White and Other Tales of Ruin

When he came to, the sun had moved across the sky. The ground was hot beneath him. Norris and Max were sitting back to back on a fallen tree, chewing on something, looking around between each mouthful like nervous birds.

Roddy lifted himself onto his elbows and tried to shake the remaining dizziness from his head. He felt weak and thirsty, and his stomach rumbled at the tang of freshly picked fruit.

“The sleeper awakes,” Norris said, somewhat bitterly. Max turned and glanced at Roddy, then continued his observation of the jungle.

Roddy did not recognise his surroundings, but that meant nothing. It did not appear to be the place where he had collapsed, but viewed from a different perspective, after however long had passed, he could easily have been wrong. Off to his right may have been where he had watched the woman and the shadows. His skin weeped and smarted with a multitude of thorn pricks, and thorny plants sat smugly all around. Looking up between the treetops he could see darting shapes leaping from branch to branch, sometimes flapping colourful wings, occasionally reaching out with simian grips. Myriad bird calls played the jazz of nature.

He was more lost than he had ever been.

“Max?” he said, but it came out like a death rattle. He coughed, sat up fully and leant forward. The ground between his legs was crawling, shifting, fuzzing in and out of view. He shook his head again, then realised that he was sitting on an active ants’ nest. He shrieked, stood uneasily and stumbled to the fallen tree.

Norris glanced nervously at him, then back at their surroundings. Max looked around casually, but Roddy could tell from the way he was sitting — hunched, tense, puffed up like a toad facing a snake — that he was concentrating fully on the jungle. Between the two sat a selection of fruits, of all colours imaginable and a few barely guessed at. Some were wounded and dripping, others whole and succulent.

“Are those safe?” he asked, then realised that he no longer cared.

“Not dead yet,” Norris said, but Roddy was already crunching into what looked like a cross between and apple and a kiwi fruit. It tasted sour and bland, but the crunchy flesh felt good between his teeth. With each bite, his soft gums left a smear of blood on the open fruit.

“I feel dreadful,” he mumbled.

“You’ve been out for two hours,” Max said, not looking around. “You were feverish at first, then jerking and shouting. Couldn’t wake you up. Couldn’t tell what you were saying, either, but it sounded important. To you, anyway. Had to pull a load of thorns out of your face — those damn things work their way in like fish hooks. Then you calmed down, after about half an hour, and you’ve been quiet ever since.” There was little emotion in his voice. Hardly any feeling. He sounded devoid of the old Max Roddy knew, his voice a fading echo of the big man.

“Two hours?” Roddy received no answer. The two men watched the trees, munching half-heartedly on insipid fruit. Roddy followed their gaze, saw only jungle, trees and more jungle. There was an occasional sign of movement as a creature, named or unnamed, skirted the three men. The steady jewel-drip of water from high in the trees made its eventual way to the ground. Nothing else. No moving shadows.

“There was something before I passed out,” Roddy said, frowning, taking another bite of fruit. “Shadows, or something.”

“What exactly?” Max asked suddenly. He turned, fixing Roddy with his stare. His voice was Max again, but Roddy suddenly preferred the monotone of moments before. He wondered what had happened while he was out.

“Well, a woman,” Roddy said quietly.

Norris snorted. “Cabin fever.” He laughed, but it was a bitter sound.

Max stared at him for so long that Roddy became uncomfortable. “What? Am I green? What?”

Max looked back into the jungle. Whatever he expected to see remained elusive; his shoulders slumped and he shook his head. “While you were out, Norris went to look for food. He was back within five minutes with that lot, but he thought he’d been followed.”

“Stalked,” Norris hissed. “I told you, I was stalked. Like a bird hunted by a fucking cat.”

“Followed by what?” Roddy asked. His stomach throbbed, and he felt like puking. His balls tingled, and his chest had tightened to the point of hurting. He realised suddenly how human perception was sometimes so blinkered, so ruled by the present. Until now, they had not actually been threatened by anything dangerous. The island was crawling with weird life, but the only real way they had been interfered with was by the tortoise. And even that had been scavenging meat already dead. Now, if what Norris and Max were saying bore truth, there was something else with them. Following them.

“I don’t know what,” Norris said. “I didn’t actually see it.” He threw the remains of a piece of fruit at the ground.

There was silence. Max did not say anything. Roddy waited for Norris to continue, but he was quiet.

“So?” Roddy said. “What? You heard something following you?”

“No, I didn’t. I felt it. I sensed it. I didn’t see or hear anything.” Norris spoke with a hint of challenge in his voice, as though fully expecting Roddy to mock his claim. But Roddy only nodded, and Norris went back to scanning the jungle.

“Maybe it was your woman,” Max said, but Norris snorted again. “We’ll have to be careful.”

The three men sat and ate, gaining sustenance and fluids from the fruit, not worrying about what it would do to their stomachs.

“How do you feel?” Max asked after a while, and Roddy nodded. He felt terrible, but he was conscious.

“Must be weak,” he said. “From the sea. Maybe the berries were bad. Or the stream water.” He felt terrible, true, but also rested. Grateful, in a way, that he had been removed from things, if only for a while.

Roddy watched the trees. He was not looking for the woman because he was certain he had never seen her. If he had, it was too awful to dwell upon. If he had seen her, she was walking dead.

There was movement everywhere, and soon he felt tired. “What are we really looking for?” he asked. “I mean… the whole place is alive. It’s crawling.”

“We’d better get a move on,” Max said.

“Where to?” Norris stood and spilled fruit onto the ground, most of it merging instantly from sight as if camouflaged or consumed. “Just where are we going, anyway? We’ve hardly been here twelve hours, and there’s only three of us left. It’s hopeless. It’s hopeless.”

As Norris turned away to hide bitter tears, Roddy recalled his own reaction only hours before, when the surge of water had plucked Butch from the world. Hopeless, he had known, and he had not rushed to help. Perhaps if he had still held hope in his heart then, he would have been able to grab Butch, hold on, drag him from the water’s grasp. With hope, he may not have had to die. But Roddy could also recall Butch’s last glance, and wondered whether he would have welcomed rescue at all.

“Nothing’s hopeless,” he said, but the words hung light and inconsequential in the air. A shadow of birds fluttered across the sun.

“No,” Max said, “Norris has a point. We’re walking nowhere. In one place, we can make shelter and gather food. Moving, we’re vulnerable. To exhaustion, or to whatever else may be around.”

Shadows in the trees, Roddy thought. Stalking. Perhaps even guiding.

“I’d like to get out of this place first, though,” Max continued, looking nervously at the permanent twilight beneath the green canopy.

“How about the mountain?” Roddy suggested. “It was our first aim, before we decided to come in here.”

“Why did we decide to come in here?” Norris asked. Max did not answer, and Roddy felt afraid to, because he thought maybe they had been steered. Lured by the promise of water or food, but lured all the same. Guided by their own misguided hope, misled by the faith they had in providence. Lied to, eventually, by the belief they grew up with that, however strange something was, it was God’s plan that it should be so.

“I suppose it’s part way,” Max said.

“Part way where?” Norris was shaking his head, denying the fact that they had control. Or maybe he was dizzy, thought Roddy. Queasy from the fruit. Had the woman in the shadows eaten of it, before her skin was flayed and her muscles clenched in a death-cramp? Or had he seen her because he had eaten the yellow berries?