White and Other Tales of Ruin (38 page)

The thought came from nowhere, but it chipped away at his mind as they walked towards the trees. Ernie was already dead, victim of his own knife. But even that was simplification; the blade had not killed him, it had merely been a tool. Something deeper and darker had been Ernie’s undoing. He had been a fair and reasonable officer, but the minute he set foot on the island he had changed. Praising God to high Heaven, but still missing Him, still sensing His absence. Mumbling prayers in the night as if they would bring him closer to God. Or bring God back to him.

God is everywhere, Roddy’s parents had impressed upon him. He had believed them because they were his parents, he always did as he was told, and he knew that his elders were wiser than mere children. As he passed through his teens he took on board his own views, and the duty-bound faith he had been given as a child had slowly dwindled, leaving a black hole in his heart where belief should sit. God had, effectively, vanished.

Roddy was often terrified of what He would think if He really did exist. God is everywhere, his parents had said.

Not for Ernie. Not last night. Last night God had not been here, and Ernie had been abandoned. He was no longer on God’s Earth, and Roddy could only hope that he had found his Heaven. Or maybe he was nothing more than a mutilated corpse rotting in the sand.

As the grasses gave way to bushes and trees, and the sound of running water drew them on, the men perked up. Butch came out with a shallow quip, Max snorted, Norris remained mercifully silent. Roddy felt shadows close about him, but they did not bring the cool relief he had been craving. The sun no longer struck his cracked skin, but the heat was just as intense, and pain still bit in from all sides.

“
More like a forest than a jungle,” Max observed. He was right, though the trees were higher and more closely spaced than in forests back home, their roots visible as if trying to escape the soil. Silence pervaded the scene, a pregnant peace. All four men could feel eyes upon them, and they glanced up into the canopy of leaves and hanging vines every time one leaf whispered to another.

The forest floor was covered with a low, rich green crawling plant, its questing tendrils wrapped around trunks in an endless attempt to climb to the heights. Hints of movement caught Roddy’s eye, but every time he turned to see what was causing it only stillness stared back. The light was good, even under the trees, but dormant night vision was teasing him.

“
I can hear the stream,” Butch said, head cocked. “This way. Christ, I’m thirsty enough to drink the Thames.”

“
Stupid enough, too,” Norris muttered.

They headed towards the distant chatter of the stream. Roddy jumped as something tapped against his ankle. He cursed and staggered several steps to one side, until a tree stopped him.

“
What?” Max asked.

Roddy shrugged. “Something in the undergrowth. Don’t you see?”

“
Probably —” Butch began. But he did not finish.

The ground around them burst apart. Shrill cries accompanied the movement as the low lying undergrowth parted and shuddered. Shapes scratched at their knees and thighs, then fell back to the ground, scurrying away under and across the foliage. None of the shapes were ever still enough to focus upon, so Roddy could only make out a disjointed montage of what they had startled into action. He saw curved blades catching the sun, domed heads jerking up and down as the creatures moved. Feathers floated in the eddying air. Red splotches marked the underside of beaks, like identical spots of wet blood.

He backed against the tree and tried to force himself up towards the branches, but then he shook his head and laughed to quell his racing heart. “Birds,” he said. “Don’t panic.”

The others had reacted in their own instinctive ways. Max was kicking out left and right, Butch jumping up and down on the spot, Norris scrabbling around on his hand and knees, trying to regain his lost footing. As Roddy’s words registered and the small, gawky birds jumped and fluttered away from the men, the panic eased.

“
Scared the living shit out of me!” Butch shouted, laughing with nervousness and relief. Max closed his eyes and shook his head. He looked around, catching Roddy’s eye and smirking. Norris stood and brushed at his filthy clothes. He stretched his neck in unconscious mimicry of the fleeing birds. He did not speak, and when he caught Roddy’s eye he turned away in embarrassment. His knees and elbows were dirty and damp from his frantic squirming on the ground. His face was red from the same. Roddy almost felt sorry for him.

“
At least we know we’re not alone,” Butch said, “though I didn’t think much of yours, Max.”

“
Scared the hell out of me,” Max said. He was rubbing beaded sweat from his head, flicking it at the ground. “I didn’t realise I was so on edge.”

Roddy thought he was lying. He thought Max was more than aware of the tension squeezing the four men. An anxiousness built up from outside, as well as in, and threatening to snap at any moment. Perhaps the birds startling them had been a good thing, a release valve for the growing pressures of their unforeseen situation.

“
Never seen birds like that before,” Butch said. “Like fat chickens.”

“
Quails,” Max said. “At least, I think so. Flightless.”

“
Why the fuck be a bird and not be able to fly?” Butch asked. His fringe, greasy and lank, annoyed his eyes, so that he had to keep blinking. “Like a fish that can’t swim.” He glanced at Norris, obviously about to come out with some cutting witticism.

Max barged in before Butch could get himself into trouble. “No need to fly, because there are no predators here.”

Butch frowned, causing his eyes more aggravation. “That tortoise was a shit of a predator, if you ask me. It was eating Ernie.”

“
A scavenger,” Max explained. He slapped his neck to dislodge a tickling fly, forgetting his sunburn. “Bollocks!”

Flightless birds, Roddy thought. Mutations. The fittest surviving, a mutation in their species eventually eschewing flight. It all added to the strangeness of the place. “More mutants.” Max nodded at him.

“
Dinner, all the same,” Norris said. For a few brief seconds, the others had not been paying him any attention. Now they all turned to look, just in time to see him fall back to his hands and knees. He scrabbled in the shallow undergrowth, leaves and dirt spinning around him. For a moment Roddy thought he’d lost it, and a terribly bitter thought passed through his mind. He wondered whether the others would have any qualms about leaving a madman behind, if it came to that. He hated the thought, despised himself for thinking it, but an idea could not be un-made.

Then Norris stood again, cursing some more, and kicked out at a fleeing bird. Luck, or fate, or something more sinister intervened. Norris’s boot connected squarely with the creature’s rear end and launched it on its maiden flight. Straight into a tree.

They all heard the subtle sigh of tiny bones breaking.

“
Yeah!” Norris shouted. “Got you! Yeah!” He raised bloody fists above his head.

But the creature was not quite dead. It squirmed at the base of the tree, fluttering useless wings in an attempt to reverse millennia of evolution and regain its flight, lift off and take itself away from its inevitable end. Nature held its secret tightly to its chest, however, and Norris’s heavy boot finished the bird’s struggles. Roddy was sure he saw a hint of something dark in Norris’s eyes as he ground his foot down.

“
I’m not eating that,” Butch said. “Roddy said it’s a mutant. Could catch anything.”

Max opened his mouth to explain, but thought better of it. Instead he headed off between the trees, aiming for the sound of running water. In the distance, calls and rustles marked the route of the fleeing birds. They had still not stopped, as though pursued by something inescapable.

“
I mean it,” Butch said.

Norris did not know what to do. Roddy stepped past him, frowning, looking down at the dead thing spilling its insides onto the damp forest floor.

“
Roddy?” Norris said, and it was the first time Roddy had ever heard the man use his first name. It sounded bitter coming from the cook’s mouth.

They left the bird. Norris stepped away hesitantly, perhaps waiting for the others to turn around and change their minds. But Roddy eventually heard footsteps following them, and the dead bird remained where it had fallen.

Bleeding. Steaming. Taking to the air at last.

Roddy caught up with Max and matched his pace. Butch and Norris followed on, muttering profanities at each other.

“
More mutants,” Roddy said. They walked in silence for a few moments, but Roddy could not bite his tongue. “What’s wrong, Max? What’s bugging you, mate? I hate seeing you like this.”

Max did not answer for so long that Roddy thought he hadn’t heard. He was about to cover the tracks of his last statement with something banal, but then Max turned to him, and his eyes were dark, and even the sun glinting through the trees did not imbue them with any real hope.

“
The whole world’s populated with mutants,” he said. “That’s the real philosophy behind Darwin. Everyone is different, so simultaneous faith is a foolishness. Ernie was a fool, but he was a real believer, and he had devout faith. And he loved his faith, and it all came to nothing for him. It fooled him in the end. Drove him to do what he did.”

“
He was a fool because he believed so much in God?”

“
No,” Max said. “No. He was a fool because he let his belief rule him. His faith stagnated, didn’t allow for progress, something new. It’s an arrogance, I suppose, but this place has nothing in common with what he believed in. When we came here, he thought he’d been abandoned. So he used his knife on himself, and gave in without a fight.” He rubbed his neck, wincing as the dead skin flaked and opened up bleeding wounds. “That’s what’s wrong. If faith can’t save you, what can?”

“
I have faith,” Roddy said, but Max looked at him, and Roddy felt foolish.

“
Faith in what?”

Roddy did not answer. His words echoed back at him, like the best lies always do. They walked together in silence and Roddy realised that, even after all this time, there was something he still had no inkling of. “You’ve been a sailor all your life,” he said to Max. “You’ve been around. Shit, you’re older than my uncle. What do you think? What’s your faith?”

Max shook his head, but not in denial. He simply could not answer. It was as though the question of his own beliefs had never raised its head. Until here. Until now. A question with no answer, because a man like Max never revealed himself fully to anyone. He was as much a mystery as the complexities he mused upon. Wasted in war, Roddy had always thought. A man like Max should be creating, not destroying.

They came to a more overgrown portion of the forest. With moisture collecting and dripping from palms, and flashes of colour hinting at the secret assignations of birds high in the trees, it looked more like a tropical jungle. They paused for a while, catching splashes of water on their tongues, listening to the steadily increasing murmur of life around them. Roddy tried to tell himself that it was because the sun was rising higher; the island was coming to life. But he could not help but identify a hidden amusement in the alien banter, a titter here, a low, throaty chuckle there. The animals, now that they had taken the opportunity to examine and test these newcomers, knew the limit of their threat and were laughing at it.

“
This way?” Max suggested, pointing along a gentle dip in the land. Nobody had an opinion, so they headed in the direction he had indicated. The sound of the stream was becoming louder, so it seemed that they were moving in the right direction.

They had to pick their way through low thorn bushes, the thorns positively carnivorous in the subdued light. They looked around for something substantial to eat. There was nothing. The heat was wafting at them now, as if blown out from some invisible orifice in the island, seeking them through the trees. Their filthy clothes were soon pasted to their bodies, aggravating their already cracked and sore skin.

Each way they turned, they were presented with more difficult obstacles to overcome. They decided to climb the steep bank of the dip and encountered a slope of sharp, cruelly exposed stone. It resembled slate but glittered with buried quartz, showing off the richness of nature on the island. Keen edges kissed lines of blood into unprotected skin.

Roddy was certain that they were the first people ever to land here. They must be. The place felt so untainted, so elemental, so pristine. If someone had been here before them, there would be signs of it in nature; but what existed here was a pureness of environment, with no sign of outside influence whatsoever. Roddy had always had a respectful fear of the sea, but that was different. Man’s natural state was not floating in a metal coffin, putting himself at the mercy of the waters. Here, on the island, he felt even more out of place. These four puny survivors of a terrible war were succumbing to the dominant party.

What about the shape under the trees? he thought, but dismissed it immediately. Shadows. Just shadows. Anything else was simply too terrifying to consider.

They made it up the sharp bank and found themselves elevated, overlooking the stream where it gurgled merrily in a small canyon. The sides were steep, but not unclimbable, and it was only about twenty feet to the bottom.