by John Barlow
But the Complex children didn’t want to come any more. They were too frightened to be his friend. That was the problem having a dad like his. Then, there was the last playslave, the one who’d caused all the trouble...
What little light there was in the sky was now fading. As the dusk descended, a light rain began to fall. Suddenly he felt sorry for all the kids inside those tents. If it rained, they’d have to stay there until it stopped. It wasn’t good to be out in the rain. Perhaps that’s what made them all so weak, he thought. The acid rain. If only there was someone with a bit of life, a bit more interesting.
Sometimes he dreamed that Lara Croft appeared in the Complex and they went around together, exploring the power plant, whatever secrets lay amid those four enormous chimneys, where he was not allowed to go. If not Lara Croft, well, just about anyone else would do. Anybody that wasn’t scared stiff of his dad. The last boy had been like that, a real explorer, and not scared of anyone. But then he’d gone too far. And he’d disappeared.
Behind him the door opened.
His dad stood there, his massive body dressed entirely in black.
“I’m busy!” Jason said.
Sullivan walked towards the window, his boots treading carefully on the thick, deep red carpet that covered the floor of the large, luxurious room. He stood behind his son and reached out, stroking Jason’s glossy hair.
Jason jerked his head away.
“Ooh!” Sullivan cooed. “There, there! I know, I know...”
“What?” Jason snapped.
“You’re bored. I know. But we’ll track down those kids, Jase. Unfounds. Probably lost, the poor things, out there on their own. We’ll find them and we’ll bring them here. They can be your friends. What do you reckon?”
“Yeah, til you scare ’em away, like last time,” Jason said, without looking around.
“I told you,” Sullivan said, putting a hand on Jason’s shoulder, “that boy ran away. He vanished, Jase! We tried everything to get him back. Don’t you remember? Everything. If only we knew why. I’m sorry, son. You know I am.”
Sullivan was sorry, very sorry. The blond haired boy was the only playslave that Jason had every liked. Then, a few weeks back, the boy had ventured a little too far into the depths of the power plant, just a bit too eager to explore.
After the boy disappeared, word got out: Jason Sullivan’s latest playslave had gone, vanished. Since then, kids had started avoiding the fun-fair, hiding in the tents in case they got spotted and were forced to be the next playslave.
“We’ll find those kids, Jase. Don’t you worry.”
Jason returned to his game, slumping down in front of the plasma screen and picking up the control. Within seconds he’d started shooting. Flashes of exploding, blood-drenched bodies filled the screen. Sullivan watched, purring quietly to himself at the sight of such destruction.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ben’s heart was pumping hard, and his stomach felt as if someone was stirring it with a huge wooden spoon.
“Right, that’s it!” he told himself.
He marched straight towards the center of the fun-fair. Around him the noise from amusement tents drummed louder and louder, and as he approached the helter-skelter its flashing lights seemed to intensify in the encroaching gloom of the evening.
Not a soul was about. A fine, cold raining had begun to fall. From inside the tents came the senseless noise from TVs, the next shift of workers already there, drinking Complex Spirit to numb the boredom before the sirens called them to the power plant.
The fun-fair was packed with people, a thousand souls at least. Ben was surrounded by people, yet he was utterly alone. He walked on, and the wall of music got louder and louder, different music coming from different speakers, echoing inside his head, so loud that he could scream and shout without hearing his own voice.
“Just do it!” he cried, again and again, one word with each step, sick with anticipation.
He felt his legs weakening as the helter-skelter rose up before him, and he remembered what Pol had said about the last playslave. But he had no choice.
“Just do it!”
The helter-skelter was easily as high as the fence that ran around the Complex, a tall, tapering dome painted in red and white stripes, with colored lights flashing on all sides.
He found an entrance at the bottom and went inside. There was a metal staircase, spiraling upwards. Quickly he started to climb the stairs, knowing that if he stopped even for a split second his courage would vanish. He almost ran up, taking the steps two at a time.
At the top he emerged into the dark evening. He was on a narrow platform. Below him the fun-fair looked like an army encampment, the tents in neat rows radiating out from the center, with their canvas doors pulled closed. Off to one side was the carousel that never stopped, turning fast, its metallic horses rearing up and down with death-like smiles on their long, angular faces, and not a single person riding them.
He turned his head, hardly daring to look, and spotted the long window high up at the top of the Control Tower. With that he took a hessian mat from a stack at the top of the slide, sat on it, and pushed off.
He went quicker than he had expected, skimming down the spiral slide of the helter-skelter in no time at all. It was steep, and you bumped off the sides as you went. Bad ’n Worse would have loved it, not for sliding down, but for throwing other people down, people like Coby. On the other hand, Silver was sure to have made some comment on gravity and centri-frugal force or whatever it was called.
He laughed at the thought of it, running straight back up the stairs for another go, the music beating heavy in his ears. He threw himself off harder this time and came down faster still. Then up again, and this time he came head-first, dragging his feet behind him to steer.
“Whoa!” he cried.
He raced to the top yet again and came down backwards, almost toppling over the side in the process. Picking himself up off the ground, he realized that it was now raining pretty hard. So he looked about for cover.
The carousel was not far away. He darted over to it and stood there, mesmerized, the horses whooshing past him at incredible speed. He’d never seen anything like it. And the sound! The music here was pumping out louder than ever, heavy metal, violent, deafening.
After a few hesitant tries, he lunged forwards and landed on the huge revolving circular platform. Grabbing hold of the nearest steel horse, he swung his leg over and pulled himself on board. He felt the tremendous force of being hauled forwards through the air whilst at the same time the horse took him up and down in huge, sudden lunges.
“Hey-ee!” he screamed, the carousel speeding around, the horse cold and hard, rising and falling through the air, the wind biting into his face. “Fantastic!”
In no time at all he’d steadied himself. It was a bit like riding an emu. Distorting guitars were blaring out from massive speakers at the center of the ride, and below their incessant riffs was a constant throbbing of drums. His ears buzzed with the music’s thunderous vibrations, and he felt delirious, hanging onto the horse’s neck, as the world spun and spun past him.
Then he decided to stand on the stirrups of the horse. Swaying in the air he put one hand up behind him like a rodeo rider. Everything was streaming past him in a blur, and a sudden gust of wind caught him, pummeling him hard in the chest and sending him cavorting in the air. But he managed to hold on, and whooped for joy as the fear and misery of the last few days were forgotten.
Something dark blue flashed into view. Was it?
It disappeared as the carousel raced around.
Then again. There was no mistake. Stun Commandos. Two of them at the side of the carousel, the dark plastic visors of their helmets pulled down.
Ben was swept away, making another revolution on his quick-travelling metallic horse. But when he came around they were there again, dark blue and utterly still. By now he was holding onto the horse’s neck as tightly as he could, dizzy and confused. The n
oise of the music flooding through his head, deafening. He clung on hard. The commandos disappeared again. The carousel swept him around.
When he came back from the other side for a third time, they’d vanished.
“Ha!” he shouted, and rose up triumphantly in the stirrups. “Ha!”
It had been his imagination. He sat tight as the carousel to make another full circle. The commandos were still not there. They had never been there. It was just his jittery imagination!
He decided to try and ride backwards, like he’d seen on old wild west films. Carefully, clinging onto the pole which ran vertically from the floor up to the top of the carousel, holding the horse in place, he swung himself around, grabbing the horse’s shiny steel rump. Then, as he looked up, he saw two massive stun commandos moving towards him on the carousel, making their way steadily between the rows of sleek metal horses that bobbed up and down in the blustering wind.
His hands fumbled and his feet slipped and scrambled. He fell, catching hold of the pole, slithering downwards, almost upside down. He somehow managed to crawl forwards, seizing the tail of the horse in front and dragging himself along.
He pushed on, hugging the flanks of the horse, clinging to it desperately each time it rose up in the air, throwing him up off the floor again. His legs moved on their own, quick and shaky. A wave of adrenalin washed through his body, and even the music was now an echo at the back of his consciousness as his head flooded with the loud beating of his blood and an intense wail of inner panic.
On he went, grabbing the next horse, clinging to it, sliding along its side as it bucked up into the air. Then the next. His head was spinning. The commandos were gaining ground. Their enormous arms seemed to slap each rearing horse down as they pushed towards him. He tried to go faster, to run. But his legs gave way. He tripped, crashing down onto the carousel’s wooden platform.
A huge, dark blue leather glove fell on his shoulder.
A second later he’d been bundled off the carousel and was on his feet again, standing between two of the largest men he had ever seen, his arms held so tightly that he felt the skin and muscles begin to crush under the force of their grip. For a split second, he saw the reflection of his own petrified face in one of their blue visors.
Not far away, the corner of a tent’s canvas door twitched. Behind it two eyes watched, tearful, helpless, as Ben was carried off to the Control Tower.
“You idiot!” Pol whispered. “But who on earth are you?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
They pushed Fried Liver for what seemed like forever. Five or six emu-lators were supposed to be helping, but they kept breaking out in fits of hysterics, running off and jumping in the air, then collapsing in more laughter. They were hopeless.
Bad ’n Worse did most of the work, although Coby and Silver played their part too, and by the time they rolled into what looked like a ghost town, all four of them were sweating.
“Right,” said Tah. “You’ll be safe here. You can’t see this place from the main road.”
Terra jumped out of the van and stretched.
“Hey, this is an old Underground haunt, isn’t it?”
“A long time ago, it was,” Tah said.
There were perhaps a dozen old stone cottages dotted about, and nothing much besides. A kind of dry gray moss had consumed most of the cottages from top to bottom, and the ground was bare of anything other than old, blackened roots, where trees and bushes had withered and died.
They pushed the van out of sight behind one of the buildings, and went in search of the best cottage to sleep in.
“You look over there,” she said to Coby and the twins. “We’ll start here.”
“Poor kids!” Tah said to himself as he watched the boys wander off towards the furthest cottages. “They have no idea.”
Then he saw Ugly Pig chase after them, at full speed, heading straight for Worse’s legs.
“Watch out!” Tah shouted, knowing how dangerous a bullet pig could be. “Quick! Look out!”
Worse spun around and grabbed Ugly Pig around the belly. The pig stopped dead in its tracks. Worse rocked back on his heels, but otherwise he didn’t move.
“That’s incredible,” Tah said. “A boy his age? That strong? It’s not possible. He must be...”
But Tah put the thought out of his mind. It couldn’t be true.
They chose a large cottage in the middle of the village. It’s floor was still in tact, although there was nothing much inside. Nevertheless, it was dry, and the roof looked solid enough. Tah led the emu-lators right out of the village, further away from the main road, where they would sleep in safety that night.
“It’s better that we don’t stay here with you,” he said, returning on his own, his arms overflowing with mountains of cheese and bread, and an enormous jar of jam. Emu-lators, it seem, have little secret stores of supplies everywhere.
“Dinner!” he announced, placing all the food down in the middle of the floor in the cottage, where they were all sitting. “By the way, there’s a flock of chunk-hens outside. They with you, are they?”
“Cool!” the twins said in unison.
They grinned at Coby, who shuffled uncomfortably on the floor.
“They probably followed us here,” Terra said.
“You mean that really can fly?” Bad asked.
“Yep, and once they get the scent, there’s no keeping ’em away, right Tah?”
“Oh, yes! Very loving creatures, they are. Very. Until they take your hand off.”
Coby hunkered down where he was sitting, glaring at the twins, his eyes full of hate.
With that, they had dinner. Terra had some bottles of water, and then there was all the fruit and veg from the van, including strawberries. They sat in a circle on the floor, the food in the middle. Their stomachs began to cave in and throb at the sight of that wonderful emu-lator cheese. Plus jam! On the Island there was no sugar, only honey, from a single beehive. Anything sweet was like gold. People had been known to fight like animals over a spoonful of honey. Once El Billio had brought A WHOLE JAR of honey to school, to explain about queen bees or something. The children had lost their minds and pinned him to the floor until he handed it over... Happy days.
“Right,” Terra said, as she pulled hunks of bread from the loaf and handed them around. “This is the plan.”
But no one was listening. Their eyes had glazed over, hypnotized by the sight of that jar of jam, transfixed by its ruby red color, as if it was speaking to them...
“Hey!” she cried. “Listen! Tomorrow we get inside the Complex and as long as Ben is okay, we bring him back out with us. Is that understood?”
They nodded, although in fact none of them had been listening. The jam was calling... calling...
“If he’s in trouble,” Terra continued, “well, who knows what we’ll do!”
She looked around, and sighed. They hadn’t heard a word that she’d said. So, grabbing the jar of jam, she held it up in the air, above her head. “Do you hear?”
The sweet spell broken. They agreed with the plan.
Now dinner could begin. Three pairs of greedy hands descended on the jam. But only three pairs. When it came to food, Worse was devious. Whilst the others crowded around the jam, he took his opportunity. He stuffed himself with cheese, eating as fast as he could, squashing lumps the size of tennis balls into his mouth and washing the stuff down with swigs of water and the occasional strawberry (a good combination, if you ever get chance to try it). The others competed to get their hands inside the jar, and spent the next few minutes licking their fingers and hands and arms and elbows, until the jar was gleaming, not a spec of jam left inside it. By the time the jam was gone, Worse had eaten enough bread and cheese to feed a dozen men.
Suddenly, Silver stopped eating and wrinkled her forehead.
“How do we get there?” she asked.
“We walk,” Terra replied casually, as she made herself a big thick doorstep of a sandwich from bread, cheese an
d tomatoes, balancing one thing on top of the other with great skill.
“And how do we get all the way back again, without the van?”
Terra looked up. I hadn’t thought of that, her expression said. She didn’t need to say it out loud. Silver knew exactly what she was thinking. Then, one by one, the others looked up, slowly coming to realize that there was a problem, a rather serious problem.
“Tah,” Terra said tentatively, “is there any chance you could get us back east, from the Complex?”
“I can try,” said Tah, “but this is getting very dangerous for us, you know. We’ll keep an eye on you when you come back out of the Complex. But I’ve got to be careful. I mean, it’s a huge risk for an emu-lator to be anywhere near authority.”
His frown twisted into a mischievous smile.
“There’s always earth patches, of course. Now that’s the way to travel, kids! First class, and mighty fast! Ah, if only those things were reliable! Like buses used to be, you remember buses Terra? Wait for ages then three come along at once?”
Terra’s sandwich fell to the floor.
“Earth patches don’t exist, for goodness’ sake!” she said angrily as she retrieved the cheese and tomatoes and hunks of bread and reassembled her doorstop.
“Earth patches?” said Silver.
“Exactly that,” Tah said. “Patches of the earth. Just roll up like a carpet and off they go. If you get inside a big one, it can take you miles and miles.”
“A big ball of earth, moving on its own. No way!” Silver said.
“I beg your...” Tah said.
“How do they move, these patches? Where’s the energy source?” Silver said, then threw her head back.
She looked at Terra, who nodded with approval. There was no such thing.
