‘Ugh, what is this? Static electricity?’ Stella touched the seat, the steering wheel, her own face. ‘Ow, it’s making my fillings hum. How do I turn it off?’
Wincing, Finn pulled his own door to, though he felt like jumping straight out again. ‘This is what it’s like inside the wall, too. They’ve done something, they’ve treated the whole tanker. The quicker we get started, the sooner we can get out.’
Gingerly Stella nudged the gear stick. ‘This bit seems normal enough—it even shows where the gears are, thank heaven. But what are all these things?’ Nestled between the two bucket seats were two spiky silver-green mounds, beaded with red lights. Finn lifted one out with extreme care, his hands closing around the two grips.
‘Oh,’ said his mother. ‘Well, they might come in handy. God, I’m getting the most atrocious headache.’ She switched on the engine and gave it a decisive rev. She played around with the gearstick for a minute, then found first gear and released the handbrake and the clutch. In his rear-vision mirror Finn saw the Magna turning into the lane behind them. He stuck his head out the window, looked back and tried to wave reassuringly to Janet. ‘We’re off,’ said his mum nervously as they began to roll.
Behind them the two tankermen lay motionless, their suits gleaming at the centre of dark puddles. Finn watched Janet drive carefully between them. ‘Hope no-one comes staggering up this lane and poisons themselves on those two.’
‘We’ll have to warn someone they’re here. The police? I don’t know. Who deals with aliens?’ Finn’s mum paused at the main street, waiting for the traffic to clear. ‘Now we’ve just got to get into town without mowing anyone down or attracting the attention of the boys in blue,’ she said. ‘Talk about nerve-racking.’ She waved to the driver who was hanging back to let her in. ‘What’s that he’s yelling? Oh, lights. Of course. Now where—ah!’ She snapped on the headlights and drew into the traffic. ‘Thanks, mate. What a business!’ She was chattering; it wasn’t like her. Finn watched her profile, the bones showing sharp through the skin in the moving streetlights. She spared him a distracted grin. ‘How did you feel, jumping that guy? If it was a guy—if those monsters have any sex at all.’
Finn shook his head slowly. ‘It was horrible,’ was all he said.
‘I don’t think I could’ve done it. What was it—a robot, an insect? Jesus! I mean, you don’t expect to be able to put out your hand and touch this . . . this being you haven’t got a clue about.’
Finn, too, was struggling with the new knowledge. He looked around the cabin, but apart from the weapons it was fairly normal, quite clean except for the oily smears on the floor where the tankermen had put their boots. There was just that awful ache—his mum was right, it did seem to be centred in the skull and jaw. He found himself gritting his teeth repeatedly to try to ease the pain.
‘I mean, do they have brains?’ his mum went on. ‘Are they just someone’s tools, some human person’s, some mad scientist’s? Are they genetically engineered or what? It doesn’t bear thinking about—but there they are, for real, and somehow we have to cope with them . . .’ Her voice trailed off and she bit her lip, manoeuvring the tanker through a tight corner.
‘You should do this for a living, Mum,’ Finn told her, trying to keep the fear back for a moment, to lighten the general mood of gloomy endurance.
‘Don’t get me feeling complacent; it might be fatal for us. Now, the next mind-expanding thing we have to do is get this monster through a wall of the Argyle Cut, isn’t it?’
‘You know it’s not the Argyle, Mum. We went over it ten times.’
‘Just checking.’ She threw him a wry look that turned into a suffering expression. ‘Oh, I hurt all over . . .’
They drove the rest of the way in silence, Stella concentrating hard on directing the tanker, Finn feeling increasingly lousy about going back through the wall. Without the recent memory of the tankerman’s non-face imprinted on his brain, he would have been having serious doubts about his own story. Of course, there was no more rational explanation for where Jed and Finn’s dad were, but he could feel his sense of logic putting up a staunch battle. He tried to remember the sensation of the wall flowing over him on Jed’s bike, but that was many long hours back now, dreamlike and unbelievable. A hallucination, as his mum had said.
As they swooped along past the piers, his mum sat up straighter, shifting in her seat and emitting a breathy whistle through her teeth. She doesn’t believe me, thought Finn, and I can’t blame her. She slowed and rounded the bend before the cutting.
‘Just go in a metre or two,’ said Finn. ‘Okay, turn here.’
She did so, and drove towards the wall so slowly that they were barely moving. Looking past her, Finn saw Janet make a U-turn and park the car just outside the cutting. He waited for the grating impact of the tanker and the rock.
It didn’t come. Instead the rock came up to the windscreen and shifted through it, creeping up their legs.
‘Aaak,’ his mum said. ‘This is totally and utterly creepy.’
‘It’s going to be very bright inside,’ Finn warned her, just in time. The hot air and the hot light hit them in the same instant. Finn’s mum dipped her head, braked, and came up squinting. ‘But there’s nothing here! It’s like driving into death! What’s holding us up?’
‘Remember to leave a little bit sticking out at the back for Janet to come in,’ Finn said as calmly as he could.
His mother edged the tanker forward again. ‘I’ve got Jan at the back there, waving me in.’
She cut the engine and looked around wonderingly. ‘But there aren’t any lights—where’s it all coming from?’
‘Quick, Mum.’ Finn thrust one of the weapons at her. ‘Take this and let’s get going. I don’t know how long it’ll take them to realise we’re here.’
Stella took hold of it with some distaste. ‘Will it work against those things?’
‘I don’t know. If it doesn’t, we can always use our knives.’
‘Oh, Don . . .’ he heard her say as she scrambled down from the cabin.
Janet was standing with one hand against the back corner of the tanker, the other covering her eyes. She spoke when she sensed Finn was close. ‘All of a sudden I feel just revolting. Physically, I mean, on top of everything else.’
‘I know. That’s the way it is in here. There’s nothing wrong with you.’ He picked up one of the two packs she had dropped and shouldered it.
‘It’s the light—it makes me feel sick and sore all over.’ She squinted through her fingers and then covered her eyes again.
‘It’s the whole place. The tanker, too.’ He removed her hand from it and squeezed it. ‘Everything’s got, like, some sort of charge running through it.’
His mother came up behind him. ‘I don’t know about this, Don. Shouldn’t we find out a bit more about these insect-things before we go destroying them?’ She picked up the other pack. Her face was already pink from the heat, and the heavy weapon hung from her hand, blinking.
Finn shook his head. ‘Believe me. Come downstairs and you’ll find out all you’d ever want to know.’
9
Insect Soup
In the glare of the white light the putrefaction cages seemed to float, their fumes an invisible force that beat against the three intruders. They stood at the foot of the ladder, Finn between his two mothers, who held on to him to steady themselves. He could see his father, but it took him a few seconds to distinguish Jed. When he picked him out among the bodies he realised why, a drop of sweat trickling cold down his neck. Jed’s signal-red beard, such a give-away before, was now streaked and speckled with white. In the few hours Finn had been gone, all the Santa Claus quality had disappeared from the big man’s face—his skin was grey, and his clothes already hung slightly loosely on him.
‘Who would do this?’ Finn’s mother whispered.
‘Not who, Mum. What. You saw them.’ Finn started forward, shrugging off his pack. ‘Jed. It’s me, Finn. Can you hear me, mat
e?’
Jed lifted his head and tried to speak, then nodded.
‘Where’s Richard, Don?’ said Janet, right behind him. ‘Is he still here?’
‘Yes, here.’ He took two water-bottles from the pack and pushed one into his mother’s hand. ‘Mum, give Jed a drink, quick. Down here, Janet.’ He cleared his father’s spattered face with a handful of water.
‘You can’t tell me he’s alive,’ whispered Janet, crouched close beside him. She reached out and touched Richard’s filthy hair, and the back of her hand adhered to the frame. She started and gasped. ‘Oh my god, I’m—’
Finn poured a gout of water over her hand and it came away from the metal, a silky burn-mark across where it had stuck. ‘Hold his head,’ he said urgently, ‘and don’t touch the cage.’ He began to dribble water through his father’s hair, soaking it off the frame. It released easily, and soon his father’s head was cradled in Janet’s hands. He moved down his body, freeing him bit by bit. Finn’s mum, realising what they were doing, began to free Jed, and soon the two men were entirely off the cage. Finn’s mum helped Jed to sit on a clean part of the floor, while Richard lay along the walkway, his head in Janet’s lap. She sponged his face and tried to get him to swallow a little water. His eyes would not open.
‘We’ve got to get them inside the cages.’ Finn glanced nervously back at the trapdoor.
‘Don, no. It’s so filthy,’ Janet protested.
‘I know. But if the tankermen come, and see us—’
Janet said nothing, but Finn saw her glance fall to the weapon lying on the floor beside him. He shook his head.
‘But we don’t know how many there are, or whether these guns are good for more than one blast, or what. We’re better off lying low until we can get all the people free, and then making a dash for it.’
Jed spoke for the first time, in a croak Finn barely recognised. ‘Mate, there aren’t many people here who could dash.’
‘He’s right,’ said Stella. ‘We’ll need ambulances. These people are in a desperate way.’
Finn was already busy freeing a woman he’d seen moving. When she was released, she was so light he was able to take her whole weight with ease. He laid her on the floor inside the first cage, well away from the barred walls in case she should move. He helped Janet move his father in beside her, then crouched before Jed’s slumped figure. ‘Jed? You okay?’
Jed lifted his head, and his faded blue eyes struggled to meet Finn’s. ‘Mate,’ he said. It was as if the Jed Finn knew were buried deep inside those eyes, under layers and layers of fear and illness and ageing.
‘Jed?’ He touched Jed’s face, where the grey skin met the speckled beard. He saw something stir in Jed’s eyes, pushing aside the layers.
‘Thought you weren’t coming back,’ admitted Jed in a whisper.
‘Of course I was.’
‘Felt like years.’
‘Yeah, I reckon it would.’
Jed’s head dropped again, into his hands. His arm bore a long shiny mark where it had stuck to the bar, and his jeans were fragmenting where the cage-metal had attached itself to his calf.
Finn’s mother passed them, another body in her arms. Finn looked up and their eyes met, but hers betrayed nothing and she moved on as if she were a machine. As soon as she had laid the person down she applied a soaked sponge to the mouths of the three who lay there. She was murmuring to them, a low chant that Finn couldn’t hear. He stood up and went back to work.
It was a half-hour he would never be able to forget completely. He could feel it changing him just to sweep his eyes across the walls of dead and dying creatures, seeking out a person who would betray some sign of life. Worst was holding a wrist or pressing his fingers into a neck, listening through the singing of his own aches and pains for the faint beat of life, even as he listened for sounds upstairs. And hearing nothing, and moving on. It was too much to bear, the viewing and the handling of corpses and near-corpses, yet of course he had to bear it.
There were eight people alive, besides Jed and Richard. Janet and Finn’s mum moved along the row with the water, washing the people’s faces and trying to get them to sip water. Finn crouched beside his father, watching the infinitesimal movements of his face. Finn was all a-quiver, trying to work out the next step of the plan, wondering when the other tankermen were going to cotton on to their presence.
‘Who will go and get help?’ said Janet, squatting beside him. She pressed at the pain in her temples and jaw and fixed her eyes on Richard’s face.
‘I will,’ said Finn, beginning to stand up.
‘No,’ said his mum, straightening up at the far end of the line of people. ‘You and Janet should stay with Richard. I’ll go. They’re more likely to believe me.’
‘She’s right, Don.’ Finn felt Janet take his hand. ‘Take the car, Stella. Here,’ and she tossed the keys across the cage.
Jed tried to stand up. ‘Take me out with you,’ he said to Finn’s mum. ‘I can’t stand being in this place much longer. Please?’
Finn and Stella helped him to his feet and walked him to the ladder. He began to climb, his limbs shaking with the effort. Finn darted back to fetch the weapon he’d left on the floor.
‘Looks all clear up here,’ Jed panted as he reached the top of the ladder. Finn and Stella climbed out after him.
Finn went to the rock door with them. He stepped outside for a few seconds, and felt his body’s cells relax and the pain evaporate.
Jed groaned with relief, and immediately took all his weight on his own feet. ‘Crikey, I felt like I was being microwaved in there!’
Finn’s mum’s glazed look began to dissipate and she allowed herself a small smile. ‘It’s so cool out here!’
‘Yeah,’ said Finn longingly, taking in the refrigerated cavern of the cutting, the curve of the street out of sight, the glisten of the midnight stars above the deserted warehouses. ‘Will you be okay to get to the car, Jed?’ He was hunting for an excuse to stay outside in the pain-free darkness.
‘Sure, mate. You get back in there and look after those sick people. And—Finn?’
Finn looked back, one hand tingling on the tanker’s tail-light. Again, Jed’s stooped silhouette made him look like a stranger.
‘You did a good job, mate. Saved my life.’ The voice was definitely Jed’s now, gathering strength already.
‘Be careful, Don,’ he heard his mother say before he disappeared into the rock.
‘Yeah, I will,’ he called back over his shoulder. Then he pulled up short. One of two tankermen kneeling beside the open grating looked up and reached for the weapon it had laid aside.
‘You sneaking bastards!’ yelled Finn. In a rush of rage, he lifted his own weapon, lined up what he thought were the sights and pressed what in a normal gun would have been the trigger. There was a loud fizz, and the tankerman fell back, a spout of black fluid slapping on to the floor around it.
The second tankerman was armed now. Finn felt the weapon being trained on him for a half-second before he flopped to the floor. The fizz sounded above him, and a piece of tail-light bounced past his eyes. He got up and ran a zigzag across the glossy floor towards the tankerman. Its black eyes wavered slowly left to right, and the gun drooped in its hands. Finn veered in behind it, slashed its suit open down the back, and pushed it aside, soggy under his foot, so that it wouldn’t fall forward across the hole in the floor. He tried not to look at either of the tankermen as he relieved them of their weapons, then scrambled clumsily down the ladder and sealed the grating behind him.
Janet was peering through the cage wall, her anxious face framed by a white pigeon’s lifeless wing and a possum’s tail. ‘Oh Don, it’s you. I heard you shouting—I thought you’d been caught!’
Finn brought in the three extra guns. ‘I don’t know if these are any good—two of them have been fired already—’ He was interrupted by Janet, who put her arms around him, guns and all, and burst into tears.
‘It’s okay. It’s oka
y,’ he heard himself repeating, wanting to hug her back but scared to drop any of the weapons in case one went off.
‘You’re all right?’ Janet stood back and blinked aside her tears to look at him. ‘What happened up there?’
‘I had to get rid of a couple more of those insect-things.’ Put that way it sounded no more serious than stepping on an ant. Unsteadily, Finn put two of the weapons down on the walkway. Janet wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, looking embarrassed.
‘I’m sorry, Don. It’s not very useful to cry, I guess.’
‘I wouldn’t blame you if you went stark raving mad in here,’ he said through the throbbing in his head. Over her shoulder he surveyed the row of people they’d rescued. ‘Here,’ he said, pulling a fresh bottle of distilled water from his mother’s pack. ‘Have a drink, and we’ll give some to Dad and the others. There’s nothing we can do now except wait.’
They waited twenty minutes, and it felt like a lifetime. There was no getting used to the charnel-house smell, to the thrumming in their skin and bones of the force the cages carried, to the noises of the dying animals and the laboured breathing of the people they tended. All they could do was move doggedly from one victim to another, sponging faces and helping them drink a little more water each time. ‘We’re just getting you an ambulance. Help’s on the way,’ Finn heard himself saying, his calm voice amazing him. ‘Just rest now.’ He learned the features of each of the people in his care, but he couldn’t discover how long they had been there, how they got there or even what their names were. Their tongues were stiff and swollen, and though some could open their eyes and look at him, all he could see was the blank suffering he had read in Jed’s face. They seemed hardly human at all, however much his brain told him they were, however angry he was at the tankermen on their behalf.
‘Your father opened his eyes,’ said Janet. ‘I think he’s sleeping now—his breathing seems more even. A little more even, anyway.’
Finn leaned over a tall man and willed him to stay alive. ‘Won’t be long now. Any minute now,’ he said, his hand on the man’s chest. He thought he saw the flicker of an eyelash, and frowned in concentration.