Tankbread 02 Immortal (33 page)

Else sank into a crouch at the farthest edge of the firelight, unsure whether she should approach and taken aback by the display of painted dancers and the coiling rhythms of the music coming from the long wooden pipes that the men played by blowing air down from their bulging cheeks.

A steady beat rang out from two sticks clapped together, a sharper harmony to the eerie wail of the long pipes. An old woman rose from the fireside, her wrinkled face and drooping skin painted with white ash. She kept the beat of the clapping sticks in her hands, taking a shuffling step with each sharp report, kicking up dust and making her way to where Else rose to her feet.

The woman beckoned Else forward with a toss of her head. Else shyly followed her closer to the fire and sank down into a cross-legged position between a man playing the long pipe and the old woman keeping time with her clapping sticks.

Else watched as the people danced. A young man, his chest marked with raised welts, caked in ash and fresh blood, stomped and pranced around the fire, his eyes seeing some other place or some other time.

Else listened to the voices singing and chanting in a language she could not understand. The performance continued until the fire burned down to white ashes and red embers while the darkness slipped closer to their backs.

Finally the circle fell quiet and a man with a white painted face and wearing a simple red cloth wrapped around his waist came over and crouched down in front of Else.

“Hey you,” he said and grinned.

“Joel?” Else said and beamed. “Where the fuck have you been?” Else rolled to her knees and hugged her friend.

“Oh you know, on walkabout,” Joel replied. “You know Jirra’s people, aye?” he added.

“Yes. I’m sorry. Jirra died,” Else said to the old woman next to her. The woman just nodded, her face a mask of sadness.

“But he lives on through his baby girl, Lowanna,” Joel reminded them.

The group nodded. They were a mix of old men and women, with a few young people and two babies. No more than twelve people in all.

“Where is she?” Lowanna’s grandmother, Sally, asked.

“She is safe. She is with someone who has been taking care of her. They are in Mildura, the town over there.”

“Will she come back to us?” Billy asked.

“Of course,” Else said. “Cassie is just helping out.”

“What you doin’ out here, girl?” Joel asked.

Else took a deep breath and then started talking. She explained the journey from Queensland and the horror she had discovered at the convent. How her hope for a safe future in the Mildura community had been dashed by Donna’s plans to use her son’s body as source material for a new series of clone experiments. The kind of experiments that brought the world to its knees a decade ago.

No one interrupted her monologue. They listened in respectful silence and then Sally put some more wood on the fire, sending sparks twirling into the night sky.

“You could use a hand, aye?” Joel asked.

“Sure . . . I guess.” Else laid the line of six bottles out in front of her. “This is what I’m going to use to burn the convent down.”

“That gonna work?” Joel asked, eyeing the bottles skeptically.

“It has to,” Else said. She stood up, brushing the dust from the knees of her jeans.

“Reckon you could use a hand, aye?” Joel said, rising to stand in front of her.

“Reckon I could,” Else replied.

Joel stooped to gather his weapons before they left the family scene that had been a common site on this land for forty millennia, and headed off towards the distant glow of the convent of Saint Peter’s Grace.

Joel moved silently through the sun-parched grass, making Else feel like a lumbering cow beside him. She followed his lead, slipping behind him and stepping where he did, trying to match his effortless stride in the dark.

The perimeter fence stood as it always had, but strengthened with more mesh and now a palisade of wooden stakes, pointing outwards at a forty-five degree angle on the outside.

She sank to a crouch when Joel stopped and ducked in front of her. A handheld spotlight swept over the ground just ahead. A guard on the convent wall was checking for any evols that might have made it through the fence.

“You got a way in?” Joel whispered.

“Yeah,” Else pulled a pair of pliers from her jeans pocket. “We cut the wire with this.”

“How you gonna cut through the concrete block wall with that, aye?” Joel’s eyes twinkled in the starlight.

“I was going to have a look around the back,” Else replied.

With careful maneuvering they climbed over the sharpened stakes and crouched at the wire fence.

Else cut a slit in the mesh and pushed the ends apart, creating a hole for her to slip through. Joel followed and then they pressed the wire back into shape.

“Quite a bit of clear ground for us to cover,” Joel warned.

“Four hundred meters,” Else replied, her gaze fixed on the distant wall.

“You hear that?” Joel cocked his head. Else listened. On the air came the sound of distant groans and shouts of alarm.

“Evols. They must have gotten through the barricades somewhere and are in town.”

Else and Joel waited, crouched in the dark, for a few long minutes. The sound of gunfire from the direction of Mildura tightened the tension on Else’s every nerve to near breaking point.

“Please be okay. Keep him safe,” she whispered to Cassie and her baby.

“You wanna go back to town?” Joel asked.

“No, we have to keep going.” Else stood up and started running towards the corner of the convent wall.

The gates in the wall opened and a truck with people standing on the back roared down the driveway towards the fence. Else and Joel threw themselves flat as the truck thundered past. The fence gate opened automatically and the truck rolled out and headed towards Mildura.

“Come on, while the gate’s still open.” Else sprang up and ran, her eyes watching the wall, looking for the silhouettes of guards with spotlights.

A beam of light played over the ground behind them as they slid to a halt at the base of the wall. Else gestured towards the open doors and drew her blades. Above her she heard a woman say, “I’m sure I saw something moving out there. It was moving fast, though.”

Another light came on and swept over the open ground between the wall and the fence.

“Could have been a ’roo,” another woman’s voice suggested.

“Maybe.” The first woman did not sound convinced. Else and Joel moved quietly along the base of the wall.

Peering around the edge of the open gate, she saw the courtyard was empty and dimly lit all the way to the main entrance of the convent building.

“Watch out for sharp stones,” Else whispered to Joel, noting his bare feet.

Joel grinned and wriggled his dusty toes. “I’ve walked on worse.”

“Let’s go.” Else darted out into the courtyard, her feet scraping lightly on the hard-packed limestone gravel. Joel followed close behind. They paused when they reached the doors, pressing themselves against them and waiting for a shout of alarm from one of the guards on the wall.

The door was unlocked, so Else and Joel slipped inside, Joel looking around at the high vaulted ceilings with some interest.

“Nice place,” he whispered.

“We start there,” Else indicated the chapel. “That’s the lab.”

Else led the way, staying close to the wall, listening intently for any approaching nuns. The chapel door was locked. Else frowned at it.

“Else?” Sister Mary’s voice sounded surprised. Else started a little and turned to face the woman who approached them down the wide corridor.

“Sister Mary,” Else said, nodding to the floor in a faint reflection of a bow.

“Doctor Preston is quite displeased with you,” Sister Mary said. Else lifted her gaze. “And as ungodly of me as it is, I do take some small pleasure in seeing her put out.”

“Sorry,” Else said, not knowing what else to say.

“Never mind, I’m sure the good doctor will get over it. Who is this you have brought into God’s house?”

“Joel, missus,” Joel said.

“And what may we do for you, Joel?”

“I’m here for some salvation, missus. I went to a Catholic school when I was a kid. Reckon it’s time to meet Him again and pray.”

“Bless you, child,” Sister Mary said and made the sign of the cross.

“Thank you, missus,” Joel said.

“The chapel is unavailable. We have a newly consecrated space at the rear of the building. You may pray there.” Sister Mary indicated the way. Else and Joel remained where they were, looking like guilty schoolchildren.

“Thank you, Sister, we’ll make our way there presently,” Else said using her best words.

Sister Mary regarded the two of them for a moment and then swept away down the corridor.

“Can you open that door?” Joel asked.

“I don’t have a key,” Else replied.

“No kidding. I mean can you like, pick the lock or something?”

“We’ll have a look around and see if we can find someone who can get it open for us.”

Else stopped skulking in the shadows. If Sister Mary knew they were there and didn’t raise the alarm, she figured maybe they would be safe.

“You wanna light this place on fire, aye?” Joel asked.

“Yeah,” Else replied, listening hard for anyone else approaching.

“Well, maybe we should start with the basement. Lots of old places have basements. They keep old paint and rags down there. Fires start in places like that all the time. At least they used to. On TV and stuff.”

“I don’t know if the convent has a basement.” Else looked up and down the corridor. “How do we find it?”

“Stairs going down? Maybe a door?” Joel started walking down the corridor, in the opposite direction that Sister Mary had left in.

“Maybe off the kitchen or something?” he asked as he went.

“Kitchen is this way.” Else turned her back on Joel and headed for the kitchen. Joel came loping after her.

The kitchen was empty and quiet. Else wrinkled her nose. “What is that smell?”

Joel inhaled deeply and sighed, “Homemade bread. That’s the smell of yeast rising.”

They slipped into the kitchen, with its worn countertops and polished pans hanging from hooks. The first doors they tried opened on pantries stocked with hundreds of tins, jars, and packets of salvaged or harvested food.

“Man, they could feed an army on this lot,” Joel said, taken aback by the quantity of food on display.

“I think that is exactly what Donna is trying to do,” Else said, helping herself to a box of matches and closing the doors.

The next door was sealed with a padlock. Else ran her fingers over the hasp and then went back to search the kitchen drawers. She returned with a honing steel for sharpening knives. In shape it looked like a half-formed screwdriver, without the flat or crossed tip. Else jammed it into the wood under the hasp and levered the entire latch out of the wall.

“I thought you said you didn’t have a key?” Joel teased.

Else ignored him and peered into the darkness beyond the door. A series of stone steps went down into darkness, and the smell wafting up was more familiar to her than home baking.

“This is where we start,” she whispered. “This is what we need to burn.”

The way ahead was lit by caged bulbs hanging from hooks in the ceiling. The bulbs in them were dull and flickered as Joel followed Else down the stairs.

Else drew her blades and carefully separated the hanging sheets of heavy plastic at the bottom of the stairs. The chapel above was a laboratory and this chamber was a mix of charnel house and butchery.

“Jesus, what the fuck is this?” Joel’s wide eyes glowed white against his dark skin.

Else stepped further into the room, passing the bins of hacked-up body parts, some covered in a pink slime, the blood spilt on the stone floor, until she reached a still form draped in plastic and laid out on an operating table.

Using the tip of her blade she lifted the plastic and peeled it back from the body on the table. The chest cavity had been dissected, the skin peeled back and clamped with clothespins. Straps at the ankles, wrists, and neck held the body to the table.

“Ohh . . .” Else’s breath slipped out in a sigh. The face and body were her own.

She reached out and stroked the blood-spattered hair. It wasn’t her. It couldn’t be her. It wasn’t even a perfect copy. The hair was shorter and soft like a baby’s. This Else’s skin was pale, missing the tan from months spent under the harsh Australian sun. The limbs were twisted, deformed, and underdeveloped. Some slight but essential genetic coding had failed during the development process. This clone was a failure.

“I’m sorry . . .” Else whispered, the nauseous horror looming inside her threatening to swamp everything in a tsunami of tears and vomit.

The creature’s eyes opened. Her head twisted as the mouth opened slightly. The organs in the chest cavity had not been eviscerated; they pulsed with a soft squishing sound as some form of life surged through the vessels of the flayed figure that would not die.