by Susan Gates
‘Eurgh!’
He sprang back, sour bile rising in his throat. There was a Verdan down there. But unlike the others, she was chained to a rock. It looked like she’d been down here longer than the other prisoners. Her limbs were like soft yellow jelly: she couldn’t lift them. The fungus from the mine had invaded her weakened body. Spores, like white dust, puffed out of her skin.
Disgust struggled with pity inside Jay’s mind. ‘Why’s she chained up?’ he asked Gran. ‘Who is she?’
‘She’s an Immune Sympathiser. A traitor. Her punishment is death.’
‘What?’ said Jay. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘What’s she done?’
‘It must have been something bad,’ said Gran.
Fighting revulsion, Jay knelt down. ‘What’s your name?’
The prisoner tried to lift her head. She couldn’t. When she spoke, fungus spores came in clouds out of her mouth. Her voice was so feeble, Jay had to bend closer. She smelled like mouldy graveyards.
‘Teal,’ she whispered.
Her pale yellow eyes were glazed over. She was dying and Jay knew there was nothing he could do. Even if he could free her from her shackles, there was no way he could get her up to the surface.
He let go of Gran’s wrist and got the other torch out of his backpack. He switched it on and placed it on the rock near her.
Teal turned her head towards it and it seemed, for a moment, to bring life back to her ravaged face. But it was only her eyes reflecting its beam.
Jay knew it wouldn’t save her; it was sunlight Verdans needed. But it might comfort her, down here in the dark.
Jay got up. His whole body felt heavy, weighed down with despair.
Then he ordered himself, Get moving. You’ve got to find Dad.
Gran bent to pick up the torch. ‘No, leave it for her,’ said Jay angrily.
Teal’s eyes were closed now. She wasn’t moving at all. But he wasn’t going to let Gran steal her light.
Jay grasped Gran’s hand. She tried to pull away again.
‘I’m not an Immune, right?’ lied Jay, desperately. ‘Soon as we get out of here, I’m going to get myself injected with the virus. So you’re not in any trouble, Gran.’
‘Will you tell the Cultivars?’ said Gran. ‘Will you tell them I’m not an Immune Sympathiser?’
‘Course I will. I’ll tell them as soon as we get out of here.’
Together they started the long climb up the limestone slope, with Jay’s one remaining torch lighting the way.
Jay didn’t look back. He forced the image of Teal out of his mind. It was one burden too many.
Instead, he asked, ‘Gran, why do Verdans hate Immunes so much?’ He was desperate to know. It was terrifying when Cultivars wanted to kill you and Verdans hated you and you didn’t know why.
But Gran just repeated, ‘All Immunes are enemies.’
Jay sighed, looked upwards. They didn’t have far to go. He’d worried that Gran wouldn’t make the climb. But, even Etiolated, she moved creepily fast. Springing from block to block like a green monkey, more agile than she’d ever been as a human.
Jay caught her up, just below the trapdoor.
Cautiously, he tried lifting the door. He’d already decided it was probably locked. So when it opened easily, it took him by surprise.
It was grey outside but daylight hurt his eyes after so long underground. His heart thumping, Jay gently lowered the trapdoor again, in case any guards saw.
‘Keep quiet, Gran!’ he hissed, a finger to his lips. He didn’t want her shouting out to the guards, like she had before.
But he needn’t have worried. Gran was lapping at a pool in the rock, lost in her own Verdan world, where only water, sunshine and nutrients mattered.
Gran hadn’t felt any pity for the dying Teal. She didn’t seem to care about finding Dad.
Jay slumped down on a rock to think. He had no idea what was waiting out there. He felt more alone than he’d ever done in his life.
He looked down into the dark cave, far below them. The lantern had gone out. He saw the torch he’d left for Teal, its white beam shining out like a star. But he knew the other prisoners would soon be slithering and staggering over to take her light for themselves, like Gran had tried to.
It hardly mattered, because Jay instinctively knew that Teal had died. She didn’t need the light any more.
Jay suddenly had to get out. Not caring who saw, he flung the trapdoor wide open. He’d rather take his chances with the Cultivars than stay in this hellish prison.
He climbed out, blinking in the cloudy daylight, pulling Gran behind him. ‘Get ready to run,’ he said.
But there was nobody there.
He rubbed his eyes, stared round again. But he couldn’t see a living soul, human, Verdan or Cultivar.
Chapter 9
Jay crouched with Gran in tall grass beside the trapdoor. He made a spy hole between the green stems.
‘There’s nobody here,’ he whispered to Gran.
He wasn’t in the scrubland anymore, with those strange, round hills. He seemed to be in some kind of industrial estate – there were several of them on the edges of Franklin. But the whole place looked derelict. Grass was growing in the car parks. The units had broken windows with green shoots of ivy sprouting through. A fork lift truck was rusting away.
Jay said to Gran, ‘I thought you said there were guards. They left the trapdoor open. You could have escaped any time.’
‘Escaped?’ said Gran. She looked shocked and terrified at the very idea.
And Jay knew then why there were no guards, why the Cultivars could leave the door unlocked. The prisoners were so brainwashed and scared, they’d stay exactly where they were told.
‘Didn’t anyone even try to escape, Gran?’ said Jay.
Gran shook her head.
So why was Teal chained to a rock? wondered Jay, then blocked all thoughts of Teal out of his mind. Dad was his priority.
He stood up. No Cultivar ran out of the abandoned buildings, yelling, ‘Arrest the Immune!’ But why should they? Viridian had told them, weeks ago, that Jay was dead. They weren’t searching for him any more.
There must be other humans left in Franklin. Jay could just blend in with them. With any luck, no Cultivar would give him any trouble. And, if they did, he’d tell them, ‘Back off! Me and Viridian are good mates. Blood brothers. He’ll tell you so himself.’
Jay scanned the skyline, trying to get his bearings. It had stopped raining and the sun had slid out between grey clouds.
‘We’re going to get Dad now, Gran,’ said Jay, without looking round.
An image flashed through Jay’s mind, of Dad drowning in dark, swirling flood water. He crushed it, brutally. Instead he constructed another picture in his head. In this one, Dad was alive. He’d escaped the flood and he was sitting in the van, scoffing sardines. When Jay turned up he’d grin and say, ‘Took your time, didn’t you?’
But Jay had no idea how to get to the mine entrance from here. He wasn’t even sure where he was now. Dad and he must have walked several kilometres underground to get to the cave.
Then, staring over the low buildings on the industrial estate, Jay saw the two Gothic towers of the Victorian town hall rising over the trees. That was in the centre of Franklin, in the market square. If he headed for those two towers he could head out again to the plot by the motorway where the Diner had been. From there he was fairly certain he could retrace the route Dad had driven to the mine entrance.
It would be a long hike. He’d need supplies from the shipping container. Dad had been pretty sure that would have survived the blast.
‘You ready, Gran?’ said Jay, and turned round.
Gran wasn’t there.
For one horrible second, he thought she’d climbed back down into the cave to serve her prison sentence. But then he saw her, in a wilderness of plants, soaking up the autumn sun. She looked totally at home, almost lost in brambles, blackberry juice smearing her gr
een skin, part of the plant world now, not Jay’s.
Jay persisted: ‘You coming with me to find Dad?’
Gran opened her green, glowing eyes. She said, ‘I want to stay here.’
Jay didn’t know whether to be sad or angry. He said, ‘Well, I’m going. When I find Dad, we’ll come back for you, right?’
Gran didn’t even answer. She closed her eyes again and lifted her face to the sun’s watery rays, alien, unreachable.
Jay started off. He hadn’t wanted to leave Gran behind. But part of him was relieved. For the first time in his life, he didn’t trust her.
‘She’s not Gran anymore,’ he told himself. ‘She’s a Verdan. She’ll betray you.’
It felt like a person he loved had been taken from him, forever.
Jay had only taken a few steps, when another thought hit him. He rushed back to the trap door and called into the dark, ‘The door’s open. You can just climb out of there!’
He looked down. He couldn’t see Teal’s torch beam any more. But there was a weak shaft of light from the open trap door that slanted down to the cave floor. Jay could see some prisoners standing in the patch of light, their blank faces staring up.
‘You can be free!’ Jay called to them. But they didn’t seem to understand what he was saying.
Sighing, Jay started off again. At least one question was settled. If he had the choice, which he didn’t, he wouldn’t want to be Verdan. And definitely not a Cultivar. Not after he’d seen how they treated their prisoners.
He headed for the town hall towers. He didn’t see any need to hide – an Immune didn’t look different from any other human. But, at the same time, it’d be stupid to draw attention to himself. So when he got to a housing estate he kept a low profile, sneaked down back alleys full of wheelie bins. Accidentally he turned into a main street. He was about to duck back when he realized that there was no-one here.
The estate was like a ghost town. Every house seemed abandoned. Every garden was a wasteland of withered weeds.
Where is everyone? Jay thought.
Doors and windows were wide open. And, wherever the people were, they hadn’t gone by car. There were cars everywhere, in driveways, on the streets, even in the middle of the road. Jay peered into the open door of a four-wheel drive. Moss was growing on the seats, grass sprouting from the carpets. Bright green algae had invaded all the window and door seals.
Jay wandered into a house, through the open door. ‘Hello!’ he yelled. ‘Anybody home?’ His voice echoed eerily through the silent house. No-one replied.
Everything had just been left, as if Verdans had no use for all their previous possessions. There was an open laptop, its screen covered in dust. Jay tried to power it up. The screen stayed grey and lifeless.
He tried switching on the television, then the light – there was no electricity. He picked up their home phone. The line was dead. He turned on the taps. Dry gravel trickled out.
He wandered back into the living room, and wrote his name on a gritty table top, just to reassure himself he still existed.
He picked up a grey hoodie, thrown over a chair. It didn’t feel like stealing; Verdans didn’t need this stuff any more. It was far too big for him. But that was good. Jay tugged the hood over his face, let the sleeves dangle over his hands to hide his skin colour.
He probably didn’t need to do this. Just being human wasn’t a crime, was it? But somehow, he felt better disguised.
Jay tramped upstairs. Maybe there was something else he could use. He found a mobile and tried to turn it on, but it was dead too. Jay threw it back on the bed in disgust.
His guts clenched in panic at a sudden sound in all this deathly silence. A sort of whining noise, from downstairs. Cautiously Jay crept to the top of the stairs, looked down. A scruffy little dog was standing in the open front door.
‘Hey, boy!’ said Jay, relieved. He went clattering down, pleased to find another creature that hadn’t got the virus.
Jay sat down on the doorstep, scratched the small, scrawny terrier behind its ears.
‘Hey, boy,’ said Jay again, as the dog whined and licked his hands. ‘Did you live in this house?’
He’d probably been the family pet. But now his fur was matted and tangled with sticky burrs and twigs. It looked like the Verdans had walked away from their pets as well. It didn’t take a genius to work out why.
‘You’re an animal, a Polluter like me,’ said Jay. And, in the new Paradise on Earth, there was no room for dirty Polluters.
Jay told the dog, ‘You can come with me if you like. I’m off to find Dad. Then there’ll be three Polluters together. Us against the world!’
He stroked the fur on the dog’s head. It lunged and bit him. Snarling savagely, it clung on, trying to take a piece out of his hand.
‘Hey!’ shouted Jay, in shock and pain, trying to wrestle his hand free. But the family pet had gone feral, forced to hunt for food. And humans were just bigger, meatier prey.
Jay grabbed the dog’s collar with his free hand, twisting it tight. The dog had to open its mouth to breathe and Jay snatched his hand away.
He leapt up, looked round for a weapon in case the dog attacked again. He grabbed a stone garden gnome from beside the doorstep and raised it high above his head like a club. For a few seconds Jay and the dog snarled at each other like two wild beasts. Then the dog whimpered and slunk away into the bushes.
Panting, Jay found himself alone, holding a garden gnome high above his head. Suddenly embarrassed, even though there was no-one to see, he put the gnome carefully back beside the doorstep.
He looked at his hand and swore. Blood was trickling from two puncture wounds in the soft flesh between his thumb and first finger.
Red blood would give him away as human immediately. There was plenty of water around after the recent torrential rain, so Jay washed his hand in an overflowing bird bath. He went back into the kitchen and, wincing, wrapped up his injured hand in a tea towel.
He looked in the kitchen cupboards for food but there was nothing. So he ripped open a can of beans from his backpack and wolfed down the contents. He’d get more from the shipping container.
He checked himself in the hall mirror, made sure the hoodie top hid his face and the long sleeves his hands. Then he went out again onto those spooky, empty streets, heading towards Franklin town centre.
Jay took a short cut through an old graveyard. It seemed perfect for Verdans, with all its neglected corners choked with stinging nettles and huge willow trees shedding dead leaves in yellow drifts all over the tombs. But the graveyard, like everywhere else, was deserted.
Maybe the Verdans have moved out of town, to the countryside, thought Jay. Maybe they’re living in the woods and forests now.
But he couldn’t think where the humans had gone.
He turned left down an alley and emerged in the High Street. At last, he knew where he was. He was sure he’d see Verdans sitting at tables outside the Mineral Café, and maybe a few humans scattered around.
But there was no-one in the main street either. No-one sitting at the Mineral Café’s tables sipping nutrient smoothies. The Café had a ‘Closed’ sign on its door.
Jay felt like the guy in a horror film who wakes from a coma and finds he’s the only survivor in a creepily empty town where the road and buildings are crumbling and everything is gradually returning to wilderness.
Then he heard a growling of engines. He shrank back into the doorway of the Mineral Café. Three black armoured Humvees sped past in convoy, the first one flying a green flag on the bonnet. The convoy made a left turn, into a cobbled lane that led into the main square.
That was the way Jay was going. Before he reached the end of the cobbled lane Jay could see a sea of bobbing green heads. When he turned into the square, he murmured, ‘So this is where they all are.’
Every Verdan in Franklin seemed to be assembled here, in front of the town hall. Jay couldn’t see any humans at all.
He thought: S
urely I can’t be the only one left?
Jay ducked back into the street he’d come down. He’d totally underestimated the Verdan takeover. Now even his hoodie didn’t make him feel safe. It concealed his skin colour, the red-stained towel. But he still looked different. Verdans never covered their heads; they liked to soak up as much light as possible.
Jay peeped cautiously out to see what was going on. What were the crowd waiting for? They didn’t seem excited or joyous. They were meekly standing there, quiet and obedient.
Then he saw the taller, darker green Verdans, some standing like soldiers around the edge of the square, some moving among the crowd.
‘Cultivars,’ whispered Jay to himself. Now he knew why the Verdans were so subdued.
They’re scared, thought Jay.
He saw a Cultivar, pushing his way through the crowd. The Cultivar pounced on a Verdan man and began to drag him off. The nearest Verdans stared at the ground, as if it was none of their business. The Verdan didn’t struggle. His head drooping, his feet shuffling, he let himself be led away.
Suddenly, loud military music blasted out into the square. The Verdans all seemed to be gazing in one direction, at a stone balcony, on the first floor of the town hall.
The music stopped. A voice boomed out into the square. ‘Verdans, welcome Franklin’s Cultivar Commander.’
More and more Cultivars pushed through the crowd, very alert, towering above the ordinary Verdans, their green eyes flickering everywhere.
Viridian walked out onto the balcony, and the Verdans started shouting and cheering as if their lives depended upon it.
He was only just recognisable as the teenage boy Jay had met, that day at the Diner. He wore simple, loose, karate trousers. He was bare-footed, bare-chested. He was much taller, bulkier than before, his muscles more pumped up and sinewy. His veins stood out like creepers, writhing under his skin, carrying green sap around his body. His skin was so dark green it was almost purple.
He’d shaved his head and instead of hair, a Mohican crest of vicious, curved thorns ran from front to back over his skull and down along his spine.
