Passing beyond the fence, into the compound, gave Laila a start. She couldn't explain it, but it felt as though she had passed a threshold to a place she shouldn't go. A shiver ran down her back and she realised that the jungle wasn't as silent as she had thought. Here, beyond the fence, true silence fell. Not the sound of distant bird reached her ears, nor the busy buzzing of insects. Nothing. Even the sound of her own breathing seemed amplified and distorted and she caught herself holding her breath.
The pilot slipped away, sweeping her rifle everywhere she looked, the barrel never deviating from her line of sight, checking the backs of the trucks, pointing upward to the walkways of the tall, derelict tower, before whipping around and pointing in the direction she now headed. Toward a series of low buildings away to the side.
A pitted, cracked, concrete road circled away, paralleling the broken down fencing, tufts of grass breaking through the surface, creepers trailing from wider cracks, even a tree that had erupted from below the road, leaning back toward the jungle as though trying to return to its family. Laila followed the pilot, trying her best to sneak along as silent as the woman ahead, but her ruined shoes had other ideas, clicking and scraping a surface that probably hadn't seen traffic in decades.
"Barracks." The pilot jerked her head to the side. "They look mostly intact. It's getting dark. Maybe we'll find you something soft to sleep on."
"I'm not sure we should stay here." Even as she said it, Laila still followed the pilot as the woman moved sideways toward a door hanging from its hinges. "This place doesn't want us here."
The words had only that moment escaped from her mouth and Laila wondered why she had said it. She wasn't a superstitious person and didn't go in for any kind of esoteric nonsense, but she felt it. Like a malevolent presence bearing down upon her from the moment she had set foot passed that checkpoint. The more they disturbed the place, the more it felt as though something pushed them to leave. Not that she expected the pilot to understand.
Instead, the pilot had already reached the door, standing to the side, the rifle lowered as she flashed a glance between the gap of the door and the frame. Resting the gun to the side, the pilot lifted the door, righting it, and then opened it outward and leaning that against the wall. No sooner had she let the door go than she had the rifle back in her hand and had entered. She paused, pressed against the inner wall and glanced over her shoulder.
"There's nowhere else to go. Not at the moment. We'll head back to the beach in the morning, okay? Right now, you need rest." The pilot nodded down to the spot beside her. "Stand there. Stay out of sight. I'll check inside. If you see anything or hear anything, do not shout. Hide as best you can and wait for me. Understand? Good. I'll be back."
"Okay. I ..." She answered no-one.
The pilot had gone. Creeping into the building, turning a corner and disappearing, leaving Laila alone at the entrance to the decaying wreck and wondering whether she should have done a little more praying in her past. Not that she was religious, but her mom had always said it was better to keep your options open and regret it at leisure than not believe and have to explain yourself at the Pearly Gates.
That had always sounded trite and not-a-little disingenuous. As though God couldn't tell whether you were faking or not. It didn't sound trite right now. It sounded like a fair exchange. I believe in you, you make certain I don't die horribly. Fair? She got no reply from God, which felt a little undeserving. It wasn't as though she was a bad person. A little self-centred, maybe. A tad vain. Somewhat greedy. Not bad. Not really. Was she? She suddenly had flashes of all the people she had said awful things to. All the people she had ignored and passed by. All the bad things she had done. And it was a disturbing amount.
She chanced a peek outside and swore blind that she could see shadows moving in the jungle, only a short distance away, the light beginning to fade faster than she had expected. Moving shadows and absolute silence broken only by her short, shallow breaths. By her heels scraping along the dust beneath her feet, accumulated and deposited so long ago, undisturbed until now. Until she invaded the place and she wanted to apologise to whatever malevolent entity called this place home. She hadn't meant to disturb this place, hadn't ... She almost shrieked again as lights blazed all around her from above, but she didn't have the breath.
"It's got working electric!" The pilot re-emerged and Laila had to fight to stop herself running into those big arms. "You look like you peed yourself. Come on. There's a couple of racks we can use and I found some rat-packs, and clothes that aren't falling apart. And, get this, water. Hot water! Well, warm."
"How is that even possible?" She tried to calm herself down, looking back out the door, but the jungle only looked like the jungle. Then she scowled. "What's a 'rat-pack'? It sounds disgusting."
"Oh, it is, but they're pretty much indestructible. Ration packs. Food." The pilot seemed a little more relaxed. Which, compared to a normal human being was not relaxed at all. As she led the way, she pointed to a set of doors to one side. "Showers through there, though the towels I found are little more than rags and the soap is ... well, it's better than scraping off your skin with a stone. Barely. Beds are this way and at the far end is a med-section. Not much there, so don't damage yourself too bad."
Laila followed in silence. She glanced at the doors to the showers and almost rushed inside straight away, but, right that moment, she didn't want to leave the pilot's sight. This was probably the most she had spoken since they met, as though the pilot felt more at home here, whereas Laila felt troubled about the whole compound. The pilot continued to talk, but Laila didn't pay any attention as she surveyed the barracks.
They had left the place in disarray. Boots upon the floor. Lockers and footlockers open and inviting, showing dust-covered belongings. Taped onto the door of one locker, Laila could see a faded picture of a young couple, the woman in a wedding dress, the man in uniform, smiling and clutching at each others' hands. No-one would leave that picture behind if they had to leave, no matter how much they had to rush. No-one.
"I'm going to ask this again, because it needs answering. What happened here?" She moved to the locker, pointing at, but not touching the photograph. "Who leaves pictures like this behind?"
The pilot seemed to lose the enthusiasm the place had brought her and she stepped closer to Laila and the locker. She did touch the picture, taking it from the door and giving it an intense look. Her finger traced down the side where the woman stood and a sad smile curled her lips before she looked at Laila, handing her the photograph.
"Dead people." She tapped the edge of the photograph with her fingernail. "Dead people leave pictures like this behind. Best get to that shower. Oh, and try to be quick. How the water's warm, I don't know, but it might not last."
She turned away and headed to one of the beds that had already had the mattress and blankets unrolled, the rifle laid atop them, and the the pilot began to straighten and tuck the sheets in with precise, practiced movements. Laila took one last look at the couple and returned the photograph to the locker, hooking it into the gap in the door. Dead people left things, the pilot had said, and there seemed to be an awful lot of things left here, lying around, in lockers and footlockers. A lot of dead people, but no bodies.
With that disturbing thought lingering, she picked up something from the bed, beside the pilot's, that looked generally like a towel and headed back down the length of the barracks to the doors to the showers. She lifted the towel to her nose, expecting it to stink, but it only smelled dusty. She gave it a light patting, not wanting it to fall apart and crumble in her fingers and pushed into the showers.
Whatever she had expected, it wasn't a square room with 'stalls' that wouldn't hide anyone's embarrassment in the slightest. Corroded pipes and shower heads dropped down from the roof, exposed piping running away to the walls, and Laila found the least worst shower head and tugged at the chain dangling from the pipe. The rest of the pipes rattled and shook and, after some time, water erupted from the shower head, cascading down and starting to wash away decades of dust and dirt, on the floor, into the hole a few feet away.
Laila reached out tentative fingers to the water, not at all expecting acid instead, or for it to suddenly change to blood or something, but it was just water and, as the pilot had said, it came out warm. Almost hot, in fact, and Laila needed a hot shower more than she needed anything right now. She had soon removed her oil ruined clothing, draping them over the least broken other stall she could find, kicked her ruined shoes to the side and stepped under the spray, engorging herself on the pounding of the water against her skin.
A noise caused her to jump, only to find the pilot had entered the room, already naked, carrying another ragged towel. Without even a glance, the pilot entered the next stall over, tugged the chain, causing it to jump and rattle, and stepped straight under the shower head, reaching out for the bar of soap on a tray to the side and setting it to lather in her hands. She showed no sign of caring whether Laila looked or not, the act of showering nothing more than a mechanical process.
Laila did look, of course, as she, too reached over for a bar of soap that had sat there for decades. She turned her head to the side as she smelled the soap, a putrid kerosene smell, but it was better than nothing. She had to take her mind off what she had seen as she had sneaked a look at the pilot, because it had almost brought her to tears, yet again.
Scars. Little, puckered scars that looked as though they had sprayed up the length of one side of her back. Like little, hot objects had buried themselves into the pilot's skin, leaving it thin and stretched. It had only taken a glance, Laila thinking she could have sneaked a voyeuristic peek at the pilot's body, and see whether she had muscles everywhere. She did, but the scars had caught her attention more. The pilot gave no sign that she had caught the glance and continued to shower in silence, cleaning every part of her body with a speed and thoroughness that left Laila looking as though she did nothing. Then she tugged the chain again, stopping the flow of water, and started to towel herself down.
Laila made furtive, furious attempts to clean herself, trying her best not to look once again and end up staring. The oil took the longest to extricate from her hair and it still felt slimy in her fingers, even with a soap that could probably kill a wild animal at twenty paces just from the smell. She took longer to shower than the pilot, but she had got far more filthy along the way. By the time she heard the door opening and closing, the pilot leaving without saying a word, Laila had almost started to feel almost clean.
She couldn't get those scars out of her mind, though, and she could only begin to speculate what had happened to the woman. Was that why she came across as so hard and uncompromising? Laila couldn't say, but she wanted desperately to know what had happened, though she also had complete awareness that she and the pilot were not friends. They weren't even colleagues. Only two people that had become trapped on this insane island together. She had no right to ask personal questions of the pilot and those scars seemed as personal as it got.
A pull at the chain brought the splashing, still warm, water to a stop and she allowed the last few drips to fall onto her face, lazily starting to rub the rag of a towel over her body. Stepping away, she looked around and wondered if they had hair dryers back in the days of yore, pushing away all thoughts of the pilot's scars. She couldn't ask about them. That would be a gross invasion of privacy.