Chapter 22

The Island seemed darker.

It wasn’t; it was just as bright and beautiful as it had always been, but the day’s events seemed to have drawn a pawl over the landscape. Every tendrilous finger of a shadow seemed to flee the glorious sun and reach from each cloud and tree in ever more threatening shapes toward me.

Each of them seemed to point accusingly at me.

The ambulance procession back to the bunker had been long and slow. Ray had remained mercifully unconscious for the entire journey. Still, the soft, pained groans coming from Zoe told every other member of our group that she was not only awake but was feeling every single one of the careful footsteps that her stretcher bearers were taking.

Amy, ever vigilant, stopped the trek a few times to check and refix her blood-saturated dressings before allowing us to continue. Each time, Amy’s face grew a little darker. Zoe had lost a lot of blood, and Amy, having no means to check blood types, had no way of giving her more. The doctor looked exhausted. It had been less than an hour since the moment that possessed-Ray had attacked Zoe, but Amy looked like she had lived at least a week’s worth of hard work in that time. What was worse was that we all knew that she wasn’t just the only person who could help but that her task was far from finished.

Two people required her aid, and one of them was looking to be in a very bad way.

Zoe was pale; her breathing, even the one around her throaty groans, was shallow and labored, and a slight sheen of perspiration gave her skin a sickly, almost grey hue. She was conscious, but her eyes were closed, and the arm on her uninjured side hung limply off the edge of the stretcher and dangled toward the ground.

The look that washed over Amy’s face with each of the many, many glances that the doctor gave her patient could only be described as distraught.

I flashed a look to Tom and gestured for him to take over carrying the head of Ray’s stretcher. Considering he lived with a condition that the cliches said made him oblivious to the subtleties of interpersonal communication, a pointed look and a nod were all it took to get him to step away from the group at the back of the procession and take the poles from my hands to bear the weight of Ray. Like so many people living with Autism, his ability to defy the stereotypes was genuinely amazing. Far from being fearful or frozen when he had returned to the carnage of the lake with Louisa, he had simply acted. He saw what needed to be done, and where everyone else was panicking, he just did it.

I had spent much of our time on this Island thinking that Tom needed to be sheltered, looked after, protected, or otherwise treated differently from the rest of the group. Now I could see that Tom may very well have been the best of us, and I felt a momentary pang of shame for ever thinking otherwise. I rested a hand on his shoulder and nodded my silent thanks to him before stepping closer to Amy.

She barely even looked up.

She was smeared in blood. It was caked into her hair, over her bikini top, and spread onto the skin of her chest. Her hands were covered in it as I slipped mine into hers and laced our fingers together.

“You are doing everything you can, Amy,” I whispered softly.

“It’s not enough,” she murmured back with a trembling breath, her hand squeezing mine as a tear carved its way through the crimson stains on her face.

I chanced a look behind us. Everyone was listening. I couldn’t be sure if the women at the back of the line - including Katie, who was equally covered in blood from her efforts to drag Zoe from the lake - could hear us, but the solemn, worried looks on their faces were certainly hinting that they could.

Only Caroline held my eye. In the time that it had taken us to get here from the lake, her expression had shifted. Not to replace the reverent, heated fever with which she looked at me but simply to include a significant amount of concern for her friend. That real-world fear was the only thing stopping her from acting on the desires smashed into her by our apparently shared vision.

“What do you need?” I asked Amy, returning my full attention to her while being careful not to pile the pressure onto what must have already been a monumental load on her shoulders.

“Dan, she needs a hospital. She needs blood; she has lost too much, and we don’t have it. Even if we did, I have no idea what blood type she is, let alone anyone else’s. The wrong blood type will kill her. But if she loses much more, she will start suffering from organ failure. Her heart is already beating more than twice as fast as it should be.” The tears were starting to come faster now. “I don’t ... I don’t know what to do.”

I didn’t know what to say. Our beautiful, amazing, heroic blonde doctor was doing all she could, but from the way she seemed to be breaking before my eyes, it sounded like it wouldn’t be enough. All I could do was try to reassure her and repeat myself, even if it would change nothing. “You are doing everything you...”

“Hmmmmmm, I am O-Negative.” Tom interrupted, sounding almost cheery from behind us.

Amy whipped around with a speed that should have snapped her neck. “What?”

Tom had something of a smile on his face as if he knew he was being helpful, even if the relevance of his outburst was completely lost on me. “My blood type is O-Negative,” he repeated proudly.

“Are you sure?” Amy had let go of my hand, and the tears had been replaced with a look that could almost be called hope.

“Yes. I am O-Negative.” He nodded, maintaining his smile. “I give blood at O’Connor hospital in San Jose every twelve weeks ... It is on Forest Avenue, and I go on a Tuesday.” He finished with an affirmative nod.

“Oh my God, Tom, I could kiss you!” Amy almost screeched.

Tom cast a nervous look back to Louisa. “Ummm. No, thank you.” He frowned

The whole group was following the conversation, too, but a few of the women, Louisa, Robyn, and Liz specifically, seemed to understand the relevance a whole lot better than I did. “I’m ... what? I’m confused.”

“O-negative is the universal blood type,” Amy explained excitedly as a wave of relief seemed to wash over her. “It doesn’t matter what Zoe is. Her body won’t reject Tom’s blood, even if they don’t match.”

I could almost see her burden lightning. “Does that mean...?”

Amy wasn’t listening; her mind was already busy elsewhere. She was thinking out loud rather than directly answering me. “I need to seal her wounds; her dressings will need to be changed and kept clean ... We can’t drain Tom, we will need to pace any transfusion ... and she will need to be kept on broad-spec antibiotics to stop any infections, but...” She finally looked back up at me, the most beautiful of relieved smiles painted on her lips. “ ... I think she might be okay.”

The next few hours were a bit of a blur. With a glimmer of hope about Zoe’s condition, the ambulance procession redoubled its pace and proceeded without pause or hesitation. The two stretchers were practically power-marched up the side of the mountain and toward the bunker where Caroline, possessed by Mother, had found me the previous day. It was the most direct route to the hospital from this part of the Island, if not the easiest of climbs.

This slope was steep, and the footing was uneasy. The pace of the march had to be measured against the sureness of each footing, but it was still much quicker than crossing the river and climbing the gentler east side of the mountain to the main entrance to the bunker.

There was no doubt that the hike became an increasingly unpleasant experience for Zoe, but Amy had stated that the faster she could be moved into “surgery” - and she used that term lightly - and then start her transfusion from Tom, the better her chances would be. Ray was still unconscious, but I took over the lifting of the foot of his stretcher from the tiring Caroline. Her hand brushed over my arm in thanks, lingering affectionately and adoringly for a moment before she fell into step beside her friend, holding Zoe’s hand. For the moment, that reverent hunger in her gaze seemed to be under control, or at least held in check by the reality around her.

It was still there, but it wasn’t as palpable as it had been when I first came around from the vision. At that point, it seemed like she was ready to throw herself at me, on her knees, and in my service with little more than an affirmative glance. The rampancy of that moment had simmered, but it was nowhere near gone. There was a need behind those eyes that would need to be dealt with later in one way or another. I looked down at Ray ... Despite what had happened in the vision, despite what I now felt in my bond with Caroline, despite the looks that she was giving me, he was my friend, he had saved my life, and he deserved better than for me to sweep in and claim her while he was hurt. That would be worse than what Lewis did to me.

Something fundamental had changed in Caroline. Taking advantage of it would be ... well, it would realistically be no different from taking advantage of the control this island exerted on the women here, but it somehow felt worse. It felt like a betrayal, and looking down at Ray’s unconscious body, I vowed to fight that urge with everything I had, at least until we could sit down and properly discuss everything that had happened. For now, there were more pressing matters.

It had taken Robyn and Hannah about forty-five minutes to run the return journey to the hospital and back when they had gone for the supplies. Despite the frantic pace that the procession marched up the hill, it took more than double that time just to carry Ray and Zoe one way. Eventually, though, we made it. Amy was still very much in charge and fully recovered from the battering her confidence had taken from the fear of losing Zoe. She still looked haggard and tired beyond measure, but she was putting her patients first and powering through that exhaustion with a level of dedication that, in my opinion, set those in the medical profession far above the rest of us.

After we had safely transferred both patients from the stretchers and onto the beds, she ushered everyone out of the room with the exception of Tom - who was to give his blood to Zoe - and Louisa, who would act as Amy’s nurse.

With a resounding crash that reverberated through the corridors of the bunker, the metal door to the hospital crashed shut, and the rest of us were left outside to wait.

Amy wouldn’t leave that room except to use the bathroom for three days, reminding all of us of the pure dedication and heroism of her profession.

All the rest of us could do was wait.

Waiting, as a general rule, sucks. There is, of course, a massive and yawning difference between waiting for something like a bus and waiting for a friend to come out of surgery. In our case, the sense of waiting was acutely heightened by several important factors. The most obvious was the enormous adrenaline crash that came after the fight at the lake. The question still hadn’t been asked by that first night, but everyone was thinking about it. And I am not talking about our general, perpetual concern over Zoe and Ray’s condition.

What. the. fuck. just. happened?

And would it happen again?

Not only had the question not been asked out loud by anyone, I don’t think any of us could have answered if it had. Freya and Mother were perhaps the only ones who could have given us any sort of insight, but both had been infuriatingly silent in the time since the night before the visit to the lake.

Something had changed. None of us knew what it was - although we had all seen its manifestation in Ray, the reasons behind it were a complete mystery - but the realization still hung heavy in the air the following morning. It was tangible. It was like it gave a physical weight to the atmosphere around our group as we waited for news - any news at all - of our friends’ conditions.

We had been attacked.

The door to the hospital had been closed around midday, the fight having taken place an hour or so before that. The walk, between the stops for Amy’s checks and the general care of the stretcher-bearers, had taken much, much longer than I would have thought. With no way of telling the time, it was impossible to say with any sort of accuracy, just that that sun was somewhere around its zenith as we entered the bunker. There had been no word for the whole rest of that day, and the sun had slumbered for the night, then re-emerged above the burning eastern horizon, casting its long, warming rays into the tunnel to the bunker when Lousia finally stepped out of the room.

None of us could claim to have had much in the way of sleep, maybe an hour or two of disturbed, broken rest, but Louisa looked like she hadn’t even had that. Her face was drawn and haggard, and her eyes seemed to have sunk deeper into her skull, leaving dark rings around her usually vibrant hazel orbs. She looked exhausted. Splashes of dried blood - doubtlessly from her assistance of Amy in the surgery - speckled her upper arms and parts of her chest. Nobody mentioned them, nobody wanted to draw attention to them; I’m not even sure that the others noticed, least of all Louisa. She seemed to be using the last of her energy just to stay upright.

The whole group stood as one as she stepped wearily into the main common area. Caroline, who had never been far from my side for the entire wait, pressed in next to me as Lousia hugged a few of the women she was closest to.

“She’s going to be okay,” she said, her voice sounding just as tired as her face looked. “It’s gonna be a while til she is up and about, and she won’t be able to do much when she is, but Amy thinks she is out of the woods.”

There was a collective sigh of relief around the group, and more than a few of us let our shoulders slump with the release of the tension the wait had inflicted on us.

“But...” she swallowed hard. “ ... she lost a lot of blood. Too much. She...” a tear rolled down one of her pale cheeks as she looked away from the faces staring at her. “ ... she lost the baby.”

The collective sigh was instantly replaced by gasps of grief. Hayley and Hannah, both of them carrying my own offspring and both standing in my eyeline, lifted their hands to their bellies and cuddled in closer together. Liz and Katie started crying. Robyn dropped distraught back onto the chair she had been sitting on.

For her part, Louisa looked like a woman who had been condemned to death. Like anywhere on Earth would have been preferable to being the one to deliver this news.

“How are you doing?” I asked softly.

“I’m okay,” she said with a sad, exhausted, but grateful smile that never quite reached her sunken eyes. “I’m tired and sad, but I’m okay.” She continued before I had the chance to ask the next question. “Amy is like a machine. I don’t think she has sat down for more than a few minutes all night. She is having a bit of a rest with Tom at the moment. The poor guy has been almost drained. But she is a little concerned about Ray.”

That pulled everyone’s attention back to her.

“Is he okay?”

“Well, that’s the thing; he seems to be fine. No broken bones, no head injuries, a nasty bruise on his chin, and those cuts on his arms seem to look worse than they are. He’s just ... sleeping and not waking up. She doesn’t have any smelling salts or adrenaline to wake him, so she was wondering if there was a way you could ask Freja or Mother for advice. The only thing she can think of is that ... whatever happened to him ... has put him into some sort of coma.”

I nodded. “I’ll try to reach out to them.”

She simply nodded back. It wasn’t dismissive or even that she was satisfied with my answer. It was more that she was so tired that her ability to add anything more to the conversation was just not there. “Would one of you be able to take over for me in the hospital for a few hours so I can get some rest? You won’t need to do much, just...”

“I’ll do it,” Liz announced before Lousia could finish, wiping the tears from her face and pulling herself to her feet again. One look at the tawny-haired geologist’s face was all I needed to see that she had no interest in playing nurse, but sitting in solitude, watching our hurt or resting friends, was better than being here and wallowing in the grief.

“Thank you, Lizzie,” Louisa smiled gratefully. “Just wake Amy up if any of the others wake or stir or ... something.”

“I will. Go get some sleep, darling. You’re dead on your feet.” Liz smiled weakly as she shot a glance at me and the others, then made her way to the corridor that led to the hospital. Lousia offered a tired smile of her own, then turned down the other corridor toward the room she usually shared with Tom and disappeared into the darkness.

Silence descended on the group.

It was hardly boisterous and lively before Lousia had arrived, but now that the immediate risk seemed to have passed, the rest of the feelings came rushing to the surface.

“So are we really gonna pretend that none of that shit happened?” Robyn asked after what felt like a few hours of solemn silence but was probably only a few minutes. “What the fuck was that thing? ... And Kudos to you, Dan, for smacking the shit out of it.”

Hannah snorted out a nervous laugh.

“Yeah, you were pretty incredible, baby.” Hayley agreed, smiling one of those tired but affectionate smiles I had grown to love so much.

“Gods, breeding, dead scientists, crazy sex-inducing influences, not to mention surviving a plane crash ... and now being possessed. This island is fucking crazy.” Robyn huffed.

“And...” Katie added nervously, wiping her eyes on the back of her hand. “ ... I don’t know if it’s relevant, but I think I had a vision or something just after the shit-smacking finished.”