To my family at
Abbotsford Presbyterian Church.
May we shine like stars.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Copyright Page
Chapter 1
THURSDAY, JULY 30
14 DAYS
I didn’t like being out here while it was still light.
Not that there was any ideal time to be standing out in the open, waiting for the Co-operative to come and find me, but the blood-coloured sunset dripping down between the trees wasn’t exactly an encouraging sign.
The wind whipped around my face, stinging my ears and stirring up braids that had deteriorated almost completely by now into dreadlocks. I flicked my head back, clearing my line of sight, feet shifting on the asphalt to keep warm.
Waiting.
The road stretched out in front of me, slicing a narrow path through the bushland. It curved away to the right, almost imperceptibly, winding out from Phoenix in a spiral. Eventually, far out of sight, it bypassed the warehouse and petered out, dead-ending into the trees just short of the towering wall that sealed us off from the outside world.
The road was a lie, like almost everything else in this place. But those lies were starting to unravel.
It had been three weeks since Shackleton gave up the benevolent-leader act and turned the town centre into a concentration camp. Three weeks of scouring hijacked surveillance feeds, of searching the bushland for anything or anyone that might be able to put a dent in the Co-operative’s plans, of watching the days slip out from under us.
And now our food was running out.
There were thirteen of us down in the Vattel Complex, getting by on food supplies originally meant for two, and things had only got worse when Kara’s hydroponics bay finally bit the dust. Watered-down soup might trick the eyes, but it didn’t trick the stomach, and it seemed like a waste to die of starvation when there were so many other, more interesting threats to my life – like getting gunned down by a Co-operative security officer, or disappearing into one of my visions of the past or future, either of which might happen at any minute.
I shivered, hugging myself through the same crusty jumper I’d been wearing for five days straight. It was one of Luke’s, although we didn’t really think like that anymore. It had been a long time since I’d worn anything properly clean or entirely mine.
The wind picked up and I glanced over to the side of the road. It was impossible to tell through the jostling leaves whether anyone was out there.
Mind on the job, Jordan, I ordered myself. No time to start jumping at –
My eyes snapped forward again as the low hum of an engine cut through the noise of the bush. I took a breath, steeling myself.
The rumbling grew louder, and a black supply truck crested the rise in front of me. I held my ground in the middle of the road, fists clenched at my sides. The driver jolted in surprise and slammed on the brakes, screeching to a stop about five metres short of me.
The passenger door flew open. A black-uniformed security officer jumped out, raising the semi-automatic rifle that was apparently standard-issue now.
It was Officer Cohen. Formerly just Mr Cohen, the school cleaner.
‘Down on the ground,’ he ordered. His voice was hard, but his eyes flashed back and forth, like he already suspected he was being set up.
‘Mr Cohen, please,’ I said, refusing to let the nerves spill into my voice. ‘You don’t want to shoot me.’
‘No,’ he said, fingers tensing. ‘No, Jordan, I don’t. But I will if I have to.’
I glanced into the bush, opening my hands and slowly raising them into the air.
‘Down on the ground,’ Mr Cohen repeated, ‘or I promise you, I will –’
There was a crash. A figure flew from the bushes, impossibly fast, hair streaming behind her like black fire. The figure collided with Mr Cohen. I heard a split second of his startled shout before it was drowned in gunfire. I dived to the asphalt, rolling clear of the torrent of bullets.
Mr Cohen fell to the ground, rifle slipping from his grip, putting an end to the firing. The black-haired figure – Amy – landed on top of him. She grabbed the rifle and jumped up, stumbling off again, and spun her gaze to the trees. ‘Get out here!’ she yelled in her weird, too-fast voice. ‘Hurry!’
Luke and his dad burst out from their hiding places, wielding a rusty bit of pipe and one of Kara’s pickaxes. Soren swept in from the other side of the road, carrying a rifle identical to Mr Cohen’s. All three of them were as dirty and underfed as I was. They looked like a pack of survivors from a zombie movie.
I got up, ears still ringing from the blast of the gun. No way had they missed that, back at the warehouse. We had maybe five minutes before more trouble arrived.
Luke’s dad bent down to disarm Mr Cohen. ‘Nice work, girls.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, looking up at the driver, frozen in his seat. ‘Hey, you! Get out here!’
The driver nodded shakily and cut the engine. He clambered down from the truck, and I recognised him as one of the old delivery guys from back when Phoenix was still a town. He glanced out at the bush, like he’d love to make a break for it, but he came around to kneel next to Mr Cohen.
‘Please,’ Mr Cohen whimpered, as Luke’s dad stood up with his rifle. ‘Shackleton – he’ll kill me.’
‘I will do it for him if you don’t keep your mouth shut!’ Soren snarled.
‘No, you won’t,’ I said, wishing I’d fought harder to keep him from coming with us. ‘And Shackleton won’t either. Just let us pick up a few supplies and we’ll be out of your hair.’
‘Where are the keys?’ asked Luke. The driver cocked his head in the direction of the truck, and Luke went to pull them from the ignition. I followed after him, leaving the others to handle the guard duty.
As soon as we got around the back of the truck, Luke dragged me into a hug. ‘That was ridiculous. I thought he was going to –’
‘We’ve done worse,’ I said, squeezing him back, still dizzy with adrenalin.
‘Yeah, but usually I don’t have to sit there and watch it.’
‘Good thing this is a one-off then,’ I said. No way would we get away with it again.
Luke turned his attention to the truck. I watched him cycle through the keys, dirty fingers fumbling in the cold, and the low-grade dread I carried everywhere with me swirled up to the surface again, clawing holes in my stomach.
He was going to die.
If that old surveillance video of Kara’s was to be believed, he’d already died.
Sometime in the next two weeks, Luke was going to find himself thrown twenty years into the past. We had no idea how that was even possible, but neither of us doubted for a second that it was going to happen – unless we did something about it.
And we were going to do something about it.
Because Luke wasn’t the only one going back. According to the video, Peter was going to follow him back there, stab him to death in a blind rage, and return to the present again.
And then came the final piece of the puzzle: As he bled out on the floor, Luke was going to deliver – had already delivered – a message.
Take Tobias to the release station.
Tobias. The anti-Tabitha. The cure for the end of the world. The answer we’d been waiting so long, so desperately for. At least, that’s what we were hoping it was. But for all our talking and searching and tying ourselves up in knots about it, we were still no closer to knowing what Tobias even was.
‘Got it,’ said Luke, popping open the padlock and heaving the roller door into the air to reveal mountains of neatly labelled boxes. A month ago, we might’ve found pretty much anything in here – office stuff, school uniforms, magazines – everything a town needed to keep believing it was still connected to the outside world. Now it just looked like food and a few other basics. Exactly what we were after.
‘All right,’ I said, climbing into the back of the truck, stomach grumbling in anticipation. ‘Let’s go shopping.’
My hands landed on the nearest box, and it took all my self-control not to tear it open and start gorging myself.
Focus, I thought, hauling the box down to Luke. I dropped a second box on top of the first, and he ran them around to the front of the truck.
I could hear Soren threatening Mr Cohen again, shouting at him in the weird, stilted voice he’d picked up over a lifetime in isolation.
‘Everything okay back there?’ I asked as Luke returned.
‘Hard to say,’ said Luke. He grunted as I dumped a giant bag of rice into his arms. ‘Shackleton’s guys aren’t giving us any trouble. Soren might be a different story, though.’
I gritted my teeth and ducked back into the truck. Theoretically, we were all on the same side now, but that didn’t make Soren any less unstable. Sooner or later, he was going to become a real problem.
I heaved a box of soup tins down from the top of a pile, then froze as I heard the growl of another engine coming up behind us.
Luke jogged back. ‘Already?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, passing the soup down to him. ‘Time to go.’ I grabbed one last box, and we raced to rejoin the others.
Amy and Mr Hunter were loaded up, ready to run. Soren’s box was still at his feet. He was standing over Mr Cohen and the driver, waving his gun around like a crazy person. Luke tossed the keys out into the bush and looked down at the two men. ‘Just stay where you are until your mates get here, okay?’
The driver nodded.
‘I don’t trust him,’ said Soren, pointing the rifle in the driver’s face.
The driver lurched. ‘No! You can’t!’
‘Tell me about Tobias,’ said Soren. ‘Tell me where Tobias is being kept and I may let you live.’
‘I don’t know!’ the driver moaned. ‘I swear – please – I don’t even know who that is!’
‘Soren,’ I snapped, over the growing engine noise behind us. ‘Put it down. We’re going.’
‘Please,’ said Mr Cohen. ‘Please, just go.’
‘Shut up,’ Soren grunted. He pulled the trigger.
Click.
The men on the ground shrieked and reeled out of the way, not registering at first that the weapon hadn’t fired. Soren squeezed the trigger a few more times, shaking the rifle like that was going to fix it.
Click, click, click.
He shot me a furious look. ‘You did this!’
Soren let the rifle drop to his waist. He growled in frustration and kicked the truck driver in the face, knocking him to the ground. Then he snatched up the box at his feet and followed the rest of us into the bush.
Chapter 2
THURSDAY, JULY 30
14 DAYS
Soren lashed out at me as soon as the entrance to the Vattel Complex rolled shut above our heads. ‘Never do that again!’
‘Won’t be an issue,’ I muttered, moving ahead of him down the decaying stairs, fingernails digging into the box in my hands.
Soren swore. ‘What is that supposed to mean?’
‘Trust me,’ I said, ‘that’s the last time you’re going up with us.’
Soren charged into the hallway behind me. He dropped his box, grabbed me with both hands and shoved me up against the wall, sending my own box flying. I felt the rifle hanging between us, pressing into my stomach.
‘Do not pretend you are in charge here,’ he said. ‘You do not decide –’
‘You would have killed them!’ I shouted. ‘You would have murdered two people who weren’t any threat to us!’
‘Hey!’ said Luke’s dad, coming up behind us and grabbing Soren’s shoulder. ‘That’s enough.’
Soren shrugged the hand off. ‘Do you expect me to apologise? They are the enemy, Jordan! If you are not willing to do what is necessary –’
‘You know what, Soren?’ I said. ‘You don’t exactly have a brilliant track record of figuring out who the enemy is. How about you let someone else decide what’s necessary?’
Soren opened his mouth and closed it again. He stormed off to the surveillance room, throwing his rifle to the ground.
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ I said under my breath, ‘go have a whinge to your mum.’
A thin face framed by matted black hair appeared in a doorway off the corridor, peering at Soren as he passed. Mike. Soren scowled at him and he shrank back inside.
Luke glanced sideways at me, checking if I was okay. ‘Come on,’ he said, grunting under the weight of the box in his hands, ‘let’s get this stuff to the kitchen.’
We headed up the corridor and I shoved past Mike into Kara and Soren’s old lounge room, which was now set up as one of our main sleeping areas. Theoretically it was the boys’ room, but I’d moved my bed in here too. I didn’t care how ‘safe’ Peter was, locked in his cell at the other end of the Complex. I wasn’t taking any chances when it came to keeping Luke alive.
‘You should speak to Soren with more respect,’ hissed Mike, following along behind us.
I glanced back at him, but didn’t respond. Not worth the energy.
We’d picked up him and Cathryn about a week ago. Luke and I had been out past the eastern end of town, setting up a fake campsite to keep security looking for us on the surface, when the two of them burst out of the bushes, half-starved and begging us to take them in.
Turned out Kara had warned them. Two days before Shackleton took the rest of the town captive, she’d written to Mike, Cathryn and Tank, telling them to get out. A gesture of goodwill, I guess, after everything she and Soren had put them through.
She’d come clean with them about all of it. Who she and Soren really were. The whole elaborate deception they’d used to lure Mike and the others into kidnapping Peter. But one letter wasn’t going to undo all the wrong that had been done – and it wasn’t going to bring Mike’s fingers back either.
He’d been badly injured when we found him, hand torn up by a bullet wound from a run-in with security a few nights earlier. They were separated from Tank that same night, and he hadn’t been seen since. Kara did what she could for Mike, but the infection had already set in. His left thumb and forefinger ended up getting left behind on the operating table.
‘Everyone okay?’ asked Luke’s mum, already waiting when we arrived in the kitchen.
Soren’s furious voice echoed across the corridor. Luke raised an eyebrow. ‘More or less.’
He dropped his box on the floor and gave his mum a hug. He seemed to be feeling a bit more sympathetic towards her these days, after what had happened to Dr Montag. Luke had hated his mum’s new boyfriend all along, but that didn’t make his murder any easier to stomach.
Managing the food supply was kind of Ms Hunter’s thing now. Luke said it was good for her, that she needed something like this to help her deal with everything
. He said she’d be fine with the end of the world, so long as she had a project to be in charge of.
Cathryn was in here too, sitting on the bench, picking the dirt out of her nails. She smiled at us as we piled into the room.
Amy squeezed in after us, deliberately slow again now that we were back underground. She glanced around anxiously. ‘Hey, Ms Hunter? Um, could you…?’
Luke’s mum nodded. She unlocked the cupboard above her head, pulled out two chocolate bars, and passed them down to Amy. My stomach growled again.
‘Thanks,’ Amy breathed, turning to leave.
Mike grabbed her with his good hand. ‘Hey. Wait.’
‘Problem, Mike?’ I said, before he had time to do something stupid.
He ignored me, turning to Luke’s mum. ‘Seriously? Two?’
‘You know she’s entitled to extra rations,’ Ms Hunter said evenly.
‘That’s crap. She doesn’t need all that.’
‘Mike,’ I said. ‘Let her go.’
Ms Hunter stared down at him. ‘Would you like me to give her your dinner as well?’
Mike muttered under his breath. He threw down Amy’s arm and pushed his way out of the room.
‘Not your fault,’ I told Amy, catching the look on her face.
‘Yeah,’ she sighed, and slipped off to her bedroom.
Cathryn dropped down from the bench and went after her. The two of them had struck up a bit of a friendship this past week. Something to fill the void for Cathryn now that she and Mike were barely speaking.
Luke’s dad put his box down where Cathryn had been sitting. Ms Hunter tore it open and looked inside. ‘What’s this?’
‘Cereal,’ said Luke’s dad, pointing to the label on the box.
‘Does this look like cereal to you, Jack?’ She pulled a smaller box out of the big one. It was a video camera. One of those little handheld ones, about as big a phone. Ms Hunter stared at her ex-husband, pursing her lips like it was his fault the box had been mislabelled.
‘Sorry,’ said Luke, moving quickly to head off another argument, ‘should’ve checked inside before we took it.’ He pulled another camera out of the box. ‘It’s not like the Co-operative to stuff up like this.’
‘I’m going to have a shower,’ said Luke’s dad stiffly, walking out.
Fallout Page 1
