Conclave

by Murray, Lee

  “Come with us, Miss. We need adult supervision.” Doze gives her a nudge forward. She grins with renewed hope.

  “Doze, my shoelace is undone.” With his back to the Gate, Doze bends to tie Chrissy’s shoelace, when he hears Ana’s scream.

  “Miss!” Whipping around, Doze can’t see anything that would make her scream until his teacher starts to sway, her hand covering her replacement heart as she collapses to the ground.

  “Kym, stay here with Chrissy.” Rushing to Miss Tera, her face already turning grey, he picks her and drags her back through the Gate. “Come on, Miss. Fight.”

  “What’s happening to her?” Chrissy and Kym have crept forward. Trembling, they lean against his back.

  “The Fence. The Gate. There must be an electric field. When she stepped through, it must have blown the chip.” Brett holds his teacher’s foot to show her blackened toe, still smouldering, the smell of burnt flesh lingering.

  “It stopped her heart.” Doze cradles her closer, putting his hand to her chest as he strains to feel her heart beating.

  “We have to go.” Paulo beckons from the other side of the Fence.

  “We can’t leave her.” Doze closes his teacher’s eyes and brushes her hair away from her face.

  “We don’t have time to bury her.” The sweet, polite Pacifica boy has been shed, leaving someone Doze doesn’t recognise.

  “I’m taking her to the beach.” He should have let her go home, made her go home. Doze lifts Tera off the ground, tenderly, as if she were an injured child.

  “We’re leaving.” Paulo starts to go and, after a moment of hesitation, Brett follows. “Come on, Ana.”

  “I’m not going,” she replies. Taking the girls’ hands into her own, she stares him down.

  “What do you mean, you’re not coming?” Paulo demands.

  “Why were you still at your shed instead of looking for me?” she retorts.

  “What do you mean? I was getting things ready, and then I was going to come and find you.” Paulo’s eyes shift nervously towards the road.

  “How were you going to find me? I was in the Hall, about to be herded onto a bus and taken away with the rest of them. You weren’t there. Doze was there looking for his sisters, rescuing his sisters, but you weren’t there.” She takes a step away from the Fence.

  “Brett got out. I thought you could too,” Paulo replies.

  “I’m staying with Doze, and we’re going to look after Miss Tera,” she decides.

  “If you stay with this loser you’ll end up like Mum and Dad. Cut and changed.” Paulo nails her with his words.

  “Go. I’d hate for all your plans to be ruined.” Ana turns her back on her brother. He scowls at Doze but leaves, Brett breaking into a jog to catch up.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to go with them?” Doze asks.

  “No, I want to stay with you and the girls. Do you need help with Miss Tera?” She dries her face with the palms of her hands.

  “Thanks. But I’ll carry her.” They don’t speak until they have walked back around the dunes to the beach.

  “It’s not the number of breaths you take but the moments that take your breath away,” Doze prays as he lays her down on the slope of the dunes, his face stricken with guilt.

  “What’s that?” Ana places the wild flowers the girls have gathered on her teacher’s chest.

  “Miss Tera’s slogan. You know? The one she had to keep rewriting on the top of the whiteboard every time someone turned the o’s into penises.” Doze forces a smile as he looks out to sea. “It’s going to be a beautiful day, no sign of a storm.”

  “I wonder what moments took her breath away,” Ana says. She takes his hand and gives it a squeeze.

  “Me too.” He returns her comfort, glad for her company.

  “Doze, I’m hungry.” Chrissy holds her bag open.

  “Me too.” Doze is tossing cereal bars one by one to the others, when they hear the sound of vehicles.

  “Paulo.” Ana spins around and races towards the Gate.

  “Stop. Ana, stop!” Doze leaps after her, his sisters close behind. “They’ll just catch us too.”

  “What, then?” She stops, her face flitting between guilt and fear. “Doze?” Kym and Chrissy take sentry on either side of her, joining her with their own questioning looks.

  “This wasn’t my plan. I just want you to be safe.” He looks directly at Ana before flicking his eyes to his sisters. “I wanted you all to be safe.”

  “How can you keep us safe?” Ana steps closer, placing a hand on the side of his face.

  “There was someone. When I was taken last time.” He presses her hand closer, drawing it against the scar on his temple. “The woman who gave me this, told me that if I found a way to leave, to head for the forest on the other side of the hills.”

  “Why?”

  “There were people who would help.”

  “You never said.”

  “She may have lied.”

  “Let’s hope she didn’t.”

  They leave the beach and head back to the Gate, where the four of them hold hands and together cross over the line.

  6

  On the other side of the Fence, the scenery changes dramatically. Knee-high wild flowers give way to scraggly grasses clinging to life between the cracks of the rocky landscape rising high above their town.

  “There’s no way we can climb these slopes, we’ll have to follow the road,” Doze says as he throws a skimming pebble towards the ridge, sending a shower of stones downwards. “The ground’s too unstable.”

  Doze takes the lead, stepping first into the artificial ravine; Kym and Chrissy keep close to either side while Ana tosses fearful glances behind. The lonely road, built for one-way traffic, slices clinically through the hill, leaving them nowhere to hide along the smooth high walls. As if rolling like a giant marble along a crack in the earth, the sun races them to the other side, its relentless heat burning the ground beneath their feet.

  “I’m tired,” Chrissy says. Clinging to a ghost of her brother’s shadow, her feet fight to propel her forward.

  “Only a little further, Chrissy,” Kym says, catching her sister’s hand as she stumbles. Her dark eyes sunken like a reanimated corpse, she drapes her arm across Chrissy’s shoulder, sharing what little strength she has left. “We will be safer when we get to the other side.”

  “It’s so far away.” Chrissy’s little face scrunches. Pushing back her tears, she tries to make out the end of the passage, but the far side of the hill appears no closer in the blinding light. Their feet scuff along the tarred surface, loosening stray gravel to scuttle ahead. Enthralled in their exhaustion, they emerge finally on the other side, having pushed themselves to the limit of their endurance so they can barely move.

  “Doze...”

  “See those trees over there, Chrissy. We can have a break there.” The cool air captured in the low hanging branches of the forest entices them further in until the road is a line in the desert. Crashing through the bush, bent and broken branches drag at their clothing until the dense foliage gives way to a memory of a path. Unburdened by roots and tangled vines, it ends at a stream. Too tired to do more than unsling their packs to use as pillows, they lay down to sleep.

  7

  The muted sound of a stone landing in the decaying debris wakes Ana from her afternoon nap. Carefully disentangling herself from Chrissy and Kym, she sits up. She brushes the leaves from her hair, tucking escaping strands behind her ears. When the next stone drops near her left foot, she spots the stone thrower, sitting cross-legged on the ground in front of her. His unfamiliar clothes, shades of dark greens and browns, blend into their surroundings, making him look more like a fallen branch than an old man.

  “What are you doing in my woods?” he asks.

  “Your woods?” Ana leans over Chrissy and pounds on Doze’s back, making him aware of their visitor.

  “More mine than stray Volunteers.” The man’s words are muffled by his th
ick beard.

  “Are you here to help us?” Ana shifts closer to Doze, dragging Kym with her.

  “Don’t tell him anything, Ana,” Doze says, reaching into his pocket. He fingers a packet of buds like a child’s blanket, before dismissing his need for a morning smoke.

  “Maybe he’s the one we’re looking for,” Ana says with a hopeful lilt to her voice.

  “I don’t want to stay here.” Rubbing sleep from her eyes, Chrissy rolls over. Like a lost woodland fairy, her face is smudged with dirt, her hair decorated with twigs and fear dances in her expression.

  “You all better come with old DJ then; otherwise you’ll wander around until ConClave Corp catch you and process you permanently.” The old man stands, wipes the dirt from his butt and fits his cap firmly to his head.

  Ana jerks her head, encouraging Doze to agree. In reply, he leans in close, his breath tickling her neck. “Fine, but be ready to run if I tell you to.”

  With no obvious trail to follow and no pack to carry, the man uses a thick branch, worn smooth by constant handling, to support his weight as he leads Doze’s party over the undulating forest floor and along the widening river.

  “There hasn’t been rain in weeks, so the rocks in the river are a bit slippery. You’re going to need a pole to continue upstream. It’s not safe to rock hop.” DJ drops to a knee, deceptively graceful for a man of his age, and rummages around in the leaf litter until he finds a collection of possible staffs. “Try these out for size.”

  He tosses the sticks one by one to his newly acquired companions to choose from, before stepping into the water. The stream is encased by giant trees that bend over the water as if desperate for a drink; their long spiky leaves stroking its surface like a lover. Angling his staff upstream, the man stabs the river bed, fighting against the torrent of water. The current rises to embrace them on the chance they’ll lose their grip and tumble. As they navigate their way upstream, barely keeping up with the man, the icy water seeps into their shoes, deadening their feet against the chill. The river twists back on itself as it winds its way higher into the mountain range. In places they lose sight of their guide altogether when fallen trees reaching across from one bank force them to tunnel through the arch. Finally, before it becomes too dark to see a foot in front of them, the trees began to thin on one side of the river.

  “We’ll stop here ‘til morning,” DJ says.

  Now that they’ve stopped moving, Doze can feel the chill of the water seeping into his flesh; rising from his feet, it work its way up his arms to his fingers, loosening his grip on his stick.

  “I need you to look after the girls so that I can go after our people.” Doze ignores Ana’s angry stare.

  “There’s nothing you can do to help your people.” DJ taps Morse Code into his balding head, as if teasing forward wisps of rarely accessed information. “It’s better if we all stick together.”

  “It’s not about better. It’s about what’s right, and I can’t leave our friends and family inside knowing what will happen to them.” Doze feels Ana come up beside him and thread her arm through his own and around his waist. She says nothing, but he knows she agrees.

  “You don’t want to do that, boy. I should know; I’ve been inside.” DJ pins Doze with his stare.

  “But you’re not from our town.” Doze takes a step back, placing himself between DJ and his sisters.

  “There’s more than one town, and there’s more than one reason to be inside,” DJ says, passing his staff from hand to hand, marking time between questions.

  “You worked for the Corp? A Driver?” They’re the only people Doze knew who moved freely between their town and ConClave.

  “A Driver?” DJ captures the point of his staff with the tip of his forefinger. “Oh, you mean the Ambulances. No, I wasn’t a Driver.”

  Doze stumbles backwards, his arms flaying out for support. Ana reaches out to hold him steady.

  “You’re a Cutter,” he whispers, remembering the monsters shrouded in white, only their eyes visible, their tinny voices piped through the air to communicate with the Volunteers.

  “Is that what you call us? Yes, I was a Cutter until I couldn’t pretend that what I did was important.” A ghost of a past life darkens DJ’s face. “But that was a long time ago.” DJ lets the staff fall to his shoulder, more like a crutch and less like a weapon.

  “What are you doing out here?” Kym asks, clambering over the lip of the bank before Doze can haul her back.

  “I couldn’t work for them any longer, but there’s nowhere else for me to go. The world isn’t what you think it is.” DJ drops to his knee and extends an arm to help Chrissy up.

  “Our town... the people in our town...” Doze ignores DJ’s gesture and leaps up beside his sisters, helping Ana up behind him.

  DJ waits until Doze regains his balance before he attempts to explain. “You’ve helped us understand ourselves, helped us live longer, stronger, healthier lives.”

  “No! You experimented on us so your lives could be better. What about our lives? What about us?” Doze’s hand strays to the left side of his head, the fingertips sliding over the incision scar.

  “You volunteered,” says DJ. His indifferent shrug infuriates Doze. He tightens his grip on his stick.

  Volunteered! He’d like to bash DJ’s skull.

  Ana’s gasp brings Doze back from the brink. Doze looks at his sisters. They haven’t complained. They’ve walked for days with little rest and less food. “Will you keep them safe?” Doze asks. “If I come with them, will you keep them safe?”

  DJ nods in agreement, his face showing his relief. “You must be hungry. I’ll make us something to eat.”

  “He has your name,” she whispers. “It’s tattooed on his wrist. I saw it when he reached down to give you a hand.”

  Doze glances over to where DJ has drawn his sisters closer with the promising beginnings of a small fire and food. “I always thought my mother hated me because I lived and my father died. Maybe that was only part of it. Maybe it was also because he wasn’t my father. It almost makes me feel sorry to think what they might have done to her. Whatever it was, they didn’t replace her broken heart.”

  Ana puts her arms around him, hugging him tightly. “You don’t need to think about all that anymore, just keep your sisters safe. Like you said, nothing else matters.”

  Reassured, Doze lets her go and moves towards the fire. Eating until they are too full to speak, the girls are soon asleep, their heads resting on each of Ana’s thighs. Ana stares at the uneaten food in her hand and gives Doze a puzzled look across the low burning embers.

  “Ana, I don’t feel right. I shouldn’t feel this tired.” Doze stops his head falling forward with a sudden jerk. “I think we’ve been drugged.” Unable to resist the pull of sleep, he topples to his side, his hands reaching towards Ana as she slumps over the girls’ bodies.

  “Doze, wake up.” A warm breath tickles his ears. “Please wake up before he gets back.” Disorientated, the dark clouds blank out any warmth or light, but it’s no longer the same day.

  Tracker.

  The word comes unbidden from his memories. When they came for him, for his father, the only thing that stopped him from running was the Trackers. He’d assumed they were mechanical devices, like the satellites that orbited the sky, not people. The irony was not lost on him. He, who had betrayed countless of his town’s people to protect his sisters, would be so easily fooled.

  “Where are my sisters?”

  “Behind me.” A tear falls on his face, and it’s not his own: Ana is crying. “I was so worried. They seem to be sleeping heavier than you or me. I think they might have eaten too much.”

  “Can you untie me?”

  “Roll over. I’ll use my teeth.” The mat is dry. It rustles as he moves onto one side. Ana wiggles lower and tries to raise his hands further up his back. He can feel her pulling on the knot. “Move your hands closer together, I’ve almost got it. There. Now you undo me.”

>   Doze holds back a smile as he rubs the blood back into his wrists. Then he unties her, leaving the rope coiled on the ground between them. Propping himself on an elbow, he leans over Ana and sees his sisters lying tied together, their breath softly ruffling each other’s hair. He reaches over Ana, brushing against her as he strokes Kym’s cheek. Ana stifles a squeak of surprise as Kym stirs under his touch and moves protectively closer to her sister. “They’re okay, I think.”

  “He’s coming.” Her hands now untied, Ana rolls over, her face within a breath of his own.

  “Good, you’re awake.” DJ pulls Doze abruptly to his feet. “And you’ve untied yourselves. Done. You might as well untie your sisters too, but we’ll let them rest some more. We’ll be going soon enough.”

  Doze slams a fist into his stomach, punching with all his strength. DJ grabs his wrist, forcing it behind his back and ploughing his face into the dirt.

  “What the hell! Calm down.” Loosening his grip, he lets Doze go.

  “Don’t tell me to calm down, you asshole! You drugged us, tied us up. For all we know, you’re about to hand us over to ConClave.” Panting heavily, Doze’s pleased to see that he has left some damage on the older man.

  “I’m not going to do that, but we’re also not going to trust wandering strays without checking you out first.” DJ rubs his bruised ribs to ease the pain. “There’s too much to risk.”

  “How can you check us out unless you still work for the Con?” Doze clenches his fists ready to go another round.

  “No, no, I don’t, but I still have contacts on the inside, and of course there are your chips.” Patting his pocket, Doze feels the familiar packet of buds minus the three chips he’d taken from Brett in a moment of curiosity.

  “So you’re going to help us because of the chips?” he asks.

  “Like I said last night, I can’t help you find your friends. They’ll have been processed by now.” Seeing their lack of understanding, DJ clarifies. “Euthanised.”

  “You mean killed,” Doze accuses.

  “Yes, put down now that they are no longer of use. But we can get you both and your sisters to safety.” DJ looks softly at the sleeping girls.