Wicked Bindup

by Paul Jennings

  Mum was alive.

  In Rory’s terrible, sick, wonderful vision Mum was alive.

  I wanted to be there so much. Just to throw my arms round her. Just to say goodbye and tell her I’d always love her.

  No. More than that. To try and save her.

  Something was slithering. A scratching, sliding noise next to my ear. ‘The root,’ yelled Howard. ‘Look at the root.’

  I tore my eyes off Rory. The strands of root were sliding down the window and hanging loosely off the car. I didn’t care. I turned back to Rory. Who was looking at me.

  ‘I’m parched,’ he croaked.

  I saw instantly he wasn’t on the bus any more. ‘No,’ I screamed. ‘Go back. Please.’

  His lips were cracked and dry. ‘I need a drink,’ he whispered.

  I bent forward and started rummaging on the floor of the car, desperately hoping that Gramps had left an old soft-drink bottle there with some dregs in it. Or a plastic bag with a damp window-wiping cloth inside. Anything to moisten Rory’s mouth so he could go back on the bus and tell me about Mum.

  Nothing.

  Just the metal tyre lever and Gramps’ little pocket knife and one of the curried-egg sandwiches from wedding.

  No fluid of any description. I was losing Mum for the sake of a mouthful of liquid.

  Suddenly a rage bigger than anything I’d ever felt exploded inside me. I nearly crammed the sandwich into Rory’s mouth, even though it was two days old and the bread was hard and dry and it was super-hot because Mrs Conti didn’t understand the strength of curry powder. I just managed to stop myself.

  It wasn’t Rory’s fault that his dad had sent him a slobberer-riddled, infection-spreading apple-man. And it wasn’t Rory’s fault that thirst had interrupted his vision.

  It was the root’s fault. The stinking apple-man root that had drunk all our water.

  I grabbed Gramps’ pocket knife and wound down my window and started slashing at the poxy root.

  ‘No,’ yelled Howard.

  ‘Put the window up,’ croaked Rory.

  ‘Scumbag,’ I screamed at the root. I hacked and sawed wildly. The root was like steel cable and the little knife wouldn’t go through. But I did manage to scrape off some of the brown hairy skin. The wound I made was wet and purple. The root quivered angrily.

  ‘Suck on this,’ I yelled. I scooped the lumpy curried egg out of the sandwich and rubbed it into the purple wound. The root flailed against the side of the car as it tried to uncoil itself.

  I grabbed the tyre lever and forced my door open and squeezed out.

  ‘No,’ yelled Howard and Rory and Gramps.

  Too late. I was on my face in the dust. I scrambled up and turned round and started pounding the root with the tyre lever. I was pounding Gramps’ car too, but I didn’t care.

  ‘You’re compost,’ I screamed at the root.

  I could feel it crunching under my blows. The last couple of loops slithered from around the car.

  ‘That’s it,’ I yelled. ‘Rack off.’

  Instead of snaking away across the dusty plain, the root reared high above me. I gripped my weapon. ‘You want more, mulch-breath?’ I screamed.

  It wanted much more.

  Before my eyes it grew twice as thick, from a finger to a hairy, knobbly hosepipe. Then in a blur it cracked itself like a giant whip.

  The noise it made was painful. But not as painful as when it flew at me and flayed me across my back. And even that searing white-hot pain wasn’t as bad as the agony and despair and fear I felt when it coiled around and around my body like a rough-skinned steel snake and started to squeeze …

  ONE

  I was history.

  The longest root in the world was wrapped around me. Squeezing me. Crushing me. I’d hurt it and now it wanted revenge.

  Kilometres away, back where we’d camped the night before, Rory’s evil infected apple-man was sending a message along its root ducts to the ends of its strangling tendrils.

  Kill Dawn.

  I started to send one back.

  Get st –

  Pain seared through my chest. My ribs felt like they were cracking. I struggled to suck air into my squashed lungs. I tried to force my thumbs down inside the rough steely strands to tear them away from my body.

  I couldn’t.

  Even as it was killing me, the root was bursting with new life. I could feel shoots running down my back and coiling round my legs. Suckers sliding along my neck and slithering into my hair.

  I tried to claw them off but new coils pinned my arms. The hairy tendrils cut into my skin and my hands started to go numb.

  I realised I was screaming.

  I stopped.

  I fought to get more air. It was hopeless. My brain was running out of oxygen. My eyes started to go funny. Everything around me started to shimmer and wobble. The narrow dusty road, which I knew ran dead straight through the flat scrub, suddenly looked as twisted and snaky as the root that stretched along it to the horizon.

  Gramps’ car looked all out of shape. I knew I hadn’t hit it that many times with the tyre lever. And Howard and Rory and Gramps, who were scrambling frantically out of the car, looked blurred and wavy as if they were underwater.

  Their voices seemed slow and distorted.

  ‘Hang on, Dawn,’ warbled Rory.

  ‘We’re coming,’ growled Howard.

  ‘Howard, no,’ boomed Gramps.

  In slow motion, Gramps grabbed Howard and pushed him back inside the car. Somehow through the pain I felt glad. Even though the stinking vicious root was killing me, it wouldn’t have won if it didn’t get to infect Howard.

  Rory was lifting his arm. It seemed to take an age.

  He was throwing something at me.

  As the tendrils round my throat tightened, I watched the object spin slowly towards me through the air. It landed in the dust at my feet.

  Mum’s shoe.

  Suddenly my fear and anger went. All I felt was sadness. My knees gave way and I fell forward onto the ground, dragging the root with me. My face slammed into the dust.

  Poor old Rory. He’d done his best. But he’d forgotten that Mum’s shoe had lost its power.

  I tried to get a hand to it, to touch something of Mum’s for the last time. My hands were still pinned. With my last whisper of breath I squirmed forward and touched the shoe with my cheek.

  Oh Mum, I thought. Was this what it was like for you, trapped under the surface of the river, your life ending? Was your windpipe on fire? Were your lungs exploding with pain?

  I squeezed my eyes shut and saw her smiling at me with her soft brown eyes just like she used to.

  In my imagination I held her tight and waited to die.

  But I didn’t.

  I heard a noise. Loud sobs. They were coming from my chest. And shuddering into me were painful gulps of air.

  I could breathe again.

  The pain was going.

  The root had stopped squeezing.

  For a few seconds I thought I was going to faint with relief. I forced myself to concentrate. I kicked and squirmed and twisted and clawed and wriggled out from between the hairy coils.

  Then I scrambled to my feet and looked around in a daze for the tyre lever so I could pulp that stinking root into mulch.

  ‘Dawn, don’t,’ yelled Rory. ‘Don’t get angry.’

  I stared at him. My eyesight was wobbly and his face was blotchy and swollen but I could still make out his intense expression. He wasn’t taking his eyes off the root. It had moved a short distance away and was tracing slow patterns in the dust with its tip.

  I knew the root didn’t have eyes, but I could have sworn it was warily watching Mum’s shoe.

  ‘Don’t get angry,’ said Rory again. ‘If you get angry, we’re history.’

  I didn’t understand.

  Gramps appeared behind Rory, wide-eyed and waving a street directory. ‘Run for it,’ he yelled. ‘I’ll distract it with this.’

  ‘It’
s okay, Gramps,’ said Rory. ‘Dawn and me have got things under control.’

  I stared at Rory again. Under control? I hoped desperately the infection wasn’t turning his brain into roof insulation.

  ‘Dawn,’ said Rory quietly, ‘stay as calm as you can and pick up the shoe.’

  I didn’t know what else to do, so I took a deep breath and picked up the shoe. Rory came and stood next to me.

  ‘Stay close,’ he said.

  Before I could ask him what he was doing, he darted over to the root and grabbed the tip in both hands.

  ‘Don’t be an idiot,’ I yelled.

  My body tried to make me run for it but he was my step-brother so I went with him.

  ‘Stay close,’ he said, ‘and whatever you do, don’t get mad.’

  The root started writhing and shuddering in Rory’s hands. I pressed Mum’s shoe against the root tip. The root went limp.

  Suddenly I understood why Rory was so worried about me getting angry. In the car I’d grabbed Mum’s shoe in anger and attacked the root, and the root hadn’t even noticed. Anger must be the thing that somehow made Mum’s shoe lose its power. Just as anger also made the infection stronger.

  ‘Okay,’ said Rory, ‘stay calm and let’s go.’

  Normally I’d have got really mad with him for that. Expecting me to keep up with him without explaining what he was doing.

  This time, as he dragged the root towards the car, I kept the shoe touching the tip and tried to think of good things about him. His knees. How funny he looked in old ladies’ clothes. How brave he was for a puny kid.

  ‘Gramps,’ yelled Rory, ‘take the petrol cap off.’

  Gramps looked confused.

  ‘Quick, Gramps,’ I yelled without having a clue why it was so important.

  Gramps unscrewed the petrol cap with shaking hands. I could see Howard staring anxiously out the car window at us. I felt pretty anxious too. What if Rory was having another hallucination? What if he thought he was with his dad filling the car up at Kellett’s Service Station?

  Rory jammed the end of the root into the petrol tank.

  Oh no, I thought, he does.

  From inside the tank came a loud sucking noise. I stared in amazement. ‘It’s drinking the petrol,’ I said.

  Rory nodded as though this had been his plan all along.

  Gramps was staring in amazement too. ‘Jeepers,’ he said. ‘We didn’t do this in the war.’

  The sucking noise went on for several minutes. Then it changed to a slurping noise. The root was devouring the last drops of petrol in the tank.

  ‘Okay,’ said Rory. ‘Stand back.’

  ‘Lead poisoning,’ cried Gramps excitedly. ‘You’ve given the blighter lead poisoning.’

  But that wasn’t what Rory had in mind. From his pocket he took the box of matches Gramps had given him to light our camp fire.

  We stood back.

  Rory pulled the end of the root out of the tank, flung it to the ground, struck a match, dropped it onto the root and stepped well back himself.

  There was an explosion of flame and a loud whoosh. A blue and yellow fireball hurtled away from us along the road. We stood and watched it, open-mouthed, until it had disappeared over the horizon.

  Even when the fireball had gone we still stood staring because what it had left behind was so incredible. The entire root, kilometres of it, was writhing and twisting in flames.

  ‘Unreal,’ yelled Howard, clambering out of the car. He gave a loud whoop. ‘My brother,’ he yelled. ‘My brother did that.’

  Rory glowed, and not just because the explosion had almost taken his eyebrows off.

  I didn’t blame Howard for being a bit hysterical. In less than twenty-four hours he’d met a brother he didn’t know he had, discovered his real mother was still alive, plus learned that both of them were sick with a vicious disease that wanted to infect Howard and all their blood relatives. To top it all, the infection had come after him via fifteen kilometres of killer root. It was a wonder he wasn’t totally ga-ga.

  We watched the root burn until the flames died out and there was just a ribbon of ash along the road.

  I turned to thank Rory for saving my life.

  That’s when I saw it. Something moving through the dust. Smouldering at one end. A length of green shoot that had somehow escaped the flames. It was snaking towards Howard’s feet.

  ‘Howard, look out,’ I screamed.

  Howard saw the shoot just as it was rearing up and about to strike at his ankle. He tried to jump back, slipped in the dust and fell heavily. The root clamped itself around his sock.

  ‘More petrol,’ yelled Gramps.

  ‘The shoe,’ shouted Rory.

  Howard and I moved at the same time. I hurled myself at him, clutching Mum’s shoe. Howard flung something at the root. It was his apple-man. It hit the root with a crunch and bounced away.

  The root stayed clamped.

  Breathing steadily, I held Mum’s shoe against it. The effect was instant. The root gave a spasm and went slack. I tore it off Howard’s sock and flung it on the ground, all the time keeping the shoe pointing at it.

  We watched wide-eyed as the fleshy green root shrivelled and turned brown. The breeze made its smouldering tip glow red. Then it burst into flames.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I asked Howard anxiously. What I meant was, did the root infect you?

  Howard jumped up and waggled his toes. ‘Thick socks,’ he said, grinning.

  We watched the breeze scatter the ash through the scrub. Howard gave another loud whoop. ‘My step-sister,’ he yelled. ‘My step-sister did that.’

  My skin was scraped and my bones were bruised and my lungs were aching, but I still felt pretty good when he said it. And I stayed feeling good right up to the moment I remembered we were miles from anywhere without any petrol, food or water.

  TWO

  Okay, so I saved Dawn from the killer root. I felt good about that. And my big brother Howard had actually patted me on the back. Unreal.

  It was a hairy experience. Wild. And scary. I was really packing.

  After it was all over I sort of freaked out.

  I had blown up the root or whatever it was. But what about my apple-man? Was it still growing, back at the camp site? With greedy roots running into the ground?

  Or was it dead?

  The thought of that just ripped into my guts. Dad’s apple-man gone. Killed by me. When we found Dad I’d have to tell him. What would he say? I couldn’t bear to think about it. I felt as if I had murdered my closest friend.

  But then I had to save Dawn. She was my step-sister. I felt really close to her now. Not like a sister actually. More like a … girl-friend.

  I wondered how she felt about me. That’s what I really wanted to know. I saved her life. So she must be starting to think that I wasn’t too bad.

  Dawn took a deep breath. She was going to say something really nice to me.

  ‘Listen, Worm Boy,’ she said. ‘We have to face facts. Your dad sent you an apple-man that has nearly killed us twice. First the slobberers came out of it. And now it’s grown into a deadly apple tree. The tendril might even have passed on the infection to Howard’s apple-man.’

  Dawn stopped for a second to let it all sink in. We all looked at Howard and he shoved his apple-man down deeper into his pocket. He didn’t like that suggestion one bit.

  And neither did I. Dawn wasn’t even grateful. Just practical as usual. Always thinking about the next thing. Not even one word about me saving her life.

  Dawn still had more to say. ‘If apple-man number two is infected,’ she said gently to Howard, ‘guess who he will be going for next. Guess who will be getting the next little gift from your dad.’

  Boy, she made me mad. ‘Dad didn’t send the germs,’ I yelled. ‘Why do you keep putting dirt on him?’

  ‘Listen, Rory,’ she said. ‘The facts speak for themselves. We have to get rid of Howard’s apple-man. If it’s infected, anything might happen. It could
start to grow like the first one. When we’re asleep. Think about the infected frog. It turned into a giant. What if the apple-man grew that big? What if it started walking around like a human being?’

  Howard took out his apple-man and held it up. ‘My parents let me keep this,’ he said. ‘They knew that it was special – from my real dad. Nothing has happened to it. And nothing is going to. I haven’t even seen my father. I’ve never talked to him. Never even seen a photo of him. This is all I have. I can’t get rid of it. I just can’t.’

  I knew exactly how he felt.

  Dawn stamped her foot. Now she was really angry. ‘You two are so dumb,’ she shouted. ‘You’re never going to find your father if we all get murdered in the night by a giant apple-man.’

  ‘Shut up,’ I yelled. ‘Aren’t you ever happy? I burnt my apple-man to save you. I nearly got myself killed for you. And what do I get back? You hate my father. And my mother. And me. We’re not going to get rid of Howard’s apple-man. Never. I’m sick of you being such a bossy-boots. If you really want to know – ’

  Another voice interrupted me. A kind, soft, wise voice. ‘Rory,’ said Gramps. ‘She’s right. We can’t have the enemy in the camp. If that apple-man attacks us, who is going to save your mum? She’s dangerously ill. No one knows what’s wrong with her. Except us. We have to find … what’s his name? Montgomery … no, no … you know … your dad, Karl. We have to find out where these germs came from. The apple-man has to face the firing squad. There’s no way out of it.’

  Howard started to nod his head sadly. ‘Okay,’ was all he said.

  ‘See,’ said Dawn.

  She was so childish. All she wanted was to win the argument. My arm and chest ached terribly. I could feel anger growing inside me again. The slobberer’s germs were spreading through my body. I was growing weaker. I was sick. And there was no cure. All I could do was to try and slow the spread of the disease by controlling my anger.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘We’ll get rid of it. Come on, Howard.’

  Howard and I started walking slowly into the parched scrub. Dawn followed. ‘Not you,’ I spat at her. ‘This is a funeral. And you’re not welcome.’