DustRoad

by Tom Huddleston

  They drew to a halt between the buildings and The Five stared down in silence, lost in thoughts Joe couldn’t begin to guess. Then as one, they moved toward the steps, striding down and out of the train car. Kara and Joe looked at one another, and followed.

  A warm wind swept across the plain as behind them the convoy rumbled to a halt. The Five marched up to a rusty red door, looking at one another almost nervously. Then Scar-eye reached out and knocked, the dull thump sounding hollow in the building beyond.

  For a long time nothing moved; there was no sound except the tick of cooling metal and the whisper of the wind. He knocked again and the sound echoed back through the building, rebounding from hard concrete walls.

  “Perhaps he’s gone,” one of the men said.

  “Or he’s dead.”

  “Unlikely.”

  “That old villain could survive a nuclear blast.”

  “Wait, I heard something.”

  “Someone’s coming.”

  They fell silent and Joe heard shuffling footsteps on the other side of the door.

  “Hello?” a cracked voice called. “Who’s there?”

  The Five seemed to draw a single breath.

  “It’s us.”

  “We’ve come back.”

  “Let us in.”

  There was another tense silence.

  “No,” the voice said at last. “G-go away, boys. I don’t want to see anyone.”

  The Five glanced at one another.

  “Open up, old man.”

  “You must’ve looked out.”

  “You know we’re not alone.”

  “We can break this door down if we have to.”

  “Please, Father.”

  Joe looked at Kara in surprise. They heard the clunk of a lock and the sound of bars being drawn back.

  The door creaked open and a wrinkled face squinted up into the light. The man was crooked and white-haired, dressed in a dirty white coat with metallic instruments stuffed in the pockets. His feet were bare and filthy.

  “Y-you always refused to say that word,” he said, his voice quavering. “You said it was sentimental and incorrect.”

  “Well, now you’re the only one left.”

  “So maybe it fits.”

  The old man’s lip trembled. “Why are you here? Why have you come back?”

  The Five stood over him, their expressions blank.

  “The transmission array.”

  “Is it still working?”

  “We need to use it.”

  The old man spluttered, pushing his spectacles up his nose. “I haven’t powered it up in y-years,” he said. “It’s on a solar circuit – there’s no reason it wouldn’t still run, but why do you…”

  “Never you mind.”

  “That’s our business.”

  “We just need to— What was that?”

  They jerked suddenly upright, looking past the old man into the building beyond. Joe had heard something too – a faint clang, like a metal door slamming shut.

  Scar-eye stepped forward, grabbing the old man by the collar. “Who’s in there? What are you hiding?”

  The old man kicked as his feet left the ground. “Rats,” he wheezed. “Must be … rats. No one … here but … me.”

  Scar-eye let go and the old man slid to the floor, rubbing his throat.

  “You know what’ll happen if you lie to us,” one of the brothers said.

  “Now go and get the power on.”

  “Get the circuits warmed up.”

  “We’ll join you after nightfall.”

  They turned, marching back towards the train car. The old man staggered inside and Joe felt a rush of pity.

  “You shouldn’t feel bad for him.” One of The Five had turned back, the one with the birthmark on his wrist. “He did terrible things here. Things you’d barely believe.”

  “What is this place?” Kara asked. “Did you used to work here or something?”

  He let out a long sigh. “In a manner of speaking. We grew up here, you see. This was our home.”

  Joe looked at the desert stretching on every side, at the strange metal shapes rising from the earth.

  “It was a research centre initially,” the man went on. “Back in the Tech Age it was called the Very Large Array, a radio telescope built to look into the farthest corners of the universe. That’s what these machines are for. They’re called radar dishes, used to send and receive information over huge distances, even through atmospheric interference.”

  Joe felt something chime in the back of his mind, a story he’d been told once. “So that’s why you’ve come here?” he asked. “To use these … dishes?”

  The man nodded. “That’s right. We’re going to send a very important message.”

  10

  The Bedroom

  “You really think you can make them work?” Kara asked, looking doubtfully at the steel structures rising around them. “You think you can use these … radiar things to warn the Mariners?”

  “Obviously it’s a long shot,” Nate admitted, the firelight flickering on his face. “But I did pretty good in electronics class – I know how a radio works. Anyway, this might be our only chance. We have to at least try.”

  The sun had set behind the mountains and dusk was drawing across the plateau. Inside a circle of trucks a fire had been built, a stack of blazing deadwood where the soldiers gathered as the day’s warmth drained into the sand. The train car gleamed in the firelight and, as Kara watched, the door slid wide and The Five emerged, tall in silver-studded suits and brown-leather boots.

  “If they catch us, that’ll be it,” she whispered. “They’ll lock us up, or worse. No more comfy guest room, no more chances to figure out what their plans are.”

  “And how’s that going so far?” Nate asked, a hint of bitterness creeping into his voice. “All I see is you cosying up to them, acting like you’re on their side. You haven’t even learned their names.”

  “I’m not sure they have them,” Joe put in. “They call each other brother, and everyone else just calls them The Five. But I actually spotted a couple of little differences between them. The one who told us about the dishes has a birthmark on his wrist, just here. And there’s one with a scar over his eye – he’s mean, he scares me.”

  “They all scare me,” Nate muttered. “I don’t know how you can separate them.”

  “We could give them names of our own,” Joe suggested. “To remind us which one’s which. The birthmarked one can be Dash, because it looks like Morse code. And the mean one, let’s call him Scar.”

  “Yes, that fits,” Kara said with a shiver. She studied The Five through the flames, seated in a line sipping beer from glass bottles. “The one in the middle should be Grey, because if you look super close he’s got a couple of grey hairs, just at the sides here. And the one next to him, he’s always cracking his fingers. So let’s call him Knuckles.”

  “What about the last one?” Joe asked. “Does it look to you like his nose got broken once and didn’t totally heal up, right?”

  Kara nodded. “How about Flatface? Or Punchbag?”

  “Boxer,” Nate said. “My uncle had a dog called that. It was stupid and dangerous, just like—”

  He broke off, hearing shouts across the fire. A fight had started, two soldiers scuffling in the dust while the others stood round and cheered. Kara saw Lynx and the Wildcats among them, laughing as one of the men shoved the other back into the fire and he screeched, batting at his blazing clothes.

  But he rose with a knife in his hand, lunging at his opponent. Soon there was blood on the sand.

  Kara sat back down, shaking her head ruefully. She’d seen worse most days in the Shanties. But Nate stayed on his feet, looking queasy as the loser’s body was dragged away between the trucks.

  “These people are awful,” he said. “I’ll do anything it takes. I don’t care if they catch us, we have to warn the Mariners.”

  One by one the stars came out, prickling the des
ert sky. Kara remembered what Dash, the birthmarked one, had told her – that the dishes had been used to look at the stars and the planets and the spaces between. She wondered what people had discovered, out there in the dark.

  Then Nate put a hand on her arm and she turned. The Five had left their seats by the fire, moving silently towards the concrete building. One tugged the door open and Kara watched as they vanished inside.

  Across the fire the Wildcats lay flat on their backs, passing a bottle. But they weren’t paying attention to anyone but each other so Kara climbed quietly to her feet, following Nate to the door. They slipped inside, the hinges groaning as Joe pushed it shut, leaving them marooned in darkness.

  “Torch,” Kara cursed. “Why do I always forget to bring a torch?”

  “Like this?” Joe asked, a beam of white light leaping from a tiny flashlight in his hand. “I rescued it from my life jacket before that lion boy stole it. I thought it might come in useful.”

  The room in which they stood was strewn with debris; there were desks piled against the wall and the floor was littered with paper, all printed with tiny letters and symbols Kara couldn’t begin to decipher. On the far side was a door marked AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY, and Joe switched off the torch as they inched through into a long stone corridor. At the far end they could see light and hear voices – The Five, not too far ahead.

  “Stay back,” Kara whispered. “We can’t let them see us.”

  “But we can’t let them get away either,” Nate insisted. “I reckon this place is bigger than it looks from outside.”

  His hunch was soon proved right, as they came to a set of stone steps winding deep into the earth. The voices faded and Nate hurried them along, taking the steps two at a time. At the bottom was another corridor, the wind gusting hollow through steel ventilation shafts. They passed empty offices on either side with more papers scattered everywhere, yellowed and curling. Then suddenly Kara saw movement and grabbed Joe’s arm. “Over there, quick!”

  The torch beam flashed across cracked plaster and broken furniture, and just as it hit the corner of the room Kara saw a large shape ducking out of sight, a figure in a black coat darting through a second door. “Who’s there?” she demanded. “Show yourself!”

  “Shush!” Nate hissed. “What if it’s The Five? They’ll catch us.”

  “Why would they be creeping around in the dark?” Kara objected. “Anyway it wasn’t dressed like them – it had a flappy sort of jacket thing and long hair.”

  “Remember before,” Joe said, “when The Five asked that old man if there was someone else here? I think he was lying.”

  “Me too,” Kara agreed. “This’d make a pretty good hideout if someone didn’t want to be found.”

  “Well if they don’t want to be found, let’s not find them,” Nate said. “We’re here for a reason, remember? We mustn’t get distracted.”

  They returned to the corridor but now they’d lost all sign of The Five – the subterranean bunker was utterly silent. They came to a junction, three corridors branching from the main one. Nate got down on his knees, searching for any sign of The Five’s passage. But there was too much debris, piles of rubble and flakes of paint and more scattered papers.

  “What do we do now?” he asked. “Split up?”

  “Don’t be crazy,” Kara snorted. “Not with that … whoever it was lurking about. This was your plan, so pick a direction and let’s go.”

  Nate inspected each of the corridors, racked with indecision. “That one,” he said at last, indicating the right-hand way. “Look, this sign says B-O-R and I think that’s a T, it might have been ‘Laboratories’. The transmission array could be nearby.”

  “That’s a lot of mights and could-bes,” Kara said. “But sure.”

  At the end of the hall was a heavy door – they had to work together to haul it open, and when they did a blast of stale air hissed out. A plaque read “Laboratory C – Protective Clothing Must Be Worn”, but the place had clearly been abandoned years ago. The floors were tiled beneath layers of dust, the walls stacked with metal tables and wheeled gurneys. In the torchlight Kara saw steel tanks and rubber hoses, trays heaped with surgical tools and bandages. She pocketed some, just in case.

  The next room was a storage area, with rows of shelves piled with crates and caskets and containers. Joe jumped back with a shout as two green eyes fell on them, swimming in clear liquid.

  The jar was bigger than Kara’s head, a pale, embryonic form pressed up against the glass. She saw clawed hands with three fingers each, a toothless mouth and tufts of black hair. The eyes stared lifelessly into the room, as they must have done for decades. Beside it was another jar and another wrinkled shape, and beyond it another.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she whispered shakily. “This is horrible.”

  They hurried between the shelves towards another door, emerging with relief into a white-walled chamber. Nate shone the torch around, letting out a low whistle of disbelief.

  “Just when you thought this place couldn’t get any creepier.”

  Standing in a neat row against the far wall were five small beds, their white sheets turned down. Beside each bed was a table containing a lamp and an empty water glass, and fixed to the headboards were small metal plaques with numbers stencilled on them, counting from 001 to 005.

  “I feel like Snow White,” Kara said, opening a closet to reveal five white coats hanging above five pairs of shiny black shoes. She unhooked one of the coats – it was too short for her, though not by much. Children had lived here, she realised. Children who had grown up to be men.

  “I think we should leave,” Joe said. “This place gives me the heebie-j—”

  A door clanged. It was followed by a voice in the adjoining corridor, a low, tuneless humming.

  Nate looked around in panic. In the back corner a small door stood open and he ran for it, Joe and Kara close behind. Inside was a mirror, a toilet and a sink – but no way out and nowhere to hide. Kara froze in the doorway as the humming grew louder. “I think it’s one of The Five.”

  “I don’t care who it is,” Nate hissed. “We can’t let them see us.”

  “But if they find us all hiding in here they’ll know we were up to something,” Kara said. “I’m going to stay and make sure they don’t.”

  “Kara, no!” Nate protested. “They’ll suspect something, they’ll—”

  “Hush!” she ordered and pulled the bathroom door shut, turning just as a tall figure ducked through the far doorway, stopping in mid-hum.

  “Kara,” he said in surprise, shining a torch on her. “What are you doing here?” In the pale light she could just make out the birthmark on his wrist. Dash, Joe had called him.

  Kara gulped and tried to look innocent. “Just … um … having a look round,” she said breezily. “The others went to bed but I couldn’t sleep. I remembered what you told us, that this used to be a science place. I’ve always liked science. It interests me.”

  “Really?” Dash said, lowering the torch. “I assumed Joe was the academic one. You struck me more as a woman of action.”

  Kara blushed. “Well, a person can be lots of different things, can’t they?”

  Dash pursed his lips, considering this. “Yes, I suppose they can.”

  “I saw lots of offices,” Kara said. “And the labotter … latobo … the labs. But what’s this place?”

  Dash looked around. “Haven’t you guessed? This was our bedroom. My brothers and me. Look, this was my bed, right on the end. Number five. Last of the litter.”

  “So your parents were scientists?” Kara asked. “That man, is he really your father?”

  “One of them,” Dash said. “It’s … complicated. We’re not like you, Kara. We’re not like anyone in the world, as far as we know. We had three fathers, and seven mothers. We’re clones.”

  Kara had heard the word before but she couldn’t remember where; in one of Joe’s stories most likely. “Our fathers were biologists,” D
ash went on, “and two of our mothers as well. They took their genetic material and blended it, taking the best from each – one’s strength, another’s height, another’s agility. They were all highly intelligent so they knew we would be too. Then they injected that blended material into five different women – actually more, but some of their attempts failed.”

  Kara thought of the embryos in the jars and shuddered.

  “We were the five that worked, the ones who came out just how they wanted. Five perfect babies. We look the same, sound the same. We even think the same. We are uniquely identical.”

  “Not quite,” Kara said, glancing down at his wrist.

  Dash’s face reddened and he covered his birthmark with his sleeve. “A tiny deviation. A glitch in the cloning process. It means nothing.”

  “So what happened here?” Kara asked. “Where did the scientists go? And why did you leave?”

  Dash hesitated, then he sat down on the foot of the bed. “Our parents’ research was funded by a militia group,” he explained. “Part of the old US Army that had gone rogue and founded their own separatist state, down near the Mexican border. Our parents started out making medicines for them but the militia wanted more. They wanted weapons, so we were designed. We were made to be fast and smart, and we were. By age ten we could run a desert marathon, by fifteen we were performing major surgery. The militia didn’t need any more convincing. They asked our parents to make an army of us. You see, they had the same ambition we now have, to reunite this continent. But me and my brothers … well, we couldn’t allow it.”

  He looked up. “Can you imagine it, Kara? We’d been told we were special, that there was no one like us anywhere. Then they said they were going to make more. Hundreds more. Thousands more. Even quicker, stronger, deadlier. We told our parents we wouldn’t have it, and we meant it. They resisted – they were more afraid of the militia than they were of us. So my brothers and me, we … dealt with them. We disarmed them, stripped them and drove them into the desert. We had to.”