Plague Island

by Justin D'Ath

  ‘How fast are we going?’ he asked.

  James looked down at one of the many gauges on the instrument panel. The needle pointed at 140. ‘That’s our speed in knots,’ he explained. ‘On the ground, that would be roughly two hundred and fifty kilometres per hour.’

  ‘Cool!’ said Colt.

  ‘That’s nearly our top speed,’ James said. ‘We’ll get to Mimosa way ahead of the bad guys.’

  Colt didn’t want to think about them at the moment. Didn’t want to think about what he (or Superclown) might have to do when he did come face-to-face with Birdy’s kidnappers. Didn’t want to think about Birdy, either, or how scared she must be.

  I’m flying an aeroplane! he thought.

  And for the next 35 minutes, that was enough to keep his mind distracted.

  The ocean was visible long before they saw the city. From a thousand metres up, and perhaps fifty kilometres from the coast, at first it looked like a vast sheet of polished metal, shimmering in the late-morning sunlight. It seemed to bend with the curve of the Earth.

  Finally they crossed a range of low, forest-clad hills and there it was at the edge of the coastal plain – a cluster of tiny, Lego-like office buildings far ahead, surrounded by a sprawl of suburbs. Colt could even see the ‘Blowpipe’, the revolutionary new transport system that had replaced the old (and rather slow) Fast Train.

  ‘Is that Mimosa?’ he asked.

  James nodded and sat forward. ‘Nice flying. I’ll take over now.’

  He flicked a switch and spoke briefly to Air Traffic Control at Mimosa Airport. Then he banked the Cessna gently to the right and brought it around in a wide turn, peering out his side window until he spotted a ribbon of highway winding through the hills far below them.

  ‘That’s our road,’ he said. He tipped the Cessna so Colt could see it. ‘Unless our guys were breaking the land speed record, they should come beetling along here in about twenty or thirty minutes. Maybe now would be a good time to call the police.’

  ‘Not yet,’ Colt said. Did James realise his phone was in Colt’s pocket? ‘Let’s wait till we see them.’

  James didn’t say anything. He gently pushed the throttle lever until the needle on the air-speed dial dropped back to 80. Then he brought the Cessna down until they could see the individual cars on the highway. But they still looked pretty small. ‘How good are your eyes, champ?’

  ‘Really good,’ Colt said.

  ‘It’s a shame your mum’s car isn’t pink or something,’ James went on. ‘White cars are a dime a dozen.’

  ‘Mum isn’t into pink.’

  ‘I know.’

  How does he know? Colt wondered, but there wasn’t time to worry about it.

  James banked the Cessna gently to follow the highway through a gap in the hills. ‘This looks promising,’ he said.

  A white four-wheel drive had just come around a bend about two kilometres away.

  ‘It isn’t them,’ Colt said.

  ‘How can you possibly tell at this distance?’

  ‘It’s one of those new solar-powered Holdens.’

  James laughed. ‘You’re having me on, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m not,’ Colt said. ‘I told you my eyes are good. I’ve got superpowers, remember?’

  ‘So what colour are the driver’s eyes?’ the tall man joked.

  ‘I can’t see – she’s wearing sunglasses.’

  James laughed again. But it didn’t seem like a totally disbelieving laugh. ‘How many people know you’ve got these amazing powers?’

  ‘Only three know for sure – counting you.’

  ‘Why did you tell me?’

  ‘Because you’re helping me save Birdy.’

  James tipped the Cessna to give Colt a better look at three more cars travelling down the highway towards Mimosa. Two of them were white, but neither was his mother’s Appaloosa.

  ‘Not our guys,’ he said.

  Neither of them spoke for a couple of minutes. Colt munched on some rat food. He was wearing cargo shorts with six big pockets, and he’d filled all of them before they’d locked up James’s car.

  ‘So your mother doesn’t know you’re Superclown?’ James asked suddenly.

  ‘If I told her, she’d probably make me stop,’ Colt said. ‘She worries about stuff.’

  ‘I imagine she’s pretty worried about you right now.’

  Colt shrugged. ‘I guess so.’

  ‘So maybe we should phone the police and let them know you’re okay.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘We’ll have to contact them soon,’ James said.

  Colt stayed silent. The mobile phone was buried among the rat food in one of his bulging pockets, and that’s where it was going to stay. It was true what he’d said to James about Birdy being like a sister.

  And when the only family you had in the world was a mother and a pretend sister, you didn’t let anyone do anything that might put their lives at risk.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ James said. ‘We should have seen them by now.’

  For nearly twenty minutes they had been following Highway 22 back towards the crossroads, but still there was no sign of the Appaloosa.

  ‘You don’t think they got there before us?’ Colt asked.

  ‘Not a chance,’ said James. ‘Mimosa is two hundred and ten kilometres from the Redlake Road turn-off. By car, that’s two-and-a-half hours at the very least.’

  ‘Maybe they went to Redlake.’

  ‘They wouldn’t be so stupid. There’s only one road in and one road out.’

  ‘There isn’t an airport?’ Colt asked.

  James shook his head. ‘No, it’s too hilly.’

  ‘What about a helicopter?’

  ‘They’d never make it to Bintalu in a helicopter.’

  Colt peered down at the wide, green landscape below them. A shaft of sunlight reflected blindingly off the surface a small dam. ‘Is there an actual lake at Redlake?’

  ‘Sure,’ said James. ‘But it’s landlocked. A boat can’t get from there to the sea.’

  ‘What about one of those planes that land on water?’

  James slapped his forehead with the palm of one hand, then turned the little U-shaped steering yoke hard to the left. The world tipped on its side and the highway swung out of view below Colt’s side window.

  ‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

  ‘To Redlake,’ James said through gritted teeth. He seemed angry. ‘I should have thought of it!’

  ‘Thought of what?’

  ‘A seaplane,’ James said. Slowly the horizon came level again and they were heading towards a purple line of mountains. ‘Put those superhero eyes to work, champ, and tell me if you can see a town somewhere in the foothills ahead of us.’

  Colt sat high in his seat to peer out over the Cessna’s nose. It didn’t take him long to spot a pale smudge of buildings far in the distance. ‘There it is.’

  ‘I can’t see anything,’ said James. But he turned the plane in the direction Colt was pointing. ‘How’s that?’

  ‘A bit more to the right . . . A bit more . . . No, that’s too much.’

  James shook his head. ‘Why don’t you take the controls, Superboy?’

  ‘Superclown,’ Colt corrected him. Gripping his steering column, he lined up the centre of the Cessna’s spinning propeller with the distant town. ‘Can we go a bit faster?’

  ‘Aye aye, Captain.’ James pushed a lever at the bottom of the instrument panel and the needle on the air-speed dial crept slowly towards 150. ‘Full speed ahead!’

  Colt grinned. Then he remembered the reason they were flying so fast and his grin disappeared. ‘Could they get all the way to Bintalu in one of those seaplanes?’ he asked.

  ‘It would take a bit of planning,’ James said. ‘But with a hundred and twenty million dollars to work with, our bird thieves could have paid someone with a boat to drop off drums of aviation fuel at prearranged points between here and Bintalu. There are dozens of uninhabited islands,
and a seaplane can land just about anywhere.’

  ‘What about Birdy?’ asked Colt.

  ‘If they’re flying all that way, they won’t want to carry any extra cargo,’ James said. ‘So I imagine they’ll leave her with the car.’

  A tremor passed through Colt’s body like a bolt of electricity. ‘They’d better not hurt her!’

  ‘I’m sure she’ll be okay.’

  Colt took one hand off the steering column to grab some more rat food. He had a feeling he was going to need it shortly. ‘Have you ever been to Redlake, James?’

  ‘A couple of times,’ the tall man said.

  They both peered ahead.

  ‘I still can’t see the actual lake,’ said Colt.

  ‘It’s in a valley.’

  ‘How big is it?’

  ‘The lake?’ James seemed distracted. He was looking around inside the plane. ‘Where’s my phone?’

  Uh-oh, thought Colt. ‘In my pocket.’

  ‘May I have it, please?’

  ‘Let’s not call the police until we’re sure.’

  ‘Colt, give me my phone,’ James said sternly.

  ‘I can’t get it out of my pocket – I’m flying the plane.’

  ‘I’ll take over,’ said James. ‘I can see the town now.’

  Colt let him take control – of the aeroplane, not the phone. The lake had just come into view between two hills about a kilometre to the right of the town. James swung the Cessna towards it.

  ‘Can you see a seaplane?’ he asked. He seemed to have forgotten about the phone.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Colt. There were trees in the way. But he could see something else – two tiny white-and-blue cars, their beacons flashing, speeding along a straight stretch of road between the town and the lake. ‘I don’t think we need to call the cops.’

  James had seen the police cars, too. ‘Someone else must have tipped them off.’

  ‘I guess Mum did,’ Colt said. ‘That one we saw just after you picked me up must have reached her and Mr Greene ages ago. She would have given them a description of the Appaloosa.’

  ‘And someone must have spotted it coming into Redlake,’ James added.

  Colt shovelled in another mouthful of rat food. ‘I hope we don’t get there too late.’

  ‘Too late for what?’ James asked. ‘There’s nothing we can do, Colt. This plane can’t land on water.’

  ‘But we can go down and look.’

  James seemed undecided. They were almost above the lake now, but he was keeping the Cessna at a steady speed and altitude. The two police cars had disappeared into the trees.

  ‘Please!’ Colt said.

  ‘Well, I suppose we have come all this way,’ James said reluctantly.

  He eased the throttle back, then tipped the Cessna into a wide, curving descent.

  It was obvious where the lake had got its name.

  ‘The colour’s caused by a rare form of algae,’ James explained as they swooped down towards the bright red lake from one end of a long, narrow valley. ‘In the cooler months it all dies off and the water becomes clear again.’

  But Colt wasn’t interested in natural science right now. He was looking for a seaplane, or for a white Appaloosa four-wheel drive parked beneath the trees that crowded right down to the lake’s edge. ‘Can we go a bit lower?’

  ‘We’re already much lower than we should be.’

  ‘Who’ll see us?’ Colt asked.

  ‘The police,’ James said drily.

  But he did bring them down a bit lower. Colt checked their air speed – 75 knots. He wondered what that was in kilometres per hour. Now that they were down almost to treetop level, 75 knots seemed pretty fast.

  James’s voice came crackling through his headset. ‘There they are!’

  Colt snapped his head around. Half-hidden in a little bay on the other side of the lake was a sleek, black seaplane. A man stood thigh-deep in the red water, passing an armful of white boxes up to a man kneeling on one of its canoe-shaped floats. Another man was nearer to shore, wading out towards them. He was carrying something, too. It wasn’t boxes – it had little arms and legs that were waving helplessly in the air.

  Birdy!

  Back among the trees were three vehicles – a white Appaloosa and two police cars with their red-and-blue beacons flashing. All three vehicles had their doors wide open and nobody inside. Several uniformed figures crouched behind trees pointing handguns at the men in the water. It was a standoff.

  They couldn’t shoot for fear of hitting Birdy.

  If Colt ever saw James again, he was going to say, I told you so. Right now, though, he didn’t want to attract any attention while James was busy looking down at all the drama on the other side of the lake.

  But as soon as the Cessna’s door opened, the whoosh of air alerted James to what was going on.

  ‘Colt!’ he yelled, making a wild grab for Colt’s arm.

  But all he caught was the cord from his passenger’s discarded headset.

  Colt was already ten metres below the Cessna, hurtling towards the water at a speed that seemed much greater than 75 knots.

  Shashlik! he thought, as the lake’s rippling red surface came rushing up to meet him.

  BAM!

  Colt didn’t remember hitting the water. The shock of going from warm air into the icy depths of a mountain lake was too much, even for his superhuman metabolism.

  He blacked out.

  It could only have lasted for a second or two. And even unconscious, Colt had been smart enough not to breathe under water. Or try to. Now his eyelids slid open. All round him was a dreamy, red silence. He felt dazed, disoriented, only half awake. Which way was up?

  There! said a part of his brain that was working better than the rest. See that tiny orange spot? That must be the sun.

  Limbs moving jerkily, as if they didn’t quite belong to him, Colt struggled towards the little orange sun. Up he went, up and up and up. It seemed to take forever. His chest quivered from the strain of holding his breath for so long. His lungs spasmed on the point of collapse.

  Even superheroes needed oxygen.

  At last, red gave way to blue. Water gave way to air. Beautiful, fresh, life-giving air!

  Whooping in great lungfuls, Colt felt lucky to have survived. He’d been stupid to jump out of the Cessna. James was right – Colt might have an uncanny ability to recover from all sorts of injuries, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t die.

  Still, he’d jumped for a reason.

  ‘Birdy?’ Colt gasped, treading water as he took in his surroundings. He had a clear view all the way to the far end of the lake. And all the way to the other end, too. But there was no sign of the black seaplane.

  How long was I unconscious? he wondered. Had Birdy’s kidnappers taken off already?

  Colt raised his eyes above the tree line. There they were, soaring up into the sky about a kilometre away. Shashlik! He was too late.

  It’s all my fault! he thought. I should have let James call the police right at the very start. They would have set up road blocks and stopped the kidnappers from reaching Redlake. Stopped this from happening.

  Because of Colt – because he’d refused to listen and taken the law into his own hands – Birdy was on her way to Bintalu.

  He might never see her again!

  The plane started turning. Now Colt got his first clear view of its wings and fuselage. Huh!!? The aeroplane wasn’t black after all – it was blue-and-white.

  It was the Cessna!

  Colt zoomed his superhuman vision, bringing the pilot into close-up. There was James, staring back at the lake, looking horrified.

  And were those tears in his eyes?

  ‘I’m okay,’ Colt said, even though James could neither hear nor see him. ‘I . . .’

  His last two words (didn’t die) were interrupted by the buzz of another aircraft’s engine. It sounded much closer than the Cessna. Could it be . . .?

  Sure enough, the kidnappers’ black seaplane
came skating out of a little bay about halfway down the lake.

  ‘C’mon, guys,’ Colt said softly. There was still a chance to save Birdy – a very, very slim one. ‘Over here.’

  But the seaplane went the other way. It taxied down to the far end of the lake and spun around. For a moment it seemed to sit there. Then the buzz of its engine built to a roar and it came rushing back up the lake.

  Directly towards Colt.

  Taking a deep breath, he sank below the surface. He didn’t want to be seen. But now he couldn’t see! Not even his superhero vision could penetrate the murky, red water.

  He could still hear, though. The seaplane’s muffled hum grew steadily louder. There was another sound, too – the hiss of its twin floats skimming across the lake’s surface towards him.

  Colt waited until both noises were nearly overhead, then bobbed up like a Lost World seal surfacing for air.

  He nearly got it wrong. Nearly died for a second time that day. Because he wasn’t right in the middle of the seaplane’s floats, and the pointy end of one of them was bearing down on him at about 100 kmph.

  A normal person wouldn’t have had time to react. The float would have split their head open like a watermelon. But Colt wasn’t normal. In the blink of a superhero eye, his right hand shot up between his face and the rapidly approaching float.

  Whap!

  The seaplane shimmied slightly to the left. Its pilot must have thought he’d run into a patch of weed. The aircraft wobbled, then straightened. It seemed to have lost power. The engine roared as the pilot stepped on the gas.

  A metre and a half below the pilot, Colt struggled to hold on. The seaplane towed him through the water like a hooked fish.

  The spray from the propeller made it impossible to see. Colt flailed about blindly with his free hand, feeling for something to grab onto. There was nothing. The float’s smooth metal skin offered no hand-holds. He’d grabbed the float at the very front, where it narrowed to a point – there was nowhere to lock his fingers.

  One by one, they were slipping loose.

  Then it started to rise. The plane was taking off. Colt felt himself being lifted out of the water. He dangled, one-handed, underneath it. But the strain on his fingertips was too much. They slipped off.