Fever Dream Red

9

More and more people arrived until almost everybody was there, in the big industrial kitchen. It was like a non-consensual party you were forced to participate in. Even Mimi was there.

I made my excuses pretty quickly, subtly grabbing my headphones while saying I was going to pack. No one cared.

Ten minutes later I sat there on the beach, like I had many times before. My clothes would become dusty with sand, my hair would be whipped out of its ponytail by the wind, and my shoes potentially washed with salty water. I didn't care though. This was what it felt to be alive. I knew then that I would miss this place with all my heart. I belonged there.

I came back half an hour later. Not much had changed. I kept walking around, making useless excuses. I was restless. I wanted to be off.

I couldn't stop pacing around, or else I'd get too anxious.

We set off at eleven, as I remember it. We all piled into two pickup trucks. The ones with the open, backs, anyway. Are they pickup trucks?

I was with Doug, Sunny, and Zack. Danny, Inez and Alfie were in the front. We were only in the back because we were the immature ones. It hurt a little.

We bounced along to the causeway, every pebble and stone on the road making our ride that much more unbearable. Sand blew up around us as the tyres interrupted their drift, much like dust that would once again settle on the legend of Gloomy Cay. After all, there was nobody to sustain it anymore.

I took these last moments to look up at it in it's glory. The eye of the storm. The centre of the chaos. And the home of a group of idiots who managed to survive an apocalypse. So far, anyway.

The sloping green hills seemed a lot like a waving hand to me. After us, I knew nature would take its course. Order would be restored. Us, the anomaly, would disappear. The horror wasn't the island. It was us.

I turned my attention to the causeway we were approaching. The sea lapped at its feet, but it was looking at us. Guiding us to the other side, like a lost loved one at the bridge to heaven.

I glanced behind us, saw Skye, Lily, Matt, Aggie and Fae behind us. Lily was still knitting, with Matt talking hastily in her ear. didn't know what it would've taken to tear her apart from her work. She wouldn't stop if for Matt, that's for sure.

We were on the causeway now. It was strange, thinking about how, in a few hours, the ground we were driving on would become host to the water. If we were on this very spot that night, we would be drowning. We would be dead.

We held hands with death every day though. If we crossed the road at the wrong second, if we ate the wrong thing, if we did the wrong thing in a science experiment, we would die.

We could die any day, any hour, any minute. But we didn't. It was strange for me, coming to terms with my mortality like that. Life was so entwined with death.

We were halfway along the causeway when we heard shouting.
"Do you hear that?" Doug asked us. We all nodded. I recall a shiver running down my spine, like ice cold water being poured down my shirt.
"Do you hear that?" Doug asked Alfie.
"No...?"

Alfie poked his head out of the window and listened.
"Wait. I hear it."
"Has someone fallen in?" I asked. I hated the idea of drowning. Slowly sinking to the bottom of the world's dephs, like many have before you. The feeling of helplessness encasing you as your lungs fill with water like deadly anchors.

"No. That's coming from the land." Sunny said, as she craned her neck like a meerkat to see who it was.
"Yep. From Gloomy Cay."

"What?" Doug said, as if Sunny had just announced her pregnancy or a moon had just fallen out of the sky.
"Are you sure you're looking in the right direction?" Zack asked tenderly, as if Sunny was some kind of imbecile who did not understand form where we had come.
"Yes, Zach, I am sure I'm looking in the right direction. The one we had just come from, right?" Zack nodded, not comprehending that Sunny was being sarcastic.

Sunny rolled her eyes.

"Is it Eli?" Inez chipped in.
"I knew it. He's all this talk, but the minute we're gone, he's lost. I told him!" Danny retorted, waving his hands around like a madman.

Eli, Mimi and Zoe had stayed behind. Zoe was too fragile too leave again, Mimi had said, between hurried cups of coffee.

"It's not him." Sunny answered, popping Danny's bubble with the haste of a lightning strike.

"You sure?"
"I'm sure. This guy has his arms out. And sunglasses on. Who does he think he is?"
"Enough of the attitude, Sunny."
"Do we know him?" Alfie impatiently asked.
"I don't."

"Do we go back?"
"We are not compromising this just for one stupid guy!"
"No one was at Gloomy Cay though."
"To our knowledge."
"Well yes. But we can band together. Share rescources, live together in peace and eternal harmony." Doug suggested.

"That's stupid." We all said, almost in unison.
"There's too many of us as it is!" Sunny finished.
"Every man for himself. That's what I say." Danny declared.
"Very well then. I'll push you into the sea." Doug countered.

Danny held up his hands in surrender.

"Should we go back?"
"Go on then. At this point our deaths are inevitable. Let's just push our luck that bit further!" Zack saddened, his melancholic statement bitter at the seams.

"Can we go back?" Doug screamed to the other car.
"Do you hear those voices too?" Aggie asked us. We nodded frantically.

Aggie must've then told Skye, because they looked at us with the most horrified expression on their face. It was as if we had just spoiled their favourite film.

"Skye says that's the most terrible idea they've ever heard. Or, words to that effect."

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Thanks to dojacant for doing so. It is appreciated :)