Mutation

by Chris Morphew

  ‘Seriously, Mike. Just stop talking.’

  I’d seen way too much real danger in this place to be intimidated by a weedy kid in a balaclava.

  I held the book up to the moonlight streaking in through the window, opened it to a particularly detailed picture of the people in white robes, and slapped it down in front of his face.

  ‘Tell me who these guys are and I’ll let you go.’

  ‘Uh, Jordan,’ said Mike. ‘Kind of dark in here. How am I supposed to –?’

  ‘Shut up, Mike. You know who I’m talking about.’

  His eyes dropped to the carpet. ‘They’re no-one,’ he said. ‘I made them up. What, you think there are real people who look like –?’

  Bang.

  The room flooded with light.

  A giant shadow fell down on us from the doorway.

  Mike swore.

  It was Dad.

  He stood there for a minute, taking in the scene. His fifteen-year-old daughter, pinning a masked intruder to her bedroom floor in the dead of night.

  ‘Jordan, who –?’

  I scrambled up, retrieving the sketchbook from under Mike’s nose. Mike got up too, brushing himself off.

  Just in time for Dad to grab him by the arm.

  He pulled the balaclava off Mike’s face and stared down at him. That was not a stare you wanted to be on the wrong side of.

  ‘What’s your name, kid?’ asked Dad.

  Mike didn’t answer. He shook his head, flicking the hair back out of his face.

  ‘All right,’ said Dad, pulling him in the direction of the door. ‘Well, I’m sure security will be able to figure it out.’

  ‘No, Dad, wait! He’s not –’ I bit my lip. ‘He hasn’t done anything. Mike’s just – a friend.’

  Surprise flashed across both their faces.

  But if Calvin found out I was having visitors in the middle of the night, it would be all he needed to convince Shackleton to pull the pin on my suppressor.

  ‘A friend,’ Dad repeated.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mike, seizing the opportunity. ‘I’m really sorry, Mr Burke. It was stupid to come here so late, but I just – Jordan has an art project of mine that I really needed to get back.’

  He glanced down at the sketchbook in my hand.

  I scowled at him.

  Well played, I thought grudgingly, holding out the book. Dad came over and took it from me. He flipped through the pages, then snapped the book shut and handed it to Mike.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Mike, moving towards the door. ‘Well, I guess I should probably get out of your hair.’ He stared up at Dad’s shaven head. ‘I mean –’

  Dad stepped across to block the doorway. ‘This isn’t going to happen again,’ he said, crossing his arms. ‘Is it, Mike?’

  Mike shook his head.

  ‘Good. Come with me.’

  WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17

  57 DAYS

  ‘He walked him home?’ said Luke.

  ‘Yep,’ I said. ‘And this morning, me and Dad had a really fun chat about whether or not I’m ever allowed to have a boy over to the house again.’

  ‘And?’ said Peter. ‘Are you?’

  ‘That’s … still being negotiated,’ I said, pretending not to hear the obsessiveness in his voice.

  Mr Larson came past, dropping a copy of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in front of each of us.

  ‘You know, you really need to get some bars or something for that window,’ said Luke.

  ‘Yeah, no kidding.’

  Across the classroom, Mike and the others were deep in conversation. Mike kept glancing over at us when he thought I wasn’t watching. He looked like he hadn’t slept.

  Had I really seen anything that incriminating?

  ‘So what was in that sketchbook, anyway?’ asked Luke, obviously wondering the same thing.

  ‘Here,’ I said, unfolding a bit of paper and flattening it out on the table. As soon as Dad had left the house last night, I’d scribbled down as many of Mike’s drawings as I could remember. ‘This is only some of it, but –’

  ‘The locker,’ said Peter, pointing at a wonky rectangle with a door on it. ‘Right? The one from the other day.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘And he had a list of dates next to it, back to the beginning of April, all crossed out.’

  ‘April,’ said Peter. ‘That’s –’

  ‘Right around the time they all went off the deep end?’ I said. ‘Yeah, that’s what I thought.’

  ‘Who are those guys?’ asked Luke, pointing at my drawing of the two people in white.

  I shook my head. They’d definitely lost something in translation. The sizes and shapes were all about right, but I hadn’t come close to capturing the creepiness of Mike’s figures.

  ‘Dunno,’ I said. ‘Mike said he made them up.’

  ‘All right, ladies and gentlemen,’ said Mr Larson, returning to the front of the room. ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – I assume you’ve heard these names before?’

  A few hands went into the air.

  ‘Great! Then let’s figure out what we know so far.’

  Mr Larson launched into a brainstorming session, typing people’s suggestions up on the interactive whiteboard.

  I smoothed my page out on the table again and racked my brain for any other missing details. The drawings of the bushland were the hardest. I was sure they’d all been detailed enough in the sketchbook, but by now I couldn’t picture much more than a mess of grass and trees.

  There was only one that I remembered clearly, and I’d already started drawing it: trees all along the back, a bunch of giant rocks on one side, and – ‘Jordan, what about you?’ asked Mr Larson.

  ‘I’m not sure, sir,’ I said, scanning the board for a clue to what we were talking about.

  Mr Larson smiled. ‘Not sure about the answer, or not sure about the question?’

  ‘Um … both,’ I said, quickly looking down at my copy of the book. ‘Sorry, sir.’

  But as soon as he’d moved on, I rummaged for a blue pen and started scribbling some water into my drawing, trickling along in front of the rocks.

  I hadn’t even lifted the pen before Peter snatched the paper away from me.

  ‘Is this a lake?’ he asked.

  ‘How should I know?’ I whispered. ‘I’m only drawing what Mike drew.’

  ‘I know where this is! We found it ages ago, when we were first –’ Peter stopped mid-sentence, like he’d suddenly realised what he was saying. ‘Ah, crap.’

  ‘What?’

  He put his head down on the table. ‘You’re going to make me show you where it is, aren’t you?’

  Chapter 11

  WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17

  57 DAYS

  ‘And you’re sure they’re at the mall?’ said Luke as we rode along the north edge of town that afternoon.

  ‘Yes,’ said Peter. ‘I told you, Mike asked me to come with them. But, hey, why would I want to hang out with my old mates when I could be riding into the Forbidden Forest with you guys?’

  He grinned at me, veering left onto an all-too-familiar dirt track leading out into the bush.

  I didn’t return the smile. I was grateful for his help, obviously, but I had to be careful how I showed it. I said, Thanks for coming, and he heard, Let’s get married.

  I pedalled after him, pushing down the foreboding that hit me as we left the concrete path. Things hadn’t exactly gone well for us on our previous trips out here. And that was before we got injected with the suppressors. Before Shackleton started tracking our every move.

  This is different, I told myself.

  I couldn’t put my finger on why exactly. But that drawing of Mike’s – It was more than just by chance that I’d seen it, that I’d been able to remember what it looked like, that Peter had known where it was.

  Besides, we weren’t trying to break into a Co-operative outpost this time.

  At least, that’s what I was starting to believe. Because the more I thought about the
stuff Mike had drawn in his sketchbook, the more I noticed the stuff he hadn’t drawn.

  There’d been no pictures of closed-down airports or secret warehouses or giant prison walls. No hidden trapdoors or tunnels under the town. No screaming test subjects or piles of tattered clothes.

  It was like they had no idea about any of it.

  Whatever this was, it was … something else.

  Trees blurred past on either side. Looking ahead, I saw someone riding by in the opposite direction. A guy about my dad’s age. I’d seen him around town. He glared at us on his way past, like he was sure we were up to something.

  But even with the occasional cyclist staring us down, we’d decided it was worth staying on the public bike paths for as long as possible. The less time we spent bush-bashing, the less opportunity we gave Shackleton to wonder what we were up to.

  ‘Hey, check it out,’ said Peter, slowing down a bit.

  Up ahead, all along the left-hand side of the road, the bushland had been cordoned off with Shackleton Co-operative security tape.

  DANGER: DO NOT CROSS

  The tape stretched out alongside us for about a hundred metres, then ran away into the bush.

  ‘The explosion site,’ I said. I could just make out the edge of the fire-damaged area through the maze of trees.

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ said Peter, speeding up again. ‘One death wish at a time.’

  A minute or two later, he pulled to a stop on the right-hand side of the road.

  ‘This it?’ asked Luke, following him over.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Peter. ‘I think so.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Look, mate, feel free to take over the navigating if you reckon –’

  Peter broke off. He wheeled his bike a bit further into the bush, and bent down at the base of a tree.

  ‘Crap,’ he breathed.

  I followed after him, peering over his shoulder. Sitting at his feet, wide open and half-buried in the dried mud, was a rusty silver cashbox.

  We’d been here before.

  ‘The Tabitha DVD,’ said Peter. ‘This is where – We were standing right here.’

  Screaming, disintegrating faces flashed in front of me. Skin bubbling. Eyes –

  I shook it off.

  ‘Guess that explains how Cat found us,’ said Luke. ‘If they’ve been coming back out here …’

  ‘We should get moving,’ I said, looking around for somewhere to hide my bike.

  ‘Wait,’ said Luke.

  I stopped. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Are we sure we really want to do this?’

  ‘Mike drew that picture for a reason,’ I said. ‘Whatever’s going on out there, we need to know about it.’

  ‘Do we?’ asked Luke. ‘I mean, we don’t even know what we’re looking for. And what if it does have something to do with Shackleton? He knows exactly where we are. If he sees us creeping out to something he’s built out here …’ He trailed off.

  I glanced sideways at Peter, standing a few steps back from us, still working out whose side he was on.

  ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘It’s a risk. Of course it is. But what other choice do we have?’

  ‘I dunno. I just – I want to make sure we’re thinking.’ Luke slumped down across the handlebars of his bike. ‘You know what happens if we screw up again.’

  I thought of Peter’s dad, rolling away from us in his wheelchair. Broken.

  Reeve, dead on the floor.

  And the words Shackleton had left us with.

  I’m afraid that, next time, it will be someone you truly care about.

  ‘So are we going or what?’ Peter asked me.

  Luke sighed and pulled his bike in from the road. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘We’re going.’

  Peter stared at him. ‘Mate, you’re the one who –’ He gave up, shaking his head. ‘All right. Whatever. This way.’

  We stashed our bikes in some scrub, and Peter led us away into the bush. He moved slowly, pausing every few metres to look around, like he still wasn’t quite sure where he was going.

  I fell back a couple of steps, letting Luke catch up. We trudged through the foot-high grass, eyes darting to the ground to keep from tripping on the tree roots snaking underneath.

  Luke’s brow was creased in the same torn expression he wore whenever we decided to go through with something like this. His help meant all the more, knowing how much he didn’t want to be here.

  ‘Thanks,’ I whispered.

  Luke shrugged. ‘You would’ve gone without us anyway, right?’

  ‘Yeah, but still.’

  ‘And if you die, then Peter and me have to save the world all by ourselves,’ he said. ‘How exactly do you see that working out?’

  I smiled. ‘Good point.’

  Peter turned around, a little way ahead of us, and I took a quick sidestep away from Luke.

  ‘Oi – shut up,’ Peter said. ‘We’re almost there.’

  We pushed on, clambering over the giant grey wrecks of fallen trees that sprawled out of the grass.

  I still couldn’t figure this bush out. There were some huge trees out here. Some of them had to be hundreds of years old. But on the other side of the concrete wall that surrounded this place, there was nothing but wasteland for miles around.

  So where did it all come from? How does a massive circle of bushland just spring up in the middle of nowhere?

  We came to the top of a little hill, and Peter stopped again.

  ‘Here,’ he said, crouching down.

  Luke and I crept up behind him. Peering down through the grass, I saw still, brown water stretching out on the other side of the rise. A lake, maybe fifty metres across.

  We waited, listening.

  Nothing but frogs and birds.

  ‘Let’s go have a look,’ I said.

  I straightened up and started slinking down the far side of the rise. A bit further on, I could see a giant rocky mound stretching up on the shore to our right. The boulders from Mike’s drawing.

  The trees grew thickly all around the lake, making it hard to see much beyond the shore on the opposite side, but from what I could tell, there was no sign that Shackleton’s people had ever set foot in this place.

  Luke and Peter followed me down.

  ‘So this is the place, right?’ said Peter, searching the trees.

  ‘Definitely,’ I said.

  We were standing almost exactly where Mike must have been when he drew the picture.

  So what were we supposed to be looking at?

  What had brought him out here in the first place?

  ‘Have a look around the other side?’ Luke suggested.

  ‘Yeah – hold on.’

  I took off my backpack and pulled out a little rug and what was left of our lunches. I spread the rug out on the ground, scattered the rubbish on top.

  If Shackleton did send security after us, hopefully this would convince them that we didn’t want any trouble. Nothing wrong with a few kids enjoying an innocent picnic, right?

  ‘Okay,’ I said, slinging my bag back over my shoulders. ‘Let’s go.’

  We walked along the shore, weaving in and out of the trees. But if anyone was up to something out here, they’d been careful to cover their tracks. All we found was more of the same water and mud and bush.

  By the time we’d got three quarters of the way around the lake, the most exciting thing that had happened was Luke almost falling in.

  We reached the place where the rocks rose up against the shore. They pressed right up to the water’s edge, blocking our way.

  I stared back over at the shore where we’d started.

  There had to be something I wasn’t seeing.

  ‘Well …’ said Luke. ‘What do you reckon?’

  ‘Maybe it’s mole people,’ said Peter. He picked up a stone and sent it skimming across the surface of the lake. ‘We should keep an eye out for burrows on our way back.’

  ‘We need to keep going,’ I said, ignoring
him.

  ‘How?’ said Luke. ‘There’s no way around … the …’

  He trailed off, eyes fixed on the rock face.

  I stepped closer to him. ‘What is it?’

  Luke grabbed onto a tree and leant out over the water. ‘Look!’ he said, pointing to a shadowy shape on the rock.

  ‘Yeah, mate,’ said Peter, patting him on the shoulder. ‘No way around. We get it.’

  At first, I couldn’t tell what Luke was getting at either.

  But then a little gust of wind sent the water lapping against that section of the rock and I realised I was looking at more than just a shadow.

  A slow grin crept across my face.

  ‘It’s a cave.’

  Chapter 12

  WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17

  57 DAYS

  This was it.

  This was why we were here.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, shrugging off my backpack and shoving it into some bushes, ‘if we’re going to go check it out, we should probably leave our –’

  ‘Whoa, Jordan. Wait,’ said Peter. ‘How are we even supposed to get there? The water goes right up to the entrance.’

  ‘So? It’s like fifteen metres – and the lake’s probably not even that deep.’

  Peter bent down to feel the water.

  Luke just looked at me like I was crazy.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, ‘The world is ending and you two are worried about a little swim?’

  ‘It’s cold,’ said Peter.

  ‘All right, fine,’ I said, pulling off my shoes. ‘I’ll go over first, and then I’ll call you if there’s anything in there.’

  I got rid of my socks, put my shoes back on again, then took off my jumper and threw it to Luke.

  I turned back to the water’s edge and stepped in.

  The bottom of the lake was slick with mud. I slid, almost going over backwards. Peter put out a hand to save me, but I steadied myself and stepped out of his reach.

  It was cold. And deeper than I’d thought.

  After only a few steps, I was in up to my waist, school skirt dragging around my legs.

  ‘How is it?’ asked Luke.

  ‘It’s great,’ I shivered.

  I dived forward, swimming the rest of the way. Better to get this over with quickly.

  By the time I reached the cave, it was almost too deep to stand. Reaching out through the muddy water, I felt a rock slope leading up to the entrance. I tried to claw my way up, but the whole thing was thick with slime and I couldn’t get a foothold.