Chapter 7: Smoke and Teeth
1463 Words
The fire changed the beach.
Not enough to save them. Not enough to make the island safe. But enough to give the survivors a centre.
Before the flame, they had been scattered across the sand like wreckage. After it, they moved around the smoke as if it were a flag planted in hostile land. Clara kept Lily near it. Owen fed it small sticks with his good hand. Rosa spread damp clothes across hot stones and broken luggage. Even Gareth, though he did it with a scowl, dragged larger pieces of driftwood into a pile where the sun could dry them.
The fire made a sound of its own.
Snap. Hiss. c***k.
Small sounds. Human sounds. Sounds that pushed back against the endless throat of the sea and the wet breathing of the jungle.
Idris watched the smoke bend towards the water.
It was thin. Too thin.
But it was visible.
For a moment, he let himself imagine a fishing boat beyond the reef, someone lifting binoculars, someone pointing at the pale thread rising from the beach.
Then he stopped.
Hope was useful only if it made people act.
If it made them wait, it was poison.
"More damp leaves," he said. "Not on the flame. Beside it, where the heat can pull smoke."
Tom, still unnamed to most of them, obeyed without fuss. That was why Idris had noticed him. Some men tried to look brave. Tom listened, moved and did not turn every task into a performance.
Gareth watched that too.
Idris saw him watching.
That was another thing to count.
They arranged the camp around the fire in rough circles. Injured closest to shade. Supplies where everyone could see them. Damp cloth spread on rocks. Sharp metal placed away from Lily after Clara caught the child staring at it with the solemn curiosity of the frightened.
None of it looked organised from a distance. It looked like wreckage had tried to remember how people lived. But Idris could feel the difference. A bag moved from surf to shade was a decision. A branch placed beside the fire was a promise that someone expected night to come and intended to meet it alive.
He clung to those small decisions because the larger ones were too big to hold all at once.
Maya crouched beside Peter, her fingers at his neck. She had cleaned what she could with the antiseptic wipes, but there were not enough of them and the wound was still ugly. Peter drifted in and out of consciousness, mumbling words that made no sense.
"How is he?" Idris asked.
"Bad," Maya said.
She did not soften it.
He appreciated that.
"Bleeding has slowed, but he needs proper medical care. Stitches, fluids, antibiotics, pain relief. We have almost none of that."
"What do we have?"
"Plasters, two antiseptic wipes left, blunt scissors and hope."
Idris looked at Peter's grey face.
Hope again.
The cheapest thing on the island.
Maya glanced towards the bottle beneath the suitcase. "And he needs water."
"So do all of us."
"I know."
The way she said it told him she hated knowing.
Idris crouched beside her. Close enough to speak without giving the whole camp his fear.
"You did well," he said.
Maya's mouth tightened. "Do not do that."
"Do what?"
"Talk like we saved him. We slowed the bleeding. That is all."
"That is more than nothing."
"It still might not be enough."
He looked at her hands. They had been washed with a little seawater, which was a bad answer to a worse problem. Blood remained beneath her nails.
"No," he said. "It might not."
For once, she did not challenge him.
The silence between them lasted only a few breaths, but it settled differently from the others. Not comfortable. Not romantic. Too soon for that and too bloody. But honest. Two people looking at the same terrible thing and refusing to decorate it.
Peter stirred.
Maya leaned in at once. "Peter. Stay with me."
His eyes cracked open. "Hurts."
"I know."
"Water."
Her face changed by a fraction. Idris saw the effort it took not to reach for the bottle immediately.
"Soon," she said.
Peter's eyes closed again.
Maya sat back and pressed the heel of her hand to her own forehead for half a second. When she lowered it, the hardness had returned.
Gareth ruined the moment.
"Are we just admiring the fire now?" he called. "Because some of us are still thirsty."
Maya closed her eyes.
Idris stood.
The sun had climbed higher, pressing heat onto the beach until the sand shimmered. Wet clothes began to dry stiff with salt. Lips cracked. Faces reddened. The fire crackled softly behind him, but its warmth was nothing compared to the hunger of the sky.
They could not wait.
"We need water before anything else," Idris said.
Gareth looked up from the driftwood pile. "You finally ready to go into the trees?"
"Not everyone."
"Convenient."
"A small group moves faster and makes less noise. The rest stay here, keep the fire alive and watch the injured."
Rosa looked nervous. "What if the thing in the trees comes here?"
Idris picked up a burning branch and held it where everyone could see. The flame licked upward, quick and orange.
"Then stay close to the fire. Most animals do not like flame or smoke."
"Most?" Owen asked.
"Most."
"That was almost comforting."
A few people gave weak smiles.
Good. Fear loosened when people could still make room for humour.
Idris wished he could give them more than a joke and a burning stick. He wished he could say the ship had sent a signal, that helicopters would be searching by evening, that someone somewhere already knew their names. Instead, he had smoke thin as thread and a beach full of people trying not to look at the covered dead.
The fire popped. A spark jumped and died in the sand. It looked too small to hold back anything, but everyone watched it as if it were a gate.
Clara looked towards the tree line. "You keep saying animal. You think that was an animal?"
Idris hesitated.
Gareth pounced on it. "Wonderful. Our leader has downgraded from confident to guessing."
"I am not your leader," Idris said.
"You keep saying that while giving instructions."
"Then stop needing them."
The line came out colder than he meant.
Gareth's eyes hardened.
Maya rose beside Peter. "Enough. Both of you. If there is water, we need it. If there is something in the trees, we do not need to feed ourselves to it in a crowd."
Her voice had that sharp medical edge again. Practical enough to cut.
Gareth looked at her and, as before, his anger bent rather than vanished.
Idris stored that away too.
A sound rolled out of the jungle.
Low.
Long.
Deep enough to be felt in the ribs.
It was not a bird. Not wind. Not branches rubbing together. It began as a growl, sank into something almost like a roar, then faded into the green as though swallowed by the leaves.
Every head turned.
Lily began to cry.
Owen stumbled back from the tree line. Rosa dropped the keys she had been holding. Even Gareth took half a step away before catching himself.
Maya's voice was barely there. "Was that what you saw?"
Idris picked up the burning stick from the edge of the fire.
The flame bent in the breeze, then steadied.
He looked towards the trees, towards the hidden print in the damp earth and the place where the shadow had vanished.
"I don't know," he said.
The sound came again.
Farther away this time.
Or perhaps that only made it worse.
It moved through the jungle with slow confidence, the call of something that did not need to hide and did not fear being heard.
Idris raised the burning stick.
"Everyone stays close to the fire."
This time, nobody argued.
For several minutes they stood together, pressed into a rough half-circle around the flame. The camp smelled of smoke, salt and fear. The jungle said nothing more, but silence did not feel like absence now. It felt like a mouth closing.
Maya moved Peter's pallet closer to the firelight. Tom helped without being asked. Clara tucked Lily behind her body. Rosa picked up the keys, one by one, though her fingers shook.
Gareth stayed where he was, jaw tight, pretending the flame had not become important to him too.
The fire trembled between them and the green.
For now, it was only a handful of flame.
But on that beach, with the dead behind them, the sea before them and something growling in the trees, it was the first border between the survivors and the island that had taken them.
- Writer
