Taylor Five

by Ann Halam

  The kitchen house was the oldest building in the clearing. It was traditional-built, like the wardens’ home bungalow, with a high-ridged roof and massive double-timber walls for coolness; and raised on stilts above the ground. The fire seemed to have swept over it and round it, leaving it almost intact. The steps to the doorway, beside the blackened lumps that had been Minah’s hen coops, were charred but not broken.

  The electric light wasn’t working, and the windows were so blackened by smoke that they had to switch on their torches, which they’d been carrying to back up their headlamps. The food in the big fridge and in the freezers was spoiled. Even some of the plastic utensils hanging on the walls had flowed into strange shapes. But the larder door had been shut, and the dry stores in there were safe. They found a bigger rucksack on a shelf and began sorting things to pack, discarding nonessentials like Tay’s camera.

  “As much water as we can both carry. Food too, because we might be stranded for days, but we must have plenty of water—” said Tay. It was a long way to Kandah City if they had to walk, and the fire might be in their path. They might have to detour through the forest, and they’d better avoid the villages because—

  Suddenly Donny grabbed her.

  They stared upward. They’d both heard something move, up in the storage loft.

  “Who’s there?” shouted Tay. No answer.

  The loft ladder was lying on the floor. It was big and heavy, but they managed to get it into place. “You stay here,” whispered Tay. “I’ll go up.”

  “What, unarmed?” breathed Donny.

  They looked around for weapons. But Uncle, who had followed them into the kitchen, silently pushed them aside, grabbed the ladder and was in the loft in a couple of swings. They heard him make an eager sound of welcome.

  “It’s Clint!” gasped Tay. “Oh, it’s Clint! That’s his Clint noise!”

  The children rushed up the ladder. In the half dark, between the sacks of rice and stacks of cardboard boxes, they saw Uncle crouched beside someone who was sitting propped against the wall. They shone their torches. Clint didn’t get up or speak as they came over. His face and hands were scorched black, and the left leg of his trousers was glistening with something Tay guessed at once must be blood.

  “Howdy, pardners,” he said when they were near him. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “What happened?” demanded Donny.

  “Ah, what happened . . . let me . . .” He pushed himself further upright, grimaced and closed his eyes, muttering in Indonesian—a version of Malay the children couldn’t understand unless he was talking slowly.

  He opened his eyes again. “Do you have some water?”

  “Yes,” said Tay, ashamed she hadn’t thought of it. She knelt and gave him her water bottle. Clint sipped very carefully, as if he was afraid this one drink might be his last.

  “What’s wrong with your leg?” asked Donny. “It’s bleeding badly!”

  “Bullet wound. It’s not bad, Donny, just a graze. A spent bullet grazed me. Well . . . what happened? It’s a tale soon told. Yesterday, about noon . . . they came, in a fleet of jeeps. No warning. They said they were going to kill the apes. They want all foreigners out of their country. It’s very simple. No apes, no reserve, no reserve means no foreigners here. That’s how they saw it. So, ooh, then it was showdown at the OK Corral.”

  “You fought them!” exclaimed Donny. “Wow! Like in a war!”

  Clint choked on a gasp of bitter laughter. “We tried to fight them, Donny. It was a very little war . . . crazy, and hopeless, but we tried.”

  “We didn’t know,” said Tay. “We were underground. We only knew about the fire—”

  “There was nothing you could have done. You were better where you were. We said we wouldn’t let them kill the apes. Some of us scuffled with the outlaws, the rest went to release the apes and chase them away into the forest. We didn’t get out the guns. We thought that would make things worse. We didn’t believe the men would actually shoot to kill. But they . . . they shot Lucia . . . to show they meant business. Your mum and dad made a break for it and reached the telecoms suite. They locked themselves in there, to call for help. I don’t know if they got through before the mortar bomb—”

  He stopped. He realized what he had said. Tay stared at him, with a ringing in her ears and her heart beating so hard she couldn’t catch her breath. Mum is dead. Dad is dead.

  “What’s a mortar bomb?” asked Donny, and Tay could see he hadn’t understood.

  “Just a kind of bomb,” said Tay. “It doesn’t matter. Go on, Clint.”

  “Well, that’s it. The rebels had set the fire, and it was coming. The apes were free, and we can hope some of them have survived. They had the same chance as any other animal out there. But all our people were rounded up at gunpoint. . . . I’d got away when the firing started, I was fetching some vital papers from my house. I heard the explosion in the coms suite. I ran back here and something hit me. I fell, I hit my head. When I came to, everyone was gone and the fire was coming fast—”

  “They took everyone away,” said Donny. “But everyone but Lucia is okay.”

  The look that passed between Tay and Clint said: Donny doesn’t have to know.

  It might not be true. He doesn’t have to be told what might not be true, not right now.

  “Reckon you’re right there, pardner. I managed to crawl up the loft ladder before I passed out again. I was here when the fire hit the clearing.”

  “Like us in the caves,” said Tay.

  “Yeah.” He hugged them, one child with each arm. “It all happened so fast. When we knew we were in trouble, there wasn’t much time to talk. But I promised Ben and Mary that I would look after you two if I could. And here you are safe. God is good.”

  He let them go, looked at Uncle and said something in Indonesian. Then the scientist and the great ape hugged each other, and it was strangely as if Uncle was comforting Clint. He stroked his human friend’s hair, which was not glossy black anymore but smoke-smeared and clotted with ash. Clint’s leg wound didn’t look like “just a graze” to Tay. The floor under him was sticky and dark: he must have lost quite a lot of blood.

  “I ought to dress that,” she said. “We have our first aid.”

  “You’d better help me down first.” He started trying to get to his feet. “Ah, this leg has stiffened up. . . . Listen, pardners, we’re in a tight place. We can’t call for help—”

  “We have a radiophone,” said Donny. “But there’s something wrong with it.”

  “It wouldn’t help us, there’s no good guys within range. . . . We have to get out of here. I daren’t take you to Kandah City. From what our outlaws said, and from the way they were behaving, they’ve taken over the whole region. I’m going to take you across country, to the coast, to the Marine and Shore Station.” His brown face looked gray, and there were deep lines around his mouth. He leaned against one of the roof beams, sweat standing on his forehead—

  “But that’s about a hundred and fifty kilometers away!” cried Tay.

  “Yes. Through forest and across the savannah, where there are no settlements, nothing to attract the rebels. And Pam is there. If your mum and dad got through, if she knows what’s happened, she’ll be moving heaven and earth. . . . We’ll set off along the East Road and meet the Lifeforce cavalry coming to rescue us.”

  Tay swallowed hard. Even at this moment part of her recoiled. Part of her never wanted to see Pam Taylor again. I am a human photocopy, she thought. Oh my mummy, oh my daddy, you don’t even belong to me.

  But Clint was right. That was the way it had to be.

  “Okay,” she said. “That’s what we’ll do. But how? You . . . you can’t walk.”

  “The fire moved through the clearing very fast. If any of the Land Rovers were in the garage they might have survived. Let’s go and look.”

  When Donny and Tay and Uncle had helped Clint down the ladder, he was nearly fainting, and not capable of going anywhere. T
ay gave him some aspirin and cut away the cloth so that she could see the wound on his leg. Some cloth was stuck inside the flesh, and blood was thickly seeping through a crusted scab.

  “I think there’s a bullet inside,” she said. “I ought to get it out.”

  Clint laughed. “No way, little sister! Not without a bottle of red-eye whisky on hand. Or at least a cheroot. No, tie it up and that’ll be enough, until I get to a hospital.”

  Really, Clint didn’t drink. The nearest he came to red-eye whisky was cherry cola. But Uncle must have understood the word cheroot. He went rummaging while Tay did her best with the wound; and returned with a pack of cigarettes.

  Tay had realized that they all must eat something, so while Clint rested after that painful business, she hunted for easy food. She found a bowl of eggs in the back of the larder that turned out when she tried to crack them to be hard-boiled, some cooked rice and an ant-proof jar of sugar. Minah’s gas hob was still working. She put together rice and eggs and made coffee. Donny gobbled his food. Clint drank black coffee. Uncle ate a little rice and sat by Clint, who was taking a draw on his cigarette turn and turn about, and looking very solemn.Tay had thought she wouldn’t be able to eat, but she found she was ravenous. The food and hot, sweet coffee were so strengthening they made her feel drunk. She felt she could do anything. Save Clint and Donny, go after the rebels, save her parents, single-handed—

  The hole like a meteor crater where the telecoms suite had been rose up in her mind, but she knew . . . she’d better not think about that. It might not be true. Might not be true.

  They found a broom for Clint to use as a crutch and went out into the desolation. The refuge helicopter had been outdoors, grounded by the police orders but standing ready in case of an emergency flight. It was fried. So were the vehicles that had been outside. But the garage was a cement and breeze-block hangar standing on a concrete base, and it had been out of the main path of the fire. The doors were still padlocked. Tay used Clint’s keys to open them. Inside they found the refuge’s oldest Land Rover, the same one that had once got a flat tire out in the forest at midnight, when Dad had been “run over” by a monitor lizard. It was dirty and anonymous: it had no Lifeforce logos on it. Nobody had used it outside the clearing for a long time. But it was functional. Dad had let Tay try out her driving skills in it, only a few days ago.

  Clint limped up and peered inside while the children waited anxiously.

  “We’re in business, pardners. The keys are in the ignition, and I know the tank is full. One thing, though.” He turned, leaning heavily on the broomhead crutch under his arm, and held up his scorched hands. “You’ll have to drive, Tay.”

  Tay nodded. She could tell that for all his brave, cheerful words, Clint was near to collapse. He had seen people he loved either killed or taken off to an unknown fate. He had seen his apes run away into the path of a forest fire; and she was afraid he was in serious pain. She was silently pleading with him to hang on. She could do anything. Drive a Land Rover, survive in the burned forest, fire a gun. But she had to have someone to tell her what to do. If she had to think, then she would have to think about Lucia. She would have to think about Mum and Dad . . . and she would be lost.

  “Fire is like this,” said Clint, patting the old Land Rover. “It will burn one side of a stream and not the other. It will burn the house, but not the foundations. It will leap from tree to tree so that only the deadwood dies and the forest only grows stronger. You must remember that, Tay. The forest only grows stronger.”

  “Yes,” said Tay, biting her lip. She mustn’t cry. “I’ll remember.”

  “Food,” muttered Clint: suddenly swaying and almost falling. “We need food, water—”

  Tay got on one side of him. “Donny!” she yelled. But Uncle the orangutan was there first, taking Clint’s weight. Together the girl and the ape managed to get him into the vehicle, into the passenger’s side. “We’ll get the food and water,” said Tay. “Uncle, you stay with him while we fetch the supplies from the kitchen.”

  It didn’t cross her mind that she was talking to an animal.

  “Wait,” muttered Clint. “Wait, Tay. There’s one thing—” He grabbed her arm, in a grip that must have hurt his hands, but he didn’t notice. “Go back up into the loft. Get up into the kitchen loft, this is important. There’s a package, wrapped in black plastic. Papers. We have to take that with us. Important . . . what I saved is very important.”

  Donny was a good kid. He was scared and bewildered, but he wasn’t going to break down. They hurried back to the kitchen house together: by silent consent taking a route that didn’t lead them past the home bungalow. Tay wondered if they should have looked for more bodies. But she couldn’t face that. Clint had said everyone was taken away.

  She shut her mind to the meteor hole where the telecoms suite used to be.

  Hostages. Believe it.

  Tay went up into the loft and found Clint’s package while Donny finished packing the big rucksack and Tay’s pack. (His own was useless, after having served as a fireshoe.) They took it all to the garage. There were a couple of blankets in the old Land Rover that had been used when it was transporting baby apes around the clearing: they might come in useful. Donny and Uncle climbed in the back. Tay got behind the wheel, reaching for the pedals with her feet. She concentrated, bringing everything she’d learned—from Dad and from watching other people drive—to the forefront of her mind. She turned the key. The engine started at once. The gauge said the petrol tank was nearly full.

  “I can do it,” she said.

  “Allahu akbar!” said Dr. Suritobo, with something like a real smile, though his eyes were dark with pain and sorrow. God is great. Then he remembered his Clint voice. “Move ’em on, head ’em out. Keep them dogies moving. Drive ’em, cowgirl.”

  “Rawhide!” Tay said grinning.

  She drove out of the garage, crossing the concrete doorsill with a lumbering jolt, and headed for the open gates. It felt like being in charge of a huge dog that was pulling on its lead: but it was an obedient dog. At least, fairly obedient.

  Please, don’t let anything go wrong. Let us get to the research station safely.

  They were heading into the wake of the fire. On either side of the track, charred and smoldering trees vanished into a fog of smoke and condensation. The sky was a pall of gray, with red-shot cloud churning through it. There’d never been a fire this big near the refuge, as long as they had lived here. Tay thought of satellite pictures she’d seen of burning rain forest, how small the jagged little patches of smoke and flame could look. Down on the ground you couldn’t see the edges. You couldn’t know how far it went on, or how the wall of fire might twist and turn. Clint tried to raise a station on the old Land Rover’s radio. He couldn’t find anything but static. A car will drive straight along a straight road, Tay muttered under her breath, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. Don’t oversteer. She could hear her father’s voice in her mind: a warm voice, sometimes hasty, sometimes absentminded. Oh, my daddy . . . Get used to the noise of the engine, change gear when it doesn’t sound easy. Slow down into a bend, accelerate as you come out. She was crying, she needed to wipe her eyes, but she didn’t dare take her hands off the wheel, so she just had to let the tears fall.

  Clint gave up on the radio. Tay couldn’t talk because she was concentrating so hard. Clint didn’t talk because (she was afraid) he was nearly fainting. His head kept dropping and then jerking back up as he tried to stay conscious. She could only watch him out of the corner of her eye, there was nothing she could do to help. Donny and Uncle were so quiet in the back she wondered if they’d gone to sleep. One kilometer, two kilometers, five kilometers. Six, seven. This is going to take ages, she thought, because I daren’t speed up. But we’ll keep on. Like this, steadily munching away at the distance. The kilometers will pass, and we’ll get there—

  After eight kilometers the refuge track struck the backcountry route that led in one direction toward Kandah
City and in the other direction to the northeast coast, where the Marine and Shore Station was moored. There was a modern main highway along the coast, but to reach it you had to go through the city. The backcountry road was hardly different from the track, except it was wider. What if it was blocked by fire? Tay hesitated, wondering one last time if she should head for Kandah City. But Clint’s head was nodding, she couldn’t ask him. She turned for the east. There wasn’t another vehicle in sight. No sign of government soldiers; or of the rebels. No sound of planes or helicopters overhead. What’ll we do if we catch up with the fire? What if the wind changes and it comes back this way? It was afternoon now, and very hot. On either side of the road shattered trunks lay among the blackened ranks of the trees that hadn’t fallen. In the blur of heat and smoky fog ahead she saw what she thought was one of these dreadful obstacles, right in their path.

  Now what are we going to do?

  Beside her Clint roused himself with a deep sigh.

  The fog had deceived her. It wasn’t a fallen tree. It was another vehicle. Soon she could see the figures with rifles, waiting to flag them down.

  “Tay, get into the back,” said Clint. “Hide under those blankets.”

  “I can talk to them. You’re hurt.”

  “Do as I tell you. And if things go wrong, if I say run, you take Donny and Uncle and you run for it. You hear?”

  “They can run. I won’t. I can talk to them. I won’t leave you.”

  “Tay, you must. You are . . . you are so precious—”

  “What? What do you mean?” She stared at him, words she’d vowed never to speak bursting out of her mouth-—“Because I’m a prize Lifeforce publicity stunt? I have to be saved because I’m one of the famous clones? Does that make me worth more than if I was a real human being?”

  “Get in the back,” said Clint sternly.

  Tay scrambled into the back. Clint took hold of the steering wheel and eased himself into the driver’s seat. She crouched on the floor, under the animal-smelling blankets. The corner of Clint’s package, which she had tucked into the waistband of her shorts, was digging into her ribs. She could hardly breathe. She’d been terrified while she was driving, but at least she’d been in control. The feeling of not being in control was unbearable.