Frazer Lee - The Lamplighters

“Hey, I could do with some help up here.”

No answer, save for Jessie cussing as she bumped her head on something. Marla had no choice but to leave Pietro alone on the steps and went down to see what Jessie was up to. Peering inside the closet, Marla saw the source of the blinking lights she’d noticed on her first visit to the lighthouse. A beaten up old laptop was connected to a nightmare of wires and cables, its little lights blinking like some ancient prop straight out of a retro sci-fi movie. Jessie was typing and clicking furiously at the laptop’s keyboard and trackpad, her face a mask of pure concentration. Droplets of sweat fell from her brow and sizzled on the laptop’s hot plastic casing like raindrops on a barbeque. Jessie chewed anxiously on her lip as she worked. Marla felt almost scared to disturb her.

“What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?”

“It looks like you’re playing Tetris in a broom closet to be brutally honest,” Marla retorted.

“Well I’m not. I’m actually trying to get us rescued,” Jessie said sharply.

“Where’d you get that computer from anyway? I thought they were forbidden on the island?”

Jessie tutted. “I told you that already, got it from Adam.”

“Handy. That your dealer also dabbles in electrical goods…”

“It’d be a damned sight handier if he’d gotten me a computer from this century,” Jessie hissed. She winced as the hard drive made a threatening grinding noise. “Hell’s teeth, hang in there old gal. Almost there…”

Marla watched as Jessie made her final calculations and clicks. Whatever she was doing, she’d better get a move on. Pietro was looking to be in a pretty bad way. They had to get him upstairs, and fast. Marla chewed her lip, wondering if Vincent had anything in the way of a first aid kit. A startling yelp from Jessie broke Marla’s train of thought. The grin on Jessie’s face told her she’d managed to make the ancient laptop work in their favor.

“I’ve widened the beacon, put it on a shifting loop, like a distress signal. Now all we have to do is hole up for a while and wait.”

“Wait? What for?” Marla was dumbfounded by Jessie’s techno babble.

“For help. From the outside world. Someone’s gonna come and help us get off this rock Marla, you’ll see. Fowler can’t blow everyone who answers our call out of the water.”

“There’s a casualty up there needs our help first.”

Jessie nodded and clambered out of the closet, untangling her arms from the electronic entrails and closing the doors behind her carefully. She marched over to Pietro and gestured for Marla to grab his ankles. As Marla did so, Jessie reached under Pietro’s arms and hoisted him aloft. Together they heaved his dead weight into the air and began the difficult climb up the stairs. Pietro groaned loudly in protest. The painful, melancholy sound echoed Marla’s own dread. Fowler can’t blow everyone who answers our call out of the water , Jessie had said. Marla wasn’t so sure.

Once upstairs, the heady smell of boiling coffee hit Marla’s nostrils. It was a welcome scent after the cold dank of the tunnel and the metallic sourness of Pietro’s bloodied skin. She and Jessie shuffled inside the control room, stooping with his weight and sweating from their exertion. Vincent regarded them with a curious raising of the eyebrow and set his coffee down on the little table.

“Boy looks in a bad way. Set him down over there. In back.”

He gestured at an unkempt cot bed that lay partially hidden behind a vast pile of books and almanacs. The girls wasted no time, heaving Pietro’s bulk across the room and onto the mess of blankets that covered the bed. For a moment Marla was concerned about getting blood on Vincent’s sheets, but as she drew closer to them she began to wonder if they’d been washed this century—if at all.

“D’you have a first aid kit up here?” Marla asked hopefully.

“Got some bandages and stuff in one of them drawers somewhere,” said Vincent matter-of-factly. “Take a look and see if you can’t find ’em, while I clean this here feller up.”

Marla got to work and rifled through the kitchen drawers. Most were littered with sand and dust and contained a random series of utensils, broken crockery and other bric-a-brac. Eventually she located a faded cardboard carton containing bandages, gauze and a couple of bottles of antiseptic fluid. Turning one of the bottles in her hand, she saw from the label that the use by date had long since expired. She sighed and looked around the lighthouse room with its tidal wave of rotting books and molding furniture. Pretty much everything is past its use by date in here , she thought as she made her way over to the cot bed.

Jessie had filled a chipped ceramic bowl with lukewarm water at the behest of Vincent, who was now mopping congealed blood and dark matter from Pietro’s once olive-perfect skin. The act of cleaning revealed the true extent of the young man’s injuries. Deep lacerations ran almost the full width of his chest, giving him the appearance of a shark attack victim. Blood oozed from a wound in his left side, just below the rib cage. Marla gulped down nausea as she caught sight of pale yellow bone protruding from the wound—the flesh had been torn down to Pietro’s ribs. As Vincent continued his work Pietro let out a gurgling rattle, which sounded almost as traumatized as he looked.

“Here, I’ll have to pack this wound the best I can. Soak a coupla those bandages in some of that antiseptic,” Vincent said. “What the hell happened to this boy anyhow? Looks like he went fifteen rounds with Orca the Killer Whale.”

“Fowler’s men,” Jessie said.

Her speech was clipped and bitter, as she replayed the horrific scene in her mind. The pleasure boat, floating on the water. Pietro’s lithe form swimming for all he was worth towards it. Then the shock of smoke and flames and the dreadful sight of the Sentry Maiden’s black form, patrolling the water like a carrion bird. She blinked the memory away, feeling suddenly cold.

“They did this to him? Why?”

“There was a… a yacht, just offshore. One minute he was swimming towards it and the next, FOOM , they just blew it out of the water.”

Vincent frowned and shook his head grimly as Pietro bucked violently beneath him at the touch of the antiseptic drenched bandages.

“Will he be all right?” Marla asked.

“Hard to tell. Depends how much is plain shock and how much blood he lost from these wounds. Bleeding’s subsided, but he needs more than vinegar and brown paper that’s for sure.”

“We have to get him to the other side of the island. They’ll be able to give him proper medical attention over there, maybe even ferry him off the island to a hospital.”

Jessie glared at Marla. “Take him to Fowler’s compound? Are you nuts? Those are the same people who just blew him out of the damned water. They won’t be in the slightest bit interested in ferrying him to a hospital. God, we are so royally fucked.”

At this, Vincent nodded sagely. “She’s right Marla. Only one way off this rock—and this poor bastard damn near swam himself right into it.”

“What do you mean?” Marla asked. She looked over to Jessie pointedly, recalling her exact same words in the cave tunnel. She saw the grim despair etched into Jessie’s face, a sight that only furthered her own rising panic. “Only one way off? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean,” Vincent said firmly as he packed yet more bandages around Pietro’s ribs. “If you want off of Meditrine Island you’d better not have any unfinished business is all.”

Marla looked from him back to Jessie, her mouth sucking air and her eyes searching for answers.