The Repossession

by Sam Hawksmoor

  ‘We’re OK,’ Genie reassured her. ‘I’m pretty sure we’re OK.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘ ’Cause we can walk and talk and see. It’s all in the right place, Renée. If it wasn’t, nothing would work, nothing would work at all . . . and it does.’

  Renée wasn’t mollified. ‘Of course you could be more worried than you’re letting on, else you wouldn’t be standing in the bathroom for half an hour wondering if your hands are going to wash away.’

  ‘It’s not like when you were in the Fortress, Renée.

  You’re out now. They can’t switch you off. We’re real.

  We’re OK. I know it.’

  Renée didn’t say anything. She finished her business and flushed, quickly washed her hands.

  ‘Come on, let’s try to sleep. Still time before it’s light,’

  Genie whispered, opening the door.

  ‘I’m not sure I know how any more.’

  Genie took Renée’s hand.

  ‘You have to find a happy place and curl up there.’

  ‘That what you do?’

  ‘Yeah. Sometimes it’s hard to find, but that’s where I go.

  No one can find me there.’

  Renée was looking at Rian sleeping. ‘He’s so lucky he’s got you. I got to get myself someone like him.’

  Genie smiled and gave Renée a hug. ‘You will. I know you will.’

  Genie moved away and crawled back on to the bed and lay beside Rian. Barely awake, he turned over, pulled her close. She listened to his heartbeat and wrapped an arm tight around him. She realized that she was scared of the future. She wished that they could slip away and disappear, just the two of them. She wanted him all to herself, forever.

  Renée paused a moment to stare at them. Yes, she wanted a boy just like him. A boy who would hold her tight, every night, and care desperately about her. But from out of town and a little taller and definitely not blue.

  Preferably someone who had never heard of Spurlake.

  ‘Go to bed, Renée,’ Genie told her from the darkness.

  ‘Going.’

  32

  Mosquito Attack

  Genie had worked out a work schedule. Each one of them needed to build up their strength, their arms and leg muscles in particular, and find a way of being ‘normal’

  again. There was a lot of bickering. Between them all they came up with ten crazy ideas a day, but nothing exactly workable. No one could quite decide what to do next, except they were all agreed they needed to get revenge.

  They pretty much accepted Genie’s argument that they had to stay secret – that if the Fortress knew about them they’d come running with guns and grab them back.

  They knew that. Didn’t want to accept it, but it was a reality. Renée had pretty much got everyone in line, making them think they were all precious escaped animals and the zoo would be pretty keen to get them back if they knew where they were. But of course, they would have to make contact with their families soon. Couldn’t stay out in the boonies forever.

  It was late morning on the third day. Cary came to find Genie and Rian in the back room, where they were

  sorting out suitable boxes and baskets to collect the apples. He looked pretty serious and dramatically dropped the phone on to a sack.

  Genie and Rian stared at it with surprise. It was supposed to be in pieces.

  ‘Someone made a call,’ Cary said.

  Genie was incensed. ‘You’re kidding me. Who? After all we said.’

  Cary looked at Genie and shrugged. ‘It had to be someone smart enough to know how to put this back together. I found it under the sink. I was clearing the blockage and—’

  Genie hit the wall in anger. ‘We’re so screwed. They’ll be monitoring calls. The Fortress listens to everything.’

  She was feeling crushed. She’d felt so safe here.

  ‘Who? And how much did they give away?’

  Rian asked.

  ‘I feel sick,’ Genie stated, flopping down on to a box, feeling intense despair. ‘We have to call the group together. We have to find out what they said.’

  ‘I would suspect Julia, she’s desperate to call home –but no way would she be able to put the phone back together,’ Rian said.

  Miho appeared at the doorway suddenly. She looked guilty and nervous.

  ‘It was me. I made the call. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Miho!’ Genie exploded. ‘How could you? You put us all at risk.’

  She looked down at the floor. ‘I know, I know, but I wanted to hear my mother’s voice. Just wanted to hear her.’

  Cary kicked a box across the room. ‘What did you tell her, Miho?’

  ‘I just told her I was coming home.’

  ‘That’s it? That’s all?’

  ‘Nothing about the farm?’

  ‘You don’t understand. She’s sick. She has cancer. I didn’t want to wait,’ Miho said, tears in her eyes. ‘She’s in hospital. I just wanted to know if she was still alive.’

  ‘The Spurlake Hospital?’

  Miho shook her head. ‘Abbotsford. There’s a clinic there.’

  ‘You sure you absolutely didn’t say anything about the farm? What exactly did you tell her, Miho?’

  Miho looked away. ‘I told her I was alive, that I loved her and I was coming home . . . soon.’

  ‘What did she say? Where does she think you are or what you’ve been doing?’ Rian asked.

  ‘She thought I was in Kobe in Japan. She thinks my father kidnapped me. He went back there two years

  ago. They don’t talk any more.’

  Genie felt for Miho. Another messed-up family.

  Cary was thinking. ‘Maybe it’s all right. Maybe because she called Abbotsford it might not have alerted them?’

  Rian shook his head. ‘You don’t get it. Marshall’s in hospital, the Fortress put him there, they know there’s no one here. The phone gets used and immediately they’ll be interested.’

  Genie put aside her anger and went to embrace Miho.

  ‘I’m sorry you called and I’m sorry about your mother. I just hope and pray it hasn’t started something.’

  Cary picked up the phone and took the batteries out of it. ‘I’m keeping these.’

  Rian nodded. He was about to do the same.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Miho repeated.

  ‘I’m just sorry we don’t have a real plan yet,’

  Rian said.

  ‘We need to talk to Officer Miller,’ Genie said firmly.

  ‘We need protection.’

  ‘A cop?’ Cary queried. He looked at Rian for support.

  ‘I don’t think we should. I don’t think there’s anyone we can trust in Spurlake.’

  Genie went back to stacking the boxes. ‘He’s all right. I mean it. We can’t do this alone, Cary. If we ever want a

  normal life again, we have to trust someone. Now more than ever.’

  Rian looked at Miho. ‘We won’t tell the others about your call. It will only make them fret.’

  Miho nodded, mouthing ‘thank you’, then turned and left the room, her face impassive.

  It was later that afternoon when the screaming started.

  Randall was sorting the picked apples into the boxes.

  Rian had organized everyone, two to a tree. One to pick and one to catch and place in a sack so they wouldn’t bruise or spoil. It was a warm day and at Genie’s insistence they all slapped on a ton of sunscreen she’d found in the bathroom and they wore the paper hats Miho had made for them all. Genie was well tanned already, but the others’ skin was so unused to sunlight they could so easily burn. It was hard work and although the apples were sweet and tasted good and they’d eaten three or four (in Randall’s case ten) they’d pretty much had it with apples until next year already.

  Julia was the first to scream. She literally fell to the ground clutching her head, hands clamped over her ears.

  Cary slumped to the ground soon after and then one by one they fell, yelling
with pain. Rian couldn’t hear anything but their screaming. When Genie began to

  scream too he knew he had to do something. But what? At first he thought it was the apples. They’d all eaten them, but then why wasn’t he screaming or lying in a foetal position on the grass?

  ‘What is it? Genie? Tell me?’

  But all of them were in excruciating pain, rocking from side to side, their eyes full of terror. Genie looked at him with imploring eyes, expecting him to do something, but what?

  Randall suddenly started running and ran smack into the brick wall at the end of the orchard, as if he’d forgotten he was made of flesh and bone again.

  Rian cradled Genie in his arms. ‘Talk to me? What’s going on?’

  ‘Mosquitoes,’ Genie gasped. ‘Thousands of them.

  Mosquitoes. Can’t you hear them?’

  Rian couldn’t hear a thing and there were certainly no mosquitoes anywhere to be seen. He looked up into the sky for inspiration and then he saw them. Two slow-flying helicopters flying in formation some distance north of the farm. Was it coming from them?

  ‘Genie? Look. Choppers. I think . . .’

  Genie was looking, dizzy and nauseous now. She understood what she was seeing and, she, like Rian, guessed this was the source of their ‘noise’. ‘Get us

  inside, Ri. Don’t let them see us.’

  Rian didn’t need telling. He was running for the wheelbarrow. He tipped out the apples and ran from figure to figure loading up the kids. He could get two on it at once. He raced them towards the farmhouse, literally tipping them out there before going back for the others.

  He made four trips, Genie staggering home on her own.

  He could see the choppers more closely now as they made their way towards them, the Fortransco logo visible on the sides.

  Rian had just recovered an unconscious Randall and slammed the front door when the two choppers directly flew low over the house, shaking the whole building, making the windows rattle. He’d made it just in time.

  Minutes later, Denis uncurled his limbs and looked around him, astonished to find himself in the kitchen.

  ‘Jesus,’ he mumbled. ‘I thought I was back in the Fortress.

  I thought they’d got me.’ He stood up uncertainly. He looked deathly pale. Suddenly he ran for the door, managing to wrench it open, and was violently sick.

  Rian winced – it sounded real bad. One thing was sure, it wasn’t the apples.

  Cary was trying to revive Danielle. He was feeling

  pretty shaky himself but Danielle wasn’t moving at all.

  ‘Rian?’ he called.

  Rian was there quickly, feeling for Danielle’s pulse. He looked up at Cary in alarm. ‘Shit, I think she’s dead.’

  Genie staggered over to check for herself. She pressed her head to Danielle’s chest and listened.

  ‘I can hear a heartbeat.’

  Cary looked at Rian and they clearly disagreed with Genie. This girl was gone, the mosquito attack must have affected her worse than the others somehow.

  ‘Get her up, put her on Marshall’s bed,’ Genie told them. ‘She might just be taking longer to recover, that’s all.’ Genie wasn’t even convinced of this herself.

  The others said nothing. They’d had a big scare.

  ‘Why do you think she’s so messed up?’ Denis asked as he helped carry her through the house.

  No one answered, each knew it could have so easily been them.

  They left Danielle to sleep. There was little else to do for her. Denis discussed electric shock but short of sticking her fingers in the wall socket and killing her for sure, Rian didn’t think it was a great idea.

  ‘Let her be. We’ll check on her later. Let’s have a break to recover, then finish the job we started –and everyone, keep an eye on the sky. We don’t

  want to go through that again.’

  Half an hour later they were almost back to normal, shaken definitely and worried about what had happened.

  Rian had made everyone iced tea and they sat around the kitchen table trying to make sense of it all.

  Renée had described it as a mosquito attack as well.

  They all heard the same thing, thousands of the bugs buzzing in their head and the pain was so intense you just lost control of your mind and body. She knew what it meant though. ‘They know we escaped. Don’t they? Those bastards are hunting us.’

  ‘How do they know?’ Julia asked, looking at Renée for an answer.

  Rian looked at Genie and she pulled a face. They knew exactly why. Miho’s phone call. It was just as they had feared. Cary said nothing, couldn’t even look at her. It would be their secret.

  Denis pulled a face. ‘Maybe it’s because we’re not there. They can’t control us, but they can try to blow our brains out.’

  ‘Well, they know exactly what to do,’ Cary told them.

  ‘They can jam our brains with that mosquito signal. We wouldn’t be able to do anything; we don’t know how to stop it. We could be anywhere and they just need to turn

  it on and we’d fall to the floor. That’s why Rian couldn’t hear it, it’s just aimed at our frequencies.’

  Randall shook his head. He could still hear an echo in his ears. ‘It works. I’m still dizzy.’

  ‘You’re dizzy because you ran straight into a wall,’

  Rian reminded him.

  Denis laughed but Randall wasn’t amused.

  ‘Look, they don’t know exactly where you guys are,’

  Rian added. ‘That’s why they had to broadcast it from the choppers. Right?’

  Cary nodded. ‘And that’s the good news. But the bad news is . . .’

  ‘We can’t go home,’ Renée chipped in. ‘If we did, they will know exactly where to find us.’

  Denis kicked a chair in frustration. ‘Then we have to get them before they get us.’

  ‘How?’ Julia whined. ‘We’re just kids.’

  ‘We need to speak to Miller,’ Rian told them. ‘He’s the only guy I trust.’

  ‘Who’s he?’ Denis asked, not sure he was ever prepared to trust anyone.

  ‘Marshall’s son. He doesn’t believe that teleportation is possible, but he’s going to get a big surprise,’ Rian replied. ‘I should go down the track to the next farm.

  Maybe I can call him from there. He knows about

  Reverend Schneider and he’s been making enquiries.

  He just wants evidence, that’s all. You guys are all the proof he needs.’

  ‘So why hasn’t he shut them down already?’

  Denis asked.

  ‘He needed proof, I told you, and because, as we’ve discovered, it seems they employ half the town,’

  Rian told him. ‘They’ve got a lot of power and he’s just one cop.’

  ‘If we want to do anything, we’ll need him on our side,’

  Genie told them. ‘We can’t just throw rocks at the Fortress. We have to plan something, something that will get people to realize what we’ve all been through.’

  ‘Just turning up. Won’t that do it? People think we’re dead. At least, they think Denis is dead,’ Julia pointed out.

  ‘And all they have to do is turn on that mosquito thing and we drop like flies. Literally,’ Cary pointed out.

  ‘If we do anything, it has to be a surprise and then we have to get the hell away.’

  ‘And how do we do that? How do you make your mom move house just because we say so?’ Randall asked.

  ‘Because if you don’t, Randall, you’re dead meat. We’re guinea pigs, we’re worth millions to them,’ Cary repeated.

  Miho said absolutely nothing. She knew she’d

  caused this with her phone call, that was the guilt she’d have to bear.

  They all heard the scream. Randall spilled his tea, Rian jerked his chair back in shock. Everyone at the table missed a heartbeat.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Genie said getting up. ‘It’s Danielle.’

  No one else moved, as if they had been nailed to the
floor. That had been a powerful, terrified scream.

  Cary watched Genie go. ‘Well, I guess she’s not dead after all.’

  Renée shuddered, pouring some more iced tea for herself. ‘Not funny, Cary. If we call the cops, they’ll be listening. One thing I did learn at the Fortress – they listen and read everything. They’ve got ways of finding out anything anyone says about them. I’m not being paranoid. They use some word-pattern recognition software, just like Homeland Security. It listens for keywords. I don’t think you can even call from the next farm, Rian. It’s too close.’

  Genie was tired of all this arguing. They should call Miller and have done with it. She headed to Marshall’s bedroom, scared to death of what state Danielle might be in. That had been one frightened scream.

  Danielle wasn’t lying on the bed. The pillows were covered in blood, bright scarlet blood. Genie heard her

  throwing up in the bathroom and ran to join her.

  Danielle was wiping blood from her face. She glanced at Genie as she entered the bathroom.

  ‘Can’t stop the bleeding.’

  Genie knew how to deal with this.

  ‘Stand in the bath, put your back to the wall and put your head back, right back and pinch the top of your nose.’

  Danielle turned to face her, blood was still streaming from her nose.

  ‘Now, Danielle. We have to stop the bleeding.’

  Danielle climbed into the bath and did as she was told as Genie soaked a flannel with cold water.

  ‘Head back, lean back against the wall so you don’t fall, OK?’

  Danielle followed the instructions. She put her head back and pinched the top of her nose. Genie got in beside her and slapped the wet flannel on her neck and held it there.

  ‘Will this stop it?’ Danielle asked, fear in her voice.

  ‘Yes. Don’t move, don’t talk.’ Genie wiped blood from her mouth. ‘This is one hell of a nose bleed. You get them a lot?’

  ‘Not since my brother beat me one time.’

  ‘I mean, aside from that?’

  Danielle shook her head.

  ‘The mosquito thing must have started it. Affects you more than the others maybe.’

  Denis poked his head around the door. Did a double take when he saw how much blood there was.

  ‘Jeez, guys. Gross.’

  ‘Get me some ice, Denis. Now. Go fetch,’ Genie told him.