Arrival

by Chris Morphew

  ‘Oh hey, Pete,’ said Mr Ketterley. ‘You two off somewhere?’

  ‘Friend’s place,’ said Peter.

  ‘Right.’ Mr Ketterley smiled again. ‘I’d better be on my way, then. Let your mother know I came by, will you, Luke?

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘And make sure you two are home by the time it gets dark,’ he said, looking up at the sky. A strange look flashed across his face. ‘You wouldn’t want Officer Calvin to catch you breaking his new curfew.’

  ‘So, you’re still not buying any of this?’ I said as we rode past the Shackleton Building and out behind the school a few minutes later. ‘Even after the map?’

  ‘The map proves nothing, mate,’ said Peter. ‘If I got into your maths textbook and wrote you a letter saying the saucer people were invading, would you believe that too?’

  ‘What do you think is out there then?’ I asked. ‘I mean, he’s obviously got something to show us.’

  ‘How should I know?’ said Peter. ‘Maybe Crazy Bill’s got a shack out there in the bush or something. Turn right up here,’ he added, pointing to a side street up ahead.

  ‘A shack?’ I smirked as we rounded the corner.

  ‘And he’s, what, inviting us over for dinner?’

  ‘All right, genius, what do you reckon is out there?’

  ‘Dunno,’ I admitted. ‘Don’t think he’s trying to organise another meeting, though. At least, that’s not all he’s doing. There are two places marked, right? I reckon there’s stuff out there that he wants us to see.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ said Peter. ‘So you’ve narrowed it down to something.

  ’ ‘Two somethings,’ I corrected.

  ‘Right, well, that’s much better.’ He pointed up ahead again. ‘It’s on the end here. The one with the swing set.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ I said. ‘Do I want to know how you know exactly where Jordan’s house is?’

  ‘Probably not,’ he grinned.

  ‘You know, I think you may have actually crossed the line into stalker territory.’

  ‘Nah,’ said Peter. ‘It’s only stalking if you get obsessive about it.’

  The whole town of Phoenix was pretty much just one big ring of housing blocks with the town centre in the middle. Jordan lived at the far end of her street, which meant that her house pressed right up against the bushland on one side, with only a bike path and about fifty metres of grass separating her place from the trees.

  We pulled up at the house and dropped our bikes on the front lawn.

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ I said as we walked up the front path, ‘is why Bill thought shouting out some random poem was a good way of leading us to his map. What made him think we’d ever figure out that his jabbering was something from a book?’

  ‘Probably just the first thing that popped into his head,’ Peter said with a shrug. ‘I mean, he didn’t exactly have a lot of thinking time, did he?’

  ‘So you don’t reckon he drew that map until after the airport?’

  ‘Why would he?’ said Peter. ‘If security hadn’t come and broken up our meeting, he could’ve just shown us this stuff himself, right?’

  ‘But then how’d he get into the library without being seen?’ I asked, reaching for the doorbell.

  Peter didn’t have an answer to that one.

  We heard the sound of running footsteps inside and then a girl, maybe five or six years old, opened the door. She was like a half-size scale model of Jordan, exactly the same, right down to the Phoenix school uniform and the braids in her hair.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked, gazing up at us.

  ‘We’re here to see Jordan,’ Peter said.

  The little girl’s eyes went wide and a huge smile spread across her face. ‘Are you her boyfriends?’ she gasped.

  ‘No,’ I said quickly, ‘we’re just –’

  ‘You are!’ she said. ‘I know you are!’ She ran away down the hall, giggling, ‘Jordan! Jordan! Your boyfriends are here to see you! They want to give you a kiss!’

  Peter shrugged. I raised an eyebrow at him and walked inside.

  This was the first time since arriving in Phoenix that I’d been inside anyone else’s house, and it was a really weird experience. It was like walking into my own home after school one day and discovering that another family had moved in and replaced me. Jordan’s house was exactly the same as mine – same rooms, same furniture, same everything.

  Mini-Jordan reappeared in the hall, still giggling, dragging the real Jordan by the arm.

  ‘Come on!’ she said, pulling Jordan down the hall with both hands. ‘See? Here they are! Now, which one are you going to marry?’

  Jordan sighed and said, ‘I see you’ve met my sister.’ There was a weird look on her face. A sort of shell-shocked expression.

  Jordan’s little sister was staring back up at Peter and me now. Her face was twisted in concentration, like she was sizing the two of us up.

  ‘You should marry that one,’ she said suddenly, pointing at me. ‘He’s the handsomest one.’

  ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me,’ said Peter with mock indignation.

  ‘Come on, Georgia,’ said a voice from the lounge room. ‘Let’s give Jordan and her friends a bit of space.’

  A woman who had to be Jordan’s mum stepped out into the hall and gave the little girl a stern look. She had the same worn-out expression on her face that Jordan did, and looked like she might have been crying.

  ‘Oh Mum, can’t I play with them?’ Mini-Jordan pleaded.

  ‘No, Georgia.’

  Georgia balled up her fists and let out an angry groan. She stomped her foot and stormed off into the lounge room.

  Jordan smiled wearily at her mum. ‘Thanks.’

  A second later, a huge guy with a shaved head appeared in the doorway. Jordan’s dad, I assumed. He looked like he’d just got home from work; his collar was open and a half-undone tie was still hanging from his neck. He put an arm around his wife’s waist and looked down at Peter and me.

  ‘This is Luke and Peter,’ said Jordan, waving a hand at the two of us.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘I mean, hi.’

  If there’s a not-slightly-awkward way to meet your friend’s parents, I’d love to know about it.

  For a minute, Jordan’s dad just kept on staring down at us. Then his face broke into a grin. He stretched out an enormous hand and said, ‘Nice to meet you both.’

  ‘Y-yeah,’ said Peter. ‘You too.’

  Jordan’s dad glanced back toward the lounge room as he heard Georgia yelling for him. He called out, ‘Coming, sweetheart!’ and went off to find her.

  ‘Make sure you don’t forget your homework, Jordan,’ her mum said over her shoulder as she followed Jordan’s dad back into the lounge room.

  ‘Okay, Mum,’ said Jordan, rolling her eyes and turning back to Peter and me. ‘C’mon, let’s go to my room.’

  ‘Is everything okay?’ I asked as we went down the hall. ‘You look –’ ‘Yeah, fine,’ said Jordan unconvincingly.

  ‘Wait. Did you tell your family about –?’

  ‘About Tabitha?’ said Jordan, lowering her voice slightly. ‘No, of course not.’

  Jordan’s bedroom turned out to be downstairs, in what we were using as a spare room at my place. The furniture was all laid out exactly the same as my room – desk in the corner, flat-screen TV mounted on the wall, walk-in wardrobe, big double bed with identical blue and white sheets – and again, I got that weird déjà vu feeling as I walked in.

  Jordan shut the door behind us and sat down on the edge of her bed. She stared at the carpet, resting her elbows on her knees, and let out a sigh.

  ‘It’s Mum,’ she said, without looking up. ‘You know those doctor’s appointments? She’s just found out she’s –’ ‘She’s sick, isn’t she?’ Peter finished. He sat down next to Jordan and moved to put an arm around her. ‘Jordan, that’s –’

  ‘No, you idiot,’ said Jordan, shrugging him off. ‘She’s pregnant.’


  Chapter 17

  WEDNESDAY, MAY 13

  92 DAYS

  ‘Pregnant?’ I repeated. ‘Isn’t that…? That’s good news, right?’

  ‘Is it?’ said Jordan heavily. ‘A new baby, here in this town? With everything that’s going on?’

  ‘But still,’ I said, trying to be encouraging, ‘a new brother or sister…’ ‘Yeah,’ she nodded, standing up. ‘And there’s part of me that…’ She sighed again and threw up her hands. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What about your mum, though?’ Peter asked, obviously trying to recover from Jordan’s brush-off. ‘How come she’s so upset? Like, I get that you’re worried about all this apocalypse stuff, but she doesn’t know anything about that.’

  ‘She’s not stupid, Peter,’ Jordan snapped. ‘She might not know everything we know, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that things in Phoenix aren’t exactly normal.’

  ‘Sure, but –’ Peter tried again.

  ‘She doesn’t even want to be here! She only agreed to come because Dad got laid off back in Brisbane and then both of them magically got offered these great jobs in Phoenix, and so we fly all the way out here and suddenly we’re cut off from everything and we can’t even call back home –’ She glared at Peter as he opened his mouth again, ‘– and I swear, Weir, if you try to tell me one more time that none of this is real, I’m going to smack your little –’

  ‘Okay, fine, but –’

  ‘But what?’ she demanded.

  Peter shrank back against the bed.

  Jordan turned away from him and went over to the other side of the room. She leant back against the wall and sank down to the carpet, worn out from the effort of getting that off her chest. It was like this news about the baby had shaken some part of her that none of the rest of it had been able to touch. She had a look on her face like she didn’t know whether she wanted to cry or punch someone.

  I went over and sat down opposite her, a bit out of arm’s reach just in case. ‘Jordan,’ I said, with no idea how I was going to finish the sentence. ‘It’s not going to happen. This whole end-of-the-world thing, we can’t – we won’t let it happen. We’re going to do something about it.’

  Of course, I realised immediately how ridiculous that sounded.

  But Jordan looked at me and nodded. Not like she believed me, but I think she at least appreciated the attempt to make her feel better. She closed her eyes for a minute, then took a breath and said, ‘I just keep thinking about – by the time this baby is born, Mum’s only a couple of months pregnant, she won’t even give birth until after…’ She trailed off.

  Across the room, I saw Peter sitting up. He stared down at us, like he was itching to say something, but he didn’t open his mouth.

  I glanced back over at Jordan, but I still didn’t have any answers for her. The whole thing was just too big. Coded messages and secret conspiracies and super-powered homeless people.

  ‘Maybe it’s time to tell someone else what’s going on here,’ I said after a while. ‘I mean, the end of the world? I think it’s safe to say we’re in over our heads.’

  ‘Who are we going to tell?’ said Jordan. ‘Anything we say to security is going to get straight back to Calvin. And Ms Pryor’s in his pocket too, so we can’t tell anyone at school. And who knows who else is in on it?’

  ‘Then our families, at least,’ I suggested. ‘I mean, if you tell your parents what’s going on –’

  ‘No,’ said Jordan firmly, before I could even finish my sentence. ‘They’d – if my parents found out, they’d want to rush straight out there and take Calvin on themselves.’

  ‘Isn’t that what you want?’ said Peter. ‘People to help –’

  ‘Not them. I’m not putting my family in danger. If Calvin gets it in his head that they might expose him … I’m not letting that happen.’

  She was right. My mum might not be about to get into a punch-up with Calvin, but she wasn’t exactly subtle. It’d be only a matter of time before she lost her temper and let something slip. Right now, the safest thing we could do for our families was make sure they didn’t know anything about this.

  ‘So … what?’ I said helplessly. ‘What do we do?’

  Jordan sat up, a flicker of her usual determination back in her eyes. ‘We need to get out,’ she said. ‘Get across to the next town and warn someone outside about what’s going on.’

  ‘How are we going to do that?’ I said. ‘I mean, with the airport shut down and everything.’

  ‘There’s still the main road out of town.’

  ‘Yeah, and no cars. How far do you think we’re going to get on bikes?’

  ‘Why don’t we find out?’ said Jordan. ‘We need to go out there anyway if we’re going to follow Crazy Bill’s map, right? So why don’t we go for a ride on the weekend and see what we can figure out?’

  ‘All right,’ I said, shrugging. ‘Yeah. I mean, it’s the closest thing we’ve got to a –’

  ‘Do you guys really want to do that?’ Peter cut in. ‘You really want to go chasing after Crazy Bill again? You want to risk winding up like those security guys back at the airport?’

  ‘Oh, so you do think he’s dangerous?’ said Jordan, her head jerking up to glare at him.

  ‘Never said he wasn’t,’ said Peter, flinching slightly. ‘I still don’t reckon he’s got super powers or whatever, but you’ve only got to take one look at those guards in the medical centre to see that he –’

  ‘You know what, Peter?’ Jordan spat. ‘No-one’s asking you to come with us.’

  From the look on Peter’s face, she might as well have punched him.

  ‘I – I know that,’ he said. ‘But I don’t want you to get yourself killed either. I know you guys still reckon this is all real, but think about it – what are you actually basing that on?’

  And suddenly it was my turn to get angry.

  ‘Listen,’ I hissed, something snapping inside my head, ‘my dad is out there, all right? And according to Calvin, he’s got ninety-two days left to live. So maybe you can afford to waste time stuffing around and acting like none of this is actually happening, but I can’t, okay? I can’t.’

  Peter was shaking his head. ‘Mate, I wasn’t –’

  ‘You don’t want it to be true,’ I said over the top of him. ‘I get that. I’m not exactly thrilled about it myself. But it’s happening. So you need to decide whether you’re with us or not. Or else you might wind up with a couple more friends who don’t have time for you anymore.’

  It wasn’t meant to be a threat. Not really. But we didn’t have time to waste sitting around waiting for Peter to decide whose team he was on.

  Peter looked at me, then over at Jordan. He stared at her for a long time, like he was trying to decide whether she was worth all this effort. ‘All right,’ he said finally, closing his eyes like he was trying to wish it all away. ‘Yeah, all right. I’m in.’

  ‘Okay.’ I nodded, dropping down into Jordan’s desk chair. ‘Right. Good. That’s good.’

  You know those conversations that are so full-on, you actually come away feeling physically exhausted? Turns out deciding what to do about the end of the world can really take it out of you.

  I swivelled the chair around to face Jordan. ‘All right. So, Saturday. What are we – ?’

  But Jordan wasn’t listening. She was on her feet, staring across the room. Her eyes were locked on her bedroom window.

  Standing outside, face pressed up against the glass, tears streaming down his face, was Crazy Bill.

  Chapter 18

  WEDNESDAY, MAY 13

  92 DAYS

  Before I even had time to register what was going on, Jordan had dropped down and grabbed a hockey stick from under her bed. She ran over, threw the window open and took a swing at Crazy Bill’s head.

  ‘No, please,’ he said, staggering out of the way, eyes red from crying.

  ‘WHAT?’ Jordan shouted. ‘WHAT DO YOU WANT?’ She leant out the window and jabbed the h
ockey stick at him like a spear.

  ‘Jordan, be careful!’ said Peter as he and I sprang to our feet.

  ‘GET – AWAY – FROM – MY – HOUSE!’ Jordan yelled, emphasising each word with another swing of the stick.

  ‘I wasn’t –’ Crazy Bill sobbed, tears turning to mud on his filthy cheeks. ‘I only wanted to –’

  Jordan’s bedroom door flew open behind us, and her dad burst into the room. Crazy Bill took one look at him and bolted. Not that I could blame him. Jordan was scary enough, but her dad looked like he could drive him into the ground with one punch.

  Then again, Crazy Bill wasn’t exactly defenceless.

  Jordan pulled her head back inside, breathing hard. Her dad barrelled past her, vaulted out through the window, and took off after Crazy Bill.

  ‘Dad, no!’ Jordan yelled. ‘He’ll –’

  But he was already halfway down the street.

  Guess that’s where Jordan gets her reckless streak, I thought.

  ‘We need to follow them!’ she said urgently, pulling herself up onto the window frame.

  I spun around at the sound of footsteps. Jordan’s mum came racing into the room with Georgia on her heels. Jordan stopped, halfway out the window.

  ‘What are you doing?’ her mum gasped.

  ‘Crazy Bill!’ said Jordan, eyes flitting wildly between her mum and the street outside. ‘The homeless man! Dad went after him. I need to go and –’

  ‘No,’ said her mum. ‘Get back inside. Let your father –’

  ‘No – Mum – you don’t –’

  Georgia ran to look out the window, but her mum grabbed onto her. ‘Stay here, sweetheart.’ She turned back to Jordan. ‘Are you all right? Did he hurt you?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Jordan muttered, still perched on the windowsill. But there was panic all over her face and I knew exactly what she was thinking.

  If Crazy Bill freaked out again…

  I stared out the window, heart thumping, but there was no sign of either her dad or Crazy Bill.

  Surely he wouldn’t do anything. Not in the middle of town. Not when – ‘Mum, listen,’ Jordan pleaded. ‘We need to go out there and –’