by John Barlow
“He’s not yours to trade,” she said. “He’s escaped. He’s free.”
“No one’s free,” Harman said, smiling. “And remember, we’re always ready to trade. What do you care about the Brewer kid? Compared to your own?”
He turned and was gone.
Terra pulled herself up from the ground, and dusted herself down.
“Okay,” she said. “That’s it. I’ve had just about enough of this.”
*
An awkward silence had fallen inside the Jeep. The twins argued about which roads to take, but they did it quietly. The truth was, they had no idea where they were. They had no idea where they were going.
“Great! We’ve kidnapped him!” Silver said, still complaining about the unwelcome presence of Jason Sullivan.
“So, leave him here if it’s such a big deal,” Bad said, shrugging. “Just dump him on the street!”
“No!” Jason wailed, like a frightened dog. “Don’t...”
“We won’t,” Ben said.
Jason looked ashamed.
“Everyone blames me for him... you know, when he disappeared. They think I had something to do with it.”
“Who disappeared?” asked Silver.
But Jason was too afraid to say anything else. In any case, he was still thinking about Terra, and wondering why she looked so familiar...
“The messenger,” Ben explained. “The blond-haired boy that we found with the boat. You remember? He was from the Complex. A playslave. He escaped with a message.”
Jason looked up, astonished.
“It’s true, Jason,” Ben said. “He escaped. And I found him. That’s why I’m here. I’ve come to find my dad.”
“I don’t believe it,” Jason said, confused. “I... I... Anyway, who are you? And where...”
Bad interrupted them: “Never mind all that,” he said. “There’s a gate ahead. What shall we do?”
They all looked at Ben.
“But, where are we? Which gate is it?” he said.
“Turn around!” Jason cried. “This is west!”
“West!” Ben said, staring at Jason, seeing a bit of Sullivan in the boy’s eyes. “We’re going west.”
It was too late to argue now.
“Get down, all of you,” Worse shouted as he floored the accelerator.
They drove straight towards the huge western gate. A worried-looking melted man came running out from the guardhouse, peered at the Jeep as it careered towards him, then ran back inside and activated the gates, which were hardly ever opened, because nobody in their right minds would want to go west.
They drove through the gates without so much as slowing down. As they passed the puzzled-looking melted man, Worse rolled down the window and gave him the finger. The guard watched with confusion at the Jeep flashed past with two very young looking commandos inside, one of them with a bullet pig on his knee.
They’d made it.
They drove out of the Complex, out towards the land of the sea rivers.
PART THREE
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Terra ran as fast as she could, straight along the road east in search of Tah. She needed help, and fast. By the time she came to the old, deserted village she was gasping for breath and she just hoped that the emu-lators would be there.
Fried Liver was still parked behind one of the abandoned cottages. However, one of the van’s doors was open. Strange, she thought, and peeped inside. Almost all the vegetables and fruit had gone. Then she froze. Somewhere, not very far away, were voices.
The voices were warbly and indistinct. Prowling silently like a cat, she made her way towards a cluster of old, dead trees that stood behind the cottages.
“Well, I don’t know!” someone said. “Anyway, who cares!”
“Yeah!” someone else cried. “It’s not bad up here.”
“You can see for miles!”
“And,” yet another voice added, chuckling like an idiot, “it’s all the wrong way up!”
There was a general wave of giggling at this. “Wrong way up!” they shouted, hooting with laughter.
“But, don’t you see!” came a different voice, straining to make itself heard. “Don’t you understand? For the twenty-thousandth time, we are stranded here. Will one of you please try and get down! Because if not, we are all going to...”
“Tah!” Terra said, and stepped out from the corner of the cottage.
Then she saw it.
“Oh, my goodness, oh, my... my...” but even Terra was lost for words.
Seven emu-lators were hanging upside down from one of the trees. Their hands were tied behind their backs, and their feet strapped to the branches. They were like big, human decorations on a Christmas tree, swinging in the wind. The blood had rushed to their silly, upside down heads, making them jollier than ever. But that wasn’t all. Their kilts had fallen down over their stomachs, leaving their stout little legs bare, and also their...
“Oh, my word!” Terra said, almost dying with horror at the sight.
Then, realizing that the emu-lators didn’t seem to be hurt, she burst out laughing at the sight of seven little emu-lator asses hanging from a tree.
“Fortunately,” she shouted, “you lot have your backs to me. Ya know, boys, I always did wonder what you wore under those kilts!”
Then she saw Tah. He was tied to the trunk of the tree, below. There was about a mile of thick, strong rope around him. He could hardly move his head, and as for the rest of him, he looked like a rope-pod, tied very tight indeed to the trunk of the tree, from his neck down to his ankles. Tah wasn’t going anywhere.
Running over to the tree, Terra beginning tugging at the ropes, trying to release him.
“Never mind the kilts,” Tah said, shaking himself free of the coils of rope around his chest, as Terra worked them loose. “We’ve got some bad news.” He looked incredibly ashamed. “Terra, I’m so sorry, but...”
“You told them, did you?” she said, smiling and tickling the top of his head. “Stun commandos?”
Tah nodded, too sad even to open his mouth.
“Did they come this morning?” she asked.
He nodded. “We came back here once you’d gone, for a bit of, ehm, breakfast.”
“I noticed!” she said. “They were waiting for you?”
Tah shivered. “Right by your van. You must have got away just in time.”
“What did they do?” she said, almost a whisper. Then she looked up at the emu-lators in the air. “Do these lot know who Ben is? His name? Did the commandos get that out of you?”
“No,” said Tah. He raised his head and looked at her. For the first time she noticed a huge bruise on he cheek. “But they know that the kids are from the Survivors. I’m... I’m so sorry, Terra.”
He got up, but could hardly walk. Every inch of him ached. Terra saw that his legs were covered in big, red marks, and from the way he limped, screwing his face up with pain, it looked as though the rest of his body was in the same condition, the result of a hundred stun-gun burns.
“They tied this lot up first,” he said. “They knew I wouldn’t leave them. Then they started on me.”
“Don’t worry, Tah,” she said. “Sullivan would have found out anyway.” She looked up at the emu-lators, suspended in the air, the wrong way up, and apparently not minding it at all. “I suppose we’d better get ’em down.”
“You all stay here,” she said, ten minutes later, once all the emu-lators had been untied from trees.
“Where are you going?” Tah asked.
“Home, to get a little present for Sullivan. I’ve been keeping it all these years... Can I borrow an emu?”
“Take your pick,” Tah said.
“Okay, how about this big one here?” she said. “I’ll be back soon.”
“Then what?” Tah asked, as he helped Terra up onto the bird.
“Then we’re going to find Ben. By the way, how fast do these things go?”
“Full speed?”
“Turbo-charged.”
“Faster than you dare, Terra. Just you take it easy...”
“How fast, Tah?” she said, glaring at him. “Tell me!”
He sighed. “All right. Tickle its tail feathers every mile or so. It’s an old emu-riding trick. But be careful. It’ll take you so fast your stomach’ll end up in your boots.”
“Delightful,” she said, leaning back and tickling the huge bird on its equally huge behind.
“Jeeeeeeeeeeez...!”
Gone.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The Jeep whizzed along the western road. The few lights which now lined the road were all smashed, hanging down with their wires exposed, the odd spark of electricity coming from them. Overhead, the sky was blanketed in a thick, metallic gray.
“Hey,” Worse said as he drove. “Do you remember that lame kids’ film? What was it called, shitty shitty bang bang?”
“Chitty Chitty!” Silver said.
“Whatever. All those pathetic baby films we had on video? Posh kids that never did anything wrong, little goody two-shoes? Well, cop this!” He lifted a leg, leant his body to one side, and farted, louder than anyone had ever heard before. “Chew on that, Mary Poppins!”
The twins fell about laughing.
They were now all squashed onto the long seat in the cabin of the Jeep, all six of them, sitting half on top of each other, crammed in like sardines in a tin.
“So, Jason,” said Silver. “What can you tell us about the land of the sea rivers?”
“I’ve never been here,” Jason said. “But,” he took a deep breath, his eyelids fluttering as if he were on the verge of feinting, “it’s where the war was at its worst. You know, the contamination and,” he gulped, “it’s where they used to send prisoners.”
“You mean there’s a prison there?” Coby asked.
Jason lowered his eyes. “No,” he whispered. “They didn’t come back.”
A breathless quiet descended. Worse drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he drove. Even Ugly Pig grunted more softly. No one looked at Ben.
On each side of the road were dark, stagnant wetlands, as far as you could see. Thick mist hung above the water, and sticking up here and there were the remains of trees and bushes, old and wizened, like shriveled hands trying to grasp onto something and pull themselves out of the foul liquid where they were stranded. Ben looked out across the water. Heavily contaminated, by all accounts. The worst contamination of all. He could see no end to it.
The road started to get bumpy. It had crumbled away in places, and the water lapped close to the Jeep’s tires as they drove on. The mist in the air had turned thicker, and blew across the sea-rivers in flat clouds, cold and rancid. Close to the road patches of rippling slime seemed to drift by. Further off, in the murky distance, the water’s surface was occasionally broken by a sudden movement, though no one inside the Jeep wanted to think about what it might be, and they all did their best to pretend they hadn’t seen anything.
“Get ready for the sea snakes!” Bad said, winking at Silver, as he noticed that she’d turned a sort of pale, vomitty green color.
She managed to squeeze her face into a smile.
Then:
Splat.
A scaly brown hand flopped down heavily onto the windscreen, rocking the Jeep.
Worse slammed on the breaks, holding onto the steering wheel tight, as hysterical screams broke out all around him. The Jeep was suddenly full of scrambling bodies, limbs flying everywhere, mouths wide open, bawling...
It wasn’t a hand on the windscreen. It was a long arm, like a snake, but with sucker-pads along it that stuck to the glass, pulsating, sucking hard.
“Back up!” Bad shouted, fumbling for his penknife. “Back up!”
Worse reversed the Jeep and the thick brown arm flopped off. They all watched, breathless, as out of the window they saw a massive octopus slump down from the front of the Jeep, leaving a trail of goo on the windscreen, and drop back into the water. It was pinkish brown, and seemed about as big as a man. It slid into the water and was gone.
For a long time they sat there in silence. The only sound was Jason’s teeth, which were chattering loudly. Then Silver spoke, her voice weak and unstable:
“If it’s any help,” she said with a pathetic, frightened laugh, “there are places in the world where people eat octopuses. In Spanish it’s called pulpo.”
“Doesn’t look like it’s the people who do the eating, not with octopuses that big,” Worse said, scanning the dark water on both sides of them. “More like they do the...”
“Right!” Coby said, springing clean off the seat. “That’s it. We’re going back. This is too dangerous! It’s madness!”
“Nope,” Worse said.
“It’s... it’s...” Coby said, flustered, fumbling for words, and desperately afraid.
“Can’t be done,” said Worse as he peered down at the edge of the road.
“You mean you won’t,” Coby said, raising his voice. “Well, you’re out-voted, Worse!” He looked around at the others. “He is, isn’t he? We’re not really gonna carry on, are we? Come on, let’s turn the Jeep around. This is stupid! We’re in a contaminated swamp!”
Worse just shrugged. “Can’t,” he said, all matter-of-fact.
Ben saw the undisguised horror on Coby’s face. But he knew they must go on. There was something he needed to see.
“What do you mean can’t?” Coby said, getting increasingly agitated, shuffling about on the seat as if his trousers were on fire. “What!”
“Ah, yes,” Silver said, looking down at the water on both sides of the road. She was rather embarrassed not to have spotted it sooner.
“The road’s not wide enough!” she explained, as gently as she could. “We can’t turn around. Not here. And anyway,” she continued, swallowing as if to give her strength, “that pulpo, I don’t think it was much bigger than a goat, was it? I mean, a goat’s bigger and we were never scared of goats, were we?”
Even she didn’t sound convinced...
Worse huffed with contempt (although in fact even he had been shocked by the sight of the octopus so close to his face). He slipped the Jeep into gear, and off they went, further into the unknown territory of the sea-rivers. Above them the sky turned darker.
Another few minutes and the water on one side was no longer stagnant. Beneath its shadowy surface there was a constant swirl. They all tried to pretend they weren’t watching it, because nobody wanted to know what was beneath the surface.
Then they heard a sound, something familiar.
“Look!” Silver said, as a piranha-star popped up, spinning rather slowly, as if it had just had a very satisfying bellyful of something or other. It snapped its little white teeth at them.
“Is it...” she said. “Is it saying hello?”
“It’s a starfish thing, you moron!” Bad cried. “It can’t speak!”
“Okay!” she said. “It’s just, well, it’s just nice to see something we know.”
They drove on, the piranha-star spinning along through the water at the side of the road, keeping up with them, its two tiny eyes beady and alert. And Silver had been right. It was nice to see something you knew, even if it was a piranha-star.
“Just remember,” Ben said, “don’t go getting it all excited. We don’t want a hundred of its friends following us this time!”
“You’ve seen one of those before!” said Jason, as he looked with amazement at the odd little thing in the water.
“Yeah,” Coby said. “The last time, they ate our boat!”
“A boat, eh?” Jason said, with just a hint of arrogance, his father’s way of talking, playful but threatening. “What do you need a boat for? There are no boats on the mainland. Unless...”
He looked at Ben, smirking, as if he didn’t need an explanation. Ben said nothing.
“Come on, Ben,” Jason continued, gaining confidence, knowing he had just found out something that made them all very, very scare
d of him. “Where are you lot from?”
“Silver,” said Ben, “why don’t you tell him?”
“We...” she said, thinking about what Terra had told them, “we’re unfounds.”
She said it as convincingly as she could, knowing that Sullivan’s son must never find out there was an island, with survivors on it...
“We’re unfounds, orphans from the east. We just came here to... well, Ben had, ehm, you know, he’d found his way into the Complex, and... well, we wanted him back! It’s not fair, Jason! All that playslave stuff. No it’s not fair...”
“East?” Jason said, interrupting her, a note of deviousness in his voice.
God, I hate your guts, Bad thought as he listened to this sad little runt of a boy, a sniveling coward with a powerful dad. You just wait, spoilt brat, I’ll have you...
“I thought you were from the north, Ben?” Jason said. “Didn’t my dad ask you about kids from the east, and you said you didn’t know anything about them?”
“I... er...” Ben started to say.
“Oh, yes! Of course,” Silver continued. “We’re from the north. That’s right. But we came through the gate on the east, that’s what I meant. Got lost, we did. That’s what I meant by the east.”
“And you didn’t steal a police car from the melted men? And crash it?”
“Steal a car?” said Bad, who was about ready to give this little jerk what he deserved. “Oh my, oh my! Why, Jason, what do you think? We go around stealing vehicles that don’t belong to us?”
“He doesn’t think that, does he” Worse said, gasping in mock horror and putting a hand to his mouth. “The very thought. Oooh!”
The twins sniggered at each other. Jason didn’t know what to say. No one ever made fun of him. He was Sullivan’s son. But now even Silver was smirking.
“By the way,” said Ben, eager to change the subject, “where did you two get this Jeep?”
The twins now laughed out loud, grinning proudly.
“We just borrowed it from a couple of commandos. They didn’t seem to mind!”
Jason spluttered with astonishment. The rest of them laughed at his weedy little cough.
