Stranded on an Island That Hunts Back

Chapter 13: Eyes Beyond the Fire

Dusk did not fall on the island.

It gathered.

It slipped first into the spaces between tree trunks, then beneath the palms, then under the broken suitcases and bodies covered at the far end of the beach. The sky stayed gold for a while, almost gentle, but the jungle had already become another thing.

Idris built the fire wider before the light failed.

Not higher. Higher wasted wood. Wider made a border.

He laid burning branches in a rough curve facing the trees, with the main fire behind them where the survivors could sit. The beach side remained open to the sea, though the sea offered no comfort. It breathed in the dark, endless and cold.

"We need more wood," Tom said.

His voice had dropped without him noticing.

"Only from the beach," Idris said. "Nothing from the tree line now."

Gareth gave a soft snort. "The magic line again."

"Yes," Idris said. "The line between what we can see and what we cannot."

That shut him up for less than a minute, but Idris took what he could get.

They gathered driftwood in pairs. Even that felt dangerous. Every step away from the fire stretched the nerves. Owen used his good hand to drag light branches. Rosa collected splinters and palm ribs. Clara stayed with Lily, who had finally fallen asleep in her lap, thumb against cracked lips.

Maya knelt beside Peter.

His breathing had changed.

Idris heard it whenever he passed near them. Too fast, then too shallow. Fever had put a shine on his face. The improvised tourniquet held, but holding was not healing.

"He needs the pressure checked," Maya said quietly when Idris crouched beside her. "If this stays too tight for too long, the tissue below it dies. If we loosen it and the bleeding starts again, he dies faster."

Idris looked at Peter's leg, then away.

"What do you need?"

"Light. Clean cloth. More hands that will not panic."

"You have mine."

She glanced at his face. "You are already doing three jobs."

"Give me a fourth. It will distract me from the first three."

For a second, the corner of her mouth moved.

Then a sound came from the covered dead.

A scrape.

Everyone turned.

The bodies lay at the far end of the beach, under jackets, blankets and torn cloth. The tide no longer reached them. The sand around them had cooled into blue shadow.

Something moved there.

Not one of the bodies.

Behind them.

Low to the sand.

Rosa stood too quickly and dropped a bundle of sticks. "What was that?"

Idris lifted a burning branch.

"Stay by the fire."

Gareth stepped forward. "It could be someone alive."

"It is not."

"You do not know that."

Idris did not look at him. He watched the shape near the dead.

It moved again.

A long back. Narrow head. Grey hide in the fading light.

Then another shape appeared behind it.

And another.

Owen whispered something under his breath.

The first animal lifted its head.

Eyes caught the firelight.

Not yellow like the thing by the stream. Paler. Greenish. Reflecting back the flame with a flat, hungry shine.

A wild dog perhaps. A wolf. Something close enough to both and wrong enough to be neither.

It lowered its muzzle towards the covered body nearest the jungle.

Clara made a broken sound and clamped a hand over Lily's ear, though the child slept on.

"No," Maya said.

It was not loud.

It carried anyway.

The animal paused.

Idris felt the camp behind him tighten. The dead were dead. They knew that. He knew that. But letting teeth pull at them while their names were still unknown felt like surrendering the last piece of humanity the sea had not taken.

He raised the burning branch and walked forward.

"Idris," Maya warned.

"Do not follow."

He went only ten paces. Enough for the animals to see the flame. Not far enough to leave the fire's glow entirely.

The first one bared its teeth.

A low growl came from its throat. Smaller than the sound they had heard in the jungle, but close enough to make the skin tighten across Idris's back.

He shouted.

Not words. Just sound, raw and hard.

The animal flinched.

Tom grabbed another burning stick and came to stand beside him despite being told not to. His face was white.

"You said do not follow," Tom muttered.

"I noticed."

"Plan?"

"Look bigger than we feel."

"Brilliant."

Together they raised the flames.

Idris shouted again. Tom joined him, voice cracking. Behind them, Owen picked up a branch and beat it against a broken suitcase. Rosa banged the keys against a metal panel. Gareth, after one furious moment of choosing whether pride allowed obedience, seized two pieces of wreckage and smashed them together.

The beach filled with noise.

The animals backed away from the bodies.

Not far.

Their eyes remained.

More appeared near the tree line.

Five pairs.

Seven.

Maybe more.

The survivors fell silent too soon.

The eyes stayed.

Idris's arm began to ache from holding the branch high. Sparks fell onto his wrist. He did not lower it.

One of the animals circled towards the open side, closer to the sea. Clever enough not to come straight at the flame.

"Left," Maya called.

Idris turned.

Gareth moved before Idris could. He grabbed a burning piece from the edge of the fire and hurled it towards the circling animal. It landed short, spraying sparks, but the animal sprang back.

For a moment Gareth looked pleased with himself.

Then another animal lunged from the shadow near the bodies and seized a loose strip of cloth in its teeth.

Maya was on her feet. "No!"

The cloth tore free from a covered corpse.

Rosa sobbed.

Idris ran two steps forward and thrust the flame down, shouting until his damaged ribs screamed. Tom came with him. Gareth too, whether for courage or audience Idris did not know.

This time the animals broke.

They scattered towards the trees, thin bodies vanishing into the dark.

The last one stopped at the edge of the jungle and looked back.

For one strange second, Idris felt a prickle behind his ribs.

Not like the yellow-eyed animal by the stream. Fainter. Cruder.

Hunger.

Only hunger.

Then it was gone.

The jungle swallowed it.

No one spoke.

The dead lay still again, but one covering had been dragged aside. Idris walked over, chest heaving, and pulled it back into place. He did not look at the face beneath.

When he returned to the fire, Maya was watching him.

"You felt something," she said quietly.

Idris froze.

"What?"

"At the stream you looked like that too. As if something had touched you from inside."

He looked away. "Thirst. Exhaustion."

"Do not lie badly. It wastes time."

He almost smiled, but the moment was too thin.

"I do not know what it was."

Maya studied him. Then she nodded once, accepting the truth because it was incomplete rather than false.

Gareth threw his burnt stick into the fire. "So what now? We sit here until they come back with friends?"

"We make a better fire line," Idris said.

"With what wood?"

"Everything we can spare."

"And the bodies?"

That question did what the animals had not.

It broke the camp into silence.

Idris looked towards the covered shapes.

They could not bury them tonight. Digging in the dark near the jungle was madness. Burning them would take more wood than they had and a cruelty no one was ready to hold.

"We move them closer to the fire," he said.

Clara shut her eyes.

Gareth stared. "You want the dead beside us?"

"I want them where the animals are less likely to take them. At first light, we decide properly."

"Properly," Gareth repeated, bitter. "Everything proper, even at the end of the world."

Idris turned to him. "Especially then."

No one answered.

So they moved the dead again.

This time, everyone helped. Even Gareth. He took the heaviest body with Tom and did not make a joke. Clara kept Lily turned away. Rosa whispered fragments of prayers under her breath though Idris could not tell whether they belonged to any faith he knew.

When the bodies lay within the fire's glow, the camp seemed smaller.

But less alone.

Night completed itself around them.

The fire cracked. The survivors huddled close. Beyond the light, eyes appeared again between the trees. Not attacking. Not leaving.

Waiting.

Idris sat with a burning branch across his knees and watched them watch him.

Behind him, someone began to cry very softly. Not Clara. Not Lily. One of the unnamed men, face hidden in his hands, shoulders shaking with the careful silence of a person ashamed to break. No one mocked him. No one comforted him either. They were all too close to the same edge.

Maya looked across the fire at Idris. The flame made her eyes bright and unreadable. She did not ask him to fix that grief. Perhaps that was why he was grateful. Some things could only be sat beside.

The first night had begun.