Islanders

by John Barlow

  The van emerged from the woods and came to a main road.

  “Is this the road from the coast, the one that goes into the heart of the mainland?” Silver asked from down on the floor behind the driver’s seat.

  “Yup,” said Terra, doing her best to sound cheery, but with a worried frown spreading right across her face.

  She floored the accelerator. The van jerked up to a moderate (but not very impressive) top speed, its old, converted engine whining with a high-pitched electric buzz.

  From the back of the van, Worse saw Coby’s head bobbing about between two trays of lemons. It was too tempting to ignore. Sniggering to himself, he looked around, found a box of cherries, and grabbed a handful. From his pocket he pulled out the catapult and, loading a nice, hard cherry into it, took aim.

  “Owe!” Coby said, rubbing his cheek, a moment later.

  He was about to complain to Terra, but he remembered the episode with the chunk-hens: she had been quite happy leaving him to fend for himself when the twins attacked. So, he took a nearby lemon and threw it straight at Worse.

  The lemon smacked hard into Worse’s forehead, knocking his head right back. Worse was astonished. Bad could hardly believe it either. No one ever retaliated with those two. Then, as delight spread across their faces, they seized hold of the nearest things to them: potatoes.

  “Food fight!” they howled, and prepared to launch their ammo.

  Terra slammed on the brakes. The van lurched to a juddering halt on the road.

  “What the...” Terra said, twisting round in her seat.

  Worse tried to hide the catapult, but they had all seen it.

  “Hey!” she yelled. “Where did you get that?” she demanded, her face red and blustery.

  “It’s mine,” said Worse, surprised by the sudden anger in her voice.

  “The elastic isn’t,” Silver said cleverly, her head popping up from between some crates of tomatoes just behind Terra’s seat.

  Everyone looked at Worse.

  “All right!” he said. “I...ehm, I sort of found the elastic on an old catapult.”

  “Where!” Terra shouted.

  “In the old stables. Next to where the pigs live. There was a storeroom...”

  “You went in there! You took my catapult?” Terra said, her eyes burning with fury.

  “I only took the elastic,” Worse said, shrugging. “Anyway, your catapult was pathetic. It was made of wood. Look,” and he held up the new catapult. “This is metal. A lot stronger.”

  Terra lowered her voice, but it trembled as she spoke. “Don’t ever go snooping around in there again, do you hear!”

  “I... just...” Worse began.

  But Terra was gripping the steering wheel, staring straight ahead as she spoke. “Don’t you ever go in there again, right? It’s out of bounds! What else did you see in there?”

  “Nothing, but, why...?” Worse asked. “I was only...”

  Terra, though, wasn’t listening. Something in the trees by the side of the road had taken her attention. Ugly Pig begun to emit a low, impatient growl, clambering up on top of the tomato crates and staring out into the woods in the same direction as Terra, his snout pressed against one of the van’s side windows.

  “What is it?” Silver asked Terra, straining to see.

  “It’s...” said Terra. “It’s nothing,” she said, as she prepared to drive off. “Nothing at all.”

  Terra took the steering wheel again, and off they went, with Ugly Pig still growling.

  Worse was now scowling at Coby, and rubbing his forehead. Coby avoided Bad’s eyes, but felt pretty good inside: he never knew violence could be such fun.

  Terra lit a cigarette.

  “And before you start,” she said to Silver, “I’m nervous, and it’s my van, and I’m older than you, and... and I’ll smoke if I damn well feel like it.” She flicked her lighter, and sucked in a lungful of tobacco smoke.

  “It’s your funeral,” Silver said.

  “You said it, girl!” Terra replied, and blew a cloud of blue smoke behind her, right into Silver’s face.

  “Anyway,” Silver said, leaning over the driver’s seat so that the others wouldn’t hear, “what did you see in the woods?”

  Terra’s head twitched, but her eyes never left the road.

  “I think we’re being followed.”

  Silver froze, as if her chin was stuck to the driver’s seat, as if she wanted to stay right there and cling on to Terra for all she was worth. Now, more than anything else in the world, she wanted to be back on the Island with her brother and her parents. She wanted to get off the mainland forever.

  Terra drove on, desperately trying to convince herself that she hadn’t seen anything in the woods. Silver was too afraid to say anything at all, and cowered down behind the driver’s seat, hoping beyond hope that they weren’t being followed. Meanwhile, in the back of the van, Bad was keeping Ugly Pig occupied by feeding him cabbage leaves.

  On they went, for almost an hour. As they went westwards, the earth around them gradually deteriorated. Soon there were no more trees. The lush vegetation of the east had gone, and now all the plants looked withered and half-dead. Terra explained all this over her shoulder, as matter-of-fact as possible. She pointed out the enormous dark gray cloud which loomed on the horizon, a great stain of pure contamination in the sky.

  “That’s Sullivan’s work,” she said. “And all this,” she nodded at the shriveled plant life around them, “is the filth from the power station and the factories. You know what the word ‘ecology’ means?”

  “Yes!” Silver replied, annoyed.

  “Well it’s just me and you! In this place no one does. No one cares what happens to the land, or the air. It’s being destroyed. The power station is making sure of that. It spews out more poisonous fumes than any living organism could tolerate. When it rains here, it’s pure acid.”

  Silver thought for a moment. “But,” she said, pausing between words, confused. “What about... about the people?”

  “What about them!” Terra said, sarcastically. “You’ll see ‘what about the people’ soon enough!”

  With that she shut up, and made it quite clear that she would tell them nothing else.

  Eventually they came to the crown of a hill. There, in the distance, was a city, still a few miles away, with that curious coil of murky smoke twisting upwards from its huge chimneys and into the blanket of darkness which hung in the sky.

  “Wow!” they all said, forgetting about being inconspicuous, standing up amid the boxes of vegetables and staring ahead through the windscreen.

  “Okay,” Terra said, stopping the van and turning in her seat. “That’s the Complex. I’m gonna explain the rules about the Complex. So listen up. This is more important than you realize. Okay?”

  They all nodded.

  “By the way,” Terra said, and put the van in gear, ready to move off as she talked, “who farted?”

  It was true. Someone had let one go, right there inside the van. They all looked around. Then they noticed Ugly Pig, his belly big and swollen, lying on his side in the back corner of the van, around him the scattered remains of many, many cabbages.

  “Has he...” Coby said, with a mixture of dread and disbelief in his voice, “has he eaten... all those?”

  Bad nodded slowly. At the back of the van there was not a single cabbage that had not had its darkest, bitterest outer leaves removed and eaten by that fat little porcine gas-machine, who was now pumped up full and ready to blow, big time.

  A moment later Ugly Pig’s intestines went ballistic. The poor animal had more gas inside him that a hot air balloon, all compressed into that small porky torso, which had begun to quiver and shake with uncontainable pressure. Now, after a few preliminary gusts, the whole lot began to escape.

  Bad ’n Worse, who were nearest, retched as the terrible stink cut into their nostrils like razor blades. They scrambled to their feet and opened one of the side windows of the van; they were
sensible enough not to open the back doors, just in case Ugly Pig was propelled by the force of his own rear end a hundred miles down the road like a four-legged torpedo.

  The sulfurous cabbage fumes soon permeated the whole van, accompanied by a growing, expanding rumble from the pig’s red-hot nether regions. In desperation, Coby held the billy can over his face, as if this would do any good. Silver, meanwhile, was trying to breath through her sleeve. But it was no use, the stench was unbearable, and it was getting worse, as the unfortunate animal leaked like a pressure cooker left too long on the stove.

  “Open all the windows!” Terra cried, as she wound down her own window and leant out. The reek was so strong that her eyes had begun to water.

  “Eugh!” Silver said, balancing with her stomach on the back of Terra’s seat, tipping right forwards and getting her head halfway out of the driver’s window. “I thought your cigarettes were bad, but this, boy!”

  “No time for jokes. Oh, oh, oh MY!” Terra gasped, breathing in too deeply, and immediately regretting it.

  All the van’s windows had now been opened, and the stink had begun to contaminate the air outside. There was not much of a breeze, and the disgusting smell emanating from Ugly Pig just would not go away.

  Finally, after what seemed like ages, the air inside Fried Liver began to clear. They relaxed, seeing that no one had been scorched to death with the vile gas.

  Ugly Pig was now completely deflated, and lay there like a popped balloon, quite obviously ashamed of himself. But he also felt, with a pig’s sense of justice, that this had not been all his fault. Who had given him the leaves? Who? Why, it had been Worse, his master! The poor animal shot angry glances up at Worse, who avoided his stares.

  Then there was a sound. A cough. One of those coughs that someone tries to swallow back down before it jumps out of their mouth, but doesn’t quite manage. Then, again, another semi-swallowed cough.

  Terra stiffened. “Get down!” she hissed.

  They slid back down into their hiding places.

  Before Terra could start the van again, there came another cough. Then another, and straight after it some shushing, followed immediately by a new round of coughing and spluttering. The noise was coming from the ground near to the road, which was covered with weedy bushes.

  Terra peered out across the bushes. Nothing moved. It seemed as if the bushes themselves were doing the coughing. Down amid the tomato crates, Silver was too afraid even to think. She pressed her face onto the floor, trembling uncontrollably, dust tickling her nose.

  Just then Terra saw something move. A brown, round-looking lump, rising jerkily into the air. Then another, a little further off. And another. Scraggy brown lumps, as big as dustbins... Before long a dozen of these big, brown, feathery mounds had sprung up, as if the land was having an allergic reaction to Ugly Pig’s cabbagy smell and was coming up in the most revolting, hairy acne.

  “What the...” she whispered. But then she began chuckling quietly to herself. “Emu bums! Tah, Tah!” she cried. “Wherever you are, come out!”

  A ginger beard poked up from behind one of the bushes. Tah held his long, thick beard up to his nose, using it like a mask, staggering to his feet, his thick little legs wobbly below his kilt.

  “Turn off the poison gas!” he shouted. “Turn off the stink bombs, or whatever you’ve got there. We come in peace.” He sniffed the air tentatively. “Agh, my word, that’s ripe! Brrrr! Terra, my girl,” he said, coming up to the window of the driver’s door, “that’s some good quality stun-gas you’ve got there. But, hey, save it for the enemy, why don’tcha! We don’t deserve that kind of treatment! Look at the poor birds! They’ve hidden their heads. Silly things, they think if yer can’t see it, yer can’t smell it! Emus, eh? Who’d have ’em!”

  “And what are you lot doing creeping around after me?” Terra said.

  “Just keeping an eye on you. And...”

  There was a sneeze. Silver had tried to stifle it, but a sneeze is a sneeze, and you can only push it back up your nose for so long. It was the dust, and she was helpless.

  “You’ve got passengers, I see,” Tah said, a mischievous glint in his eyes.

  “Ugh!” Terra huffed. “We’re trying to keep a low profile. Heading for the Complex, if you can believe that. Hey kids, come out! I think you already know the great and marvelous Tah!”

  “Have you been following us all the way?” Silver asked Tah, getting up from the dusty floor and forgetting about formalities like saying ‘hello’, or ‘how are you’, or any such thing.

  “Yes, indeed, Miss Silver,” Tah said. “We had a... ehm, a social visit from the melted men yesterday, asking about a certain band of rebellious children and whether we’d seen ’em around. They were quite rude about you lot, by the way. And very keen to find you all. Very keen indeed. Terra, I came by your cottage this morning to tell you, but you were all getting ready to leave. So, I got a few men together, and we mounted an invisible guard.”

  His face turned very serious. “Terra,” he said, “this is dangerous, you know. They’re... they’re in real danger. This is no joke, really it isn’t.” He ran a knobbly hand across his face. “These five are...” and he peered into the van, stretching up on his tiptoes to see inside the window. “Hold on! Weren’t there five of ’em?”

  “Number five is already in the Complex.” Terra said.

  “What!”

  “Don’t blame me,” Terra said. “He went off on his own. Wanted to see things for himself, didn’t he guys?”

  Tah just shook his head in disbelief.

  “Do you think he’s in danger?” Silver asked.

  “You can be sure of that, my dear,” Tah said, with large, sympathetic eyes. “You can be absolutely sure of it.”

  The other emu-lators now emerged from their hiding places, rubbing their eyes and wafting the air in front of their noses. Emu-lators have very sensitive noses when it comes to pig’s flatulence. But, the again, who doesn’t? As the short stocky men in kilts stood and stretched, their emus pulled their heads out of the holes where they’d thrust them to avoid the rotten stink of sulfurously-enhanced cabbage juice.

  “Well,” Terra said, “we’ve got no choice. We’ve gotta go.” She reached for the ignition. “Oh, by the way, Tah. You know that...” she lowered her voice, “these kids are from a settlement...”

  Tah nodded. “I’ve heard tell.”

  “After all these years,” she said, staring right into his eyes. “Val Brewer’s there. Stay close, Tah, stay close, my friend. Because you’re going. Once we’ve got Brewer-the-Second out of danger, you can make it to the Settlement. After all this time. Stick close, Tah, stick close.”

  She sent Tah a smile that would have broken the heart of anyone who had a heart: loving, protective, defenseless, strong, motherly, frightened... a smile with thirteen years of struggle and pain and intolerable misery behind it. She and Tah had shared that misery, the last members of the Underground who were still free on the mainland. Whatever freedom really meant.

  Terra turned the keys. But something was wrong. The engine grated and hummed, but finally died. Again she tried, and again, but each time the same electrical groan came and went, fainter each time, until in the end there was no sound at all. The battery was flat.

  “Damn and blast and cow crap chowder!” she said, beating her fists on the steering wheel. “I used up all the power looking for Ben this morning!”

  “We would offer to take you,” Tah said. “But it’s too dangerous. They’ll be keeping an eye out for emus, for sure.”

  He rubbed his chin.

  “Wait a minute! There’s the old hideout down here somewhere. About half a mile, right off the main road. Don’t you remember? Nobody ever goes down there. You can wait until morning, then walk.”

  “He’s right,” Terra said, turning to the others. “It’s gonna be dark before we can make it to the Complex on foot. And you do not want to be on these roads at night. Come on. Everybody out. Push!”<
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  Chapter Twenty-Five

  For most of the afternoon Ben wandered along the winding network of back streets on the opposite side of the Complex. Wherever he went there were the same crumbling, grotty houses, damp and stained with soot. The city must have been two or three miles across, with those four gigantic chimneys at the center of everything, belching out thick, acrid smoke endlessly. The smoke hung in the air, a kind of sour whiff, like vinegar, and beneath it the sickly stink of a damp fireplace. He had to cough into his hanky all the time, and his spit was gray, flecked with dust.

  There were a few people in the streets, although no one paid him much attention. They slouched as they walked, heads down, coughing and sniffling, their noses edged with redness. Perhaps they were just trying not to look up at the sky, which billowed with dark clouds and cast a permanent grayness over everything. He looked for someone with a kind face, thinking that they might take pity on him, help him to understand this place. But there were no kind faces.

  Several times he got as far as the metal fence that ran all the way around, its thick steel pillars strong and imposing. This wasn’t a city, Ben told himself, it was a cage. Plastered on the fence were posters and signs. MUTANT ALERT! one sign read, and beneath it the picture of a screaming man being carried off by a monster the size of a house. Other signs had black skull-and-crossbones on them, and underneath a list of reasons why you should not try to go outside the fence:

  1. Deadly mutants will trap you in their dens and eat your brains.

  2. Man-eating wolves as big as tractors will tear your arms off and suck out the juice.

  3. Swarms of five-foot spiders are constantly on the look out for YOU!

  There were stupid signs like these right along the fence, put there to scare people. Why, Ben asked himself? What kind of person would be taken in by all this? The mainland was strange, sure. There were bone-headed pigs and hens with big, snapping jaws. But hairy wolves the size of tractors?

  He thought about Pol’s brother. Of course! Children! The ones who’d been born here, who’d never been outside the fence in their lives. Those silly phrases would strike fear in their hearts, preparing the next generation for a life of unquestioning work, all of it spent within this mindless prison that Sullivan had built around his power station. The adults had been beaten down already. They had their Complex Spirit to drink and non-stop TV... The adults were exhausted, weary from constant toil. And the kids would go the same way.