Something about the way they were lying seemed odd, but I didn’t have time to work out what before Matt realised I was watching and, turning, came and stood over me.
‘You will get up,’ he said. ‘We must go.’
I looked up at him. Even in the pre-dawn light he looked sweaty, and his skin was discoloured, the phosphor under his skin dimmer than it had been. On the edge of the clearing the one with the amber eyes was slumped against a tree, his head tilted back; a little way further off the woman in the floral dress leaned against a rock, coughing. I gave a small nod, and Matt stared at me for a moment or two longer then walked away.
Next to me Ben sat up. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I said in a low voice. ‘I think they’re sick.’
‘With what?’ he asked, but before I could answer Matt came back, grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet. Face to face with him I could see he was definitely unwell.
‘You will walk,’ he said.
We walked through the morning as we had the day before. At some point it began to rain again, a sudden downfall giving way to a steady drizzle and warm mist. After the heat of the previous days I was almost grateful for the rain, even if it made the ground slippery and wet, but after a while it was simply another thing to be endured.
Once we were moving it was even more obvious something wasn’t right with our captors. Amber eyes was slow and unsteady on his feet, and floral dress was clearly struggling to keep up.
Sometime around noon amber eyes suddenly fell sideways, collapsing into the undergrowth. I took a step back, startled. Matt came to a halt, then turned back and stood over him. He was lying still, his breath coming in rapid, shallow gasps. For several seconds Matt stood staring at him lying there; then, without speaking, he turned back to the path and walked on, leaving amber eyes behind.
I stared down as I passed his prone form. Although there was no way of telling what was wrong with him, he was clearly ill: eyes closed, mouth slightly open, skin blotchy and blackened in places. I had never seen somebody dying before but I knew that was what was happening.
It was impossible to tell what his death meant to the other Changed. None of them looked down as they passed or turned as we walked away. It was as if he was already forgotten, his body abandoned, irrelevant. I felt like I was understanding something new about the Change, about its indifference to the pieces of itself. I shivered.
We did not stop in the middle of the day but just kept walking, slogging on through the forest. As the afternoon began the clouds cleared, and as the sun broke through the forest was suddenly ferocious with heat, the air filled with the sound of insects.
Toward dusk grey beard must have succumbed as well, although because he was at the rear of the group I didn’t realise until I looked back and he was gone. Up ahead Matt didn’t even turn around.
Finally, as night approached, we reached an open area, Changed grass shifting gently beneath a burning red sky. There was a farmhouse on a hill ahead of us, its shape dark against the sky.
Matt led us toward it. I could hear the Change whispering around us, but I blocked it out and concentrated on Matt. It was obvious he was having to fight to keep going, and as he climbed the three stairs to the verandah I thought for a second he might be about to fall over.
The farmhouse was empty, its rooms silent and shadowy and full of dust.
Matt checked the rooms one by one, finally coming to a stop at the door to the laundry that opened off the kitchen. Although somebody had rebuilt the side and front of the house at some point, these rooms still looked original, the doors set into the weatherboard walls adorned with heavy iron keys in old-fashioned keyholes. Matt opened the door and the remaining Changed shoved us inside. I had a last glimpse of their blotchy pallor and sweaty faces and then the door closed and the key clicked in the lock.
The room was small and dark. It was difficult to make sense of what was around us, but Ben was so exhausted and ravaged by thirst he didn’t try, instead falling to the ground and leaning his head back to rest.
I looked around, taking stock. Even in the gloom it was obvious why Matt had chosen this room. Although I could make out a sink, a washing machine and a pair of shelves on which a box of washing powder stood, the only way out seemed to be a window set high in the wall that was too narrow for either of us to get through. Backing up to the sink, I groped in search of a sharp edge. Unable to find one, I flipped up the washing machine lid and twisted around so I could rub the cords around my wrist against the inside edge. The motion was difficult and uncomfortable, but after a few minutes I felt one of the cords begin to give. I twisted my wrists against each other as hard as I could, and after a second or two the remaining cords unravelled. I let my arms drop for the first time in almost three days, pain and relief mingling so powerfully I almost cried out. Once I had collected myself I knelt down and released Ben’s hands. He pulled them forward and slumped back on the ground.
Once I was certain he was all right I lifted myself onto the washing machine as stealthily as I could and peered out at the darkening landscape.
‘Could you get through?’ Ben asked quietly.
I shook my head and dropped down again. Somewhere outside Matt was coughing again, more convulsively this time.
‘What do you think they’re waiting for?’ Ben asked.
‘I don’t know. Perhaps there are more of them on the way.’
Over the next few hours I examined every centimetre of that laundry, looking for a way out. The window was too small, the floor was concrete, and although the roof was corrugated iron, so it might be possible to push it off and crawl out that way, I knew there was no way of doing that without raising the alarm.
Outside, the Changed seemed to be growing sicker, coughing more and more convulsively. At some point one of them – presumably Matt – came and sat against the door, so that each time he coughed the door rattled in its frame. Finally, much later, the coughing was replaced by slow, laboured breathing. Hearing the shift, I looked at Ben. His face was barely visible in the darkness but I saw him give a small nod, so I crept closer to the door and knelt down against it. Outside whoever it was coughed again, then again, then finally a third time, but this time it was followed by a soft thud, as if something had fallen to the floor. I caught my breath, waiting, then leaned forward and pressed my ear to the door.
I thought I could hear breathing, so I lowered myself to the ground and peered under the door.
Although it was dark the moon was up, and in the pale light from the window I thought I could make out a figure sprawled on the floor.
‘I think they’ve passed out,’ I whispered to Ben. ‘We have to go now.’
‘How are we supposed to get the door open?’ he asked.
I shook my head, staring at it. There had to be a way. Suddenly I thought of something. Leaning forward I put my eye to the keyhole. It was dark, still blocked by the key. Suppressing a small sound of triumph, I turned and groped for the box I had glimpsed on the shelf above the sink when we were first locked in.
‘What are you doing?’ Ben whispered.
‘I need something flat.’ As I spoke my hands closed on a box of some sort, and I dragged it out onto the floor. There was a spilling sound and a strong smell of soap. Washing powder.
The cardboard was old and brittle and tore easily. A few seconds later I had a flat sheet. Going back to the door I kneeled down and slowly slipped the cardboard under it.
‘I need a stick or something,’ I said.
There was a movement and then I felt Ben press into my hand a sliver of cardboard he had folded lengthways.
I carefully slipped the folded cardboard into the keyhole. At first the key wouldn’t move and I was afraid the cardboard would be too soft, that it would bend or fold. But I kept pushing, shifting the angle each time I felt the cardboard begin to give, and after
a moment the key began to move. I pushed it harder, feeling it stick a couple of times, and then, all at once, it tipped and fell, thumping onto the cardboard.
Next to me Ben breathed out. I listened, but nobody moved on the other side of the door.
‘Well done,’ Ben said.
I didn’t reply. Instead I gripped the edge of the cardboard and, sliding it gingerly back under the door, picked up the key.
The lock turned with a soft clunk. I slid the door open a crack and peered out. Matt was lying on the floor but otherwise the area outside was empty. I motioned to Ben to follow me, and we stepped over Matt’s unmoving form and hurried toward the back door. As Ben stepped out into the night I stopped and looked back.
‘What are you doing?’ he hissed, but I didn’t answer. Instead I crossed back to where Matt was lying. At first I thought he was dead, but then I noticed his chest moving, fast and shallow.
I clenched my fists. The thing lying in front of me had stolen something from me by taking Matt’s face and voice, something I would never get back, and I wanted to punish him for that. Lifting my eyes I saw a frying pan on the stovetop, silhouetted in the pale light from the kitchen window. I walked over and closed my hand around the handle. It was heavier than I had expected, its weight, the threat of it, suddenly exhilarating. I hefted it, ready for the chance to wipe this monstrosity away, to expunge it from the world.
‘Callie,’ Ben said, almost in a whisper. ‘What are you doing?’
I ignored him, tensing to strike. But just as I was about to bring the pan down on Matt’s face, his Changed eyes opened and focused on me. I saw comprehension dawn, and with it what looked like vulnerability, fear of dying.
I froze, the pan still raised above my head, the knowledge of what I had been about to do washing through me. I backed away, the frying pan falling from my hand. And then I turned and ran out into the night.
15
I remember little of the days that followed. We fled across the moonlit field that surrounded the house as fast as we could, making for the cool glow of the trees. Although we were far from towns or cities, we had no way of knowing whether the Change had sent others of itself after us, or how far away they were if it had.
As we stumbled through the trees I tried to ignore the hissing of the Change in the back of my mind. Even so I knew it was not merely the Change I wanted to leave behind, but whatever it was I had glimpsed in myself as I stood over Matt’s body in the kitchen, that urge for vengeance, violence. It was only when I realised Ben had stopped running that I finally slowed. Turning I found him bent over, panting, his eyes fixed on me with a look I did not recognise.
‘Please, Callie, I have to stop.’
I shook my head. ‘We can’t. They’ll be after us. We can’t let them catch us again.’
Ben stood, staring at me. ‘What you did back there . . .’ he began, but I looked away. ‘I don’t blame you. He . . . it . . . deserved it.’
‘But?’
‘But sometimes it’s not what we do but what we choose not to do that makes us who we are.’
I shook my head. I knew he was trying to make me feel better but I didn’t want to be absolved. I knew what I had wanted and it terrified me. I turned away.
‘We have to find water,’ I said.
Not long after that we found a small creek, where we filled Ben’s canteen, straining the water through one of his filter patches. Ben drank urgently, draining the canteen several times before he was done. When he was done he filled it again and we hurried on.
It was dawn before we stopped again, this time to rest. Although both of us knew we couldn’t afford to stop, I also knew that if we didn’t rest, one or both of us would collapse. And so while Ben slept for a few hours, I kept watch, fighting to keep my eyes open until he awoke and I could do the same.
When I woke he was watching me.
‘What do you think happened back there?’ he asked.
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘The two who got sick first, they were the ones who tied you up, who touched you.’
I nodded.
‘Do you think them getting sick might be connected to whatever it was your father gave you?’
I remembered my father showing me my blood cells, their continuing mutation. ‘Perhaps.’
‘You know that means we have to get you back? That finally we might have something that can stop the Change?’ He paused, looking uncomfortable. ‘I know you’re worried about what Quarantine will do to you, about the penalties for crossing into the Zone. But I think that if this vaccine does what it seems to do, they’ll make an exception.’
‘And if they don’t?’
He didn’t reply.
I got to my feet. ‘Let’s just get back,’ I said.
We set off again without speaking, moving as quickly and as quietly as we could. I already knew we had to avoid the roads and the towns, anywhere the Changed might gather, and so we stuck to the forest, pushing ourselves to the point of collapse.
In the end it took two days to reach the edge of the Zone, the Wall coming into sight as darkness fell on the second day. Both of us were delirious with hunger and exhaustion, but for the last few kilometres I could feel the same press of apprehension I had felt just before Matt and the others captured us, and as we stumbled on I tried to blot out the thought that the Change might have beaten us here, that they might be waiting for us at the perimeter. But it was only as we reached a stretch of open ground between the forest and the Wall that I saw them heading toward us, moving with terrifying rapidity through the failing light. I looked toward Ben, to warn him, but he had seen them as well.
There was a moment then when I almost gave up, when it all seemed impossible, yet something in me told me to push on and I ran harder, as fast as I could. By the time we reached the Wall and began to make our way along it in search of a ladder, I was having trouble staying upright. After a few hundred metres we reached one of the platforms. The whispering was frantic, furious, crowding everything else out; turning I saw the shapes of the Changed close behind us. Ben pressed a key he wore around his neck into a plastic-covered lock, bringing a ladder telescoping down. I scrambled up. In my mind I could hear them, so close I could almost feel them touch me, their excitement at being upon us, but as we scrambled down the far side and out into the razed landscape of the Transitional I felt their exaltation turn to fury.
I came to a halt. Overhead the sky was clear, the first stars already bright. I tried to focus, but all of a sudden the ground spun and came up to meet me.
And then darkness.
16
I regained consciousness in a narrow bed, a sheet pulled up over my arms. At first I had no idea what I was doing there, but then it came back to me and I started upright, only to have the room tilt and spin. Thrown off balance I slid sideways but managed to catch myself and remain still until my dizziness subsided.
I was in a white room, its antiseptic space barely large enough for the bed I was leaning against. By the wall on the far side of the bed were various machines – a monitor of some kind on a stand and wheels; an IV drip with several bags of what looked like saline, one of which was connected to a cannula in my wrist; something I assumed was a scanner for detecting Changed biology – and at the foot of the bed, a windowless door. Dominating the wall in front of me was some kind of observation panel that ran from corner to corner, from waist height to the ceiling.
The glass was dark, reflecting the room back at me. I could make out my own reflection, my face dark and gaunt beneath wild hair, my body thin beneath the blue gown. Uncertain whether I was being watched I slid my hand down and with a sharp yank pulled the cannula free. Then I darted toward the door as quickly and quietly as I could.
The door was locked. I flattened myself against the wall and stared around. There was nothing to indicate where I was or how I had got here. Be
fore I had a chance to investigate further I noticed a red light near the ceiling and realised I was being observed.
The observation panel lit up, revealing a lab of some sort, and at one end, just behind the glass, a woman dressed in a tight black skirt and midnight-blue blouse.
‘You’re awake!’ she said brightly. She was fortyish, with a blonde ponytail and glasses, and looked more like a lawyer than a doctor or a scientist.
I stared back at her. ‘Where am I?’ I demanded. ‘How did I get here?’
She smiled. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll explain everything soon. But you’re safe now.’
‘Safe where? And where’s Ben? What have you done with him?’
‘Sergeant Miller? He’s fine. Being treated elsewhere.’ She touched her ear, as if activating some kind of communication device, and then lifted a finger. ‘Just hold on,’ she said.
‘Hey!’ I said, but she didn’t respond, just touched something on the other side of the wall. The panel went dark again.
‘Hey!’ I shouted, advancing on the glass, but before I could reach it the door slid open with a hiss and the woman entered, followed by a thickset man with a brown beard. He was wearing a lab coat and held a scanner in one hand. I took a step back.
‘Are you Quarantine?’
The woman smiled and shook her head. ‘No, we’re not Quarantine.’
The Buried Ark Page 10
