Divine Madness (23 page)

James was out of breath. ‘My arse is black and blue, but it looks worse than it feels.’

‘Were you really perving at girls in the shower?’

‘It’s a long story,’ James said, not wanting to repeat it because it made him look dumb. ‘More importantly, the guy I got paddled with is Joel Regan’s son. You and me need to meet up so I can explain properly.’

‘The earliest will be tonight,’ Lauren said. ‘We can sneak off during sports time, between the buildings or something.’

They turned a corner and heard a sharp popping sound. Lauren immediately stopped running and hopped on one leg, as though she’d twisted her ankle.

James thought she was really injured. He stopped and turned back anxiously. ‘Are you OK?’

Lauren spoke through gritted teeth. ‘Look around, idiot head. It’s the signal from John.’

With all that was going on, James had forgotten that John was going to try and get the miniature radios to them. It made perfect sense for it to happen at a corner, because the runners ahead of them had no reason to look backwards and the runners behind would be blindsided by the corner.

As Lauren sat down on the pavement, ripping off her trainer and clutching her foot in mock agony, James scoured the floor. He noticed a golden cigarette packet at the edge of the tarmac path that clearly had no business in the middle of the outback.

James realised the pop must have been caused by something firing the carton from between a couple of boulders a few metres away. As he snatched the packet, he had to unhook a nylon cord that must have been there to wind the carton back if things had gone wrong.

He tucked the cardboard pack inside his shorts and wondered how it had managed to get where it was and pop out at exactly the right moment. But there wasn’t time to stand around trying to figure it out, because a couple of stragglers and a teacher who always ran at the back had just turned the corner.

Lauren stood on one leg, leaning against the Ark’s perimeter as the moustached teacher stopped running and smiled at her.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I put my foot down funny and went over on my ankle … I don’t think it’s bad, though.’

*

Dana staggered in from her run around the Brisbane mall. She always finished half a lap ahead of the other girls and was surprised to see Abigail standing outside the shower room waiting for her.

‘I’m out working all day,’ Abigail explained hurriedly. ‘They’re really busy over at the warehouse. I got these off Michael last night.’

‘Who’s Michael?’

‘He’s our liaison with ASIS now that John and Chloe have headed off to the Ark.’

Abigail passed Dana a rectangular white strip, which looked like a small bookmark.

‘Fat lot of use that’ll be to me,’ Dana said sullenly. ‘I just hope James and Lauren got theirs OK.’

‘Apparently they’ve rigged up a gadget, using a radio-controlled buggy with a video camera and a hydraulic gun mounted on it.’

Dana half smiled and shook her head. ‘James Bond eat your heart out.’

A couple more runners had finished and were heading into the changing room. As Abigail turned and hurried away, Dana gave them her sweetest Survivor smile.

‘Great work girls.’

‘Thank you, Dana,’ Eve said, as she swept her long red hair off her face.

Instead of going into the shower, Dana locked herself into a toilet cubicle. She sat down and slid the radio out of its bag. It was flexible, less than a millimetre thick and five centimetres long. The back had a small solar panel, like on a calculator, and two flat buttons: an on/off switch and one you had to press down to transmit.

She folded open a narrow sheet of instructions:

Ultra low power, multispectrum transceiver.

Range: under 2km.

Battery life: 2 hours.

Solar panel recharge: 12 hours.

Quick charge: 15 minutes’ bright sunlight will provide 10

minutes’ emergency talk/receive.

Conserve power by leaving the unit off when not in use.

Keep transmission time to a minimum.

Dana scrunched the instructions up and popped them in her mouth. Once they’d turned into a soggy pulp, she spat it into the toilet and flushed.

She felt miserable as she slipped off her trainer, peeled out the insole and hid the radio beneath it. Dana had finished with top marks in every piece of CHERUB training she’d done, yet she’d never gotten the breaks on any of her missions.

Dana didn’t want to hate James and Lauren; they were good agents and nice people, even if James was full of himself at times. But she was going to be stuck at the mall while they were getting all the glory inside the Ark and she couldn’t help resenting it. Especially Lauren: she already had her navy T-shirt and she was eleven, for god’s sake.

There was a bang on the door, followed by Eve’s voice. ‘Are you OK in there?’

Dana gritted her teeth. The Survivors didn’t even like you getting five minutes to yourself on the toilet without making sure you weren’t having any negative thoughts.

‘I’m wiping my arse,’ Dana said irritably, struggling to contain her anger as she pulled her trainer back on.

‘Oh,’ Eve said, disturbed by the graphic description. ‘It’s just that Ween wants to see us after school, so don’t go to your work assignment today.’

Dana remembered Lauren’s comment about Ween having a plan for her, but she was way too cynical to get her hopes up. She poked out her tongue and gave Eve the finger behind the toilet door as she replied cheerily:

‘Thank you for telling me, Eve. I’ll look forward to that.’

James asked around and found out that a paddling was a rare event for any kid who didn’t go looking for trouble. Most of his roommates had been at the school for years and had only received a standard dose of a dozen licks on a couple of occasions. Still, while the paddling had made James’ introduction to life inside the Ark painful and shocking, it had formed the basis of a valuable friendship with Rat.

After a morning of lessons, a poor excuse for lunch and the afternoon service, James was hitting his stride and felt a lot more confident as he walked down a sunlit path for his second day of work and met his boss, Ernie, along the way.

‘Howdy partner,’ Ernie said, clapping his hands happily.

‘Yo,’ James answered enthusiastically.

Ernie was a lively man in his sixties, who’d sold his home, abandoned a bunch of rowdy teenage kids and switched to the Survivor lifestyle. You could have put him on a Survivors poster: handsome and bronze-skinned with a bushy moustache. The sort of man you’d expect to see playing a friendly grandfather in a TV commercial.

Ernie drove a delivery truck which took letters and parcels to a post office in a one-shop town a hundred kilometres to the east. He’d never had an assistant before and had no idea why he’d suddenly been given one, but Ernie wasn’t the sort to ask questions and seemed perfectly happy having James for company.

The delivery van lived beneath the canopy of a vehicle compound, alongside two dozen other cars and commercial vehicles, including Joel Regan’s Bentley and the bulletproof limo he’d used for public events when he was in better health.

The sacks of mail ran down a metal chute from the adjacent offices. James and Ernie grabbed the sacks two at a time and hurtled them into the back of the truck. Ernie took the driver’s seat and floored the gas pedal as soon as they’d passed through the vehicle gate in the turret.

Ernie claimed that there wasn’t a speed trap within five hundred kilometres and cruised at one hundred and fifty kph, which was about as fast as the truck would go without things getting seriously hairy.

As they jiggled and clattered over badly cracked tarmac, James sat in the passenger seat, watching the plume of dust they were throwing up in the door mirror. It was good to have a couple of hours in his schedule to chill out; just a pity they weren’t allowed a radio because a few tunes would have made it perfect.

‘Take a seat,’ Ween said, waving a hand towards the sofa at the back of her office.

Eve and Dana were still in school uniform as they sank on to the foam cushions.

‘Joel Regan believes that women are the key to our survival after the apocalypse,’ Ween began, as she propped herself against the edge of her desk, facing the two fifteen-year-olds. ‘Most of the senior positions inside the Ark and our communes are taken up by women. Our ceremonies are always conducted by women. After the dark time, girls such as yourselves will become the bedrock of our new civilisation: mothers, wives and leaders.’

Dana had been with the Survivors long enough to know that this kind of flattery always led up to somebody wanting something.

‘I’m sorry you couldn’t go to the Ark boarding school with your siblings, Dana. Eve, you’re easily bright enough to attend yourself, but your work with our most difficult teenaged recruits has been magnificent. We simply couldn’t spare you. But we have found a special project that suits both of your talents. It will only take a few days, but it will get you both noticed at the highest level inside the Ark.’

Dana glanced at Eve’s excited face. She found it extraordinary that someone as bright as Eve could have mastered all the manipulative skills of the cult, without being able to see that she was being manipulated herself. Nevertheless, Dana was intrigued and felt slightly excited herself. Maybe it wasn’t just James and Lauren who’d have a role in this mission.

‘The Survivors is a vast organisation,’ Ween continued. ‘Our financial obligations are equally vast. The Ark under construction in Nevada will cost seven billion dollars and the planned arks in Europe and Japan will require the purchase of huge tracts of land in countries where space is precious.

‘Our church desperately needs money to complete these projects and you girls have been selected to help. Before I can continue, you must swear to absolute secrecy. You’ll have to hide the real purpose of your mission, even from your friends and family.’

Ween reached across her desk and grabbed a Bible and a copy of
 
The Survivors’ Manual
. ‘You must take these books and swear our highest oath.’

Eve clutched the two books to her heart and looked at Dana, as if to say,
 
Oh my God, isn’t this the most amazing thing ever
?

‘I swear on these sacred books as an angel, on pain of eternity in a fiery hell.’

Dana took the books and tried to add gravitas to her voice as she repeated Eve’s oath.

‘You mustn’t tell a soul,’ Ween repeated. ‘Tell your parents and siblings that you are being taken for a short course at the Sydney commune.’

‘But what exactly
 
is
 
the mission?’ Dana asked.

Ween shook her head. ‘I am not allowed to know. But the request came directly from Susie Regan: two girls, strong athletes, and strong swimmers. If you both accept this honour, I’ll arrange for immediate flights to Darwin.’

*

Lauren had no time for boys: she found them loud, obnoxious and didn’t care for either their obsession with sports or their apparent reluctance to wash after playing them. Even when her best friend Bethany briefly took leave of her senses and got off with a boy called Aaron – whose breath always smelled of cheese and onion crisps – she wasn’t tempted by any of the invitations for a double date.

So it surprised Lauren that she found herself liking Rat. He was big for eleven and stood with the tip of his nose just level with Lauren’s eyes, which somehow seemed exactly how it should be. Rat was good-looking apart from the squashed nose, obviously clever and the way he stood up for himself against the odds made him seem heroic and vulnerable at the same time. Above everything else though, Rat was a good laugh.

As Lauren worked efficiently, delivering messages, mastering the photocopier and generally being an obedient little Survivor, Rat constantly mucked around. Two staplers became yapping dogs that skidded around a desktop farting and humping each other. Rat demonstrated his toughness by betting Lauren that he could put the tip of his tongue on the hot bulb inside a desk lamp and hold it there for ten seconds. He lasted less than three before sprinting off to the water cooler in agony. He also proudly gobbed into the steaming coffee mug of a barrel-shaped accountant who’d scolded Lauren for fetching the wrong file.

Of course, boys always showed off and tried to get attention, but Rat was easier to swallow because his outcast status meant that he didn’t have a line of idiotic mates pushing him to take things too far.

As six o’clock and the end of their work assignment drew near, Rat approached Lauren holding out a slim leather binder.

‘How’d you like to meet
 
Le Grand Fromage
?’

Lauren smirked: she knew it meant
 
the big cheese
 
in French. ‘Joel Regan?’

Rat nodded as he opened the binder, revealing freshly printed letters and cheques stacked inside rows of cream-coloured slots.