To survive here you can’t think too much about reality. And maybe that’s OK, because for the past few years, reality hasn’t thought too much about us either. Maybe you can go on for a time ignoring life, and the world, and how things really are. But at some point reality does hit you, with its many tentacled, dripping, mucus-y, monstrous arms, whether you’re paying attention to it or not.
There was too much reality now. Too much.
Next to us, on the mesoglea, there was that pile of bodies.
They looked even worse now, dripping and wrinkled with saturated water where they’d been submerged, but wizened and leathery in the parts that had stayed dry. You could see where the crispy flaps of dried flesh were starting to peel away from the bone in that way that they do, particularly on the scalp. The knowledge that we were now sharing our living space with them was not a pleasant thought.
Even so, it was hard not to notice that the corpses were better dressed than us, and had much nicer hair. The Jellyfish people looked dirty, cold, ragged, sore and . . . just hopeless. They looked small too. I get that I’ve grown bigger since I’ve been stuck on here, I do know that. But when you have to think about the world out there, and then you compare it with the world on board this floating bogey . . . well, you know.
Everything out there’s just a lot bigger than us.
From the deck of the boat Soldier John held up his hand. ‘I’ll come back,’ he said again. ‘If this works, I’ll come back for you all. If it doesn’t work, then . . . keep trying. Something’s going to work. Somehow you’re going to get off this thing. Good luck to you all.’
He looked at Old Albert and gave him a nod. Old Albert and a few of the others started to push the boat away. Beneath them, James cut away at the jelly which was clasping the bow to its mooring. With a final glooping suck, the mesoglea released and the boat was free. Giving it a hard shove, Old Albert and his team moved away from the edge of the Jellyfish, and returned to sit with us, near the Big House.
The force of the shove propelled the boat steadily outwards towards the shore for a couple of minutes, giving it momentum until it was about halfway through the tentacles, but then it slowed quickly to a mere bobbing drift. On the deck Soldier John, Stinky and Dr Jones crouched, motionless, each staring nervously at the water below them.
We couldn’t see what they could see, but to us the tentacles seemed barely interested in the boat. The shorter fronds stroked it half-heartedly as it passed over them, like they do with driftwood and other debris, and the longer tentacles almost ignored it completely, pausing only to give it a passing feel as they flailed back and forth in their ordinary fashion.
I moved my feet slowly, sinking them into the mesoglea and trying to feel if there was anything different, if the Jellyfish could tell. But there was nothing. There was that gentle, calm, humming motion within the jelly, and the soft, occasional surges as bigger waves hit.
Next to me, Kate gave a couple of sniffs, then wiped her nose on her arm. She pulled her knees up and rested her forehead on them.
‘Should we do something? Something distracting?’ I said it loud enough for everybody to hear, but also not that loud, because I didn’t know whether it was best to be quiet, or whether we should be making noise.
None of the adults moved or responded. Some people were watching the boat intently, but others were just staring into the distance or, like Kate, had their eyes shut altogether.
‘We’ve still got this knife,’ said James. ‘Shall I cut your hair?’
‘I suppose so.’
The boat was already at the stage now where we wouldn’t be able to save its passengers if the tentacles decided to hit it. If the Jellyfish chose to just lift Soldier John and the others out, whipping them back on board with us, then that would be fine of course. But I didn’t think that was the way the creature was working any more. I didn’t think it would just kindly prevent them leaving, in its old, annoying way; I was fairly sure it would do something else, something that meant more dark shapes beneath us in that jelly.
For a minute I wondered why there were no kriks visible, and exactly where they went when they left the shore. The thought made my stomach clench, which added to the tightness in my throat and the tense beating in my forehead.
‘What sort of style would you like?’ said James.
‘What sort of thing can you do?’
‘Beautiful ringlets, carefully blow-dried and shampooed in a scented shop with soft music playing and a cup of tea. I could also dye it, perhaps with little strips of different colours and then some ribbons and stuff in it. And maybe glitter?’
The first of the locks fell on the mesoglea next to me. It was plaited at the bottom, from a long-ago attempt by Dr Jones to try and keep us looking neat. But the different strands in the plait had become so encrusted with salt and dirt that they had almost solidified, into something hard and spikey and impossible to separate.
‘Just shut up and cut,’ I said.
‘That sounds vile, anyway,’ said Lana. ‘You’ve never been into a women’s hair salon, have you?’
‘Nope. And sadly now, because of the apocalypse, I’ll never be able to.’ James gave a loud, fake-sad sigh, while another of my crusty pieces of hair fell.
‘I like my hair,’ he said. ‘I imagine it’s cool and good-looking.’
Me and Lana gave a loud laugh. I thought Kate gave a snort too, but it could also have been a cry-laugh.
‘You can imagine that if you want, but it isn’t what you look like,’ said Lana.
‘You do look good,’ I said. Lana raised her eyebrows at me. ‘I’m just being nice, Lana,’ I said to her, ‘but I think you might feel better if you cut them off, James.’
Another matted clump of hair fell. The air felt weirdly cool already against part of my head.
On the boat, nothing had changed. Soldier John, Stinky and Dr Jones still knelt, staring anxiously at the water. They were moving their arms and heads now, but their legs remained fixed rigidly. There was a muttering from the Jellyfish people.
Beneath us, there came a low, rumbling vibration. James paused in his hair-sawing, and Kate looked up. I think we all tensed, and I’m not sure I remembered to breathe. The tentacles were still swishing and waggling back and forth, to and fro, gently.
‘It must just be settling,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ said Lana.
‘It’s checking we’re still here,’ said Kate. ‘That’s why it does that. That ripple, every so often.’ She kept her eyes fixed on the boat, which was still drifting slowly away. It was nearing the edge of the shorter tentacles now, to that calm patch of water above where the longer tentacles hide.
‘If that’s what it’s doing,’ I said, ‘then we’ve passed, haven’t we?’
‘Yes,’ said Kate. ‘They’re going to do it. They’re going to get to shore.’
‘Bollocks are they,’ said Lana.
Kate shrugged.
The boat was floating painfully slowly now, and seemed to be barely making any progress at all. In the relative calm of the breeze, it was bobbing gently up and down on the little, flickering waves. It was only the darker mass of the shorter tentacles near us which gave any gauge of the boat’s movement at all. The colour of the water there was different from the rest of the sea: a deeper green. You could see that the boat was first one metre, and then two metres away from that terrible darkness.
The three on board the boat didn’t seem to share Kate’s optimism. Even from this distance I could tell that their faces looked white and sick with fear. The lines round Soldier John’s eyes and mouth seemed to stand out more sharply than they did normally, giving his face a tragic, worried expression that he didn’t have when you were close up. The low-level chatting from the Jellyfish people had also mostly stopped now; people had run out of things to say. They were all now staring straight ahead at the boat, some holding hands in silent prayer, and all with pursed, anxious lips or tensed, hunched shoulders.
For a few minutes, nobody spoke. None of us at all. James’s hands continued to move slowly over my head, and he was, perhaps, the only one not focusing just on the boat. But even he wasn’t saying anything.
And then it happened. Slowly, Soldier John stood up. He looked over the side for a couple of minutes, before reaching to the middle of the deck and grabbing a plank. Tentatively, he slid the plank into the water, leaving it there to trail in the water, as though just another piece of driftwood. And then he pulled on the plank, using it as an oar.
Nothing.
He pulled again. On the other side of the deck Dr Jones picked up her plank.
‘They really have done it,’ said Lana. ‘They’ve really done it!’
Beneath us, there came the rippling vibration.
The two started to pull, in unison, propelling the boat forward.
There was another vibration. Two of the longer tentacles lifted out of the water, their muscles tight and ready, but they merely swung around in the air for a couple of seconds, barely even agitated, before slithering back smoothly into the water.
The boat was nearing the submerged houses at the edge of the sea now, and the three passengers were guiding it in, using their planks to pull themselves in between the chimneys and roofs to either side. They were looking down carefully at the water, but we could no longer see whether there was anything to worry about down there.
They pulled to a stop, and Soldier John leapt out on to the shore. He turned towards us, and then all three raised their arms in triumph. They’d done it. We’d done it!