“Well, that explains it.” He gave a weak laugh.
I wished he’d leave. I needed to be alone with my thoughts.
“Those guys who attacked you on Friday, who are they?” he asked.
“I told you to stay out of this.”
“Who do they work for?” He leaned against the wall beside me.
“Why, so you can take matters in your own hands? Ryan, these people are dangerous! If you go after them you’re gonna get hurt. Not to mention what they’ll do to my family in retaliation. If something were to happen to my sisters or mother because you got involved, I would never forgive you.”
“Brandon, will you just listen to me?”
“No!”
“I just want to find out who they are and what kind of operation they’re running. I’m not going to go up against them, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”
“You’ll tell the Custodians, yeah? Not happening.”
“You are so stubborn!”
“So you keep telling me.”
He sighed and his shoulders sagged in defeat. He glanced up the corridor towards our door. “Your sister in? I was kind of, you know, hoping to see her.”
“Which one?” No doubt he was referring to Karen. With her beautiful face, full figure and curls. None of which I had.
“You have to ask?”
“Karen fifteen, Ryan.”
“You serious? I thought she was seventeen. She’s a real stunner, you know. Probably turns all the guys’ heads at the Solidarity Festivals.”
My spirits sank. Some secret, inner part of me was hoping he would say me.
“But I wasn’t referring to her,” he continued, surprising me. “I meant Chelsea.”
“Chelsea, why?”
“I don’t know, she's kinda cool – I guess. I like how outspoken she is. And she's pretty.” He shuffled his feet awkwardly. My heart skipped a beat as an emotion I never felt before swept through me. He actually liked me – and for me, what’s more. I felt special, even desirable. Sadly, his perception of me was completely wrong. If he knew I was an accomplice to murder who refused to come clean because of how it would affect me personally, he’d change his opinion of me pretty quick smart. He’d be shocked, even appalled.
“She’s my virtually-identical twin sister, mate. You saying I’m pretty?” I asked.
“What? No! I mean–”
“Ryan, you’d better stop before you dig yourself into an even deeper hole,” I said, smirking.
“Right.” He laughed.
Seeing the hope in his eyes reminded me he was hoping to see her. “Give me a sec, I’ll see if she’s in.”
I popped into our room and closed the door, wondering what excuse I could use to explain my own absence.
“Finally decided to grace us with your presence, did you, Daughter?” Mother asked. She was still on that lousy chair, a pair of knitting needles flying in practised fingers. Would it hurt her to swallow her pride and use one of the chairs Ryan repaired?
“Just dropping by to see if you’re okay.”
“We’re doing just fine, can’t you tell?” Mother said.
I nodded. “Right. I’ll be back later, then.” I slipped back into the corridor.
The hopeful expression faded from Ryan’s face when he saw I was alone.
“Sorry, she’s off somewhere with Sofia, one of the residents here,” I said.
“That’s a shame. Hey, feel like pumping some iron?”
“Sounds good. Let’s go.”
As we left the shelter, I noticed Ryan holding his stomach.
“You okay?”
“Stomach’s felt better. May be coming down with something,” he said.
“Don’t go giving it to me.” Actually, Brandon and I had never been sick, not even a sniffle. But that wasn’t something to broadcast, as it could be related to our mutation.
“Actually, on second thoughts, better skip gym and go lie down.” He grimaced in pain.
“Okay. Need to see a doctor?”
“See one every day,” he said.
“You do?”
“My father’s a doctor.”
“Really? Nice for some.”
“Yes and no,” he said, and took his leave. I went back home to change so I could look for Sofia.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ryan didn’t turn up to work on Monday, having called in sick. I wasn’t overly surprised, considering what he was like the night before. The poor guy was probably at home puking his guts out.
As a result, I got to accompany the others for the whole day. Lucky me.
“Right,” Con said after we drove through the town gates. “Thanks to that informer’s absence–”
“He’s not–”
“Oh shut it, Brandon! Good grief, you’re like a broken record!” he snapped.
“Sorry.” I really had to let the matter drop, I couldn’t afford to get Con offside preceding the escape attempt.
“As I was saying.” A dirty look in my direction. “Since Ryan’s not here, we’ve got one whole day – maybe more – to prepare for the breakout without worrying he’ll see or hear something damning.”
“Into the city, then?” Matt asked.
“You got it.” Con floored the accelerator as soon as we were out of sight of Newhome, the trucking bucking over the cracked asphalt road.
I gulped but said nothing. Brandon had filled my dreams with nightmares of the horrors he saw in Melbourne’s CBD – the Central Business District – also known simply as ‘the city.’
As the city wasn’t far from Newhome, it wasn’t long before we were driving through streets lined with buildings towering high above us. There was little conformity in the structures. ‘Modern’ buildings sat side by side with more antique designs with narrow alleyways nestled between them. Often as not, the ground floors were retail stores while the levels above them were hotels or private accommodation. Tram tracks ran down the middle of larger thoroughfares, sometimes occupied by the rusting wrecks of the trams themselves.
Thanks to the nuclear bomb that hit the southeastern suburbs, shattered glass from windows facing southeast covered much of the roads and sidewalks. It was like looking at streets made of quartz that glittered in the sunlight. Nature was busily reclaiming the deserted streets too. Trees and bushes grew wild, claiming every square meter of exposed soil. Wild grass sprouted from every crack in the asphalt and concrete, while creepers attacked the sides of buildings, climbing many stories high in some instances.
We reached Flinders Street and drove east, following tram tracks while dodging abandoned cars and trucks. We passed an old, green copper domed railway station on our right that had a faded yellow facade and large clock. The archway entrance beneath the clock gave the impression of an ugly, yawning mouth, the shattered windows akin to broken teeth. I shuddered at the sight of the station’s darkened interior, so ominous, so uninviting.
Then I jolted, thoroughly sickened by what I saw next. Several bodies, including two Skel, were nailed to the wall beneath the station’s upper windows, arms spread wide as though they had been crucified. They must have been there for some time, for they were in advanced stages of decay, if not skeletons.
I recalled Brandon telling me that there were things – people – in the city that made the Skel seem friendly. No one had ever seen them, but corpses like these were nailed outside the five entrances to the City Loop underground subway and rail system. The message was clear. Stay out of the subway or end up like them.
It was assumed that the City Loop denizens only came out at night. For our sake, I hoped so. Actually, there was one forager who may have seen them. Brandon told me of a rumour that Ethan Jones went into the subway once when curiosity got the better of him. What he saw no one knew, for he never spoke of the experience afterwards. I suppressed another shudder. What were we doing in the city anyway? Surely there were safer places to go?
Leaving the station behind, we passed Federation Square, a large, open-air squar
e surrounded by buildings on three sides and paved with ochre-coloured sandstone blocks. The walls of some buildings in the square had the appearance of earth-coloured patchwork quilts. The steel struts of a large atrium looked strangely out of place with most of the glass panels missing.
I was most surprised when Con turned the truck off Flinders Street and into a claustrophobically narrow alleyway named Hosier Lane.
We drove slowly down the alleyway and my mouth dropped open in sheer amazement. The buildings on both sides of the lane were covered with the most stunningly beautiful, colourful street art. And what was just as amazing, it had clearly been restored, because it could not have survived a century of wind, rain and dirt and still look so vibrant, as though it had been painted yesterday.
There were words painted with a 3D effect, an elephant decked out with a golden crown and jewels, a skull, a wooden ship about to be grappled by a green and purple giant octopus, hideous monsters wrestling with oriental serpentine dragons, even lifelike busts of people painted on the windows behind inch-thick iron security grills.
Con parked the truck and we tumbled out into the street. I went over to the closest wall and ran my fingers over the street art. As I suspected, the images were free of dust and dirt. I glanced at my teammates, wondering who restored them, but immediately rejected the idea that it could be them.
“You calmed down a bit, buddy?” Jack asked.
I nodded.
“Con was about to throttle you yesterday, you know that?”
“Got that impression.”
“Be more careful, eh? You don’t want him offside.”
“I know.”
“Fair enough.”
“I wonder who restores all this street art?” I mused aloud.
“Duh - the Loopers. Scary thought, isn’t it. For a hundred years they’ve been crucifying anyone stupid enough to enter the subway, but at the same time, keep maintaining the street art.” Jack paused and looked at me quizzically. “Say, why are you asking me stuff you already know?”
I gave him a deadpan expression. “I wasn’t asking you, Doofus, I was talking to myself. Besides, we don’t know they’re the ones doing it, do we? No one’s ever seen them.”
Jack shrugged. “True enough. Still, the cans of enamel paint we leave outside the lab every now as peace offerings disappear pretty quick.”
“Hey, jerks! You coming or what?” Con bellowed.
We joined the other three, who were standing in front of a reinforced steel door leading into what used to be a bar or nightclub.
“Remember the password?” Con asked Matt.
Matt nodded and knocked a complex beat on the steel door.
The door swung open and a balding forager I’d seen once or twice stuck his head out. He was holding a double-barrelled shotgun, which was aimed at our heads.
“You’re not rostered on today.” He glared at us menacingly.
So this was the lab? Where they made the Elatyon drugs they smuggled back to Newhome. If I only had a bomb, I’d set it and blow it sky high.
“Come to grab some ordnance,” Con snapped back. “For the breakout.”
“Right. Carry on, then.”
The door swung open and we traipsed inside in single file. Stairs led both up and down, but to our right, double doors opened into a clean but currently unoccupied bar. It had a similar layout and atmosphere to the Foragers’ Club back home, so no points for working out who set the place up.
Going by the sounds floating down the stairs, the lab must be on the next floor up. I wondered who established it. It could not have been done without at least one person having the knowledge or experience of a pharmacist. The next question was why they stuck it all the way out here, right in the midst of Looper territory, but I guessed that in itself was the answer. From what I heard about the Custodians, they rarely ventured from Newhome, and when they did, they absolutely never came to the city. No doubt thanks to the horror stories propagated by the foragers. Stories which until now I listened to with a pinch of salt. Now, after seeing those bodies strung up outside the station, I realised they weren’t exaggerating at all.
Downstairs was a basement stacked with plastic containers and bottles of chemicals, as well as steel cabinets filled with guns and knives of all shapes and sizes, even C4 explosives. Seemed the foragers had been busy, collecting them and bringing them here. I thought it was dangerous to keep explosives beneath a drugs laboratory, but figured they knew what they were doing.
My companions grabbed a couple of bags and went through the handguns and boxes of ammunition. Feeling conspicuous standing still beside them, I let rip with echolocation to watch exactly how they checked the guns to make sure they still worked, and then did the same.
An hour later, we carted the bags upstairs, laden with two dozen handguns and ammo, and blocks of C4 explosives and detonators. They hid a couple of guns and the explosives in the secret compartment in the door of the truck. The rest would go to the secret cache we were building just outside of town. The explosives would be used to create the distraction on the night we escaped.
“Next stop, blankets and backpacks,” Con said once we were back in the truck.
“Have you decided upon the day?” I asked.
“Friday next week,” Con replied. “That gives us plenty of time to get everything ready.”
That news should have excited me, but all I felt was conflicting emotions. Relief to get my family away from this place, and overwhelming guilt for helping four murderers escape justice. Why did life have to be so complicated? Why couldn’t things just be black and white?
“How many foragers have come onboard now?” Jack asked.
“Twenty-four,” Matt said. “And about seventy relatives, mostly immediate family members. They won’t all turn up on the night, though.”
Chapter Thirty
A slightly thinner Ryan came back to work on Wednesday, saying he’d been struck down by a bout of gastro. Poor guy.
We had made good use of the two days he was absent. The cache hidden in the basement of an old grocery store in Ascot Vale was now stocked with a hundred blankets, boots and shoes of all sizes, several first aid kits, hats, backpacks filled with bottled water, and of course, guns. We didn’t spend the whole of each day doing this, of course. We still had to do our jobs and the truck needed to be filled with recyclables.
Now that Ryan was with us, we went back to foraging as usual, heading for a high-rise apartment block out past Essendon in search of plastics. The areas closest to Newhome had been stripped pretty bare by foragers over the decades, forcing us to go further and further out.
After a long and gruelling Friday, I was standing in the back of the truck, receiving folding plastic chairs from Jack as he passed them up to me. Ryan was still in the building, ripping plastic plumbing out of bathroom vanity units. Con and Matt were engaged in a deep-and-meaningful near the front of the truck, and my ears picked up when I heard Con quietly mention Ryan’s name. I plonked the next chair down quietly and focused on what they were saying.
“...those porn DVDs in Ryan’s backpack?” Con asked Matt.
“Yep. Stuffed ‘em at the bottom of his bag, under the spare t-shirt.”
“Sure he won’t find them?”
“Not unless he tips the contents of his bag out, and he’s never done that,” Matt replied. “But Con, isn’t this a waste of time? What are the odds the Custodians will run one of their spot checks today?”
“They will. I made sure of it.” Con sounded mighty pleased with himself.
“How?”
“A couple of hundred bucks in the right hands.”
“You bribed a Custodian?” Matt sounded shocked.
“More like a clerk – the one who draws up the Custodian duty rosters,” Con replied.
“But if Ryan really is an informer, won’t they let him off?” Matt asked.
“If the Custodians catch Ryan with contraband, they’ll have to arrest him. Of course, once they get him b
ack to the station they’ll let him go with a slap on the wrist. But it will still serve our purposes, because he’ll get the sack.”
“Right, got it. You’re one devious git, Con, you know that?”
“I do what needs to be done,” Con answered.
I stopped listening at that point, but my mind was elsewhere. Still adhering to their presumption that Ryan was a Custodian informer, they set him up. And Con was wrong, the Custodians would not let him go with a slap on the wrist. He would lose his job, get a stint in prison, and face a hefty fine. The dishonour could also destroy any prospects of him marrying well.
I had already seen what a short stay in a prison factory could do to an innocent man, and I could not bear the thought of Ryan turning out like my father did. Scarred, broken, a shadow of who he used to be.
I had to save him, though how, I had no idea.
I was just about out of my wits by the time we drove into the yard at the Recycling Works an hour later. Seeing a squad of Custodians searching the truck and gear of a foraging team that returned before us sent me to the verge of panic.
I had tried to get to Ryan’s bag after we finished loading the truck, but with Con loitering beside it, I had to abandon the attempt. When it came time to leave, Ryan had grabbed the bag and stuffed it between his feet in the front seat. As I was in the back, that was that.
“Great, it’s ‘harass the foragers’ day’ today, is it? Stupid gits, haven’t they got anything better to do?” Con said as he parked the truck beside the Custodian’s G-Wagon. I loved how he acted all innocent. Scumbag.
“Apparently not,” Matt replied.
I finally hatched a desperate plan that could save Ryan’s bacon, so I held my stomach and groaned.
“Brandon?” Ryan asked, concerned.
“Gut ache. I better not have caught this from you.”
Overhearing us, Matt and Jack clambered out of the vehicle as quickly as they could, eyeing me nervously. When I followed them and lined up beside Ryan, they stood on his other side.
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