Viridian

by Susan Gates

  As his tension drained away, Jay felt tired and weak. Following Viridian down through the tangled creepers, he had to concentrate to make sure he didn’t fall. When he reached the ground, his legs were wobbly.

  Viridian said, ‘You cut your arm.’

  Jay inspected the long gash. It was shallow but it was bleeding a lot. He felt a wave of panic. Had it been a scratch from a plant?

  Viridian was bleeding too, from a cruel-looking cut on his wrist. Jay saw blood oozing out, green as plant sap. He stared at it, repelled and fascinated.

  Jay was about to say, ‘I never knew your blood was green too.’ But he gulped back the words, confused by the strange, intense glow in Viridian’s eyes.

  Viridian stepped closer. Jay felt suddenly light-headed as he breathed in the oxygen from Viridian’s photosynthesizing skin.

  ‘You could be one of us,’ Viridian hissed. ‘Right now. We can save the planet. You polluters, you’re killing it, with all your poison gases and dirty waste.’

  Viridian held up his bleeding wrist. Jay watched the green blood trickle down his arm. He looked down at the dark red blood still leaking out of his own wound.

  ‘You want us to mix blood?’ said Jay. ‘So I get the virus?’

  Viridian nodded.

  ‘No way.’

  ‘What are you scared of?’ said Viridian. ‘Becoming a Cultivar is the biggest adventure ever.’

  ‘Becoming a what? I thought you were a Verdan. I’ve never heard of Cultivars.’

  ‘You will,’ said Viridian. ‘We are the future.’ He gave Jay an odd smile, secretive and arrogant. ‘You’d make a worthy Cultivar. You did well, back there. But if you want to be a Cultivar, you must be a Verdan first.’

  Viridian lunged forward, grabbed Jay’s arm, and clamped it against his cut wrist.

  Jay struggled and shouted, ‘Let me go!’ But it was too late. He saw their blood mingle, run in red and green streaks down his arm.

  Viridian watched it, fascinated. He whispered, ‘I made a new Verdan.’

  Jay couldn’t speak. His brain felt numb.

  ‘I made you,’ Viridian was saying dreamily. ‘We’re joined together blood to blood…’

  Suddenly, Jay woke up to the horror of what had just happened. ‘You green freak!’ he screamed, tearing his arm away. ‘You’ve given me the virus!’

  He started running back towards the Silver Bullet, shouting ‘Dad, Dad!’

  Dad came rushing out of the Diner. Jay held up his bloody arm. ‘Viridian gave me the virus! We both got cut climbing after Sage and he just grabbed my arm…’

  ‘What!’ Dad exploded.

  He hustled Jay inside the Diner. Shivering, Jay watched him unscrew a bottle of antiseptic. ‘It won’t work, Dad. Nothing works, they said so on TV…’

  Then he yelled out as Dad poured the contents of the bottle over his arm. Jay hopped around the trailer, cursing at the burning pain, then threw himself down on the tiny sofa.

  Dad leapt down the trailer steps. ‘I’m going to get that green freak,’ he shouted back to Jay. ‘Teach him a lesson.’

  ‘Dad! Don’t!’ pleaded Jay. ‘Don’t go after him! He’s different from the others. He’s dangerous!’

  But Dad had disappeared. Jay sat shivering on the sofa, cradling his arm. He didn’t have any faith at all in the antiseptic. The doctors on TV had said, over and over again, that nothing could stop the virus. Once you’d been infected, you saw the first signs really quickly. The skin around the wound bleached grey. Then it turned green. And then the virus would spread to the rest of your body and your brain.

  Jay waited, his nerves shrieking. He felt like throwing up. His eyes stayed fixed on the wound. But it didn’t change.

  Then Dad came back into the trailer. ‘They’ve gone,’ he said. ‘Just driven off.’ He knelt down to look at Jay’s arm.

  ‘Dad, I don’t think I’m infected,’ said Jay, his voice shaky, but with a hint of hope.

  ‘Told you that antiseptic would do the trick,’ said Dad. ‘That stuff would kill anything.’

  They waited some more. Still nothing happened.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Dad finally. ‘Panic over. You’re not one of them green freaks.’

  Jay took in his first, deep breath for what seemed like ages. He let it out in a long, shuddering sigh of relief. ‘I was really scared.’

  ‘No need to be scared now,’ said Dad.

  ‘I’m not!’ Jay protested. He stopped hugging his arm and stood up. He even managed a feeble grin.

  ‘Hey, Dad,’ he said, ‘you were a hero out there, catching that girl. I bet her parents didn’t even say thanks, did they?’

  Dad said, ‘No, but then, it was my fault she went hyper in the first place. I gave her a bottle of fizzy pop.’

  ‘What? Her dad told us it was poison to Verdans! Why’d you give her that?’

  Dad shrugged. ‘I didn’t think, did I?’

  Jay sat in silence for a minute. Then he said, ‘Dad, have you ever heard of Cultivars?’

  ‘Culti-whats?’ said Dad.

  ‘Cultivars,’ said Jay. ‘Viridian said he was one, that they’re the future. Do you know what he meant?’

  ‘No idea,’ said Dad. ‘He was some kind of psycho, if you ask me. I’ve never seen Verdans behave like that.’

  ‘I know,’ said Jay, nodding.

  ‘Well, I’m not taking any more chances,’ said Dad ‘I’m going to put up that sign – “No Green Freaks Served Here”.’

  ‘Dad,’ protested Jay, wearily.

  ‘All right,’ said Dad. ‘“Sorry, No Verdans Served Here”. That polite enough for you? But I definitely don’t want any more of ’em stopping at my Diner.’

  Chapter 3

  A few weeks later, Jay walked down the slip road carrying the ‘DINER OPEN’ sign.

  A lorry thundered past, making him stagger in its slipstream. But after that, there were big spaces between cars and lorries. There hadn’t been much traffic yesterday, or the day before.

  He was setting the sign up on the dusty verge when he noticed Dad’s other sign, the one warning Verdans not to stop at the Diner. Someone had painted big red childish letters all over it:

  POLUTORS LIVE HERE

  Jay decided to take the sign back to the Diner. But as he was walking back across the wasteland with it, he heard Dad yelling, ‘Jay!’

  Jay dumped the sign and started running. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m out the back!’ came Dad’s voice, shaking with anger.

  Jay skidded round the back and found Dad staring at the trailer. The same person had painted graffiti there too, low down on its gleaming aluminium side. This time it said:

  POLUTERS MUST DIE

  Dad was so choked with fury he could hardly speak. ‘Look what they’ve done. I’m never going to get that off.’

  The rusty old shipping container had the same words scrawled all over it. But Dad didn’t care about that. All he cared about was the Silver Bullet.

  Dad spat out, ‘Wait until I get my hands on him!’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That Viridian kid of course. He must have done it last night. I never heard a thing.’

  ‘Neither did I,’ said Jay. He thought about how easily Viridian had snaked through that ivy. He could slither through the thistles and stinging nettles behind the trailer without making a sound.

  Jay imagined Viridian, in the dead of night, peering through the windows of the trailer with those spooky green eyes, watching them sleeping.

  ‘There’s no proof that it’s Viridian,’ said Jay, trying to calm himself and Dad down.

  Dad was too angry to reason with. ‘Whose side are you on?’ he snapped. ‘Why do you think it’s not him?’

  Jay said, lamely, ‘He’d do better graffiti than that. And he wouldn’t spell “polluters” wrong.’

  But he didn’t dare tell Dad the real reason. Viridian hadsaid he and Jay shared a bond, blood to blood. And he’d said that Jay was worthy of being a Cultivar. J
ay was flattered – and curious.

  It’s the biggest adventure ever.

  He hadn’t been able to block Viridian’s words out. They’d replayed constantly in his head, giving him a peculiar tingle of excitement.

  ‘Well, I’m sure it’s him,’ Dad was insisting. ‘The kid needs a good kick up his green backside. Anyway, who’s he calling Polluters? I recycle, don’t I, if I remember?’

  Jay shook his head. ‘Verdans think humans are polluting the planet just by existing, just by breathing.’

  ‘Well, what are they going to do about it? They can’t wipe us out.’

  Jay kept quiet. He was thinking about Viridian’s alien eyes and the deep green fires inside them. Viridian’s absolute certainty that being Verdan was the only choice.

  ‘Anyway, I thought Verdans never cause trouble?’ said Dad, as if he was reading Jay’s mind. ‘Why’s this Viridian kid so different?’

  Jay’s mobile rang before he could answer. It was inside the Diner and he ran to answer it. Dad called after him, ‘If that’s the school, you can tell them to shove it!’

  The new term had started, but Dad had told the school Jay was sick. They kept phoning up, demanding doctor’s notes. But Jay had wild dreams of never going back. He saw his future differently now, as a young entrepreneur. He and Dad would build up a business together. They’d have Diners all along the motorway. Rainbirds Diners would go national, global! And he and Dad would be millionaires.

  But it wasn’t the school on the phone. It was Gran.

  Jay answered, and immediately started apologizing. Gran only lived a mile away in Franklin, and she had brought Jay up, looking after him when Dad was away. But since Dad had come back, and they started up the Diner, Jay hadn’t been to see her.

  ‘Sorry, Gran,’ he gabbled into the phone. ‘We’ve been really busy here at the Diner.’

  Jay was lying. The truth was that, in the last few weeks, business had gone scarily slack. Because of Dad’s sign no Verdans had stopped. That wouldn’t have mattered if the human truckers had kept coming. But the big delivery lorries they drove were disappearing fast from the motorway. And many of the remaining truckers were Verdans.

  ‘Gran, I’ve been meaning to come and see you,’ Jay went on. ‘I’ll come as soon as I can, I promise.’

  Jay steeled himself for a telling off. But Gran wasn’t mad at him. In fact she sounded really cheery. She said, ‘Jay, I’ve got some good news. I’ve got the virus.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve got the virus,’ repeated Gran. ‘I’m a Verdan now.’

  ‘How’d that happen, Gran?’ squawked Jay, his voice cracked with shock and disbelief. ‘Were you gardening? I told you to be careful!’

  ‘It wasn’t an accident,’ said Gran. ‘I had the injection. And it’s the best thing I ever did. My arthritis has disappeared, no pain or stiffness at all…’

  Jay wasn’t listening. He raced out to Dad, the phone clutched in his hand. ‘Gran’s got the virus,’ he panted. She got herself injected with it.’

  Dad grabbed the phone and barked into it, ‘Have you lost your mind?’

  But Gran had ended the call.

  ‘Right,’ said Dad. ‘We’re going round there, see what this nonsense is all about.’

  Jay said, ‘Do you think that’s a good idea, Dad? We’ll have to close the Diner.’

  Dad was already in a bad mood, because of the damage to his precious Silver Bullet. And he didn’t get on with Gran anyway. Gran was Jay’s mum’s mum. Mum had died after a crash when she was riding pillion on Dad’s motorbike, and Gran blamed Dad.

  Dad was already on the way to the van, and Jay had to sprint to keep up with him. Dad leapt into the driving seat, Jay scrambled in beside him and with a screech of tyres they roared off, towards Franklin.

  They had to pass Jay’s school. Jay got ready to duck down in his seat. But then he saw he didn’t need to. There were a few cars in the car park but no school buses, no kids pouring up the drive.

  Jay thought, Where is everybody?

  They passed the Agricultural Research Station on the right, its three huge glass eco-domes set back from the road behind trees. As usual, a Security Guard sat in a little hut just inside the entrance and lifted barriers to let vehicles in and out. Jay was surprised to see that he was a Verdan.

  But he didn’t have time to think about that because Dad was pulling onto Gran’s estate. They skidded to a stop in front of her house.

  As Jay got out, he suddenly felt the back of his neck prickle. His head whisked round and, in the house opposite, he saw a green hand let a curtain fall.

  Dad had gone striding up the garden path. Now he was hammering on Gran’s front door. More curtains twitched in the houses across the road.

  ‘I’ve got a key,’ Jay said quickly. He let them both inside.

  The house was very silent and still. The air smelled stale.

  Gran wasn’t downstairs. Jay clattered up the stairs yelling ‘Gran!’ He flung open bedroom doors and noticed, with a sudden pang, that Gran had kept his bedroom just as he left it, weeks ago, when he’d gone to live with Dad. As if she thought Jay might soon be coming back.

  ‘She’s probably out in the garden,’ Jay told himself.

  Gran was a mad-keen gardener and spent ages outside, weeding and lopping off straggly bits of plants.

  ‘Whoa!’ said Jay as he pushed open the back door. Over the summer, since he’d been away, Gran’s garden had gone berserk. It was more like the wilderness around the Silver Bullet than Gran’s neat and tidy plot. Big tough weeds had taken over, suffocating smaller plants. Yellow slimy toadstools had killed the grass on her lawn. Spiny brambles crept over the ground, hooking themselves into her hedges, strangling her tender flowers.

  It just wasn’t like Gran to let her garden get out of control like this.

  ‘Gran?’ shouted Jay as he pushed his way through the weeds. Dad was behind him, but he had gone quiet, as if he was nervous about what they would find.

  ‘You out here?’ called Jay. A bramble looped round his leg. Jay swore. Had it scratched him? Then a green hand slid out of some tall purple thistles, and Jay yelled out in alarm.

  ‘It’s only me,’ said Gran, and as Jay stood, frozen, she squatted down, disentangled the bramble and freed it. Jay saw how quickly and easily she moved now, how supple she was, like a cat.

  ‘Hi, sweetheart,’ she said to Jay. Then her eyes slid away again, as if she wasn’t that interested.

  Jay stared at her Verdan face, her green skin, clammy with water drops, her hair fluffed out around her head like green candyfloss. She wasn’t Gran any more. She was one of them.

  He couldn’t find a single thing to say.

  Gran had moved away to find some sunlight. She was soaking up the rays, her eyes closed as if she was in a trance.

  Dad wasn’t speechless. He stuck his fierce face into Gran’s. ‘What did you do this for?’ he demanded.

  Gran said serenely, ‘Do you mind moving back a bit, you’re shading my light.’ Then, ignoring Dad, she added, ‘Join us, Jay. Get the injection.’

  ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this,’ said Dad.

  ‘It’s the right thing to do,’ she continued, calmly. ‘I feel so at peace. It’s such a pure and beautiful way to live.’

  ‘Stop preaching all that Verdan crap,’ said Dad. ‘He doesn’t want to know.’

  Jay knew this was heading for a storm. Every time Dad and Gran met, it started off politely enough, for Jay’s sake. But sooner or later, they’d forget about Jay and end up screaming at each other.

  Dad would shout, ‘You never give me a chance, do you?’ Gran would call him a loser, Dad would call her an old witch. Then, always, it would end with that terrible accusation: ‘If my daughter hadn’t met you, she’d be alive now.’ And Dad would yell, ‘You know it wasn’t my fault!’ Then he’d go slamming furiously out the door.

  Jay loved Gran. She’d always been there when Dad hadn’t. She was reliable, solid as a
rock. But he loved his wayward dad too.

  ‘How could you do this?’ Dad was fuming at Gran. ‘Become one of those green freaks, spouting their crazy propaganda!’

  Gran’s response was worse than any row. She just moved off to find a sunnier spot, as though she’d forgotten them. As if Jay didn’t matter any more.

  But there was something Gran did care about. As she was sliding off into the greenery, she pounced, with horrible catlike quickness, on an upturned plastic bucket.

  Gran lifted it up. Underneath was a sick-looking pot plant. Instead of being bristling and bright green, it was pale yellow with a long floppy stem and two droopy yellow leaves.

  ‘Oh, no!’ Gran seemed really upset.

  ‘What’s the matter, Gran?’ said Jay. But Gran didn’t even glance in his direction.

  ‘Poor little etiolated plant,’ she crooned. ‘Growing in the dark like that! No wonder you’re poorly. Never mind, we’ll find you a nice patch of sunlight.’

  And she went off, cradling the plant and talking to it tenderly.

  Instantly Jay’s mind flashed back to when he was about three years old. He’d had tonsillitis, it hurt to swallow. His throat felt like it was full of barbed wire. Gran had gone specially to the supermarket to get him chocolate ice cream. She’d said, ‘We’ll soon make you better.’ Then she’d fed him the ice cream, spoon by spoon.

  ‘Gran,’ whispered Jay forlornly, gazing after her.

  Now he felt really scared. In his heart, he simply didn’t trust Dad to look after him. Dad never had before. But, until now, there had always been Gran.

  Dad grabbed him. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’re not staying here. She might try to give you the virus.’

  Jay took a last look back. But, in all that green, he couldn’t tell which was the garden and which was Gran.

  In the van, Jay found himself thinking forbidden thoughts again. Would it really be so bad to be a Verdan? He’d never seen Gran looking so calm and healthy and happy.

  If we were all Verdans, thought Jay, there’d be no more rows. We’d all get on really well. And we’d be saving the planet at the same time.

  But there was no way Jay could confess his thoughts to Dad. Dad was saying, ‘It’s like she’s a robot, brainwashed or something. One thing’s for sure. You can’t live with her any more.’