the group, only two people have spent any decent length of time with her, Ruth and Rachel. And we all know what happened to Ruth.…”
“Three people, actually,” Natalie corrects him. “Me too. I sat with her for a while when we first found her. Are you saying we’re all Haters?”
“I’m not saying anything.”
“Because you haven’t got the balls to.”
“No, because I genuinely don’t know. I don’t have to listen to this.”
“Neither do I.”
“It’s important we do listen, though.” Matt elbows his way into the increasingly fractious argument. “I like Rachel. I’ve always got on with her. Would it surprise you to know that she’s talked to me about both of you two before now?”
“When?” Paul asks. “Fucking nerve.”
“Back at work. Ages ago. Look, I’m not trying to cause more problems here, but I’ve heard her complaining about both you two. She didn’t trust either of you. She said you were a letch, Stephen, and she thought Paul was full of shit.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Stephen’s fuming now.
“Probably nothing,” Matt answers quickly. “All I’m saying is we’ve got to put our opinions and assumptions to one side ’cause they don’t count for much right now. Put it this way: I thought Ruth was pretty lovely until she tried to knife me yesterday.”
“Good point, well made,” says Natalie as Stephen storms off, muttering under his breath.
“So what’s the answer?” Paul looks directly at Matt. “If you’re so smart, what do we need to do to stay alive?”
Matt shrugs. “Logically we should all stay well away from each other, but I don’t fancy that option. And it’s hardly practical when this is the only habitable building we’ve got left.”
“Maybe we should try and lose the rest of them,” Paul says.
Natalie and Matt exchange glances.
“What?” Natalie asks.
“Well, I reckon the three of us should definitely stick together. We’ve done all right so far, haven’t we? We’ve been through the same things and had pretty much the same reactions, so that makes me think we’re on the same side.”
“You’re still assuming there are sides.”
“And you’re also assuming it’s predetermined whether you’re going to be a Hater or not,” Matt adds. “How do you know? It might be down to something in the water or a wheat intolerance or the color of your eyes or the way you brush your hair in the morning.… We don’t know if this is something you’re born with, or something you catch.”
“I get that, but whatever it is, the three of us have been okay together so far, yes?”
“So far.”
“So I know I’m okay with you two, but I’m not so sure about everyone else. Maybe we should be thinking about being more proactive.”
Natalie doesn’t like where this is heading. “What do you mean? Barricade ourselves away again? Let them deal with each other, then come back when they’ve wiped each other out?”
“That’s being passive, not proactive,” Paul corrects her. “No, I’m talking about going a step further.”
“Kill them before they kill us? Are you serious?”
Paul doesn’t say much at first, then he reluctantly nods agreement. “Think about it.… If Rajesh doesn’t come back for a while—if he comes back at all—and we’re stuck in this situation, getting rid of the rest of them might be our only viable survival strategy.”
“Christ’s sake, just listen to yourself. You’re just being stupid.”
“No, stupid is doing nothing.”
“Do you have any idea what you’re saying?”
“Hang on, hang on.” Matt’s struggling to keep track of this increasingly surreal conversation. “You’re talking about killing people before they kill you? Isn’t that how Rod said the Haters behave? I don’t want to rain on your parade or anything, Paul, but if you’d overheard Rachel telling Ronan that she thought she should probably kill you, me, and Nat because we might be a threat, you’d have her marked down as one of the enemy, wouldn’t you?”
“Keep your bloody voice down.”
“Why?” Matt asks, bemused. “Because you think they’ll hear us talking about lynching them and you’re afraid of their reaction, or because you’re worried they’ll get in first? Come on.…”
“I just don’t know who we can trust anymore.”
“Let’s keep things in perspective—we’re talking about murder here. Cold-blooded, premeditated murder. I don’t think you’ve got it in you. I don’t think I could do it.”
Paul looks straight at Matt. “If we’re getting onto the subject of keeping things in perspective, let’s remember which one of us has already killed, shall we?”
“That was different. I didn’t mean for it to happen. It was self-defense, you know it was.”
“Yeah, but judging from what we’ve heard and what you’ve just been saying, Ruth would probably have given the same reason for coming at you with the knife.”
Natalie sighs. “Just ignore him, Matt.”
Matt’s expression has changed. He swallows hard. “It’s okay … he might have a point. All along I’ve been thinking about these Haters and trying to imagine how it must feel to be one of them. I’ve been trying to work out what kind of emotions and thoughts must be running through someone’s head to make them do the kind of things we’ve seen.”
“And?” she presses impatiently.
“And now I’m standing here contemplating killing the rest of the people here before they can kill me, and I’m thinking, ‘Is this how it begins? Have I got this all wrong? Am I a Hater? Are the three of us Haters? Are the others the ones who haven’t changed?’”
“But it doesn’t change anything,” Natalie says. “It’s still one side against the other. Us versus them.”
“Now who’s talking about sides?” Paul says.
Matt shakes his head. “Who’s to say there even is any difference? Who’s to say we’re not all going out of our minds and manufacturing a problem that doesn’t really exist?”
“I get all that. We are where we are. So for about the hundredth time of asking, what do we do now?”
“You tell us,” Natalie says, frustrated. “Just let us know if you decide to go on a killing spree so we can get out of the way first.”
“Have a go at me all you like, love, at least I’m trying.”
“Trying? You’re just talking, Paul. It’s all you ever do from what I’ve seen. And for the record, I’m not your love, right?”
“Damn right you’re not. Pity the bloke who ends up stuck with you and—”
“For Christ’s sake, Paul, just stop,” Matt snaps, uncharacteristically forceful. “As it happens, I don’t think you’re completely wrong this time. I say we do a final recce of the island and get together everything useful we can find, then barricade ourselves back in here and wait for Rajesh. First sign of trouble from anyone, and we deal with them. And by deal with them, I mean kill them.”
Matt can’t believe he’s just said that out loud,
but he knows it’s the right thing to do.
The only thing to do.
21
“Do you not think we’d be better staying here?” Paul asks as he, Matt, Natalie, and Rachel strip the main building of anything left of value. “There’s more space here than in the bungalow.”
“I think we need less space, not more,” Matt says. “The tighter the confines, the easier it’ll be for us to keep track of who’s doing what.”
“Yeah, but the closer we are, the more chance there is of it spreading.”
“It? It? Have you not been listening? This thing isn’t an STD, you know.”
“So what exactly is it?” Rachel asks.
The question floors Matt momentarily. “No idea,” he’s forced to admit.
Paul’s at the far end of the main hall with only Frank’s corpse for company. He’s struggling to carry a couple of bulky duvets when his foot skids in a puddle of the dead man’s blood, still not dry even after all this time. He loses his temper with himself when he almost falls. “Fuck this,” he yells, and he throws the duvets across the room and kicks a chair with frustration. The noise fills the entire building.
Matt watches him. Natalie comes to check what the noise is and catches his eye. “He okay, d’you think?” she quietly asks.
“Shit scared, I reckon,” Matt whispers back. “Too full of crap to admit it, though.”
“What about you?”
“Me? Oh, no machismo here. I’m terrified.”
He goes into the dorm where he and Paul slept and starts gathering up his own belongings. He doesn’t have a lot, just a rucksack full of dirty clothes and his book. He looks for anything else that might be of use: a few odds and ends from the bathroom, a couple of pillows, someone’s torch and alarm clock …
They carry what they can manage in relays, running the short distance between the base and the bungalow, eyes peeled even though they know there’s no one else left here but them. It’s ridiculous, he knows, but when he’s outside, Matt feels like he’s being watched. He feels exposed like he’s in the crosshairs of a sniper’s sights.
The island is cold and inhospitable this morning, but strangely beautiful too. For once the sky is deep blue and largely cloudless. Natalie hopes it’s like this all the way over to the mainland. The calmer the water, the better Rajesh’s chances of getting home, then getting back.
While Matt, Natalie, Rachel, and Paul are bringing useful stuff into the cottage, Stephen and Ronan are concentrating on getting unwanted stuff out. Stephen’s doing 90 percent of the shifting, with Ronan doing more talking than heavy lifting. A pile of blood-soaked linen has been left in a heap in the front garden, and right now Stephen’s struggling to manhandle Stuart’s unwieldy corpse out of his former home. Ronan tells him what to do and how to do it, but does little to help.
“We’ve left it too late to shift him; we should have done this straightaway,” Stephen complains as he drags the dead man’s bulk down the hall. He’s right—the cadaver has become rigid, arms and legs frozen into their final position. The stiffness in his joints makes Stuart feel peculiarly brittle, fragile almost, even though he’s clearly not. When he becomes stuck, one foot hooked around a shoe rack, Stephen yanks the deadweight hard with frustration.
Ronan is appalled. “Have some respect, for crying out loud.”
“Respect? Don’t you get it, Ronan? Stuart’s gone. This is just dead flesh. Useless and empty and really fucking heavy.”
“Yes, but…”
“But nothing. Look, instead of standing there like a lemon and watching, why don’t you do something to help?”
Ronan moves more furniture out of the way and holds open the door—anything but touch the body. Stephen continues to wrestle with Stuart, grunting with exertion and turning him this way and that to make his awkward shape fit through the narrow gap like it’s a macabre puzzle piece.
Matt’s trying to get in as Stephen’s trying to get out. No matter how much death Matt’s seen over the last few days, he still feels nauseous when Stephen roughly drags Stuart out into the open and cracks the back of his head against the concrete step.
Stephen looks up, unapologetic. “He’s not bothered.”
Matt puts down the stuff he’s been carrying, and between the two of them they carry Stuart down the side of the cottage along a pathway marked out with more unnecessary picket fence. They place him respectfully in his small, square back garden plot and cover him up. Matt stands with his hands on his hips and looks around at the unremarkable patch of land, just the same as the rest of the island, but somehow elevated in importance because someone decided to park a prefabricated bungalow here. It’s quite surreal. It makes Matt chuckle, and the distraction is welcome.
If short-lived.
Ronan has made a quick dash back to base to collect more of his things. He comes rushing back from the other building with his arms piled high with personal belongings. He has files and paperwork, and his laptop is slung across his back in the trendy hipster rucksack he always carries it in. Matt—around the front of the house again now—accepts it without question, because this is the Ronan he’s always known: business first, everything else second.
Natalie, though, is far less forgiving. “What the fuck have you got all that for?”
Ronan’s wrong-footed by the directness of her question. “This paperwork’s important. I can’t leave confidential business information just lying around, can I?”
“You can.” She snatches one of his folders from him and empties it into the wind. With his arms still overloaded, all he can do is watch his papers fly away. She grabs his shoulder and spins him around to get to his rucksack. “Is that your laptop? What the hell do you want your laptop for?”
“I thought I might be able to get online.”
She’s having none of it. “You won’t. We tried that already.”
“I can’t risk leaving this stuff unattended. There’s information on this machine that could seriously damage my business if it was to get into the wrong hands.”
“Do you think that really matters now? I mean, apart from the fact there’s no one here but us and there’s very little chance of anyone else turning up unannounced, do you think anyone actually cares?”
He can’t help himself. “Of course it matters. Do you have any idea how hard I had to work to build the business up from scratch?”
“No, but I’m guessing you’re going to have to work a hell of a lot harder just to stay alive from here on in.”
“I can’t leave all this data where anyone could—”
“I think you’re missing the point, you stupid little man,” she yells. “Don’t you get it? Half of your staff are dead and the other half are stuck here with you and me with no way out. By all accounts, the rest of the world appears to be fucked. It’s all over, mate.”
“How do you know for sure? How do you know what’s really going on in the rest of the world?”
She interrupts, “Right now, this island is the rest of the world, and these people are everyone that’s in it. The sooner you get that through your thick, corporate skull, the better.”
Before he can protest—and for once he’s having real trouble trying to find something to say—Natalie wrenches the laptop bag off him and empties it onto the ground. He halfheartedly tries to stop her, but she’s taller than him and far more confident, and she pushes him away. She takes his precious laptop and smashes it repeatedly against the corner of the bungalow. It buckles, cracks, and shatters. No longer a repository of vital business information, it’s now a useless lump of scrap. She grinds bits of it into the ground with the heel of her boot.
“Try stealing any trade secrets off that.” She pants with the effort of the unexpectedly therapeutic destruction.
Ronan looks broken, as if he’s lost his best friend, not his computer. “Some of the information on that was irreplaceable,” he whimpers.
He starts to bend down to pick stuff up, but Natalie grabs his collar lightning fast,
picks him up, and slams him up against the wall of the bungalow. “Gavin, Frank, and Joy were irreplaceable, not this. Fuck your business, Ronan, and fuck you.”
“Don’t hurt me.” He squirms. “Please don’t…”
She realizes he thinks she might be about to turn, and the panic in his face makes her smile. She taunts him, almost enjoying it. “You’re not worth the effort.” She lets him go, then heads back toward the main building. Ronan picks himself back up and brushes himself down. His heart’s thumping so hard he thinks it might explode. He grabs Matt for support.
“Did you see what she did? Did you see how she looked at me? We need to keep an eye on her. I thought she was going to kill me.”
Matt shrugs him off. “Grow up, Ronan. From what I’ve seen of Natalie, if she’d wanted to kill you, she’d have done it already. Now pull yourself together and do something useful.”
* * *
Paul, Matt, and Natalie are in the main building, carrying out one final check for anything of value they might have missed. They’ve taken all the food they can find, and pretty much anything else that wasn’t bolted down.
Natalie looks around at their grim surroundings. All she can focus on is bodies and blood. The stench of death coats everything. “Even if we shifted the corpses out, I don’t reckon it would make any difference. This place is a frigging health hazard. There’s no way we could stay here.”
“This island is a frigging health hazard,” Matt says quickly, and he’s pleased when he notices the corner of Natalie’s lips turn upward: almost a smile. An almost-smile is as good as it gets today.
One last check of the dorms.
He realizes plenty of stuff is still left in here. He goes back out to speak to the others. “Who checked this dorm?”
“I think Ronan did,” Paul replies. “Why?”
On cue, Ronan appears in the main doorway. “What’s the problem?”
“You’ve left loads of gear in here.”
“But that’s their stuff.” The way he looks around, focusing on Frank’s corpse in particular, leaves Matt in no doubt that by them he means the dead. “It just didn’t seem right.…”