Vulture's Gate

by Kirsty Murray

  11

  THE WRECK OF THE REFUGE

  It took them two days to reach the Refuge. Or what was left of it. From a distance, Bo spotted a tall white pole with an oval sign on top and faint writing in dull solar neon. As they drew closer it was clear that the sign said Ruff & Rusty’s Roadside . . . but the last word had been seared by flame and was unreadable. Callum’s home was nothing but a heap of dust and ash. Low scrub and sandy, red-gold desert stretched as far as the eye could see to the pale purple haze on the far horizon, uninterrupted by any type of man-made shelter.

  Callum gripped Bo as they drew nearer.

  ‘Squeeze me any tighter and I will stop breathing,’ she said. Callum loosened his grasp but Bo could still feel his fear growing. As soon as the hood of the Daisy-May slid open, he jumped off the bike and ran into the midst of the wreckage.

  Bo lifted Mr Pinkwhistle from his pannier and they followed Callum across the ruined site. He squatted in the centre of what had once been a kitchen, cradling a mangled figurine in one hand and a soup ladle in the other. The sun beat down on them, scorching their faces.

  ‘They didn’t come back,’ he said, disbelievingly. ‘I thought they’d camp out, wait to see if I came home. I thought they’d do anything to find me.’

  ‘You’ve been gone for months,’ said Bo.

  ‘They still should have waited.’

  ‘Maybe they followed the circus, hoping to buy you back?’

  Callum turned on her. ‘You don’t understand anything, do you? My dads had no way of knowing where I would wind up. But they could have waited. They were my fathers. They shouldn’t have given up!’ he shouted, his face contorted with rage and grief.

  Bo walked back to the Daisy-May. She sat in the shade and watched Callum picking through the wreckage in a desultory way. She settled Mr Pinkwhistle on her lap and flipped open his chest to program new instructions. ‘We have to help him, Mr P.’

  Mr Pinkwhistle set off at a trot, his head gyrating and his beady eyes flashing red to green as he surveyed the site. At the base of the solar sign, he stopped and pawed the ground. Bo knelt down beside him.

  ‘We’ve found something,’ she called.

  Wearily, Callum trudged towards her, kicking aside piles of ash and debris.

  ‘Look at this,’ she said, pointing to where Mr Pinkwhistle was bobbing up and down beside a dusty patch of earth.

  ‘What?’ he said flatly.

  ‘Someone has been here. Mr Pinkwhistle has a tracker facility. He’s magnified and interpreted these markings. It shows humans camped on this spot.’ She knelt down beside Mr Pinkwhistle and flicked open a panel on his back to reveal a small monitor. ‘At least two, maybe three men. They were here for a while but they left more than a month ago. Maybe your fathers waited, just as you said they would.’

  Callum looked at her with glazed eyes and shook his head.

  ‘They still gave up on me,’ he said, sitting down beside her on the hot ground.

  ‘What’s that?’ she asked, gently taking the twisted figurine from his hand.

  ‘He was our Elvis cuckoo-clock man,’ said Callum. ‘He used to jump out and sing “Heartbreak Hotel” every hour.’ He wiped his hands across his eyes. ‘I guess my dads thought he wasn’t worth keeping.’

  ‘Maybe they left you a message,’ suggested Bo. ‘Maybe they wrote you a note and left it somewhere.’

  Callum shrugged and bit his lip. ‘They don’t do that in my family. Leave messages.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Callum said nothing and they sat together in mournful silence. Mr Pinkwhistle continued to circle the solar signpost, stopping to scratch at the dirt every metre. Suddenly, he let out a guttural chuckle.

  ‘He’s found something else!’ said Bo. Mr Pinkwhistle tipped his head back and chortled as he danced a victory dance at the base of the Refuge’s signpost.

  Bo and Callum stared at the patch of red earth and then at the post.

  ‘Was all this writing on the pole before you left?’

  Callum stood beside her and stared at the fading, scratchy marks. ‘I don’t remember. What do they mean?’

  Bo knelt beside the pole and ran her hands over the words. ‘If anyone passing knows the whereabouts of Callum Caravaggio, eleven-year-old métis Eurasian, brown eyes, black hair, wide smile, please contact R & R Caravaggio at Nekhbet Tower, Apartment 217, Vulture’s Gate. Reward.’

  ‘Vulture’s Gate?’ said Callum. ‘They’ve gone back to Vulture’s Gate?’

  ‘Where is that?’

  ‘It’s where the Colony was founded. When I was little, we lived in an apartment in a tower block there. I liked it. Other men and boys lived there too. Then Ruff and Rusty took the contract for this place and we moved. They said it would be better to bring up a kid away from there.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘A long time ago, it was a good place to live, but the plague changed it. That’s when it became Vulture’s Gate, once the women died out.’

  ‘Do women still die there? Are there still birds?’ asked Bo.

  ‘Of course there are birds. But I told you, women are extinct. And Vulture’s Gate is so far away, right over on the east coast. Why did they have to go so far!’

  Bo looked out over the wreckage of the Refuge. ‘There wasn’t anything to keep them here.’

  ‘There was me!’ shouted Callum, slamming the white post with his hand.

  Bo didn’t look at him but pointed at the sign. ‘That last symbol. What does it mean?’

  Callum peered closer at the little illustration beneath the writing. It was of a hovering bird. ‘That’s their way of letting me guess about Vulture’s Gate, I suppose. I never cracked the reading thing but I always liked the symbol they taught me for Vulture’s Gate.’

  ‘And these?’ asked Bo, pointing to a little trail of arrows and circles that ran down the side of the pole like hieroglyphics.

  Callum grinned. He knelt at the base of the pole, where Mr Pinkwhistle had danced, and began scrabbling with his bare hands at the dry red earth. Bo knelt beside him and helped.

  It was only twenty centimetres beneath the ground – a sealed metal box. They lifted it out together and dusted off the surface. There was a digital lock on the front but Callum knew the code and in an instant he had the lid open. Inside was a bag of donuts, dried-food parcels, six bottles of water, two packets of rehydration salts, a small roll of gold and a toy penguin.

  Callum snatched up the toy and hugged it. ‘I can’t believe it! Peggy! She survived!’ He laid the penguin in his lap and gently touched its belly where a small digital device was neatly embedded. The screen lit up and two men stared out. Bo peered over Callum’s shoulder as the digital message began to play.

  Callum pointed at each of the men. ‘The one with smooth black hair, that’s Ruff. And the one with the thick reddish beard, that’s Rusty.’ He turned up the volume so their voices reverberated across the desolate site.

  ‘Callum, if you’re listening to this, you’ll know we came back to find you,’ said Rusty, ‘We bribed Outriders, we interrogated Outstationers, but we lost your trail. We’ve waited three weeks, hoping for news of you, but we can’t stay longer. The Colony don’t want to rebuild the Refuge so we’re going back to Vulture’s Gate.’ He began to cry. ‘Cal, darling, we will never give up hope. We’ll come back to the west when we can, to search. But if you hear this and you have any way of getting word to us, know that we’ll come running for you, son.’

  Callum played the message over and over again until Bo could mime every word his fathers spoke and she longed for him to turn it off. Finally, he tore open the bag of donuts and handed one to Bo. ‘I knew they wouldn’t give up on me,’ he said, crowing between mouthfuls.

  Bo took a bite of her donut and spat it into the dirt.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Callum, snatching the treat away from her.

  ‘It tasted queer. It made my teeth tingle. That crunchy white stuff, it burns.’

  ‘That�
��s sugar. And it tastes fantastic,’ said Callum, through a crowded mouthful. ‘This is the sort of food those kids in your storybooks eat all the time. Not crocodile and weeds.’

  Cautiously, Bo leant forward and took another small bite from the ring of sugar and dough that Callum held in his fist. She scrunched up her nose in distaste and Callum laughed. He stuffed the rest of the donut into his mouth and dusted sugar from his fingers.

  ‘Callum, I think we should go now,’ said Bo. ‘There’s nothing else here.’

  ‘I want to camp until they come back.’

  ‘We can’t,’ said Bo. ‘There is no shelter, no good hunting, and it’s too close to the road.’

  Callum bowed his head and played the iPenguin message again, holding the small toy close to his face and studying his fathers’ image. Bo remembered the way she had gazed at Poppy’s picture, hopelessly longing for him. But it was different

  for Callum. His fathers were alive. Somewhere out there, they were waiting for him.

  ‘If only the old-tech ways still worked, we could get a message to them,’ he said. ‘But everything’s broken. It’s hopeless.’ He glanced around the barren landscape and the wreck of his old home. ‘I don’t know how to reach them.’

  ‘I do,’ said Bo. ‘We’re going to deliver the message ourselves. We’re going to Vulture’s Gate.’

  12

  EVIL ANGELS

  Callum watched Bo from across the campfire. He didn’t understand her. He’d always imagined that girls must have been sickly, unreliable creatures that spent a lot of time screaming and crying. But Callum hadn’t seen Bo cry once and he couldn’t help but trust her.

  Now, as he pushed at the coals with a stick, he felt something kindling deep inside, a beacon of hope rising from the wreckage of his old life. Bo drew a map in the dry desert soil and using the GPS in the Daisy-May and the notes that Callum’s dads had left in the security box, she mapped out a route across the continent to the city on the far east coast.

  ‘The Daisy-May runs on cactus juice,’ she said. ‘She has a mini-still built into her so we can feed her and make some fuel. But I don’t know if she will get us all the way across the country. She’s more of a show pony than a workhorse. We need to find succulents for her every day and we’ll have to take her slow and steady. She’ll burn out if we push her too hard.’

  Callum looked down at the map in the dust. Then he turned on the iPenguin and watched his fathers’ message again. ‘We have to make it. With or without the Daisy-May.’

  The next morning, Callum packed what useful things he’d managed to salvage from the ashes of the Refuge. He made sure Peggy the iPenguin was stored in the pannier opposite Mr Pinkwhistle and tucked the other things in around her. He didn’t like the way the raptor swivelled his skull-like head towards Peggy and bared his shiny, sharp teeth every time Ruff and Rusty’s message played.

  Callum didn’t look back as the Daisy-May sped away from the Refuge but he knew that part of who he used to be was behind him in the ashes, the best of his childhood lost to him. He hooked his arms tightly around Bo. Even if she was a girl, he knew she understood what it meant to lose your home.

  The road through the desert ran like a long, black crack across the landscape. The Daisy-May flew over the weathered bitumen, as if barely making contact. The terrain began to change quickly, drifts of red sand blowing across the road. They travelled at such speed that every day yielded new terrain. Every evening they fossicked for succulents for the Daisy-May’s still before curling up on their catskin rugs to sleep.

  One evening, a week after they’d left the Refuge, they camped by a salt lake. It was covered by a thin sheen of water that shimmered orange and blood-red at sunset. Bo cooked up the last of the dried crocodile meat, salting it with lake water.

  After eating they lapsed into a companionable silence, but when the moon rose and the first nightbird of the evening wheeled overhead, Bo looked up from the campfire and frowned. Grabbing her string bag of weapons, she walked away from the camp and smoothed out a section of earth, clearing rocks and debris with the butt of her gun. Then she lay down on the ground and gazed up at the swirling, starry night sky.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ called Callum.

  ‘Shush, they’ll hear you,’ she said in a loud whisper. ‘They’re dangerous.’

  Callum tiptoed over and lay down beside her, mystified by her fear. Their shoulders touched and he felt that peculiar rush of blood that being close to Bo triggered in him. The desert earth beneath them was cool, but beside him Bo’s skin felt as though it was shimmering with heat.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ he asked.

  Bo didn’t answer straight away. She kept staring up at the stars, as if she was searching for something.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ she echoed.

  ‘I’ve told you, you can’t answer questions with questions. I wasn’t thinking anything. I’m not always thinking. Sometimes I’m just being. You’re the one that’s lying there with a gun.’

  Bo shifted her shoulders, making a little space between her and Callum but he moved closer so they were touching again. He took hold of her hand and held it tightly.

  ‘You must be easy to pick up with a heat sensor. Mr Pink–whistle’s internal screens must light up fierce when he sees you.’ As he spoke, Callum became even more aware of the patch of skin where their bodies met, the way their fingers enmeshed. He gazed up at the nightbird that hovered over their heads. Suddenly, Bo pulled her hand free of his grasp and raised her gun, staring hard into the night sky.

  ‘What are you going to do? Shoot the stars?’

  ‘No, the nightbirds,’ said Bo.

  ‘Nightbirds! We can’t eat them, they’re too stringy.’

  ‘They are not for eating. Only killing.’

  Callum sat up. ‘My dads used to take me outside to watch them fly over the Refuge. Rusty said they only flew at night, because people had gone on crazy killing sprees when the plague happened so the birds learned to stop flying during the day. But they can’t hurt us any more, Bo. And they’re beautiful. It’s wrong to kill beautiful things. See, they look like black angels.’

  ‘They’re not angels. They’re evil.’ She lifted the gun, took aim and fired.

  Callum ran to where the wide-winged creature lay bleeding in the dust.

  ‘Don’t touch it!’ shouted Bo. ‘Poppy said never to touch birds. They’re poisonous. You should never eat them, or their eggs. Never touch anything they’ve touched. I used to have the Wombator bury them for me. And I never touched him. Poppy said everything with wings is dangerous.’

  ‘That’s old superstition. No one gets the plague now.’

  ‘But you said there are no women. No girls. They were the ones that died.’

  ‘Are you afraid of birds?’

  ‘I’m not afraid. I shoot them because they’re evil. All winged creatures are horrible,’ she said. ‘They make a fluttering noise and it fills your head until you feel mad and tortured. Wings make my flesh creep.’

  Callum left the corpse and lay back down beside her without speaking. Bo clung grimly to her pistol but when another nightbird wheeled overhead, she didn’t fire. He didn’t know what to say to her. She seemed foreign again but also forlorn. He turned and put his face against hers so they were almost touching. Then he blinked slowly, his long eyelashes brushing against her cheek.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

  ‘Giving you a butterfly kiss.’

  ‘What is a butterfly?’

  ‘It’s a tiny insect with soft wings. That was meant to feel like the brush of its wings.’

  Bo put a hand to her cheek. ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘Not everything with wings is horrible.’

  At dawn, the salt lake was coppery pink. For the first time since they had met, Callum woke before Bo. He sat up and scanned the lake. There was something moving across its surface, as if walking or gliding on the water. He blinked and realised it was Mr Pinkwhistle. What
was he doing up before Bo? He never went anywhere before she activated him for the day. Then Callum realised the roboraptor had something in his jaws and was shaking it, as if trying to snap it in two. Suddenly, Ruff and Rusty’s voices drifted across the lake.

  ‘Peggy!’ shouted Callum. ‘He’s killing Peggy!’

  Bo was beside him in an instant, rubbing sleep from her eyes. She whistled for the roboraptor and he came skittering across the pink lake, sending thousands of flecks of silvery water into the air.

  ‘Bad!’ she shouted as he skidded to a stop in front of them. ‘Bad food!’

  In his mouth were the mangled remains of Peggy the iPenguin. Fragments of Ruff and Rusty’s voices squeaked out of her interface and then they stopped altogether.

  ‘Drop!’ said Bo. But it was too late. One of Peggy’s glass eyes dangled from its socket and a long, thick wad of stuffing fell from her body. The interface in her belly was completely shattered. Callum stared down in horror at the tangled mess. Mr Pinkwhistle’s long tail swished back and forth, as if he was pleased with himself.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Bo.

  Callum couldn’t tell her it was all right because it wasn’t. Peggy was the last token of his lost childhood and now she was gone. He turned away and trudged back to the campsite. He didn’t want Bo to see him cry.

  He barely noticed when Bo came up behind him and touched his shoulder. She didn’t say anything but she stood close to him. Gently, she took his head in her hands. When their faces were almost touching, she brushed his cheek with her eyelashes, a butterfly kiss that swept away the last of his tears.