She looked around her. She was in the forest and she realized that she wasn’t alone either. Other kids were grouped around her in a semi-circle, all asleep in various foetal positions, lying on grass or ferns. She realized the whole clearing was filled with lush green ferns and bright red fireweed. Above her head power lines softly hummed.
She wondered if she could stand, nervous her legs wouldn’t work. She stood, and with immense relief they took her weight. She had a sudden wild thought: Am I still Genie Magee? They may have transmitted her body, but had her memory come with it? Was her heart in the right place? Her kidneys? What about her blood, lungs, all the little bits that were right now making her feel dizzy? She realized she was shaking with anxiety. Her nostrils told her that her nose was working. Sweet pine and decaying vegetation. She took a deep breath and filled her lungs. As she did so she noticed her left arm. The moles had gone.
All her moles had gone. She had three, like a little triangle on her left arm. Rian had always rubbed them for luck. It was just a little thing, but what else was missing? It made her more nervous. Annoyingly, the scar, the Celtic cross,
was still vividly prominent on her other arm.
She moved toward the other bodies. Scared of what she might discover. Were they still alive? Or were they . . . ?
Many were almost naked, some wore the one-piece underwear she was wearing.
She shook the first boy awake. He turned and stared at her, fear in his eyes, then slowly he began to smile as he recognized her.
‘Jesus, Genie. What they do to your hair?’
‘Denis?’ Genie realized that he looked different in real life. Even smaller. She liked the green socks though.
Denis smiled and tentatively unfurled his body, embarrassed that his underwear had holes in it, but much more curious about whether his arms and legs actually worked. ‘I’m real. I’m frickin’ real,’ he told her with pleasure and astonishment.
‘And almost naked. You might want to do something about your underwear.’ Genie moved on to the next kid.
Denis laughed and just the sound of it made him happy.
He stood up, testing his body, feeling everything. It was so weird for him to touch and feel again.
Genie was shaking the next kid awake. Cary Harrison, she remembered. He’d been so quiet and scared when she’d met him at the house. She looked across the forest and wondered, why here? Why now? The whole
area looked very familiar to her. Was this where she’d found the howling dog? She moved cautiously to the edge and looked down across the ravine and the huge hundred-metre drop. The Fortress was somewhere down there, beyond range. Weirdly, this was exactly where the dog had materialized. Maybe Marshall had been right. Something was making this happen. Couldn’t be a coincidence.
She leaned up against a rock and looked back at other kids stirring. She hoped it wasn’t a dream. It would be cruel if this was just a dream.
‘Genie?’
Genie turned and sat upon a rock and smiled at Renée, who stood up and stretched, wobbling on her feet a little.
‘My God, you’re so tall,’ Genie remarked. ‘At least they left your hair on. Look what they did to me.’
Renée was feeling her body, testing it, just like Denis had done. She coughed, then spat blood, which unnerved her some.
‘Can’t believe this! I’m real. I’m solid.’ She looked at Denis and the others and then without warning began to cry.
Genie rushed over to comfort her, giving her a big hug.
‘Open your mouth. You’re bleeding.’
352
Genie looked into Renée’s mouth, checked teeth, tongue, everything was exactly where it was supposed to be. ‘Maybe you bit your cheek.’
Renée spat again but it was clear this time. She looked relieved and hugged Genie back.
‘We’re all alive, we’re alive, Genie,’ Renée said quietly, totally amazed.
‘It worked, I don’t know how it worked, but it worked,’
Genie told her.
Denis was frowning, moving around and helping the other kids get up. He looked back at Genie.
‘Nine of us.’
Genie broke away from Renée. She looked at Denis, still so small. She wondered if he would ever grow normally. She didn’t recognize one boy who stirred and looked so frightened to be in the forest.
Julia, the blonde girl, was last to awake and was staring at her stomach, totally unaware of her near nakedness.
‘My scars. All my scars have gone.’
‘My hair,’ a girl Genie didn’t recognize was saying. ‘I was blonde. My shoulder?’
Denis knelt beside her. She seemed distressed.
‘Does it hurt, Danielle?’
‘No. That’s just it. I can use it again. I had an accident.
Couldn’t move it.’
353
Genie watched each one of them re-familiarize themselves with their bodies. It was the weirdest thing to watch. Every single one of them checking their ears and noses were in the right places. Two more were crying with relief and happiness. The silent boy was looking at his stomach and legs with total wonder.
‘What’s wrong?’ Renée asked him. ‘You OK? What’s your name?’
‘Randall.’
Renée looked at Denis and exchanged looks of surprise.
‘Randall, the blimp? You ain’t Randall. Randall was like – huge.’
Randall looked at Denis and began to cry.
‘Oh my God, it is Randall,’ Julia trilled. ‘What did they do to you? You were like the fattest kid in our year.’
Renée looked at Genie and shrugged.
‘Well, that’s one diet that finally works. You should send them a letter of thanks, Randall. Can’t believe you were that obese kid.’
Genie realized she’d have to take charge.
‘We have to go. We can’t let them find us. We have to stick together and that means not being mean to each other. I think we’ve all been through enough. I have no idea how this worked or why, but we’re here and we have
to make sure we stay alive now.’
‘But where are we?’ Julia whined.
‘I know exactly where we are,’ Genie said, smiling.
She helped the girl up off the ground. ‘And I know where we can go.’
‘But how did this happen?’ Cary asked. ‘I mean, one minute we were like nowhere and now we’re here and we’re alive?’
‘It was Genie. She came for us. I told you she would,’
Denis declared.
‘I didn’t do anything. They just put me on the platform and pressed a button.’
But Denis was looking at her curiously. He stepped forward and stroked the silver paint on her arms.
‘And this?’
‘They painted me. I don’t know why.’ She smiled. ‘They gave me juice too, but I poured it down the heating duct.
I think that’s what started the fire.’
Denis and Renée looked at her with surprise.
‘I remember that gloop,’ Renée told her. ‘Disgusting.
It’s filled with stuff so they can see you.’
‘Nanobots,’ Denis told her. ‘I heard them talking about them. They make us swallow them and they can track all our organs if they go astray. Or something like that. It stays active for about two days. Lucky you
didn’t drink it, they’d know exactly where you are now.’
‘But where are the others?’ Julia asked. ‘Is this it? Just us? Is that Miho? Miho, is that you?’
Miho uncurled, then abruptly became aware she was practically naked and curled up again, embarrassed and afraid.
‘It’s OK,’ Julia was telling her. ‘We’re alive, we’re alive.
Come on, get up.’
Denis ran behind a tree to take a leak.
‘Ow, pine cones.’
Genie smiled. They were all barefoot except for Denis in his socks. It was going to be hell walking back to the farm.
‘Plumbing works,’
Denis shouted back. Some of the girls smirked but you could tell they were relieved to know.
‘Come on, we have to go. I don’t want them to find us.
Hell, I don’t even want them to look for us,’ Genie told them. ‘They might think I’m dead. After all, I didn’t arrive in Synchro and they don’t know about you guys.’
‘Then why are you crossing your fingers?’ Renée remarked. She turned to the others. ‘Genie’s right. We have to leave.’
‘There’s a farmhouse near here. There’s some old clothes we can have and we can get something to drink.’
Denis returned from the tree.
‘You think there’s any more of us?’
Cary was looking at where people were standing and the pattern of how they had arrived. Genie remembered he was the smart one.
‘We arrived in a semi-circle. Look where you are.
It’s a pattern.’ He looked up and saw the huge power cables strung above the trees. ‘I don’t know how, but we’re here and if anyone else came and they were outside the—’
‘Don’t say anything bad,’ Julia begged him. ‘I don’t want to see anything bad.’
‘I remembered something,’ Genie remarked, but didn’t explain. She had a flash of being inside a swirl of electrons, being able to see everything, like the secret of the universe – every atom and nothing, all at the same time. She suddenly thought of all those pictures on the walls of Marshall’s bathrooms. How many kids were missing?
Why only the nine of them in the circle? Marshall would know.
‘Come on. It’s not far. Watch out for pine cones and thorny things. I don’t know what they are but they stick right in your foot and they’re hard to get out. Oh yeah, and coyotes.’
‘Coyotes!’ Julia protested.
‘You’re too skinny to interest them,’ Denis told her.
‘And you’re too short,’ Julia shot back.
Genie ignored them and walked ahead. She was thinking about Rian. Would he be there? And then she remembered Mr Yates, employee of the month. How were they going to handle him?
‘Hey,’ Denis shouted. ‘Another one.’ He walked cautiously off the track towards a heap half hidden by ferns.
Genie turned to see all them follow Denis and she turned back to join them.
Miho was puking before she even got there and Denis was pushing them back. ‘Back up, don’t look.
Don’t look.’
‘Who?’ Genie was asking, but stopped when she saw Denis’ face.
He shook his head. ‘It’s a what. Seriously, don’t look, Genie.’
Renée had the stomach to look. She stared. ‘It’s inside out – it’s gross.’
‘There might be more.’ Genie didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to see them. If they weren’t normal, she didn’t want to know. The deformed dog had been enough for her.
Something was shining in the undergrowth. She
approached it cautiously. Once it had been white, but now, covered in sticky stuff from the trees, it looked like a plastic road cone. It was half a metre wide, with the familiar Fortransco logo. It was warm to touch and vibrated slightly. She looked back suddenly. Now she studied the ground more carefully she could see they formed a large semi-circle, just as Cary had observed.
Some probably buried under plant life as the forest grew around them. Marshall’s receptors. It was no accident they had appeared here. Something had triggered them.
The last storm brought them back to life, exactly as Marshall said.
Cary was at her side and he saw them too, his face deathly white.
‘These things must be here for a reason,’ Cary said. ‘I can feel my heart pumping. It’s a weird sensation. You?’
Genie nodded. ‘You will have to get used to lots of things you used to feel, I guess. You going to be sick?’
Cary was trying to be tough, but he was increasingly feeling nauseous.
‘What if there are more kids here and they haven’t woken yet?’ Renée asked.
‘I think it’s just us,’ Genie told her. ‘I can’t tell you how I know. Everyone outside the semi-circle will be too damaged to put back together.’
Cary was sensing that too. Someone actually transmitted inside out. He couldn’t bear to think about it, way too gross to handle. He turned away, taking deep breaths to stay calm.
‘We have to stay together, stay alive and we have to expose them,’ Genie told everyone as they started back down the track again. ‘We have to take Reverend Schneider and the whole Fortress down.’
Denis was suddenly beside her, white as a sheet.
‘Genie? My parents think I’m dead, don’t they?’
Genie nodded. A lot of parents were going to get one hell of a shock when these kids came home.
‘You were buried. I wonder what’s in your coffin?’
‘Am I dead?’ Julia asked, wiping her mouth. ‘I bet they think I’m dead.’
Genie turned to look at her.
‘I don’t know. But right now you’re alive, girl, and I suggest you start enjoying it.’ She smiled. ‘I can’t wait to see Reverend Schneider’s face when we all march into his damn church and bear witness against him. He is going to be so sick. He’s going to prison. They all are.’
Everyone assented. That’s exactly what they wanted to happen.
Cary was frowning and stopped dead suddenly, causing others to bunch up.
Denis heard the commotion behind him and he turned to see Cary staring at a bird in a tree.
‘It’s a bird, Cary. You never seen a bird?’
Cary shook his head.
‘In a tree? No. Never. I’m supposed to be nearsighted.
I wear glasses.’
‘Well you ain’t wearing them now.’
‘I know. I can see perfectly.’
Genie and Denis exchanged glances. Well that wasn’t so bad, was it?
Renée was walking at the rear and thinking about that. ‘Did they ask you about your eyes back at the Fortress?’
‘They tested me for days. I had to answer hundreds of questions and they gave me special glasses.’
‘Me too, I mean questions,’ Miho piped up.
‘And me,’ Randall told them.
They all looked at Randall again with wonder. He was less than half the size he had been. Each one of them had been altered in some way.
Genie understood. It was exactly what Marshall had explained to her and why Reverend Schneider was interested.
‘That’s what they want. In the future you’ll be able to get anything fixed, anything at all. No one will have any
imperfections,’ she informed them. ‘They can change your DNA, stop ageing, make arms work again, give people back their eyes, fix obesity. It’s about regeneration.
Eternal life.’
Denis’ eyes widened. ‘Stop people growing?’
Genie shook her head. ‘You got older, but your body didn’t, Denis. You’ll start growing again now, I promise.’
Denis wasn’t convinced.
‘I hope so. I frickin’ well hope so.’
Renée was examining her hair.
‘I swear my hair has changed. This just isn’t my hair.’
Genie agreed.
‘It was red. I remember it was red. We’ve all changed a bit.’
‘What about inside?’ Cary asked, clearly nervous about this now. ‘I mean they made lots of mistakes before. How do we know it’s all been done right?’
Genie continued walking, she didn’t want to think about that. There was a way to go yet. What else had they changed? Would any of them ever be truly normal again?
She looked at her arm. Why the moles? What could they do with a few moles?
31
Ghosts in the Forest
Rian was clearing up in front of the farmhouse, satisfied that things were beginning to get back to normal. He wanted to keep as busy as he could to avoid thinking.
Thinking about Genie only made him ill. He stood on a rock by th
e burned-out shell of the barn and surveyed the orchards. The apples would need harvesting soon or they’d ripen on the tree and just rot. But there were so many apples he knew he couldn’t pick them in time.
Miller had been right. The Fortress had come back for the burned-out SUV and taken it away. He hoped they were finished with the farm now and wouldn’t return.
He missed Moucher, he missed everything. It just wasn’t the same without Genie there, catching one of her brilliant smiles. He only had to look at her and he was instantly happy and then he remembered that he’d never see her smile again. He didn’t even have a photo.
Nothing left of her but her sketchbook he’d found and the memory of those brilliant blue eyes.
The pig suddenly started. With the corner of his eyes he caught sight of it running into the forest and was amazed to see something so big set off so fast, without warning. He wondered what had spooked it and listened for approaching vehicles, but heard nothing.
It was curiously hazy now that the sun was high in the sky. He heard the familiar sound of thunder in the distance. The air carried the expectation of change.
Clouds were scudding overhead. He was getting to know this place well enough now to know there would be a downpour in about two hours.
‘Wow, you’ve been busy, Rian Tulane.’
Rian spun around and slipped on the rock, falling flat on his ass.
He heard familiar laughter and to his astonishment Genie stepped out from the forest, the pig beside her as she stroked its ears. Her head was shaved and she was wearing the weirdest white one-piece underwear. The sun was reflected off her silver skin and dazzled him. For a moment there Rian had the strongest impression he was looking at an angel.
‘Cat got your tongue?’
Rian realized he was too scared to ask anything. She’d been in the Fortress. She was glowing. They had turned her into something else. She was going to be like Denis
or Renée and he couldn’t bear it.
‘Genie?’
Genie came closer. ‘You look disappointed.’
Rian struggled to speak and get up off the ground. He was elated, nauseous, scared – hell, terrified, all at once.
Genie stood right above him and put out a hand.
The Repossession Page 24