Nick Cracknell - The Quiet Apocalypse [= Island Zero]

He dropped his weapon arm to his side and set the empty beer glass down on the table.

“You fucken Brits!” he mocked. “Too bloody sensitive!”

He pronounced it sinsituv .

My shock broke, and I felt a wave of anger well up inside me.

“What are you doing, Hans?” I asked him. “What do you want from me?”

“What do I want?” he laughed incredulously. “It’s not what I want of you , bro. You need me ! I’m the only thing that’s keeping you from going cuckoo for caca my friend.”

He went silent. He had started breathing heavily again, as if incensed at my confusion. I shrugged and exhaled, not knowing how to respond. He seemed half way between a small child having a tantrum and a madman about to snap.

He went on. “Who do you think’s been looking out for you all this time?” he said under his breath. “Who’s been watching you since Day One? Who bandaged your head to stoop you bleeding to death, eh? Who set out all the food for you so you wouldn’t starve? Who dragged your sweaty ass back to bed every time you collapsed like a drunken kent in the street? You know what I want? I want you to show me some fucken respect!”

It came out ruspict .

Whether it was the beer buzz or a sense of immortality, I felt the need to challenge him. Something deep within me wanted to prove this man, this apparition , wrong.

“You’re lying,” I said, and speaking slowly I enunciated each word, as if to convince myself as much as to emphasise the point to him. “You. Are. Me!”

He grinned again and his tongue lolled out. He looked like a rabid dog about to pounce.

“You don’t get it, do you bro?” he said dangerously quietly. “I’m more than you. I’m better than you!”

Bitter than you.

“If it weren’t for me, you’d be pissing into the wind my friend. You’d be a wreck.”

Wrick .

“You want me sticking around son, let me tell you. I’m warning you right now, if I walk away you’ll be in a world of hurt little man!”

He was using lines from my favourite movies against me now. He let that hang in the air, standing ten or so feet away, staring at me. Was he expecting a response? Did he want me to challenge him? I couldn’t work it out. It was the most extraordinary situation I had been in on the island so far, and there had been plenty. I was standing in the street having an argument with a visual manifestation… of myself. I decided enough was enough.

“I’m not sure what you expect me to do, Hans,” I said hesitatingly. “But I’m not having this argument any more. You’re not real.”

I turned my back to him and began walking towards the beach, fully expecting a tirade of abuse to be hurled at my departing form. After a few paces nothing had happened so I stopped and turned around again, not sure what to expect.

But not expecting what I saw.

Hans had disappeared. So had his beer glass. His chair was still pulled out from the table as if he had been sitting there all along, but aside from that there wasn’t a single trace of him. I stared, gawping, trying to make sense of the situation in my head. To my surprise, I had to stifle a small laugh. Well that’s that, I thought to myself. I shrugged and turned my attention again towards the beach.

The attack came from out of nowhere. Somehow he had worked his way around behind me in silence. As I turned beach-wards, a thumping crack landed on the right side of my head just above my ear, and I screamed in shock and surprise. The pain exploded through my skull and my vision became awash with bright light. I reached up and grabbed my head with both hands, and felt a sharp blow land in my ribs, doubling me up. The pain tore through my chest in a massive wave.

I gasped for breath, but kept my hands up to shelter my head from further blows. I felt a warm liquid start to course down my check, and in that instant I knew the bastard had glassed me. I managed to open my eyes in an attempt to parry further blows, and saw bright red blood dripping through my hands onto the pavement.

“Hans! Stop!” I cried, still in shock at what had just happened. Another sharp pain barked through my left leg, and I knew he had kicked me. The blow knocked me off balance, and I fell to the hard concrete pavement, knees crumbling beneath me. I curled into the foetal position, trying to stop the attack. I felt powerless, unable to defend myself as I was in such pain and disorientation.

I heard his breath coming from above me, ragged and heavy, the breathing of a man in the throes of a furious breakdown.

“Please stop!” I shouted as loud as I could, desperate for a second to collect myself and absorb the blows before any further reigned down. I daren’t move or straighten myself out in case I received a broken glass to the belly or face.

“Just stop! Please for a second! Let’s work this out!” I cried in desperation.

I heard a short, sharp snigger, high-pitched and absurd, from above me.

“Not so fucken clever now, eh bro?” came his sarcastic retort. “Still think I’m not real now? Real as the blood in your head bro!” he shouted.

I risked a glance. He was standing above me, engaged in some form of tribal shuffle. An absurd little dance, lifting his legs up and down and making as if to punch an invisible boxing speedball. My head was rolling and I had to fight back the urge to throw up. The pain was intense, masking my vision. My ribs throbbed. He must have swung a real haymaker into them.

He danced on, yelling ‘eye of the tiger!’ at the top of his lungs, spitting onto the pavement. I was looking at myself, but a grotesque parody thereof, unable to convince myself that this was reality despite the throbbing in my skull. I knew somehow I had to get away from the madman circling me or else I would wind up dead. I suspected he meant to kill me and was just looking for an excuse.

But what if all he had said was true? What if he was some kind of angelic doppelganger that had been looking out for me ever since my arrival on the island? Maybe not physically, but metaphysically … was he some sort of incorporeal embodiment of my imperviousness to physical harm? The falls, the explosions, the bees, the nuclear clouds… all of these things could have, should have killed me and yet, here I was lying on a sidewalk covered in my own blood, racking my brains as to how to escape.

From myself .

Maybe all this presence did want was a little respect, a little acknowledgement for protecting me thus far, and when he didn’t get it, it was in his childlike nature to lash out at those closest to him. Was he some kind of animalistic, base form of me, some anti-me that had been placed here to reveal to me my true nature in times of trouble? All this was rolling through my head as I watched the mad man shuffle just feet away.

I decided I wasn’t going to wait around to find out. I had to get away or risk a further beating that could possibly be my last. I waited until he shuffled his back towards me, then hastily, groggily rose to my feet as quickly as I could. I didn’t know where I was going, but it didn’t matter.

I just ran.

Amazingly I got around twenty feet of a start on him before he realised my subterfuge. A primal roar escaped his mouth.

“Keeeeeeeeeeeent!” he screeched, and I felt the air around me tear a little as if in acceptance of the guttural howl he had emitted. That, and the beer glass landing next to me, shattering into a thousand pieces but missing me by a good couple of feet. This seemed to enrage Hans even more, and I swear I could hear his low grunt as he set himself and began charging after me.

Even with my head start I could feel him gaining on me by the second. I knew he couldn’t possibly be any faster than me ( or could he? ) as he was me, but he didn’t have a suspected broken rib and a face full of blood to contend with. Each step I took, a bolt of pain lanced through my side where he had slammed me with his fist, and I had to sweep the mixture of blood and sweat off my forehead to stop it running into my eyes.