Islanders

  ISLANDERS

  a novel

  by

  John Barlow

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12

  13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22

  23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32

  33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42

  43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48

  About the Author

  COPYRIGHT

  Copyright © 2012 by John Barlow

  Cover design: Stuart Bache

  First published in 2012 by Storm Books

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used merely to add authenticity to the work. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Islanders

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  Ben was gasping for air. The blood pumped loud and hard in his ears as he ran. But when he looked back they were still there, coming after him.

  They’d chased him all the way from the Settlement, right down the old road to the south of the Island. And they were gaining on him, their large, bulky bodies rocking steadily as they jogged, as if they knew they’d get him in the end.

  “Why do you always think I’ve got anything?” Ben shouted.

  But they just kept on coming.

  Ben ran faster along the crumbling road. His hair blew everywhere, flopping down over his eyes like a blindfold. Losing his footing, he stumbled forwards, falling face-down and skidding across the road.

  Stunned, he tried to pull himself to his feet and continue. But he was hurt. Blood dripped from the palms of both hands. One side of his face was stinging, and he felt a gash stretching from the side of his jaw halfway up his cheek.

  “I’ve got nothing to eat!” he shouted, knowing that he couldn’t escape now. “Nothing! I’m hungry as well!”

  His lungs ached. Each breath felt like a dagger into his ribs. His whole body was weak, and he felt himself sway and flutter as if he were made of paper. Then he dropped in a heap on the road, exhausted.

  When he opened his eyes, they were standing right over him. Two big, ugly faces topped off with ginger hair that hadn’t been brushed for years. They looked like a couple of huge, muscle-bound toilet brushes.

  “You all right?” one of them said, the slightly taller one. His dirty face twisted into a grin as he aimed the toe of his boot at Ben and kicked him in the ribs.

  Bad an’ Worse, they were called. The hardest boys on the Island, clad in old leather jackets, faded army fatigues, and the heaviest boots you could imagine. William and Daniel were their real names, but unless you wanted to feel one of those boots up your backside, you didn’t use their real names. They were also the oldest children on the Island. Although you wouldn’t have called them children, exactly. They were just Bad an’ Worse.

  “Is his neck broken?” Bad said, laughing.

  “Not even close!” Worse added, drilling Ben’s ribs playfully with his boot until he squirmed.

  “Pah! He’s not hurt!” said Bad, disappointed. “Come on Benny boy, what have you got for us?”

  Ben blinked, still feeling dizzy. He managed to sit up.

  “Look,” he said. “I don’t have anything to eat. Nothing!”

  The twins didn’t seem to believe him.

  “You ran off when they were cooking the sea snake!” said Bad, staring down at Ben. “You must have something else to eat, or you’d’ve eaten the snake like everybody else.”

  “I ran away because I’m sick of it. Sea snakes, moldy potatoes, rancid goat’s milk... Everything!”

  He struggled to his feet.

  “I can’t help you, understand? I don’t have any food. None of this is my fault. We’re all in this stinking place together, and that’s the end of it! Just leave me alone!”

  Those big dark eyes ached with sadness, with all the misery of life on the Island. But he wouldn’t cry, especially not in front of Bad an’ Worse. Never. He was John Brewer’s son. And that meant something. He turned and walked down towards the beach at the very bottom of the Island, the place he always came when he was miserable.

  As he walked, he thought about the sea snakes. One had been washed up at the top of the Island that morning. It was already dead. Thick as your leg and five times as long. The adults—Survivors they were called—had dragged it back to the Settlement with ropes and metal hooks. They laid it out on the grass and cut its head off. Its two little eye-slits oozed with slime, and pink watery blood dripped from its mouth onto the grass.

  Then they sliced it up and cooked it.

  Food was getting scarce. You had to eat whatever there was. And today everybody, Survivors and Islanders—the adults and the children—had eaten thick, greasy lumps of sea snake. Everybody except Ben Brewer. He had sat there with everyone else, watching as coils of slimy sea snake sizzled on the fire, the stink of singed snake fat in his nostrils. But then, suddenly, he ran off. He couldn’t stand it anymore. He was sick of everything. Although, deep down, he knew that sooner or later there would be nothing but sea snakes to eat on the Island. And there was no way off the Island.

  “Come on, Benny!” Bad an’ Worse said, shuffling along the road after him. “Why didn’t you eat the snake? You got something else hidden away, have you? Eh? Your mum got a stash, has she?”

  Ben spun around, his lip quivering.

  “Leave my mum out of it!”

  A cruel smile crept across Bad’s face.

  “Ooh, little mister Brewer’s talking tough!” he said.

  “Hey!” Worse added. “Your daddy was a big hero, Benny! That make you tough, does it? I’d watch it if I were you...”

  Ben, though, wasn’t listening. Something had caught his eye. He was staring out across the last bit of scrubland and down onto the beach beyond.

  There was a boat.

  All three of them scrambled down onto the beach as quickly as they could, ignoring the big, faded sign in the sand:

  DANGER: NO SWIMMING.

  ISLANDERS MUST NOT GO NEAR THE SEA

  WITHOUT A SURVIVOR PRESENT!

  Ben led the way. What he had seen was a fleck of red behind some rocks on the beach. It looked like a pointed nose, or a chicken’s beak. But it wasn’t a nose. It was the tip of a boat. He’d never seen a real boat. But he’d seen them in books. And this was definitely a boat. A red boat on the beach.

  The twins saw it too.

  All three of them started to run. They toppled over in the sand as they went, then scrambled straight back up and lunged forwards, running like maniacs, falling and staggering forwards. They almost crawled across the sand, desperate to see a real boat for the first time.

  The Survivors’ll smash it up, Ben thought, his feet sinking deep into the soft sand, making him feel as if he was running in slow-motion. The adults’ll take the boat away, he knew. He had seen it in their eyes, whenever boats were mentioned, a kind of madness, a fear. That was the rule: no boats allowed.

  Was it a trap? Had the adults put it there? The red nose of the boat got bigger and bigger as he approached. Was it a trap?

  Ben slowed up, cautious, thinking. The twins dashed past him. They galloped idiotically, like donkeys gone mad. They didn’t care about rules. It was a boat. The first boat they’d ever seen.

  A secret boat! Ben told himself. That was it! As long as they could keep it a secret, he and Coby could come to the bottom of the Island whenever they wanted and start exploring the sea along the coast. The Survi
vors almost never came here, so it was perfect! A secret boat!

  Meanwhile, Bad an’ Worse had reached the rocks, leapt up onto them...

  “Agggggh!”

  “Agggggh!”

  They flew back down off the rocks, howling with fear.

  “What is it?” shouted Ben.

  The twins were trembling, scared stiff, gulping air and shaking their heads.

  “It’s a... a dead body,” said Bad, who for the first time in his life looked completely harmless.

  “Dead,” Worse said, as bravely as he could. He puffed out his chest, but couldn’t disguise his nerves. “Go on,” and he nodded to Ben. “Go on, you’ll see.”

  “Okay,” said Ben, feeling his heart jump madly inside him. If they were playing a joke on him, he wouldn’t let them see how scared he was.

  Slowly, he walked over to the rocks. His hands touched the cold, damp stone, and he pulled himself up. He crept over the rocks, towards the boat, which was down on the other side. His stomach churned with fear.

  Then he looked down.

  In the boat there was a body. A boy.

  But he wasn’t dead.

  By the time the twins had climbed back over the rocks, Ben was already down in the boat. He was cradling the boy’s head. The boy was about Ben’s age, perhaps a little older, fourteen maybe, with knotted blond hair. His eyes were delirious, caked with sand and salt, but they moved in their sockets. It was as if he was trying to focus on something but couldn’t quite manage it.

  “Just breathe,” Ben said, and brushed the filthy matted hair away from the boy’s face.

  Worse jumped down into the boat. He took off his leather jacket and laid it over the boy, who was shivering.

  “We should get him up off the beach,” said Ben. “And get help. One of us’ll have to go and get help.”

  “It had better be you, Ben,” said Worse. “No one’ll believe us.”

  The boy in the boat coughed, his breath faint and wispy. His eyes were straining to stay even a little way open. Ben looked back up the beach, the way they’d come. He knew he’d never make it, not all the way back to the Settlement. It was five, six miles at least, and he had already run it once today. But the twins were right: it had better be him that went.

  The boy’s eyes widened. Then he lifted an arm. Or he tried to, but it fell back down to his side.

  “Are you Ben?” he whispered. “Ben Brewer?” His face strained, and he tried to swallow. “A... message from... your dad...” he said, as if the effort was hurting him.

  “My dad’s dead,” Ben said.

  “Yeah,” Worse added. “Like ours.”

  The boy in the boat shook his head a fraction.

  “He’s not dead, Ben. But he’s...”

  Ben froze.

  “He... needs... help... he’s...” the boy said. A terrible look of fear ran across his face. Then he began to cough, a terrible, hacking cough that ripped through his body. Yet, he forced himself to speak: “It’s... sull... su...”

  He gasped for air. And with the last drop of strength in him, he lifted his arm. One finger pointed out across the sea, westwards, towards the mainland.

  Then silence. His arm dropped. His eyes closed.

  He was dead.

  But in his hand he held a piece of paper, torn at the edges and stained with dirt. Ben took it.

  Chapter Two

  When he got home, one side of Ben’s face was caked in dried blood, and both his hands were as red as the boat on the beach. He crept quietly into the little house at the edge of the Settlement that he shared with his mother. It was a small place, like all the houses on the Island, its walls a patchwork of odd-shaped rocks and a roof of wood and plastic sheeting and just about anything else they could find whenever it sprung a leak, which was quite often. Inside it was damp and cold, and there was never enough dry seaweed to make a proper fire.

  “I fell,” he told his mother, then bit his lip.

  As she wiped the blood off his face and his hands, she kept hugging him and saying his name over and over; typical survivor behavior. He was relieved to be home, but something within him had changed. This wouldn’t be his home forever. His dad was alive, and he was going to find him.

  “Mum,” he said, after she’d cleaned up the cut on his face, “what happened to Dad?”

  She turned away, and looked down at the floor, running her fingers through her long brown hair, which was drab and lifeless, like wet rope. Her whole body looked weak and achy. When she breathed, her chest sounded hollow and crackly inside. She was like this more and more, always tired, feeling under the weather, sniffing, coughing. All the Survivors were.

  “Drink this!” she said, handing him a cracked mug. “It’s all we have left. It’ll do you good.”

  It was goat’s milk, creamy-yellow and disgusting. But since the cows had died, the only milk on the Island came from goats. Each house got one mugful every two or three days. A cupful of goat’s milk. That was it.

  “I hate this stuff!” he said.

  “Come on, love,” she said, her voice fragile. “You know how difficult things are. We’re lucky to have milk at all. Drink up, it’ll do you good.”

  He drank the milk, trying to ignore the strong, creamy taste in his mouth, and the stickiness it left on his tongue. It made him wretch as he swallowed.

  “So?” he said, wiping his sleeve across his mouth. “What really happened to Dad?”

  “You know what happened,” she said, and started to fuss with the cut on his cheek again.

  He felt her fingers skipping nervously across his skin.

  “Don’t talk about all that, Ben,” she said. “It’s in the past,” she whispered. “The war, all that stuff. Forget it, you hear me?”

  “Why?” he said, fighting free of her arms. “Why can’t we ever talk about what happened on the mainland?”

  “The mainland’s too dangerous,” she said at last, more as an apology than an explanation. “Don’t think about it. It’ll do no good.”

  She looked around, trying to find something else to do.

  “Mum,” he said. “Are you sure Dad died there?”

  “Yes, yes,” she said, through gritted teeth.

  “When?”

  “Before you were born. He brought us here. You know the story. We came here in a boat. Then the boat left. And so did he.”

  “But why? Why did he go back to the mainland?”

  “Because he was a hero, Ben,” she said, pretending to be all matter-of-fact. She forced herself to smile. “He was a hero. And you know what happens to heroes, Ben?”

  He shook his head.

  “They get killed.”

  She walked away, into the corner of the room. “Damn you, John Brewer!” she said to herself, her voice croaky. “Damn you!”

  “Mum...” he said quietly. “What is Sull?”

  She spun around, her eyes on fire, her face crazy with anger. Running back over to her only son, she seized his head in both hands, her fingers digging into his cheeks until they hurt.

  “Where did you hear that?” she hissed, her lips quivering with fear, her breath hot in his face.

  Ben started to speak, but couldn’t. He saw something in his mother’s eyes, something fearful and full of hatred.

  “Why do you think we’re here, Ben?” she said. “On this miserable island, eh? We’re... we’re safe here, you understand? Safe!”

  “Safe from what? Sull?” Ben muttered.

  As if she’d lost all reason, she grabbed his shoulders, and began to scream hysterically: “Never say that again. Please, please.” She shook him harder and harder: “Never, Ben, do you hear? Never!”

  “Sull, Sull, Sull...” he shouted defiantly. “I wanna know!”

  She slapped him across the face. He had to grip the chair so he wouldn’t fall over. The sound of the slap echoed around the room, and the side of his head began to throb with pain. He saw his mother standing in front of him, astonished, hardly believing what she’d just
done.

  “Oh Ben!” she said, tears welling in her eyes. Her heart was breaking, right there in front of him. Because the day had finally come, the day she had been dreading ever since he was born.

  *

  That evening Ben was alone at home. He sat at the table and stared at the paper that the boy had given him. It was covered in dark, dirty fingerprints, and on it was a large cross drawn in pencil, one thick vertical line scored down the center of the paper, and another, horizontal one bisecting it. Below the cross was the letter ‘N’ in a circle. What on earth did it mean?

  Ben’s mum was out looking for seaweed. Seaweed was getting difficult to find, because everyone needed it for fuel. There was less and less of it each year, and it was best to collect it at night, so no one saw you and tried to steal it from you. Ben’s mum was different, though. She would always share hers with anyone who didn’t have any. Her house was often full of people, huddling around the fire to keep warm. Val Brewer was the wisest, kindest woman on the Island, and Ben knew it. Everybody did.

  There was a loud knock at the door. It was Bad an’ Worse. They didn’t bother waiting for anyone to open it. They walked right inside and sat down at the table.

  Bad sighed, shaking his head. “We buried the poor kid.”

  “Where no one’ll find him,” Worse added. “And we hid the boat good.”

  No one felt like saying anything else. They all sat there, in silence.

  Ben looked at the two of them. Bad was a big, ugly, red-headed thug; but his brother was bigger, uglier, redder and thuggier, with a permanently dirty face, as if it was a matter of pride never to get washed. They were only thirteen, but they looked older, and they were nothing but trouble.

  They were orphans, and everyone on the Island was afraid of them, even the adults. But now, Ben thought, as he watched them shift awkwardly in their seats, Bad an’ Worse were probably the best two people on the Island to be trusted to bury a dead body, to hide a red boat, and to keep quiet about it.