Wicked Bindup

by Paul Jennings

  They didn’t seem to like the shoe either.

  Without thinking I ran over to the door and threw the shoe out like a hand grenade. ‘Cop that,’ I yelled.

  The shoe bounced right through a bunch of slobberers and landed next to the remains of a clapped-out Land Rover. The slobberers squealed and wriggled away backwards. I laughed hysterically to myself. They didn’t like it. The shoe had them worried.

  Except for one little group that had other problems.

  They were stretched out in the shadows. Groaning. Almost as if they were sick. The very sound of their wailing sent waves of revulsion through my shaking body.

  I looked around the bus. There was no way out. Sunrise was a long way off. And so was Dawn.

  If she was still alive.

  I was alone. Outside were the slobberers. And inside – terrors as yet unknown.

  I slumped down onto the floor and sunk my head into my hands. My cut fingers ached and throbbed. I felt as if I had an awful bout of the flu. The inside of the bus seemed to warp and bend. Strange things were happening. My whole body was racked with wild, uncontrollable shaking.

  I turned to my little apple-man for comfort as I had done many times before. The way a child turns to a teddy bear in the darkness of the night.

  I stared down at him and tried to focus. My father’s last gift. But this time there was no comfort. Was it my eyes, or was my apple-man changing?

  Yes, he was changing. Slowly at first so that I couldn’t quite make out what was happening. Then faster.

  His face began to squirm and boil. It warped and bubbled and re-formed itself. The eyes became evil slits. Sharp, cruel teeth erupted from its lips. Pointed ears sprouted from the head. The mouth opened and a mocking, blue, forked tongue flickered out.

  Oh, horror of horrors. Something else. Worse. Oh, so much worse.

  A whining, high-pitched, cackling laugh came from its mouth. Like a tortured chainsaw squeal, the sound filled the air.

  The contorted head began to swell, larger and larger, until it was the size of a football. Whang, sploosh, cackle. The head exploded and filled the bus with the stench of a thousand farts.

  Then there was nothing left except a dry skin which began to smoke and burn.

  Oh, no, no, no. I dropped the shredded remains of the apple-man to the floor and screamed.

  Was there no end to this nightmare?

  Everything was changing. Even in the moonlit shadows I could tell that the bus had more sick secrets to tell. The seats were no longer torn and cracked. And the smashed speedometer now had a sparkling new face. I stared out through the windscreen. The tree that had grown out of the bonnet was still there. But it was smaller. Not broken or pruned. Just smaller.

  I stared at it. It was shrinking. Slowly, slowly, slowly, the tree was shrinking.

  ‘It’s un-growing,’ I gasped to myself.

  I heard something above me and looked up. A moth buzzed at enormous speed around my head. So fast that I could hardly see it.

  I looked down. Beside me on the floor a tiny lizard scampered quickly away and into a small rust hole. Backwards.

  I shook my head in disbelief. ‘What the heck is going on?’ I yelled.

  No one answered. There was no one.

  On the wall of the bus a patch of rust was disappearing and being replaced by red paint. A faded poster was growing brighter and renewing itself. The photo of a doctor stared down. Underneath in bold letters it said ARE YOU SICK? WE’RE HERE TO HELP.

  I looked along the aisle. There was no one there. No one to help me.

  The goat’s skeleton still sat in the seat where it had died. But now it was different. Its bones were no longer bleached. And small pieces of dried flesh and skin clung to some of the ribs.

  I stared at it with widening eyes. Last time I was there, those bones were as dry and smooth as old wood. I backed away – unable to even scream.

  Another foul odour started to fill the air. A disgusting, dead-flesh smell. My eyes watered and my stomach heaved as the revolting smell choked the inside of the bus. I pinched my nose with my fingers and ran to a broken window and started to gulp in fresh air.

  I only managed a couple of gasps. The shattered window un-shattered. Pieces of broken glass flew up from the floor and from the ground outside. In an instant the window was whole and re-made. I fell back into a seat and began to scream and scream and scream.

  Every cell in my body begged me to leave that bus. That stinking jail. That terrible refuge. Making itself new.

  I stared at the goat. I couldn’t take my eyes away from the skeleton as flesh slowly re-formed on the bones.

  Slobberers. An un-rotting goat. A window re-made. A bus becoming new.

  Terrible, terrible, terrible.

  But all made small next to the one sight which had burned itself into my frenzied mind. A vision which would remain with me for ever. Like the worm spelling Karl in my bedroom …

  The face … The wicked face on the apple-man when it exploded …

  Had been the face of my father.

  THREE

  Keep a clear head, I told myself as I strode across the wrecker’s yard. You need a clear head when you’re going to beat a hundred slobberers to death with a steel fence post.

  My head wouldn’t listen. It kept filling up with Dad. And how I didn’t know if I was ever going to see him again.

  That thought should have made me even angrier. Even more determined to pulp the slobberers. It didn’t. It just made me sadder.

  As I got closer to them I felt my anger draining away. My legs started to feel heavy. So did the steel fence post.

  Then I realised the dopeyness of what I was trying to do. One kid, forty-eight kilos in her boots. A hundred assorted slobberers, eighteen thousand kilos not including the slime.

  How many could I kill before they sucked out my bones?

  Fifty?

  Twenty-eight?

  Three?

  And what if Dad was still alive? How’d he feel coming along afterwards with the army and finding me tossed onto the roof of the bus, just an empty bag of skin?

  Suddenly my whole body started shaking and I wondered if I could make it to the gate before the slobberers attacked.

  I looked at them sprawled around the bus in the moonlight. Then I stared. They weren’t moving. Not even their eyes. They looked like they were asleep. Why not? I thought. Maggots sleep.

  Then I had another thought. What if Rory was in the bus? Cowering in there now, too terrified to come out? Waiting for me to rescue him?

  I took a deep breath.

  I didn’t want him in my life but I couldn’t leave him to die.

  Perhaps I could make it. Perhaps I could get to the bus if I crept really quietly. Making sure I didn’t kick any scrap metal or tread on any tongues.

  I gripped my fence post tighter and tried to spot a clear path between the dozing slobberers.

  Then I saw it. Lying next to the axle of a wrecked four-wheel drive. Slobberers all around it. Scuffed and mouldy and dirty but unmistakeable.

  Mum’s shoe.

  My stomach lurched.

  The last time I’d seen it, it had been on the bus. Under the driver’s seat. Right where she died.

  How did it get out here?

  The slobberers must have slimed onto the bus and dragged it off, hoping there were human bones in it.

  I shuddered at the thought of filthy slobberers squabbling over Mum’s shoe. Well, they weren’t having it any more. If Dad was dead, it was the last remaining bit of both my parents and it was mine.

  Heart pounding, I started picking my way between the slobberers.

  Closer.

  Closer.

  Please, I silently begged the giant grubs. Don’t be light sleepers.

  Closer.

  Closer.

  Got it.

  I pressed Mum’s shoe to my chest and squeezed my neck muscles really hard to stop a sob coming out. It wasn’t easy. For a second it was like Mum was th
ere with me but I knew she wasn’t and that was almost more than I could bear.

  Then I remembered I was surrounded by slobberers.

  I pulled myself together. But only for a second. A horrible thought hit me. This was what it must have been like for Rory when the slobberers flooded into the yard. All around him like this. Except worse. Charging at him, slurping, ravenous.

  That’s when I knew Rory must be dead. I started shaking again and I had to squeeze my neck muscles as hard as I could. I hoped it had been even quicker for Rory than it had been for the dog.

  Then I concentrated on getting out of there. The longer I hung around being sad and wobbly, the more chance I’d wake up the slobberers.

  Halfway back they woke up anyway. Or at least I thought they had. I caught a glimpse of movement. My heart stopped. Movement all around me. My head spun. Then I realised it wasn’t bodies that were moving, it was skin.

  While the slobberers slept, their skin was starting to fester and bubble like cream cheese past its use-by date.

  I hurried on, trying not to look. What was happening? Perhaps it was just because they were adults. Eileen always complained that she got dry painful skin at night.

  I stepped past the last slobberer, hoping desperately it wouldn’t wake up and be as grumpy as Eileen was in the mornings.

  Then I ran for the gate.

  My plan was to get back to town and find a phone and raise the alarm and the armed forces of several nations.

  In the middle of Dead Cow Clearing another awful thought hit me. The slobberers on the bridge over the river. What if they weren’t all sleeping and having skin problems? What if some were guarding the roads into town?

  I decided to go cross-country and head into town through the paddocks behind Agnelli’s dairy.

  It wasn’t easy, going bush at night. In less than an hour I was scratched and sore and exhausted. I wasn’t even sure I was going in the right direction. Dad had taught me to use the stars, but now the clouds kept getting in the way.

  I hung onto my fence post just in case. At about three a.m. I was glad I had. I’d just painfully unhooked myself from a thorn bush when I saw movement ahead in the gloom.

  I froze.

  Several slobberer-sized shapes were watching me.

  Then a cloud shifted off the moon and I saw it was only a mob of sheep. They had weird expressions on their faces, just like the one in the wrecker’s yard. My neck prickled. Must be an imported breed, I thought, with unusual jaw bones.

  ‘Dunno why you’re grinning,’ I said loudly. ‘You won’t find any feed here under the trees.’

  The sheep turned and trotted off. Then stopped and looked back at me. Then trotted some more. Then looked back again.

  I had the crazy thought that they wanted me to follow them. It was my turn to grin. Dopey sheep. But I didn’t grin for long. Suddenly they all came back and surrounded me and several started butting me behind the knees. When I tried to free myself they closed in tighter. Then they started herding me towards an open paddock.

  As the shock wore off I tried to stay calm. Relax, my desperately tired brain told my desperately tired body. You’re being rescued by a mob of sheep. They’re grateful for the considerate way Dad always warms the shears first.

  After a fair bit of herding I saw the dark shape of a building and recognised where the sheep had brought me.

  The Piggot place. Ernie Piggot had tried to run sheep too far up Bald Mountain and he’d gone broke and got into a big fight with the bank. Eileen had done heaps of courier trips out to him with legal documents before he’d got evicted.

  Dad had told me that when Ernie had gone he’d left the phone on with a rude answering-machine message to the bank. When I saw it was his place my heart gave an exhausted thump of joy. ‘Thanks, guys,’ I said to the sheep.

  The door was open. I blundered around in the dark. Finally I found the phone socket.

  No phone.

  I was too tired to cry. I just lay down on the bare boards with the fence post next to me. I hugged Mum’s shoe and thought how normal my life had been until twelve hours ago and how sad and weird and scary it was now.

  As I fell asleep I thought I heard a strange sound from outside. No, it couldn’t be. Sheep didn’t laugh.

  FOUR

  Dad, Dad, Dad. Why did I see your face just before the apple-man exploded? And why was it twisted and horrible and ugly?

  ‘You don’t look like that. You don’t, you don’t, you don’t,’ I screamed to myself.

  I had no time to figure it out. Another horror was about to start. The retreat of the flies.

  In they flew. Buzzing in reverse gear. Settling like a black, boiling blanket near the rotting flesh of the goat.

  Why was this bus set on rewind? Was it really happening? Or was I mad?

  I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the goat. Now, where the flies had been there was a mass of pale-coloured things. A moving mass.

  My head hurt terribly. I found it hard to focus my eyes. What was going on?

  No, no, no, no, no. The pupae were slowly turning back into maggots. Hungry maggots. Wriggling towards the rotting body of the goat.

  At first there were just a few. Then a couple of dozen. Then hundreds. And thousands. And millions. They were centimetres deep crawling right across the floor. Squirming and squiggling by the barrow-load.

  As they seethed on the carcass of the goat, it filled with more and more rotting flesh. The maggots were disgorging, not eating their meal – but un-eating it.

  I gagged and retched as the foul stench filled the air. I had to get out. I threw up on the wall. Gasping in agony I stumbled to the door.

  Suddenly I stopped.

  I couldn’t leave and face the slobberers. Never. And I couldn’t stay either. Think, think, think. I pulled my windcheater over my head and blocked out the ghastly sight of the maggots.

  Inside my own little black space I stole a second or two and tried to clear my head. For all I knew the waiting slobberers had killed Dawn. And my mum.

  Poor Dawn. She didn’t seem so bad now. Not now that she was gone. I would have given anything just to have seen her ugly mug again. She would have been someone to talk to. She was a pain in the bum. But she was human. And she was strong. A little reminder of home.

  Home. It seemed so far away. Normal. Hamburgers. Cereal. My bed. Milk in the fridge. Arguments about photos and Milo tins.

  It seemed so wonderful. So unreal. So distant.

  The thought of it gave me a speck of courage and I pulled the windcheater down off my head. Through watering eyes I peered at the great carcass. It stank as much as ever but there weren’t as many maggots. Shoot. Was this really happening? Each maggot was being replaced by a small, white egg.

  The maggots were going back into their eggs.

  Bzzzz. Now what? The number of flies was building up. Oh no. A billion buzzing blowflies blackened the air and filled it with an ear-splitting whine. Flying furiously backwards. The parents of the first lot. The ones that laid the eggs. They were coming back for what they had left behind. Each fly stopped for an instant on the pink flesh and took its eggs, one by one, back into its body. The flies were un-laying their eggs.

  The stench was bad. I choked and staggered. I covered my mouth and tried not to breathe in the hideous fumes. My head seemed to float in space. My hand throbbed. But I could still work out what was happening.

  The bus and everything in it was being made new. Growing younger. Renewing itself.

  The dials. The seats. The dead goat.

  They were going back to the way they once were. Before the bus crash.

  The goat was now fully fleshed and covered in a white, hairy coat. Flies still buzzed backwards but there were fewer of them. The goat’s empty eye sockets seemed to be staring at me. Then, slowly but surely, the sockets began to fill, almost as if some invisible sculptor was remaking them. Dead, black pupils appeared and then the yellowy brown of the eyes.

  The smell began to we
aken and then it was gone. So were the flies. There was just me and the goat. And my throbbing hand, which was growing more and more painful.

  The dead goat seemed to mock me from its seat. I hated that goat. I hated it.

  As the hate grew inside me I noticed that a bruise was spreading up my arm. Almost as if the anger was feeding it.

  It was a silly thing to do. A stupid, weak thing. But it was all I could think of. I stuck my fingers into the air. ‘Nick off,’ I yelled.

  Oh, why did I say that? Why, why, why? The goat gave a loud bleat, jumped to its feet and ran past me down the aisle backwards. It slipped and skidded and then wriggled bum-first through the door, back the way it must have come when it had entered.

  I couldn’t believe it. The goat was alive.

  But I was nearly dead. With fear. I fell back against the seat and stared around the bus. I was alone. Thank goodness for that. My rotting companion had gone.

  The inside of the bus stopped warping and bending and grew still. My head began to clear.

  Everything in the bus was back to new. The paintwork was fresh. The vinyl seats were shining. The floor was clean. The steering wheel and instrument panel were in perfect condition. The ignition key was in the lock.

  The tree that had been growing through the bonnet had disappeared.

  The bus was ready to go. And outside the sun beat down from high in the sky.

  One lonely fly circled above my head. Forwards. The backward journey was over.

  I heard a footfall on the step outside. Someone was there. Someone was coming. My heart leapt in my chest. Thump-fear. Thump-hope. Thump-fear. Thump-hope. The aching bruise washed up and down my arm like a purple wave on a beach.

  The driver’s door opened and someone stepped in. Was it Dawn? Was it Dad, come to save me? I couldn’t see at first in the glare of the midday sun. It was a human. Oh yes, a person, not a slobberer. Someone else to share the terror. Maybe even someone to make it go away.

  I peered more closely. The visitor was wearing a uniform. And shoes that I had seen before.