I nod. ‘Be careful.’
‘Run fast, Ade.’ Katja hugs her.
And she’s gone, running noisily through the trees and on to the road in front of the two bug-eyes, where she fake trips and falls to the ground. She looks up and pretends to be surprised when she sees the guards. It’s hard to tell what the guards are thinking at this point, cos their eyes are just bottomless dark and their faces expressionless. But it only takes a couple of breaths for them to launch into action. They move towards Ade. She lets them come for a few steps, then she jumps up and darts into the trees on the other side of the road, without looking back.
‘Respect.’ Mak sighs – his eyes all big and gooey.
‘Let’s move,’ I say, and we make for the gate.
‘There’s moss, lots of it,’ Katja says, as we get close. We pull our bags off our backs and start unzipping them as we run. There’s no way of knowing how long we’ll have before the guards come back, or are replaced by some other bug-eyes.
We reach the mounds of moss, scrape it up with our hands and cram it into the backpacks. It’s only when we’ve taken nearly all of it, that I look up and notice. ‘The gate’s open.’
19
A Chance to Escape
‘The lock must have deactivated when Chets hacked the security system,’ I say, gently pushing the gate cos I can’t quite believe we have a way out right here, right in front of us. ‘One of you should go – it’s a long way back to civilization, but you might be able to get help.’
‘But we need all three of us to carry out the rest of the plan,’ Katja says. ‘It can’t work with two people, especially now Ade has gone.’
‘But they won’t know you’ve gone,’ I say to Kat. ‘They won’t be looking for you out there. It’s a chance to get away from this damn crater – we might not get another one.’
‘No,’ she says. ‘I’m not going. We’ll find another way.’
‘Mak?’ I turn to him.
‘Like Kat says, we’ll find another way. Anyway, I’m not leaving this place without you guys, Adrianne and Chets.’
‘And if we don’t stop the aliens, it won’t be any safer out there anyway,’ says Kat.
We look out at the road stretching through the trees, away from the crater, away from the bug-eyes, towards home and our parents and air conditioning. Then we gather up the rest of the moss and race back into the woods, towards the centre.
We make it back with no sign of Adrianne or any of the bug-eyes. We’re all quiet. Focussed. With Adrianne and Chets gone, our group feels small and stuff is starting to get real.
Trent is still asleep on the bed when we open the door to my room.
‘Chets is a gross, spitty, hunter thing, Adrianne is running through the woods being chased by bug-eyes, the rest of our class have been body-snatched by aliens, and he’s just sleeping,’ Kat says. It’s the closest to angry I’ve ever seen her.
‘It’s going to be dark in a couple of hours,’ I say, looking at my useless phone. It still has fifty per cent power left – funny how long the battery lasts when you can’t actually use it for anything. ‘We should wake him and see if he’ll help.’
‘Ooh, I’ll wake him,’ Mak says, pulling a bottle of water out of his bag.
As much as I’d like to throw a whole flipping bucket of water over Trent, now isn’t the time. ‘Gently, Mak – we can’t have him shouting out.’
‘Spoilsport,’ he says, and he walks over to the bed.
‘So what now?’ asks Katja.
‘We need to test this moss – see if the tardigrades have any effect on the bug-eyes.’ I’ve thought about this, and there’s something I want to try. It’s not the most sensible plan I’ve ever had. It’s possibly the most stupidly dangerous plan I’ve ever had. But I want to try. ‘We’re going to trap a bug-eye and run some experiments.’
‘But what about the pheromones?’ Mak sits down on the floor with us, leaving Trent to whine in the corner about how rude we are to wake him up.
‘If we enclose the bug-eye immediately, before he gets a chance to sound the alarm, we should be able to stop the pheromones from reaching the other aliens,’ I say.
‘You’re calling the bug-eye “him”,’ Kat says. ‘You’ve already decided who we’re going after, haven’t you?’
‘Yep. We’re going to get Chets and we’re going to make him human again.’
‘You’re mental,’ Trent says. ‘If you’re crazy enough to try to abduct an alien, you should at least go for one of the stupid worker ones.’
‘But strategically it could be a good call,’ I say. ‘We’d be taking one of the hunters out of the mix, which is going to be a massive help when we instigate the endgame. Chets is the smallest and he hasn’t been turned for as long as the others, so he probably has the least sporiness about him.’
‘Also, he’s our best mate, jerk-face,’ Mak says, looking at Trent in disgust. ‘If there’s any chance we can turn him back, then obviously we have to try.’
‘How are you going to turn him back?’ Trent snorts. ‘Expelliarmus?’
‘With this moss,’ says Kat, holding open her backpack for him to see. ‘We think there are tiny creatures called water bears living in it, and that they will eat the alien virus.’
‘Where’s Adrianne?’ he says, looking around like he’s just noticed she’s not there, which is typical Trent cos he’s so self-obsessed.
‘She led the bug-eyes away from the gate so we could collect the moss,’ Mak says.
‘Why are there bug-eyes at the gate? Surely they know we’re not going to be able to climb over?’ Trent says. ‘And there’s all that thorny wire at the top of them. Nobody’s getting out that way.’
‘The gates are open,’ says Kat.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The gates aren’t locked. So they’re guarding them.’
‘Hold up a bit,’ Trent says. ‘Are you saying that you were at the gates, the gates were open, the guards were gone and you didn’t try to escape?’
‘There are more important things,’ I say. ‘We’re not leaving anyone behind.’
‘I always knew you were a bunch of weirdos, but this is a new level of idiotness.’ Trent tucks into a chocolate bar and laughs to himself.
We turn away and ignore him.
‘So how do we get to Chets?’ Kat says.
From the security-room window, Katja, Big Mak and I have a good view across the lawn to the lake. Pretty much all the bug-eyes are out there, disappearing into the tunnel they’re digging to channel the water from the lake, or operating the generator and pump. The lake is visibly shrinking now. We need to hurry.
The hunters seem to have given up combing the woodland for us. Instead they’re circling the site, looking out into the trees, alert for any signs of life. It’s like they know that once the lake has been drained the spores will catch up with us, so they’re focusing all their efforts on the main act.
Lucky for us, Digger, Hoche and Chets are separate, spaced out around the circumference of the lake. I could be imagining it, or my eyes might have gone nuts due to lack of sleep, but they look different to me. Especially Digger. He was big before but it’s like he’s grown taller and broader, and he’s slightly hunched over, like there’s something up with his back. He’s too far away to see properly, so I put it out of my mind and laser my thoughts on to our plan. All we have to do is draw Chets away without him raising the alarm. Easy, right?
We make our way as stealthily as we can into the trees and through the woods to the area Chets is guarding. We take our positions. Adrianne still hasn’t returned and Trent refused to help with our quote ‘suicide mission’, so it’s just the three of us. But hopefully that’s all we’ll need.
Mak, who apparently is an expert in imitating bird noises, makes a low whistling sound. It sounds strange in the silence of the woods. The only wildlife we’ve heard since we got here has been the insects. All the other birds and animals seem to have cleared out.
Chets’ head jerks up and he scans the treeline.
Mak whistles again.
Chets moves towards the tree where Mak is hiding.
This is Kat’s signal to move. As Chets stalks closer to Mak’s tree, a light thud comes from another tree further in. Kat has played her move perfectly, throwing a rock against a rotten trunk. Nothing too loud but enough to lure Chets away from Mak’s hiding place.
When Chets reaches the tree, he finds a sweet wrapper. And not just any sweet wrapper – a green Maoam stripe, which he knows is my favourite.
We gradually move him through the trees, leaving a trail of noises and clues, Hansel and Gretel style. We try to play it out like it’s not deliberate, making some of the breadcrumbs hard to find, like we’ve tried to conceal them.
This game is all about patience.
Eventually we get him into the building and to the kitchen door.
Chets doesn’t hesitate, throwing the door open and making for the fridge. We’ve left the fridge door open a crack and, from where I’m hiding, I see Chets’ weird bug face light up as he realises he has us trapped.
He pulls the door open and peers inside.
Big Mak and me are inside the fridge, our backs against the wall on either side of the door.
‘Now!’ I shout. We both grab an arm and pull Chets into the fridge at the same time as Kat slams the door shut from the outside and locks it.
Chets struggles. He starts pulling his head back and making that god-awful gurgling sound. But Mak and I are prepared. We swapped our shorts for trousers and put hoodies over our T-shirts. Our hoods are up and pulled tightly around our faces so that only are eyes are exposed. There isn’t much of a target for Chets to spit at.
He thrashes around but we hold tight and let the cold work its way into him. Within a few minutes I feel him weaken.
‘I’m really sorry about this, Chets,’ I say, as we use our backpack straps to tie his hands together and to a metal shelving unit. And then I tie a tea towel around his mouth.
I think he’s glaring at me but it’s hard to tell with those hunter’s eyes.
‘That went well,’ Mak says.
‘I knock on the inside of the fridge door and call through. ‘We’re OK, Kat. Chets is tied up and, err, incapacitated. Keep a lookout and we’ll holler when we’re ready.’
‘Well done, guys,’ she calls back. ‘And say hi to Chets for me.’
‘Katja says hi,’ I say, turning to Chets.
He makes a noise in his throat that sounds somewhere between a growl and ‘I’m going to kill you in the face’.
‘Chets says hi back,’ I call.
‘Let’s get started,’ Mak says, looking like he’s thinking what I’m thinking. This bit is not going to be fun.
‘’K. You’re stronger,’ I say. ‘You hold him and I’ll … you know.’
Chets looks from me to Mak and back again. I think he’s scared. Which, to be fair, he should be, cos we’re basically about to torture him.
Mak steps behind him and grabs Chets’ head. He fights. Tries to wriggle out of Mak’s grasp. But we don’t call Mak ‘Big Mak’ for nothing. He’s strong – much stronger than Chets. And Chets’ extra super-alien powers are being counterbalanced by the cold.
I rip the tea towel from Chets’ face and, before he can speak or spit, I ram a handful of moss into his mouth. I do it fast, so I don’t have to see those black pincers, and then I tie the tea towel back. ‘Really sorry, Chets.’
He chokes and splutters. I think for a moment we might have to take the gag off and perform the Heimlich manoeuvre.
‘Just swallow,’ I say. ‘It will be much better if you swallow.’
I look at Mak and can see he’s struggling with this too. I’m glad Kat’s not in here – she wouldn’t be able to handle it. She gets tears in her eyes when she accidentally steps on a snail.
Chets swallows and retches like he’s going to be sick. Then he stops. Slumps to the ground. Not asleep but in a kind of daze.
‘This is the worst thing I’ve ever done,’ I say.
‘Same, mate.’ Mak pulls his hood down. Even though the fridge is super cold, he’s sweating. I realise I am too. ‘What next?’ he says.
‘I guess we wait.’
We sit in silence, keeping watch over Chets. Neither of us says it, but I know we’re both terrified that we’ve killed him or something. Maybe the moss is poisonous to humans. Maybe once someone has bugged out, there’s no going back.
Now that he’s still, I can look at him more closely and I realise that the changes I thought I saw from a distance are real. Chets is taller. Not a lot, but enough for it to be noticeable. And obviously there’s the whole eye thing. But there’s also something odd about his skin – it’s starting to flake and peel. And I don’t think it’s sunburn.
He suddenly twitches, taking us by surprise. I think he’s going to attack us, but it’s as if he doesn’t know we’re there. He writhes around like his whole body is unbearably itchy and he can’t scratch it away. Then he starts to choke.
‘Get the towel off,’ I say and me and Mak work together to loosen the knot, pull it away from his face and tip him forward. Chets is still choking and his face is turning a funny colour. And not funny in a good way, or a waspy way, funny in a close-to-death way. Mak thumps him hard on his back. Something flies out of his mouth and pings off the wall on the other side of the room.
‘That didn’t look like a spitball,’ Mak says.
I run over to the wall and crouch down to examine the missile. ‘It’s one of his mouth pincers,’ I say.
‘Is that a good thing?’ Mak asks.
‘It’s either a good thing or he’s about to die,’ I say, and panic rushes through my body. ‘Chets,’ I shake him gently. ‘Snap out of it, buddy. Talk to me.’
‘Look at his eyes.’ Mak’s jiggling around with excitement.
The dark centres of Chets’ eyes are lightening from metallic black to a deep brown. The angry yellow rings are fading.
‘Chets, are you back?’ I say, feeling that pinch inside my nose that means I might start crying.
‘Lance?’ Chets says, finally focusing his eyes on me. The sight of those chocolate browns looking at me is too much and a tear leaks from my eye.
‘It’s been ages – what’s happening?’ Kat yells through the door.
‘Hey, Katja,’ Chets calls out. ‘Basically, I ate some magic moss and it made me feel a bit weird, but the good news is that I don’t think I’m a sporeling anymore.’
‘Yay!’ Kat calls. ‘Can I open the door then?’
‘I think it’s safe,’ I say and I can’t stop smiling.
20
The New Chets
With Chets back in the group, our confidence is rising. It seems like his alien transformation hadn’t gone far enough to cause any permanent damage. He coughed up the other pincer, and where his skin was peeling, I can see new, pinkish-brown human skin underneath.
We’re making our way back to my room to collect the rest of the moss, which we need for the next stage of our plan.
‘Hhhhccchhh,’ Chets says, for the twentieth time. ‘Hhhhhhhcccccchhhhhh.’
‘I don’t think it works anymore, Chets,’ Kat says. ‘Which is a good thing, right?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t like the pincers, but the balls of venom were kind of cool. Imagine what I could do with them – send anyone to sleep whenever I wanted.’
‘The spitballs were gross, man,’ Mak says. ‘I can’t believe you want them back.’
‘Yeah, the Chets we knew would be disgusted,’ I say, looking across at my best friend, who has a new air of something about him.
‘Turning into an alien changes you, literally and also emotionally,’ he says.
We all laugh. It’s so good to have him back.
‘I’m sorry for the things I said to you, Lance,’ he says. ‘You’re my best friend and you’ve always had my back.’
Deep breaths. ‘I can explain why I trapped Tre
nt in the toilets, and why I didn’t tell you about it.’
‘I know you did it for a good reason,’ Chets says. ‘You don’t need to explain. Let’s talk about it once we’re out of this flipping crater.’
‘Oh my gosh, Chets said an almost-swear,’ Kat gasps. ‘You really have changed!’
‘Welcome to the new me,’ Chets smiles and starts trying to walk with what I think is supposed to be a gangster swagger.
‘Chets,’ I say, ‘you’re a straight savage.’
All is quiet in the dorm corridor. We tiptoe down the steps to my room and quietly open the door, expecting to find Trent sleeping with the CPAP on again. But he’s not there.
‘That’s weird,’ says Kat. ‘I would have thought Trent would be too scared to go out on his own.’
‘I wonder if he got caught?’ Mak walks over to the bed and checks underneath it, just in case.
‘There’s no sign of a struggle,’ I say. ‘And if the bug-eyes knew he was here, they’d be waiting for us too.’
‘So where is he then?’ says Chets.
We look around the room, all of us blank. And that’s when I realise something else is missing, too.
‘Guys, the bag of moss,’ I say. ‘It’s not here.’
‘The CPAP is missing too,’ says Mak.
Mak and Kat start opening the drawers and checking under the duvet, but I know where it’s gone.
‘Trent’s taken them,’ I say. ‘He’s taken them and gone for the gate, to try to escape.’
‘He’s saving himself,’ Kat gasps.
‘Of course he is,’ says Mak. ‘Why the hell did we trust him?’
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