Wicked Bindup

by Paul Jennings

  Gramps stared at me.

  And started to scream …

  ONE

  Gramps stared at my face and screamed. He looked terrified. I staggered backwards on the little underground jetty.

  What was going on? I looked around wildly and tried to make sense of it. Water gurgled along the underground drain. Rats scampered in dark corners. We were alone and helpless, but I couldn’t see anything to scream about. There was no sign of the terrible apple-man. There was no mouldy-faced horror glaring out of the darkness.

  Or was there? Gramps was looking at me as if I was the enemy.

  ‘What’s the matter, Gramps?’ I gasped. ‘I won’t hurt you.’

  ‘Get away. Get away, spy,’ yelled Gramps. His spindly legs began to shake and for a moment I thought he was going to fall back into the dark water below.

  ‘Gramps, it’s me – Rory,’ I shouted. ‘You’re just seeing things again.’

  ‘Rory?’ he said. ‘Rory? You can’t be Rory. You’re, you’re … ugly.’

  I held my hands up to my face and touched the skin. My flesh was all loose and wrinkled. It was horrid to touch.

  But there was something else. Something terribly wrong. I couldn’t feel the pressure of my fingers on my cheeks. I pinched my nose. Nothing. My fingers could feel my face. But my face couldn’t feel my fingers.

  I frantically touched my chin and lips and explored the curve of my mouth. Everything was still there but nothing seemed the same. My own face felt as if it belonged to someone else.

  Invaders.

  Cold fear washed over me. I had been invaded. Evil germs were taking hold. It all flashed through my mind. Everything that had happened. The slobberers infecting me back in the wrecker’s yard. Me passing the disease on to the sheep. And then my mum catching it from the lamb. The frogs looking for Mum. The snail and the vine that wanted to infect Howard. The apple-man. The horrible germs that were following my bloodline. Trying to kill me and my relatives.

  From animal to human being. From human being to animal. And plants. It used them too. Frogs, apple-men, snails, vines. All wanting me and mine.

  The germs were changing my appearance. Feeding on my fear of the mouldy apple-man. The fearsome foe who had grown to human size and was trying to kill us. Now the wicked illness had changed me so much that Gramps couldn’t even recognise me.

  ‘It is me,’ I shouted. ‘It is. It’s me – Rory.’

  Gramps moved forward carefully. He was still scared of me. He peered at my face. ‘Okay,’ he said nervously, ‘I’ll test you out. If you’re Rory you’ll be able to answer a few questions.’ He bent down and picked up a rusty iron bar which lay on the jetty. ‘If you get them wrong you cop this, Apple-spy.’

  I took a few steps backwards and stood precariously on the edge of our little refuge. One more step and I would fall back into the rushing stream. ‘Anything,’ I said. ‘Anything.’ I nodded my head furiously.

  Gramps began to quiz me. ‘What did I eat that I shouldn’t have?’

  ‘A snail,’ I yelled.

  ‘Wrong,’ shouted Gramps. ‘You’re not Rory at all.’ He started to walk towards me with the iron bar held above his head. I didn’t know what to do. Gramps was old and tottery. I could have knocked him over but I didn’t want to hurt him. I didn’t want to get clobbered with the iron bar either. He came towards me. He was going to let me have it.

  I tried to think. What was the answer? What could it be? ‘A compass,’ I shouted. ‘You ate the compass.’

  Gramps lowered the iron bar. But he still wasn’t sure that the ugly person facing him was really me.

  ‘What did I throw in the mouth of the frog?’ he demanded.

  ‘Salt.’

  ‘Who put the apple-man spy in the car boot?’

  ‘Howard. And … me.’

  ‘What is your father’s name?’

  ‘Karl.’

  ‘Who is the best Gramps in the world?’

  ‘You are,’ I shouted. I threw myself into his arms. He was smiling. He believed me. He knew it was really me. He hugged me tight.

  ‘Rory,’ said Gramps. ‘You’re in a bad way, mate. We have to get help.’

  I passed my hand over my rotting face. ‘I’m terribly sick,’ I said faintly. ‘And no one can help me. But I’ve got one thing to do while I still can. I’m going to find my dad. I have to see his smile just one more time.’

  Gramps gave my hand a squeeze. ‘This is only a battle,’ he said. ‘The war’s not over yet. We’ll find the answer. You wait and see.’

  I walked around the small jetty looking for a way out of the drain. We could go back the way we had come but I wasn’t sure that we could make it in the strong current. Neither of us was strong enough. Or we could head upstream, further into the tunnel. But where did it go and how far was it?

  Then I noticed a steel ladder on the wall across the water. It stretched up above our heads into another huge chimney-like tunnel. The ladder had at least a hundred rungs and it led up to a steel door. It was a long way to the top.

  Suddenly a rusty squeal filled the air. The door opened and light filtered into the shadows above. Someone or something was standing in the doorway.

  ‘The apple-spy,’ whispered Gramps.

  ‘The mouldy apple-man,’ I said hoarsely.

  It was him. It was him. Our deadly enemy was looking down at us. He was high above and I couldn’t make out the details. But there was one thing for sure. He had something white and hairy and foul where his head should have been. Just the thought of that terrible being made my stomach churn. I felt as if maggots were eating my last store of courage.

  But I still had a little bit left. I snatched the iron bar from Gramps’ hand and hurled it up at the mouldy apple-man. ‘Take that,’ I screamed.

  The bar hurtled upwards, turning and twisting through the air. Then it clanked harmlessly into the wall halfway up the ladder and began to fall. It fell with a splash into the water below.

  The mouldy apple-man quickly ducked back and slammed the door.

  Once more we were alone.

  I could feel defeat and despair gnawing away inside me. I looked at my hands and arms. The flesh was loose and sagging. The germs were spreading, spreading, spreading. I couldn’t bear to think what might be ahead.

  Suddenly the despair turned to anger. My mother was infected. And maybe my father. And now that mouldy spectre wanted to spread the disease and kill my brother. And anyone else who got in its way. Even poor old Gramps. How dare it. I didn’t care about myself any more. I was filled with rage.

  ‘Okay, Apple-head,’ I yelled into the shadows above. ‘So you want a fight, do you? Okay, here I come.’

  ‘You can’t go up there,’ shouted Gramps. ‘It’s a trap.’

  ‘Just watch me,’ I said.

  Gramps tried to hold me back but I pulled away. I lowered myself into the water and waded into the stream. I felt my foot touch something hard. The iron bar. I bent down and picked it up. Then I splashed my way across to the steel ladder on the other side.

  ‘Don’t, Rory boy, don’t,’ pleaded Gramps.

  I ignored him and started to climb. One, two, three, four rungs. Suddenly my fingers touched something hanging on a rung above my head. I stopped and tried to work out what it was.

  ‘What’s up?’ yelled Gramps.

  ‘I’ve found something,’ I said. Then I began to scream. And scream and scream.

  ‘Hands,’ I shrieked. ‘There’s a pair of hands hanging on to the rungs.’

  ‘Don’t touch them,’ yelled Gramps. ‘I’m coming.’

  Touch them? I couldn’t touch them, not in a million years. They weren’t just hands. They were sucked-out hands. With no bones or muscles. Flat, empty skins. Some poor person had had their innards sucked out. Only the dried-out hands were left, still gripping the ladder. Suddenly I realised what the furry slippers were that I had seen at the entrance to the drain. Sucked-out rat skins.

  Something terrible was in the wat
er below. ‘Hurry,’ I yelled at Gramps. ‘Hurry.’

  Gramps struggled slowly across the stream and pulled himself up onto the ladder. He stared at the hands which gripped the rung like a pair of frozen …

  ‘Gloves,’ said Gramps.

  ‘What?’ I yelled. ‘They look like hands to me.’

  ‘Can’t be,’ said Gramps.

  ‘Why not?’ I shouted.

  ‘They’ve got no fingernails.’

  I suddenly felt stupid. Thinking that gloves were hands. A wave of relief washed over me. But it didn’t last for long.

  ‘What about the rat skins?’ I yelled. ‘What about those? There are slobberers here, Gramps.’ I threw the gloves into the stream below and continued to climb. Gramps followed, grasping each rung weakly with his knobbly fingers.

  Up, up, up. I stared down. The dimly lit jetty looked like a child’s toy in the water way below. On I went until at last I reached the door at the top. There was no handle. I knew that on the other side – somewhere – was the mouldy apple-man.

  I tried to stop a terrible thought entering my mind. A thought that had been trying to surface ever since my appearance started to change. I didn’t want it out in the open. I didn’t want to know what this disease was going to do to me.

  I had to stop myself thinking about it. Action was better than thoughts. Anything but face the truth. I clung on to the top rung with one shaking hand and desperately beat on the door with the iron bar.

  ‘Come on, mouldy Mister Apple-head,’ I yelled crazily. ‘Come on, slobberers. Come and see what I’ve got for you.’

  TWO

  I lay as still as a corpse on the hospital trolley. The sheets draped over it hid me from view, but I was still taking a huge risk.

  I gripped Mum’s shoe. It had saved me from killer sheep and evil strangling apple-man roots. Would it save me from two nurses and a doctor?

  They were wheeling me along a corridor in the huge city hospital. ‘Heard the news?’ I heard the doctor say. ‘This morning’s triplets. Two of them were two kilos but the third was only one kilo and a bit.’

  The nurses made sympathetic noises. ‘Is the littlie okay?’ one of them asked. ‘Fine,’ said the doctor. ‘Mum and dad are over the moon.’

  I gritted my teeth and forced myself to stay hidden on the base of the trolley. I wanted to leap out and give the doctor and nurses a good shake. I wanted to tell them that Eileen and Howard’s ward was where their attention was desperately needed, not the maternity ward.

  ‘Families aren’t only loving parents and two-point-five children,’ I wanted to yell at them. ‘Families are also step-families struggling with jealousy and sadness and evil diseases.’

  But I didn’t because my family was one of those and the only way I could save them was to get out of the hospital without being caught.

  I spent the rest of the trip down the corridor planning the details of how I’d save them. I knew I didn’t have much time. The infection was killing Eileen and that meant it was doing the same to Rory, with Howard not far behind. They might only have a few hours.

  I made a list in my head of everything I had to do in that time.

  1. Find Rory’s dad.

  2. Get him to say where the infected slobberers came from.

  3. Tell the doctors so they could find out more about the infection and discover a cure for it.

  4. Wait for the results.

  It seemed a lot. And what if we couldn’t find Rory’s dad? I prayed Rory and Gramps had found some clues at the refinery. But then what if Rory’s dad didn’t know where the slobberers had come from? I didn’t want to think about that.

  I didn’t get a chance to.

  The trolley stopped suddenly. I heard the doctor and nurses walk away. I decided to risk lifting a sheet to see where I was. Before I could, the trolley swung round and a male voice started humming.

  There was a bump and a jolt and I heard lift doors closing. We were going down. I had a horrible thought. What if we were going to the hospital laundry? What if they just chucked their sheets in the washing machine on hot without checking for stray bedsocks or children?

  The lift jolted and we clattered out. Then the trolley stopped.

  Silence.

  It wasn’t the laundry. I couldn’t smell steam or detergent or stain remover or fabric softener.

  The humming started again. It was getting fainter. The man must be moving away from the trolley. Should I run for it now?

  I decided to wait, just to be safe. Time was tight but another couple of minutes wouldn’t make any difference. It wasn’t as if Rory and Gramps were facing immediate danger.

  That’s when it hit me.

  I should have thought of it before. In the quarantine ward. When I realised Howard was infected.

  Howard’s apple-man. If the root infected Howard, it probably infected his apple-man too. I remembered the crunch when Howard hurled his apple-man at the tendril clamped round his ankle. Okay, he and Rory dropped the apple-man down a mine shaft, but so what? Infected worms could turn into slobberers. Infected sheep could turn into steel killers. An infected apple-man could easily turn into something horrible and climb out of a hole and come after us.

  The figure I’d seen at the refinery. The evil figure running along the fence. I hadn’t imagined its mouldy wrinkled apple-skin after all.

  I had to warn Rory and Gramps.

  Now.

  I flung the sheet aside and scrambled off the trolley. Bright lights. Trolleys everywhere. In the far wall, an open roller-door. A cloud of insects and a black square of night.

  ‘Hey.’

  A man in a white smock. Turning from a bench. Holding a spanner.

  ‘Please,’ I begged, backing away, banging into trolleys. ‘My step-brother and my Gramps. They’re in terrible danger.’

  The man ran at me, then his eyes widened and he stopped. He was staring at me, horrified. What was wrong? Did he know Gramps? Perhaps they’d been in the war together.

  Then I realised. He was staring at my skin. At the purple and yellow blotches I’d drawn on to get into the quarantine ward.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I shouted as I sprinted for the door. ‘It’s only texta.’

  I dashed through a car park full of ambulances, up a ramp and into the street. It was a street I hadn’t seen before. I didn’t care. There was a bus in it, waiting at traffic lights. I hammered on the door. The driver let me in. He must have sensed I was related to someone in the bus-driving business.

  ‘I’m never going back,’ I said to him as I dug in my pocket for money. ‘That face-painting class was a joke.’

  He looked at me for a long time. Then he hit the accelerator and we jolted into the night.

  The other passengers were all staring at me. I considered asking if any of them was an ex-commando with a couple of hours to spare, but decided against it.

  We were hurtling down dark streets and I realised I didn’t have a clue where we were going. I also realised I didn’t have any money for my fare.

  I turned to the driver again. ‘I shouldn’t have been going to face-painting classes anyway,’ I said. ‘Not with the homework I’ve got. I’m doing a huge project on why the oil refinery closed down. You know, that one over there.’

  I pointed through his window.

  ‘You mean over there,’ he said, pointing in the opposite direction.

  Luckily someone wanted to get off at the next stop. I dashed down the steps after them. ‘Hey,’ yelled the driver. ‘That’s seventy cents.’

  I felt bad, jumping off without paying, specially as he’d pointed me in the right direction. I made a mental note to post seventy cents to the bus company if I was still alive next pocket-money day.

  I ran until my lungs were on fire and I kept on running.

  In the distance I heard a siren. Were the ambulances out looking for me? I told myself not to be dopey, then ran across a park to throw them off the scent.

  I shouldn’t have done that. The park had twisty
paths and by the time I came out the other side I’d lost my direction. I kept running. Every dark street looked the same. I sprinted round a corner, praying the refinery road would appear.

  It didn’t.

  I gasped air and sobbed desperate tears. The same desperate tears as Rory was probably sobbing as the evil mould-dripping apple-man lurched towards him.

  I pressed Mum’s shoe to my forehead. ‘Help me, Mum,’ I whispered. ‘I need you. Even if you were the bad person people say you were, I still need you.’

  That’s when I heard it. The hum of fast traffic in the distance. The freeway.

  I reached it in a few minutes. There was a pedestrian bridge. As I staggered to the top, my mind was racing. Gramps had turned left off the freeway to get us to the refinery. We’d been heading towards the city centre.

  I scanned the horizon and saw the city skyscrapers lit up against the night sky. I turned to my left and peered into the darkness. And just made out, faint and distant, a familiar forest of dark shapes silhouetted against the electric haze.

  The refinery.

  It took me another half-hour to find the refinery road. The pub where I’d asked directions was closing up. I slipped past it in the shadows and stumbled along the road, beyond where the streetlights stopped, through the darkness to the towering, rusty, chained refinery gates.

  Gramps’ car was parked where we’d left it. I threw myself on the back seat and sobbed tears of exhaustion and relief and fear.

  Then I pulled myself together. I let Gramps’ handbrake off and pushed the car slowly and painfully over to the gates. I climbed on to Gramps’ roof trying not to scratch his duco and flung the tarpaulin and blankets from the boot over the barbed wire at the top of the gates.

  No sound came from the hulking darkness of the refinery. No rattle and clatter as Rory opened old filing cabinets looking for his dad’s forwarding address. No swearing as Gramps banged his head on cranes. No evil rasping breaths as the apple-man crept up on them.