Wicked Bindup

by Paul Jennings

  And getting lighter. Not in colour, in weight.

  The blue mould was eating Mum’s shoe.

  ‘No,’ I screamed. ‘No.’

  Cupping the crumbling shoe in both hands, I waded frantically out of the sick bay.

  ‘Rory,’ I yelled, staggering over to him. ‘Stop fooling around. I need your help.’ With my foot I dragged the windcheater off his head. And gasped.

  His face was terrible. I’d almost got used to what the virus had done to it before, but this was worse. Much worse.

  Even worse than Karl.

  Rory’s tiny breaths sounded like milkshake fighting its way up a very thin straw. His eyes were closed.

  I crouched close to him and as I did I saw that in my hands was just a pile of blue powder. Mum’s shoe was gone. I felt grief surging up, but I locked it down with my throat.

  ‘Rory,’ I said, ‘don’t die. I’ve got some blue mould. Don’t die.’

  His eyes fell open. They flicked wildly around.

  ‘The goat,’ he shouted.

  I didn’t bother looking behind me. I knew there was no goat on the ship. And I knew Rory wasn’t dying, not yet.

  He was on the bus.

  SEVEN

  The bus was facing the river.

  The goat was pawing with its front hooves and stamping. Ready to charge down the aisle.

  Mrs Enright had selected first gear and had the clutch pressed to the floor.

  My father was banging desperately on the door trying to get into the bus.

  And I was screaming. ‘Dad, Dad, Dad. It’s really you.’

  He was yelling something and trying furiously to open the door. What was he saying? Something about a boat? No it wasn’t that.

  ‘Watch out for the goat,’ he shouted. ‘Don’t touch the goat.’

  I threw a quick glance down the bus. The goat was charging. Its eyes glowed horribly. Its face was almost human. As if it knew who we were. It thundered down the aisle with its horns lowered. What was it up to? Was it attacking Mrs Enright?

  Crack. I felt the bone break under my jeans. My leg twisted sideways at the knee. The pain was terrible. I screamed in agony and fell to the floor. The goat half jumped, half fell over me and skidded on into the back of Mrs Enright’s seat and jolted it forwards so that her legs were crushed up under the steering wheel. It had enormous strength.

  ‘Get out, Rory,’ Mrs Enright screamed. ‘Get out. I can’t reach the gear lever. I can’t hold the clutch. Get out. Now.’

  The goat backed up over me and positioned itself for another charge. Its horns were aimed right at me.

  ‘I can’t move,’ I screamed. ‘I can’t move. My leg is broken.’

  With a sudden crash Dad burst into the bus.

  ‘Get him out,’ screamed Mrs Enright. ‘Get Rory out. I can’t hold the clutch much longer. We’re going into the river.’

  Dad threw a horrified glance at the goat, which was thundering back down the aisle towards us. Then he snatched a look at Mrs Enright trapped under the steering wheel trying desperately to keep the pedal pressed in. Finally he turned to me. I groaned in agony. My leg was killing me.

  Dad didn’t know what to do. I could see it in his face. He had to decide. Help Mrs Enright get the bus out of gear. Stop the goat. Or pull me to safety. Dad groaned in agony. And made his choice.

  EIGHT

  Rory opened his eyes. I knew immediately that he was back with me in the passageway of the abandoned ship. Back in his poor twisted infected body.

  The bus trip was over.

  I knew because his eyes were full of tears.

  He didn’t speak. He just lay there panting with shallow rasping breaths. He didn’t need to speak. I could see the horrible truth in his brimming eyes.

  So it was true. All the things people had whispered about Mum. All the things I’d kept locked away in my nightmares. She had been mad. Or drunk. Or criminally careless. She’d hit a goat and tried to turn the bus around on an impossibly narrow road and had killed herself doing it.

  Perhaps it was just as well that her shoe was gone. Now I didn’t have anything to make me think about her.

  I stayed kneeling next to Rory for a long time, rigid with misery. I knew I should have been trying to make him better with the blue mould, but suddenly it all seemed hopeless.

  Tears ran down my face and dripped onto Rory’s hand. They seemed to stir him into action. Wheezing, he dragged himself up onto his elbows.

  ‘I know what happened to your mum,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Please, I don’t want to hear the details.’

  He told me anyway.

  He described how the goat charged into his leg and broke it and rammed Mum’s seat so she was trapped behind the wheel.

  ‘Bull,’ I said. ‘Goats don’t bend steel seat supports. Not unless they’re …’ I trailed off, remembering how strong the infected sheep had been. Then I remembered that the goat had eaten Karl’s mouldy thong.

  ‘Don’t talk,’ croaked Rory. ‘Just listen.’

  I listened. Rory described Mum struggling to keep her foot on the clutch. He described his dad bursting on to the bus and having to decide who to save. He described it all so vividly I could see it as clearly as if I’d been there.

  ‘Get him out,’ screamed Mum. ‘Get Rory out. I can’t hold the clutch much longer. We’re going into the river.’

  Karl looked at Mum’s foot slipping off the clutch. He looked at the charging goat. He looked at Rory writhing in agony on the floor.

  He grabbed his son and dragged him off the bus.

  Even before Karl and Rory sprawled into the bushes at the side of the road, the back wheels of the bus were spinning in the mud. The clutch spring had been too strong for Mum’s poor crushed legs.

  The bus seemed to hang there on the edge of the cliff for a moment. The back wheels flung sludge at the sky. The engine roared. Then the bus shot forward and over the edge.

  That would have been enough for me. Knowing Mum had died a hero would have been enough for me. I could have lived happily with that for whatever short time my infected body had left.

  But there was more.

  As the bus went over the edge of the cliff, the fuel line must have been ripped out by a rock. Suddenly the engine went dead and the bus fell towards the dark swirling river in silence.

  Except for one sound. Mum’s voice, strong and clear.

  ‘Dawn,’ she shouted with the passion and energy that Dad reckoned had made the bedroom windows rattle when I was born. ‘I love you.’

  Even after the bus had disappeared into the depths of the river, and Karl had dived in after it, Mum’s words still echoed inside my head and I knew that from then on I’d have to be dead to stop hearing them.

  I slumped back against the wall of the ship’s passageway and a storm broke inside me that would have been a match for any storm that ship had ever seen, even in the Atlantic. Tears that had been waiting five years came out in huge shuddering sobs. Tears of sadness. Tears of grief. Tears of love.

  They took a long time to pour out, but when they stopped I felt more peaceful than I could ever remember feeling, including being with Dad at Dubbo zoo.

  Until I heard a faint, high-pitched rasping.

  Rory. He was barely breathing. He stared up at me with dull eyes. The colour and life were draining out of his poor suffering face.

  I’d forgotten about the blue mould. While Rory had been telling me about Mum, my fists had been clenched tight. I opened my hands and in each palm was a sweaty lump of blue mould the size of an egg.

  I broke a piece off one of the lumps. Then I panicked. How should I give it to Rory. Externally? Internally?

  I rubbed the blue mould carefully on to his face. He looked at me gratefully, but the light continued to fade in his eyes.

  ‘Thanks,’ he whispered, ‘but it’s too late.’

  I broke another piece off and gently pushed it through his lips into his mouth.

  His eyes closed. His
breathing slowed. The blue powder on his face was gradually turning white.

  My eyes filled with tears again. ‘Oh, Rory,’ I said.

  He was dying. He’d helped me get my mum back and now he was dying. And there was nothing I could do.

  Except what his mum would have done.

  I leant forward and kissed him gently on his swollen lips. They didn’t feel swollen to me and I didn’t feel like his mum.

  I felt like a girl who loved him.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw his cheek turning blue. I’d always imagined that when I finally kissed a boy both our cheeks would probably turn red, but his were definitely turning blue.

  I peered at them. The blue mould on his face was growing. It was eating the while mould.

  Rory’s eyes opened. ‘Don’t stop,’ he murmured. I’d always imagined that when a boy said ‘don’t stop’ I’d stop immediately, but on this occasion I didn’t. I put a piece of blue mould into my mouth and lay down next to Rory and put my arms round him.

  I only gave myself a tiny piece. With Mum’s shoe gone we couldn’t grow any more. The two lumps were all we had for Karl and Eileen and Howard.

  Rory and I lay like that for a long time. As the minutes passed, and Rory’s breathing slowly got stronger, I thought how lucky I was to have a brother like him.

  My thoughts seemed to help. His face became less twisted and the terrible marks of the infection started to fade. So I kept on thinking those thoughts and having those feelings.

  It wasn’t hard. It was much easier than thinking about the slobbering horror that was waiting for us at the other end of the passageway.

  NINE

  Dawn had kissed me. My first one. Probably hers too. With a kiss she had saved my life.

  What had gone on in her mind? Kissing my revolting sagging face. It was a kiss that gave, not a kiss that took. There was nothing in it for her. It was an act of compassion. She was telling me, ‘Rory, I care about you. Rory, I don’t want you to die. Rory, even though you are infected, I really care.’

  She was saying, ‘Rory, you are not ugly. Not inside.’

  I kept touching my lips and remembering the softness of Dawn’s. How could she have done it? How could she have kissed my foul flesh?

  I remembered the look of love in her eyes. Not love like in soppy love stories. Not girlfriend love. But the sort of love that you have for a brother. He might annoy you. He might get on your nerves. But you don’t want him to die.

  And then I realised that was how I felt about her. She was daggy. Sometimes she was bossy. But she was kind. And gutsy.

  I didn’t love her like a girlfriend. I loved her like a sister.

  And she had saved my life. She had put the blue mould in my mouth and it had started to work. I could feel it making me better. But it wasn’t enough. The virus had been too strong for it.

  Until Dawn gave me the kiss of life. And gave the blue mould what it needed to grow and do its work.

  I wanted to ask if her feelings were the same as mine. But I was embarrassed.

  ‘That kiss,’ I stammered. ‘Did …’

  ‘Yes?’ said Dawn.

  ‘Did I have halitosis?’

  ‘Rory,’ she said. ‘This is no time for discussing personal hygiene. We have to get that mould back to your dad. And Howard. And your mum. Before they die of the virus.’

  She held up the two precious balls of blue mould – one in each hand. All that was left. But enough. Just enough to save them all. If we could get it back in time.

  I suddenly felt terribly guilty. I was so pleased to be getting better and so shocked by the kiss that I had forgotten all about the others.

  Dad and Eileen and Howard. They were all dying and I could only think about myself.

  We had to take the mould to them. Quickly. Dawn and I were the only ones who could save them. Only the blue mould could kill the virus. And what about poor old Gramps? All alone with Dad. Trying to keep him alive.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said.

  We started back along the small corridor, following the dim yellow lights. Suddenly they went out. We were in total darkness.

  ‘Hang on to my belt,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’ said Dawn.

  ‘So we don’t get separated.’

  ‘You hang on to me,’ she said.

  Boy, she could be annoying. Why did she always have to lead the way? Still, she had saved my life. And kissed me. At that moment I would have forgiven her anything. I grabbed her belt and followed her along the empty black corridor.

  Suddenly she stopped.

  ‘What is it?’ I whispered.

  ‘Something’s blocking the way,’ she whispered back. ‘The whole corridor is blocked with flat furry things. A whole wall of them. Someone, something is trying to stop us.’

  I put my hand out and quickly pulled it back again. ‘Yuck,’ I screamed. ‘Rat skins.’

  ‘Slobberers have been here,’ said Dawn. ‘That’s what the spitting noise was.’

  I tried to pull one of the rat skins out but it wouldn’t budge. The skins felt as if they had been cemented together by a sort of sticky wet dribble. It was as strong as glue.

  ‘We’ll have to go back to the sick bay and keep going that way,’ I said.

  Dawn started to make her way back down the corridor the way we had just come. ‘I think I know where this leads,’ she said. ‘And I’m not sure I want to go there.’

  But she kept moving on. Sometimes she stumbled. Once she fell. But she climbed back up without a word and went on. And I followed, hanging tightly on to her belt. Suddenly she stopped. And started to sniff.

  ‘It’s that smell again,’ I said in a shaky voice.

  ‘It’s like I thought,’ she said. ‘This corridor has been going in a circle. It’s leading back to the dining room from the other direction.’

  ‘Halitosis,’ I said. ‘Stinking slobberer breath. Let’s find another way.’

  ‘There is no other way,’ said Dawn.

  I held on to her more tightly and we moved forward with trembling legs and racing hearts. The smell grew worse and worse. Oh, foul. Oh, disgusting. We were walking to our doom. Walking into the slobberers’ nest. I was sure of it. But we had to go on. We had to get the mould to Dad and Howard and Mum.

  Now we could hear them. Sucking, sucking, sucking. A revolting sound. The slobberers’ wet song of death.

  Our legs took us forward. How I don’t know. We were like condemned prisoners walking to our doom. Slowly, I began to see details of the passageway. Dim light was filtering through dirty portholes. I could make out the shape of Dawn’s head. Morning had arrived.

  Up ahead I could just read a sign hanging above a steel doorway. It read:

  ‘What’s for breakfast?’ said Dawn.

  I didn’t laugh. ‘Listen,’ I said. The sucking was much louder.

  I shuddered and remembered the sucked-out skin of the dog at the wrecker’s yard. But I didn’t say anything.

  We crept up to the door and peered around the edge.

  Nothing could have prepared us for the sight. No one in the history of the world had ever seen such a sight.

  A huge slobberer the size of a whale almost filled the room. It lay on its side revealing four bloated blue teats. On each teat a baby slobberer sucked greedily.

  Babies. Surely they couldn’t be babies. Each one was as big as a cow.

  ‘The queen,’ I gasped. ‘She’s feeding them up.’

  I knew where that queen had come from. Howard’s infected apple-man. And now the queen was gigantic. She must have eaten thousands of rats.

  The queen’s long wet tongue flicked around the room like the tail of a crocodile. Suddenly she flipped it upwards into the shadowy mass of pipes and pulled down a fat rat. In a second it was gone. Swallowed. Sucked out.

  Phoot. She spat the skin out like a bullet and it thunked into the wall.

  We crept back down the corridor. ‘There’s no hope,’ I said. ‘We’ll never get past her. That tong
ue would suck us up in a second.’

  I hung my head. It was useless. There was no other way out. Dad would die. And Mum. And Howard. And in the end Dawn and me. We were trapped like rats in the abandoned hulk.

  ‘Listen, Rory,’ said Dawn. ‘We have to work together on this.’ Dawn held up her fists and shook the two balls of blue mould at me.

  ‘This would kill the queen,’ she said. ‘It killed the white mould. It would do the same to the queen.’

  I shook my head. ‘We’d never get near it,’ I said. ‘Not with that tongue lashing around. And anyway, if we use the mould up on the queen there will be none left for Mum and Dad and Howard.’

  ‘We could use half of it,’ said Dawn. ‘We could use one ball on the queen. And keep the other for your family.’

  I remembered the frog general. Gramps had killed it by throwing salt into its cake-hole. If we could throw some mould into the queen’s gob she might die too.

  The thought of that slimy mouth made me shudder. Someone could die throwing the mould into it. And that someone should be me. I took one ball of mould from Dawn and held it in my hand. If the queen ate me she would eat the mould as well. And that would be the end of her.

  It was strange really. The virus had nearly killed me. And now I would soon be back to normal. Looking forward to a great life with Mum and Dad. I had defeated death and now I had to face it again. There really wasn’t any choice. Dawn had risked her life for me. She’d kissed me, even though she might have become infected. She’d pressed her soft lips against my rotting ones.

  Now it was my turn. There was only one thing to do.

  ‘Take off your bra,’ I shouted suddenly.

  ‘What?’ she yelped.

  ‘Take off your bra.’

  ‘Rory,’ she said in an outraged voice. ‘Get real.’

  She stared at me. Then her eyes grew round. She was remembering. Remembering a silly trick played by a silly boy a long time ago. Without another sound she pulled her arms inside her T-shirt and started to wriggle and jiggle like a butterfly trying to get out of a cocoon.