Nick Cracknell - The Quiet Apocalypse [= Island Zero]

“Akari,” I said with rising concern, “if you’ve been here for over a month, how much longer have you got left? What is your percentage reading?”

Despite the language barrier she seemed to understand exactly what I was asking, as if she had been expecting the question all along.

With her hands shaking, making the water in her bottle appear to dance, she looked at me with something approaching guilt.

“San.”

She held up three fingers.

Three percent! She only had three percent left! But what did that mean? If her life was counting down at the same rate as mine, that meant the next time she went to sleep could mean she would never wake up. The possibilities ran through my mind. What would happen to her? Would she disappear? Melt away? Or would she just drop dead in front of me?

“We have to get out of here,” I said as we made our way along the beach front. We weren’t headed anywhere in particular, but I had felt the need to get out of that hotel room and do something that might spur me into action to prevent what could be coming.

I didn’t want to think what would happen to this beautiful young girl once she hit zero.

I was holding her hand and pulling her along, changing direction every few metres, pacing around in a blind panic as I tried to make some sense of the situation.

“Please,” she begged. “No worry.”

She bowed her head and then looked at me from under her black fringe, in a gesture of acceptance. Then she said something which has stuck with me ever since. It was in flawless English, with no trace of an accent that belied her nationality.

“I am ready.”

I almost laughed in incredulity.

“You’re ready?” I cried. “For what? You don’t have the slightest idea what you are saying!”

Again she shrank away at my outburst, but I was too incredulous at her comment to try and reassure her. I just continued to babble at her in the street while she watched me calmly but from behind her defensive gaze.

“Don’t you realise that you could die when your percentage runs out?” I shouted. “Have you not considered this?”

Of course I knew very well that she had considered it. After all, she would have to be a total masochist not to have considered the prospect of her own death over the past month and I could tell that she wasn’t.

“Don’t you want to survive this?!” I continued, oblivious in the moment to the fact that she couldn’t understand me. “Well I’m sorry love, I’m not going to stand by and watch you fade away without at least trying to do something about it!”

She shook her head and smiled at me, in what I could only assume was resignation.

Think, dammit! I scolded myself. I was so consumed by her seeming acceptance of fate that I couldn’t think straight. I had no reserves left myself, but suddenly my own physical exhaustion didn’t seem to matter. All that mattered to me at that moment was trying to keep this young girl alive, as if I let her go I knew it would be the end for me as well.

Part of me couldn’t wait to see what happened when she hit zero as it would assuage my own worries. Death, at least, would be something . It was the not knowing that was the real killer. But it was a small part of me that thought that. The rest of me was desperate to ensure her survival, not entirely out of self-preservation, for I knew that if I could keep her alive it meant I could keep myself alive, but it also meant I wouldn’t have to go through what I would inevitably have to go through if she did die. At that moment I simply didn’t think I would have the strength of mind to cope with that.

Her eyes gazed at me with a mixture of concern and pity, and I was again struck by the maturity of this young woman. So what if she had accepted her fate? What right did I have to try and take that away from her? It was her life after all, and if she was ready to leave it then that was her choice surely?

No, I refused to stand by and let it happen without at least trying. But what the hell could we do? How inexorable were these flashes of percentage? Were they the be all and end all? Should we perhaps just wait and see what actually did happen when one hit zero percent? For all we knew, the whole damn thing might just perpetuate itself and she’d wake up in exactly the same hotel room with a fresh charge at 100%?

I was running all this through my mind in a kind of wild stupor and must have looked extraordinary to the poor girl. It was starting to get dark, and we needed to take action if we were to successfully stave off fatigue and not go to sleep.

“Coffee!” I said out loud, and made a gesture to a restaurant on the beach front. “You need coffee!”

I mimed lifting a cup to my mouth and drinking, then jumped around a little to signify the rush of caffeine. She seemed to understand, and nodded her head somewhat in resignation. I think she grasped what I was trying to achieve.

I pulled her in to the restaurant and found a coffee machine behind the counter. It was a proper Italian one, made of shiny gold brass, and I had absolutely no idea how to operate it. I flicked a switch and it started making boiling noises which I figured was what it should do, and it had a grinder built in with some beans ready to go. After some messing around I produced a thick black cupful of coffee and made Akari drink it, which she did with a look of disgust on her face. I wondered if she’d ever had coffee before in her life.

The action of getting her to drink some caffeine seemed to calm me down a bit, as if I had subconsciously awarded her an extra few hours of life by preventing her going to sleep. We stood there in the café, her looking at me curiously to see what my next absurd move was going to be, and me racking my brains to come up with some sort of plan.

My mind kept whirring back to the idea of a boat. I had entertained the idea before, whilst in the marina at Playa Blanca and during my three day bender, of appropriating a vessel and attempting to sail it to Fuerteventura, or further. I dismissed it purely out of technical difficulties. I had never sailed a boat before, had no idea about jiving or booms or whatever the other terminology was. If I couldn’t get a car to start the likelihood that a boat would go using the same fuel was non-existent. If it even did use the same fuel, which of course I didn’t know. The concept of jibs and spinnakers and staysails and headsails was anathema to me as hotwiring a car, and although I’d given that a go I had miserably failed (and almost been killed) in the process. I had therefore given up on the sailing boat theory almost as quickly as it popped into my mind.

I had kept it at the very back of my brain as almost a last-resort situation, to be resurrected should I get down to the final few percent and still have no idea how to get off the island.

Well, it wasn’t my final few percent we were talking about, but it was Akari’s. I turned to her and mimed a sailing motion.

“Can you sail a boat?” I asked her, moving as if I was hoisting a sail. She looked at me in confusion. For all she knew I was asking her if she could bell-ring, and she shook her head slowly.

“Shit!” I shouted, and she recoiled a couple of steps. The futility of it all suddenly hit me, and I considered the idea of just finding a bar and drinking whisky until she expired. Maybe have a dance and at least enjoy ourselves watching her final sunset.

But something in me wanted to beat this place, and whoever it was who was responsible for forcing it upon us. I resolved not to go down without a fight, and after downing a shot of coffee myself the seed of an idea began to germinate in my mind.

I had passed the airport on my cycle into Arrecife from Puerto Del Carmen four days previously. What if, I thought as Akari and I cycled back along LZ-2, there was a way of getting a plane to fly without the need for fuel? There must be human powered craft, or some form of electric motored thing that could cover small distances, that might allow us to get at least an aerial view of the island… perhaps get us across to Fuerteventura or even further? From my estimation, Lanzarote only sat around 70 or so miles from mainland Africa…