by Perrin Briar
Jack’s eyes widened at his mistake. He looked over at Fritz, and then lowered his eyes. The guilt was written plainly on his face.
“I… I was just out looking for fruit,” Jack said. “Mum said she wanted some different types. For pies she wanted to make.”
Liz smiled.
“It’s true,” she said. “I thought it might be nice to grow some other fruits we’re more used to, and when we have an oven I’ll make some fruit pies.”
Bill’s eyes hadn’t moved from Jack.
“You know my thoughts on wandering around by yourself on the island,” Bill said.
“Yes, Father,” Jack said. “It wasn’t far. Just down the slope. You could still see me from the treehouse.”
“That’d hardly do us any good if we couldn’t get to you in time before something else got you, would it?” Bill said coldly.
“No,” Jack conceded.
“Bill, you’re scaring him,” Liz said.
“Good,” Bill said. “Maybe what I’m saying will get through to him. It hasn’t for far too long.” Bill turned to Jack. “Don’t do it again.”
“No, Father,” Jack said, head down.
Liz hated the defeated tone in Jack’s voice. It reminded her of the one she adopted in front of her own father at the same age. She gritted her teeth.
“Let’s get on with our meal, shall we?” Liz said.
“Have you checked inside the desk drawers?” Bill said to Fritz.
“Bill,” Liz said, her teeth clenched so tight the sound barely escaped her lips. “Let’s just eat, shall we?”
Bill pulled a drawer open. It was empty. He opened another.
“I emptied them at the beach,” Fritz said. “Didn’t seem worth carrying it all the way back here.”
“Yeah,” Bill said. “A few scraps of paper must make all the difference with the weight of a large table. Did you at least keep the pages? Scrap paper is hard to come by.”
“No, sorry,” Fritz said. “I didn’t think.”
“No, you didn’t, did you,” Bill said, dipping his spoon into his vegetable stew.
“Is there a problem?” Fritz said, eyes unmoving from Bill’s.
“You tell me,” Bill said, spooning another mouthful.
“There’s no problem so far as I can see,” Fritz said. “We needed a table, and here one is.”
“Praise the Lord,” Bill said. “I suppose He had to hear one of our prayers eventually, didn’t He. We would have preferred to be showered with His bounty, but we’ll just have to settle for this table. We should be grateful for getting anything at all though, I suppose. Most people don’t even get that.
“You know, my father was the head of the household when I grew up, and he made damn sure we all knew it. What he said, went. That was the way I was brought up. Maybe we made a mistake in bringing you up to think you were our equal. In my father’s household we all knew where we stood, where we were in the pecking order. My brothers and I always knew never to lie to our parents.”
“I’m not lying,” Fritz said. “I found it.”
“You found it all right,” Bill said, “in the captain’s quarters of The Red Flag! Did you honestly think I wouldn’t notice?”
Jack and Francis’s spoons froze above their bowls of stew, sensing something was wrong but unequipped emotionally to identify what it was. They picked up on the undercurrent, and it was enough. They looked over at Liz, who shook her head gently. They shared a glance and continued eating, eyes fixed firmly on the bottom of their bowls.
“I refuse to eat at a table with a liar,” Bill said. “In fact, I refuse to eat at this table at all!”
Bill lifted the table up and tossed it, the bowls, plates and food spilling over the ground. The Flower family flew back on their tree stump stools. Jack and Francis fell back, banging their heads.
“Bill!” Liz said.
Bill stepped on the table and pointed at the scorched coat of arms emblazoned on its underside.
“Property of The Red Flag!” Bill read. “The Heavens collide! What are the chances of a davenport belonging to The Red Flag turning up on the south coast when we have a vessel called The Red Flag on the southeast coast? Mighty eerie, I’d say. But then there might be another explanation, mightn’t there?”
Fritz, the only one apparently unperturbed by the table tossing, sat on his stool seemingly at his leisure. But his eyes were burning hot coals.
“You needed help,” Fritz said.
“So you admit it,” Bill said. “Disobeying my express wishes.”
“You were going to kill yourself,” Fritz said.
“Am I dead?” Bill said. “You seem to know what’s best for this family. I suppose I must be. But if I’m dead I shouldn’t be able to touch you.”
He stepped forward, the wood of the table creaking, fibres snapping under his weight. Bill pressed his finger to the middle of Fritz’s forehead. Fritz pushed back against Bill’s exerted pressure, eyes locked with burning fire.
Bill dropped his finger and, not expecting the sudden release of pressure, Fritz fell forward. He caught himself before falling off his stool. Bill laughed without mirth.
“The great Fritz Flower!” Bill said, addressing the other members of his family.
“Bill, stop it!” Liz said. “I said stop it!”
Bill spun around, raising the back of his hand, a consuming anger bending his features. His eyes drifted past Liz’s, and something in her expression caught him, and he drew his blue eyes back to her.
And he saw her, really saw her.
Bill looked at the boys, all of whom were looking at the ground, away from him, except Fritz, who glared with intensity. Then Bill’s eyes cleared, like the mist had been blown away. His face muscles relaxed. He lowered his hand and moved away. Fritz did likewise in the opposite direction.
Ernest came out of the toilet, a relieved smile on his face. It disappeared when he took in the overturned table, the food cast over the ground, the tears in Jack and Francis’s eyes, the marching figure of Fritz heading away, and the broken look on Liz’s face.
“What did I miss?” he said.
“Go talk to Fritz,” Liz said. “And take your brothers with you.”
“Mum, what’s wrong with Dad?” Francis said.
“Nothing,” Liz said.
“Do you want me to come with you?” Francis said.
Liz almost burst into tears.
“No,” she said with a smile. “I’ll be fine.”
“What happened?” Ernest said.
“Just go with your brothers,” Liz said.
“You go to empty your bowels of grubs for one second…” Ernest grumbled, taking Jack and Francis by the hand and leading them away.
Liz unconsciously touched her hair, checking it was in place. Her hands were shaking. She took a deep breath, smoothed down her skirt, a dozen multi-coloured specks of vegetable and fruit juice across it like a schizophrenic rainbow.
She turned and headed behind the treehouse, down the steep incline, past the goat enclosure, and onto the soft sandy beach of the southeast coast.
Bill’s form stood stock still, black against the rushing waves, washing over his boots, unnoticed, sucking him an inch deeper into the sand. If he could have been swallowed Liz got the sense he would have let it happen. The Red Flag sat just off the beach to their right, almost fully submerged.
Liz stood beside him but said nothing.
“I don’t know the man I’ve become,” Bill said. “I don’t know who I am anymore.”
Despite her anger Liz’s heart broke a little at hearing that.
“I never wanted to become this man, this monster,” Bill said. “But I suppose we’re all shaped by our circumstances.”
If Liz hadn’t known better she would have said Bill was going to break into tears, not tears of overwhelming agitation, frustration or anger, but of depression, sadness and loss.
“I don’t believe that,” Liz said. “Good people come from the darkest of
places, and vice versa. You’re a good man, Bill. I still believe that. You’ve just lost your way, that’s all. We all do, at times.”
Her voice became hard.
“But there’s a line, Bill. There’s a line you do not cross. Raising your hand to your family is that line.”
“I know,” Bill said.
“Francis asked me if I wanted him to come here with me, to watch you, in case you struck me like you were going to earlier. And do you know what I did? I hesitated. I hate that I hesitated, Bill. That I had to think twice about whether or not I was safe alone with you. I vowed I would not marry my father.”
“Liz…” Bill said.
“I never thought it would come to this,” Liz said. “Not us. Not you. I believed you were a good man, a great man. But you ruined that image today.”
“I’m sorry, Liz,” Bill said. His voice cracked. He didn’t turn to look at her.
“Bill, look at me,” Liz said.
Bill didn’t move.
“Bill,” Liz said, her voice soft but firm. “Look at me.”
Bill swallowed something thick in the back of his throat and turned to look at her. A sad smile bent Liz’s lips. She reached up and laid a hand on Bill’s cheek.
“You’re never going to raise your hand to me or any of us ever again, do you understand?” Liz said.
Bill nodded.
“I do,” he said.
“Now, you’re going to tell me what’s eating you,” Liz said.
Bill turned to look out at the ocean.
“This island isn’t large, I grant you,” Liz said, “but it’s big enough for the rest of us to live on one side and you on the other. So, tell me. What’s the problem?”
“You asked me once what I do early in the mornings before the rest of you wake up,” Bill said.
“You’ll tell me?” Liz said.
“I can’t tell you,” Bill said.
“Of course you can,” Liz said.
“No,” Bill said. “I can’t. But I can show you.”
“Show me?” Liz said.
“Yes,” Bill said.
Liz almost turned him down. His tone of voice scared her. She pursed her lips, faking calm.
“Good,” she said.
“Follow me,” Bill said.
He turned and walked along the beach.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“THEY STARTED appearing four months ago after the bombers came,” Bill said. “Sometimes it’s clothes, rags, really, in too much of a bad shape for us to be able to use. Sometimes it’s fragments of a building, or a ship, or broken toys. Sometimes it’s people.”
Bill knelt down at the water’s edge beside a bunch of rags.
“Most of the time it’s just parts of people,” he said. “Most of them have been scorched beyond recognition to be able to tell who they once were. I walk up and down this beach every morning clearing it of human debris.”
Bill picked up the rags. There was something weighty inside them. Liz was glad she didn’t see what it was. Bill carried the rags into the jungle, into an open air clearing, where sunlight filtered down and bathed it with golden light. There were rows of plain crosses. None had names on.
“I bury them here,” Bill said, “and made simple crosses with sticks, twigs, anything I could find. It’s the only proof they ever existed. It seemed inhumane to push them back out to sea to let the fish and sharks have them. They were people once.
“So many wash up here I can’t bury them all in single graves anymore. And it never ends. You think the world would run out, but it doesn’t. Every day more and more come. My muscles and heart aches before the sun has even raised its head.”
“Why didn’t you tell us about this?” Liz said.
“The boys aren’t ready to know what kind of world we live in now,” Bill said. “The kind where cities are bombed in an effort to wipe the slate clean and start again, as if the past ten thousand years hadn’t happened.”
“They already know, Bill,” Liz said. “They were on board The Adventurer.”
“Believe me, I wish they hadn’t been,” Bill said. “Two hundred lives lost. All because of me.”
“What are you talking about?” Liz said. “That’s not your fault.”
“Rohit wanted to warn them in the mess of the danger, but I wouldn’t let him,” Bill said. “Every body I see that washes up on the shore I expect it to be one of them. Rohit, Priya, Zack… a hundred faces I don’t know the name of. I think back now and I can’t even remember the passcode to my office in Chucerne, but I can remember every face I saw that night in the mess. They're lodged in my brain like a catchy tune that gets stuck in your head. If we had done what Rohit had wanted maybe we wouldn’t be alone here on this island.”
“You can’t blame yourself,” Liz said. “You did what you thought was right at the time. We wouldn’t have made it to this island if it wasn’t for your actions.”
Bill turned his palms up and looked at them.
“My hands are red with their blood,” he said, “and I’ll never wash them clean.”
Liz took his hands and held them in her own.
“They look plenty clean to me,” she said. “It’s not your fault, Bill.”
“I did what I thought was best for us,” Bill said. “Not for them. I was worried they would panic and make it difficult for us to escape.”
“If you’d have told them, there would have been panic,” Liz said. “There would have been chaos. They would have done as much damage to each other as any undead. A mob never thinks clearly. You did the right thing.”
“Thanks for saying that,” Bill said, but he clearly didn’t believe it. “That night we were on The Adventurer, do you know the scariest part for me?”
“The fire, the undead, the sea?” Liz said.
“It was trying to climb the mast to get to Jack,” Bill said. “Do you know why?”
“Because you’re not a fan of heights?” Liz said.
“No,” Bill said. “Because I knew where Jack was and I couldn’t get to him. Jack in danger, in reach, but me unable to help him. I can’t risk losing you and the boys. Not now.”
“You have almost lost us, Bill,” Liz said. “When you kept pushing us away. We’re not going anywhere. If you keep working the way you are it’s you we’re going to lose. You’re working harder than an old draft horse.”
“The sooner I can get the treehouse up the safer we’ll be,” Bill said. “Safety is the only thing we have here. But I can’t do it all alone. I know that now. I pushed myself to the limit and it almost broke me. But even now… I can’t risk losing you. Or the boys. I can’t face that. Not when you’re in easy reach.”
“You won’t lose us, you fool,” Liz said, putting her hand to his cheek and kissing him gently on the lips. “And we equally don’t want to lose you. If you keep going the way you are you’re going to end up in one of these graves. Where would that leave us then?”
Bill sighed.
“You’re right,” he said. “As always.”
“You need to show the boys this,” Liz said, gesturing to the rows of crosses. “They need to see.”
“They don’t need to see,” Bill said. “Not this. They need to believe there can be more than this, that there is a world with a future waiting for them out there. What have they been brought up for but to push the human race forward, to become masters of the earth? Instead we’ve lumbered them with a virus-infested world full of death and decay. They don’t need to see this.”
“The truth is always better than lies,” Liz said. “You’re right – it will be up to them to deal with it, but hiding it from them now isn’t going to help them. As a doctor you need to know there’s a problem before providing a solution to it, don’t you? This is no different. You can’t protect the boys from seeing this forever. It’s better they see the world for the way it is than the way they remember it.”
“It might be that way again,” Bill said.
“One day,” Liz said, nodding
. “In the future. But not now. You can’t protect them from everything.”
“I can try,” Bill said.
“You can try, but you will fail,” Liz said. “Children are children. They’re going to go out and do things we don’t like. We can’t – we shouldn’t – try to control everything they do. We just have to trust we’ve done a good enough job in raising them to know they won’t do anything stupid.”
“That’s easy to say when we’re in Switzerland surrounded by friends and family,” Bill said. “But now we’re stranded on a strange island.”
“No, it’s the same,” Liz said. “In the old world there were a million ways to snag children and turn them from a good course in life. It’s the same here. We just need to learn to trust them to make the right decisions.
“We have to rely on all our strengths if we’re going to stand a chance of surviving out here. Rely on us. Use us. We are fortunate enough to have a family of exceptional children, each with their own strengths. You need to let them be exceptional. Let them use their strengths, all our strengths, to help you.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“MY MOUTH feels dry,” Bill said.
“You’re just nervous about seeing the boys again,” Liz said. “But you can’t avoid seeing them forever on this small island.”
“You wanna bet?” Bill said.
Undergrowth snapped from behind the foliage. Then it shook and the boys emerged. They looked down at all the plain wooden crosses arranged in low rows before them. Francis knelt down and corrected a wonky one, carefully patting the earth down so it held tight. Seeing that brought a lump to Bill’s throat.
“Your father’s been burying the bodies he finds along the coast,” Liz said. “We wanted to show you what the world’s like now, the world you’re going to inherit. You should help your father do this in the future. There are going to be a lot more dead bodies out in the world that you’re going to have to see.”
“I want you all to be aware of the dangers,” Bill said. “Those zombies can wash up on our shore at any time. We have to be careful. I also know that you’re all old and smart enough to avoid danger if it comes at you.”