The Beach Read online

  ‘Looking forward to it?’

  ‘Yeah… Speaking personally…’ I took a deep breath. ‘… I was kind of hoping Saddam wouldn’t back down…You know, just to see what would happen.’

  Jed narrowed his eyes. ‘Now, Richard,’ he said. ‘I can’t imagine why you’ve suddenly brought this up.’

  I felt my cheeks flush. ‘I can’t either. It popped into my head for some reason.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Well, I suppose I was looking forward to the Gulf War in a way. It was all dramatic and exciting and, like you said, I wanted to see what would happen. But when I saw the pictures of the Basra road and that civilian shelter that got hit, I felt pretty shit. I felt like I’d missed the point, and only got it too late. Does that answer your question?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said quickly. ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Good.’ Jed chuckled. ‘So, Richard, you’re bored.’

  ‘Not bored…’

  ‘Listless.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Whatever. You want some excitement. Fine. Perhaps we should go and nick some grass.’

  ‘We?’ I said, stammering slightly because I was both eager and surprised. Since I’d begun working with Jed he’d only gone dope collecting once, and he’d left me behind at our look-out spot. ‘You mean both of us?’

  ‘Sure. We’ve got plenty of time to come back here later, and we can take the chance they won’t do anything while we’re away. Anyway, I noticed camp supplies are getting low.’

  ‘I think it’s a great idea!’

  ‘OK.’ He stood up. ‘Come on then.’

  The pass between the island’s two peaks was the one position from which you could clearly make out the location of the dope fields, although the fields themselves were obscured behind trees. The only thing you could see were sudden dips in the canopy where one terrace dropped down to another. From higher up the terraces seemed to merge into a single slope with occasional – natural-looking – breaks in the canopy, an illusion caused by the elevated angle. I guess it stopped them being spotted from the air.

  Once we reached the pass, Jed made the closed-fingers pointing gesture and we began our descent into the DMZ – as I’d decided to call it. While we walked, I watched Jed’s feet closely. I’d noticed he was able to walk much more quietly than me, even though we were both treading on the same mixture of dead leaves and twigs, and I was determined to discover how he did it. One thing was that he used the flat of his foot instead of the ball. I’d been doing the opposite, simply because my instinct was to walk on tiptoe when trying to move without noise. But after watching him, I realized that my way lacked common sense. By spreading the pressure across his whole foot he put less weight on twigs and flattened an area of leaves instead of just one or two. When I swapped to his method, I heard the change immediately. The other thing he did was to lift his feet quite high, so that they weren’t skimming just above the surface of the ground and catching loose material.

  In order to press these lessons home, I played a private game as we crept through the DMZ. If I snapped a twig then I’d triggered a land-mine, and if I rustled a leaf above a particular volume – a rustle that couldn’t pass as a regular jungle sound – then I’d been shot by a sniper. I also decided that the spider-web strands which occasionally stretched across the path were Claymores, and took care to step over them if they hadn’t already been broken by Jed. In deference to video games I gave myself three lives, allowing an extra life if I saw any animal larger than a beetle before it saw me. The only flaw to the game was that there was no punishment if I lost all my lives – as I did several times. But the shame was punishment enough, and that one flaw aside, the game proved to be excellent.

  I was enjoying myself so much that I was a bit pissed off when we reached the dope field. At the edge we crouched in silence for several minutes, checking that the coast was clear. Then Jed turned to me. ‘OK,’ he mouthed, pointing at me. ‘You go.’

  I raised my eyebrows and touched my chest, and he nodded. I grinned and gave him the thumbs up. Then I hunched down as low as I could go without being on all fours, and scuttled forwards.

  Between the trees and the start of the dope field was a space of at least three metres, well beaten down where the guards made their patrol. Once clear of the trees I looked both ways and sped across the gap. I was mindful that a guard might appear at any moment, so I wasted no time in trying to pull off a few good-sized branches. But I immediately ran into difficulty. The stems of the marijuana were remarkably tough. I twisted and ripped, as quietly as I could, but was completely unable to get them free of the main stalk. Worse, my hands were sweating like mad and infuriatingly slippery, and I couldn’t get a proper grip. I looked back at Jed, who had a hand clamped to his head in despair.

  ‘What do I do?’ I mouthed.

  He held up his knife, waving the point sarcastically. I realized I’d scuttled off before he’d had a chance to give it to me. Cursing my haste I cupped my hands, indicating he should throw it. The knife came sailing through the air and finally I was able to sever the troublesome stems. In order to compensate for the fuck-up I hung around a minute longer than I had to, so I could return with a particularly daring sized bunch.

  ‘What’s the matter, Richard?’ said Jed, when we’d got back to the safety of our look-out position. ‘I thought you’d be happy after all that excitement.’ He patted me affectionately on the back. ‘I thought you’d be singing that ridiculous mouse song.’

  I shook my head and laid out my bushel. ‘I’m fine, Jed.’

  ‘It wasn’t that thing with the knife, was it? That was my fault, you know, not yours. I told you to go before I’d given it to you.’

  ‘No, no. The knife thing didn’t bother me… not much anyway… and it wasn’t your fault. I should have stopped to think. But I’m fine, really.’

  Jed seemed unconvinced. ‘I know what it is. You wanted to spot some of the guards, right?’

  ‘Well…’ I shrugged. ‘It would have been interesting.’

  ‘I don’t know, Richard. You get disappointed by all the wrong things. Listen, take it from me, you’re glad we didn’t run into anyone.’

  ‘Sure…’ I thought for a moment, idly plucking at a couple of buds. ‘… Out of curiosity, what do you think would happen if they were to find us?

  ‘Mmm… don’t know. Rather not find out.’

  ‘Do you think they’d kill us?’

  ‘It’s possible. In a way I doubt it though, because there’d be no sense to it. They know we’re here and vice versa, and neither of us wants our secrets to get discovered, so…’

  ‘I heard that Daffy once talked to them.’

  Jed looked surprised. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Uh… Greg, I think.’

  ‘I think maybe Greg has that wrong. Sal would have told me if there’d been any contact with them, and she never has.’

  ‘Oh… So what if they caught Zeph and Sammy? That would be different, because they’re not connected to us.’

  ‘Yeah. They might kill Zeph and Sammy.’

  ‘That would solve our problem at least,’ I suggested cautiously, waiting for Jed to say something disapproving, but he didn’t. He just nodded.

  ‘Yep,’ he said bluntly. ‘It would.’

  Zombie Fish-Eaters

  It was dark by the time we got our act together. We had to jump into pitch blackness, unable to see the edges of the pool or even the white foam where the waterfall landed. Then we had to find our way through the forest, something I’d have found difficult without Jed to guide me.

  My plan was to eat some food quickly and spend the rest of the evening swimming in the phosphorescence. I also wanted to tell my friends about the sleeping dope guard, which had slipped my mind in the excitement of the previous night. But when I got to the kitchen hut, I discovered that our banana-leaf food parcels were missing. All I found was a cold pile of boiled rice. Next, I hunted for the big cooking pot, assuming Unhygienix had just forgotten to lay the f
ish and veg out, but the pot was empty too. That was strange because usually the cooks kept some dregs for the next morning’s breakfast. Pensively, I patted my empty stomach and looked around me. Then I noticed something else, even more strange. Apart from Jed, who was sitting a few metres away, the clearing seemed to be completely empty. I couldn’t see any joint-butts glowing in the darkness, or torches inside tents.

  I walked over to Jed. ‘You notice anything weird?’ I said.

  He shrugged. ‘Only that I can’t see my food.’

  ‘Well… exactly. There isn’t any food. And there aren’t any people either.’

  ‘People?’ Jed shone his Maglite around him.

  ‘See what I mean?’

  ‘… Yeah.’ He stood up. ‘That is weird…’

  We gazed about us for a few seconds, following the yellow beam. Then, from somewhere close by there was a loud moan, clearly the sound of someone in pain.

  ‘Jesus!’ Jed whispered, and switched off the light. ‘Did you hear that?’

  ‘Of course I did!’

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  We paused, listening carefully. Then we heard the moan again and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

  ‘Christ, Jed! Put the torch back on! This is making me nervous!’

  ‘… If you’re nervous, why are you smiling?’

  ‘… How did you know I was smiling?’

  ‘I could hear it in your voice.’

  ‘Just put the bloody light back on!’

  ‘No,’ he hissed. ‘We don’t know what’s going on yet.’

  We listened some more. I remembered my first morning on the beach, waking up after my fever to an empty clearing. I’d found it pretty freaky in broad daylight. There was something unsettling about an empty place that you knew should be full of people. In the blackness with the eerie moans it was ten times as bad.

  ‘This is like a zombie film,’ I muttered darkly, and giggled. ‘Zombie Flesh-Eaters.’ Jed didn’t reply.

  The next time we heard the moan we were able to place it. It was coming from our left, around where most of the tents were pitched.

  ‘OK,’ said Jed. ‘We’ll investigate. You take point.’

  ‘Me? You’ve got the torch!’

  ‘I need to hold it so you’ve got both your hands free.’

  ‘Free for what?’

  ‘Fighting off the zombies.’

  Jed flicked the beam on and illuminated Unhygienix’s tent, so I mumbled a swear-word and began slowly walking towards it.

  I’d only gone a few feet when the flap opened and Ella’s head poked out. ‘Jed?’ she said, squinting against the glare.

  ‘Richard.’

  ‘And Jed. What’s going on, Ella?’

  She shook her head. ‘Come inside. It’s a disaster.’

  *

  ‘It was Keaty,’ Ella explained, mopping at Unhygienix’s forehead. It had been Unhygienix who was moaning, and he continued to do so while we were talking. His eyes were closed and he was clutching his great brown belly in both hands. I don’t think he was even aware we were in the tent. ‘That idiot.’

  I raised my eyebrows. ‘Why? What did he do?’

  ‘He put a squid in one of the fishing buckets, and we chopped it up and chucked it in with everything else.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘The squid was already dead when he speared it.’

  Jed sucked in his breath sharply.

  ‘Most of the camp are sick. The bathroom hut is clogged with vomit, and you don’t want to go near the Khyber Pass.’

  ‘What about you?’ I asked. ‘You seem OK.’

  ‘Five or six of us are all right. I’ve got a few pains, but it looks like I’ve been lucky.’

  ‘And why did Keaty spear a dead squid?’

  Ella narrowed her eyes. ‘I’d like to ask him that myself. We’d all like to ask him that.’

  ‘Yeah… Where is he? In his tent?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘OK. Well, I’ll go and see him…’

  I chose the right moment to leave because as I was backing out, Unhygienix sat bolt upright and vomited everywhere. I vanished quickly into the darkness with Ella’s furious screams ringing in my ears.

  It took me ages to find Keaty. He wasn’t in his tent and there was no response in the clearing when I called his name. Eventually I decided to check the beach, where I spotted him, sitting in a patch of moonlight a little way down the shore.

  When he saw me coming towards him he made a movement, as if he were half considering running away. Then he relaxed and his shoulders slumped. ‘Hi,’ he said in a low voice.

  I nodded and sat beside him.

  ‘I’m not flavour of the month, Rich.’

  ‘… Neither is squid.’

  He didn’t laugh.

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Don’t you know? I poisoned the camp.’

  ‘Yeah, but…’

  ‘I was using Greg’s mask, I saw this squid, we’ve eaten squid a hundred times before, so I speared it and chucked it in the bucket. How was I supposed to know it was already dead?’

  ‘… Because it wasn’t moving.’

  He glared at me. ‘Well I know that now! But I thought… I thought squid were like jellyfish. They just floated around and… and its arms looked like they were moving…’

  ‘So it was a mistake. It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘Yes, Rich. That’s right. It was Jean’s fault.’ He paused to punch the sand between his legs. ‘Of course it was my fucking fault! Jesus!’

  ‘OK… it was your fault, but you shouldn’t…’

  ‘Rich,’ he interrupted. ‘Please.’

  I shrugged and looked away. Across the lagoon, the moonlight was catching the jagged fissure that ran down the cliffs to the coral garden. ‘Kapow,’ I said quietly.

  Keaty leant forward. ‘What?’

  ‘Kapow.’

  ‘… Why?’

  ‘Just because that’s the sound lightning makes.’ I pointed at the fissure. ‘See?’

  Bedlam

  I only stayed with Keaty a short while because I wanted to check on Étienne and Françoise. He wouldn’t come with me because he said he wasn’t ready to face people yet, the poor guy. It was rough to have fought for so long to get on to the fishing detail and then to have been responsible for such a fuck-up. He felt especially guilty that he’d been one of the few unaffected by the squid. I tried to tell him not to be so daft because he could hardly blame himself for having a good immune system, but it didn’t do any good.

  When I saw what was happening inside the longhouse, I was glad Keaty had decided to stay behind. The scene inside would only have made him feel worse. I’d had no idea that the effects of the food poisoning had been so severe, and actually I doubted Keaty had realized either, or he’d have been back at the camp helping.

  Running all the way down the centre of the room were candles, placed there, I guessed, to keep them from being kicked over by the writhing figures on the beds. Through the burning-wax fumes there was the sour smell of vomit. Everybody was moaning – probably not constantly, but there were enough of them to overlap and keep the noise at a steady level – and everybody seemed to have reverted to their own language. Picking out recognizable words in the meaningless babble made everything all the more surreal. People wanted water or the sick to be wiped off their chests. When I passed Jesse he lunged for my foot and asked me to carry him to the bathroom hut. ‘I’ve got shit all over my fucking legs!’ he gasped incredulously. ‘All over! Look!’

  I spotted Cassie and Moshe darting between the beds, hopelessly trying to attend to all the different requests. When Cassie saw me she made a despairing motion with her arms and said, ‘Are they dying?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘How do you know, Richard?’

  ‘They’re not dying.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I don’t.’ I shook my head again. ‘Jesse�
��s calling for you.’

  Cassie ran to check on her boyfriend and I continued down the longhouse towards Françoise and Étienne.

  Françoise was the worst off – I think. Étienne was asleep, so I suppose he might have been unconscious, but he was breathing steadily and his forehead didn’t feel too hot. Françoise, however, was awake and in a great deal of pain. The cramps seemed to come in regular waves about sixty seconds apart. She didn’t cry out like everybody else but she bit her bottom lip, and all over her stomach were marks from where she’d been digging her fingernails.

  ‘Stop doing that,’ I said firmly, after she’d nearly drawn blood from biting so hard.

  She looked at me through dull eyes. ‘… Richard?’

  ‘Yes. You’re chewing your mouth to pieces… You shouldn’t.’

  ‘It hurts.’

  ‘I can see, but… Here.’ I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cigarettes. Then I ripped off the top of the box and pressed it flat. ‘You can bite on that instead.’

  ‘It still hurts.’

  I smoothed her damp hair away from her face. ‘I know it does, but this way you get to keep your lips.’

  ‘Oh.’ She managed to look faintly amused. She might even have managed a smile if another pain-wave hadn’t come.

  ‘What is happening, Richard?’ she asked, when her muscles had relaxed.

  ‘You’ve got food poisoning.’

  ‘I mean, what is happening now?’

  ‘Well…’ I looked down the longhouse. I wasn’t sure how to answer in case I frightened her. ‘People are chucking up, and… Moshe and Cassie are here…’

  ‘Do you think this is serious for us?’

  ‘No, no,’ I replied, laughing encouragingly. ‘You’ll all be much better tomorrow. You’ll all be fine.’

  ‘Richard…’

  ‘Uh-huh?’

  ‘When Étienne and I were in Sumatra, someone died from eating bad shellfish.’

  I nodded slowly. ‘Yes, but they probably ate the whole thing. You would have only had a tiny little bit, so you’ll be OK.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Sure.’

  She sighed. ‘Good… Richard, I need some water… Please will you bring me some?’