I’m not even embarrassed to admit it; we were properly leaping up and down and screaming. I think I might have even injured Kate a bit because I was hugging her so hard. It was an amazing feeling to have them waving to us, when we’d just seen them defeat the kriks so easily. Even the blue-haired woman on the cliffs gave us a giant wave with both arms.
I wanted to be them, to be like them, so badly. Not just because they were on the coast instead of on an amorphous ocean blob, but because they were brilliant, and gorgeous, and just everything I wanted to be in life. I swear the hair of the women seemed to give a little extra blow in the breeze right then, just to show how silky and clean it was.
I knew that they would be here to rescue us, to get us off. They would definitely have a plan, like a helicopter or something. Something brilliant. But at the same time I didn’t want to let myself think that, because I didn’t want to be disappointed when I also knew that they couldn’t possibly have any solution. That led to mental confusion, I’ll be honest. It meant that I ended up more doing a little dance of awkwardness, rather than a dance of triumph.
What was going to happen next? Well, because of my little dance of awkwardness, I stopped celebrating before everybody else, so I saw the reactions of the people on the shore.
After giving us that wave they just stood staring at us, but then I think our cheering went on a little bit too long for them. They started talking amongst themselves, and the blue-haired woman got her binoculars out again. She was definitely using them to scan the water. She went back and forth slowly, very carefully this time. And then she gave another signal to the team on the shore. Others said they saw that too, but I was fairly sure I saw her shake her head. It might have been that I was too far away to see that and, yes, I could be imagining it. But the movements of the people on the shore seemed to confirm it. It was like they were shrugging, and saying, ‘Oh well. It was worth having a look at these people, but they’re doomed to die on this jellyfish, so we might as well get back to our happy, free lives.’
By this time, most of the Jellyfish people had stopped cheering loudly, and were just smiling to themselves, or sobbing quietly with joy. We were all eagerly watching the shore, however, to see what these brilliant, efficient, organized people would do.
One of the women started waving more obviously to us, and pointing to the road with exaggerated gestures.
‘What’s she doing that for?’ I asked.
‘To tell us where they’ve come from?’ said Kate. ‘So that we can go there when they get us off?’
‘They’re not waiting for us, then?’ James muttered at me. ‘Not exactly planning to get us off in the next half an hour, are they?’
I nodded. Because already I was thinking that they might not have a plan, that they might just have come down here to have a look at us. They didn’t seem to have that useful helicopter hidden anywhere, or a magical bridge. In fact, they didn’t seem to have anything different from other people we’d seen; they were just more organized, that was all. Already I was thinking – no, knew – that they wanted to leave now without seeing us all crying.
James gave me a glum look. The blue-haired woman was still scanning the water with her binoculars, and it was just taking way too long. What was she looking for?
‘I think they look annoying, actually,’ I said.
Lana screwed up her face. ‘You’re bonkers. You’ve got literally no reason for saying that at all.’
I hadn’t, so I didn’t add anything to my point. But it was a strategic move, because it meant that if they failed to rescue us, then I could glory in having been the first to complain about it. I wasn’t the only one, though. ‘Don’t like it,’ Old Albert was muttering. ‘Don’t like it at all. Nothing good’ll come of it, you mark my words.’
The blue-haired woman gave a hand signal. But she kept her binoculars up. On the shore the team looked at each other, and had a quick chat. Then two of the men ran over to some of the boats which had been washed up in a high tide. They started pushing them into the water.
‘That’s it?’ said Lana. ‘Bollocks to them, then.’
Around us there were mutters of disgust and anger.
Three boats were pushed towards us before the fighting team gave us a final wave and ran back up Long Street.
‘They could at least have pushed in the good boats,’ said James. They’d pushed in the three closest ones, but had ignored our favourites: the yacht with what looked like an intact sail, and the red one, which we liked because, well, it was red.
Kate gave a big sigh.
‘Do you think it’ll be worse being stuck here knowing that they’re out there?’ I said. ‘You know, worse than it was yesterday, when we thought there was nobody else alive?’
‘I never thought we were the only ones left alive,’ said Kate. ‘Did you really think that? How horrible.’
‘No, I suppose I didn’t think that. I suppose I thought that anybody who was left alive must be having a much worse time than us, and that they must just be being killed slowly on land. Because otherwise they’d have come to rescue us, wouldn’t they? Kriks must be there – inland too, not just on the coast, because they go away somewhere and then come back, don’t they? So, you know, I thought everybody might as well be dead.’
‘Brutal, Martha!’ said James. ‘That’s cold.’
‘Yeah? Maybe, but it looks like it is pretty brutal out there, so at least I’m being realistic. What are you spending all your time thinking about? How lovely the world is and how great it is to live here on this wind-exposed hellhole?’
‘That’s really unfair, Martha. I don’t see much evidence of brilliant things going on in your head,’ said James.
‘Or any evidence,’ said Lana.
‘What are you joining in for?’ I said, turning to her. She was scowling and still kicking at the mesoglea. ‘You always have to be at the centre of everything. Especially if it involves being mean. This has got nothing to do with you, it’s just me and James.’
‘You wish it was just you and James.’
‘Well it never is, is it? You’re always here, hanging around, wherever I go,’ I said.
‘It’s not like I’ve got a choice. Trust me, if there was anywhere I could go, then I would love some time away from you. All three of you.’
‘Stop it!’ said Kate. ‘Stop it. You’re all making it worse.’ She started to cry. ‘It’s not going to help if you all get cross with each other. It’s just . . . it’s just . . . for a minute there, I thought . . .’
We all knew what she thought because, yeah, for a minute we’d been thinking it too. I could almost feel that hard tarmac beneath my feet, imagine that stable, unmoving earth.
‘I feel sorry for the rest of the human race, actually,’ said James, ‘because they don’t get to experience our gorgeous sea views.’
I smiled up at him, and Kate gave a more cheerful sniffle.
‘Wait, what?’ Lana sat up. ‘How stupid are you dickheads? Do none of you even think about it all? Do none of you think about our world? What the bloody bollocking crap do you think about?’
‘I spend a lot of time trying not to think about the world, Lana,’ I said, because it was true. And I think it was true about most of the people on board the Jellyfish. If we thought about it too much, our lives would be rubbish, wouldn’t they? Even more rubbish than they already were, I mean. ‘Go on, then. What should we all have been thinking about?’
‘Well, you don’t think we’re the only ones stuck on one of these things, do you? That’s a start. There’s no way we’re the only humans in the world who are being kept like flippin’ animals in a zoo. There’s no way this jellyfish is a complete one-off freak of nature. There’ve gotta be others, that didn’t just destroy ships and then go back beneath the water. So, yeah, other people have got the sea-view hellhole, James.’
We sat there for a minute, completely shocked. Because, the thing is, I had thought we were the only ones. And even though he tried to hide it by looking fake-casual and giving a yawn, I don’t think James had ever thought anything else either.
The tentacles nearest to us sank suddenly below the surface, leaving behind a smooth, glassy area of water. Only the occasional drifting bubble or dark shimmer gave a hint of the threat below.
‘And those flippin’ crab kriks out there are running out of food now, aren’t they?’ added Lana. ‘We’re not seeing as many humans as we used to, so they’ve caught all the easy ones. The only humans we’ve seen in the last few months have been krik killers, right?’
‘Right.’
‘So what are the kriks going to start doing? Are they going to start eating each other? What do you think they’re living off?’
I hadn’t thought about it. I didn’t really want to start thinking about it now, even.
‘Those animals up on the hills?’ said James. ‘There are loads of those still left.’
‘Yes, there are,’ said Lana, ‘but those animals are really fast and really hairy, and we’ve not seen kriks eating them before, have we? Maybe that’s because they can’t catch them, or maybe it’s because they don’t eat them.
‘And the thing is, crabs don’t live very long, do they?’
‘Don’t know,’ I said.
‘I don’t think they do. So are the kriks about to start dying?’
‘That’d be nice. But I don’t think so,’ said James. ‘There’re still a lot of them and they probably breed or something. Plus they’re not actually crabs, are they?’
‘Yes, well, our options are that either they’re about to start running out of food and dying, or we’re being kept here to feed them when food supplies run low, so we’re about to start dying.
‘I think things are about to change. They’re about to change soon. I don’t know how they’re going to change, but I want to be one of the ones to survive.’
We all stared out at the shore. The lumpy bodies of the dead kriks looked smaller than they had when they were alive – maybe because they were all hunched over now, or because of blood loss or something. They didn’t exactly look less evil or anything – but they did look sad and not at all like the scary monsters they had been. Over each of them there was already a squabbling cover of seagulls picking at the flesh beneath. They’d pull and peck, then turn their necks upwards to chew and call noisily. Every so often, for no obvious reason, all the gulls on one of the kriks would rise upwards and fly round shouting, before swooping back down again to pull at that dead flesh once more.
Up at the top of the cliffs, six black figures emerged from behind the houses. At a steady jog they ran up the road away from us. We watched them until they were out of sight.