by Sara Grant
When she reaches the base of the Mountain she keeps running towards Vega. She wishes she could run away from her responsibilities, but she’s learned no one can survive alone out here. She jogs through the endless maze of houses.
She hears laughing. It’s that sickening bark her brothers make when their mouths gape and their fingers point and their fat bellies jiggle. She cups her hands around her mouth and calls, ‘Joe! Bungle! Tinker! Buzz! Time to go!’
Four boys twice her size come rushing towards her. The layer of dirt that perpetually covers them makes them almost indistinguishable from one another.
‘Hi, Greta!’ Bungle says with a wave.
‘What took you so long?’ Buzz asks, and shoves her into Tinker.
‘Hey!’ Tinker shouts, and pushes her into Joe.
Buzz, Tinker and Joe jostle her between them while Bungle punches each one in turn, yelling, ‘Cut it out! Leave her alone!’
This type of teasing is new. They think she doesn’t see their new-found interest in her recently developed body. She used to be one of them but now she’s different, and there’s a new awkwardness among them.
‘It’s all right,’ Greta says to Bungle. She dives under Buzz’s arms and outside of the circle. ‘Let’s go,’ she says, and takes off at a brisk pace. ‘We need to get back before it gets dark.’ She can hear them arguing and then there’s the distinct sound of fist hitting gut. She doesn’t turn around. She’s through with their silly fights.
Bungle strides up next to her. ‘Don’t worry about them,’ he says.
‘I don’t. I do worry about you.’ She rams her shoulder into his and he knocks her right back. ‘What did you guys do besides wait for me?’
‘Nothing,’ Bungle says, glancing back at the other three. ‘Tinker and Buzz saw how far they could throw stuff. Joe chased after those lizard things.’
Greta shouldn’t be surprised by their lack of brain function, but she is. Most days a pile of rocks would be more interesting than those three. The roar and scramble increases and soon Joe, Tinker and Buzz are barging into Greta and Bungle as they pass.
‘So, Greta, what did you find on the mountain?’ Tinker asks, walking backward.
‘Nothing,’ she says. Da is the only one she’s told about seeing Beckett and the girl. She’s supposed to determine if they are a threat or an asset. Da can’t leave anyone alone.
‘That smoke every night isn’t coming from nothing,’ Buzz says. ‘Da’s just going to send us back until we figure it out.’
She knows he’s right. Next time she’ll convince Da to let her come alone. She doesn’t need their protection or disruption. They don’t know she’s sneaked here once before and, if she needs to, she’ll sneak out again.
‘Maybe I should go to the mountain,’ Tinker says, and stops. ‘I will find the source of the smoke.’
‘You wouldn’t know what to do if you found someone.’ She speaks too fast. It’s too important. ‘You can’t go to the mountain. Da sent me.’
‘He sent us,’ Tinker says, puffing himself up. ‘I can make first contact too, you know.’
She changes tactics. ‘Tink, you’re too big and scary.’ And he is. She hadn’t really noticed before how much he’s grown. He’s always been her stupid younger brother, but he’s already as hairy as Da, and she could hide in his shadow.
‘I guess you’re right.’ Tinker smiles a toothless smile and some of what makes him scary fades away.
Maybe that is why Da sends her. She doesn’t look intimidating, but she’s tougher than any of her brothers. They don’t mess with her, not really. All she needed to do was to give Buzz one swift kick between the legs the first time he knocked her down. The others saw it and knew she’d do it again.
The closer they get to Vega the tighter the buildings are packed together and the higher they climb. She can’t believe that all these buildings used to have people in them. How did the world work with all those bodies crashing into one another? Even now, she feels trapped by the walls of her new home. Da claimed a building near the centre of Vega. He liked that it was shaped like a big X.
Greta doesn’t understand the ways of all the other people who have joined them. There’s one family that only comes out at night. Another is trying to grow things on the roof of their building. She tried to tell them they’d have to cart water all the way up there, but they don’t seem to mind. One family prefers to live in the basement. They’ve all survived, but in very different ways.
Greta’s family searched for six years before they settled on Vega. Da plans to set up lookouts on each of the mountains. He’s trying to organize everyone. He says the only way they will survive is to work together. He says they need to play to their strengths. The group he calls the Fighters stand guard. They’d as soon punch you as look at you.
Greta’s family are Gatherers. She and her brothers zigzag through streets they haven’t travelled before. Tinker, Buzz, Joe and Bungle can’t help but explore the buildings and come out with broken bits and pieces.
‘We can use this!’ Tinker says of a scrap of material with plastic loops clinking together on one end.
‘Look at this!’ Bungle shows Greta a metal pot with a broken handle. That is a rare find. Over the years these buildings have been picked clean like sun-bleached bones long after the vultures have stopped circling, but her family has discovered where people hid things way back then. They know how to take other’s leftovers and build something new.
Greta calls to her brothers and keeps them moving. Without her they would get lost, wandering aimlessly, picking at shiny things like raccoons.
She runs the last mile to the heart of Vega. She wants to reach Da first. Da’s standing on a glass bridge near the X building. He can see down the streets and keep an eye on everyone bustling about.
‘Hey, you!’ he shouts, and points his fat finger at a red-headed man who is piling wood for a fire in the middle of the street. ‘Dig a trench so the fire doesn’t spread. We want it to be seen but not burn the place down.’
The man nods.
‘Are we going to have enough torches?’ he yells at a blonde woman wrapping scraps of material around thick branches.
‘I’ve sent Aaron and Blue to get some more,’ she yells without looking up at him.
‘I want more lights in those buildings. I expect the Coasters and Valley folks to come soon. We need to make sure they can see our lights no matter which direction they come from.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ the woman says. ‘You told me already.’
Greta climbs the stairs and surprises Da with a hug. He shrugs her off. She places a kiss on his cheek and gets a rare smile from him. He makes a big show of wiping his cheek. ‘About time you and the lazy creatures returned.’
They stand and survey what he’s built. At last count, Vega’s population had grown to nearly two hundred. But it is hard to keep track. Some people keep to themselves and more people sneak in and out every day.
‘Will we raise the fires tonight?’ Greta asks. The last time was magical. Vega was cold and lifeless and then everyone lit their torches at the main fire and carried their lights into the buildings. The Messengers taught everyone the words to a lullaby of light, and the song seemed to glow in the flickering flames. Da doesn’t realize he’s humming it now.
‘Not tonight, Greta, but soon,’ he tells her, and then yells to her brothers, ‘Take your finds to the Collectors and help them organize the supplies.’ Her brothers are laden with treasure. Bungle has loaded everything he scavenged in a big blanket and is carrying it over his shoulder like a Traveller. The others haven’t been so thoughtful and have to stop every few feet to pick up what one of the others has dropped. Da and Greta share a laugh at their crazy procession.
‘So, my darling daughter,’ Da turns his full attention to Greta, ‘what did you discover on that mountain of yours?’
Lying to Da isn’t easy – or advisable. ‘I need more time. There are people who live on the mountain, but I need to find out mor
e.’ She makes up her response as she goes along. She must give him a good reason to let her continue her contact. ‘They may have valuable knowledge about how to survive in this area. But they are as wary of me as we are of them.’
‘Did you meet with the leader?’ Da asks this because it was his instruction.
‘I am learning about their culture from a boy who is about my age. The more I learn, the better equipped I will be to introduce you to their leader. As you say, patience leads to power.’
‘A boy,’ he says, and raises one eyebrow. She blushes. He knows. He always knows. ‘I trust you, Greta. You are going to lead us one day.’
They look out over Vega and she can see Da’s vision. The city is coming to life again. Da said Vega once had millions of people living here. One day this place was alive with light and life – or so the story goes – and the next day everyone in it was dead. Greta thinks he exaggerates.
Greta’s ancestors survived because they lived on a farm miles away from anyone. Da says they can be stronger by joining with other survivors. He has the battle scars to prove that not everyone wants to rebuild what was broken so long ago. The people who survived the plague and the wars were outcasts in one way or another. Greta was starting to feel she didn’t belong – not with Da and his quest to conquer and not with her brothers, who were happy to follow orders. She’s never had someone to talk to, someone who wasn’t related or scared of Da. But since meeting Beckett, for the first time in a long time, she doesn’t feel so alone.
Chapter Eight
I stared out of the wall of windows overlooking the runways. Normally planes would be criss-crossing the sky like some airborne x-y graph. But all the aeroplanes were parked in neat rows. The airport terminal had grown strangely quiet.
I felt as if I was on the edge of my seat, but my seat was dangling by a dreadlock over the Grand Canyon. It was like a google times worse than the feeling I got when I watched horror movies. My insides were bunched up and a primal scream was permanently wedged at the back of my throat. All that was missing were those screeching violins. But I couldn’t cover my eyes or switch off the TV. This horror story was my life.
I had to get out of here. I followed the exit signs. My spine felt as if the vertebrae were being crushed under the weight of my backpack. A queue of people stretched through the sliding doors that led outside and slithered around a maze of barricades. They were checking and double-checking their phones. They all kept their heads down and their eyes averted. Women rummaged in their handbags. Businessmen removed their jackets. Kids my age bobbed their heads in prayer to the iPod gods.
Everyone was trying to act natural but tension sparked in the air. No one had any info about what was happening. It was as if everyone knew this was a Darwinian test on a massive scale. Survival of the fittest. When I did inadvertently make eye contact, people’s eyes were glazed with panic and their faces were tight, nearly twitching with fear. It felt as if one wrong word would transform this tenuous order into disaster-movie chaos.
Up ahead a vision in pink was jumping and waving wildly. It took me less than a second to recognize the bald head, the ears that were more metal than flesh and the cat’s eyes. Even though my predicament hadn’t improved a fizzle, something inside me lightened a little.
‘Icie! Hey, Icie!’
Damn, that girl could project.
She was nearly at the front of the queue, which I could see was marked ‘taxi’. Surveying the length of the line, I knew Marissa was my only hope of getting out of here any time soon. I swallowed my fear of all these potential disease-carriers and weaved my way towards her.
‘She’s with me,’ she said to the people scowling at me. I handed her my backpack and then slipped between the metal bars of the barrier. I had to nudge a man in a purple golf shirt to make some room. He grudgingly shifted his golf bag a whole five inches.
Marissa placed my stuff on the ground between us and wheeled her fuchsia suitcase closer. ‘Got some supplies,’ she said, opening a canvas bag which was stuffed with bottled water, a year’s supply of breath mints, and every snack food available at the airport travel mart. She had mad survival skills. I noticed the slogan on the bag: Arizona is Dehydriffic! Another Ripple.
I couldn’t think of Lola right now. I couldn’t afford to think about everything I was leaving behind. I had to block out everything and focus like a laser on the one thing I could control – getting out of the airport.
‘Thanks for the assist,’ I said. ‘Sorry about earlier. On the plane, you know. I didn’t mean to be rude.’
‘No problem,’ she said, spinning on the heels of her sneakers and clearing us a few more inches of space. ‘Desperate times call for outrageous actions?’
‘Desperate measures,’ I corrected. The saying was ‘desperate times call for desperate measures’.
‘Yeah, whatever. You know what I mean.’ She whipped her phone from her jeans pocket and poked the screen. ‘Your cell working?’
‘Don’t have one.’
A look of sheer horror crossed her face.
‘I mean, I have one but I didn’t bring it with me,’ I explained, but that didn’t change her expression.
‘My cell died,’ Marissa said. ‘It was working a minute ago and now nothing. It’s not out-of-juice-or-minutes dead, but like no signal. Everyone is having the same problem. Look at them. You’d think they’d lost children.’
She was right. Everyone was switching phones off and on and punching buttons. Panic gurgled in my gut again. I remember Mum mentioning once that the government could jam the phone lines so cell phones couldn’t be used to detonate devices of mass destruction. It – whatever it was – was starting already.
Conversations twinkled around us. ‘Do you think all the airports are closed?’ ‘Are more taxis coming?’ ‘Can anyone get cell phone reception?’ ‘What’s going on?’ ‘I wish they’d give us more information.’ Everyone was dancing around the real topic. No one wanted to be the first to say the words ‘terrorist’ or ‘attack’.
Everyone was standing too close to me. Breathing on me. I could feel heat rising from their bodies and fear emanating from their pores. Everyone was a breath away from freaking out. A few more police and airport security patrolled the crowd. They eyed us, almost willing us to break the fragile calm.
When we reached the front of the taxi queue, some fridiot airport employee decided now was the moment to make an announcement. ‘Everyone,’ the voice rang out and static reverberated through the speakers. ‘Everyone please remain calm.’ Wasn’t that the worst thing to say in a situation like this? ‘There’s no reason to panic.’ Nope, that was the worst thing to say. Everyone began to fidget. ‘We don’t have details but all airports are closing due to an incident on the East Coast. This is a national security measure. Please leave the airport in an orderly fashion.’ He might as well have said, ‘Run! Save yourselves!’
Someone screamed. The man with the golf bag slumped to the ground. Had he fainted? People started to cry.
Marissa tugged on my shirt as our taxi pulled to the kerb. She lunged for the car. ‘Come on, Icie!’
Then someone shouted something that included the word ‘bomb’ and all hell broke loose. People transformed from human to animal. What I can only describe as an electrical current shot through me. The fight-or-flight survival instinct kicked in all around me. For me it was fight and flight.
Marissa hip-checked a man in a business suit when he tried to open the taxi door. To clear the space around her, she swung her D&G handbag, which was big enough to comfortably hold a family of dachshunds.
I shouldered my backpack and pushed through the crowd as it surged forwards. It was us or them. ‘Out of my way!’ I shouted as I spun forwards, my backpack now a deadly weapon.
An announcement rang out from the speakers and the security personnel were shouting. The gist was calm the hell down, but it was too late for that.
Marissa had managed to open the back door of the taxi. She tossed her suit
case and goodie bag inside and dived in the back seat. ‘Get off!’ she screamed, and bicycled her legs, kicking people away. ‘Icie, hurry!’
I bent over like a line-backer and charged head-first towards the taxi. People were climbing on top of the car. I grabbed a handful of Hawaiian shirt and yanked some college kid out of my way. I heard his shirt rip and the guy scream as his body clunked to the ground, but I didn’t stop. I kicked and punched and tore myself free until I was safely inside the taxi. Two people had climbed in from the other side. Marissa drew herself into a ball and kicked what might have been a husband and wife away from the taxi. We both yanked the doors shut and locked them.
‘Drive! Damn it! Drive!’ she screamed at the taxi driver, and slapped the Plexiglass that separated us from the front seat.
The car lurched forwards. The driver laid on the horn. Faces were pressed against the glass. The roar of fists on the car was deafening. The driver eased forwards.
‘I don’t think I can go.’ He gripped the steering wheel at ten and two. ‘Maybe I should take a few more passengers.’ The car rocked back and forth. It was like those shots from inside some famous bands’ limo, except these weren’t screaming fans; these were adults dressed like reasonable human beings, but with faces red and contorted from shouting. Their eyes were wild and I didn’t know what they would do if they got their hands on me.
I fumbled in my money belt and grabbed a fistful of cash. ‘Here!’ I shoved bills through the money slot. ‘There’s more if you get us out of here.’
The driver surveyed the waterfall of crumpled fifties collecting on the seat next to him. ‘You got it!’ He honked the horn and hit the gas. I closed my eyes. Marissa and I bounced like balls in the backseat as the taxi freed itself from the crowd.
I opened my eyes when the ride smoothed. I wasn’t proud that I had left all those people behind, but I had to, right?