I feel tired, empty and sick. ‘I don’t think it ever left.’
18
At Last
We get back to my room to find Mak awake and looking a lot better.
‘You go next, Adrianne,’ I say.
She smiles at me and flops on to the bed without saying anything. She puts on the mask and rolls over to face the wall. A minute later her breathing gets slower and deeper. She’s asleep.
‘What happened?’ Kat says. ‘I’m assuming it’s not good news.’
I look at Trent. ‘Before I tell you, I want everyone to stay calm. We need to be quiet. We need to think carefully. Nobody panic.’
‘Spit it out, man,’ Trent says. ‘What’s the beef?’
‘’K. Well, the good news is that we found out why the bug-eyes are draining the lake. The bad news is that it’s so they can free the rest of the alien spores and take over the world.’
‘We figured it was something like that, anyway,’ Mak says. ‘So it’s good to have official confirmation.’
‘Yeah, Fangs – what’s the big deal? When the coach comes tomorrow, we escape, call the police, the police sort it out and we get the credit. Simples.’ Trent tosses a handful of Starmix into his mouth.
‘The big deal…’ I say, and I’m thinking that, if I say it really quick, it won’t sound as bad ‘…is that the coach driver’s a bug-eye, the coach is hidden in a murder-y barn by the lake and, if we don’t stop the bug-eyes by sunrise, then it’s probably going to be too late.’
Trent swallows the candies whole. It sounds like a dog choking on a chicken carcass.
‘So we’re on our own?’ Katja says.
‘Well, not completely,’ I say. ‘We’ve got each other.’
‘Hell, yeah!’ says Mak. ‘I’d trust you guys with my life over anyone else in the world.’
‘You’re all mental.’ Trent’s stopped choking and is knocking back a bottle of Evian. ‘I’d rather be with a pack of velociraptors than you lot.’
‘So what’s the plan?’ Katja asks.
‘We have to stop the lake from being drained,’ I say. ‘Mak, do you think there’s any way we can break down that dam?’
‘The thing with dams,’ he says, munching on what looks like bits of twig, ‘is you don’t need to break the whole thing down; you only need to make a crack in the right place.’
‘So it’s do-able?’
‘They put it up in a hurry. It’s not structurally sound. It’s definitely do-able.’
‘But how are we going to get it done with so many bug-eyes around?’ Kat says. ‘There’s too many of them.’
‘I’ve got a couple of ideas,’ I say. ‘But nothing substantial enough that I can feel sure it will work.’
I rub my hands through my hair so hard I think I may have left a bald patch. I’m so tired – it’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before. I miss my mum. I miss Chets. I feel like the fate of the human race depends on me, and my brain and body are just shutting down.
‘We have some time, Lance,’ Kat says. ‘When Adrianne wakes up you can sleep. After that, things will seem better. We’ll think of something.’
I want to believe her, but it all seems too much. I came on this trip to protect Chets. I failed. I tried to stop everybody from turning into aliens. I failed. I fail at everything – at school, at home and in life. All I want to do is go to sleep, drift off to a happy place and forget about it.
‘We wouldn’t have got this far without you,’ Kat says, like she’s reading my mind.
‘We’d have been toast on the first night,’ says Mak. ‘RIP us.’
‘I’d have been fine,’ Trent says. Kat hits him in the face with a towel.
‘Here, eat a banana.’ Mak passes one to me. ‘Thirty minutes, then it’s your turn to sleep. And, honestly, mate, that hour of sleep is gonna make you feel unstoppable.’
‘And tomorrow, when we’re home, we can all sleep for a week,’ Kat says. ‘They’ll let us have a couple of days off school, right?’
Somehow the others keep me awake until it’s my turn with the CPAP. I feel weird cos I never sleep in front of anyone, but there have been a lot of firsts on this trip, so I guess one more won’t hurt. As I put the mask over my nose and mouth, I worry for a second that I’m too wired to sleep – that the stress and craziness will keep me up, worrying. But I only worry for a second, and then I fall into a heavy black cloud, where nothing matters except the steady beat of my heart.
I wake to see Katja gazing down at me, the turquoise of her eyes twinkling like a mythical jewel from Asgard or something.
‘How are you feeling?’ she asks.
‘Better,’ I say. Part of me wants to let myself slide back into sleep, but I know I’ve got stuff to do; the others are counting on me. So I sit up and take off the mask. ‘Where’s that page of notes about water bears? I’ve had an idea.’
‘Geek, Robot, Overlord for the next turn?’ Trent dangles the oxygen mask in his hand.
‘Just shut up and go to sleep, if you don’t want to help,’ Adrianne says.
‘Don’t come crying to me later, saying I didn’t give you a fair chance then.’ Trent jumps on to the bed and settles down for another nap.
‘Here’s the page you wanted, Lance.’ Katja hands me a crumpled piece of paper. ‘I think it looks more like a hippo than a bear.’
‘What do you know about tardigrades, Mak?’ I say.
‘They’re tiny. They survive in conditions that nothing else can deal with – they can even come back from the dead. They can stand boiling hot, freezing cold, total dehydration and being in space. They eat all sorts of stuff, including bacteria, which is why they can be useful.’
‘Is it possible they could eat alien bacteria?’ I ask, looking at the creature in the diagram.
‘I guess it’s possible,’ Mak says. ‘You could be on to something.’
‘But where can we get some?’ Katja asks. ‘We don’t have access to shops here.’
‘They often live in green or watery places. Another name for them is moss piglets.’
‘Remember just before Dale passed out – he said something about water bears and he had green slime on him?’ I say. ‘I reckon there are tardigrades in the crater somewhere. That’s what he was trying to find when he bugged out.’
‘The moss!’ Kat widens her eyes to infinity-pool proportions. ‘There’s moss around the edge of the crater. Chets slipped in some on the way in.’
‘Maybe the moss has been helping to keep the spores from escaping the crater,’ Ade says.
We look at each other and I’m sure they’re all thinking what I’m thinking – that this could be the key to stopping the aliens. It’s an epic moment, full of possibility and hope. Then Trent farts in his sleep.
‘Alright,’ I say. ‘I have a plan. It’s all based on guesswork and assumptions, so there’s a high chance of it going wrong.’
‘I’m in,’ says Katja.
‘Me too,’ says Adrianne.
‘Of course, I’m totally in.’ Mak grins. ‘And I hope it involves getting out of this room because if Trent farts again, I might be sick.’
‘Right.’ I jump up and I’m feeling full of energy again. Nothing makes you feel worse than running away and hiding from things. When you make the decision to face them and fight them, even though it’s scary, it’s like the dark clouds blow away and everything becomes clear.
‘Empty your backpacks, except for water and a snack. We’re going to forage for some moss.’
‘What about Trent?’ Kat says. ‘Should we wake him?’
‘Nah. He made his choice. Leave him here to sleep.’
Five minutes later, we’re leaving the building through the back entrance and making our way into the trees. It feels good to be doing something useful, and with my best friends beside me. I only wish Chets could be here, too.
‘So we know there’s some moss by the main gate,’ I say. ‘But the main gate is risky – they could be watching it.’
&n
bsp; ‘Let’s start at this side and work our way around the crater,’ Katja says, skipping up the savagely steep slope as though she’s on flat ground.
The rest of us follow as best we can, though by the time we see the fence through the trees, we’re practically climbing. A few metres before the fence, Kat suddenly stops and wobbles as though she’s on the edge of something. Adrianne is second in line and just about manages to grab Kat’s backpack and keep her from falling. As Mak and I catch up, I see that where Kat and Ade are standing, there’s a deep dip in the earth, with vertical sides, laced with bits of dead root. It’s like the ground has been ripped out. On the other side of the ditch, the fence rises ominously.
‘It looks like someone’s dug a trench,’ says Mak.
‘To stop us from getting out?’ Adrianne asks.
Katja stands with her hands on her hips, assessing the vertical sides of the trench. ‘I can climb that, no problem. But I don’t think you guys will be able to. No offence.’
As if anyone could ever be offended by something that Katja says.
‘Lucky we’re not here to try to climb our way out,’ I say. ‘But if there was any moss there, it’s long gone.’
‘So we follow the perimeter?’ says Mak.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Maybe the ditch is only across the back of the crater.’
We trudge on, keeping the ditch on our right. It’s strange to see the world outside the fence, going on exactly as it did before. Life in the crater is so disconnected, we might as well be on an alien planet.
‘Remember when Chets thought there were bandits in the woods?’ I say, and we all laugh, until we remember there are nastier things to worry about than bandits.
‘So I guess Digger hit Dale on the head to try to knock him out,’ says Ade. ‘That’s one way of making someone sleep.’
‘Or killing them,’ says Mak.
‘And after everything he went through, they got him anyway.’ I can’t see Kat’s face cos she’s walking ahead of me, but I know she hates seeing people get hurt. Since we came across the ditch it’s like everyone’s spirits are falling again.
‘If we can find the moss and fix this,’ I say, ‘then nothing Dale went through will be wasted. If he hadn’t left the notes, or scared the butts off us by smearing his blood over the coach window, we never would have known what we were dealing with. I mean we’ve worked some things out for ourselves, but a lot of it is cos of his lunatic scribbles. We won’t let his sacrifice be in vain.’
Katja sniffs.
‘That was rousing, mate,’ Mak says and he pretends to break down in tears. ‘Especially the part about Dale’s blood smears.’
Ade starts giggling and whacks Mak on the arm. ‘It was a good speech, Lance. You really should have run for head boy.’
‘I’d have voted for you,’ says Kat.
‘Me too. And Chets,’ Mak says.
‘Yeah, I don’t think three votes would have won it for me, but thanks anyway, guys.’
‘If more people had really got to know you, things could have been different,’ Adrianne says. ‘We’ve been in the same class for years, seen each other nearly every day, but all I knew about you was that your attendance is in the low eighties, you find it hard to concentrate, you don’t seem to care about the SATS or doing well, and sometimes you get into trouble. You’ve kept so much to yourself and allowed people to think the worst of you.’
‘It kind of suited me to be seen as the class idiot. It meant nobody bothered asking questions,’ I say, and I realise that I’ve actually been quite a coward. I took what seemed like the easiest option: the least risky way of getting through. Maybe I was wrong.
‘If people knew about your mum, and about your other difficulties, sure there would be a few jerks like Trent who’d laugh and say horrid things, but most people would be nice about it,’ Ade says. ‘You should have given us a chance.’
‘And I can’t believe you didn’t tell us,’ says Katja. ‘We’re your best friends, Lance. We know how awesome you are.’
‘Hey – we’ve all kept things to ourselves, buddy.’ Mak whacks me gently on the back of my shoulder. ‘Even the girls.’
There’s a few seconds of quiet – no sound but our footsteps.
‘Yeah, we did both do that, too, Ade,’ says Kat, and then she starts giggling.
‘You’re thinking about that little table in the restaurant, aren’t you?’ Ade says.
‘And the rose,’ Mak splutters.
I can barely hold in the laughter. ‘Don’t forget the candle.’
We all laugh so hard that we have to stop walking. There’s so much going on and things are looking pretty bad right now, as our only plan seems to have been dug up and thrown away, but it feels amazing to laugh like this. We give it a few minutes, holding our bellies and falling to the ground. Then Katja snorts and Big Mak starts crying, and we start all over again. We laugh until we ache, and I know that whatever happens, however it all turns out, this is one of the best moments of my life.
‘If I live to be an old man, I’m going to sit at bus stops, telling people this story,’ I say. ‘It’s never going to stop being funny.’
‘We’ll all live in the same old people’s home,’ says Kat. ‘We can talk about it while we do our knitting.’
‘I’m an excellent knitter,’ Mak says. ‘It’s one of the life-skills my parents taught me.’
And we all laugh again.
After a water and wee break, we continue our walk around the crater of doom. The ditch doesn’t let up, but we have to keep hoping.
‘It’s gonna be by the road,’ I say. ‘They won’t have dug it up cos they need it for getting in and out. That’s where we’ll find the moss.’
And as we approach the only road through the crater, we can see that it’s intact.
‘There are guards,’ Mak says.
‘Of course there are,’ I sigh. No way are they going to make this really hard thing we have to do any easier for us. ‘How many?’
Mak crawls forward for a better look. ‘Just two. Crater Lake guys.’
‘They’re making sure nobody gets out of the gate, I guess,’ Kat says. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘They’re only workers – let’s take them out. We’ll grab some branches and hit them round the head.’ Mak starts scoping the trees for a suitable weapon.
‘Too risky,’ I say. ‘They’re bigger than us and we won’t be able to sneak up on them so we won’t have the element of surprise.’
‘Besides,’ says Ade, ‘remember the aliens have displayed wasp-like tendencies so far. If we attack one of the hive, they’ll release the pheromone that alerts all of the others. We’re out in the open here. The pheromone will spread quickly and there’ll be a swarm.’
‘We have to lure them away, and there’s only one way I can think of.’ I roll my shoulders back and do some warm-up stretches.
‘We’re not using you as bait,’ says Kat. ‘It’s too dangerous.’
‘It’s the only way,’ I say. ‘I’ll draw them away and you guys get as much moss as you can.’
‘The problem with this plan is that you’re too slow.’ Adrianne stands up and tightens her ponytail. ‘So I’m being the bait.’
‘I can’t ask you to do that,’ I say.
‘You’re not asking, I’m volunteering. It’s the option that has the greatest chance of success. I’m the fastest, so I’ll go.’
‘No way. It’s not happening.’ It’s so dangerous. The thought of watching Ade run into the jaws of death is too awful for me to deal with. It should be me.
‘It isn’t your choice to make,’ she says. ‘It’s not your job to protect everyone all the time – you have to let us take responsibility for ourselves. I’m the fastest, so this makes the most sense.’
I can see that she’s determined, and she’s right – it does make the most sense. She’s way faster than me. But still…
‘I’ll Geek, Robot, Overlord you for it?’ I say.
‘Did it
ever cross your mind that you’re not actually helping people by protecting them all the time?’ she asks. ‘Take Chets, for example. You saved him from the wasp. You got stung. He didn’t. And are you scared of wasps now?’
‘No,’ I say.
‘And is Chets still scared of wasps?’
‘Hell, yes,’ says Mak.
‘Exactly. Sometimes the fear of something happening is worse because you’ve never experienced it before. Once it’s happened to you and you’ve got through it, you realise it’s not so bad.’
‘You’re saying Chets might be less scared of wasps if I’d let him get stung?’
‘It’s possible,’ she says.
‘Ade, you’re blowing my mind,’ says Kat.
‘Group vote then,’ Adrianne says. ‘Everyone in favour of me luring the bug-eyes away from the gate, raise your hands.’
Kat sticks her hand up with an unhappy look on her face. Adrianne glares at Big Mak and he puts his hand up too. I give him a look but he shrugs. ‘She’s like a flipping cheetah, mate. You’re more like a ferret or something.’
‘I win, three to one,’ she says. ‘I can do this. Trust me.’
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