Trojan Gene

by Meg Buchanan

  Chapter 20

  “SHOULD WE FOLLOW HIM?” asks Ela when she’s sure Nick won’t hear her.

  “No, give him some space.” 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?”

  “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 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 Katie working her way towards us.

  “Hi Jack,” she says quietly.

  “Hi Katie, 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 called me 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.” Katie says that like she’s half apologising.

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

  Me and Katie keep talking for a while. I see Scott moving towards us at the speed of light. I guess he’s not too keen on me talking to Katie 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. I 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, 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.

  Katie 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.

  Katie has her Com against her ear and is talking.

  Nick sees Katie 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. Across the road. Open the passenger door of the Land Rover.

  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. Bastard still doesn’t trust 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. “I stayed here before we moved to the City. We’re at the school camp.”

  “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 aching hand. 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 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?”

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

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

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

  “You don’t have to worry about Katie. We’re finished.” When we were talking, Katie 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’s still not looking at me. Her reflection is all harsh edges and shadows in the glass.

  I lean over, peer through the dark, and 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?”

  She gives me another sidelong glance. “When I left you with Katie, I wandered into the lounge. It was less crowded than the hallway. In fact, no one else was there, just a single red light bulb making the room dark. I was staring out the window at the gloom. Then I turned around to find Henry and Charlie Willis behind 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.”

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

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

  “It was like I was being herded across the room towards the door,” she says. “‘Nice hair,’ says Charlie, moving closer again, stroking it. I stepped back. But Charlie followed and grabbed a handful of my hair. I gave him a shove,” says Ela. “They were strange.” Ela looks up at me. “I glanced around, 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.’”

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

  “Then Henry grabbed my arm, twisted it behind my 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.”

  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.”

  “And,” I say. “maybe 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 Mum and say, ‘Come and pick your son up’. Mum doesn’t like those calls. She gets shitty. 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. Mum 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?” I nod. “Could we do it again?”

  “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. She thinks all that’s over.”

  “Okay,” says Ela, then turns enough in my arms so I’ve got no choice but to kiss her.

  Chapter 21

  “YOUR MUM’S ECO ARRIVED, THEN?” I say the next morning as the driver’s door of the Eco floats up like a wing. Ela’s been to see Jacob.

  “Yes, just after you left.” Ela hops out of the Eco, hair drifting in the breeze, looking Elite. It’s the way she usually looks when she’s been in town before she finds the farm clothes again. She reaches over to the passenger seat.

  “Your mum sent lunch.” She hauls out a bag, gives it to me then looks a bit uncertain. Her hair settles over her eyes.

  “Get changed into your farm gear,” I say, ignoring the hair. “I’ll get the bikes ready.”

  Ela nods, looking puzzled the way she has since we left the school camp ground last night. She turns and goes inside.

  You see last night in the Land Rover it started to get problematic. I’ve spent my life hearing how sex, and my unplanned arrival on the scene, ruined Mum’s life. And when you think that through, it’s not particularly flattering. But last night, there in the Land Rover with Ela, I began to see where Mum was coming from.

  I said, “We’d better get home.”

  “Why?” asked Ela, looking pretty puzzled.

  And I had a ‘and her mother’s a doctor’ moment. But I said, “Mum’ll be worrying about us.” So, we went home, and Ela slept about a metre away from me in her own bed on the other side of the wall.

  And that’s about how we stand at the moment. Talk about unsettling.

  *

  At the edge of the bush we get off the bikes. I whistle the dogs, order them to stay, sling my rifle over my shoulder and give Ela the pack.

  She shrugs into it, dressed all serious now. Swanndri, t-shirt, jeans, boots.

  We go to the clearing where we saw the Willises. We’re going to make sure Ela can shoot them if they come near her again.

  “Stick the pack there,” I say. She drops it by the log the Willises were leaning on.

  I get a sheet of paper out. It’s already got a cross on it and a 50mm bull’s eye. “Come and help set up. Bring the hammer. We’ll nail the target up on that log by the bank.”

  I step it out as we walk over to the log, count out 110 paces, near enough for this, those Willises are a big target. I nail the cross to the log.

  We walk back to the log, unsling my rifle, hand it to Ela, get a box of ammo and a Swanndri out of the pack, put them on the ground. I take the binoculars, sling them around my neck, sit behind the log with Ela. She puts the butt up against her shoulder and looks through the scope. I adjust it a bit for her until she can see the target.

  “How does that feel?”

  “Good, but the cross is moving.” She looks through the scope again. “It keeps disappearing. I don’t remember that happening when I was a kid.”

  “You’re being too careful. Kids don’t do that. If you take too long, you start shaking and can’t hold it on the target and pull the trigger. You have to line the sight up.” I demonstrate with an imaginary gun, fingers pointing at the cross. “Take three deep breaths and on the last breath you let it half out, hold it then fire. Don’t think about it too much.”

  Ela tries the breathing technique to see if the cross stays in sight. “That’s better.”

  “Tr
y to hold the crosshair above the target, and each time you let out your breath bring the crosshairs down then up again as you breathe in.” I lie down beside her. “When you let the last breath out, bring the crosshairs down to rest on the target as you hold the half breath, and gently squeeze the shot off.”

  She puts the gun down. “That’s impossible, too many things to remember.”

  “You used to be able to do it.”

  “You didn’t make it so complicated when you were twelve,” she mutters.

  “Stop complaining and just do it.” I lift the gun to the right position and move her head a little.

  She wiggles closer to get a bit more comfortable. Never realised teaching someone to shoot could involve so much touching.

  She looks through the scope again. “The cross is staying on the target.”

  “Okay, are you ready to try a shot?”

  She nods.

  “Here’s a round.”

  She slips it into the chamber and closes the bolt then looks through the scope.

  “Hold it tight into your shoulder. Get your head right down on the stock.” I push her head down a bit. “And hold your cheek against it. It won’t kick as much if you’re holding it tight.”

  She fires.

  “Don’t shut your eyes.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You did. Keep them open.”

  Ela reloads the rifle and gets back into position. Fires again. The gun bounces back, and the scope hits her.

  “Look, it’s hit me in the eye. I’m bleeding.”

  “Sorry. Open the bolt. Wipe the blood off. It’s not bad.”

  She sits up and uses the bottom of her t-shirt to wipe the speck of blood off her eyebrow. “What happened?”

  “You weren’t holding it tight enough into your shoulder. Try to keep your face back a bit further from the eyepiece.”

  I hand her two more rounds. “Have another go.”

  She loads the rifle, aims and fires. I look at the target through the binoculars. “Nice shot.” When she’s fired six times we go over and examine where the rounds have hit. They are all close to the cross.

  “Not bad.” I take the target off the tree then replace it with another. “Now we practice shooting standing up.”