where truth ached to penetrate. “God brought us here.”
“But why?” Ernie stood and walked unsteadily along the boat, pausing at the grounded bow. He looked down at the sand, staring at the smudged footprints of the others already on the beach. Then he glanced back at Roddy, and his voice was distorted. “Why?”
“Why what?” Roddy asked, but the officer was climbing from the boat, stepping gingerly as if afraid that he would sink at any moment.
Roddy followed. He felt a moment of disorientation, so used was he to the constant movement of the boat. His stomach lurched as it tried to maintain the motion, then settled again. The sand was warm, even through his shoes.
Norris had wandered along the beach, the others waited in the shadow of palm trees. Leaves hung from the high branches, pointing down at the men like the wings of great sleeping bats.
Roddy fell to his knees with the others, wondering why he did not feel at all liberated. “At least it seems pretty verdant,” he said. “Where there are palms, there’s water, and birds, and animals. Fruit too. Food and water. Safety.”
Butch frowned past his normally busy eyes. He was staring out to sea, apparently coveting the terrible five days just gone by. His face was bleeding again but he seemed not to notice. Flies began to buzz him, thinking him already dead.
“Butch?” Roddy said. He did not like seeing the little man so quiet. It was unnatural, disconcerting in the extreme. “Butch? What say we go and find the native women?”
“Doubt there are any,” Butch said. His gaze never faltered; he wanted to avoid looking back at the island for as long as possible. “This place feels dead.”
Roddy shivered, aggravating his sunburn. It was a strange statement, especially from Butch, but it seemed so right. Roddy tried to shake the words but they were spoken now, and they held power. “Max?” he said, searching for something. Comfort, perhaps.
Max looked at him long and hard. Roddy had known him for a long time and he had never seen a look like this. He knew that Max was vaguely superstitious, but he had never actually seen him afraid of something he could not see. Max’s superstition was like the trace of his own religion, in that it was inbred rather than self-propagated, handed down through generations instead of defined and created through personal experience. Even though Max was a thinker, some things were planted too deep to think around.
“We make our own Hell,” Max said.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Butch exploded, digging his hands into the sand.
Max shrugged. “It just seemed to sound right. This place feels all wrong. We’ll have to be careful.”
“How can a place be wrong?” Roddy asked. Max was frightening him, badly.
“It’s God’s place,” Butch said, imploring Ernie to back him up. “Isn’t it, sir? God’s own place, and He’s saved us from dying on the sea.” His hands had closed tight, and sand flowed between his fingers like sacrificial blood.
“I’m sure God doesn’t know a thing about this place,” Ernie said. He turned and looked past the palm trees, to the rich wall of foliage hiding any view further inland.
“Bollocks!” Roddy said. Hiding his fear. Becoming angry so that he could not dwell on what he was really feeling, the jaws of doubt even now gnawing at his bones. “Crap. Get your act together, you lot. We’ve got to find water, food and shelter. Norris!” He stood and called along the beach to where the cook was rooting around by a fallen tree.
“There’s something blowing bubbles in the sand,” Norris shouted back.
“Come here, we’ve got to start getting ourselves together,” Roddy said, but then he felt his knees beginning to betray him, and he fell onto his rump in the sand. He slumped slowly onto his back, a hand catching his head and easing it down. Nausea overtook him, then a swimming fatigue that worked to swallow him whole. As his eyelids took on a terrible weight he tried to see the first stars, dreading that he would not recognise any of the constellations. But the palm trees hid them from view, and darkness blanked his mind.
He was not really unconscious. Everything moved away for a while; noises coming from an echoing distance, sensations of heat and pain niggling like bad memories. Voices mumbled dimly, words unknown. He felt the cool kiss of water on his lips, sudden and sweet, and he opened his mouth and glugged greedily.
“Steady,” Max said. “Not too much.” He was kneeling above him, twisting his shirt so that drops fell into Roddy’s mouth.
“Fresh?” Roddy asked.
Max nodded. “There’s a stream further along the beach.” His face was grim and he said no more, but Roddy felt too tired to pursue it.
The five of them sat where they had landed for an hour, taking turns to walk to the stream and soak their shirts in fresh water. Max had made a half-hearted search for a smashed coconut to use as a cup, but found none. There was little talk, but their attitude spoke volumes. Ernie had stopped praying.
When Roddy’s turn came to fetch the water he relished the time alone. He realised that he had experienced no privacy for five whole days, even performing his toilet in front of the other men. The sea roared at the reef to his left, the silent shadowy island was a massive weight to his right, threatening at any moment to bear down and crush him into the sand. He tried not to look into the jungle, averting his gaze from darkness as he had as a child, struggling to convince himself that what he could not see would not exist. Even the silence seemed wrong. Where were the animals? Away from the attention of his fellow survivors, the feeling of being watched was almost overwhelming.
When he reached the stream he eased himself to his knees and leant over the running waters. In the vague light of the clear night sky, he was a shadow. The water spilled and splashed past rocks holding out against time.
The banks were scattered with things carried down from further inland, and he tried to see what they were in the moonlight. A huge feather, tattered by whatever had torn it from its owner. A dead thing with many legs, as big as his hand and hairier. Something long and slinky, with oily scales glimmering in the silvery light and a pasty smudge where a chunk had been taken from the body.
All bad things, Roddy thought. All dead. But was dead necessarily bad?
He soaked the shirts, stood and made his way back to his companions. They were silent, as before, but there was a tension between them which was almost visible. If he could see it, Roddy thought, it would be black and dead as the things in the stream. He wondered whether his brief absence had allowed him to register it more certainly, like leaving a room and then noticing its smell upon re-entering.
“At least there are animals,” he said. “Something we can eat.” Nobody answered. Max looked at him, but in the dark Roddy could not read his expression. He was glad.
They each took another drink, but the water tasted different now. Roddy thought of the dead things as he drank and it was all he could do to keep it down. It no longer smelt fresh, but rancid. It soothed his dried throat, however, and for tonight at least he did not care what harm it may do him.
They agreed to spend the night on the beach. They all lay out in the open, in case something fell on them from the palm trees. Their breathing slowed and deepened until a sudden grinding, rasping sound jerked them all from the verge of sleep.
“What the hell?” Butch called.
“His demons are come!” Ernie yelled.
“All mutations,” Max said.
Roddy sat up and saw their lifeboat being sucked back out to sea. Whatever minimal currents there were had now turned, and the boat was drifting further and further away from the beach. In the moonlight, it was a nonchalant sea monster.
Shorn of their dreams, the men sat silently and watched.
“We could swim out and get it,” Norris suggested. “It’s our only hope.”
“Go on then,” said Butch. “Just tell us how to cook what’s left of you when you wash up on the beach.”
“Could be anything in there,” Max said. “Sharks. Jellyfish. Octopus.”
“Creating your own hell?” Roddy asked, but regretted it at once. He was scaring himself as much as the others. Max stared at him darkly, as if trying to share a secret or steal one back.
