Pandora Jones: Admission

by Barry Jonsberg

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Jen.

  ‘No,’ said Nate. ‘I’m not taking volunteers. Sam and Wei-Lin will go. A sense of direction and hunting, remember? It’s what we need right now.’

  Wei-Lin shook her head. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You can,’ said Nate. He cupped Wei-Lin’s chin and raised her eyes to his. ‘You saved our lives back there, Wei-Lin.’

  ‘I killed a man.’ Her voice shook and one large tear spilled down her cheek, splashed on Nate’s hand.

  ‘Yes, you did.’ Nate didn’t let his gaze shift from her eyes. ‘You had no choice. You know that, don’t you? No choice at all. And if the situation arises again, you will have to do the same.’

  ‘I didn’t think it would be so . . . hard,’ she said. ‘It was so . . . hard.’ Pan put her arms around Wei-Lin’s shoulders, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her body trembled.

  ‘If you’d found it easy,’ said Nate, ‘then I’d be seriously worried about you. But this isn’t over, Wei-Lin. Not nearly. We came through back there. I’m sorry, but now we need you to come through again. Food, kiddo. A bird, a mammal. Hell, a frog would do. But we need to eat and you’re the best person for the job. You must go out there.’

  Wei-Lin nodded. Then she laughed, but it came out wrong.

  ‘One arrow down. Only five left.’

  Nate mussed her hair.

  ‘Make them count, kiddo,’ he said.

  She nodded.

  Karl, Sam, Wei-Lin and Jen lay down and closed their eyes, though it was doubtful anyone slept. Nate sat cross-legged, staring in the direction of the village. There was nothing to see, even though they couldn’t have been more than ten or fifteen metres from the perimeter. But Pan knew he was listening. The silence of the forest was deep, and if anything moved out there, it was almost certain they’d hear it.

  ~~~

  After half an hour, Wei-Lin and Sam got to their feet. Wei-Lin seemed more composed, but her body was still tight and strained. Pan thought it would take a very long time before she was back to her normal self. If ever. Sam took the water canteen and Karl handed over the compass.

  ‘To help you find your way back to the village,’ he explained. ‘Be quick, okay?’

  Sam nodded and put the compass in her pocket. Wei-Lin checked her arrows, smoothing the fletchings almost lovingly. Then she hitched the bow over her left shoulder and they were gone. The sound of their departure was almost deafening and Pan felt her blood tingle in anxiety. But then all was quiet. She glanced over at Sanjit. The boy’s face was drawn in pain. He had torn strips from his shirt and bound his ankle tightly, but he was still pale.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said in answer to Pan’s unspoken question. If anything his voice was even quieter than normal. She smiled at him. Nate hitched himself towards her and brought his mouth close to her ear.

  ‘Do you sense anything, Pan?’ he whispered.

  She shook her head. ‘Where the hell is this place?’ she said. ‘And what are we really doing here? I mean, Gwynne’s story about possible survivors doesn’t make much sense. If that was the case, wouldn’t the helicopter have checked it out more thoroughly? I thought the search for survivors took precedence over everything. It just doesn’t add up – sending a bunch of inexperienced kids into a place like this.’

  Nate frowned.

  ‘I hear you,’ he said. ‘And saying he’ll leave us behind even if we’re almost at the rendezvous point? If you’ve only got ten thousand survivors, then putting some at risk – and not doing everything possible to rescue them if they’re in danger – appears illogical. Hell, I don’t know, Pan. All I can deal with is the immediate situation. I’ll worry about the rest later. At the moment it’s reasonable to assume that what we saw in the village was the aftermath of the virus and those guys chasing us are survivors. Maybe The School knew that. Maybe we were sent here to test our survival skills after all. You know, see firsthand what has happened to the world and have some experience dealing with the kinds of people who are left.’

  ‘But you said it, Nate,’ said Pan. ‘That’s an unacceptable gamble given there are so few of us. No, it’s all wrong. I know it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘A couple of things. First of all, why did those people attack us? I mean, come on, Nate. Assume you are a survivor of a horrendous virus that has wiped everyone out. As far as you know, there is only a small band of survivors. Then, suddenly, you see a group of seven kids, alive. Why attack? You’d think the first reaction would be to hug people rather than try to kill them.’

  Nate scratched his head.

  ‘Yeah, but that’s assuming they’re normal and reasonable people. Maybe living through all that, seeing your friends and family die, would change you. Fundamentally. Perhaps they’ve regressed, become militant survivalists willing to attack anyone they perceive as a threat. People who would sooner shoot than talk under the best of circumstances. After all of this . . . I dunno, Pan. It’s bound to screw with your mind.’

  ‘All of their minds?’ asked Pan.

  Nate shrugged. ‘Maybe. I read a book in high school. Lord of the Flies. These kids are marooned on a desert island and although they try to stay civilised it all turns to shit in no time. They kill each other; do the nastiest stuff for no reason other than the desire to hurt. And from what I remember, that was the point the book was making. We think we are civilised, but when the restraints of civilisation are removed, we find the animal in all of us isn’t buried deep at all.’

  ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘No. There’s no way you’d have read a book in high school.’

  Nate laughed and then choked it off. ‘Maybe I dreamed it. Or watched the movie,’ he said. ‘So, what else?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said a couple of things. What’s the other?’

  Pan ran a hand through her hair. It felt grainy and matted.

  ‘Statistics,’ she said. ‘The maths don’t add up.’

  ‘The math? What do you mean?’

  ‘The School told us that billions died from the virus and only ten thousand survived.’ She put up her hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘Hey, I can’t work out the percentages, but it’s tiny, all right? The ratio of survivors to fatalities. But that village we saw. It had, what, seven or eight bodies?’ She remembered the man in the bed and the spume of blood arching through the air. Pan shivered. ‘And the people chasing us. Ten of them, right? If that ratio holds good that would be the survival rate in a city of many millions. Okay, we don’t know what may lie a kilometre or two down that track, but I seriously doubt we’ll stumble on New York City. How do you explain so many survivors?’

  Nate chewed on that for a few moments, his brow furrowed in concentration. Then he shrugged again.

  ‘Maybe most of them are still going to die. Maybe they joined up from a much larger area. Maybe this is all of the survivors from a radius of two thousand miles around. I don’t know, Pan. And you don’t either. We don’t have enough information.’

  Except she did know. There was something very wrong about this place, this situation, but all she had were feelings. Feelings and a few dubious statistical ideas probably based upon fundamental misconceptions.

  There was a rustle close by and she stiffened. Before any of the group had a chance to react, Sam and Wei-Lin entered the clearing. Pan was impressed. She hadn’t heard anything until they were right on top of them. The two girls sat down close to Nate.

  ‘How did it go?’ he asked.

  ‘Water okay,’ replied Sam. ‘We found a stream maybe half a kilometre from here. Clear running water.’

  ‘You checked upstream?’

  ‘As far as we could and we didn’t find any bodies. But, as you know, we can’t be certain that there wasn’t pollution further up. Not unless we traced the stream back to its source and that simply wasn’t practical.’

  Nate rubbed at one eye. ‘I guess those survivors must have a decent water supply. Maybe
that’s why they stayed around here, so your source might well be good. Whatever, we can’t be certain. Perhaps we should boil it.’

  ‘I drank at the stream,’ said Wei-Lin. ‘Tasted good to me and I’ve had no reaction in the last half hour.’

  Jen grabbed the water canteen from Sam’s hand and unscrewed the cap. She sniffed the contents and then took a small sip, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and passed the canteen on to Sanjit.

  ‘No guarantees in this situation,’ she said. ‘It’s all a risk and we have no means to light a fire and boil it. Not while those guys are out there and looking for us. Way too risky.’

  Nate shrugged. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said. ‘But drink slowly, guys. Sip, don’t gulp. Every time we have to refill this we are exposed, and I want to keep that to a minimum. What about food?’

  Wei-Lin frowned. ‘Not so good on that account,’ she said. ‘We didn’t see any animals. Heard scuffling, but that was all. I looked out for birds as well. Saw a few, but they were out of my range. Sorry, but I reckon it’s the nature of forests. Everything avoids you when they hear you coming. Maybe if we had some traps . . .’

  Nate spread his hands. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘We’re not exactly well-equipped. But there must be something to eat in this goddamn place.’

  ‘We found berries,’ said Sam. She unknotted the jacket she was carrying over her shoulder. ‘Some kind of blackberries. A few had been pecked at by birds, so we figured they must be good. I had a couple and they are slightly bitter, but okay.’ She unrolled the jacket to reveal maybe a couple of kilos of berries in the centre. They looked like hard red knots of blood. ‘Better than nothing,’ she added.

  They divided the berries between them, but Pan couldn’t eat half before she felt slightly nauseous. She gave the rest to Sanjit who had regained some colour, though his face was still drawn in pain.

  ‘How’s the ankle?’ she asked.

  He gave a wry smile. ‘Okay if I don’t put weight on it.’

  ‘And if you do?’

  ‘Not okay.’

  ‘Just rest it, all right?’

  Sanjit put his head down again. Pan wondered how he had coped with The School’s regime. There was much about him that reminded her of Cara – a loner, lost in his own thoughts, inadequate in the skills The School valued most: physical fitness and psychological strength. What kind of horrors had he been through and what depths of loneliness had he plumbed? Pan remembered how she had let Cara down, had not been a good enough friend. Or, indeed, any kind of friend at all. She resolved that this could not, would not, happen to Sanjit. She shivered. One of us will not return to The School.

  ‘I’m a burden,’ said Sanjit as if reading her mind. He didn’t meet her eyes, but examined the ground beneath his splayed legs. ‘I fell and put the rest of you in danger. And someone died as a result. Now I can’t move. It would have been best if you’d left me there. Maybe it’s best to leave me now.’

  Pan framed the words, but stopped them in time. You are not a burden and it would not have been best to leave you. The words were patronising and they wouldn’t fool him. What would keep them together was honesty, and anyway, he deserved that much.

  ‘Yes, you are a burden now,’ she said. ‘But that ankle injury could have happened to anyone. It wasn’t your fault. To leave you would have been wrong. To leave you now would be inhumane. We are a team and we do not leave anyone behind.’

  He glanced up at her then and smiled. But it was a difficult smile to read.

  ‘Just rest,’ she said again. She squeezed his shoulder and returned to Nate’s side.

  ‘Sanjit can’t move yet,’ she said. ‘He can’t put weight on that ankle.’

  Nate nodded. ‘I figured. Look, I think it would be a good idea to stay here overnight anyway. We have no idea where those men are and there seems no compelling reason to move. It’s not like there is a specific mission we have to achieve.’ He sighed. ‘Roaming around for the sake of it is dangerous. I’ll talk to the others, see what ideas they have, but that’s the way I’m thinking.’

  ‘He might be better in the morning. I don’t think he’s broken anything. Rest is all he needs.’

  Nate nodded and got to his feet in one fluid movement. He went to each of the group and whispered in their ears, listened to their responses. Finally he came back and sat down at Pan’s side.

  ‘It’s agreed. No one is happy about it. Like me, they prefer action to inaction. But no one could suggest a better alternative. I’ve told them to sleep. We are all running on adrenaline and it’s not just Sanjit who needs rest. I’m taking the first watch. Jen insists on taking the second.’

  ‘I’ll do the third,’ replied Pan.

  ‘Okay. In the meantime, get some sleep.’

  Right, thought Pan. I’m freezing, my clothes are damp, my stomach is empty and we are being hunted. Not the best conditions for sleep.

  She fashioned a makeshift pillow from the rotting leaves and twigs that littered the forest floor. The ground was hard and lumpy and something dug painfully into her side. Shifting position did nothing to relieve the discomfort. She curled up, sighed and closed her eyes. It was hopeless, she decided. But sleep plucked her almost instantly.

  And she dreamed.

  ~~~

  At first she dreamed of Cara. Cara was running around a track at The School, far behind Pan. Cara was crying out, but Pan couldn’t hear the words. The wind picked up the sound and swept it away. Pan slowed to allow Cara to catch up, but every time she looked over her shoulder the distance between them was increasing. Eventually she stopped. But, although Cara continued to run, she continued to recede. She was waving, gesticulating wildly. Her urgency was palpable. Yet Pan could only watch as she steadily shrank. Eventually, Cara disappeared from view and all sounds, apart from the moaning of the wind, faded and died. When Pan turned back she saw Cara’s diary at her feet. She picked it up. Cara’s name was written on the cover in large, childish script. Pan opened it to the first page. HELP ME was written in crayon, but as she watched, the crayon’s colouring changed, became deep red and liquid. The letters dripped down the page, the word melting into blood. Pan watched as her hands were stained.

  The image changed and she found herself in the group as they ran through the forest. Pan jogged behind Nate and she could see Sanjit’s face as he bounced on Nate’s shoulder. His eyes were wide open and he was mouthing something at her. She edged closer to catch his words. ‘Read my journal,’ said Sanjit. ‘Read my journal.’ He said it in barely more than a whisper but his eyes implored her with an urgency that belied the softness of his speech. ‘Read my journal.’ Pan nodded and he smiled, but he did not stop his repetition of the words. Nate turned and it wasn’t Nate at all. It was the man Wei-Lin had shot. His beard was badged with blood and Pan could see the arrow head jutting through his neck. The man smiled at her through blood-stained teeth.

  Then the scene shifted again and Pan was back in her recurring dream. She was in the police car and a handcuffed man was being brought towards her.

  ‘Don’t bring him here,’ she yelled. ‘Please. Don’t let him anywhere near me.’

  The female police officer slid into the back seat next to her.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘He’s cuffed. See? And we’ll put him in the front. He can’t get to you. You’re safe.’

  But Pan didn’t feel safe. The closer they got, the less safe she felt. The man was crouched over in pain. His eyes were red, inflamed and puffy. But the officer with the moustache was not being gentle. He gripped him tightly, pulled him around to the passenger side of the police car, placed his hand on the man’s head and thrust him into the seat. Pan shuddered. The officer closed the door and walked around to the driver’s side. He got in the car, belted himself in, turned to the prisoner next to him.

  ‘You have the right to remain silent,’ he said. ‘But anything you do say may be taken down and used in a court of law. Do you understand?’

  The man nodded. Pan
was grateful she couldn’t see his face. The car pulled away, lights still flashing. The driver turned his head and smiled at Pan in the back seat. A gold tooth glinted.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to say that,’ he said.

  And the sense of wrongness flooded over Pan again. Perhaps she had simply been too traumatised to notice properly, her instincts, her gift buried beneath adrenaline and pain. But now it swamped her, screamed in her mind, twisted her gut. Police officers didn’t use those words when they arrested someone. That was old-fashioned. Like something out of an 80s TV series.

  ‘How did you know I sprayed his eyes?’ she asked.

  But she knew the answer already. Her sense of the wrongness of the situation heightened. Part of her had known from the moment she had seen the police car. The police were not here to save her. Pain flashed in her left thigh. It was intense. But all pains were intense now. She glanced down at the syringe in her leg. A numbness was spreading through her body. It was a beautiful numbness. It filled her, took away pain. The sunlight changed, became buttery. Colours flashing past the window melted together. Even the words of the others in the car, when they came, were cool, wrapped in cotton.

  ‘Take these cuffs off.’

  ‘Not yet. You don’t deserve it.’

  ‘The bitch sprayed me in the eyes.’

  ‘Good. I hope it hurts.’

  ‘It stings like hell.’

  ‘You have any idea what a cock up this whole operation is? Have you? Ten agents. To get one schoolgirl. And you failed. A whole street in uproar. Dozens of witnesses. I have no idea how this mess is going to be cleaned up. But I have a fair idea of what our superiors are going to say. This is a disaster and you are responsible.’

  ‘We got her.’

  ‘I got her.’

  ‘I need to wipe my eyes.’