It was a barren place, beautiful in its wild simplicity. As I approached Karen my temper grew with every step. I could see her lying on the dirt with her back against the rock. The bitch is asleep; I had thought at the time and was readying a stream of abuse that would strip the moss from the rock. I mean if the dead had decided that the water was low enough they’d be visiting us in our beds before we knew it and that cow was asleep. It was only when I reached the rock that I noticed that her head was far more forward than it should be. But at the same time I saw a bottle of water beside her that had fallen over and spilt onto the ground. The dirt around the spill was still wet and muddy which led me to suspect that most of the full bottle had seeped away. Shit! We had so little water. How dare she? I reached down and shook her more vigorously than was warranted, I must admit I was livid with her and hoped that her neck muscles would hurt her for days from being at that angle. When I touched her she fell to the side and I saw her face for the first time.

There was no doubt that she was dead. Her face was stretched into a grimace that suggested she died in pain. Did she fall off the rock or have a heart attack when she was sitting having a rest? I lifted her back into a sitting position and cursed as I slipped in the mud and lost my footing. The mud was a weird orange colour when it was wet and my lovely white trainers sported orange soles that bled up around the sides by the time I was finished.

I looked over the body, now this wasn’t my CSI skills coming in or anything; I was worried that she might have died from a bite and that our friends from the mainland might already be here. I wanted to see if her skin was torn but I found nothing and sighed in relief. She might have been asleep, except for the strange angle of her neck and the look in her eyes.

They say that our eyes are the gateway to our souls. Well I’m not convinced of that but Karen’s eyes were wide and she looked terrified. Yes, she could have had a heart attack and knew that she was dying, too far away to be heard and consigned to die alone in a barren place. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone and, scary as this might be, there was just something about her face that suggested to me that it was more than a lonely death that had put that terror in her eyes. But there was no way to be sure.

It was entirely possible that her heart had just given out with the stress of the last few days, I mean she had actually had to run or be left behind on our way here, but something nagged at me. I mean, why this morning? If she had keeled over after her exertions then I could understand, but that was two days ago. It just seemed a little too convenient to me, especially

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