Arrival (18 page)

Chapter 25

S
ATURDAY
, M
AY
16
89
DAYS

‘Never again,' Peter panted. ‘Never. Not ever.'

He sounded half-delirious. Not that I could blame him.

‘Did they see us?' I gasped as we stumbled through the bush, putting some distance between us and the warehouse. I was walking in a straight line again, but the last five minutes were still a total blur.

‘I don't know,' said Jordan, looking back. ‘No. I don't think so.'

I realised I was still holding onto her hand and quickly dropped it.

‘No guns,' said Peter vaguely.

‘Huh?'

‘They didn't shoot us,' he said. ‘And they didn't seem like the kind of guys who'd hold back if they saw a trespasser.'

‘Yeah, right,' I nodded wearily. The guards had definitely heard something, but it looked like we'd got away. I came to a stop and grabbed onto a tree for support. ‘So, now what?'

‘It's five o'clock,' said Peter, staring up at the sky.

‘We need to get back to our bikes if we want a hope of getting home before curfew.'

‘Not yet we don't,' said Jordan. ‘We're only half-finished.'

‘Are you kidding?' said Peter. ‘No. No way. We are
all
finished.'

‘What about the other place on Crazy Bill's map?'

‘You know what?' Peter snapped. ‘I reckon I've had about enough of Crazy Bill's surprises for one day.'

‘But –'

‘Look,' he said, stabbing a finger at her. ‘You want to spend the night out here? You want to go find more opportunities to get shot at? Be my guest. But you can count me out of it.'

It was surprising to hear Peter speak to Jordan like that, and he looked like maybe he regretted saying it. But he was at least as scared as I was, and I guess that fear was finally starting to outweigh his desire to stay on Jordan's good side.

‘Fine,' said Jordan, turning to look at me. ‘You coming, Luke?'

I didn't answer right away.

‘Mate, come on,' said Peter, obviously not liking the thought of making the journey home by himself. ‘Haven't we been through enough for one day? If we decide we want to come back some other time –' Jordan muttered something under her breath.

‘Sorry,
what?'
said Peter, stepping up until they were nose to nose.

‘I said, as if you'd ever come back again!'

‘What's that supposed to mean?'

‘It means if you don't even have the guts to come with us now, then as if we'll ever convince you to –' ‘Oh, right,' said Peter, rolling his eyes, ‘so just because I don't want to give you another chance to get us all killed, that makes me a coward, does it?'

Jordan stared coldly at him, letting the question hang in the air for a minute. ‘No,' she said, ‘deliberately blocking your ears to the truth is what makes you a coward.'

Peter glared at her.
‘
That is
not
fair. If either of you can show me one piece of
concrete
evidence –' ‘Don't give me that,' spat Jordan.
‘
This has nothing to do with evidence and you know it! You just don't
want
any of it to be true, because then you might actually have to step up and do something about it!'

Peter said nothing. He just stood there, shaking his head, too furious to even speak. I tried to step in, but Jordan wouldn't let me get a word in edgewise.

‘And that scares you doesn't it, Weir?' she ploughed on. ‘So instead of facing facts, you just invent your own little fantasy world where this is a joke and you can keep living your pathetic little –' ‘Jordan…' I said.

‘Sure, seven billion people might be about to get murdered, but what does that matter so long as Peter Weir can keep on deluding himself that everything's –' ‘Jordan,' I repeated. ‘
Stop.'

She stopped.

I closed my eyes. The painkillers had well and truly worn off by now. As if I didn't have enough to worry about without trying to stop these two from ripping each other to pieces. Not that there wasn't a bit of truth in what Jordan had said, but now was clearly not the time to be having that discussion.

Both of them were staring at me when I opened my eyes again.

‘I want to go home,' I said.

‘Luke,' Jordan began.

‘I want to go home right now and crawl into my bed and forget that this ever happened. But then what?'

Peter shot me a look like he was trying to figure out whose side I was on.

‘Jordan's right,' I continued. ‘If we go home now, we're not coming back. No way am I going through all this again. So we need to decide whether we're going to do this or not. And we need to do it without screaming so loud that everyone within a million kilometres can hear where we are.'

‘I don't care what you do,' said Jordan, pulling her backpack up over her shoulder and turning to walk away. ‘I'm going.'

‘No, Jordan,' I said firmly.

Jordan stopped in her tracks but didn't turn around.

‘Either we all agree to this, or we turn back and go home,' I said, with no idea how I would enforce that if either of them wanted to challenge me. ‘I'm not letting you go running off by yourself over some stupid argument.'

‘You're
not letting
me?'

Suddenly, she was back in my face again. I braced myself for whatever onslaught was coming next.

But then she looked me right in the eye and her expression shifted.

I don't know whether it was because she'd used up all her energy getting stuck into Peter, or if she caught sight of the damage Crazy Bill had already done to me and decided I'd suffered enough. But
something
happened, because the anger suddenly evaporated from her face and when she spoke again, her voice was much calmer.

‘Okay,' she breathed. ‘What do you want to do?'

‘I don't know,' I admitted. ‘I'm scared and I'm tired and I don't even want to think about what else might be out here. But if we decide to keep going, I'll keep going.'

Jordan smiled.

‘All right, let's get moving then,' said Peter, stepping between us.

Jordan stared at him like he was up to something. ‘You're the one who –'

He sighed heavily. ‘We're screwed either way, aren't we? Even if we make it home without running into any more security, we're still gonna get busted for breaking curfew. If I'm gonna die, I might as well do it making you happy.'

We cut back across through the trees and eventually found our way to the main road again. We walked along by the side of the road, ready to duck for cover at the first sign of trouble, but I had a feeling there was less chance of anyone coming past now that we were away from the warehouse.

The sky was changing colour and our shadows were getting longer, but there was still plenty of light. None of us talked very much for a while. I guess we were all still calming down after our little blow-up back in the bush. Jordan passed around the rest of the sandwiches from her bag as we walked, and I suddenly realised I was starving.

It was much slower going without our bikes and, as the sun continued to drift downward, I was reminded of all the movies I'd seen where wandering backpackers got dragged off deserted roads by bloodthirsty psychopaths. I tried to tell myself that the only bloodthirsty psychopath I knew was locked up in town, but somehow that didn't make me feel any better.

A bit further down the road, we saw a set of tyre tracks veering off through the dirt to our right and disappearing into the bush – too small to have been made by one of the delivery trucks, but probably too big for a car. They looked recent, but in the end we decided not to check them out – they'd be impossible to follow through the bush and Crazy Bill's map seemed pretty clear that whatever we were looking for was
on
the road. Or so we thought.

‘Look up there,' I said after about half an hour of walking. ‘Trees.'

‘Yep,' said Peter. ‘They're a prominent feature out here.'

‘No, I mean up there in front of us.' I jogged ahead of the others to see where the road was taking us next. ‘It must veer off in another direction.'

But a minute later I got close enough to realise that this road wasn't veering anywhere. ‘Uh, guys?' I called, looking back.

‘What is it?' said Jordan, coming up behind me.

‘Did you find –' She and Peter reached the place where I was standing and stopped in their tracks.

‘Oh.'

‘Yeah,' said Peter. ‘This is probably not a good sign.'

Chapter 26

S
ATURDAY
, M
AY
16
89
DAYS

About ten metres up ahead, the road came to an end.

Not like a proper dead end, with a warning sign and a place to do a U-turn or whatever. It just faded away into the grass, like whoever was building it had suddenly gone ‘Forget this!' and walked off the job.

For a few minutes we just stood there, gazing at the ground. The words
dead end
rattled around in my brain. Because this was it. The end. This was where they gave up pretending. This was the place where the carefully constructed lie that Phoenix was just an ordinary town stopped getting told. No-one was supposed to make it this far.

Eventually Peter blew out a lungful of air and said, ‘What now?'

‘I dunno,' I said, scanning the bush around us for some sign of … anything. ‘I guess this is it, right? This is what Crazy Bill wanted us to see.'

Jordan reached over and pulled
Alice's Adventures
in Wonderland
out of Peter's pocket.

‘Maybe not,' she said, flipping to the map and pointing. ‘That's the place we're heading for, right? We were assuming it was on the road, but look – there's a gap between the end of that line and the X. What if the thing we're meant to see is still out there somewhere?'

‘I think maybe you're reading too much into it,' said Peter. ‘I don't reckon Crazy Bill was paying a whole lot of attention to detail when he drew this.'

‘Might as well keep going though, now that we're here,' I said, seeing Jordan's nostrils flare and wanting to avoid another argument. ‘No point leaving without making sure.'

But I was pretty sure Peter was right. As much as I wanted to think there could be something else out here, I couldn't see what Jordan was hoping to find.

Peter sighed and led the way past the end of the road. Jordan shoved the book into her bag and the two of us followed him into the bush.

It was suddenly darker now that we were back under the cover of the trees, and I found myself stumbling in the undergrowth a lot more than before, struggling to figure out what was real and what was shadow before I stepped on it and it was too late.

After twenty minutes, I was just about ready to start heading back. We'd already lost all hope of beating curfew, and I wanted at least to be back on the road again before darkness surrounded us completely.

Peter was looking fed up too, but he didn't say anything. His eyes kept darting over to Jordan every few seconds, but he'd given up on his angry glares and was back to his usual habit of just looking at her for the sake of looking at her. I wondered whether some of what she'd said to him before had made an impact.

I gave it another five minutes, just to satisfy Jordan that there was nothing else out here, and then reached out and put a hand on her shoulder.

‘What is it?' she said, turning around. ‘Did you find something?'

I shook my head. ‘Jordan, listen. I think maybe we've already found everything there is to find.'

‘No,' Jordan insisted. ‘This can't be all. We didn't come all the way out here just to –' ‘Hey, what's that?' said Peter, stopping up ahead of us. He'd just sidestepped between two giant gum trees, and I had to follow him through before I could see what he was looking at.

Up ahead, maybe fifty metres away, something huge and grey stretched out in front of us. It rose up as far as I could see through the trees and seemed to spread out to the left and right.

Jordan put a finger to her lips, crouched low and began creeping forward. Peter and I followed along behind. My eyes darted through the shadows, scanning for any sign of movement.

A little bush rat bounced across our path and I almost had a heart attack. But if security were out here, they were keeping quiet.

We reached the expanse of grey and I pressed a hand against its surface. It was a wall. Solid concrete, towering up almost as high as the trees around it. Jordan flicked on the torch from her bag and started shining it around the wall, trying to figure out how big it was.

‘It's another building, right?' Peter frowned, staring up at it. ‘Another storage facility.'

‘Yeah, maybe.' I stood back a bit to see if I could spot a way inside. But there was nothing.

‘Maybe it's a hangar,' said Peter. ‘What if this is where they're storing all the helicopters and stuff that they moved away from the airport?'

There was a rustling behind me and I spun around. ‘Where's Jordan?'

Peter glanced away from the wall and pointed off to his side. ‘She's just –'

But he was pointing into empty space.

I stared around at the trees, shifting my weight from foot to foot, wanting to go looking for her but having no idea which direction to run in.

‘Jordan!' Peter called, stumbling through the bush. ‘Jor– !'

‘Peter, stop!' I hissed. ‘What if –'

I heard the sound of footsteps approaching, crunching through the dead leaves. Seconds later, light flickered through the bushes and Jordan came bursting back out towards us. She raised an eyebrow at our panicked expressions.

‘What's wrong?' she panted.