Stranded on an Island That Hunts Back

Chapter 11: The Stolen Water

Gareth held the sealed bottle as if it had always belonged in his hand.

For one breath nobody moved. The fire snapped softly behind him. The sea dragged its broken treasures across the sand. Tom stood at Idris's side with the full juice bottle clutched to his chest, muddy water sloshing against the plastic.

Idris looked at Gareth's fingers first. Knuckles white. Thumb pressed onto the cap. Not opened yet.

Good.

There was still a line he had not crossed.

Maya stood between Gareth and Peter, her face pale with anger. Blood had dried on her hands in dark patches, and her red hair, stiff with salt, clung to her cheek. Peter lay behind her, half conscious beneath the palm shade, breathing in shallow pulls.

Clara held Lily close. The little girl stared at the bottle in Gareth's hand with cracked lips and silent hunger.

Gareth smiled at Idris. Not warmly. Not openly hostile either. A man speaking to an audience.

"You found more," he said. "So there is no problem."

Idris stopped three paces away from him. The burning branch in his hand spat a thread of smoke into the air.

"Put it down."

Gareth lifted the bottle slightly. "This?"

"Yes."

"Funny how quickly one bottle makes a man important."

"It was not yours to take."

"It was not yours either."

A murmur moved through the survivors. Idris heard the danger in it. Not agreement exactly. Hunger looking for a voice.

Tom shifted beside him. "Gareth, just put it back."

"You keep quiet." Gareth did not look at him. "You went for a little walk and came back holding water like you discovered gold. Now suddenly he gets to decide who drinks and who waits?"

Idris could feel every pair of eyes on him.

The easy answer was anger. Snatch the bottle. Shove Gareth back. Show everyone who had control.

That would feel good for about three seconds.

Then the camp would split.

Idris lowered the burning branch until the flame licked the sand near his foot.

"No one owns the water," he said. "That is exactly why no one takes it secretly."

"Secretly?" Gareth laughed. "I am standing in the middle of the beach."

"You took it from under the suitcase while Maya was watching Peter and while I was in the trees."

Gareth's eyes flicked. Small. Quick.

Enough.

Maya saw it too.

"I told him to leave it," she said.

Gareth turned towards her. "You told me a lot of things. Most of them involved letting a child cry while a bottle sits in the shade."

Clara flinched.

The blow landed exactly where Gareth intended it.

Lily buried her face against Clara's chest.

Idris felt anger rise, hot and clean. He swallowed it.

"Do not use the child to excuse yourself."

Gareth's smile thinned. "Careful. That almost sounded like leadership."

"No," Idris said. "It sounded like a rule."

The word held the air.

Rosa looked up from the luggage pile. Owen's good hand tightened around a strip of cloth. Tom stared at the sand as if he wished someone braver would speak for him.

Gareth tilted his head. "And what rule is that?"

"No one takes water, food or medicine secretly. Not now. Not later. Not because they are thirsty, frightened or convinced they deserve it more than someone else. We share it openly, or we fight over everything by sunset."

"Openly," Gareth repeated. "Lovely. So open the bottle."

"We will. After we boil what we brought from the stream."

Gareth looked at the dirty juice bottle in Tom's hand and scoffed. "That? You expect people to wait while you play campfire games with mud water?"

"Moving water can still make us sick. If we drink it straight and half the camp gets diarrhoea, dehydration will kill us faster than thirst."

"Listen to him," Gareth said to the others. "A man finds water and the first thing he does is tell you why you cannot drink it."

That one worked.

Owen looked at the juice bottle, then at Idris. Clara's eyes glistened. Rosa pressed her lips together. Even Tom's grip changed, not unwilling but desperate.

They were all thirsty.

So was Idris.

His throat felt lined with grit. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. The sealed bottle in Gareth's hand looked impossibly clear, impossibly full.

Maya stepped forward. "Idris is right. Peter drinks first because he is losing blood. Lily gets small sips because she is a child. After that, everyone gets a mouthful. Then we boil stream water and no one dies of something stupid tomorrow."

Gareth studied her. For a moment his anger bent around her, changing shape.

"You trust him already?"

Maya's mouth tightened. "I trust the man who brought water back more than the man hiding the bottle in his fist."

The beach went quiet.

Gareth's face changed.

Only a little.

Enough to show the wound under the pride.

He held the bottle out.

Idris did not move.

"Give it to Clara," he said.

Gareth's eyebrows rose. "What?"

"You said this was about the child. Give it to Clara."

A few people looked at him then, properly looked. Idris kept his face still.

Gareth hesitated.

There it was. The trap. If he refused, he proved Idris's point. If he obeyed, he gave up the centre.

His jaw worked once. Then he tossed the bottle to Clara too hard.

She caught it against her chest and gasped.

Idris moved before the anger in him could turn into action. He took the bottle gently from Clara, crouched beside Lily and unscrewed the cap.

"Three small sips," he said.

The child drank as if the world had narrowed to that plastic rim. Clara guided the bottle away before Idris had to.

"Good girl," Clara whispered, though her own voice cracked.

Maya wet Peter's lips next and gave him enough to swallow. Peter coughed, groaned and opened his eyes for a second.

"Ship?" he whispered.

"Gone," Maya said softly. "But you are still here."

After that came the others. One mouthful each. No more. Idris made Tom drink before himself. Rosa. Owen. Clara. The red-haired man. The older woman, who had barely spoken. Others whose names Idris still did not have.

When the bottle reached Gareth, he took a long pull.

"One," Idris said.

Gareth paused with the bottle still at his lips.

"You counting my throat now?"

"I am counting everyone's."

Gareth stared at him. Then, slowly, he lowered the bottle.

Only a little remained when it came back to Idris.

He wanted to empty it.

Instead he took one mouthful, capped the bottle and put it in the shade beside Maya where everyone could see it.

"From now on," Idris said, "supplies stay in the open. Rosa, can you keep the list?"

Rosa blinked. "A list?"

"Water, food, cloth, sharp metal, medicine, anything useful. We need to know what we have before we lose it."

She looked frightened by being chosen. Then she looked at the keys in her hand, the torn bags, the useless things that might not be useless.

"I can make a list," she said. "It will not save us."

"It might stop us wasting what does."

Owen gave a small nod. Tom too.

Gareth turned away with a bitter sound, but he did not argue.

Not yet.

Maya crouched by the fire with the juice bottle Tom had brought back. "We still need to boil this."

"I know." Idris looked at the poor little fire, then at the scattered wreckage. "We need containers. Metal if we can find it. Or stones hot enough to make water boil in something that will not melt."

"You can do that?"

"I have seen it done."

"That is not the same thing."

"No," he said. "It is not."

She held his gaze for a moment.

Then, instead of telling him that was not good enough, she nodded once.

"Then we learn quickly."

Behind them, Gareth kicked at a piece of broken plastic. It skidded across the sand and stopped near the covered dead.

Idris watched him from the corner of his eye.

The island had teeth in the trees.

The camp had teeth too.

Clara moved Lily nearer to the shade without being asked. Owen sat with his back against the luggage, eyes fixed on Gareth as if trying to decide whether courage meant challenging him or staying quiet. Rosa's pen scratched across the ruined page, recording the bottle, the argument and the new rule in a hand that shook less with every line.

Idris watched all of it and understood that the first danger had not been the theft itself. It had been how quickly everyone had needed someone else to be guilty. Hunger had made a court out of the beach before they had even built a shelter.

And the first rule had already drawn blood, even if no one could see it yet.

Before sunset, Idris made Rosa read the rule back aloud. Her voice shook once, then steadied. The words sounded small against the surf, but everyone heard them. Even Gareth. Especially Gareth.