Wicked Bindup

by Paul Jennings

  I felt the same way every time I pictured myself sprawled on the floor watching a dopey TV show while Mum was drowning. Chuckling my head off. Instead of hurling myself out the door and sprinting to the river and diving in and saving her.

  If only I could turn time back.

  But I couldn’t.

  All I could save now was her good name. And my memories of her.

  ‘Gramps,’ I said. ‘We’ve got to get Rory out of here.’

  Gramps looked disappointed. He was fiddling with the postage stamp machine in the hospital foyer. ‘I wanted some of that chocolate,’ he said as I led him away. Then he frowned. ‘Rory can’t leave, he’s sick. He needs to be cured.’

  ‘He will be, Gramps,’ I said. ‘But first we’ve got to find out what type of infection he’s got and I reckon the person to tell us that is Rory’s dad.’

  Gramps peered into the distance as if he was struggling with a memory. Perhaps it was just the chocolate.

  ‘I dunno,’ he said after a bit. ‘Doctors are the ones that know about infections. And vets.’

  ‘Gramps,’ I said, looking hard into his milky grey eyes. ‘I think Rory can help us find out about Mum.’

  Gramps’ wobbly jaw was suddenly set hard. ‘My daughter is dead,’ he croaked, ‘and I won’t hear a bad word against her.’

  ‘Me neither,’ I said. ‘That’s why we’ve got to get Rory out of here. You know how the infection is taking Eileen’s memory away? Well I think it’s bringing Rory’s back. He’s started having memories of being on the bus just before it crashed. If we can give him the chance, he might be able to tell us why Mum died.’

  Gramps’ eyes shone. Then his shoulders slumped. ‘It’s hopeless,’ he said. ‘This place is like a fortress. The staff have all got guns.’

  I reminded him about the difference between guns and pagers, then told him my plan. His eyes shone again.

  ‘There’s an op-shop next door,’ he said. ‘We can get the stuff we need there.’

  After we’d been to the op-shop, we waited in the hospital foyer until the nurse on reception ducked out to get some afternoon tea. Then we hurried along the corridor. I looked at the signs on the walls and doors.

  ‘What’s the word,’ I whispered, ‘for the place people are put when they’ve got an infectious disease?’

  ‘Dunno,’ said Gramps. ‘I’m no good at crosswords. How many letters?’

  I saw a sign on a side corridor saying QUARANTINE. It looked like the word.

  Small country hospitals like ours didn’t have many patients with infectious diseases, I could tell. The handwritten sign was one give-away. Another was the precautions they’d taken to keep the germs in. I’d seen on telly once how big city hospitals had double air-lock doors with a special microwave oven for your handbag. Our hospital just had big sheets of plastic sticky-taped across the corridor.

  Holding our breath, Gramps and I squeezed through the plastic. No alarms went off. We gave each other relieved looks. Then suddenly a trolley burst through a door. Wheeling it was a bloke in a white smock. He stopped and looked at us suspiciously.

  ‘What are you doing in here?’ he demanded.

  I turned Gramps around. ‘Come on, Gramps,’ I said crossly. ‘You know you’re not meant to be down here. The old people’s ward is the other way.’

  ‘Eh?’ said Gramps.

  I turned to the bloke. ‘After you,’ I said. ‘He’s a bit slow.’

  The bloke gave me a sympathetic grin and clattered off through the plastic. We waited till he’d turned the corner, then hurried on down the corridor.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said to Gramps. ‘You’re not really slow.’

  ‘That was a close one,’ said Gramps. ‘Ernie Piggot went on one of those trolleys and lost his prostate.’

  I took Mum’s shoe out of my shirt and held it out to Gramps. ‘Hang on to this,’ I said. ‘In case there are infectious germs in the air.’

  Gramps took it. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  We started peeking through the glass panels in the doors. The first two rooms were empty. Then someone called my name. ‘That sounded like Rory,’ I whispered. The door of a nearby room clunked shut. ‘In there,’ I said.

  We stepped into darkness. A tiny thread of sunlight peeped through the curtains. I could just make out the shape of a figure in the bed. I went over. Rory didn’t move. I gave him a shake. Instead of flesh and bone, all I could feel were folds of something soft.

  Skin.

  I gasped and jumped back. Oh no. The infection had done what the slobberers hadn’t been able to. Eaten out Rory’s insides.

  ‘Don’t look,’ I mumbled to Gramps, my head swimming with nausea and grief.

  ‘That’s right,’ said a voice. ‘Or the light’ll hurt your eyes.’ We spun round. A light blinked on and Rory stepped out of a little bathroom. ‘They’re just blankets,’ he said, pointing to the bed. ‘So they’ll think I’m asleep after I’ve gone.’ He sighed. ‘Except I can’t go ’cos they’ll recognise me. Every doctor, nurse and handyman has been sticky-beaking through that door at the kid with the yucky skin.’

  My heart had calmed down enough for me to speak. ‘It’s not that yucky,’ I said, which wasn’t true. I tried to ignore my neck cramp and all thoughts of curried-egg sandwiches. ‘Anyway,’ I went on, ‘we’ve got a plan.’ I handed him the op-shop bag. ‘Put these on.’

  Rory stared. ‘That’s a woman’s coat,’ he said indignantly. ‘An old woman’s coat.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Gramps. ‘It was Ivy Bothwell’s.’

  ‘And this,’ I said, ‘is an old woman’s hat. If you want to get out of here, put them on.’

  Scowling, Rory put them on. ‘This is pointless,’ he said. ‘They’ll still recognise my face.’

  ‘No they won’t,’ I said.

  Rory rolled his eyes. ‘You’re so dumb,’ he said.

  I took a deep breath. This was the riskiest part of the plan. ‘Not as dumb as you,’ I said. ‘You think the sun shines out of your dad’s bum, but a two year old could see he’s the evil mastermind behind everything that’s happened.’

  Rory’s eyes flashed angrily. ‘No he’s not,’ he snapped. His face was starting to change.

  ‘It’s obvious,’ I said. ‘Your dad’s using this infection to get back at you and Eileen for being in a new family.’

  ‘Bull,’ hissed Rory. Already he was hardly recognisable.

  ‘He’s out to get you,’ I said as harshly as I could.

  ‘Shut up,’ gritted Rory, furious. His face had crumpled into a creased, wizened mask of anger. In the hat and coat he looked like grumpy old Mrs Creely from the school tuckshop.

  I felt terrible that I’d done it to him. But this was no time for guilt.

  ‘Quick,’ I said to Gramps. ‘Let’s get him out of here.’

  I grabbed Rory’s overnight bag and turned the light off and we crept out and hurried down the corridor and through the plastic. Gramps was great, keeping an eye out for doctors so I could concentrate on saying awful things to Rory about his dad to keep him angry.

  Only once did Gramps lose it. Just as we were hurrying out to the car park, he looked at Rory, confused. ‘Mrs Creely,’ he said, ‘what are you in for?’

  By the time we got to Gramps’ car, Rory was back to normal. Well, as normal as a kid with a monstrous infection could be.

  He looked at me. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I know you had to do that, and I know you didn’t really mean it.’

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘Thanks, Gramps,’ said Rory. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’ He and Gramps hugged each other for a long time. I looked away. Sometimes, I thought, too much hugging goes on in this family.

  Rory suddenly had a thought. ‘I should say goodbye to Mum,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘That wouldn’t be a good idea.’ I’d had the same thought about Dad but it was too risky. ‘They’re in good hands,’ I said.

  Then I had another thought. I alm
ost kicked myself.

  ‘Worm Boy,’ I said. ‘You don’t know where your dad is, do you?’

  Rory stopped hugging Gramps. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You know I don’t.’

  ‘So how are we going to find him?’ I asked.

  Rory gave one of those grins small kids give when they’ve had a really good idea. ‘We’ll get ourselves a guide,’ he said, and then grinned even wider because I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. ‘If my mum infects something,’ he continued, ‘that thing will go straight to Dad, right? To try and infect him.’

  ‘Probably,’ I said.

  ‘So we get my mum to infect something,’ he said, ‘then follow it.’

  I stared at him. The germ was obviously getting to his brain. Even Gramps could see how dopey that idea was.

  ‘What do we follow it in?’ I said. ‘A helicopter? You saw how fast those slobberers moved.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Rory. ‘That’s why we need something slow.’

  He opened Gramps’ car door, groped around on the floor and held up the plastic box with the see-through lid.

  ‘Something slow like this,’ he said. Inside the box, the snail looked at us, bored.

  ‘Clever boy,’ said Gramps. I scowled. The trouble with old people was they were too easily impressed.

  ‘Two things, Wonder Boy,’ I said. ‘One, this snail will take about eighteen years to get anywhere. Two, it’ll infect every other snail it meets on the way.’

  ‘Not if we keep it in the box,’ said Rory. ‘The infected snail will be quarantined in here, and we can use it like a compass. Whichever direction the snail crawls, we drive.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ said Gramps. It was sickening. But I had to admit it was clever.

  Except for one thing.

  ‘How do we get your mum to infect it?’ I said. ‘We can’t just go up to her and say, ‘Excuse me, Eileen, can we put this snail on one of your scabs?’

  ‘You and Gramps will have to do it,’ said Rory. ‘I can’t go back in there.’ He sighed. ‘Do it gently.’

  I sighed too, for my sake rather than Eileen’s. Then I took Mum’s shoe back from Gramps and told him to stay in the car with Rory. No point in us both being arrested for illegally touching a public hospital patient with a gastropod.

  Eileen’s room was down the corridor from Rory’s. When I got there and peeked in, it was empty. I crept in, made sure nobody was in the bathroom, took the snail out of the box and started searching the room for blood samples or scabs.

  Nothing.

  Then I heard voices coming down the corridor.

  I looked frantically around for a hiding place big enough for a girl and a snail. The bathroom was too risky. Coffee drinkers always had over-active bladders. I climbed into the wardrobe and hoped Eileen wasn’t planning to change for dinner.

  I’d just got the wardrobe doors closed when Eileen and a nurse came in. Through the crack I saw the nurse settle Eileen into bed and give her a tablet. ‘This’ll help you sleep,’ she said. I hoped she was right. My heart was pounding and the snail was feeling very slimy in my hand.

  After about ten years, Eileen’s slow breathing told me she was asleep. I crept out of the wardrobe and checked her over. All her cuts and scratches were bandaged. I swallowed nervously. I’d have to make one of my own.

  I searched among the nurse’s stuff on the bedside table for a scalpel. Nothing. Not even a pair of scissors. Then I remembered something.

  Mum’s shoe had a loose nail in the heel. After a bit of a struggle I got it out with my teeth. It was pretty rusty but the tip was still fairly sharp. I rubbed it on my shirt so Eileen wouldn’t get tetanus and wondered if I could get it through her skin without waking her up.

  Eileen murmured something and rolled over. I could see her bare bottom through the crack in her hospital gown.

  ‘Sorry, Eileen,’ I whispered, and placed the point of the nail against her buttock.

  I couldn’t do it.

  It was dopey. All the times I’d imagined stabbing my step-mother, and now I had the chance I couldn’t even prick her skin.

  Then I remembered something else. Eileen’s feet. She was always complaining how her shoes rubbed her feet.

  Carefully I lifted the sheet at the bottom of the bed. Perfect. Raw patches on both Eileen’s heels.

  ‘Sorry, snail,’ I whispered and put it onto one of the raw spots. I’d never infected a snail before so I didn’t know how long it would take. I counted to ten, lifted the snail off, put it in the box, found band-aids on the bedside table, stuck one on each of Eileen’s heels and slipped out of the room.

  I hurried back to the car park with the world’s first living compass inside my shirt. I tried to forget that the snail clinging to the thin plastic next to my skin was infected. I tried to forget what that could mean.

  The whole way, though, I gripped Mum’s shoe tightly.

  Just in case.

  SEVEN

  I quickly changed out of Ivy Bothwell’s clothes. Then I hid inside the car with Gramps. There was no sign of Dawn. ‘I hope she hasn’t been taken,’ whispered Gramps.

  ‘She wouldn’t tell the doctors what we’re up to, would she?’ I asked.

  Gramps scoffed loudly. ‘A Finnigan would never go over to the other side,’ he said.

  We had to get out of the hospital car park quickly before someone saw me and took me back into the isolation ward. In the distance I could see men in white coats searching. There was no time to lose. ‘I’ll do one quick whip round the grounds,’ I said. ‘And then we’ll have to go without her.’

  Gramps nodded. ‘Watch out for sentries,’ he said. ‘And take these for the barbed wire.’ He reached down under the seat and handed me a pair of pliers. Poor old Gramps. He thought he was back in the war again.

  I slipped out of the car and started to run. Crash. I bumped into someone running just as fast in the other direction and we both sprawled onto the ground.

  ‘Idiot,’ said a familiar voice.

  It was Dawn. She rubbed her big backside and grinned at me.

  ‘Did you infect the snail?’ I said hoarsely.

  ‘The snail,’ yelled Dawn. We both looked around. The lid had come off the box and the snail was heading across the car park at great speed. I had never seen a snail move so fast before. It was really travelling. I jumped up and ran after it with the box. I grabbed the snail by the shell and dropped it back inside the container and shoved the lid on.

  ‘It must be infected,’ said Dawn in amazement. ‘A normal snail can’t move that fast. You shouldn’t have touched it.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘It’s after Dad, not me. Let’s go.’

  I grabbed the front doorhandle of the Morris Minor with trembling fingers.

  So did Dawn.

  ‘I’m sitting in the front,’ we both yelled at the same time.

  I couldn’t believe it. In the middle of all this excitement she was worrying about something as trivial as that. And I knew why. She was jealous of me and Gramps. We were becoming mates. And Dawn didn’t like it.

  Dawn shoved me aside and jumped into the front seat of the car with Gramps. Oh well, I still had my apple-man for company. And the snail for that matter.

  I shrugged and scrambled into the back. Gramps crunched the gears and the car lurched forward. Blue smoke billowed out behind us.

  ‘Which way is the snail headed?’ Gramps yelled.

  I stared down into the snail box. The snail was moving fast. ‘That way,’ I said.

  Gramps threw a glance over his shoulder. ‘North-west,’ he said.

  The snail reached the end of the box and stopped. I turned the whole thing around and the snail immediately turned and headed north-west again.

  Gramps accelerated noisily down the hospital drive and stopped at the road. ‘Now which way?’ he said.

  The snail was still headed north-west, which was lucky because the street ran in the same direction. ‘Turn left,’ I yelled.

  Gramps follo
wed my outstretched hand and the car lurched and swayed down the road. He was a terrible driver. He narrowly missed an old lady who was crossing the road. Then he stopped at a T-intersection.

  This time we were not so lucky. The road ran from east to west.

  ‘I don’t know which way,’ I yelled.

  Gramps stared down at the snail. ‘A strange compass,’ he said. ‘Must be captured from the enemy. It’s not one of ours. But don’t worry. They all work the same way. We just make every turn that takes us in the general direction. In the end we’ll get there.’

  Gramps lurched off to the right.

  I looked at the snail. ‘It’s so creepy,’ I said.

  We both stared into the snail box. The snail looked normal but we knew it was intelligent now it was infected. It moved too fast. And those eyes. They were big. More like people’s eyes. They swivelled on the end of their thin stalks. They looked back up at us. Filled with hate.

  Dawn thought about it for a bit. ‘All the infected creatures got smart,’ she said. ‘The sheep and the slobberers and the frogs. They all did clever things.’

  ‘It’s not the creatures,’ I said. ‘It’s the germs. The germs take over their brains. This is not really a snail any more. It is only the body of a snail.’

  I started to get scared. Very scared. ‘Hey, Dawn?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The frogs grew big.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘So did the slobberers. And the sheep grew steel wool.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So what’s this snail going to do? Why is it just walking around inside the box? Why isn’t it changing? Why doesn’t it try to get out?’

  ‘Because we are taking it to where it wants to go,’ said Dawn. ‘To your father. To the one next to you in the blood line. So it can infect him.’

  She was right. Or was she? There was something that didn’t make sense but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

  I had something else to worry about. The disease had infected me. And my mother. So what happened to the infected people? The virus fed on anger. We knew that. But in the end what became of the victims?

  I tried not to think about it. But I couldn’t help it.