Wicked Bindup

by Paul Jennings

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘It’s better than nothing. I’ll go and find it.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Rory.

  ‘No,’ gasped Karl. ‘Too dangerous. Creatures.’

  I pretended I hadn’t heard that. To myself as well.

  ‘Before we go,’ I said to Karl, ‘one last question.’ I couldn’t go without asking it. ‘The goat and the bus,’ I said. ‘When my mother died. Tell me what happened, please.’

  I held my breath. Karl sat up. Then he muttered something and slumped against Gramps.

  ‘He’s unconscious again,’ said Gramps. He listened to Karl’s chest. ‘I don’t think he’s going to come out of this one for a while. I’d better stay with him, I was in the tank corps. You infantrymen get the mould at the double.’

  ‘But what did he say?’ I yelled as Rory and I headed for the door.

  ‘He said “Watch out for the queen”,’ said Gramps. He gave Rory a sympathetic look. ‘I’m sorry, Rory, but I think he might be going a bit senile.’

  FIVE

  I left Dad’s room with an aching heart. I was in the grip of hopeless grief and despair.

  Dad was dying. I kept remembering the old Dad. The one with the kind, handsome face. The one with white teeth and smooth skin. Now he was a germ-riddled wreck, hardly alive. Unconscious. Helpless, and covered in a greedy invading mould.

  And me. What about me? I was getting weaker all the time. My face and skin were sagging and collapsing more with every passing minute. The virus was eating away at me. I couldn’t see myself but I knew that I must be incredibly ugly. Normally a person’s face just looked unhappy if they were angry or sulky or whatever. But those feelings were like fertiliser to the virus. All the bad thoughts I had ever had. All the wicked things I had ever done were like food for the germs. My hateful thoughts were written on my face.

  But maybe there was hope. Just a tiny hope. Maybe we could find the blue mould. And maybe it could save me and the others.

  Maybe.

  Dawn kept her distance. And I knew why. She could hardly bring herself to look at me, let alone touch me.

  We made our way down a steep ramp and found ourselves in the middle of a group of oil storage tanks. Tiny-looking ladders spiralled around each one leading up to giddying heights above.

  ‘Which way to the dry dock?’ asked Dawn.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Your dad said the mould is in the hulk of a ship. An old tanker. It will have to be in dry dock.’

  ‘How would I know?’ I snapped. I’m just an ugly, infected step-brother. You’re only coming with me for one reason.’

  ‘Not that again,’ said Dawn.

  She made me so angry. ‘You want to be there at the death knock. Just in case I hallucinate. Just in case I see what happened to your mother. You even had to go and worry my dying father with it. You are so selfish.’

  ‘I do want to know, Rory,’ said Dawn. ‘But I want something else too.’

  ‘What?’ I said scornfully.

  ‘I want to help you. I want to find the blue mould. If there is such a thing. I want you to go back to normal.’

  ‘Don’t you like the way I look?’ I spat out. ‘Don’t you want to come close to your worst nightmare?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what you look like,’ said Dawn. ‘Even if you have got a face like a dag on a sheep’s bum, it doesn’t mean that you’re not still the same person.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said sarcastically. ‘That makes me feel a lot better.’

  We stared into the dark night. A cold drizzle soaked through our clothes.

  Twisted ladders and huge chimneys filled the spaces between the oil tanks. At their feet tangles of pipes fought for space. The whole refinery was like a dead rusting monument to wickedness.

  In the distance I heard a bird squawk. ‘A seagull,’ said Dawn. ‘The dry dock must be that way.’

  We trudged forward through the darkness. Two lonely figures. Frightened, small and hopeless.

  ‘What did your dad mean by the – ’

  ‘Queen?’ I broke in. ‘Probably just some other bossy female.’

  Dawn said nothing. We threaded our way through the dead refinery peering into every shadow. Hoping, hoping, hoping that slobberers were not waiting for two juicy kids.

  ‘There it is,’ said Dawn. We both stared at the deserted oil tanker. Huge and rusting in the dry dock. Propped up by hundreds of wooden beams, it stood alone, abandoned like Noah’s ark after the Flood. We perched there on the edge of the dock at deck level and looked down at the silent propeller and the useless rudder.

  ‘How will we ever find a bit of mould in a monster like that?’ I said in a defeated voice.

  ‘Listen,’ said Dawn quietly. ‘What’s that?’

  We looked up to where the noise was coming from. ‘Rats,’ I whispered.

  Hundreds of rats were running up a rope on to a crane high above our heads. They were squeaking and squealing in terror. They wanted to get off the ship. A terrible smell filled the air. My knees shook as I watched the wretched rodents. ‘I can’t take much more,’ I choked. ‘I just can’t.’

  Dawn tried to cheer me up with a joke. ‘Rats always desert a stinking ship,’ she said.

  I peered down into the dry dock beneath the hull and saw something else. It looked like thousands of pairs of old slippers had been thrown out of one of the portholes. I knew straight away what they were.

  ‘More rat skins,’ I gasped. ‘Sucked-out rat skins. There are slobberers around here somewhere.’

  We both stared up at the rickety gangplank that led on to the ship and shivered. Neither of us wanted to go.

  ‘Come on,’ said Dawn. ‘Don’t think about it.’

  I couldn’t figure out if she was incredibly brave or just stupid. ‘Think of the rats,’ I said. ‘How would you like to end up like that? Sucked out.’

  ‘Think of your mum,’ said Dawn. ‘Think of your father dying of a terrible disease. Think of Howard. Think of – ’

  ‘Okay, okay, okay,’ I said. I hung my head in shame. We had to find the blue mould. If there was any such thing. Otherwise everyone I loved was going to die. I pushed past her and headed up the gangplank. At the top was a roughly painted sign saying:

  KEEP OFF!

  DANGER

  CONTAMINATED AREA

  I laughed wildly.

  ‘Rory,’ said Dawn. ‘You’re hysterical. Pull yourself together.’

  ‘I’m already contaminated,’ I said. ‘I’m the danger.’ I cackled away like a crazy chook.

  The ship seemed dead. All the useful parts had been stripped away and it was only a hulk. There would have been no way that we could have gone into the black insides of that ship. Except for one thing.

  A long electrical lead with dim lights glowing from it led down a steep ladder.

  I had a hunch. ‘Dad did that,’ I said.

  Dawn didn’t ask me how I knew. She was listening to something. ‘I thought I heard a slurp,’ she said. ‘Maybe we should get help.’ I couldn’t see her knees but I knew that they must have been knocking. Like mine.

  Suddenly she started climbing down the ladder. ‘Come on,’ she said.

  I hobbled towards the ladder and followed her. I felt as if my body was a heavy load. I was dragging my infected flesh around. Taking it where it didn’t want to go. It was almost as if the germs inside my body were trying to control me. And stop me going.

  At the bottom of the ladder was a corridor. A battered sign pointed to the dining room in one direction. The lights led the other way. Dawn took a curious step into the darkness. ‘Aagh,’ she screamed. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Yuck,’ I said. ‘That’s the worst stink in the world.’ I was so scared. Something awful. Something evil was down that passage. Dawn swallowed her own fear and tried to cheer me up. She was gutsy. Trying to pretend that she wasn’t scared.

  ‘Reminds me of Lester Green’s halitosis,’ she said. ‘Only a million times worse.’

&n
bsp; ‘Huh?’ I said.

  ‘Bad breath,’ explained Dawn. ‘There wasn’t a girl in the school who would kiss him.’

  I was just going to say something rude when we both froze on the spot.

  Hhhhccchhhssshh. A horrible deep breath. Like a monster snake about to strike. And then a worse sound. One I had heard somewhere before. A terrible, gobbling, sucking noise came from the direction of the dining room.

  We both fled in the other direction, following the lights without any idea of where they might take us. We scrambled down stairs and around corners. I lost track of how far we ran following those lights. But there was one thing I did know. We had not passed one other door or passage. We had only two ways to go. Back. Or forwards. We could go back and try to sneak past the dreadful slobbering noise. Or forwards into the silent unknown depths of the hulk.

  ‘What was that thing?’ I yelled when we finally stopped.

  ‘From the smell,’ said Dawn, ‘and the hissing and sucking, it could be – ’

  ‘Look,’ I shouted.

  It was the sick bay. The door had a round handle on it like a safe. And just above that was a small glass window with a light above it. We had found what we had come for. Dad’s experimental laboratory. Maybe we could find something that would save Dad and Mum and Howard and … me. The answer to all our prayers.

  We hoped.

  I stood on tiptoes and stared into the window. Then I screamed. The most ugly, rotten, decayed face in the world was looking back at me. A face with hateful watering eyes. With sagging skin and patches of white mould and twisted dirty hair. With rotting teeth and bleeding gums.

  The face screamed back. It was scared of me.

  It was me.

  I was looking at my own reflection in the glass.

  I sagged down like a sack of jelly. Even if we found the blue mould, my life wasn’t worth living. I could never leave that ship. I could never face another person. I had the ugliest face in the universe. The virus was ripping into me. Turning me into a monster.

  I was too ashamed to look at Dawn. No wonder she was keeping her distance. I sank down on to the metal floor and pulled my windcheater over my head. I wanted to crawl into a hole and never see another person as long as I lived. I wanted to stick my head into a dunny and flush it away.

  How could Dawn even bear to look at me?

  At that very moment an awful wet spattering sound filled the air. It reminded me of the time the Year 7 boys had a competition to see who could spit the furthest. Only this was worse. Spit, spit, suck, spit. Wet and bubbling. Horrible. Horrible. Somewhere back along the corridor.

  SIX

  I tried to ignore the distant slobberer sounds as I gripped Mum’s shoe and pulled the sick-bay door open. An avalanche of washing powder knocked me over.

  I floundered around on my knees in the torrent of white granules. I tried to crawl away, but they poured out with such force I ended up sprawled on my stomach.

  ‘Rory,’ I screamed. ‘Help.’

  Finally the torrent stopped. The stuff was everywhere. In my hair. In my mouth. I was half buried in it.

  ‘Good one, Worm Boy,’ I spluttered. ‘This isn’t the sick bay, it’s the ship’s laundry supply store.’

  Rory didn’t reply. Once I’d got the washing powder out of my eyes, I looked over to where I’d last seen him.

  He was huddled on the passageway floor, his windcheater pulled over his head. Laughing at me, probably. I felt like going over and giving him a good shake. Instead I made myself remember that he was sick. And that the virus must have infected the part of his brain that knew about good manners.

  Something was weird. I smacked my lips. The washing powder didn’t taste like washing powder. It didn’t smell like washing powder either.

  That’s because, I realised with a sudden jolt of panic, it wasn’t washing powder.

  It was white mould.

  ‘Aagh,’ I screamed. I staggered to my feet and shook my hair and frantically brushed myself down.

  A shower. I needed a shower. A big ship like this must have heaps of showers. Then I remembered what Karl had said. The ship had been stripped for demolition. What good was a shower without taps and water?

  Anyway, it was hopeless. Even if I scrubbed every grain off myself, it had still been in my mouth.

  The horrible truth sank in. This wasn’t Karl mould that fed only on him. Or Rory mould that fed only on Rory. This was the original mould that had started the whole nightmare.

  And now the virus was inside me. The virus that had infected Karl, that had created the slobberers, was inside me. Now the cycle would start again. I’d infect something and it would infect Gramps. And he’d infect something and it would go after Dad.

  And soon our whole family would be dead.

  I sank to my knees. Oh, Mum, I thought. Perhaps you were the lucky one, dying first. At least you didn’t have to see faces you loved going mouldy in front of your eyes.

  I glanced over at Rory. He was still huddled against the wall with his head in his windcheater. I was glad. I didn’t want him to see me blubbing.

  I wanted Mum. I wanted to be on her bus kneeling with my head in her lap so she could stroke my hair between gear changes. I wanted to be there when she drove off the cliff into the river so I could see why.

  Why she’d died.

  Then a thought hit me. The virus that was inside me was the same virus that had given Rory his hallucinations. That had helped him remember what happened on the bus up until just before Mum died.

  Now I was infected, perhaps I’d have an hallucination. Perhaps at last I’d be able to find out why.

  Heart thumping, I screwed up my eyes. ‘Come on,’ I said to the virus. ‘Show me.’

  Then another thought hit me. The only reason the virus had been able to bring back Rory’s memories of the bus was that he’d been on the bus in the first place. He’d seen Mum’s death.

  I hadn’t. The virus couldn’t give me memories of something I hadn’t seen.

  I grabbed a handful of mould and flung it angrily away. ‘Stinking, scumbag virus,’ I screamed.

  There must have been quite a draught on that half-demolished ship because the tiny grains of mould seemed to float in the air. In the faint gleam of Karl’s makeshift lighting system they seemed to glow. And some of them glowed blue.

  I grabbed another handful of granules and studied them. No wonder I’d thought it was washing powder. In amongst the white grains were blue ones.

  ‘Blue mould,’ I yelled. ‘Rory, I’ve found the blue mould.’

  If the blue mould had slowed Karl’s sickness from three days to five years, perhaps it could also cure it. Perhaps it could save us all.

  Frantically I started trying to collect it. Only about one in every hundred grains was blue. I lifted one up between my fingertips. Before my horrified eyes it turned white.

  I picked up another one. It turned white too. Was I doing that, by touching it? Rubber gloves. I needed rubber gloves. Even sailors must have done washing-up.

  Then I saw the horrible truth. The blue grains were dying without me touching them. They were appearing from nowhere, bursting into life, then almost immediately turning white. The white mould was killing them.

  ‘Stop it,’ I screamed at the white mould. ‘Stop it.’

  Desperately I tried to pick out several blue grains so I could put them together and they could draw strength from each other away from the white predators.

  My fingers wouldn’t move fast enough. Big, clumsy fingers. I wanted to chop them off. Why did I have big clumsy fingers when Mum’s had been so slim?

  I smashed my fists down into the white powder, causing a mini-avalanche. When the grains had stopped tumbling, something familiar was left poking out.

  Mum’s shoe.

  I stared at it. The colour looked different. Instead of scuffed, watermarked brown, it looked almost blue.

  I saw why. All the grains sitting on it were blue. And they were staying blue.

/>   Excitedly I picked a blue grain out of the white heap and tried to add it to the ones on the shoe. Before I could let go of it, it had turned white. I tried to flick a blue grain on to the shoe with my fingernail. No good. I tried to scoop blue grains up with the shoe. Hopeless.

  My neck ached with frustration. I felt like giving up and going back to punching the white mould. But something Dad always said popped into my head. ‘If at first you don’t succeed, stop and think.’

  Then I remembered what Karl had said. About trying to grow blue mould. That must be where the blue grains were coming from. His experiments in the sick bay.

  I waded through the mould into the sick bay. The small room was waist-deep in white powder. There were bunks on one side and shelves on the other. The shelves were piled high with jars and soft-drink bottles. All full of white mould. Karl’s failed experiments.

  I swore at the jars and bottles. Until I realised what I was doing. My anger was turning the blue grains on Mum’s shoe white. I shook them off and took deep breaths and remembered what Dad said about not giving up till you’d searched the back paddock.

  I examined the shelves again. And there, high on the top shelf, I found them. Three small Vegemite jars. One containing a dried-up piece of cheese. One half-full of water. One stuffed with leaves and twigs. And each one with a lump of blue mould in it about the size of a Smartie.

  Hands shaking with excitement, I carefully lifted the jars down. Would this be enough to cure us all? Even as I asked myself the question, I knew it wouldn’t. It probably wasn’t even enough to cure one infected person, or Karl would have used it on himself.

  I knew what I had to do. It was a risk, but my family was dying and I didn’t have time to be cautious. I unscrewed each jar and tipped each tiny lump of blue mould into Mum’s shoe.

  Then I waited.

  In less than a minute the blue lumps started to grow. ‘Yes,’ I screamed. ‘Yes.’

  The lumps were already the size of Maltesers and still growing. ‘Good on you, Mum,’ I yelled happily.

  I stopped yelling. Something strange was happening. The blue mould was creeping over the entire surface of the shoe, inside and out. The shoe was completely blue.