"We have to go."
"Go? What? What are you talking about."
She felt his strong hands around her wrists and realised she had been wrong to trust him. He lifted her off the ground. She tried to fight back but she was tired, still half asleep. He was bigger than her and she didn't stand a chance.
The stars disappeared as they went further into the forest. He was saying something to her in a whisper but she didn't understand. She struggled again and somehow she managed to break free.
"Sam don't!" he said but he still didn't raise his voice above a stage whisper.
She ignored him and ran as hard and fast as she could, regardless of the direction. She made no effort to keep quiet, she doubted Billy would hear her over the sound of his own clumsy movements. The most important thing to do was get as far away from him as possible.
16
Trevor woke with a gun in his face. The metal barrel was dull grey. He didn't move. Much to his shame this was not the first time he'd had a gun pointed at his head.
Behind the gun stood a figure dressed entirely in black. Even the face was covered with some sort of mask and breathing apparatus.
"On your feet," said the masked figure.
Trevor glanced behind the figure. The sun had not yet risen but he could see other dark shapes in the background. He suspected they too had guns aimed at his head.
He got to his feet slowly and purposefully, no sudden movements, and raised his hands above his head.
"Are you the captain?" asked the figure. It was impossible to tell whether it was a man or a woman from the voice alone but they stood at least a foot taller than Trevor and there weren't many six-foot eight women walking the earth.
"Yes, I'm the captain," he said after the briefest pause. His tenure might have been brief but he was the last captain of the ship. "And you are?"
"Come with me," said the man.
Trevor was about to protest but before he could do so hands grab hold of his wrists and drag them behind his back. He was given no choice in the matter and pushed after the man who had spoken to him.
He watched the man ahead of him. He moved with the slightly jerky motions of a robot or of a man heavily armoured. Trevor thought that medieval knights in heavy chain mail and breast plates would move in a similar way.
In the cool darkness of the early morning it was much easier to move and before sunrise he estimated they had travelled as far as he had managed the whole of the previous day.
Neither the man he was following nor the man who was holding his wrists spoke to him as they marched rapidly across the island. As the sun rose he was better able to see the makeup of the black suits and was surprised to see the surface moving. He watched for a while until he saw that they were made of the same black dots he had seen between the rocks and grass.
A building broke the skyline up ahead. It was an unnatural looking square block, completely at odds with the natural beauty that surrounded it. As they got closer more buildings became visible and the series of concrete tunnels that connected them.
He continued to follow the guards as the violent heat of the sun beat down on him and made keeping pace increasingly difficult.
The ground beneath his feet became firmer as the grass was replaced by what at first looked like concrete but on inspection turned out to be a hugely concentrated number of the black dots. Seeing what was actually beneath his feet gave him a strange feeling of vertigo but he couldn't fall over with the man behind him holding his wrists.
They approached a gate. A man in a glass cube waved them through. From there it was just a short walk to the door which opened before they could reach it.
A man in a smart black suit stood on the threshold. He looked about fifty from a distance but up close Trevor saw that he could have been ten years either side of that.
"Captain?" said the man as they approached.
His hands were released and the man in black in front stepped to the side. It appeared that he was free but he had little doubt that if he tried to make a run for it he'd get a bullet in the head for his troubles. "Leterohs," he said and put out his hand. "Captain Leterohs."
The man at the door ignored his hand but stepped aside to let him know he was expected to go in. Inside he would be trapped, with the doors locked he stood no chance of getting away. It didn't appear that he had a choice, however. A shadow was cast over the wall and he realised that the soldier in black was once again behind him.
Trevor walked past the old man and into the darkness of the building beyond.
17
She ran without questioning the fact that she was running away from Billy and that all he'd done to spook her was wake her up. Then she was running from the realisation that she had behaved so irrationally and from the certainty that Billy was no longer chasing her.
The idea that Billy was trying to hurt her was idiotic and she admonished herself for not realising it earlier. Her only excuse was that she'd been involved in a major accident. But, while other people might have forgiven her for acting a little strangely after being shipwrecked, she knew that she couldn't forgive herself. She was better than that. If Billy had been planning to hurt her why would he wake her up? And why had he waited until then to do so? And, above all, this was Billy, of course he wasn't going to try and hurt her.
She slowed to a walk. She was out of breath and she could feel the heat of the day struggling to get through the thick canopy of leaves above. She couldn't hear him behind her but she wasn't ready to turn around and have it confirmed.
She walked on. The forest was thicker now, the insects slow and lazy. It took her a moment to realise that she wasn't fighting her way through bushes and branches, that she was on an actual path. It wasn't so unexpected, she supposed, after all, if there was a fence then there were probably people here. They had probably cleared a path.
"Sam?"
Her blood ran cold at the sound of her name and then seemed to boil over when she realised it was Billy. She turned around hoping to see him there but the path behind her was empty. "Billy?"
"Sam where are you?"
She stopped walking but the forest continued to move around her. "I'm on the path," she shouted.
She waited for a response but none came. She looked in the direction she thought his voice had come from but saw nothing there. She wondered if she had imagined the whole exchange.
Then Billy was running towards her. He burst through a bush and scattered yellow petals across the path. His eyes bulged and his lips were pulled back so she could see his teeth. "Run!" he shouted.
She didn't move though. She stood on the path and let him run towards her. She didn't even get out of his way.
Then she saw the men in black body armour, they looked like soldiers but didn't wear the uniform of any nation she knew about. They were running behind Billy, their guns in their hands. Their stiff mechanical movements showing no sign of fatigue in the scolding heat of the day.
Billy grabbed her arm and she spun around. They ran together into the bushes while the men in black chased them.
They left the path at the first opportunity. They crashed through the bushes. Stray branches scratched her exposed face and arms but she thought that preferable to whatever the soldiers would do to them if they got caught.
They ran and they ran and then suddenly the ground was no longer beneath her feet. They crashed through a final thick bush, jumping like hurdlers. When they came down on the other side expecting to find the ground they found, instead, thin air.
She fell and Billy fell beside her. The world spun around and around and after a moment she hit the ground but she continued to fall. Rolling now, down a steep slope, rocks and branches tearing away her clothes and pieces of skin in large ragged chunks.
Samantha wasn't sure whether she cried out but she knew Billy did. She could hear him beside her and, at odd moments, saw his anguished face and his arms flailing about to try and grab hold of something.
She saw the rock ahead.
It jutted out from the ground like a piece of diamond, glinting in the sun. She was rolling straight towards it and there was nothing she could do to avoid hitting it. She turned her head, hoping at least to avoid that but it did no good. May, in fact have made it worse. She felt her head strike the solid chunk of rock and there was a moment of intense pain and worry that she was about to die.
Then there was nothing at all.
18
The alarms had been switched off but the air of panic remained. Grace paced back and forth in her room and tried to decide whether or not she was really going to go through with it. If she got away with it the potential consequences were as dire as if she got caught.
Her bag was packed and by the door. All she had to do was pick it up and leave. That and get past the hundreds of people rushing around and the guards on the gates without anyone stopping to ask what she was playing at. And then she didn't just have to face the dangers of the island but trek right into the most dangerous part and back again.
She honestly didn't know if she had it in her but right there in her little room she decided she had to find out. Grace picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder. She pulled open the door and charged out into the corridor before she could change her mind.
The red warning lights continued to flash. It was somehow even more threatening without the accompanying siren. People rushed past going in both directions and no one so much as glanced in her direction.
Bolstered by her new found transparency she set off in the opposite direction to the lab. The nearest exit was at the lab end but she had already determined that the risk of being spotted by someone who knew her, and knew what she was supposed to be doing, was too great. So she walked in the direction of the security department, taking long strides and doing her best to appear important and in a hurry.
She dodged people walking in the opposite direction and strode past slower walkers. She kept her head down and a look of focus on her face. It was not as difficult as she had imagined; she was focused, just not on something that the people who saw her would approve of.
It took almost than ten minutes to walk along the featureless corridor to the security building. Red lights blinked on and off and a little voice in her head told her that she shouldn't be doing this, that she could turn back now and forget all about it.
She didn't have clearance to enter the security building but she didn't need to. Beside it there was an unremarkable door with a green sign reading 'Fire Exit' across the middle.
Grace pushed the bar across the door. It was just like the fire escape at school. It caught and for a moment she thought she had been wrong and that it wasn't going to open at all. She pushed with more force and it gave. No alarm went off and all of a sudden bright sunlight was burning her retinas.
She stepped outside and put on her sunglasses. The door swung closed behind her. She waited a moment but no one came after her and demanded to know what she was playing at. She relaxed a little, not much, the hardest parts of her self given mission still lay ahead. But first she had to get past the guards.
She walked towards the guard cube with the same focused determination she had channelled in the corridor. The guard stood up as she approached, his eyes wide with surprise.
"What are you doing out here?" he said, his voice perfectly clear despite the barrier between them.
"I need to collect some samples from the Shed."
The Shed was what they called the warehouse. It was where the documentation for most of the experiments was held. The sort of thing she hoped would be perfectly normal in an emergency like this.
"Shouldn't you be wearing a haz-mat suit?" he said.
"No time. I won't be long."
He shook his head and opened the gate for her. She knew full well the dangers of being outside without breathing apparatus and skin protection but she wouldn't have been able to get hold of a suit without raising suspicion. Besides, she hadn't been lying to the guard about everything, she really didn't plan to be long.
She hurried past the guard box and tipped him a grateful salute on her way. He returned it listlessly and returned to playing on his tablet.
The Shed was up the hill to the right but as soon as she was out of sight of the guard she turned left and down. She broke into the closest thing she could manage to a run in the searing heat. The sooner she got this over with the better.
19
Samantha opened her eyes. The sun had bleached the blue sky until it was almost white. Her bones felt bruised and her flesh felt bloody. It hurt to breathe. She remembered what had happened but for a moment it didn't seem possible. She didn't move until she heard someone calling her.
"Sam?" they said. "Sam?"
She turned her head and it hurt. She couldn't see anyone but there was the side of the hill she had just fallen down and a large bush.
"Sam are you there?"
She stood up slowly. Her legs ached. They felt weak as if they might give up being solid at any moment and turn to jelly. She staggered towards the bush.
"Sam?"
There was a deep indentation in the green leaves and at the bottom lay Billy. He had cuts all over his face and his right arm was twisted beneath him. He still smiled when he saw her.
"Are you alright?" he said.
She nodded but didn't feel as if she had the strength to speak just yet.
"Can you give me a hand?"
She wasn't sure that she could do anything. Standing upright seemed to be taking most of her strength. She gave him her left hand anyway.
Billy pulled himself up with only occasional help from her. Once he was out of the bush he brushed thorns from his clothes, hands and face. He looked up at the slope they had just fallen down.
"I don't think we're getting back that way," he said.
She shook her head, or should she have nodded? She couldn't think straight. It felt as if her brain was still rolling down the hill.
She realised he was looking at her and she tried to smile to reassure him that she was okay. That seemed to satisfy him.
"At least we got away from those guys," he said, looking back up the. "We should keep moving though. Try to find some shelter."
She nodded but her head felt heavy and somehow she started to fall forwards. The ground rushed towards her but the world had gone black before she hit it.
When she opened her eyes again she was beneath a canvas roof. This confused her and she wanted to call Billy to explain it but her mouth felt as if it was full of cotton. It was dark and her face was cool but she was wrapped in a blanket of some kind. The ground beneath her felt soft.
She heard footsteps coming towards her, softly squashing the ground. Suddenly she remembered passing out and she felt embarrassed. She closed her eyes and turned away from the footsteps. She wasn't ready to face Billy yet.
"Is this her?" said a strange muffled voice that she wasn't familiar with. A woman's voice. She sounded bored and annoyed.
"Yes," said Billy. He also sounded annoyed but in a different way that she couldn't quite understand.
Then hands were touching her, checking her pulse and temperature. She lay still and let them get on with it. She didn't want to act to soon.
"She's fine," said the female voice.
"Good," said Billy. He still sounded angry but a little more relaxed.
Samantha opened her eyes, blinking as if she had just woken up. The woman was wearing a full body suit, not unlike those of the soldiers that had chased them except it was a light tan colour and instead of a mask she had a clear helmet. She was Asian, of indeterminate age. Her hair was tied back in a loose ponytail.
"What's going on?" said Samantha.
Then she turned towards Billy and saw that he was aiming a gun at the woman.
"Billy?"
He looked at her and it was as if his whole face had changed. He didn't look so young nor so innocent. The cuts on his face had turned into scars and he held himself differently. She wondered if she had been right to fear h
im.
"Are you alright?" said Billy.
She nodded. The fuzzy feeling in her head had gone but she was still confused. "How long was I unconscious for?"
"Three hours," he said.
The woman continued to crouch beside her. She looked bored and strange in her fishbowl helmet.
"Who's she?"
"Dr Annabel Chong," said the woman. "And you two are in a lot of trouble."
Billy put the safety catch on the gun and walked past Annabel. He held out his hand and Sam took it with pleasure. "There's something you have to see," he said.
He helped her to her feet. Her body still felt as if it might decide to return to a liquid form at any moment so she put her arm around him for support. She limped as they walked out from beneath the shelter.
"What's going on?" she whispered once she thought they were far enough away.
"I'll explain later but you've got to see this first," he said.
They were at the top of a small rise that she could tell at once was man made. She could still see the marks of the tractor which must have pushed all of the dirt together.
Above them there was a full moon and stars filled the sky like diamonds on a black cloth.
They walked slowly but there wasn't far to go.
Billy stopped at the edge of the mound and she stopped beside him. There was a wooden fence that came up to her waist imbedded in the soft ground. "Don't lean on it," warned Billy.
"What am I supposed to be looking at?" she said.
"Just wait," he said and took out the gun again. She wondered if he was going to shoot her.
Time seemed to slow down. Even though the situation was extremely strange a part of her was glad that she was there with Billy. She felt warm when she thought about how he had taken charge of the situation and taken care of her. How even in the middle of nowhere he had found a doctor to make sure she was alright.
Three Stories Tall Page 20
