Islanders
Page 11
The grass at the sides of the road was no longer thick and lush. It was now a dull, lifeless green, almost gray, and there were straggling weeds and half-dead plants, some of them covered in what looked like a film of black dust. The land was turning darker. The emu galloped on, and Ben watched as the earth around him lost its color and seemed to be dying.
They got to the top of the next hill. The emu stopped. And when a giant emu stops, it is a very sudden thing. Ben already knew this, and he clung hard to the bird’s neck, sort of swinging forwards and managing to stay on his feet as he flew down onto the road. And then he saw it, for the first time: a city.
“That’s it,” he said, his eyes fixed on the silhouette, which was perhaps a couple of miles ahead of him. “That must be it, Sullivan’s place, the... the...” But he didn’t know exactly what it was, only that he must go there.
He tried to climb back onto the emu. But the bird was having none of it. It hung its long, elastic neck towards the ground and tapped the road’s surface with one of its feet.
“Come on!” Ben said, rather nervously (he had never tried to reason with an emu before). After a few seconds it became quite apparent that emus cannot be reasoned with.
So there he stood, wondering what to do, his hands on his hips. He looked again at the city up ahead. He’d never been in a city before, and this one, although it was still a long way off, was like cities that he’d seen in films, a bunch of tall buildings huddled close together. Then, as he stared, he noticed something in the sky, about the city. At first he thought it was just more of those dark clouds. But they were not clouds, not exactly. It was like a dark horizontal curtain hanging in the sky, miles of it. Something was on fire.
“Should I get help?” he asked himself, and turned to the emu, as if it might be able to offer advice.
The emu, though, had turned and was now trotting happily away, back down the road in the opposite direction.
“Oh, great!” Ben said, and set off walking.
As he walked, the city grew slowly clearer to him. Above it, the darkness became more visible: a dense layer of smoke, dispersing at the edges and gradually thinning out to nothing. But over the city itself it was thick and unbroken, and now, as he walked towards it, Ben could see that the smoke cloud was casting a shadow right across the land, a big stain of darkness.
There was almost no living vegetation around him, nothing but singed grass and weedy, soot-stained bushes that blew in the wind. And above him the entire sky now seemed to be filled with gray smoke. It was as if the life was seeping away from the earth, choked and burned to death. A kind of permanent dusk had fallen, and in the air was the smell of old, damp fireplaces and rotten eggs.
As he continued, the city’s various shapes came gradually into focus. Four enormous funnel-chimneys dominated the skyline, huge, bulky tubes of concrete stretching upwards. It was a power station, just like the one he’d seen on a documentary about electricity which they’d all been shown a thousand times back on the Island (for some reason, the adults thought it was very important to teach them about electricity). And the chimneys were belching out thick smoke, which drifted upwards and hung like a dark blanket in the sky. Beneath the four great chimneys was a sprawl of low buildings, oddly shaped and chaotic, it seemed, as if there was no deliberate design to the place. Most curious of all, though, was that there was a fence, forming a sort of long, continuous wall around everything.
He was now close enough to see the fence in detail. It was built from great, solid steel pillars, as tall as a house, and it let no light through. The fence stretched as far as he could see in both directions, in a massive curve. The city must have been two or three miles across, and that made this enormous, circular wall... how long? He tried to remember his mathematics class on this, circumference equals diameter multiplied... or was it radius multiplied by... It had something to do with a pie, he thought. In any case, the entire place was locked inside an impenetrable wall of steel. And from where he was looking there was only one way in: through a huge set of gates at the end of the road he was now on.
Then he stopped, right where he was. He had realized something so incredibly important that he wanted to shout it out. The map! The map that the messenger boy had brought to the Island! It was a map of the mainland. He took it out of his pocket and stared at it.
The letter ‘N’ in a circle didn’t mean ‘go north’. It was a map of the north, the northern most part of the mainland, right where he was now. The large cross on the paper represented roads. The road he was on started on the coast in the east and went westwards. There must be another road going north to south. Perhaps the two roads intersected at the city up ahead.
It was a map, then. A secret map, badly drawn so people wouldn’t pay any attention to it. Where the roads met, it said, is where the answer lies.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Terra had been driving her old, battery-powered camper van all morning. The van didn’t have a very powerful battery, but this was an emergency. Ever since they had discovered that Ben was missing, all of them had been out looking. Terra drove endlessly up and down all the back roads in the area, whilst the others combed the woods near to the cottage. Well, in fact, Bad an’ Worse were so disgusted that Ben had slipped away for some action on his own that they more or less refused to look for him, and spent the morning fighting with their chunk-hens. Worse also goofed around with Ugly Pig and some of Terra’s normal pigs, who seemed to enjoy his company. He wanted to tell them to escape, to explain that Terra had bacony plans for them... but he knew they wouldn’t understand.
By lunchtime, Terra had drawn a blank, and she drove back to the cottage to see if the others had had better luck. As the van jerked around the final corner of the old track in the woods, her stone cottage came in view. And parked there was a black police car.
“No!” she said, slamming her foot on the brakes.
She sat there, thinking, thinking. There was no alternative, at least none she could think of. So she threw the van into gear and drove right up to the cottage. Her heart was pounding hard, beads of sweat already standing out on her forehead.
As she pulled up to the cottage and got out, she prayed that somehow the melted men hadn’t found Silver and the others. It had been stupid to leave them alone, knowing that a bunch of policemen were on the lookout for them. The whole thing was stupid, she thought, angry with herself, and cursing Ben Brewer for escaping and causing all this trouble, for... for being like his dad!
She pushed open the kitchen door.
“Ah! Terra,” said Sawyer, who was sitting at the table helping himself to some cheese and a big hunk of bread that he’d found in a cupboard. “Good to see you!”
Terra scanned the room, trying to look natural. Nobody else.
Sawyer was not like the rest, not like the other melted man. But you had to be careful. Melted men never went anywhere on their own.
She smiled as hard as she could. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” she said, searching desperately for cigarettes. But the only pack left was on the table, over by Sawyer. She decided not to reach over, in case he saw how much she was trembling.
“We’ve had a little problem,” he said. “With some children. You heard anything about it?”
He stuffed more bread into his big mouth, then looked around for something to drink.
“Here,” she said, and handed him a glass of water, knowing that melted men don’t drink Complex Spirit. It’s too strong for them, they don’t like it.
“Ehm,” she continued, thinking quickly, “children? Unfounds, you mean?”
“Unfounds... Don’t know. Might be,” Sawyer said, his mouth full of bready mush.
She shrugged, not very convincingly. “What else could they be, turning up out of nowhere, you say? There are probably unfounds all over the place, if we looked hard enough, people who just survived out there, hidden away without anyone knowing about them. It’s a big country. They probably came up from further south.”
Outside there was a noise, the noise of another electric car pulling up.
“My men have been taking a look around,” Sawyer said, nodding towards the door. Then, making sure they were still alone, he added, in a low voice: “I don’t want any trouble for them, really I don’t. Whoever they are. But these kids trashed one of our cars! He’s heard about it, and we’ve got to find ’em. I’m under orders. Believe me, Terra, if it was up to me...”
The door flew open. In came two more melted men, two of the biggest, those who had grabbed Ban an’ Worse back in the field.
“You beaten it out of her yet, boss?” one of them said.
He came up close to Terra, staring down into her eyes, his big fat gut swilling and flopping around in front of him. His breath was sour and disgusting, and it made her want to puke.
“Leave her alone!” Sawyer said. “She hasn’t seen ’em.”
“Leave her?” the other one said, gurgling, the phlegm in his throat bubbling as he wheezed and laughed. “How do we know she hasn’t, until we apply a little pressure...”
Upstairs, Silver was rigid with fear. She had been alone in the house when she heard Sawyer’s car arrive, and sprinted up into the bedroom. Now, with her ear pressed to the floorboards, she could hear every word below. Anyone else—Bad, Worse, even Coby—would have charged downstairs to help Terra. But Silver knew that it wouldn’t do any good. Terra could look after herself. She’d have to. Because there was something else that needed to be done.
As quietly as she could, Silver got up off the floor and went over to the bedroom window, peering out from behind the curtain and looking across the vegetable garden towards the woods. The boys were all out there with Ugly Pig, looking for Ben. She hoped beyond hope that they would not come back.
From below came the sound of a plate smashing on the stone floor.
“Think you’re tough, do you?” she heard Terra say, defiantly. “Threatening a woman who’s on her own? That make you a hard case, eh? Sawyer, call off your dogs!”
Silver winced silently for Terra. Holding back the tears, and breathing in deep, frightened gulps, she remembered what Terra had told them: Sullivan has a soft spot for me... That’s what Terra had said. Silver remembered it now, and she just hoped it was true: that Sullivan would never order his policemen to harm Terra.
This had just got very serious.
Then she saw them, out at the edge of the woods.
Worse was sprawled out on the ground, face down.
“Let... me... go, you creeps!” he hissed.
Nearby, Ugly Pig growled low, but stayed where he was.
Bad and Coby were on top of Worse, pinning him to the ground, Bad sitting across his brother’s back, an arm pressing his neck down into the grass, Coby struggling to keep Worse’s legs from kicking.
“Shut up!” Bad whispered, giving his brother a hard slap on the back of the head with his free hand.
“And stop kicking!” Coby said, in an even quieter voice.
The three of them, plus Ugly, had been on their way back to the cottage when they saw the black bubble cars. They were the same as the car they’d crashed down the ravine. Police cars. Melted men cars.
“Silver!” Coby had said, weak with fear, remembering that his sister was alone in the house.
They all looked. They couldn’t see Terra’s van, which was round the back.
“She’s there,” Coby said. “Look! In the window!”
There was Silver, up at the bedroom window, waving her arms, then pointing downwards.
“What does she mean?” Bad said.
Before anyone could answer, three melted men came out of the cottage, two of them laughing and slapping each other on the back. As soon as he saw them, Worse wanted to beat them up, pummel their fat faces until there was nothing left but a bruised, flabby pancake with eyes in it. He started to snarl, the muscles in his arms flexing. Bad and Coby held on tight, making sure he didn’t do anything silly.
“Let me at ’em!” Worse growled.
But Bad and Coby managed to keep his twisting, wriggling body pinned down, as the three melted men crammed their wobbling bodies into their cars, and drove off.
About thirty seconds later the boys burst in through the kitchen door. Terra sat at the table, her face flushed, her eyes swollen red. Beside here was Silver.
“Are you all right?” Coby said.
“Don’t worry,” Terra said, her voice quavering and weak. “Don’t worry. Nothing happened. I’ve had worse than this, a lot worse. Damn it!” She thumped the table with a clenched fist.
“What... what did they want?” Silver said, very gently, coming over and putting an arm around Terra’s shoulders.
Terra laughed to a herself, shaking her head. She looked up at Silver:
“They wanted you,” sweetheart. “They know something. And they want you. All of you.”
Silver, ashen-faced, turned to the others:
“Oh, my god. Ben.”
“Come on,” said Terra, jumping to her feet. “We’re going after him.”
The cottage then turned into a scene from a fruit and vegetable market, as they all helped Terra pack her van with produce. She normally made the trip westwards about once a week, taking whatever she had ready to sell. This time she’d have an extra cargo. Terra knew that Ben would have gone westwards. And that meant danger. The kind of danger Ben couldn’t even comprehend.
Crates of tomatoes and beetroots were piled into the van, along with sacks of potatoes and cabbages, everything stacked carefully so that the bodies of four humans and one mutant pig could be hidden amid the fruit and veg.
There was just one problem: Terra’s van was, well, was not very cool. It was sort of oblong, with windows along the sides, a bit like a miniature bus. It was a metallic pink color, and where it had rusted (which was more or less everywhere) the rust had been painted a dull red-brown. Not only that, things had been painted on it by hand: little smiling faces and wiggling worms and flowers and clouds with suns peeping over them, plus words like PEACE, HOPE, LOVE, TERRA’S VAN, and other stuff that they didn’t get, like FURTHUR, and TUNE IN.
“That’s not how you spell ‘further’,” Silva said.
Terra shook her head. “Long story... Anyway, don’t you like my beautiful van?”
They all stared at the sorry heap of rust.
“It’s...” Coby said, who for some reason thought he was the best person to explain the problem, “it’s... it’s just that it’s not very cool, is it?”
“What!” Terra shrieked. “Not cool!”
“Even the police car had more style” he added, rather hurtfully.
Clearly, Coby was not the best person to explain.
“Terra,” said Silver. “We’d never seen a car in real life until yesterday. But their favorite DVD,” she nodded at Bad an’ Worse, “is Fast and Furious, plus anything else with sports cars in it. And I watch a lot of old films, Bette Davis, Bogart, the classics, so we just don’t see many rusty old Volkswagen camper vans. It’s, ehm, it’s like if you don’t eat any meat for ages. You’re not going to dream about fried liver, are you? You dream about fillet steak. At least, we do!” she said, realizing that she’d only had steak twice in her life, the last time about four years ago when the one remaining cow on the Island had finally died.
“So my van’s like fried liver?” Terra said.
“Well it’s hardly fillet steak!” Worse said. “Anyway, what does it run on?”
“Electricity,” Terra said, as she slid open the door and pulled herself up into the seat. “Like everything else in this place. I change the batteries when I get to... the place where I sell the veg, otherwise I’d never make it back home.”
“What place?” said Silver.
“Don’t ask,” Terra muttered. “Come on, it’s a long drive
. It is in this thing, anyway.”
They clambered in the back. It was a squash. But somehow they all managed to fit in between the stacks of boxes and crates. Terra looked over her shoulder from the driver’s seat and nodded her approval: they were all hidden.
Terra started Fried Liver up, and they were off, in search of Ben Brewer.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The gates in front of him were massive, solid steel plates riveted together to form doors thirty feet high. He peered up at the flat, impenetrable mass of metal before him. There was no way in. He walked a short way along the fence. It was continuous, and impossible to see through, because between the thick, steel uprights there was heavy steel mesh, to stop even the smallest creature getting in. Or was it out?
He walked back to the main gate, wondering what to do. Then the gates began to creak. He jumped to the side and flattened himself against the fence. With a series of deafening groans and metallic screeches, the two gates opened on great steel rollers.
Holding his breath—although there was no need to, the noise all around him was deafening—he watched as a dark blue Jeep drove out through the gates and continued along the road at a steady pace.
He craned his neck and peeped inside the gates. There, just within, was a wooden shack. And looking out through a small, grimy window was the sneering face of a melted man.
The gates began to rumble, closing again, inch by slow, grinding inch. The melted man was still looking. Ben didn’t dare move. The gates came closer together. Then, at the last moment, the fat man looked away, satisfied that the entrance had closed successfully.
Ben threw himself forwards, getting between the two massive plates of steel a split second before they finally came together with a massive thud.
Panting for breath, he slumped down right beneath the window of the wooden guardhouse, thinking that from there the melted man couldn’t see him. He was inside. But what now? He tried to concentrate. It was no use, his mind was leaping with a thousand thoughts. Then he felt a big, hot, flabby hand grab his skull.