Page 63 of Swept Away

“Umm,” Lexi says. “Did that sound…”

“Ominous?”

“Structural?”

I pull a face. It didn’t soundgreat.

“We’re going to be fine,” Lexi says, swallowing. “There’ll be a phone. A radio. Something. Then we’ll be home in no time.”

She tries a few handles and finds locked doors. We turn a corner, catching more laminated signs and wall panels in the dim light—and another door. This one opens.

“Oh, shitting hell.”

Lexi gets a look inside before me. I peek over her shoulder and pull right back out again. It’s some sort of sick bay—empty beds with lights over them, a bit like desk lamps but fixed to the ceiling.

“Are we in a disaster movie? Can you just tell me this is real, please? I feel like I’m in a bad dream.”

“It’s real. Sorry.” I swallow, forcing myself to take in the dark room again.

There’ll probably be useful supplies in here—bandages, creams. But it looks so creepy. I wrap an arm around Lexi’s shoulder, desperate to stop her shaking.

“Maybe another room will be better,” I say, steering her away. “Maybe there’s one filled with all our friends and family waiting to surprise us.”

“Don’t say that. Don’t joke about that.”

I wince. “Sorry. Stupid.”

I know she misses Mae in a way I can’t comprehend. I want to see my mum, Brady, even Jeremy and Lyra, but Lexi’s like a woman with a hole in her heart right now, and I just stuck a finger in it.

“Not stupid,” she says, glancing up at my face. “It’s hard to say exactly the right thing to someone who’s shit-scared and doesn’t even know what they want to hear. It’s not stupid to sometimes hit on the wrong thing, Zeke. We all do it.”

She remembers that conversation in the bathroom, then. I’d hoped she might not—mild concussion, or something. I look away, embarrassed. Not because of what she said, but because of how good it makes me feel to hear it.

The next door leads to a staircase with the same clinical feel as the corridor we just left behind. As we make our way up the steps, with Lexi leaning on my arm, I figure out why I feel so weird. I’m unsteady on my feet, like the steps are moving underneath me. No wonder Lexi’s dizziness has got worse—we’re both having to manage our sea legs.

Plus I’m still a bit light-headed from the blood loss, and my wound’s hurting like hell right now. Not that I’m going to mention that.

As we round a bend, it gets lighter. There are windows, showing cranes and sky. I never thought I’d be so relieved to see the sea again.

“Do you need to rest?” I say, glancing at Lexi.

She shakes her head. “I want to keep going.”

“I could keep exploring, while you…”

Her grip on my arm gets twice as tight.

“We stay together. Please. Don’t leave me.”

I give her hand a quick squeeze.

“Never.”

We check every door. We find bare bedrooms, mostly, like dorm rooms in a school. There’s even a games space with a snooker tableand some of those chairs that you find in waiting rooms, the uncomfortable ones with curved wooden arms. Deeper down the maze of corridors is an inventory room filled with tall metal shelves, carrying endless boxes of screws and pipes and bits of metal.

“A treasure trove,” Lexi whispers, running her hand across a dusty shelf. “Or maybe…absolutely useless.”

I know what she means. If we were in a survival film, then all these pieces of equipment would probably be a lifeline. We’d cobble them together to start up our engine or something. But it turns out being lost out here hasn’t made me any lessme. I’m still a man who has no clue what to do with any of this stuff.

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