Wicked Bindup

by Paul Jennings

  It was a fruit bat.

  I turned it over with my oar.

  A big dead fruit bat without a bone or blood vessel in its flat floppy carcass.

  We stared at it.

  More splashes further down the river.

  Suddenly I heard wings beating overhead and realised what was going on. ‘The slobberers are flying in on bats,’ I yelled, ‘and sucking them dry when they want to come down.’

  We looked at each other, then peered frantically into the black water. There they were. Slimy torpedoes with green eyes. Speeding away from us.

  ‘Why aren’t they attacking?’ said Rory.

  ‘Dunno,’ I said. ‘They must have another plan.’ Up ahead, more splashes.

  Rory groaned. ‘There’s a bridge before we reach town.’

  ‘So?’ I said.

  ‘So have you ever seen a spider drop off a roof?’

  My guts clenched. We rounded a bend. In the distance, friendly street lights. I went weak with relief. Then I saw it. Spanning the river ahead. An arc of green lights. A miniature Sydney Harbour Bridge at night.

  ‘Row,’ screamed Rory. ‘Row for the bank.’

  We thrashed the water with our oars. When the boat rammed into the bank we leapt out, slipping on mud and grabbing at tree trunks.

  Tree trunks supporting a canopy of dark branches.

  And an army of evil green eyes.

  ‘Run,’ yelled Rory.

  ‘Where to?’ I shouted as we ploughed through dry grass.

  Behind us I could hear the horrible thud, thud, thud of soft things hitting the ground.

  ‘Dunno,’ shouted Rory. ‘Yes I do.’ He veered to our left, towards Dead Cow Clearing. ‘The bus. The slobberers are terrified of the bus.’

  I knew how they felt. For several hours I’d been feeling sick every time I thought about Mum’s shoe on the bus. I kept having a crazy thought. Drunk people lost their shoe. Mad people. What if the things people said about Mum and the accident were true?

  Now, as the jagged iron fence of the wrecker’s yard loomed out of the darkness, I knew I couldn’t go back on that bus.

  ‘Not the bus,’ I pleaded, ‘Somewhere else.’

  ‘There isn’t anywhere else,’ yelled Rory, wide-eyed and frantic.

  ‘There’s a caretaker at night,’ I said. ‘He might have a gun.’

  ‘He’s even older than Gramps. He’ll think we’re burglars and blow our heads off.’

  We reached the fence. I glanced back across the moonlit paddock. Green eyes were coming. Slimy bodies hissing over the long dry grass. Tongues slobbering.

  I froze.

  They were getting bigger.

  I stared, terror thudding in my head at their swollen bodies.

  ‘Okay,’ I whispered desperately. ‘The bus.’

  I hurried along the fence, Rory close behind. I tried not to look at the bus standing wrecked and rusting in the yard.

  We reached my secret entrance.

  ‘Hurry,’ said Rory. ‘They’re getting closer.’

  I couldn’t hurry. I couldn’t even move. The hole in the fence had gone. Someone had nailed a sheet of iron over it.

  There was no way in.

  EIGHT

  There was no way in to the wrecker’s yard. The fence was just too high.

  Dawn and I searched around desperately for something – anything that might get us over the top. ‘Ah ha,’ I shouted. ‘Just the thing. A big oil drum.’

  I rolled it over to the fence and stood it up on its end. ‘You first,’ I managed to gasp.

  They were coming. They were coming. The slobberers were coming. And they were bigger than ever. Maybe the darkness would hide us. Maybe they would lose our trail. Maybe their horrible, horrible tongues would not pick up our scent.

  Maybe.

  The top of the fence had been cut to form sharp points. Dawn scrambled onto the drum and pulled the sleeves of her jumper down over her hands. Then she hoisted herself over the razor points in one bound. I heard her land on the other side of the fence. How did she do that? She was so fit.

  I couldn’t even get onto the oil drum. It rocked from side to side every time I tried to haul myself up.

  Slurp, slurp, slurp.

  ‘Aagh. Someone help. Someone come. Anyone.’

  ‘Rory, hurry up.’ Dawn’s urgent whisper seemed like thunder in my ears.

  ‘Shhh,’ I said. ‘They’ll hear you.’ Finally I managed to get onto the drum. I knelt there on my knocking knees. The drum trembled, threatening to upend itself and me onto the hard ground. Carefully I rose to my feet. I pulled my sleeves down over my fingers and gingerly felt the sharp edges of the iron fence.

  Slurp, slurp, slurp.

  ‘Aw, gees. Aaghh …’ The drum skidded off beneath me leaving me dangling by my hands. The steel points of the fence cut through my sweater, scraping the skin off my fingers. I hauled myself up and felt the jagged points tear along my legs. Blood spilled down the fence in a sticky trail.

  Slurp, slurp, slurp.

  I dropped to the ground inside the wrecker’s yard, a bloody bundle of terror spread-eagled on the oily ground. I groaned in pain as I saw Dawn run towards the bus.

  Over in his little office the caretaker looked up and scowled. I could see his face glowing dimly in the light of a desk lamp. His dog was curled up by the open door. It gave a low growl and lifted its head.

  ‘My fingers,’ I groaned. I held up my cut hands and stared in horror at the blood pouring down my arm. The pain was terrible.

  I looked down at my knee. Something inside me seemed to die. Suddenly I didn’t care any more. I was like a wounded soldier wanting to be put out of his misery by a friend’s bullet.

  It was all too much, the running, the pain, the terror. Let them come. Let them come.

  I didn’t care any more.

  Maybe I was slipping into unconsciousness. Just like after the bus crashed. Then I felt something soft and soothing wipe the blood from my left hand. Like a nurse gently wiping a patient’s wound. For a second I couldn’t take it in. A long, wet, veined tongue slid through a hole in the iron fence. It slithered over my injured fingers, licking up the blood.

  A slobberer’s tongue. A horrible blue tongue was feasting, slurping, sliming over me. It slid up and touched my face.

  I froze. I couldn’t move. On the other side of the fence I heard horrible gobbling squeals as the other monsters fought over the bloody trail I had left behind on the fence.

  ‘Aagh.’ I tore my hand away and fled after Dawn towards the bus. I snatched a glance over my shoulder. Hideous slobbering tongues, like the tentacles of a monstrous sea anemone, were waving over the top of the fence. Some were pausing at the sharp points. Some were even licking the patches of blood on the spikes.

  Aarf, aarf, aarf. The caretaker’s dog had sensed us. He stood barking, staring into the gloom.

  Dawn had reached the bus. ‘Rory,’ she called. ‘I can’t go back in there …’

  ‘You have to,’ I yelled.

  Dawn looked over her shoulder. The dog charged towards her. Its lips pulled back over terrible teeth. Growling and howling it leapt. With a scream Dawn ran into the darkness. But the dog wasn’t after her. It hurled itself at the gate, springing furiously up at the blue-veined, slithering tongues of the slobberers.

  I started up the steps and stumbled. There was something there. Something alive – wedged on the step and blocking the door. A sheep. A stupid sheep. I grabbed it wildly and pulled. My cut finger went right up its wet nose. Oh yuck, yuck, yuck.

  As I wrestled with the sheep the caretaker ran out to see what the barking was about. His pot belly jiggled up and down as he lurched across the compound. I stared out from the steps. The moon shone on my face. The caretaker stared right at me and carried on. He must have seen me. But he ran right past. And I couldn’t see Dawn anywhere.

  The sheep gave one loud baa and scampered off into the night.

  Suddenly the gate fell and an army of enormous slobb
erers poured into the yard. The first slobberer lunged forward and closed its mouth over the dog’s jaws. It shoved its tongue straight down the poor animal’s throat. There was a horrible sucking noise like the sound a bath makes as the last of the water drains out. Then the dog collapsed, boneless on the wet ground. It shook for a moment, still alive. A furry handbag of jelly. Its legs no more than quivering ropes.

  The dog’s eyes rolled for a second and then closed. There was a gurgle and it lay still.

  I gave a shudder. For the dog’s sake I hoped it was dead.

  The caretaker fled howling into the night. Most of the slobberers ignored him. They had other prey. It was me they wanted. But one big grey brute turned and rumbled after the caretaker. It looked like a seal galloping forward into battle.

  In the darkness there was a yell. Then silence.

  The other slobberers surged in my direction. Fighting with their tongues for the red drops I had left behind me.

  They tasted the trail and followed.

  Was there anything that could help me? Anything at all? The only thing I had with me was the apple-man. Squashed down in my pocket. With bleeding fingers I pulled him out and stared at him.

  My head swam. It felt as if it was filled with a million bees.

  I scrambled into the bus and collapsed.

  I was alone.

  Outside, somewhere in the darkness, I heard a girl scream …

  ONE

  It was night. I was miles from home in a lonely wrecker’s yard. Next to me was a bus with the only remaining part of my mother in it. Giant slobbering worms were straining at the battered yard gate, desperate to suck out my bones.

  And what was it that made me run blindly into the darkness in terror?

  A dog.

  Dawn the chicken, that’s what Rory would have called me. Well he’d have been wrong.

  The dog was a killer. It had a savage snarl and huge teeth. Its saliva had bubbles in it, not from eating soap, from being so vicious. When it charged at me with its huge jagged mouth wide open, I ran.

  Scary broken-down farm equipment loomed out of the darkness. I crashed into something, scraping my arm on rusty metal. I kept running until I tripped and sprawled painfully in the dirt. I scrambled up, heart thumping, expecting to see dog-food-stained teeth coming for my throat at any second.

  But the dog was over by the gate, leaping up at the slithering tongues of the giant worms. My heart slowed down to very fast. The dog hadn’t been going for me, it had been going for the slobberers.

  There was enough moonlight for me to see my hands trembling with relief.

  I heard feet scampering towards me.

  ‘Rory,’ I tried to yell, but all that came out of my parched throat was a croak.

  I strained to see if it was Rory. He was about as hopeless a step-brother as you could get, but at that moment I really wanted it to be him.

  It wasn’t. It was a sheep.

  We looked at each other, startled. Then the sheep grinned.

  I blinked. Was I imagining it? Had terror scrambled my brain? Sheep didn’t grin.

  Get real, I told myself. It’s just got wind.

  A screech of twisting metal rang out across the yard and the sheep bolted. I turned towards the sound. The gate was slowly groaning inwards. Then it fell.

  A sea of slobberers poured in.

  I stood frozen with terror. I knew they’d been growing, but I was shocked to see how big they were. Most of them were fatter than the sheep. In the moonlight they looked like angry, slurping vacuum cleaners without the wheels.

  I didn’t want to see what they did to the dog, but I was too slow turning away. The horrible image burned into my brain and I felt sick. No dog deserved that, not even a vicious one. No step-brother did either.

  ‘Rory,’ I tried to scream, but my vocal cords were in shock and all I could do was squeak.

  I looked frantically over at where I’d last seen him. That part of the yard was alive with slobberers. Green eyes glinting. Wet tongues sliming.

  A sob forced its way out of my throat.

  The slobberers started moving towards me.

  As I turned and began running again, I heard other running feet nearby.

  Thank God. Rory was okay.

  I sprinted in the same direction. Soon I could see the shape of a figure up ahead. I tried to yell but I had no breath.

  Neither did the running figure. He was wheezing and gasping. His white hair was flopping. His pot belly was rising and falling with each step.

  My guts fell too. It wasn’t Rory. It was the old caretaker.

  ‘Wait,’ I yelled, sucking in air. ‘Rory’s back there. You’ve got to help.’

  The caretaker lumbered on. I forced my legs to go faster and caught him at his car door as he fumbled with his keys.

  ‘Please,’ I gasped. ‘Please help.’

  He turned, saw me, and gave a yell.

  ‘Arghhh.’

  I’d never had an adult yell at me in fear before, and for a couple of seconds I didn’t know what to say.

  Then I did. ‘You’re our only hope,’ I pleaded. ‘My mum’s dead, and Rory’s dad’s nicked off, and my dad and Rory’s mum have had an accident on their honeymoon and disappeared and they could be dead too.’

  Panting, I waited for him to digest this and then get some really high-powered slobberer-strength guns out of his boot.

  Instead he glared at me.

  ‘I know you’re not real,’ he said, and blew a raspberry at me.

  I was stunned. But I didn’t have time to be stunned for long. ‘I am real,’ I said, and kicked him in the ankle to prove it.

  He winced and rubbed his ankle with his other foot.

  ‘That wasn’t real either,’ he said, scowling. ‘Lousy doctor. What’s the point of heart pills if they make you see stuff and get palpitations.’

  He hurled a bottle of tablets into the darkness. Then he got into his car, slammed the door and started the engine.

  ‘Wait,’ I begged. ‘We’re just two kids. Probably only one now.’

  The caretaker spun his tyres in the dirt and the car took off, flattening a second rusty iron gate and skidding over it in a cloud of tyre smoke.

  As I watched his rear lights getting smaller in the darkness, I suddenly felt small too. And very alone. Suddenly I wanted Mum and Dad, both of them, with their arms round me and their soft voices in my ears. I crouched in the dirt and squeezed my eyes tight so the tears wouldn’t sting so much.

  At first I thought the sound of mucus bubbling was me crying. Then I opened my eyes and saw it wasn’t.

  A slobberer, the biggest of the lot, was writhing slowly about a car’s length away from me. Its green eyes were fixed on mine and I could see the blue veins in its slithering, hungry tongue.

  I screamed.

  The slobberer’s eyes glowed brighter and it slimed towards me like a big vinyl bag on a luggage carousel with all its shampoo and moisturiser oozing out.

  I stepped back and scraped my leg on something. A steel fence post sticking out of a pile of scrap. I grabbed it and raised it above my head and closed my eyes and swung it down onto the slobberer with all my strength.

  It was a shock.

  I expected a squish and what I got was a thunk. The slobberer was solid muscle. The fence post vibrated and so did my hands and arms and shoulders and major internal organs.

  I opened my eyes.

  The fence post was bent.

  The slobberer was slithering backwards. Then it stopped, shuddered and suddenly went sloppy like liver when you cut open the plastic bag.

  I didn’t take my eyes off it.

  After a bit I chucked a metal bolt at it. The bolt sort of sunk in. The slobberer didn’t move. Its eyes were grey.

  I peered over at the other side of the yard. The rusty hulk of the bus was completely surrounded by slurping, tongue-waving slobberers.

  Mum’s bus.

  Suddenly my fingers weren’t numb any more. Blood tingled thro
ugh my body. I thought of Dad, my only remaining parent, who was probably next on the slobberers’ menu. One scrawny kid and a dog wouldn’t keep them going for long.

  I gripped my fence post and walked slowly towards the slobberers.

  Okay, there were heaps of them. Okay, there was only one of me.

  But now I was as angry as they were.

  TWO

  As the slobberers poured into the wrecker’s yard, I slammed the door in a panic and stared out of the bus window with wide, terrified eyes. They were still sucking their way after me – looking for a meal. Ever since I’d cut my hand on the fence trying to escape them, they’d followed the bloody trail I’d left behind me.

  A few metres from the bus they suddenly stopped. They sniffed and sucked at the air, their green eyes glowing in the dark of the wrecker’s yard as they stared in hatred.

  At first I thought they were going to charge. But no. Something held them back. They seemed frightened of the bus, but not to the point of giving up. Instead of charging they slid and slithered around each other like piles of slime-filled garbage bags. Finally they surrounded the bus. I was trapped.

  Why didn’t they come for me?

  I looked around. The shoe. Dawn’s mother’s shoe. She had died in that bus. And I had been there. But I couldn’t remember what had happened. I had tried to remember a thousand times. But the memory of it was gone. Knocked out by the crash.

  Had Dawn’s mum been drunk? Had she crashed the bus on purpose like some people thought but didn’t like to say? I had her to thank for my limp and my twisted leg. If it wasn’t for her I’d have been able to run faster than Dawn. If she hadn’t died, Dawn wouldn’t be my step-sister. My mum would still be married to Dad. And we all would have been happy. It was all Louise’s fault.

  The shoe made me angry. It was a rotting reminder of Dawn’s mum and how she had crashed the bus. With me in it.

  I picked up the worn shoe and held it in front of my eyes.

  Outside in the night I heard a huge swooshing noise. Almost as if a hundred mouths had sucked in breath at the same time. It was the slobberers. They were blinking their eyes and sighing.