Islanders

by John Barlow

  “How... do... I...?” he bawled. “HOW DO I STOP IT!”

  Nobody had told them how to stop.

  The others laughed out loud as they watched Ben race ahead, still flat out on his emu, hanging on for dear life.

  Giant emus cannot understand humans. But the strange thing is that they think they can. Whenever they hear a human screaming or laughing, anything high-pitched, like the silly cackle of an emu-lator, they think it means fun. And when an emu hears someone having fun, it kicks its legs for joy and runs even faster. So now the other birds cranked up the speed and accelerated.

  “Just... hang... on...” Silver cried, as they all leant forwards like jockeys.

  Ugly Pig was still with them, down at ground level amid the emu legs, staring defiantly ahead as he scuttle-galloped along.

  The slap-slap of bird feet on the ground became a constant drumming in everyone’s ears. Trees whisked past, and it was only by keeping their heads down, right behind the base of the emu’s neck, that they escaped getting lashed and scraped by leaves and branches.

  They raced across a long, flat valley bottom. Then up the other side, never slowing down, those huge, beefy emu legs going like the cylinders of an unstoppable machine. Around a hill they went, and along the side of a river, where finally the birds came to a rest and took a long drink of the water.

  But a minute later they were off again, up to break-neck speed in no time, whizzing through a patch of woodland, before heading into open countryside, miles of it. An hour passed, perhaps more, and still the emus ran, as the sun burned high in the sky.

  Then, in the middle of a wood, the emus decided that they’d got to wherever it was they were going. Without any warning, they dug their feet into the ground and skidded to a halt. Ben felt himself slide quickly forwards, right over his emu’s neck (which the bird had lowered) and shoot clean into the air. He landed with a thud on his bottom. The others suffered the same fate, all five of them dumped unceremoniously on a bit of hard, bare ground between some trees.

  A second later the emus were gone, returning the way they’d come, and in a matter of seconds the drumming of their feet had receded to nothing, and the wood was silent.

  For a while no one spoke. It was one of those strange silences, when you don’t quite know if everybody is going to burst out laughing or if they’re straining to keep back the tears. They were on their own, and just for a second or two, none of them felt like mentioning the fact.

  “Right,” Ben said in the end. “Silver, did you by any chance...”

  “West,” she said. “Almost directly west.”

  “In that case...” Ben said, with no idea what he was going to say next, but hoping something would occur to him, “I think...”

  Ugly Pig, who had flopped down next to them on the ground, exhausted, suddenly picked up his head, sniffing madly. Then he sprung to his feet, apparently forgetting all about being tired, and began to whine. For a moment he waited there, obediently. But then, seeing that no one was eager to follow him, he scampered off through a cluster of ferns which seemed to mark some kind of border.

  “Ugly!” Worse called after him, to no effect.

  Worse was already on his feet, and the others now stood up as well. They all went in the same direction as Ugly Pig.

  Making their way through the trees, they saw what they had all been secretly praying for: signs of life. In front of them the land dipped slightly, forming a long, broad clearing, about half the size of a football pitch, right in the middle of the wood. In the clearing was an old stone cottage. It was square, with a door and four windows, just like in story books. A nice, cute little cottage.

  However, it wasn’t the cottage that interested them. In front of it were rows of plants, all sorts of stuff. And nearest to them were several long lines of tall tomato plants, sagging with ripe tomatoes. Ugly Pig had scurried off, and was over nibbling the outer leaves of a cabbage, which it turned out was his favorite vegetable.

  It was then that Ben and the others realized that they’d had nothing for breakfast.

  “Oh, my goodness!” whispered Silver, swallowing hard. “They look good!”

  For a while they stood there, frozen to the spot, transfixed. They had already tasted the enormous mainland strawberries and apples. But it was the bright red tomatoes which now mesmerized them, leaving them delirious, their mouths dribbling. Tomatoes didn’t grow very well on the Island. Last year there had hardly been enough for a single tomato each, once a month, and only in the summer months. It was supposed to be a big deal, your miserable monthly tomato. Now there were hundreds and hundreds. And they were enormous.

  Coby, Silver and the twins couldn’t help it. They raced over to the tomatoes and attacked.

  “I think we should be careful... ” Ben said, remembering the apples.

  The others ignored him. Meanwhile, Ugly Pig was over by the cabbages going mad, a hundred torn cabbage leaves littering the ground around him.

  “I really don’t think we should just eat them...” Ben called out.

  “I agree!” came a female voice, right behind him.

  Ben saw Silver busy cramming a tomato into her mouth in front of him. She wasn’t speaking...

  He swung around.

  A woman held a razor-sharp machete up in the air, her eyes ablaze.

  “Don’t move a muscle.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The woman was medium height, with emerald-green eyes and short black hair that stuck up, spiky and uneven. Ben stuttered and spluttered, watching the razor sharp blade of the machete, which wagged in the air, not very far from his throat.

  “Your friends are stealing my tomatoes,” she said.

  Ben glanced over his shoulder and saw that the tomato feeding frenzy was now in full progress.

  The woman jumped out from behind him, slashing her way through the undergrowth with her machete.

  “Stay where you are!” she cried, half way between Ben and the others.

  Four tomatoes splattered on the ground, and everyone froze.

  The green-eyed woman stood where she was, her machete held in front of her. She was outnumbered, even with the machete, but she stood there defiantly, head held high. The twins pushed out their chests and stared right back at her: no one pushed them around, even someone holding a two-foot long fighting knife.

  “W... we had no food,” Silver said, peeping out from behind Bad’s shoulders. “We’re hungry and... we’re sorry.”

  “Sorry, are you?” said the woman, running a hand through the tufts of her spiky hair. “So you damn well should be, thieving little creeps. That’s my tomato crop. And...” she waggled the machete in the air in explanation of what she would normally have done to intruders.

  Just then Ugly Pig trotted forwards, scraps of half-chewed cabbage leaves falling from his mouth. The woman’s expression slipped fractionally.

  “Ah. You’ve brought protection,” she said, and lowered her knife.

  “Stay, boy!” Worse commanded, to underline the point: they’d brought protection.

  There was now an uncomfortable stand-off, there at the edge of the garden: the woman had an enormous knife, but they had a bullet pig. And Ben was stuck in the middle.

  “How’d you get here?” the woman said.

  She looked about thirty, or a bit older, Silver reckoned, sizing her up. She wore tight, faded jeans and some kind of boots, an old, black T-shirt, and over it a leather jacket so ancient that there were scar-marks where it had been sewn up and patched again and again. And she cuts her own hair, Silver told herself, noticing the jagged ends.

  “We came on emus!” Bad blurted out without thinking.

  The others sighed to themselves. Was there any secret in the world the twins could keep?

  “Brought by the emus!” she said sarcastically, as she pulled a pack of cigarettes from her back pocket. “Best way to get around, no doubt about that. Although,” and said, lighting a cigarette, “I’ve never heard of people borrowing emus. Yo
u must have very special friends!”

  Her face turned suddenly vicious. “You liars!” she shouted. “What are you lot doing snooping around here? Tell me!”

  “We’re sorry about the tomatoes,” Ben said, glancing across at the others.

  “Forget the tomatoes!” she said, struggling to control her voice, the cigarette shaking visibly in her hand. “You didn’t come hear on emus! No way!”

  “Tah, Sah, Fah...” Ben began, struggling to remember them all.

  Coby helped out: “...Pah, Shah, Abah, Stah...”

  “All right!” she said, her face brightening up as she heard the names of so many emu-lators. “All right! I believe you. My name’s Terra, and Tah’s a friend of mine. It’s just,” and she sucked hard on her cigarette, “it’s just that this is where they usually come, if there’s trouble. I’m one of the usual suspects. I wouldn’t put it past them to send a bunch of kids!”

  “Who comes?” Ben said.

  “Who? Who do you think! Any trouble, and it’s straight to Terra’s house! Always talk to me... Hey, wait a minute. Never mind who they are, who are you!”

  Ben glanced over at Silver, and she nodded very gently.

  “We’re not from here,” said Ben, stumbling over his words, going slowly, carefully. “We’re from somewhere else, we’re sort of exploring.”

  Terra screwed up her face. No, her expression said, that won’t do!

  “And,” he continued, “we’re looking for someone.”

  “Who?” Terra said.

  Ben breathed in, hard and long. “John Brewer.”

  For the longest time Terra said nothing at all. Her green eyes darted from Ben to Silver to the twins to Coby... Above them, the trees rustled in the breeze. It was if that name had cast a spell over the whole place.

  “Don’t you know how bad for your health that is!” Silver said, looking at the cigarette with disgust.

  Terra dropped it, mashing it into the earth with her boot.

  “Come on,” she said.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Terra led them across the garden to the cottage. There were a handful of orangey-brown hens clucking about outside, minding their own business. Inside the cottage was a large kitchen that smelled of herbs. There were no electric lights, and they all secretly wondered whether the mainland had TVs. They sat around a large, wooden table in the middle of the kitchen.

  Meanwhile, something about that name was playing on Ben’s mind. It sounded strangely familiar. But how? There was no one called Terra on the Island, yet it reminded him of... yes, it reminded him of his mum.

  “Okay,” Terra said, finally accepting that their story was true. “So you’re from the Survivors,” she said. She looked excited and depressed at the same time. “Remember one thing: don’t tell me where! You understand how important that is? Do not tell anyone where the Settlement is, okay?”

  They nodded, remembering that they had already told Tah it was an island. But there was nothing they could do about that now.

  “So,” she continued. “You got curious about what happened here during the war, and fancied a bit of exploring? They told you about John Brewer and all that... It’s natural. How old are you lot?”

  “I’m twelve and they’re all thirteen,” Silver said, nodding at Ben and Coby. “We were born in the Settlement. But those two,” she pointed at Bad an’ Worse, “they were born just before the war ended. On the mainland. They’re sort of in-betweenies.”

  Bad an’ Worse didn’t know whether they liked the sound of being in-betweenies. For once, though, they kept quiet.

  “Thirteen years ago...” Terra said, nodding, taking it all in. She looked around the kitchen, as if it were a prison. “Thirteen years I’ve been in this dump!”

  She took a pack of cigarettes from her pocket: Complex Smokes, it said in red, angular letters. But then, seeing the disgust on Silver’s face, she put them away again.

  Just then one of the brown hens wandered into the kitchen. Bad tickled it on the back of the head.

  “Hey, careful!” Terra shouted.

  “Why?” said Bad. “It looks pretty...”

  Suddenly, the hen twisted its neck backwards. Its beak seemed to pull itself apart, the bird’s jaw dislocating, its whole face splitting open to reveal the insides of a sharp, glistening, bony beak. Then the beak snapped shut again, right on the back of Bad’s hand.

  “Ah!” he yelled, pulling up his hand, a red lump already swelling up there on the skin.

  The others jumped up onto their chairs.

  “Don’t worry,” Terra said, laughing. “It was only playing.”

  “Only playing!” Bad shouted, as his hand began to throb.

  “What is it?” Coby said, trembling, crouching on the seat of his chair and not looking as if he was about to come down.

  “A chunk-hen,” Terra said. “So called because they can take a chunk right out of you. Post-war development, of course. Lay good eggs, though. And by the way,” she said, pulling the sleeve of her T-shirt right up to reveal a large, ugly flesh scar on her shoulder, “that’s what happens when they get serious.”

  “A hen did that?” Bad said. “How did it get up there?”

  “These hens can fly!” she said, winking.

  Terra shooed the chunk-hen back out through the door. But the twins were mesmerized. They watched it go, their mouths hanging open, amazed. It was too cool. It was the coolest thing they had ever seen. They had to have a chunk-hen. Each.

  “Right,” Terra said. “Do you wanna know about the mainland?”

  She stood up, not waiting for an answer, and fetched a bottle from a cupboard. It had clear liquid in it, and in large red letters the label read: Complex Spirit: Keeps You Going! Pouring some of the spirit into a chipped mug, she took a long, hard swig as one by one Ben, Silver and Coby climbed down off their chairs.

  “The war destroyed everything. Anyone who was still alive came up here, to the north. You do know you’re in the north, don’t you?”

  “We do have geography class,” Silver said, rather annoyed at being patronized.

  Meanwhile, Ben remembered the map, which was still in his pocket. The letter ‘N’ on it, in a circle? Is that what it meant? Whatever. He decided to keep quiet.

  “Well,” said Terra, “before the war hardly anybody lived up here. There was nothing here but a power station and a few small coalmines. But the whole land was being destroyed. First by the war. Then the germs. Those of us left banded together. We came as far north as we could to get away from it all, Brewer, Sullivan...”

  Ben swallowed.

  “Brewer and Sullivan hated what was going on,” Terra continued. “They hated the way that armies were just destroying everything, for no reason. They became our leaders up here. You know how it is with men, they always have to be the leaders! Anyway, we planned to rebuild a society here, in the very north, where there was still a chance of survival. We did pretty well. I mean, we survived. After a fashion...”

  “But what happened to Brewer?” Ben asked, staring intently down at the table in front of him.

  Terra sighed. “John Brewer was away searching for a better place to settle, seeing if there was anywhere free of the germs that were eating everything up. When he got back, Sullivan had taken over,” she said, flicking the packet of cigarettes with her fingernail. “That’s when the Underground was born. To fight Sullivan. But,” and she smiled bitterly, “we lost. We lost everything. The Underground lost, and Sullivan won. Simple as that. And now there’s nothing of our world left. Only Sullivan and his thugs.”

  Terra grabbed the Complex Spirit and drank straight from the bottle. Her face was turning sadder, her eyes beginning to close. Each breath she took was bigger and more hopeless than the last.

  “Sullivan’s men were roaming the land, taking anyone they could get, dragging them back to work in... in that place. It was impossible. John Brewer helped people to escape, to move somewhere safe, to the Settlement. But, of course, that’s the bit
you know! That’s where you’re all from. Where the Survivors went. The people who escaped.”

  By now Terra’s face streaming with tears. As she talked she sniffed, unashamed, as if she was proud of crying.

  “But,” said Silver, frowning, “why are you still here?”

  “Because John Brewer disappeared,” said Terra. “One day, he was gone. Before we had all managed to escape. I was left here.”

  “What happened to John Brewer?” Ben said, the words only just creeping up from his throat.

  Terra didn’t answer. She couldn’t.

  “Sullivan?” Ben asked.

  Terra just nodded.

  No one dared to look at Ben. The kitchen fell horribly quiet.

  “Sorry, Ben,” Terra whispered, reaching over and squeezing his hand.

  “You know who I am?” he said.

  Terra smiled through her tears. “Yes, sweetheart. You look just like your mum. Apart from the scar. Have you been in a fight?”

  Chapter Twenty

  “I’m sick of being here on my own!” Terra, as she yanked a huge, juicy onion up out of the soft brown soil.

  They’d had a lunch of enormous tomatoes and as much bread as they could eat. Afterwards, they all went out to help Terra in the garden. The twins, though, soon got bored and went in search of fun. So it was just Ben, Silver and Coby who helped Terra gather in the onions.

  “But why did they abandon you?” Silver asked, as she too pulled up a onion. “I don’t understand. The Underground, after John Brewer disappeared? There must have been others. Why didn’t you all stick together?”

  Terra grabbed another onion. It shot up out of the ground, spraying soil everywhere.

  “People get scared,” she said. “They get scared. Then they get caught. And you know the first thing someone does when they’re caught?”

  “No.”

  “They talk. They betray others. That’s how Sullivan works. He keeps you until you talk. Doesn’t matter how long. He’s a patient man. He destroyed the Underground like that, person after person. There’s not many of us left now, on the outside. That’s why Tah sent you to me.”