‘Matt!’ I said. He looked around, his eyes following mine upward until he too froze.
‘We have to go,’ I said. ‘Now, before it sees us.’ But even as I spoke the drone began to descend, its lenses swivelling and extending as its cameras focused on us.
‘Come on,’ I said, reaching for Gracie, my eyes still fixed on the drone as I began to back away.
25
With Gracie in my arms I splashed out across the pond, trying not to think about what might be moving in the water as I pushed her up the bank on the other side and scrambled after her. As before, the track was choked with grass and ferns, making passage difficult, but as we left the pool behind us there were fewer Changed plants, suggesting the infected area was concentrated on the pond and the creek.
As we ran I kept looking up, searching the breaks in the foliage for some sign of the drone; although I didn’t see any I wasn’t reassured: I knew it had seen us, that even if it wasn’t following us there must be others up there by now, searching the area with infra-red or scanners capable of detecting Changed biology.
After about forty-five minutes I heard the sound of a helicopter approaching. I took Gracie’s hand and pulled her back into the cover of a tree. The path had curved up around the flank of a hill, and from where we were crouched it was possible to see out across the valley below; as we watched the helicopter passed overhead and on in a long arc toward the pool.
The helicopter was big and black, its fuselage bulging here and there like an insect swollen with blood. As it reached the centre of the valley it slowed down and circled a few times, before some kind of valve opened in its belly and a shower of liquid began to rain down onto the trees below.
The spraying continued for several minutes, the helicopter swinging in slowly widening circles before it finally rose upward again. A great gout of flame rose from the forest beneath, rolling upward in a fireball before bursting and dissipating, the flames beneath it licking skyward.
Next to me Gracie cried out, her eyes rolling back in her head, and for a moment she wavered on her feet as if she were about to fall.
‘Gracie!’ I said, but she only moaned and jerked away from me.
‘It hurts,’ she said.
Horrified I glanced at Matt, who was staring at her. He looked sick, frightened.
‘We have to get her out of here,’ I said.
He nodded and, extending a hand to support Gracie, stood up. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.
By the time we had put another kilometre or two between us and the fire Gracie seemed to have recovered, although Matt still looked frightened. I was scared as well but the couple of times I tried to stop and speak to him, to try to reassure him, he just shrugged me off, unwilling to discuss it with me.
Late in the afternoon we stopped for a while to drink. From where we were it was possible to see the sky to the east, the light already fading, and for a time I stood and stared out, searching for some sign we were being observed. I found nothing and allowed myself to feel a flicker of relief. Yet when I turned back I saw Matt sitting staring ahead, his manner as distracted as Gracie’s.
As soon as we could we pushed on again, driving ourselves north. As the afternoon faded we moved faster, as if the knowledge we were almost at our destination would not let us give way. At one point I turned and glimpsed Matt behind me, his long face drawn and pale in the fading light, his body thin beneath his filthy clothes. I could see the light of the Change on his skin, in his eyes, saw the way he was receding, and I knew his time was running down. Beside me Gracie moved steadily, her eyes blank and her face a mask emptied out of emotion.
It was already dusk when we heard the first of the helicopters. A searchlight passed over the trees off to the east, followed by the whirr of a drone overhead. Gracie tightened her grip on my hand, and instinctively I looked down, seeing once more the frightened child I had done this for. Then the helicopter banked left, the beam of the searchlight swinging toward us, the finger of light dancing through the trees.
‘The drone must have spotted us,’ Matt said. ‘We need to move fast.’ But I was already moving, stumbling on through the trees, following the faint outline of the track, the roar of the helicopter rising and falling as it swung back and forth above the canopy, the beam of the searchlight dancing though the trees behind us.
I’m not sure how long we ran – fifteen minutes, perhaps, maybe more – certainly we were beyond caring; all we knew was that we had to keep moving, to stay ahead of the beam. Once or twice we lost the helicopter, slipping down a bank or scrambling through a patch of undergrowth, but each time it found us again, the shock of it almost too much to bear. And then without warning the forest came to an end, the trees giving way with shocking abruptness to a wide expanse of scorched, stony ground, beyond which, its concrete bulk almost invisible in the gathering dark, stood the Wall that separated the Zone from the Transitional.
26
In the seconds after that first glimpse of the Wall I forgot about our pursuers and just stood, staring. We had been travelling so long there was something unreal about realising we were finally here, almost as if despite its bulk the Wall might easily prove to be a dream or a mirage and disappear if we took our eyes off it.
My distraction was quickly dispelled however. Almost as soon as we emerged the beam from the helicopter swung across toward us. Looking up I raised an arm against the intense glare: combined with the noise and the wind from the rotors the light felt like a physical thing, holding us there, pinning us. In my arms Gracie began to scream, fighting to hide her face from the light.
‘We have to get back out of sight,’ I shouted.
Matt looked at me, wild-eyed. ‘And go where?’
I shook my head. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said, but before I could say more a voice rang out from the helicopter.
‘You are in contravention of the regulations governing the Transitional. Lie down on the ground with your arms above your head or we will have no option but to shoot.’
I looked at Matt. It seemed impossible it should have come to this.
‘Lie down,’ the voice boomed again. In my arms Gracie had fallen still, her eyes trained on the helicopter, her face uncannily calm and devoid of all emotion other than a cool, affectless curiosity. Shaken by the sense I was holding some kind of changeling I had to fight not to drop her. Beside me Matt’s face told me part of him wanted to give up, to do as he was being told, and although I understood, I knew I couldn’t allow it, that if he gave himself up now they would kill him.
‘No,’ I said, shaking my head as he began to lower himself to the ground. ‘Don’t do it.’
He hesitated, staring at me.
‘We have weapons ready,’ said the voice from above. Moving slowly I looked up, squinting into the glare of the searchlight. Then I turned, and in one desperate movement made for the cover of the trees.
‘Stop!’ shouted the voice. ‘Stop or we’ll shoot.’ But it was too late, because I was already back amongst the trees, crashing back into the darkness. Glancing back wildly I glimpsed Matt running after me, then two shots rang out, the sound shockingly loud.
‘No!’ I shouted, terrified he had been hit, but before I could say anything else he was there in front of me, one hand on my arm, his face near my own.
‘It’s okay! They missed!’ he shouted, and I must have looked confused because he said it again, and then we were running once more, westward this time, following the line of the trees with the helicopter’s beam raking the canopy behind us.
As we ran I tried to come up with some idea about what to do next. We couldn’t just keep running: sooner or later – and probably sooner – one of us would grow tired and stumble and they would find us and start shooting again. Yet neither was there any way we could reach the Wall and escape that way: not only did several hundred metres of open ground separate us from it, but it was also apparent that ge
tting over it was likely to be extremely difficult, even if we had time to try.
The Wall had been constructed in the first year or two after the Change arrived, its line of high concrete slabs positioned one beside the other like palings, bisecting the landscape in an effort to keep the Change and the Changed from moving south. While I had seen pictures of it before I hadn’t really understood how big it was, the way its eight metre high slabs extended in both directions as far as the eye could see.
Behind us the helicopter was gaining, the searchlight darting here and there, something I kept wanting to see as a good sign, an indication that they had not yet located us. Yet still I knew we were highly unlikely to escape.
Then as I glanced at the Wall I saw something I had not before, a bulge in its shape, almost hidden in the darkness. Realising it was an observation area of some sort, and the shadow beneath it was a ladder, I grabbed Matt’s arm with my free hand and pointed at it.
‘There!’ I shouted.
Matt stopped and stared. Behind us the beam of the searchlight moved closer.
‘We’ll never make it,’ he said.
I shook my head. ‘We have to. We haven’t got a choice.’
‘They’ll see us.’
My arms aching I lowered Gracie to the ground. ‘Maybe we could double back, get behind them. Or find some way to distract them.’
As I spoke the helicopter’s downdraft struck us again. Matt looked up, squinting against its force. Then he turned back to me and gripped my arm. I felt something twist in my stomach.
‘Take Gracie,’ he said. ‘And run as fast as you can.’
‘No,’ I said, but he had already let go of my arm. I reached for him and dragged him back. Pressing my face to his, I held him tight.
‘You can’t,’ I said. ‘There has to be another way.’
‘You know there’s not,’ he said. ‘And this way you can save her, save yourself.’ As he spoke he unclasped my hands and backed away.
‘Matt,’ I said. ‘Please . . .’
But he just smiled and, turning, ran back toward the helicopter, breaking free of the foliage and arcing out across the open ground away from us.
For several seconds I thought he might be okay, that the helicopter might not have seen him, but then I saw it turn and begin to follow him, the beam tight on his thin figure as he weaved back toward the line of trees.
Next to me Gracie was staring after him, her face blank. I felt sick, battered by the dull apprehension this had all been a terrible mistake, that I should just have let her be taken when she began to Change. My sister was gone, after all, or at least in every way that mattered; all that remained was a shell, this alien thing that had once been a person.
In the distance I heard the loudspeaker on the helicopter ring out a warning, followed by two shots, and then I was on my feet, Gracie in my arms, stumbling toward the ladder, tears streaming down my face.
27
I tried not to look back as I clambered up the ladder with Gracie ahead of me, not sure I would be able to keep moving if I thought too hard about what we were leaving behind. Up close the Wall seemed even larger than it had from a distance, meaning we were surprisingly high by the time we emerged onto the platform I had seen from the trees.
I am not sure what I had been expecting, but it wasn’t what I saw. Even in the darkness it was obvious we were looking down at an alien landscape. Where one might have expected the familiar outlines of gum trees stood other, less familiar things, fantastic arrangements of leaf and fleshy tube, in the depths of which were visible the soft glow of bioluminescence. Beside me Gracie had paused and was looking down, her hands on the railing; reaching out I touched her head and she turned, looking up blankly.
Despite the strangeness of what lay in front of me I had little time to waste, so, crossing the platform, I established there was another ladder, this one retracted. Looking down at it I felt a flicker of disquiet about why that might be, what kind of creature they might fear would use it, but as I groped about in the darkness I found a lever, which I pulled, and the ladder telescoped down with a clang. In the distance the helicopter was still circling; unable to look back I took Gracie’s hand and, going first, began the climb down.
Just as on the other side of the Wall the first three hundred metres or so of the Zone was bare ground, the earth poisoned and burned. Uncertain of whether the helicopter would follow us now we were here I dragged Gracie across it as quickly as I could but the helicopter remained on the far side of the Wall.
As we grew closer I became aware of a sort of whispering, and from time to time I caught a breath of perfume, something thick and sweet and slightly rotten. Here and there lights moved, darting and scurrying, living things in the trees, and on the trunks of the trees ghostly banks of fungi or something similar glowed palely.
When we reached the edge of the trees Gracie began to move more steadily, heading forward into the darkness as if following some unspoken directive. Uncertain what else to do, I followed her, trying to make sense of what I saw as I went.
Although it was dark our way was lit by the luminescence of the trees, from which globes of light hung. Yet even with light it was difficult to make much sense of what I saw. Where once trees had stood, there were now huge tuberous structures, their sides fleshy and swollen, like massive rhododendrons; elsewhere canopies of what seemed to be roots snaked down from central platforms. Around and on top of both grew other organisms, many disturbingly suggestive of animate forms. Several were creatures – whether plant or animal – I recognised from the pool, things with cilia and flowers that unfolded like anemones, but others were new to me: layers of shells or scales that clung to the roots of the treelike structures, fat balls that lay about the roots, long strands that threaded downward from overhead.
Yet it was not their alienness that was most unsettling. Instead it was the sense that as we moved through the darkness the forest was watching us, the cilia swivelling to follow our movement, not individually but almost as one, a shiver of sound moving with them.
I am not sure how long we walked: I was too exhausted, too deranged by grief, too confused by what I saw to make sense of time. At some point it dawned on me we were not wandering at random, but following a path; glancing back, suddenly aware we were not alone I wondered who – or what – had made it, but there were only the trees, the weight of the forest’s presence. Eventually though the path turned and began to head up along the side of a hill, before finally emerging into a sort of clearing, the sky overhead open to the stars. On its edges I hesitated, unwilling to step out where I might be spotted by a drone or a helicopter, but before I could think through what to do next I saw figures entering the clearing from the other side.
There were perhaps a dozen of them, and although it was too dark to see them clearly, in the starlight and the glow of the Changed plants I could see they were human, or had been. As they filed in from the trees there was something eerily purposeful about the way they moved and the way they held themselves, a quality I knew from watching Gracie.
I reached down and grabbed Gracie’s hand, meaning to pull her away, but she didn’t stop, just turned her face to me, her expression not so much blank or hostile as indifferent, as if I was simply an irrelevance to her.
Shocked, I let go of her hand, and in the same steady pace she had set through the forest behind me she began to walk toward the group of figures who stood on the other side of the clearing. Two of them – a man and a woman – stepped out to meet her. Gracie stopped, the three of them standing unmoving, almost as if some silent meaning were passing between them. Then they turned as one, and moving as quietly and resolutely as they had arrived began to disperse back into the trees.
Sudden terror gripping me I followed, crashing after them into the vegetation. In here the forest was thicker, darker, yet it didn’t seem to slow the figures of the Changed who moved ahead of me; despi
te moving steadily and unhurriedly they soon began to leave me behind, disappearing into the darkness.
I suppose I could have called Gracie’s name, cried out to her to stop, but something told me it would not matter, and that to do so would only bring unwanted attention down on me. Even when, a few minutes later, I lost sight of them for good, I didn’t cry out, instead I just crashed on, searching for some glimpse of them in the dark, saying her name over and over to myself, as if by doing so I might bring her back.
In the end I only stopped because I couldn’t go on, stumbling to a halt by a rock and falling to my knees. At some point I had started crying, and now the tears filled my mouth and nose, left me barely able to see, choking on the knowledge it was over and I had lost, that Gracie was gone, and Matt was dead, and I was here, alone, lost in the Zone, unable to return. I wanted to take the plants, rub them on myself, take the Change into myself, lose all of this, all this pain, let it go, but something – perhaps fear, perhaps some instinct for survival – held me back, so instead I just lay there, in the dirt, sobbing brokenly. And then behind me I heard a voice say my name.
I turned in confusion, then froze, a word forming on my lips.
‘Dad?’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Writing this book was an adventure and a joy, and I’m incredibly grateful to everybody who helped along the way. I owe a special debt of gratitude to my friends Garth Nix and Sean Williams, who read various drafts and were endlessly generous with their encouragement and advice, and my publisher Claire Craig and editors Julia Stiles and Danielle Walker. But thanks most of all to my partner, Mardi McConnochie, both for her critical insight and for her love and support, and to my daughters, Annabelle and Lila.
About James Bradley
The Silent Invasion Page 21
