‘I never lied to you, Callie.’
I thought I was going to be sick. ‘Where is my real father? Is he dead?’
‘I am your real father.’
‘What was it you told me? About the Change deceiving people? About it using our responses against us?’
‘Please, Callie, listen. Bodies aren’t important. What matters are memories, feelings. They’re who we are.’ He stepped toward me but I jerked away.
‘Don’t touch me!’ I hissed. Somewhere nearby I could hear footsteps approaching.
I backed away from him.
‘Don’t do this, Callie,’ he said. ‘The Change is aware of you now. You’re not safe alone.’
‘I’m not safe with you!’ I spat, and raced away down the empty street.
7
As I rounded the corner I heard the thing I had thought was my father’s voice, low and threatening, followed by a cry of pain that was abruptly cut off. Something lurched inside me but I ignored it and pushed myself to run harder. I didn’t know or care which way I went, I only knew I had to get away, and so I ran until my breath burned in my chest and my legs shook. Even when I couldn’t keep running I didn’t stop, just stumbled on, fists clenched, limbs trembling, until at last I gave up and slowed to a stop. Gasping with thirst I pulled my rucksack off and fumbled with the zip, but my fingers were too clumsy and the slider kept slipping in my hand, until finally I hurled it to the ground and, sinking to my knees, began to weep.
If I had thought tears would make me feel better, they didn’t. Once they were done I wiped my face and slumped down. In my panic I had fled south across the river and past the university, ending up in the remains of some unidentified suburb, its streets lined with small weatherboard and fibro houses overgrown with Changed vegetation.
I shivered. Although I knew there must be Changed nearby, lurking in the houses perhaps or burrowed beneath the greenery, there was no sign of them. The only sound was the breeze moving slowly through the leaves. Were they looking for me? Did the Change already know I was here?
Only a few hours ago I had thought it might be possible to head back to where we had crossed the Wall and find Gracie, but after my encounter with Matt and my glimpse of the nest beneath the station and the nursery in the tunnels I knew that was a fantasy. Even if I found her again, everything that mattered about Gracie was gone, and all that remained was the Change. Matt too, replaced by that murderous thing. Even my father . . . I blinked back more tears.
What was it like to be one of them? What happened to your memories, the things you had felt and known? Were they still a part of whatever you had become? Or did they simply become part of the Change as well, things it could call up to deceive and manipulate? I could picture Matt’s face, the way he smelled, the weight of him, the taste, the way our bodies had melded to one another. I remembered the times we had argued as well, and the way he could retreat into himself, the loss he had endured making him wary of being hurt again yet also so gentle, so unwilling to cause harm to another. I remembered him so vividly that if I closed my eyes I could almost feel him here with me again. But when I pictured the thing that had tried to trap me in the street I felt sick and violated at the idea it might know the things about me that Matt had, that when it looked at me it was looking through his eyes.
The thought of that thing with Matt’s face brought back the cry of pain I had heard as I fled. I knew it had been my father, or whatever he was, and it meant he was gone. To my surprise I felt tears again, but clenching my fist I wiped them away, telling myself it wasn’t him and never had been. My real father was dead, incinerated in some Quarantine facility five years ago, and although the creature I had spent the past few weeks with had his face, his memories, it had been no more him that the other creature was Matt.
I shuddered as I tried to think through the implications of what I had discovered. The notion of people being copied, of their minds and memories being duplicated, made me dizzy, as if the ground was shifting beneath me. The idea Matt and Gracie were gone was bad enough, but that their bodies had been turned into puppets for some alien thing was somehow worse, and the more I thought about it the angrier I became. It all seemed so unfair, so monstrous, not just that this should have happened but our inability to stop it or slow it down. When I had been in the interview room with Kostova she had seemed so angry, and at the time I hadn’t understood why, but now I thought I did: to face a threat like this and know that no matter what you did you were going to lose was unthinkable. How could you not be angry, how could you not succumb to despair?
I began to weep again, great juddering sobs that came in a rush. And when I was done I sat there. I didn’t know where I could go or what I could do: if I went back, Quarantine would arrest me. But I also knew I couldn’t stay, that I needed to get away from here. I was sick of always running, always losing. I wanted to fight back, to hurt the Change as it had hurt me. I knew that was ridiculous but it didn’t matter; there was something liberating about allowing myself to be angry. And then I remembered the treatment in my blood, the fact that my father’s vaccine had worked, and I knew I had no choice. I had to go back, make them believe me.
I got to my feet, wiped my face and dusted myself off. I was hot and exhausted, but I knew that even if it didn’t already know where I was, the Change would find me soon enough.
It was late afternoon, and although it was still brutally hot, the sun was sinking low. I put my backpack on and looked around. Although I didn’t know the city, there was only really one way to go, which was south. Making sure the sun was on my right, I began to walk.
I followed the back streets at first, cutting through the suburbs. In the last days before the evacuation they had burned whole sections of the city in an effort to hold back the encroaching infestation of the Change, so most of the buildings were piles of charred and rotting weatherboard or blackened concrete skeletons festooned with Changed vegetation.
After a kilometre or so I reached a main road flanked by apartment blocks. Many of them had been burned as well, but as I hurried past them I knew I was being watched. Once or twice I heard what sounded like dogs howling in the distance, and I trembled, terrified they might be tracking me.
I was still in the suburbs as the sun began to set. Although the houses were further apart, the gaps where parks and open space had once broken up the city’s uniformity were more frequent. As the sky faded the first stars began to appear and the glowtrees began to shine, but tonight I did not find their light beautiful or reassuring. Although I hadn’t seen another person or animal since I had left my father, I knew that whatever that thing with Matt’s face had been was somewhere out there, following me, I could feel it.
As it grew dark I paused outside the shell of a supermarket, and, after glancing around, went inside. The floor was caked with mud, presumably from a flood, but it seemed to be empty, so moving as quietly as possible I groped my way through the darkened aisles until I found several bottles of water and a few tins of food.
When I emerged the street was suffused with the phosphorescence of the glowtrees. I began to run again, but as I reached the next corner two figures appeared out of the shadows near the supermarket. A man and a woman, both terribly thin. Dropping back into the shadow of the trees, I waited for them to move off, then ran again, desperate to be out of the city.
8
It was close to midnight before I finally stopped. I knew I had to keep moving, to put as much distance between me and the city as possible, and each time I slowed I became convinced I was not alone and staggered on.
I took shelter in an old house that stood in the middle of a field. Crossing the moonlit space around it as quickly as I could, I jimmied a window open and clambered in. It was dark and silent inside. I pushed an armchair against the door and pressed myself into a corner, then pulled out the tins I had grabbed in the supermarket and tore them open.
The canned meat
was disgusting, the gelatinous texture of it rank in my mouth, so much so that I almost retched the first mouthful up, but I forced myself to keep eating, and when I was done I lay down on an old sofa with a view of the field outside.
At first I was too uneasy to sleep. All day the whispering in my head had been growing louder, more insistent, its tone angrier, more agitated, like bees disturbed in their hive and in the silence it was impossible to ignore. What did it mean? Was the Change colonising my mind? Or did it mean it knew where I was? Finally I slipped down into an exhausted and fitful sleep.
I woke with a gasp, certain I had heard something. It was dark outside, although the first glimmer of dawn could be seen through the window. Lying still I tried to slow my breathing, listening, when I heard a creak on the verandah by the front door. My heart beating fast I sat up, and grabbing my backpack as quietly as I could crept back toward the window and slowly slid it open. Just as I slipped out I heard footsteps again. Keeping low I fled across the field in a long arc back toward the road, uncomfortably aware of the grass moving around me. When I finally reached the road I looked back; in the darkness I could see the shapes of figures standing in the field not far from the house, their backs to me. I slid through the wires of the fence and raced on down the road without looking back.
After a short while the road joined a freeway, a wide space slicing south through the forest. The way ahead seemed clear, and although I jumped at every sound, there was no sign of whoever it had been back at the house behind me.
Over the past days and weeks, I had grown used to the crowding green of the Change, the weird shapes of the glowtrees and vines that covered everything. But as the sun began to rise I came around a bend and stopped, astonished. A kilometre or two ahead rose a stand of trees unlike anything I had ever seen. There were perhaps a dozen of them, each two or three hundred metres tall. With their bulbous trunks and stumpy limbs branching out far above, they resembled baobabs, yet larger than any baobab had ever reached.
To the east and west other stands were visible, and I wondered why I hadn’t seen them when I’d travelled north with my father. I eventually decided that the forest was so thick that even if we had passed by the base of these trees I wouldn’t necessarily have noticed them.
I began walking again, although more warily than before. The stand in front of me had sprouted directly in the path of the freeway, and although I had no reason to think they were dangerous, the thought of walking between them made me uneasy. Anything could live in their branches or in the huge roots that snaked into the ground at their bases.
It took twenty minutes to reach them, although long before that their bulk blotted out the sky, looming over me ominously. As I got closer I could see that several of the trees had taken root beneath the freeway and broken through it, leaving chunks of roadway and asphalt twisted by their bases.
Although the trunks had the same smooth, almost fleshy appearance as that of the glowtrees, up close the bark was darker, the leaves that grew far overhead glossier and greener. Around the base fungoids had taken root, crowding into the cracked asphalt and spreading up the trunk in softly glowing veins. But the most disturbing thing about them wasn’t their size, it was that high above, in their canopies, huge protuberances were visible, swollen things of mottled red and green and purple that resembled fruit or – I suddenly realised – buds, that shifted now and then as if animated from within.
As I stepped into their shade I moved slowly, wary of losing my footing. Far above I could see shafts of light, but otherwise the space was in deep shadow. Although it was only a few hundred metres to the other side I had to force myself to stay calm, to focus on the road ahead.
My heart was hammering when I emerged into the morning light on the far side. The forest was even denser here, trees crowding in to the edge of the asphalt on both sides. Tightening my grip on my pack I hurried on, eager to put the darkness of the trees behind me, but had only taken a few steps when I heard a woman’s voice shout ‘Miller!’ somewhere nearby.
Legs shaking, I darted into the trees and pressed against a trunk.
The voice hadn’t sounded like one of the Changed. But she had called out a name which meant she wasn’t alone.
I strained to hear more. Were they Army? Quarantine? Finally I heard another voice, quieter this time, and the sound of people moving through the forest a little way off.
For a few seconds I didn’t move. Part of me wanted to slip away, keep moving south, but I also knew I might be taking a bigger risk if I didn’t work out who they were and what they were doing here. What if I stumbled into some kind of trap? Or – and my stomach lurched at the thought – what if there were others like Travis and Jared and Ryan out here?
A sick fear washed through me at the thought of those days in the container; gritting my teeth I pushed it down, willing my hand to stop shaking. I took a deep breath and, keeping low, slipped through the trees after the voices.
It wasn’t easy, following people through the forest, and several times over the next ten or fifteen minutes I thought I had lost whoever it was, only to catch the sound of their movement again, off to one side or ahead; each time I adjusted my direction and set off after them once more.
Finally I glimpsed movement nearby and dropped to the ground behind one of the glowtrees. In my haste I had somehow got ahead of them. Through the trees I could see five figures moving through the forest, three in a loose line, one taking point at the front, another bringing up the rear.
Although their faces were obscured behind containment masks, they were dressed in uniforms of some kind, not black, but camo, which I supposed meant they were Army rather than Quarantine.
I slid around the tree, ready to follow them again, but as I did the one at the front lifted his hand and they fell still. Dropping back a few metres, the scout conferred quietly with a woman who had a command insignia on her sleeve. The commander glanced around, then raised a hand and gestured to the others to move forward.
I waited until they were almost out of sight and took off after them.
Despite their packs and gear, they moved quickly, marching hard and only stopping once to drink and eat. I did my best to stay well back and out of sight, but when they stopped I observed them more carefully. Two were men – one the burly man with the rifle at the front, the other tall and gangly – and three women: the commander, the one guarding the rear and the one the commander had conferred with when they stopped the first time, who was also the smallest and slightest. All carried packs and seemed to be armed.
I worked out that they were moving east, toward the next stand of giant trees, which suggested they were the reason for the expedition. The trees must be important for some reason because even I knew the risk of infection meant missions beyond the Wall were rare.
In the late morning they reached a clearing and the commander motioned them to stop. One by one they seated themselves and, opening their masks, quickly ate and drank from ration packs. Then, at a signal from the woman who had been acting as scout, they moved out again.
Around midday the forest gave way to a long hillside covered with mottled red and white grass and broken copses of strange bushes with twisted roots like pandanus trees. I waited until the squad was some distance ahead and then ran, crouching, toward one of the pandanus trees. The grass was unlike anything I had seen before and seemed to be made of a solid stalk about as thick as a child’s finger, and as it broke beneath my feet it released a sigh. Unnerved, I hurried on, but as I did I realised the movement was not the wind but the grass itself, shifting and swaying in long waves that radiated outward from me and back again, as if it were aware of my presence.
I had seen this sort of behaviour before, but it was more disturbing because of the scale of it, the way the ripples seemed to move into the distance and return, as if the entire hillside were one organism. Even worse was the sense that it was speaking to me, and I could almost u
nderstand what it was saying, like listening to somebody speaking a language that is almost, but not quite, your own. Reminded of the whispering, I forced myself to focus on the figures ahead. As I reached the tree line, I realised I had lost sight of them so I began to run, keeping my head down as I listened for some sound ahead. Hearing nothing, I stopped. Frightened I had passed them somehow, I turned and hurried back toward the edge of the forest.
As I emerged into the light I heard a sound and turned to see the burly scout who had been on point step out of the trees behind me, his gun pointed at me.
‘Hands in the air,’ he said.
9
I raised my hands.
‘Are you armed?’ he asked, his voice wary, tense. Behind him a female soldier emerged as well, her rifle trained on me, followed a moment later by the commander and the other two.
I shook my head.
‘Infected?’
I hesitated then shook my head again.
He seemed to consider this for a moment before gesturing to the female soldier with a tip of his head, his eyes not leaving me.
‘Check her.’
The female soldier lowered her rifle and approached me. Although her face was mostly concealed behind her mask the way she moved that told me I should not mistake her small stature for weakness.
‘Arms up,’ she said.
She moved behind me and patted me down.
‘Backpack,’ she said. I removed my backpack and handed it to her. She poked through it, then tossed it back to one of the others.
‘She’s clean,’ she said.
‘Secure her,’ said the male scout.
She grabbed my arm and twisted me away from her. With her free hand she produced a set of plastic cuffs.
The Buried Ark Page 5
