Mutation

by Chris Morphew

  But she was drowned out mid-sentence by a high-pitched squeal from down the hall. Georgia came bursting through the doorway, squeezing past Lauren’s leg to get out of the house. Max was right behind her, swinging a little foam sword above his head. Georgia turned left and right, searching wildly for an escape route, then jumped up and started climbing me like a tree. Max ran circles around us, swatting the sword at Georgia’s ankles.

  ‘Help me!’ she gasped between hysterical giggles. ‘Help me! He’s gonna kill me!’

  I reached down and snatched Max’s sword out of his hand.

  ‘Hey! That’s mine!

  ’ Lauren raised an eyebrow at me.

  I looked at the sword, then shook my head and handed it back. ‘You be nice to my sister, okay?’

  ‘I am being nice,’ Max said. ‘You’re the one who’s being a stealer!’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

  It had been a stupid overreaction. But I was starting to feel like that was the only way I knew how to deal with anything anymore. This place was messing with my head. And having Georgia here in the middle of it all was like this constant weight.

  I had to protect her.

  But how was I supposed to do that when I couldn’t even keep my own brain under control?

  Georgia was staring up at me, brow furrowed.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing. Everything’s fine.’

  Sixty days, I told myself. Hang in there. Concentrate on the job in front of you. Concentrate on dealing with Tabitha –

  Georgia’s eyes went wide. She grabbed me by the shirt, shivering like she’d just stepped into a freezer.

  ‘Jordan,’ she whispered. ‘Who’s Tabitha?’

  I walked up the steps to the medical centre, Georgia’s terrified expression still burned into my mind.

  Tabitha.

  Had I accidentally said the name out loud?

  Couldn’t have, I thought. No-one else reacted. Just Georgia.

  And it wasn’t just the name either. She was afraid. Like she knew Tabitha was something dangerous.

  I stopped at the top of the steps, and turned instinctively to look back out at the town. Checking that the coast was clear, though I wasn’t even up to anything. My eyes passed over the Shackleton Building. I imagined Shackleton sitting up there in his office, tracking my every move, and my lower back gave another dull throb.

  The doors slid open to let me into the medical centre. Mum and Dad were standing in the middle of the waiting room, talking to Dr Montag.

  The doc tensed up as I approached.

  ‘Jordan wanted to sit in with us this morning,’ said Mum, apparently mistaking his frustration for confusion.

  ‘That’s not a problem, is it, doc?’ I smiled.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Montag, tightening his grip on the laptop under his arm. He looked back to Mum and Dad. ‘Shall we?’

  I started towards Montag’s office, then hesitated as the doc moved off in a different direction.

  ‘This way, please.’

  The doc led us across to the other side of the reception area, down a winding corridor, to a door marked STAFF ONLY. He pulled out a key and let us in. We headed down a flight of stairs, along another corridor, and finally stopped at a tiny room with nothing in it but a desk and a few plastic chairs.

  ‘I really must apologise,’ said Montag as he ushered us inside. ‘Maintenance are doing some work on my office today. Why they couldn’t have chosen a more convenient time is beyond me, but … Anyway. Please, have a seat.’

  He was lying.

  Why? What was his real reason for dragging us all the way down here? What was he about to do to us that he didn’t want anyone else to see?

  ‘What have you got for us, doc?’ asked Dad, chair creaking under him as he sat down. He reached across and squeezed Mum’s hand.

  Montag took a breath. ‘All right,’ he said, setting his laptop down on the desk in front of us. ‘As you will recall, Samara, this all began just over a month ago when you first came in to see me, complaining of, among other things, intermittent nausea and shooting pains in your stomach. We ran a series of tests at the end of which I informed you that you were five weeks pregnant.’

  ‘Doc, we already know all this,’ Dad cut in. ‘Why are you –?’

  ‘Because,’ said Montag delicately, ‘that assessment may not have been entirely accurate.’

  Silence.

  Montag waited, face all doctorly calm.

  ‘What are you saying?’ asked Mum.

  Montag turned to his computer and brought up an image of a little blob. Leaning forward, I could make out the shapes of a head and some tiny hands and feet.

  ‘This is an average foetus at nine weeks,’ said Montag. ‘The image is at actual size – something approaching two centimetres. Based on my original assessment of your pregnancy, we would expect your baby to be at approximately this stage of development by now.’

  ‘But …?’ said Mum.

  ‘But,’ Montag continued, ‘when I performed an ultrasound earlier this week, what I actually found was this.’

  The doc clicked to the next image.

  I jolted in my chair. Mum tightened her grip on Dad’s hand.

  The image in front of us had just exploded in size. We were now looking at a baby almost a quarter as big as the laptop screen.

  Dad’s face went cold. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ said Montag. ‘At the moment, all I can tell you is what I’ve observed: as of a few days ago, your baby is just over fourteen centimetres in length and weighs in at approximately one hundred grams – figures more consistent with a baby at fifteen weeks.’

  ‘You’re telling me I’m fifteen weeks pregnant?’ said Mum. ‘Surely that should have been –’

  ‘No,’ said Montag. ‘You’re not. And you’re not nine weeks pregnant either.’

  ‘But you told me –’

  ‘Samara, my estimates were based on normal rates of prenatal growth. But that’s not what’s happening here. Your baby is developing at remarkable speed. Somewhere between two and three times as fast as a normal pregnancy. You may actually have been carrying this child for as few as six weeks.’

  ‘Six weeks …’ Mum repeated.

  Which means she didn’t get pregnant until after we got here, I realised.

  ‘You’re serious,’ said Dad, shaking his head at the doc. ‘You’re actually – How? How is this happening?’

  ‘I’m doing all I can to find out,’ said Montag. ‘But this situation is completely unprecedented.’

  The room went quiet again.

  Mum’s hands moved to her stomach, like she was trying to shield the baby from what the doc was telling her. Or maybe she was just searching for something solid and real in the middle of all of this insanity.

  ‘What now?’ said Dad eventually.

  ‘Well,’ said Montag, ‘based on the current rate of growth, I’d say you’ve got no more than nine weeks before your baby reaches full term, which would put your due date somewhere in the vicinity of –’ He broke off, eyes flickering in my direction for just a fraction of a second. ‘– somewhere in the vicinity of August 13.’

  Mum and Dad just nodded, completely missing the weight of what Montag had just said.

  August 13.

  Day Zero.

  This baby was going to arrive just in time for the end of the world.

  Chapter 6

  MONDAY, JUNE 15

  59 DAYS

  I found Luke on the way into school the next day and filled him in on my impossible weekend. He listened to the whole thing without interrupting, although that may have been because he was too weirded out to speak.

  After ten minutes of talking, I looked up to find myself standing at the bike racks outside the front office. I’d hardly even noticed where I’d been walking. We chained up our bikes and wandered out to the quad.

  Luke leant back against the wall of the industrial art
s block. ‘Jordan, this is … insane. If you told all this to Peter, he’d say you were –’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘That’s why I’m talking to you about it.’

  Luke pursed his lips and my heart sank. If he didn’t buy it either …

  ‘Not that I don’t believe you,’ he said quickly, catching the look on my face. ‘I mean, after everything else that’s happened here … But this is –’

  ‘Ridiculous,’ I finished. ‘Even for us. Yeah. I know.’

  Luke craned his neck, staring out behind me.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing. I just – If Peter sees us hanging out like this …’

  I rolled my eyes, sick of tiptoeing around Peter’s stupid suspicions. ‘Let him see,’ I said. ‘It’s not like we’re even doing anything.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. I just don’t want him to –’

  ‘Don’t want me to what?’ snapped a voice from around the corner.

  Luke flinched, face turning red.

  Peter wheeled around the side of the building. I got the feeling he’d been waiting back there for a while now, choosing his moment to strike.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Luke again. ‘I didn’t mean –’

  ‘No, come on mate,’ said Peter, storming over. ‘Tell me. What’s gonna happen if I see you guys together? Huh? What am I going to do?’

  ‘Well, I was going to say react badly,’ said Luke, recovering himself a bit, ‘but since you’re being so calm about it all, I guess I was –’

  He broke off as Peter took hold of his shirt.

  ‘Oi!’ I said. ‘Pete, c’mon.’

  But I doubt he even heard me.

  ‘You reckon I don’t get what’s going on here?’ he spat, looking slightly crazy now. ‘All this stupid freaking don’t-tell-Peter crap?’

  Luke sighed. ‘Peter –’

  ‘No, you shut up and listen!’ said Peter, shaking him. ‘This is my fight too, and I’m bloody sick of –!’

  ‘ENOUGH!’ I shouted, grabbing each of them before things could get any more out of hand.

  Peter let go of Luke’s shirt, shoving him back against the wall.

  ‘You think this is helping?’ I hissed, lowering my voice so I wouldn’t be overheard by the kids who were stopping to watch us. ‘Three people against this whole town, and you want to start fighting each other?’

  No response from either of them. Not that Luke had anything to answer for, but right now taking sides was only going to wind Peter up even more.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d blown up like this. We’d all lost it at some point. Hardly surprising, given everything we were going through.

  But there was something different in Peter’s anger. Something out of control. And it seemed to be taking less and less to set him off.

  I let go of them both.

  Peter blinked, like even he was surprised at the force of his outburst. ‘Sorry,’ he said, finally. But he was looking at me, not Luke.

  ‘I need something out of my locker,’ I said, taking off towards the English block.

  The others followed. Peter sped up to walk next to me, and I noticed a smudge of brown on his collar. I looked down at my hand. Some of the concealer had smeared off on his shirt when I’d grabbed him.

  ‘We should track Jeremy down,’ I said. ‘See if –’

  ‘Shh!’ said Peter, putting his arm out to stop me. He’d stepped halfway round the corner, then darted back.

  ‘What?’

  But then I heard them. Hushed voices in the next corridor. Voices I recognised.

  ‘What’s the time?’ asked Cathryn, sounding anxious.

  ‘Twenty-one past,’ said Tank.

  ‘Check it again.’

  ‘We just did,’ said Mike. ‘It’s empty.’

  ‘Check it again,’ said Cathryn. ‘They said it was important.’

  ‘You think I don’t know that?’ said Mike.

  ‘Both of you, shut up,’ Tank hissed. ‘Someone’s going to hear us.’

  Mike sighed. He waited another few seconds.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Go on. Check it.’

  There was a clank of metal. I risked a look around the corner and saw the three of them crowded in front of an open locker about halfway down the hall.

  ‘There!’ said Tank.

  Mike’s hand shot into the locker and pulled out a yellowing envelope, sealed with black wax that matched his fingernails.

  I flinched as someone gripped my shoulder. Peter, leaning past me to see down the corridor.

  ‘That’s the locker!’ he whispered as Mike ripped the envelope open. ‘The one we caught Cat going through.’

  ‘Get back,’ I said. ‘They’ll see you.’

  ‘Yep,’ said Peter. ‘Reckon you might be right.’

  And then he was taking off down the corridor toward them.

  Cathryn saw him coming and clutched Mike’s shirt sleeve, colour draining from her face.

  Great, I thought, following Peter around the corner. And you say I’m the reckless one.

  Mike looked up from the letter in his hand. Without missing a beat, he slipped it back into its envelope, stuck it in his pocket and said, ‘Hey, Pete. What’s up?’

  ‘What’ve you got there?’ Peter asked, gesturing at Mike’s pocket.

  Mike’s head turned towards Luke and me. ‘It’s personal,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Peter, ‘I bet it is.’

  He lunged forward, knocking Mike back into the open locker and making a grab for the envelope.

  ‘Hey – Weir – c’mon –’ Mike grunted, shoving a hand up into Peter’s face. Peter turned his head, teeth clenched, still grasping for Mike’s pocket. ‘Tank! You want to do something about this?’

  Tank reached out and tore Peter off Mike.

  ‘Oi! Let go!’ Peter kicked and shook, but he didn’t have a chance. Tank was easily twice as big as him.

  Peter had left Mike half-sitting in the locker. His shirt pocket was hanging by a thread. Cathryn hauled him back out. It took some manoeuvring, bending down to reach him and keeping her too-short skirt in place at the same time.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Mike, picking up his sunglasses, knocked to the floor in the scuffle. He was angry, obviously, but for some reason he seemed to be trying to hide it.

  I looked down into the open locker. The panel of metal on the floor had come loose, bending downwards. It took me a second to figure out why the sight was so weird to me.

  Then it clicked.

  The locker floor was sinking down way further than it should have. Down into the ground.

  I brushed past Cathryn and Mike and stuck one leg into the locker, testing the floor with my foot. It bent up and down under my shoe, still attached to the walls on two sides.

  ‘Hey, get out of there!’ Tank ordered, still not letting go of Peter.

  I lifted my foot up off the locker floor.

  ‘Yeah, come on, Jordan,’ said Mike. ‘Just back off and –’

  I stomped back down again. The dislodged panel came away completely, sending a clang of metal echoing through the corridor. It tumbled downwards, through the floor, into a dark, narrow tunnel.

  It was a good five seconds before we heard the muffled sound of the panel hitting the bottom.

  Peter twisted under Tank’s grip. ‘What the crap?’

  I felt Luke behind me, stretching up to see over my shoulder, and I knew his mind was flashing with exactly the same images as mine was: the tunnels under Phoenix. The ones Shackleton and his people used to get around the town undetected. This had to be part of the same –

  SLAM!

  Tank shoved me aside and banged the locker shut, finally letting go of Peter.

  Cathryn looked terrified. Whatever all this was, it clearly wasn’t meant to be public knowledge.

  ‘You’re dead,’ said Tank, raising his fists. ‘All three of you. Come anywhere near us again, and I’ll –’

  ‘Tank, wait a sec,’ said Mike. ‘Let’s
not do anything stupid.’

  ‘Think about who you’re talking to, mate,’ said Peter.

  Mike grinned at him, and it looked at least halfway genuine. ‘You want to come hang out with us this arvo?’

  ‘What?’ said Peter and Cathryn at the same time.

  ‘No way,’ said Tank, whipping around. ‘He can’t! You know what they told us.’

  ‘Tank, shut up!’ Cathryn hissed.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mike. ‘I know what they said. Things change, though, don’t they? Specially around here.’ He shrugged. ‘Up to you, Pete. You ready to give a mate a second chance?’

  ‘So the tunnels mean they’re working for Shackleton, right?’ I said, my voice low as we crossed the busy food court at the mall that afternoon, keeping an eye out for Peter and the others. Mike’s sudden offer of friendship hadn’t included Luke and me, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t listen in. ‘Question is why? What are they doing for him that couldn’t be done by one of his other thugs?’

  Luke shrugged. ‘Here’s what I don’t get. If they are working for Shackleton, then why did Cat freak out so much when she caught us watching that DVD Bill left us? I mean, if she already knew what Tabitha was –’

  ‘Who says they knew about Tabitha?’ I asked. ‘Look at Peter’s dad. He had no idea what he was really involved in.’

  ‘Shh!’ Luke warned.

  Officer Barnett, the guard from Reeve’s funeral, was walking toward us, arguing with a small, skinny man with glasses: Arthur van Pelt.

  I dragged Luke sideways into a nearby booth, hoping they’d pass by without noticing us, wishing I’d been more careful. But what choice did we have? Speak in public and risk being overheard. Speak in private and risk Shackleton guessing what we were doing.

  ‘Sir,’ said Barnett behind me, struggling to keep his voice under control, ‘we’re talking about a few groceries. It’s not as though –’

  ‘We’re talking about four separate breaches of this building’s security,’ snapped van Pelt.

  They strode past our booth and I saw Barnett’s fingers clenching in frustration.

  ‘Yes sir,’ he seethed. ‘We’re working on it.’