The Island

She slipped her hand from the other girl’s. ‘He is not a policeman.’

‘I’m going to get you some help,’ said the marshal. She began to walk towards the house.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Please.’ It hurt to talk; she wasn’t sure if the girl had heard her.

‘Everybody!’ yelled the false policeman. ‘Everybody, come! You’re safe! We have the situation under control.’

She looked about her. People were arriving from all directions, converging on the house. People who did not know, though they must have heard the shots.

The second man joined the first. They stood, arms folded, waiting.

No, she wanted to scream. No.

When the marshal girl was three metres from the men, they drew their pistols. The girl stopped. Around her the others stopped too. The shorter of the men raised his pistol and shot the marshal girl twice. She stayed upright for a moment, swayed, then collapsed to the grass. The second man aimed carefully. Two more shots. A tall boy fell forwards. His body struck the girl standing next to him. The girl stood frozen. She did not turn and run. The man shot her twice, and she too collapsed to the ground.

Why aren’t they running? she wondered. There must have been two dozen people, standing fanned out around the men in their police uniforms. Not one of them moved. She made to turn, but found that she could not. Two more shots. Another body hit the ground.

You cannot look. You must not look.

The men, she knew, had seen her.

Turn.

They would come for her. She had to move.

Run.

She could not run. She could barely move, but she set off down the path towards the cabins. Still the shots came, always in pairs. At any moment, she thought, two more bullets will come for me.

Think.

The dormitory cabins. A single room, four bunks, a window at each end and door in the middle. There were sixty of them. Would they search every one? Something told her that they would. These men were methodical, efficient. They knew what they were doing.

Once they were inside, you were dead.

Think.

Her backpack, ahead of her, to the side of the path. Her phone; the boat key.

Sharp crack. A bullet tore into a tree to her left.

Don’t turn.

A stray.

Don’t turn.

She had to believe the bullet was a stray. She had to keep going, towards her backpack. She had to get to the water. Then she would figure out how to get to the boat.

She knew she must not turn, but she turned.

In front of the men were bodies, unmoving on the ground. Six figures stood, facing the men, rooted to the spot. As she watched, one seemed to come to life. A girl. She turned, began to sprint towards the nearby trees. The tall man raised his weapon, fired twice. The girl dropped to the ground.

She forced herself to turn away. Five pairs of shots, five more bodies, and then they would come for her.

Two paces and she was at her backpack. She hooked her left hand into the shoulder strap, winced in pain, carried on down the path.

Another pair of shots; then another.

It was obscene to be counting off the shots, counting off the lives of the girls, the boys, who stood, rooted by fear, in front of those men.

Don’t look.

Two more shots.

She was at the trees now. From here the path snaked around the edge of the lake, then led down some steep steps cut into the rock to the sea. Off to the right were the dormitory cabins. She wondered if she might be safer there.

She reached into her pack, slid out her telephone and the key to the boat. Then she thought again. She held the pack around the ammunition box, shook her possessions on to the side of the path.

Pain rooted her to the spot. She forced herself to breathe through it. She found the ziplock bag with her toothbrush and soap in it, tipped them out of the bag. She dropped in her telephone and the boat key, sealed the bag, dropped it into her backpack.

It bothered her that she couldn’t find a wound on her front. She knew – perhaps she had read – that it was best if the bullet passes right through you. When she reached her hand round to the entry wound it was small. The wound itself didn’t hurt a lot, but every time she moved her shoulder nerves shrieked and her jaw clenched shut; it was all that she could do not to sit rocking in pain. Still, not having an exit wound on her chest meant she could draw the straps of her backpack tight.

This had to be survivable. There were two hundred young people on the island. Plus a few adults. Those men couldn’t kill every last one of them. If she could make it down to the water, perhaps she could swim along the shoreline to the dock.

How many people would the boat carry? Eight, she guessed, easy. Maybe ten or twelve. Maybe more.

‘Do not be alarmed.’

The voice was chillingly close. She pushed her clothes under a bush.

‘There has been an incident on the island.’

She held her pack in her arms, threw herself into the trees, not thinking about her shoulder. The underbrush was dense here; she could not get more than a few metres in.

‘You may have heard shots. We have the situation under control. Be assured that you are safe. Please approach my colleague and me for assistance and further information.’

She heard the approach of footsteps. She saw a shadow on the path in front of her, saw it turn this way, then the other. She crouched down, forced herself to slow her breathing.

Hold out, she thought. You have to hold out.

A second shadow followed the first. A single muttered word.

The shadows moved off towards the cabins.

A hand reached for hers in the gloom. It took all her strength to keep from crying out. A boy. A tiny little boy.

In truth, she realized, he couldn’t be much younger than she was. Her sister’s age, maybe. Thirteen, but small. His skin glowed dully. His eyes were wet.

‘De er ikke politi,’ he said. Not the police.

No, she said. Those men weren’t the police.

Were they safe here?

No, she said, she didn’t think they were. He should come with her to the boat. He could swim, couldn’t he?

Yes, he said, he could swim.

Well then, she said. But she could not persuade him to leave the cover of the woods, no matter what she said.

A pair of shots. A pause. Another pair of shots.

He was clinging to her very tightly. He was hurting her. She was injured, she explained. She couldn’t stay here. She needed him to loosen his grip.

‘Sorry,’ he said in English. So sorry. He hadn’t meant to hurt her.

You didn’t, she told him, though the pain was more than she had ever known. She bit the inside of her cheek hard, clutched at her thighs with her nails. The boy was looking at her hands. She could hear his breathing, and her own, ragged and hoarse. She knew she was frightening him. But more than that she knew she must not cry out.

When the pain subsided she asked him to take her pack, to unzip it and take out the metal box, and to place the box under a long piece of rotting pine bark on the forest floor. The boy did what she asked, wordlessly. His face was streaked with dirt and tears. In the forest gloom the blood from her wound was black on his white T-shirt.

When she told him it was OK, that he would be OK, she saw how hard he tried to smile and it almost broke her. You’re being very brave, she told him.

‘I don’t want to die.’

‘What’s your name,’ she asked him.

‘Arno.’

‘Then we have to go, Arno,’ she said.

He nodded. She promised him he would not die. But he would not leave, and she knew she could not stay.

She kept to the trees on the left side of the path, by the lake. It was heavy going through the underbrush. She had imagined she would slip past the dormitory cabins in the cover of the trees, but as she drew near, panting – her body twisted in anticipation of the pain that increased with every step – she realized that it would not be simple. The cabins were arranged in four straight rows on the other side of the path. Anyone standing outside could see directly on to the path. Worse, the trees on the lake side had been cut away opposite the cabins to give a view directly on to the water.

Why hadn’t she rung someone? Her father? The police? Too late for that now; she would give herself away.

She came to the edge of the wood by the lake, turned to face the cabins. They were small, square, cheaply built, with miniature terraces and mean little windows.

The pattern of the gunshots had changed. Short, jagged bursts. Had they run out of pistol ammunition? She heard another burst of gunfire, saw, she thought, a muzzle flash, heard the sound of a heavy object collapsing against wood, forced herself not to think of bodies. Though it could only be a body.

In the second row, in the nearest cabin, a face appeared at a window. The window frame was pushed roughly out, breaking a hinge. A boy of her own age pulled his arms through, braced them against the outer wall of the cabin, pushed hard. He forced one shoulder out, then the other, snaked his body through. He hung, upside down, then landed, catlike on the faded grass. He paused, listened, then sprinted up the path towards the clearing. As she watched another face appeared at the window, a girl this time, looking out.

The unmistakable sound of footsteps on the grass, heavy, relentless. The sound of a door swinging open. She saw – she felt – the panic in the girl’s face as she stared towards the door of the cabin. She heard a commanding male voice.

‘Please remain calm.’

She saw – she felt – the girl’s confusion. The girl stood there, her face in profile, framed by the window. How close she was. Three metres, perhaps four.

The girl made to say something.

A sharp burst of gunfire. The girl stood there still, expression draining from her face. Then she fell out of sight. She heard the girl’s body as it collapsed on to the wooden floor.

Christ.

She pushed herself in among the trees, stared at the path. That girl – there and then not there.

Please Lord Christ make this stop.

The face of the taller man appeared in the window, looked out. As he did so, his companion rounded the corner, stood on the path between her and the cabin. She hunkered down, made herself small.

Please Christ. Oh, please. Please Lord.

She had to control her breathing. She knew that she was approaching panic, and that panic would kill her. Weird that she could remember the school drills so well. Macabre. She had to quiet her breathing, her raging pulse. She had to damp down the desire to stand up and scream. Because these men, she knew, would cut her down.

It was dark here in the cover of the trees, and the men were standing in direct sunlight, and perhaps that simple fact would be enough to save her. She began counting as she breathed.

In, two, three, four.

Hold two three four.

Out two three four.

It hurt to breathe deeply, made her wonder where the bullet was lodged, made her hope her lung was OK.

Both men were in front of her, though she had not seen the short man move.

‘Re-up?’

She saw the smile they exchanged: confident, ready, friendly.

‘Yep!’

There was nothing about them that betrayed the horror of what she had witnessed. Their eyes were bright, beady, like dogs on the chase. She could see no aggression in them, no malice. She saw the tall man take what looked like a pill, then wash it down with water from a small metal flask. The short man did the same. She heard the water in his throat as he swallowed, smelled on his breath the chewing tobacco, sickly and sweet.

The taller man took something from a pocket. Three flat metal boxes, which the short man dropped into his own pocket. Pistol magazines, like the ones in the rusted case. Then he bent down, picked up his rifle. She saw him disengage something boxy, which he handed to the short man.

‘BRB, buddy.’ Both men laughed. Be right back.

The tall man fitted a new magazine to his rifle, turned, walked towards the third row of cabins. She leaned forwards, watched the small man till he was out of sight, then crossed the path. She flattened herself against the first cabin in the third row. She heard his footsteps in the cabin, felt the slow, deliberate cruelty. But he did not fire his weapon. She heard and felt him move towards the door, forced herself forwards along the side of the cheap wooden building, made herself watch him leave this cabin and enter the next.

She walked as briskly and as quietly as she could across the gap that divided the third row from the fourth. At any moment, she thought, another bullet will tear into me. A burst of bullets, and they will shatter my lungs and my heart and my liver and all that is me will end, and Christ, please Christ …

The bullets did not come; the man had not seen her.

She calmed herself.

She wondered. She could save some people. Surely she could. If she tried to enter any of the cabins in the third row she would be in direct line of sight of the gunman. But would he see her if she went from cabin to cabin on the fourth row? How far could she get before he rounded the corner and began to move towards the lake? How many could she save?

She heard a burst of gunfire. Her courage deserted her. She had thought – hoped – that the men would run out of ammunition, that losing the rusted box would cost them, but they had bullets to spare. She was wounded and she was frightened. She needed to get to the water, and to the safety of the boat.

There was no hope for the children in the cabins. How many of them would even move? She must get to the water, save herself and anyone else she could. It was too late for the children in these cabins. It was not too late for her.

She continued down the path to the edge of the island, and down the narrow steps cut into the pink-grey rock, like a tunnel towards the sea below. To her right was a narrow ledge a few metres above the water.

A man on the ledge. An adult. He had cut his leg open dragging himself up the rockface.

‘Come up here,’ he said. She thought again of her father. The man smiled down at her, extending his hand, and for a moment she felt she was saved. But this man was not her father, and she was not yet safe.

The man’s hair was wild, his T-shirt torn. She recognized him, she thought. Part of the welcoming committee as they had stepped on to the dock with the other kids. Did something in the office, he had said.

As she frowned up at him she heard an engine approaching, the familiar ruck-ruck-ruck of chopper blades. She felt the rush of air, saw the water begin to swirl and dance in the downdraught, and when she looked up she saw the helicopter, forty feet above.

Christ, she thought. Thank you, Christ.

The man threw himself from the ledge into the water and vanished. She scanned the water. He surfaced, waving wildly.

She looked up again, and saw the camera mounted beneath the fuselage, saw the white-on-red of the TVZ logo. The helicopter hovered, hummingbird still, and she realized that the camera was lining up on her.

They’re filming us.

From the top of the steps a boy and a girl appeared, running as if for their lives. The boy from the woods, she realized, little Arno, with a girl she had not seen before. Another two girls appeared. They pushed past her, stood at the foot of the steps, waving. A burst of gunfire, close by. The plexiglass in the nearside door shattered. The helicopter lifted upward, turned and headed inland.

‘Where did they go?’ said one of the girls. ‘Where the fuck did they go?’

The man in the torn T-shirt began running up the steps shouting after the helicopter. ‘Here! I’m here.’ He reached the top, disappeared, still shouting.

She could see the others looking up the steps after him. One of the girls began to move past her. She put her hand on the girl’s arm.

‘We should—’ said the girl.

‘We can’t.’

‘He is the only adult,’ said Arno very quietly.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘But we are not going to do that.’

She swung the backpack off her shoulder, took off her dress.

All faces, all looking at her. The girl at her side reached out towards her, as if seeing for the first time the wound on her shoulder.

‘Did you get shot?’

‘I’m OK,’ she said.

Fear on every face.

She pulled on her pack, tightened the straps. ‘Come on.’

The helicopter was fading away. From nearby they heard the man’s voice, increasingly desperate.

‘Guys! Hey over here! Guys, we’re over here.’

A shot. Then another.

The man stopped shouting.

No one spoke. The three girls looked at her, terror in their faces. The boy too.

‘We’re trapped,’ one of the girls said quietly.

She looked up through the rock towards the top of the steps. The other children followed her gaze. She could see them thinking the same thought. The helicopter had given them away.

Every face turned towards her.

The men would be here in a minute. She had her backpack on the ground, was stepping out of her dress.

I’m the oldest person here, she realized. I’m the adult. Funny. Almost.

‘We’re trapped,’ said the girl again.

‘No.’ She set her teeth against the pain and pulled on her backpack. She pushed past the girls to the bottom of the steps, crossed her arms over her chest, jumped forward, let herself fall, body tensed and stretched like a dart. For a moment she felt only the air around her. Then the shock of the water, the roar of the sea all about her. She felt herself drop, let her body relax, waited for the water to carry her up towards the light. Her right shoulder ached, but the water cooled it and soothed it, and she found she could swim with her left arm.

Not a sound behind her. She turned to find all faces looking at her. The girls, the boy, rooted in place.

‘There’s a boat. It’s at the dock. I have the key.’

One by one they joined her in the water. Only Arno remained. ‘Arno,’ she said. ‘We have to go.’

Two gunshots nearby.

‘Arno, please.’

Arno crossed his arms over his chest and jumped.

She kicked hard. The straps of her pack cut into her wound and she winced. But if she held her body stiffly she could make progress. Two girls on one side of her, swimming strongly; on the other side Arno and the other girl. The only sound was water; water and breath.

Arno was the weakest of the swimmers. He held his head too high, kicked too hard, tiring fast. The girls swam quietly, efficiently, their bodies low in the water, pacing their breathing to their strokes.

She turned, treading water, waiting for the boy to catch her up. Her shoulder was stiff, to be sure, but she was all right. Better now than before. She would survive this. They would all survive.

She looked back at the cleft in the rock. She did not see the men.

‘I’m so slow,’ said Arno as he drew level with her. ‘Sorry.’

‘Shh,’ she said, because as he spoke the smaller of the men appeared in the cleft in the rock, his pistol in his right hand. If the man turned, if he saw them …

‘Listen to me.’ She put her arms on Arno’s shoulders. ‘Take two deep breaths and dive to the bottom.’

‘Two?’

His eyes widened. She could feel the panic in him. He wanted to look back.

At the steps in the cliff the man was looking to his right, straining to see on to the ledge. In a moment he would turn to his left and he would see them as they swam for their lives and everything would be lost.

She felt Arno gasping air. ‘Swim down, Arno. Grab a rock. Hold on.’

She pushed his shoulders beneath the surface; she turned, caught the eye of one of the girls. The girl nodded and slipped below the surface.

She kicked down to the bottom. The water was peaty and dark, but she found the boy quickly, his arms wrapped around a boulder. Bubbles spilled upwards from his mouth. She wrapped her own arms around his, brought her face very close, made sure that he could see her.

She smiled, but Arno did not respond. She could feel him trying to free his hands.

She shook her head, tightened her grip on his arms.

Panic in his eyes. Arno, please, she thought, you have to hold on.

He was grimacing, making a strange kind of Mmmm sound.

Please. Just a little longer.

He began to struggle. So tiny yet so strong.

She let him go. She saw a dark shadow above her as his body reached the surface. He thrashed there for a moment. She watched, certain that he had given himself away, certain that the bullets would strike him, that his body would seize, that blood would leak from him in dark clouds.

Instead his body calmed; she saw him begin to swim again. She released her grip on the boulder, came up facing the rock staircase, certain that they were discovered, but the man in the police uniform was gone. Ahead of them the three girls surfaced. They swam on, the island to the left of them, treading water from time to time to wait for the boy.

No one spoke.

As they swam she began to see the corpses at the water’s edge. You could see people hiding too, boys and girls that the men had not found, though you saw them clearly from here, cowering into crevices in the cliffs or hiding in the underbrush. Gathering near the children were the news helicopters: three of them now. Filming the children as they hid for their lives. Revealing their presence.

Where were the police? The army? The camp staff, even?

She began to plan. The boat was held at the dock by two ropes. The engine was in position, the electrics on. They would come on board at the stern; she would be at the console in seconds, the key would turn, the boat would slip its mooring, reverse quietly out into the fjord.

It helped to know what she would do, what she would say. It held at bay the terror that threatened to engulf her.

The men would not hear the engine before she gunned it towards the mainland.

Everyone down.

Stay out of sight.

They were going to make it.

Through her backpack she felt her phone ringing. Still there in its ziplock bag.

Can’t speak now, Dad.

Funny.

Almost.

The boat was in sight now. Ahead of her were the girls. Behind her was Arno. She waited until he caught her up.

‘I’m going to go on board first,’ she said. Her voice sounded foreign to her, unreal. Out of breath, though she was barely swimming.

The boy nodded. She could see that he was near the end of his strength.

‘Need to let the others know. You be OK, Arno?’

‘Yeah.’

She pressed on towards the girls, swimming swiftly, ignoring the ache in her shoulder. Two minutes. Maybe less. Keep them out of the way.

Everybody stay low.

The water in front of her flicked as if slapped. Twice. She heard the gunshots as they echoed from the far banks of the fjord. She turned to face their attacker, though she knew that she should not; she stopped swimming, though she knew that she must not.

There he was, the short man. He was standing on a rock near the water’s edge. His black shirt was open at the neck. There were sweat patches under his arms. His pistol was raised, held in both hands, braced. He was looking at her, she realized. Sighting up. It was casual, matter-of-fact, without malice.