Three Strikes

by Lucy Christopher

  Either way, whether she did or not, it’s still my fault.

  It’s two more hours since I wrote all that. It’s taken me ages to even pick up the pen again.

  Nothing’s happened in those hours. The cameras still blink. Sam still hasn’t come back. I remember lying against him as I drifted to sleep. And then, this morning … gone.

  The trees are still noisy. Still hot. There are no sounds of gunshots or trucks.

  I could stay here, like this. Maybe no one would find me. I could hunt monkeys when I ran out of food. Could become like a black cat myself – stealthy and never quite seen. Stay here, waiting.

  I just curled up for a while, hugging my knees.

  Where are the others?

  Maybe Sam’s found someone – some help – and he’s coming back for me.

  Maybe they’ve all been shot.

  Without Sam … no one knows where I am.

  Without Sam … I don’t know where I am.

  Who I am.

  What.

  It’s how he looks at me – as if he likes me, even after everything – even after all the shit I’ve done. As if none of that really matters. He looks at me like I’m here. I exist.

  Another hour gone.

  The flag is still where we left it in the corner of this hut, the flag we never planted on the top of the hill behind our camp: the final task. I can’t stop staring at it.

  I could do it. Then I’ve done everything. No one can say I didn’t fulfil my contract. It wouldn’t take long. Just to the top of that hill and back, we’d almost done it before.

  If it hadn’t been for those shots…

  And at the top of the hill, I could see down. See where to go. Maybe I’ll see where the others went.

  See Sam?

  I want to see Sam.

  Maybe I’ll fling this book into the trees if anyone tries to shoot.

  This is Dieter’s address if anyone finds this:

  Dieter Fintry

  Flat 33, Thomas Court, New Warehouse Lane, Porton Town, PW5 1GA

  I’ll write a note for Sam. Leave it on our bed. I’ll tell him where I’m going.

  If someone finds this book and not me with it, please try to find Sam too.

  And look for my bones somewhere. Package them up and send them back to Dieter.

  Dieter.

  Would he care enough to call the cops? If I do disappear.

  Does he suspect anything?

  OK…

  OK!

  I don’t believe this – what I’m looking at.

  I’ve been staring at it for ages.

  HERE!

  I’m almost at the top of the hill with the flag, but I had to stop. Had to record this. Can I draw it? I’ll try.

  There.

  See?

  A paw print. Like the ones Mum drew in the dirt the night she died. The prints I followed to find her.

  But this one’s real.

  Least I think it is. Unless Lily and George really are fucking with me.

  But I didn’t tell them about the prints that night. Told no one. Not even Sam.

  I’m tracing my fingers over it, again and again, in between writing these words. It’s SO like the prints Mum drew. How did she get it so right?

  Four teardrop-shaped toes and then the firmer-indented pad beneath. It’s almost as big as my own hand when I lay it flat on top. It’s beautiful too. Art work in its own right. No wonder Mum drew them so many times, had them tattooed.

  A real print.

  There are other prints too, but away from the damper ground they are so much fainter and harder to see – I think they are going into the trees, and anyway I don’t want to follow them. I remember what happened when I followed prints into trees last time.

  Where’s its owner?

  Mum would be so excited if she were here.

  If I could write her a postcard:

  Dear Mum,

  I found the cat. Look, here’s a picture I drew of its print. You don’t need to keep looking anymore. You can relax, just be healthy. It exists.

  I love you, Mum.

  I’m sorry too.

   Kasha

  I’ve stopped to look around. Can’t see any cat, but the undergrowth has gone quieter around me. That’s a sign, isn’t it, that there’s a predator near?

  Perhaps this is the real way I die, not by gunshot but by cat.

  I think I’d rather that death.

  I waited for ages and it didn’t get me. Nothing came.

  Nothing still comes.

  All quiet.

  Velvet-dark.

  Cat-like-dark.

  I’m going to keep going to plant the flag. And if this IS still some crazy psychology programme everything will stop then – bright lights will flash. Music will play. Sam will come running back. The others too. A million-dollar cheque handed over.

  And it will all be done. I can go home.

  But who am I kidding? It’s not The Hunger Games. It’s so much more real than that. But there’s nothing else to try.

  At the top I’ll look down and see where Sam is, then I’ll go join him.

  These are the hopes I hold.

  But first I have to get there.

  I’m at the top.

  I’m looking down at the view. Right from the top. There is so much green.

  There is nothing else.

  There is so much else.

  Green. Green. Green.

  Undergrowth for days.

  Nothing but green, tangled trees.

  It looks a bit like broccoli.

  The programme didn’t stop. Not after I planted the flag on the top. There was even a proper metal slot to slip the flag into, like there’d been a flag up there before, like L and G had planned it that way.

  There were no flashing lights. Or theme music. No hosts leaping out of the trees to congratulate me.

  No Sam.

  But there was something.

  Definitely something.

  When I turned, I finally saw her. Properly this time.

  I never heard her arrive. But, then, I guess I wouldn’t. I’m not sure anyone would hear a black cat arrive unless she wanted you to.

  A real black cat.

  Following me, after all.

  I don’t know how I knew she was a she. But I did. I was certain.

  And she was beautiful, too. So sleek. Shining. I wanted to touch my fingers to her fur, feel how soft she was. I forgot about everything else, even breathing. I just saw her. I breathed her.

  She was so close, just the other side of the summit, staring right back with amber-gold eyes. Like tiny fires, those eyes. I could ignite them. I could burn inside them. It would take three, maybe four, strides for her to reach me … to stretch out one of her huge paws and cut me with her own knives. What would it feel like to die from claws? And what would it feel like to climb onto her back and ride her – away from this island and whatever fucked-up thing we’d got ourselves into, back home?

  This wonder-black-cat.

  Most of all, I just wanted to watch. See what she did. The power was hers, after all. What could I do if she did want to strike? I had no weapon, unless you counted the flagpole.

  I don’t know how long we stayed there – her and me – just watching each other. Was she waiting for me to run? Waiting for an excuse to chase?

  My heart was catapulting in my chest the whole time. I’m not sure I’d ever felt so real. So completely there. Perhaps because any minute I might not be.

  She could decide it.

  She took one step towards me, just one. And my heart leapt about a metre inside, felt like it anyway.

  I saw again – so clear – the paw print she left in the ground behind her. The same as the last one. The same as the paw prints on Mum’s mountain. And again I was thinking – surely not even an artist could draw those prints so accurately, over and over. And, let’s face it, Mum was never the world’s best artist.

  Maybe there had been a cat there that night with Mum, may
be it had always been there. Maybe Mum had followed the cat to the trap and was so desperate for me to see the cat too that she caught herself up instead.

  It was one theory.

  Or maybe … Mum just stepped back, too astonished by the cat’s beauty when she finally saw her. Like I’d been just now.

  Who knows. Accident, deliberate, caused by a cat… Maybe it doesn’t matter why Mum died.

  But that’s what I was thinking as I was watching her – that black cat – that panther or jaguar or whatever else she might’ve been. Perhaps what that cat was didn’t matter either. It only mattered that she was there, letting me watch her. That she was real. That I was too. That she’d seen me. She took one more step towards me – as if considering what it might be like to taste me – and then turned and merged into the trees.

  After she left, I felt like I’d been in a whirlpool. Sweat-soaked. Shaking.

  I stumbled back against the stone that had the flag wedged into it. I shut my eyes, then opened them again to see if she’d come back.

  But of course not.

  I was alone.

  It took me a while – a long while – to move again.

  And then, something else strange too.

  Eventually I went to the edge of the summit and looked down on all the other sides, properly stared at everything below. I was expecting to find the sea, I suppose. The edge of the island. A town.

  There was none of that. Only green. Treetops and treetops. An endless sea of those. Like countless heads of broccoli, stretching out. A blanket of vegetables … vegetation. Undergrowth for days. And so many different shades. Sea-green. Pea-green. Shoot-green. Grass-green. It was all there. It wouldn’t be possible to describe it all. Couldn’t even paint something so vivid as that.

  And there were other things, underneath all that … in the undergrowth. Things I couldn’t see, but there all the same. Things I could only hear or imagine. The monkeys we’d seen most days. The birds. The black cat, and probably more of her kind, too. Somewhere, out there, was our camp. Lily and George’s camp. A rutted track. The others.

  Perhaps there were other settlements too, other people.

  Escape.

  Sam.

  Just what else did this undergrowth hide? It was so much bigger, out there, than I’d ever thought. It didn’t look like an island. I couldn’t see any ocean.

  I walked around the entire summit, climbing up trees so that I could see out on all sides even further. There was no sea, not anywhere. No beaches. No cities. There was only the green, the trees.

  But there was a different kind of green on one side. Leafy green. Vivid green. A whole big crop of it. I knew that green.

  So, that’s where the crops were hiding. Perhaps if we’d ever got to planting the flag that day as a group and looked out properly, we might’ve seen them then. Don’t know if seeing them from here would have changed anything though; we probably would’ve just assumed they were another part of the jungle.

  I looked at them for ages, still trying to work them out. After a while, I noticed … there seemed to be movement inside them. Another black cat? People? Just wind, or monkeys?

  Where the hell are we?

  I’m still watching out.

  I should move, I guess. Go back down and wait for Sam. Get away from the black cat before the day gets any longer.

  Alone again.

  I’d even take Dieter to be up here with me right now.

  I almost want him to be.

  That’s a shock, writing that.

  But it’s Sam I want here most, to see all this.

  I’m going to write about him, to bring him up here with me. Going to put on paper the rest of what we did last night, too. Then I’ll go down this hill, and I’ll make a plan. I’ll wait for him to return and tell him.

  Now I know there’s no programme end. Maybe no programme at all.

  It’s all one big fucking lie.

  They’ve just been feeding us drugs and fantasy. God knows what they planned to do next. Somehow, I don’t think it was good.

  Last night, it didn’t take Sam long to convince me to sleep in his bed. He only asked once. I went right in. And his arms folded around me straightaway. My head fitted onto his shoulder like there was a groove made specially.

  He kissed my forehead. Squeezed my shoulders. Nothing else.

  It didn’t feel odd. Or even wrong. It didn’t feel like he only wanted one thing, either.

  If anything, he wanted me to talk. Just that. Just to be quiet in the dark with only my words.

  So I did.

  I told him things I’d been holding back for over a year … about that night, and about how strange Mum had got with her art and her illness … I said about the cat. And I talked about Dieter too, about the last few months living in the city with him and Cynthia. How Dieter wanted me to go to some posh school that could give me a better education. Then, quietly, I told Sam how I’d rather stay with him. He’d been surprised at that, hadn’t believed me.

  ‘I thought you hated me now,’ he’d said. ‘Thought you’d never forgive me for taking you away that night, for taking her car…’

  And I shook my head and told him it was me I’d hated, not him.

  But, still, he didn’t believe.

  So I leant up on my elbows and kissed him on the mouth.

  Just. Like. That.

  Kissed him hard.

  He was so surprised, I felt him breathe out right into me. I swallowed his breath. Then I kissed him again.

  He tasted stale and sweet at exactly the same time. I liked it. I didn’t want to stop, even when I imagined Mum in that hut with us, looking on.

  I made myself think only of Sam. The sensation of being right there, with him, feeling his arms solid around me. Of how much I liked it. Sam didn’t just want one thing. Everything we did last night was because of me.

  Sam was always more than that one thing. He’d returned with me to our camp, when all the others had walked away.

  Although, he did leave – this morning, when I woke, when he wasn’t in our bed.

  I’m thinking of the note I left him. Hoping he’ll see.

  I’d lain with Sam all night, talking and touching, getting close. I found all of him. He found me. We didn’t do that one thing. And that was OK. With both of us. It was enough just to be quiet and dark, to be under covers together. Enough just to feel him tangled with me, curled up so tight. Like two little mice. Like magnets.

  KF 4 SW

  Wound up in the undergrowth.

  I can hear something. Steps. The cat again?

  Coming closer, up the path I’m facing. Perhaps I should grab the flagpole. I’ve got nothing else to use if I need a weapon. Perhaps I could fling myself off the side, let the canopy of broccoli catch me. There’s nowhere to hide up here.

  But, no … I know those shoes. Those legs.

  That smile.

  Sam.

  Come and found me, after all.

  ‘Saw your note,’ he says.

  It’s later now, when I’m writing this. But I think it’s still important to do this … to say everything that happened next.

  We walked down the mountain together, Sam and me. We looped around until we were walking down the other side from where we’d come up, not going back to our camp but heading towards those crops instead. Sam had found them too.

  ‘And something else,’ he said. ‘Wait and see.’

  There was a barbed-wire fence all around those waving plants, but Sam had already found a hole through part of it.

  ‘How?’ I asked.

  ‘I followed paw prints,’ he said. ‘This morning when I couldn’t sleep, there were prints in camp. I wondered where they’d lead. It wasn’t long before I found the path here.’

  ‘You could’ve been eaten up,’ I said.

  ‘Could’ve. Didn’t see anything that might’ve made them though.’

  He pulled back the barbed wire. Turns out he’d found a path right through the crops. And the
n, something else – he’d found a road the other side.

  But … he’d found my paw prints, too. And that meant, I hadn’t just made them up.

  ‘Follow this track long enough and, after the crops, there’s a dirt road. After that, it eventually gets you to a tarmac road,’ he said. ‘I didn’t go down that though, because I wanted to get you first.’

  He was taking me to see. Tarmac meant town. Or airport runway at least. I remembered it: sticky black melting tarmac, arriving in this place on that rickety old plane.

  ‘Why didn’t you leave a note for me?’ I said. ‘So I didn’t think you’d died!’

  ‘I thought you’d sleep for hours, after last night,’ he said. ‘And I didn’t think I’d be gone so long.’ He smiled, sheepish. ‘And, anyway, I got kind of lost, coming back.’ He pointed at the crop field. ‘This place is like a maze.’

  He was right. The plants were even taller and leafier than they’d looked from the screens, thick and healthy with growth. How had he found any way through?

  ‘Bet there’s snakes in there,’ I said.

  ‘Probably.’ Sam stepped closer when he agreed, but then shrugged. ‘It’s crazy going through it, I know, but what hasn’t been crazy these past few weeks?’

  I half-laughed. And the sound felt so loud.

  Sam pulled back the wire, made the hole big enough for me to crawl through. I stood up afterwards and held it open for him. The plants swished and whispered, letting us in. If someone made drugs from them, it was hard to believe it – they looked beautiful, bold-green and brimming with vitality.

  ‘What do you think this is?’ I said.

  Sam shrugged. ‘Maybe some sort of native plant. Made into a crop? Must be worth some money, with all the cameras, security… Who knows? Does it matter right now?’