68%
Purgatory. That’s where I was, I swore. This was some kind of Catholic purification ritual that I had been unwillingly entered into after death. It was the only explanation. Didn’t the Jews also believe in a state of life between death and heaven or hell? I was sure it was a common religious belief and racked my brains to recall my sixth-form theology classes.
It played in my head enough to make me try and hunt down a library. If I could figure out where I was maybe I could work out what the damn flashing numbers meant every time I woke up. Even if the books were all in Spanish I might be able to discern enough from them to explain the idea of a soul being forever trapped in a median world between life and death. It was what motivated me as I ate a breakfast of cold sausage, grapefruit and bread rolls in the cafeteria.
Inexplicably (but then what was explicable in this place?) I had awoken back at the Sun Royal, this time in room 213 in the front section right beside the reception area. My shoulder was still tingling, not in pain but with the kind of pins of needles you get after sleeping in one position for too long. I had no recollection of returning there, and I awoke feeling utterly refreshed with the familiar numbers swimming away out of my eyeline. This time 68%. They were going down a few percentage figures each time, and each time it put me in mind of the ubiquitous battery icon on a cell phone. The flashing signal that posed two questions: one, how long have I got left, and perhaps more importantly two, when does one start panicking? I was certain it would hit me when the numbers dipped below 50%. Why? Because then I would be halfway through my ‘charge’. And by simple deduction, by gauging how long I had been here so far, I would be able to tell roughly how long I might have left.
If things continued the way they did, what would happen when I hit the big zero? Would I just drop dead where I stood? Would I go to sleep and never wake up again? Or would I awake to find myself back home, in my own bed, with my little girl shaking me awake in the middle of the night to wipe her bottom? Maybe the numbers would just reverse and would start increasing instead of decreasing. In which capacity would I be stuck here for eternity, in an endless run of zero to 100% and back down again?
You can see how the mind, faced with an uncertain certainty, fixates on things. I sat chewing my sausage lost in thought. On the plus side at least I had, seemingly, some sort of end in sight. What that end would be, I had no idea, but I knew that something would happen when I hit 0%. Edmund Dantes never had that. Nor did any other indefinite captive in history; no indication of when their servitude would cease. They were just stuck in dark holes with no prospect of release but their own death. And maybe that was what I was facing, but again, looking at it positively, how many people can say with utmost certainty how long they have left on earth? If the numbers continued decreasing at the rate they were, I estimated that I had around 20 days left before my charge ran out. And was I going to just sit around and wait for that to happen?
No. I had to find a way out. And if that meant exploring the island top to bottom then that’s what I would do. But first, I had to put my mind to rest. I had to figure out not where this place was, but what it was.
I figured I would need some supplies so headed up to the shop on the first level behind the games room. I budgeted for a couple of days initially, if I was away for longer I was sure I would find food and water in any of the other supermarkets or restaurants on the island, and certainly within Playa Blanca as I had already discovered. I needed clothes – I was still wondering around wearing just my swimming shorts and tool belt, and had in fact been going topless since I first woke up all those days ago. I had developed a pretty nasty case of sunburn on my neck and shoulders as a result of my three day bender, so grabbed a tube of aloe vera ointment and a couple of T-shirts in the ‘clothing’ aisle. That was another thing: whoever or whatever placed me here had made it very easy to remain on the site of the hotel. The shop was filled with pretty much everything I needed to survive without ever having to leave the grounds of the Sun Royal. Food, still unspoiled, sat in the restaurant. The bread rolls were a bit stale but the beer was chilled to perfection. There was ample bottled water almost everywhere I went, from the chiller in the store to bottles in the fridges of presumably every single one of the two or three hundred rooms on site. There was fruit, salad, even the milk in the fridges still tasted fresh. How long did milk take to go off? If kept cold I surmised a week, maybe even longer, but I had been here for almost two weeks and the stuff the store still tasted udder fresh.
I found a rucksack by the tills that must have belonged to one of the hotel employees. It was worn, and had been lovingly taped back together where one of the seams had split, but there was nothing inside that gave away any information as to who had once owned it. I stuffed it with a few bread rolls, a two litre bottle of mineral water, some cheese, a pack of salami and a tetra-pak of four apples. I changed my swimming shorts, throwing the old ones in the bin beside the checkout, put on a pretty garish yellow T-Shirt and stuffed the other two in the rucksack. I suppose it was survivalist instinct – I intended to leave Playa Blanca at some point, but didn’t know if the rest of the island would have been left in such pristine and habitable condition. I packed light, but calorifically; high fat foods that I could ration if I found myself in a less hospitable environment. My tool belt was still stocked with my foldable knife and chisel, but somewhere along the line I had misplaced my torch. I would need another one in case darkness set in and I was miles from a streetlight. That I could obtain in town. I selected the least touristy sombrero from a rack by the door, and a pair of cheap sunglasses completed my ensemble. I looked exactly like what I was – a sunburned tourist in a foreign land. On my way out I noticed a display of maps and added the most comprehensive one I could to my rucksack, hardly ordnance survey quality but it showed the main roads and towns that ran across the island.
For good measure I tried the computer in the lobby again for internet connection, just in case, but there was of course nothing. I tipped my hat nostalgically to the Sun Royal as I walked out of the lobby, not knowing whether I would ever return and feeling a tinge of sadness at the thought. Whatever this experience was, it was an experience nonetheless, and this three-star whitewashed labyrinth had been my base, indeed my home, my shelter, my salvation even, since I had arrived.
I found the library by chance about an hour later. It was hidden down a back street called Calla de la Laja, in a completely different place than was indicated on the tourist map of Playa Blanca that I had been following.
I had been browsing through a dusty store called Tian Lu which promised ‘Articulos Orientalos’ and ‘General Merchandise’ on Calle el Coreillo looking for anything that might be useful. A wide-brimmed Chinese sun hat to replace my sombrero was all I found, but through the back of the store there appeared to be an area selling ice-creams. It was hotter than usual outside and the thought of a cold creamy one was too good to pass up.
As I moved through the aisles of assorted crap I suddenly heard a noise coming from behind me. It was a dull thud, like a single footstep on a wooden floor, and seemed to come from towards the entrance door. Fear washed over me in a terrific wave. I froze still, hardly daring to breathe, in case I missed a second footstep. The shop was darker than any of the others I had been in thus far, and my eyes had still not fully adjusted to the change having come in from the blazing bright sunshine outside. My eyes squinted as they tried to attune to the gloom and identify the source of the thump. I stood stock still, breathless, for what seemed about 30 seconds but in actual fact was probably a lot less, before panic seized me. I guess I still hadn’t sobered up from the alarm incident, and was haunted by the vision of an army of undead zombies pursuing me through the streets.