Chapter 14: The First Night
1499 Words
No one slept properly.
Sleep came in scraps, stolen between sounds. A wave breaking harder than the last. A branch snapping in the jungle. Peter muttering in fever. Lily whimpering herself awake and Clara soothing her before fear could spread.
Idris stayed upright beside the fire until his body began to sway without permission.
Maya noticed.
"Sit before you fall into it," she said.
He looked down and found one foot dangerously close to the coals.
"I was resting my eyes."
"You were standing."
"Advanced method."
"Sit."
He sat.
The heat struck his face. Behind him, the sea breathed in darkness. In front of him, the jungle formed a black wall beyond the unsteady reach of the flames. The eyes had withdrawn after midnight, but Idris did not trust absence. Absence had too many places to hide.
Tom kept the first watch with him. Then Owen, despite his arm. Then Rosa, who insisted she could stay awake because fear had made rest impossible anyway. Gareth refused to be assigned, then stayed awake on his own, sitting apart with his back against a palm trunk and his arms folded.
Watching the trees.
Watching Idris.
Always both.
The fire needed constant feeding. They had less wood than Idris liked. The larger pieces smoked instead of burning cleanly, damp from seawater and spray. Each time the flame sank, the jungle seemed to lean closer.
Idris divided the night with marks in the sand. It was crude, almost childish, but it gave tired minds something to hold. Two people awake at once. One watched the trees. One watched the fire. If either started seeing things that were not there, they woke the next pair. No shame. No argument.
Gareth mocked the lines at first. Then, when the dark thickened and the eyes returned beyond the flame, he stopped mocking them.
That was something.
Not trust.
Something.
"We need a system," Idris murmured.
Maya sat on the other side of Peter. She had cleaned her hands with boiled water and one of the last antiseptic wipes, but blood remained under her nails. Her red hair had dried in rough waves around her face, darker at the ends from salt.
"For what?"
"Everything. Fire. Water. Watches. Food. People will panic less if they know what happens next."
"You think so?"
"No. I hope so."
She gave a tired breath that might have become a laugh in another life.
"At least you are consistent."
Peter stirred between them.
His eyes opened, unfocused. "Mum?"
Maya leaned closer. "Peter. It is Maya. You are on the beach."
"Cold."
He was not cold. His skin shone with heat.
Maya touched his forehead and looked at Idris.
He understood the look.
Bad.
"We need to loosen the tourniquet," she whispered. "Just enough to check."
Idris felt his stomach tighten. "Now?"
"If we leave it too long, we may kill the leg. If he survives at all."
The words were blunt because anything gentler would be a lie.
"Tell me what to do."
She guided his hands. Pressure here. Cloth ready there. If the bleeding surges, press hard and twist tighter again. No hesitation.
"Ready?" she asked.
No.
"Yes."
She turned the stick slowly.
Peter groaned.
Blood seeped through the cloth. More than Idris wanted. Less than before.
"Pressure," Maya said.
He pressed. Peter's back arched.
"Sorry," Idris said, though Peter was too far gone to hear it.
Maya worked quickly. Clean cloth. Tight wrapping. Not clean enough. Not proper. Still better than doing nothing.
After a minute, she tightened the tourniquet again, but not as fiercely.
"That will have to do."
Idris leaned back, sweat cooling on his neck.
Across the fire, Gareth watched them.
"How long before he dies?" he asked.
Clara gasped. Owen's face twisted.
Maya looked up slowly. "Do not."
Gareth shrugged. "Everyone is thinking about it."
"Then everyone can learn to think quietly."
His mouth curved. "You think pretending makes us decent?"
Idris answered before Maya could. "No. What we do when pretending fails does that."
Gareth's eyes moved towards him. "There it is again. Sermons by firelight."
"You asked a cruel question. You got a simple answer."
"Cruel? Or useful? If he dies, we stop giving him water. If he lives, we keep wasting it on a man who cannot walk. Somebody has to say it."
The words landed badly because they were awful and because fear could understand them.
Owen looked at Peter, then down.
Clara hugged Lily closer.
Maya stood.
There was no drama in it. She simply rose, exhausted and blood-streaked, with her jaw tight and her eyes cold.
"Peter gets water while he is alive," she said. "If you touch his share before I say so, you and I will have a problem."
Gareth stared at her.
For the first time, he seemed unsure whether to laugh.
Idris almost admired her timing. She had not appealed to kindness. Gareth would have used that. She had drawn a line.
"And you decide that?" Gareth said.
"Yes," Maya said. "Because I am the only one here who has managed to slow his bleeding."
Silence.
A small one, but useful.
Idris fed the fire.
The night stretched.
Near the darkest hour, the animals returned.
Only eyes at first. Low sparks beyond the fire line. Then shapes between the trunks. Idris counted four. Maybe six. They did not come as close this time. The wider fire made them wary.
But they watched.
Lily woke and saw them.
She did not scream. That was worse somehow. She went rigid in Clara's arms, both hands clenched in the woman's torn shirt.
"Do not look at them," Clara whispered. "Look at me."
"They want the dead," Lily said.
No one answered.
The child was right.
Idris lifted a burning stick and stood. Tom rose beside him. Owen tried to, swayed and sat back down with embarrassment burning through his pale face.
"Stay," Idris said gently.
Owen looked relieved and ashamed at the same time.
The largest animal moved just beyond the glow. Grey shoulders. Narrow muzzle. Its ribs showed beneath its skin. Starving, perhaps. Or built that way.
It looked at Idris.
A pressure brushed his chest.
Not words.
Need.
Hunger.
Fear of flame.
A pack held back by heat and hunger pulling forward.
Idris's hand tightened around the stick.
He did not want to feel it.
An animal wanting to eat the dead was easier to hate if its hunger stayed outside him.
"Idris?" Maya said.
The pressure vanished.
He shouted and thrust the flame high.
Tom banged metal against metal. Rosa joined from behind the fire. Gareth did nothing at first, then picked up a branch and threw it into the flames hard enough to send sparks spiralling.
The animals retreated.
Not far.
Enough.
When dawn finally began, it did not come with beauty.
It seeped grey into the edges of the world. The jungle became trees again, though no less dangerous. The sea turned dull steel. The survivors looked worse in the morning than they had in firelight. Faces drawn. Eyes swollen. Salt dried on skin. Blood on clothing no one had the strength to wash properly.
But they were alive.
All fourteen.
For now.
Idris stood and nearly fell.
Maya caught his arm.
Her grip was stronger than he expected.
"You need to rest."
"We need water."
"Both can be true."
Gareth's voice cut across the fire. "And we need to move the bodies before the pets come back for breakfast."
This time, no one rebuked him.
Because this time, the cruelty carried a truth they could not afford to ignore.
Idris looked at the covered shapes lying within the fire's smoke.
The first morning had brought survival.
Idris looked at the marks in the sand, half-kicked apart by tired feet, and thought about how thin order was. A few lines. A dying fire. People too exhausted to argue for a while. That was all that stood between them and the dark.
It had not brought mercy.
Once, near dawn, Idris woke from a half-sleep convinced he was back in his own bed and late for work. The smell of smoke corrected him first. Then the ache in his ribs. Then the sight of Maya kneeling beside Peter, refusing to surrender to exhaustion because the wounded man breathed better when someone listened. The ordinary world slipped away again, cruel in how easily it had pretended to return.
When it was Rosa's turn to watch, she asked Idris what she should do if she became afraid. He almost gave her a practical answer. Shout, wake Tom, lift the torch. Instead, he told her the truth first. Fear was not failure. Fear was information. Then he gave her the practical answer too, because truth without use was only decoration.
By sunrise, the watch marks were almost gone, but people remembered their turns. That mattered to Idris more than the lines themselves. A rule that survived tired minds had a chance of surviving fear.
Barely, but enough.
- Writer
