Doomsday

by Chris Morphew

  And as I clambered up over the side of the cage and found a seat in between the boxes of explosives, for all my talk of meaning and purpose, a part of me couldn’t help wondering if I was being just as blind as he was.

  THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 7.23 A.M. 9 HOURS, 37 MINUTES

  ‘I saw them,’ said Reeve, fiddling absently with an old tennis ball he’d found in one of the bedrooms. ‘Katie. And Lachlan, my kid. They’re alive in the Shackleton Building.’

  I swallowed the last of a stale biscuit from a packet we’d found in the kitchen. ‘They see you?’

  We were down at the back of the house, sitting on opposite sides of the floor in the hallway, still waiting for Reeve’s guys to return from the armoury. Chew had gone out to the edge of town to meet them and bring them back. Assuming they were coming back, which seemed more doubtful all the time.

  Reeve shook his head. ‘It was just a glimpse. Just as we were leaving. Back of their heads.’ He bounced the ball off the wall and caught it again. ‘I just hope –’

  He jerked upright as a creak of wood signalled the arrival of someone outside.

  I got up, holding my breath, and a wet bit of paper appeared under the door, words scrawled across it in half-dead pen:

  I showed it to Reeve. He rolled his eyes and pulled open the door. ‘That’s not the password,’ he said wearily, as Chew stepped through the door, followed by two more guys in guards’ uniforms.

  ‘I like mine better,’ Chew grinned, and Reeve looked too relieved at their arrival to push it.

  ‘Kirke and Saunders are waiting back at the truck,’ said one of the new guys. He had wild hair and a look of complete bemusement on his face.

  ‘Everything okay?’ Reeve asked.

  ‘Mate,’ the guard smirked, slapping Reeve on the back and moving up the hallway, ‘have I got a story to tell you.’

  But before he could even get started, a head popped out of the lounge room. Mrs Weir, looking more alive than I’d seen her all day. ‘It’s working!’

  We raced into the kitchen, where Mr Weir had been working on the transceiver. One of the newcomers dumped a backpack on the floor. The others were already crowded around, except Wilson, who looked longingly over from his watch at the window, and Lazarro who was somewhere upstairs.

  ‘It should be working,’ Mr Weir corrected, holding up the transceiver, a Frankenstein’s monster of looping wires and spare parts he’d scavenged from stuff around the house. ‘Won’t know until we turn it on.’

  He was holding the thing just a little bit too tightly, and again, I got the sense that this project was all that was keeping him from melting down over Peter.

  ‘So what are you waiting for?’ asked Chew, pushing to the front.

  Mr Weir flicked a switch. Two lights, one green, one red, started blinking at the top of the transceiver, and the cracked screen flashed to life.

  ‘That’s good, right?’ said one of the new arrivals.

  ‘Bloody miracle is what that is,’ Mr Weir beamed, tapping something on the screen. ‘Now, I’ve left it at the frequency it was transmitting on when the jet crashed, so with any luck, we should still …’

  He tapped at the screen again. Static crackled out of a speaker, and I felt my breath catch in my throat.

  Mr Weir held the speaker tentatively up to his face. ‘Hello?’

  Static.

  Mr Weir tried again. ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’

  More static. And then –

  ‘Who is this?’ a gruff voice demanded. ‘Identify yourself.’

  The kitchen hummed with stifled noise. Everyone grinning and staring at each other, fighting to contain their excitement.

  ‘This is Brian Weir,’ said Mr Weir. His hands were shaking. ‘I’m a prisoner of the Shackleton Co-operative.’

  The voice at the other end was silent for just long enough to make me think we’d lost the signal, then: ‘This is a restricted frequency. How did you –?’

  ‘We found your transceiver,’ said Mr Weir in a rush. ‘When your jet came down. I pulled it from the wreckage. It was damaged, but I –’

  ‘Shh!’ I hissed, grabbing Mr Weir’s arm, pulling the transceiver closer to me.

  I’d heard something. Another voice. Muffled, distant, as though the speaker was across the room from whatever they were transmitting with.

  ‘Stop,’ the voice demanded. ‘Let me go. You’re being –’ He broke off, regaining his composure, and I almost lost mine completely as I realised who it was. ‘Listen. Listen to me, I know you have your protocols, but this is –’ He grunted again, still struggling. ‘I’m telling you, I know that man. He’s a friend.’

  And finally, I found my voice. ‘Dad!’

  ‘Luke!’ he called back, closer this time, or maybe just louder. ‘Luke, are you all right? What’s happening out there? Where’s –?’ He growled at whoever was holding him. ‘Enough! Please, I just want to –’

  ‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ snapped a third voice, sharp and impatient. ‘It’s his son, you jackass. He’s fifteen. How much harm could he possibly be?’

  It was Kara.

  Alive. Both of them. They’d made it out.

  There was what sounded like a scuffle for control of the transmitter, and then Dad’s voice cut through the static again, louder and clearer. ‘Luke! Are you okay?’

  And without warning, all the trauma and the exhaustion finally caught up with me and I disintegrated into tears. Mr Weir handed over the transceiver and I held it up to my face, unable to speak, staggering over to lean on the sink for support.

  ‘Luke …’ said Dad, his own voice breaking. ‘Talk to me, mate.’

  I took a breath, pulling myself together enough to get words out, painfully aware of the huddle of security officers standing over me. ‘It’s – it’s a mess, Dad. Jordan’s on her way out to the release station now, but –’

  ‘You’ve found Tobias?’ said Kara, cutting in.

  ‘Y-yeah, but I don’t even know if –’

  ‘Where are you?’ asked Chew from behind me, losing patience. ‘Who are those people you’re with?’

  Through the static, I heard Dad sigh. Whatever was coming next, I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like it.

  ‘We’re with the military, in a temporary facility outside of Alice Springs. They’re mounting a rescue effort, but there’s been some … difference of opinion,’ Dad said carefully, ‘about how to go about it. About how much of what we’ve told them is actually reliable.’

  ‘What – what do you mean?’ I said. ‘What about all that video Jordan took?’

  ‘They’ve watched it,’ said Dad, his voice crackling with static. ‘And obviously they can’t deny that there’s some kind of hostage situation going on in there. What they aren’t so sold on is Tabitha. Their surveillance hasn’t shown any sign of –’

  ‘Enough!’ barked the military officer. ‘That information is –’

  ‘Their surveillance just got blown out of the sky!’ I said. ‘Tell them I saw it! Tell them if this isn’t fixed by five o’clock –’

  ‘I know,’ said Dad bracingly. ‘I know. And I’d love to tell you they’ll be quicker to trust us on Tabitha than they were on Shackleton’s defences, but I hon–’

  His voice cut out, and the static went with it.

  ‘No …’ I breathed. At first, I thought the connection had been cut at his end. But then I held the transceiver away from my face. Lights, screen, everything dead.

  Mr Weir pulled the transceiver out of my hands.

  ‘What happened?’ the scraggly-haired guard asked. ‘What did he do?’

  Mr Weir didn’t answer. He was too busy poring over the transceiver.

  I spun away, pushing out of the circle.

  ‘Mate, I didn’t mean …’ the scraggly-haired guard began, but Reeve held up a hand and said, ‘Leave him.’

  I stumbled back into the hall and slumped on the carpet, grabbing for my phone, needing to talk to Jordan, not even to tell her about Dad, just to kno
w she was still out there, but again, the phone just rang and rang. I tried Calvin’s number, expecting nothing and getting it, and by the time the call rang out, my tears had evaporated into stony anger at the guards in the other room.

  I could hear their hushed tones, probably griping about all the time I’d wasted crying to Daddy when we should have been exchanging information. Like any of them could lecture me on not having my priorities straight. Like they hadn’t wasted months fighting on the wrong side of this war.

  Not helpful, whispered the rational part of my brain.

  I got to my feet. No point dwelling on dead ends.

  We had to get out of here, out to wherever they had this truck and –

  ‘Back from the windows!’ hissed Lazarro, thundering into view down the stairs. ‘Everybody down!’

  ‘Where are they?’ asked Reeve, appearing in the doorway, already armed. ‘How many –?’

  He dragged me down just as a spray of gunfire tore into the house, splintering the front door off its hinges.

  ‘Don’t want to alarm anyone,’ said Lazarro from the stairs, taking aim at the half-destroyed doorway, ‘but I think they might have found us.’

  JORDAN

  THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 7.26 A.M. 9 HOURS, 34 MINUTES

  ‘It is not moronic,’ Calvin insisted as we roared along the road. ‘It is the most extraordinarily sophisticated surface-to-air defence system on the entire planet.’

  ‘Sure,’ I shouted over the wind in my ears, ‘except for the part where it gunned down that jet over the place it was meant to be defending.’

  Calvin’s shoulders arched up a bit. ‘That was your fault, not ours.’

  ‘Our fault?’

  ‘We have protocols in place to ensure that our automated systems are not disrupted by the movement of our own aircraft,’ said Calvin, wiping the rain out of the goggles he’d pulled from under the driver’s seat. ‘Protocols which were disregarded completely last week when your people commandeered one of our helicopters.’

  I rolled my eyes, sinking into the wall of boxes at my back. ‘How thoughtless of us.’

  Amy was hanging on to the side of the cage again, shivering in the wet and the wind. Silent since we’d left the armoury. She still glared disparagingly at Calvin, but she’d given up pointing the pistol at him.

  ‘The system should have been manually recalibrated as soon as Officer Barnett was notified of your escape,’ Calvin continued. ‘Yet another duty he mismanaged in my absence, it seems.’

  ‘Why didn’t you just shut the whole thing down while you were in the armoury, then?’ I asked.

  ‘The controls aren’t in the armoury,’ said Calvin. He slowed the skid down, eyes drifting to the right side of the road. ‘Now that the security centre has been destroyed, they can only be accessed from Shackleton’s office, and my removal from active duty has made sneaking in there somewhat more difficult than it might once have been.’

  ‘Of course it has,’ I grumbled, shifting Tobias as my arm started to cramp. He lay there, all bundled up, shivering occasionally but still never complaining, never crying out.

  Which would have been unnerving enough without the eyes. I watched them swivel in their sockets, tracking my face with an intensity that no baby should have been capable of, and tried to convince myself I was just imagining things.

  What could possibly be going on inside that tiny head of his?

  My mind burned with a swirl of sickening visions of what might be waiting for him outside the wall. I shook them off, readjusting Tobias’s covers again. Calvin had found Tobias a waterproof blanket in the armoury to replace the grotty towel he’d been wrapped in before. What was that? An actual gesture of humanity, or just Calvin protecting his interests? Clearly, he needed Tobias alive for something, but –

  The skid slowed as Calvin turned off onto a faint dirt trail leading off into the bush. I realised I’d seen this area before, way back in the beginning, when Luke, Peter and I had come trekking out to the wall, following a map scrawled in a library book by Crazy Bill.

  We’d known nothing back then. No idea who we were really following, or where he was taking us.

  And now, after everything, after all we’d learned, here I was, riding out to the wall again. Just as lost and confused as ever.

  The skid splashed down into the wet bush, onto what was not even a proper path. Just a winding trail worn into the grass and the mud. We’d known since our first trip out here that there must be a way through the wall – how else had Reeve brought us back from the outside in a van? – but we’d never actually been out here to see it.

  Calvin’s hand slipped from the wheel. His head tilted down in the direction of his pocket.

  I sat up. ‘Who is it?’

  Calvin’s eyes shot back out to the road.

  ‘Calvin,’ I snapped. ‘Who’s calling you?’

  ‘No-one,’ said Calvin. His hand returned to the wheel. ‘I was checking the time.’

  ‘He’s lying,’ said Amy, drawing her pistol. ‘I saw the caller ID. Victoria Galton.’

  ‘That’s Luke,’ I said. ‘Give me the phone.’

  ‘We do not have time for distractions,’ said Calvin, swerving to avoid a fallen tree.

  ‘Give it to me,’ I said. ‘It could be important.’

  ‘More important than saving the world?’ Calvin asked. ‘Worth running down the last of my battery? He has been calling for hours, Jordan. And he is still calling, which means that whatever’s happening to him, it isn’t –’

  Amy leant over, pressing the pistol into the back of Calvin’s head. ‘Give it to her.’

  ‘Put it away,’ said Calvin.

  ‘Give it to her!’

  ‘I think we’ve established by now that you’re not going to –’

  BLAM!

  The skid screeched to a halt, spraying muddy water, almost smashing into a clump of trees. I grunted in pain as a box of explosives thumped into the back of my head.

  ‘Oh my goodness,’ said Amy shakily. ‘Oh – Oh my goodness.’

  I clambered to my feet, shoving the dislodged boxes back into place.

  Amy was frozen, clinging one-handed to the side of the cage like it was the only thing keeping her standing. The pistol was pointed straight up into the air above her head.

  Calvin stared back at her, face twisted with fury. He thrust out a hand. ‘Give me that!’

  Amy shakily lowered the weapon and pointed it at Calvin. ‘The phone,’ she said. ‘First, give Jordan the phone.’

  THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 7.37 A.M. 9 HOURS, 23 MINUTES

  The firing stopped and for a second the world went quiet. Nothing but the spatter of rain coming down on the roof.

  Grey dawn light broke in through the bullet-riddled front door, gleaming down across our faces. I pushed up from the ground, disentangling myself from Reeve, then froze as the light began to move. A shadow rose up over the carpet. Someone was coming.

  ‘I’d stay outside if I were you!’ called Lazarro from the stairs, rifle still aimed down at the doorway.

  ‘We got plenty of guns in here, and some guys too incompetent to know when to hold their fire.’

  ‘Nice working with you too, mate,’ said Chew from somewhere in the lounge room.

  Lazarro turned to Reeve. ‘I counted two out the front. Another one coming round the back. We’ve got the numbers for now, but –’ He fired a short burst into the wall above the door. ‘I said get back!’

  A scream pierced the gunfire. ‘Please – I’m unarmed!’

  A woman’s voice. Reeve sprung up from the ground like he’d been electrocuted. ‘Katie!’

  ‘Matt!’ the voice called back.

  ‘Stand down,’ Reeve told Lazarro. ‘Let her in.’

  Lazarro didn’t budge. ‘It’s a trap.’

  ‘It’s my wife,’ said Reeve.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Lazarro. ‘Just out for a walk, is she?’ He barked into the lounge room: ‘One of you clowns feel like getting out here and watching the
back door?’

  I jerked sideways as something vibrated at my leg.

  Galton’s phone. Someone was calling me.

  Reeve started down the hall. ‘Katie! Are you okay?’

  ‘Enough!’ snapped a voice from outside, stopping him dead. ‘All of you, out the front door! Hands behind your heads!’

  I dug my hand down into my pocket, shuffling out of the way as Chew and Wilson appeared in the hall, slipping out to the back of the house.

  ‘That you, Justin?’ Reeve called, his voice strained.

  The guard hesitated. ‘This isn’t personal, Matt. I’m just doing my –’

  ‘You have a gun on my wife!’

  I stood, checking the caller ID.

  Bruce Calvin.

  ‘Matt, please,’ Katie begged, ‘you have to do what he says! They’ve got Lachlan!’

  I slid the phone open. ‘Luke!’ said Jordan, and it was like something dead inside of me had come back to life.

  ‘Jordan,’ I hissed. ‘We’re surrounded. They’ve got Reeve’s wife. They’re using her to –’

  Reeve took a step towards the door, and I lost my train of thought.

  ‘Don’t,’ Lazarro warned. ‘Don’t do it, Matt. You know that doesn’t end the way you want it to.’

  ‘I’ll give you thirty seconds, Matt,’ called the guard. ‘Tell your men to stand down and get their arses out here or I shoot your wife and we start again with the kid.’

  Katie let out a desperate wail.

  I turned my attention back to the phone call. ‘Jordan?’

  No answer. I heard rain, frantic voices, the rumble of an engine.

  ‘Listen to yourself!’ Reeve shouted back through the door, voice cracking. ‘Listen to what you’re saying! He’s a kid, Justin. He’s three. Are you seriously going to –?’

  ‘This – this isn’t about me, Matt,’ said the guard. ‘It’s just orders. Twenty seconds.’

  ‘Jordan!’ I hissed. ‘What’s –?’

  ‘Luke,’ said a stony voice at the other end of the line. Sweat prickled at the back of my neck. It was Calvin. ‘Ten seconds,’ said the guard.