Ozzy cocks his head and listens to the nothingness.
‘Yeah, it’ll be out to sea by now,’ he adds.
Nobody moves at first. It’s like we’re all waiting for someone else to be the idiot who opens the door first and gets struck by flying debris or blown out to sea.
‘I’m not sitting in here with you lot any longer,’ Tony says, heading for the door. ‘If I die, I die outside, not in here from boredom.’
The hatch door creaks open and… yep, the storm has passed. We can go back outside.
One by one, we crawl out and… oh, it’s bad.
Palm trees bent like snapped straws. Fruits and branches and God-knows-what scattered everywhere. The storm has ploughed through the island and taken no prisoners.
That’s not the worst part though. There’s something so, so much scarier than our camp being trashed. It’s as we’re walking through the trees, back to the beach. You know that unnerving sound of the cameras following us, panning as someone in the control room remotely stalks us? The only thing more unnerving than hearing them, it turns out, is not hearing them. They’re not moving. No one is controlling them. I don’t think anyone is watching…
The others don’t notice. Perhaps they’re not as sensitive to them as I am, or they’re too busy taking in the aftermath.
Our shelters are gone. Flattened and/or scattered like confetti. The beds we built seem to have survived but they’re not where we left them and they’re soaked like everything else is.
Camilla hugs herself.
‘Well, we can’t sleep here,’ she says. ‘Not now.’
She looks around for a camera to complain to.
‘Do you hear me? I said we can’t sleep here,’ she shouts when she finds one.
‘She’s got a point,’ Tony says. ‘I’m surprised no one has come to get us, to take us to safety. They must be on their way… right?’
Honey wipes her nose and looks up at one of the cameras above our camp.
‘They wouldn’t let us stay here if it wasn’t safe,’ she says, voice wobbling. Then, louder, to the lens: ‘Right? You wouldn’t leave us here if it wasn’t safe?’
This is normally where the camera would switch from looking at Camilla to looking at Honey but it doesn’t move an inch.
Lockie catches my eye. He’s noticed it too. That the cameras aren’t moving any more.
‘They’ll reply soon,’ Ozzy says. ‘For now, let’s start Operation: Clean-up. Even if they are coming, we can’t leave the beach like this. It’s not good for the wildlife. We might as well put everything back.’
Tony nods. ‘Yeah, come on. It will be easy if we all do it.’
‘If we all do it?’ Camilla repeats back to him. ‘I’ve been through a lot.’
‘We’ve all been through a lot, princess,’ Tony claps back.
Honey instinctively wraps an arm around Camilla to comfort her… only for Camilla to wrinkle her nose every time Honey sniffs hard.
‘Perhaps the speakers here got too wet,’ Lockie suggests. ‘Maybe the crew are trying to speak to us. I’ll go for a walk, check the others.’
‘Good idea,’ Ozzy says.
‘Be careful,’ I say instinctively.
‘Of course,’ Lockie replies.
I smile, but my stomach is in knots.
If the speakers aren’t responding, if the cameras aren’t moving… that means no one’s watching – I daren’t even think about why not.
