Trojan Gene: The Awakening

by Ben Onslow

  The cloak is a really bad idea, what she’s wearing isn’t exactly the way the other girls will be dressed, skirt real short and a bit floaty, tiny singlet thing, shiny red boots, but at least it’s not that bloody cloak.

  “No, leave it here: this isn’t a good place to advertise you’re Elite.”

  Ela pauses, lets her hand slip off the door handle, sighs, nods, leaves the cloak where it is.

  We cross the road. Walk along the path. I see Nick leaning on the veranda railing cradling a bottle of beer. He watches us come up the old steps.

  We lean against the railing too, just the three of us. I open a couple of bottles, give one to Ela. We watch the dark as more people drift into the house. Everyone is wearing a wrist shield.

  Nick drinks some beer, his sleeve slides.

  “Aren’t we meant to be here either?” Ela asks, nodding at his wrist.

  “We’re not allowed in big groups. When the trackers see a group, the surveillance Hovers turn up.”

  “Another rule,” says Ela.

  “Don’t the Elite have that problem?” asks Nick, without even turning to look at her – just keeps watching the dark.

  I put my empty bottle beside the veranda post. Open another one, offer it to Ela. She shows me hers is still half full.

  Nick turns around. Leans his elbows on the veranda rail, and looks at the front window for a while.

  “Fitzgerald came to see Joe again this afternoon.” Nick takes another swallow from the bottle.

  “Have they found Lucinda?”

  “Nah.” Nick keeps examining the window. “He told Joe to accept she’s gone.” After a while he turns around again so he’s leaning against the veranda rail. Now he’s looking out at the dark the same as me and Ela.

  “How did Joe take it?”

  “Not too good,” says Nick. “He went nuts again. He was going to take on the whole of Vector on his own. It took me and Dad and Fitzgerald to hold him, stop him getting in his ute to go try and find her. In the end Fitzgerald said if Joe didn’t calm down he’d shoot him himself. Save Vector the trouble.”

  “That’s terrible,” says Ela quietly. I bet she’s pleased she’s not in that bloody cloak. I figure other people here know about Lucinda too.

  Nick has another swallow from his bottle. “Joe and Lucinda were supposed to leave the night she was taken. Jacob and Fitzgerald had arranged for them to hide way up North somewhere until the baby was born and then they’d get them out of the country. But Jacob thinks someone got wind of it and informed on them. It was probably the Willises. They go to the dairy all the time. They would have seen her. Joe should have told Dad when they first knew, not waited until you could tell.”

  “How come you and Curley didn’t hear about the raid?” I ask.

  “There was no warning; it just happened.”

  “Do you know where they’ve taken her?”

  “We think she’s in the infirmary at the Outpost.”

  “The Outpost?” asks Ela. “The same one Jacob was talking about?”

  “Yeah, the Headquarters for the Administration around here. Nick works for DoE. That’s where he’s based,” I tell her. “Have you seen Lucinda?” I ask Nick.

  “Nah. Curley heard something accidentally. We’re not hearing much though. Jacob thinks Vector are getting suspicious about the Locals they’ve got working for them and have made a few changes. He doesn’t think me and Curley are going to be much use from now on.” Nick sounds angry again.

  “Can you help Lucinda?” Ela asks Nick, like she expects him to fight back.

  “Have you seen the Outpost?” asks Nick, really abrupt.

  “No,” says Ela. “But Jack just said you work there. I thought you would know what to do.”

  “Yeah, I work there, so I know it’s got plenty of security. You’d need your own army to get in. And Local’s get shot if they are found anywhere they aren’t meant to be.”

  Then Nick just walks away, leaving me and Ela standing there. Maybe he just wants to forget about his brother’s problems for a while. Maybe he doesn’t like feeling powerless.

  22.

  Scott’s Party

  Saturday 18th Feb 2051

  10:30 p.m.

  “Should we follow him?” asks Ela when she’s sure Nick won’t hear her.

  “No, give him some space.” Anyway I’m sure he’ll find somebody willing to comfort him, pretty much any girl at the party actually.

  “Why isn’t someone trying to help Lucinda?” Ela asks.

  “There’s nothing we can do now Vector have her. No one’s allowed to question what’s happening, if anyone makes trouble they get shot. If a family refuse to let their kids go to University, Vector just rounds up the whole family and shoots them. The Administration says they are doing it to save the human race.”

  “But what about Jacob and Fitzgerald, and those men you see at the farm?”

  “I guess they have to be real careful. They’ve all got kids at University, so the Administration’s got hostages.”

  A few more people come out and join us on the veranda so we move inside, join the others. I see Jess working her way towards us.

  “Hi Jack,” she says quietly.

  “Hi Jess, I got your message.”

  “You didn’t answer it.”

  I give her a, what was there to say? shrug. “What you are doing here?”

  “Scott connected and told me about the party. I got a dispensation to visit Mum again.”

  “No study to do?” That comes out like sarcasm.

  “I’m up to date now.” Jess says that like she’s half apologising.

  Ela wanders away. I let her go. She won’t go far, doesn’t know anyone except Nick.

  Me and Jess keep talking.

  I see Scott moving towards us at the speed of light.

  I guess he’s not too keen on me talking to Jess now he’s got her here.

  Then I hear a yell from the back of the house.

  “Jack! Here! Now!”

  It’s Nick’s voice and he sounds like he’s running and yelling at the same time.

  I move fast. Push through the crowd in the passageway. Get to the kitchen and its empty. See Nick flying out the back door. I fly out after him. He grabs Charlie Willis by the shoulder. He spins him round and hits him. I can see Henry Willis standing, his back to me. He’s got someone pinned up against the shed.

  I recognise the boots.

  Fuck, it’s Ela.

  I leap down the stairs. Hit Henry, fist connects with the side of his jaw.

  He lets Ela go and staggers back.

  Recovers, moves to the side a bit.

  I follow, punch him again, hard.

  He slumps against the shed wall.

  Nick hits Charlie again.

  Charlie falls onto the woodpile.

  The space is filled with people, noise, movement and threats, all slow and surreal in the red light.

  Jess pulls out her Com.

  Scott stands over Henry. “Get out of here,” he says.

  Nick’s rubbing his fist. “Where the fuck were you?” he says to me. “We’re meant to be looking after her.”

  We?

  Henry pushes himself away from the wall.

  He’s still struggling to catch his breath, wipes his mouth, checks for blood, glares then staggers towards me and Nick like he’s planning on having another go.

  Jess has her Com against her ear and is talking.

  Nick sees Jess on the Com, then looks at Ela. “Get her out of here. We’ll look after this.” He waves at the Willises.

  I grab Ela’s hand. Pull her up the steps towards the door.

  “Gotta go,” I say to Scott.

  “Yeah.” He turns back to help Nick.

  I run, dragging Ela with me. Through the kids in the lounge. Along the hallway. Out the door. Down the steps. And across the road.

  Open the passenger door of the Land Rover.

  “Get in.” I slam the door shut when Ela’s in. Run to
the driver’s door.

  Within seconds we’re moving.

  “Why did we leave so fast?” Ela asks, once she’s caught her breath.

  “Someone always rings the cops.”

  The Land Rover turns left onto a side street.

  “But you didn’t do anything wrong. You were protecting me.”

  “You can explain that to Mum if she finds out, and to that granddad of yours if he gets to hear I let the Willises get to you.”

  Though it sounded like Nick and Scott were on the job too. Jacob had organised back up. So much for him trusting me.

  I turn right. Drive a bit further along the road and then left again. We’re on the main highway heading away from town, speeding.

  “You’re going the wrong way,” says Ela.

  “We’re going the back way.” I keep driving fast. We get to the golf course. Turn off, slide on the corner. I fling the Land Rover into a parking area. Drive across the concrete and skid to a stop in the shadows behind an old building.

  Ela, peers through the dark. “We’re at the school camp. I stayed here before we moved to the City.”

  “Yep,” I say and turn off the lights.

  “What’s going on?” she asks. “What just happened?”

  I put my elbow on the steering wheel and consider Ela. I rest my chin on my hand, the hand aches. Ela looks back at me in confusion.

  She probably has no idea what happens if you get into a fight at a party. And it’s pretty unlikely she has any personal experience of punching anyone either.

  In fact, she doesn’t seem to understand anything about anything actually.

  No wonder her granddad wants her looked after.

  And the only reason she needed protection was she’d buggered off.

  “Why were you outside being monstered by the Willises?” I ask.

  “You were busy. I didn’t want to be in the way.” Ela leans her head on the pillar of the door and stares out the window at nothing. Deliberately not looking in my direction.

  “With Jess?” What did she expect me to do? Ignore Jess?

  “Who else?” Ela asks, still concentrating on the window, arms folded.

  “You don’t have to worry about Jess,” I say. “We’re finished.” When we were talking, Jess fed me the, it’s hard when she’s in the City and I’m here, let’s be friends routine. And Scott was moving faster than the wind towards us. I figure the next thing I’ll hear is that Scott’s given up his job and gone to University. He knows what he wants and goes after it does Scott.

  Good luck to him.

  “It’s none of my business,” Ela says, still not looking at me. Her reflection is all harsh edges and shadows in the glass.

  I lean over, peer through the dark, try to see her face.

  “You’re not jealous are you?” I ask, sort of half joking.

  She turns around. I can just see a hint of a smile in the gloom.

  “I thought,” she gives me another one of those little smiles, “if you wanted to catch up with old girlfriends, it was your business. But I didn’t have to stand around watching.”

  Sounds reasonable.

  Move on.

  “Are you all right?” I ask. “They didn’t hurt you?”

  Ela shakes her head.

  “What happened?”

  “When I left you with Jess ...” She gives me another sidelong glance. I shrug, nothing I can do about that now. Ela keeps going, “... I wandered into the lounge: it was less crowded than the hallway, in fact no one else there, just a single red light bulb making the room dark. I was staring out the window at the gloom. Then I turned away from the window to find Henry and Charlie Willis in the room staring at me. They were standing between me and the doorway.”

  “Creepy,” I say.

  “Yes it was,” says Ela. “Anyway Henry said, ‘You’re the bird with Fraser these days.’ And Charlie said, ‘Her car got damaged.’”

  “That answers one question, if they know about it they probably did it.”

  Ela nods.

  “Then what?”

  “Henry ignored him. ‘Where’s Fraser now?’ he asked me and moved closer. He was holding a bottle of whisky. I took a step back. I didn’t like him standing so close. I could smell the whisky on his breath.”

  “Why didn’t you yell for help then?” I ask.

  “It was scary. They were scary – really scary,” says Ela, sounding cross at herself. “Henry moved forward again and Charlie followed; he smelled of whisky too. I stepped back again. Then Henry said, ‘You’re a good looking bird’, and moved in closer. Charlie crowded in too. I stepped back.”

  Ela looks over at me, all big dark eyes, still looking a bit scared, but really cross too.

  I put my arm around her shoulders. “Then what?” I ask, and she takes a breath and keeps telling me what happened.

  “It’s like I’m being herded across the room towards the door,” she says. “‘Nice hair,’ says Charlie, moving closer again, stroking it. I step back.”

  And it goes on like that.

  They move in, she moves back. When they’re close, one or the other touches her: hair, cheek, arm, shoulder. All the time talking about me or how nice she looks.

  “They were strange.” Ela looks up at me.

  Then she ordered them to leave her alone but she backed up again. By then she was outside on the porch.

  “You can’t be alone at a party,” said Henry, stepping forward. “Parties are for fun.”

  “I glanced around,” says Ela. “Looking for someone who would help, but all I saw was a row of sheds along the fence: a laundry, a bike shed and a woodshed. Then I said, ‘I’m going inside, get out of my way.’”

  But she stepped backwards again down the step and they crowded closer.

  “It’s much nicer out here,” said Charlie, stepping down too, grabbing a handful of her hair.

  “I gave him a shove,” says Ela.

  “Good girl.” I hold her tighter. It must have been bloody scary. I’ve seen them in action before. Jess told me how she felt when they did the same sort of thing to her.

  Then Henry grabbed Ela’s arm, twisted it behind her back.

  “And that’s when Nick came out the back door,” says Ela. “He was with a girl I hadn’t seen before. I heard him yell for you and then he flew at Charlie. Then you arrived too, storming out of the house with Scott.”

  I take my arm from around Ela’s shoulders and lean my elbow on the steering wheel.

  What would have happened if Nick hadn’t been tomcatting?

  I rub my knuckles. It will be a while before I want to shake hands with anyone.

  “Does it hurt?” she asks.

  “Not much.”

  “Why are we hiding here now?” she asks looking puzzled. “Why aren’t we laying a complaint?”

  Well, apart from anything else, I’m pretty sure Jacob’s not going to want Ela doing anything as high profile as being involved in a court case.

  I take a deep breath and try to explain.

  “It’s like this,” I say. “If we’d stayed until the cops arrived, they would have rounded up me and you and the Willises and maybe Scott and Nick and taken us all to the cop shop.”

  Ela nods. “I guess so.”

  “Then the police start asking questions, and you tell them what happened, but in the police station it doesn’t sound as frightening. The Willises say you were happy to go outside with them and Nick and I suddenly appeared out of nowhere and hit Charlie and Henry.”

  Ela nods again. “Okay, I guess the Willis brothers might lie.”

  She’s starting to get the picture, so I move on to the next step.

  “Maybe they don’t believe Henry and Charlie and they decide to charge them. And you get to answer a million questions, and the lawyers get onto it, and look at your past, and all sorts of things come up: trolleys, DNA, your dad.”

  Ela thinks about that. “Okay, I don’t want that,” she says.

  “And,” I say. “Ma
ybe they decide I’ve done nothing wrong and drop the charges the Willises are trying to pin on me. But they don’t give me my keys right? They don’t say, ‘Jack, it doesn’t matter you’ve been drinking, you can drive home now’. What they do is ring Patsy and say, ‘Come and pick your son up’. Mum doesn’t like those calls – gets pretty shitty actually. So I don’t want to talk to the police any more than you do.”

  Ela nods then looks out the side window. There isn’t a lot to see, an old building looming in the dark, a few stars. “Has Patsy had a few of those calls?” she asks sounding suspicious.

  “One or two.”

  “And it wouldn’t make any difference if you explained what happened?”

  I shake my head. “Nope. Patsy and Jacob would just think it’s my fault you needed protecting.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “That’s not fair,” I mimic.

  “You were trying to protect me and all you expect is trouble.”

  “Just the way it goes,” I say.

  Then Ela moves on. “You know how you taught me to shoot when I was a kid?” she asks.

  I nod.

  “Could we do it again?”

  “So you do think you need practice.”

  “Maybe, and maybe I just want to know I can get rid of vermin if I need to,” she says.

  “You going to keep my rifle with you all the time?”

  “It’s tempting.” She looks at the building looming beside us. “And why are we still parked here, not driving home now?”

  “It’s not a good idea for me to run into a breath test right now. I thought I’d give everyone time to settle down before I risk it.”

  “Won’t they go to your house and look for you?”

  “Nah, by the time the cops get to Scott’s, the Willises will be gone and nobody will remember anything.”

  “I could drive for you.”

  “You’ve been drinking too.” I put my arm around her again and pull her closer. There is usually an upside to any situation. “Are you warm enough?”

  Ela nods. “Won’t Patsy be worried if we’re late?” she asks, snuggling in closer.

  “Not as worried as she would be if I turned up in Fitzgerald’s car again. Patsy thinks all that’s over.”