“Where are we?”
“Hang on,” he said. “I’m trying to work it out.”
“Let me,” Dolores said, snatching the map away from him. After studying it for a moment, she pointed to a thin line in the top right-hand corner. “This is the road we came in on.” She dragged her finger down, through the empty space. “This is the ground we covered.” She dragged her finger six inches to the right then straight down, until it hit the first of the concentric circles. “After we were attacked by that tree, we ran north for all we were worth, and then headed west to get here.”
“How do you keep track of all this?” I asked, unable to help myself.
She shrugged. “Always know where the sun is, and where it’s been. And using a compass helps.” She pointed again at the first of the unbroken lines. “This used to be the perimeter road for the facility.” She waved at the lush wall of vines. “And that used to be a cyclone-fence designed to keep people out.”
No matter how hard I looked at the wall of vines, I couldn’t see a hint of wire, apart from the spires that loomed over it. It was like an organic brick; no sunlight could be seen behind the wash of colour, just an unchanging mass.
“There should be guard towers and gates somewhere nearby,” Jackson said.
I looked at the map more closely. Every six-inches or so, the first of the unbroken circles was marked with a sequence of numbers. How they equate to guard towers or gates, I have no idea.
“Good one, Wacko,” Dolores said with a smile. “Let’s get a wriggle on – the day’s getting on.”
I realised that I’d completely lost track of how long we’d been out. I realised that the sun was already dipping to the west and shining in my eyes. I blinked hard.
“We’re heading back, right?” I asked Jackson and Dolores, voicing everyone’s concern at spending the night out there.
“Once we’ve figured out where we are, so we can get back here without fucking around,” Jackson said. “I have a feeling we’ll find what we’re looking for behind that wall.” He looked at Dolores. “Dolly? It’s time to go.”
She looked down at Lyndon, who still hadn’t turned away from the wall of vines. “Are you coming?”
He didn’t answer.
“You either tag along or you get left behind.”
He didn’t answer. Dolores nudged him with her boot.
“Didn’t you hear me? Shift your arse, boy.”
Lyndon still didn’t say anything, but he slowly got to his feet. His eyes were blank, his face slack. I felt a bit sorry for him. I still do, considering everything we’ve been through. But I didn’t want to molly-coddle him – we knew almost nothing about the jungle, apart from the fact that it was truly bizarre. We couldn’t waste any more time trying to accommodate Lyndon’s moods and panic.
“Okay, this way,” Dolores said, pointing north. “We’ll follow the road until we find a marker, then we’ll see what’s what.” We set off. Dolores, Jackson and I walked together; Lyndon followed us, dragging his feet. “Keep up, Lyndon,” Dolly yelled. “If we get separated, we’re in trouble.”
I turned back to him, hoping that he was dawdling because he was looking at the vines, studying them closely in an attempt to understand them. But his eyes were still just glazed and unseeing.
“Some people just can’t take it,” Jackson said.
“Sorry?”
“By ‘it’ he means the world,” Dolores explained. “Not everyone has met one of those things, you know – you’d be surprised how many people have never seen one in the flesh.”
“Story of my life.”
Jackson smiled at me. “Yeah, but you used to work with animals. Nothing’s quite so mean and ornery as Mother Nature, no matter if it’s a mouse or a monster. If you’d spent your life in a lab, and then gone straight to a camp…” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, gesturing at Lyndon, “…it’s no wonder that you’d find the world a horrible place, once you realise what it’s really like.”
“Huh, I never thought of it like that.”
We kept walking, following the almost imperceptible curve of the road. For a while, none of us spoke. It was like we were all catching our breath, now that we were doing something as ordinary as walking down a road. My shock slowly wore off, and my desire to help was returning. At some point, I decided that I might as well take some samples myself, seeing as though Lyndon was next-to-useless. After all, we needed to bring something back to camp – analysing cuttings from overgrown gums wouldn’t get us very far.
“Hang on,” I said to the others as I veered off the road. I rooted around in the undergrowth until I found a branch that I hoped would be long enough. Holding it out in front of me like a joust, I ran at the wall. “Here goes nothing.”
The branch penetrated the mess of vines, the last two metres of it disappearing into the dense vegetation. Some of the flowers stirred, some drooped, some stayed still. None of them tried to have a go at me. I pushed harder on the branch. It hit something solid and unmoving and then stuck fast. I tried jerking it back and forth, with little luck. The vines themselves coiled and slithered, but none of them reached for me or tried to devour the branch.
“I think we’re okay,” I said.
Dolores and Jackson laughed.
“Good thinking.”
“Nice one.”
“Aw, shucks, thanks,” I said, playing it up.
Lyndon didn’t say anything.
“Give me a hand here,” I said to Jackson as I dumped my pack to the ground, pulled out a bundle of specimen bags and thrust them at him. “Can I borrow your knife?” I asked, as I plucked out a pair of work gloves and slipped them on.
“Sure.”
He passed it over and I started cutting flowers from the vines, carefully placing each one in the specimen bags that Jackson obligingly held open.
“I’ll leave you guys to it,” Dolores said, “and take a look further down the road.”
Jackson and I mumbled at her, not looking up from our work. I had to concentrate; some of the vines proved tough to saw through, some impossible. A few turned to mush as soon as I touched them. I cursed Lyndon – I had no idea how many samples to take. Six? Ten? I’m no botanist…
“I think that’ll do,” I said when I’d bagged up a dozen different and equally fascinating flowers.
Jackson smiled at me encouragingly. “You’re the boss.”
“Like hell I am – lead on, soldier boy.”
His smile widened. “Right you are.”
We hit the road, with Lyndon once again lagging behind. Dolores was a couple of hundred metres ahead, crouched down, her palms flat on the surface of the road. Jackson and I picked up our pace, Lyndon be damned.
“Do you feel that?” Dolores asked us.
We both crouched and lay our palms on the road. The same rumbling that we’d encountered in the jungle could be felt, the earth once again trembling slightly.
“What is that?” Jackson asked no one in particular.
It was a familiar feeling, just like last time, but I still couldn’t work out why.
“You see anything?” Dolores asked.
I looked up at her – she had already gotten to her feet, and was slowly scanning the road behind us with her binoculars. Jackson was doing the same thing, checking that the way ahead was clear.
“Yep,” he said. “But I don’t reckon it’s whatever’s causing this.”
“Give us a look.” She turned in his direction as I got to my feet. “Far out.”
“Yeah, it’s a good one.”
I coughed into my palm, trying to make myself noticed.
“Right, sorry,” Jackson said, passing me his binoculars. “It’s in the tree-tops, just to let you know.”
All I could see was the green-green-green of leaves, the canopy stretching on endlessly. Back and forth, back and forth, nothing changed. And then something caught the light, a bright reflection off something metallic. I turned to Dolores and Jackson. They just shrugged an
d shared a small smile.
“Come on,” Dolores said as she started hurrying towards it.
Jackson smiled at her excitement before taking off after her. I did the same, a sudden need to know burning deep inside me. I huffed and puffed and envied the soldiers’ fitness. My side hurt, a sudden stitch. I tried to keep going, but no way – the last twenty meters or so were an embarrassing stumble, and I almost vomited.
“Can I have my binoculars, please?” Jackson asked me.
I was too busy trying to catch my breath to answer, so I wordlessly passed them back. I looked up, at a tree rising into the sky. “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” he said with a frown.
From what I could see, it was almost as if the crown of the tree was slowly turning to metal – steel struts and beams and spires rose above the tallest branches, while a crumpled mass of iron and tin sprouted from the centre of the top-most fork.
“Shit.”
“Dolores, what you got?” Jackson asked.
“Eleven o’clock from where we’re standing. Check it out, please tell me I’m wrong.”
Jackson zeroed in on the spot Dolores had described. “Shit is right.”
I couldn’t take the suspense. “What’s going on? What is that thing?”
Dolores turned away from the tree, her mouth turned down in a frown. “Here,” she said, passing me her binoculars.
All I could see was the crumpled mass sprouting from the top-most fork. I looked harder – the mass resolved into a pile of iron sheets, steel plates, gutter-pipes and I-beams, some sandwiched together, and some jagged and torn and jutting every-which-way. Strange markings on the surface of certain sheets slowly became apparent, dashes and dots and half-circles that almost looked like letters. I scanned left and right and saw a sequence of numbers, as clear as a flowing river.
“What are they?”
“ID numbers,” Jackson said, “for the guard-towers that used to dot the perimeter. This would have been one of their huts.”
He squatted down, laid the map in front of him then started tracing the outermost unbroken circle. Dolores was still looking at the hut, muttering the sequence of numbers under her breath.
“Six-eight-three-six,” she said, over and over again.
“Six-eight-three-three,” Jackson said, still tracing the unbroken line. “Almost there… Six-eight-three-four, six-eight-three-five, six-eight-three-six. Got it.” He stood up, looked again at the ruined hut, and slowly shook his head.
“How did it get here?” I asked, barely realising how stupid my question was.
“It was dropped,” Lyndon said, taking us by surprise. It was the first time he’d spoken in hours, and his voice was flat and cold. “You see how some of the plates completely encircle the highest branches? That tells us that the hut fell a long way before being pierced. Gums can be incredibly tough trees, branches this thick will punch through metal like it was crepe-paper. But that’s not the weirdest part. Look at the crown. See how some of the bark is growing over the metal? Now, that’s not uncommon, some trees can grow over pretty much anything we’ll hammer into them. But it usually takes years.”
Lyndon’s eyes were still dead, despite his renewed interest in the jungle and its wildlife. He seemed to take no joy in sharing what he knew.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Dolores asked him.
“Something right in front of your eyes,” Jackson added.
They were standing side by side, his frown as deeply etched as hers. They both had their arms crossed over their chests, and were leaning against the tree. Neither of them looked impressed by Lyndon’s impromptu lecture.
I suddenly realised what they meant. “If the hut was dropped, then something must have dropped it.”
“Give the girl a cigar,” Jackson said humourlessly.
Lyndon’s eyes bugged, and his mouth fell…
Hang on, there’s another weird noise. It’s louder this time. I don’t know what it is, no idea at all. Jackson’s on watch, I’d better go make sure he’s okay.
***
False alarm. It was just a storm – Jackson said he saw some lightning on the horizon, and it feels like it’s about to rain.
Where was I?
Right, so, the four of us had just found that impaled hut. We stood there looking up at it, all of us knowing that it was now so much more than merely another piece of wreckage. None of us spoke. The moment stretched on.
After a while, Dolores and Jackson broke away and started going over the map again. They’re good soldiers, and they knew when to get back to work. In contrast, Lyndon and I didn’t move. I don’t know if it was fear or awe that kept us in place, and it doesn’t really matter. We had known that we might encounter a UBO in this jungle, but until that moment this was something distant and deniable, a ‘maybe’ that didn’t really mean that much. But looking up at that hut, it became real and almost overwhelmed me. Staring at its handiwork, expecting it to appear at any moment, a winged nightmare effortlessly conquering the sky, it was… it was too much. Words can’t describe what I felt. Shock, giddiness, horror, fear, wonder, anger, insignificance, resignation; they’re nothing but collections of letters, and we fool ourselves into believing that they sum up emotions strong enough to bring us to our knees.
I wonder if this is what Lyndon felt earlier. In some ways, I’m just like him – I was evacuated early, before my hometown had been hit, and I’ve never seen a UBO in the flesh.
Eventually, Dolores and Jackson finished looking over the map and returned to the tree. I hadn’t paid them any attention, hadn’t even cared. But as numb as I was, some part of me still wondered how they could be so calm and collected – they didn’t even take a second look at the hut, they simply led us away.
The trip back to camp was uneventful.
Now, when I say uneventful, I don’t mean that nothing happened. We trudged through the dry bush, sweated in the heat, constantly waved flies away. We took an occasional break, sat down and drank some water. We trusted Dolores to lead us to safety, and trusted Jackson to watch our backs. We walked on and on and on. I tried to understand what I was feeling and what I had felt. Shame was the big one – my earlier excitement at the thrill of discovery was now a source of embarrassment. Before heading out here, I don’t think I’d ever really understood just how bad things were.
Extraordinary things also happened, as we hiked back to camp.
Deep within a stand of River Red Gums, Dolores brought us to a halt. We froze. I watched, still numb, while she crouched down and lay her palms on the ground. This time, I felt it through my boots: the same rumbling as earlier, only strong enough now to shake the ground. Dolores slowly led us to an unexpected clearing in the trees, a bare patch of dirt about the size of a football oval. At its closest edge lay a jumbled mess of what looked like plates of bone. Although they were different shapes and sizes, each curved inward slightly, and some looked to share an edge with others.
It resembled something I’d seen before, but that ‘something’ wouldn’t come to me. Dolores snatched up a long branch from the edge of the clearing and poked one of the plates. With only a little resistance, the plate cracked and the branch spiked through it. Dolores rolled a different plate over, so that it rocked on its curved edge; inside the shallow bowl-like depression that now faced us, the surface was marred with scratches and nicks.
I started to realise what it was.
“No way,” I said, the first time I’d spoken since guessing that the hut must have been dropped.
“What is it?” Dolores asked.
“No way,” I repeated.
“What?”
Now everyone had gathered around.
“It’s… It’s an egg…”
I was staggered, unable to take it in… The world swam, my vision grew blurry, I started to sway, I started blinking too fast… Someone caught my arm, steadying me… I resisted, my knees buckling… They held onto me, hauling me back to my feet…
I
suddenly tore myself away. If the UBOs can breed…
Some part of me that runs on reason was still functioning, some little cog that refused to give in, offering me a way to keep going by needling me with a problem only I could solve, daring me to do so, playing on the desire to help that I had developed.
I looked at the clearing properly.
It was just an ordinary clearing, empty and grassy, nothing strange about it at all. Dolores handed me her binoculars and I looked again. In the middle of the clearing, the earth itself seemed to rise and fall almost imperceptibly. Up and down, up and down, a slow and slight movement but movement nonetheless. It seemed to match the trembling beneath our feet. Up and down, up and down, up and down, slowly-slowly-slowly.
Everything suddenly fell into place. No wonder it had been familiar; it was the same steady motion as that caused by the deep breathing of a sleeping animal.
“You’ve got to be kidding…”
“What is it?”
I didn’t want to say it and didn’t want to think it and didn’t want to know it. I still don’t. But a part of me that can’t help trying to put the puzzle together had taken over.
“Some animals burrow underground after they’ve hatched,” I said unsteadily. “They’ll make a nest… or join a hive… somewhere big enough to sleep, and store their food, and eat… I guess that an animal big enough to shake the earth like this, well… if it’s that big… I don’t know, its tunnels could stretch maybe…”
The little cog inside me that runs on reason suddenly buckled and snapped.
Is this really what our world has become? I understood then that we can’t win this war, and that to think so is to live in dreamland. How do we confront something so final? How do we go on living in the face of a fact like that? Why do we bother? All these years in the camps, ferried back and forth, living dull and dusty and hungry, always distanced from the truth about what’s really happening, not even unaware that there really isn’t a future…
I felt so stupid, so small, so scared. And I feel so stupid, so small, so scared, even hours later. How do people like Jackson and Dolores do this day after day? How do they just keep on trying? How do they cope?
We Call It Monster Page 17
