Terminal (13 page)

 

 

 

Chapter Four

T
he bushman was being bounced around in the seat next to Jürgen, who was manoeuvring the New Germanian half-track through the jungle at some speed. It was a hefty eighteen-tonne military vehicle, requisitioned from a military compound in the city, and with its combination of wheels and caterpillar tracks it was ideal for the jungle track, which a recent monsoon had turned into a muddy stream.

There were numerous crates of apparatus in the rear of the vehicle that the New Germanian brothers had hastily assembled for the expedition. Despite this, there was still plenty of room for Will and Elliott to spread out.

As they sat across from each other on the side benches, Will caught Elliott's attention. ‘He's doing it again,' Will mouthed at her, as he indicated the bushman in the front seat.

The bushman's new appearance had taken some getting used to. He looked very different now, wearing a pair of blue dungarees, a boonie hat and a pair of wraparound sunglasses, all very necessary to protect him from the sun since he'd lost his extraordinary epidermal layer.

But this wasn't why Will was pointing at him. As he had
done since the first moment Elliott had spoken to him in Styx, the man was forever sneaking glances at her, as if he couldn't keep his eyes off her. And each time Elliott returned one of his glances, he quickly averted his eyes.

He now did this yet again, peering at her over his shoulder. And, true to form, as Elliott made a move to acknowledge him, he whipped his head back round to the windscreen again. Never once had he met her eyes.

Will leant towards Elliott, waving her closer so she could hear him over the sound of the engine. ‘Reckon our bushman here has a massive crush on you,' he suggested mischievously.

Elliott shook her head. ‘Don't be an idiot, Will.'

Will was grinning. ‘We should give your new BF a name. We can't keep calling him
the bushman
.'

Elliott didn't rise to Will's teasing as she thought out loud. ‘No, I get the feeling he's sort of frightened of me … for some reason,' she said.

‘I know! Woody!' Will burst out all of a sudden. ‘Yes, that's what we should call him – Woody … get it?'

Elliott groaned. ‘That's as bad as one of Drake's awful jokes,' she said, smiling sadly. ‘I never thought I'd miss them as much as I do.'

‘And if Woody's leaves grow back, we can change his name to Russell,' Will added, but in a flat voice, because like Elliott he was thinking about their friend Drake and how unlikely it was that he'd survived the nuclear explosion.

What Elliott had said about Woody, as he'd just been christened, did have some credence, though. He did seem to be in total awe of her, and, although he'd gone back to scanning the passing trees through his wraparounds as they continued their
way through the thick jungle, he did seem to be only interested in Elliott. For the first twenty-four hours after Woody had regained consciousness, he'd repeatedly tried to throw himself at her feet. And all he would say were the same words, ‘They have returned'.

The revelation that Elliott was half Styx – or half invader, as they insisted on putting it – had taken the two New Germanian brothers by surprise, because neither Will nor Elliott had considered her parentage relevant when they took Jürgen through the series of events that led to the release of the virus in the inner world. But the New Germanian brothers seemed to accept it after speaking in more detail to Elliott about the matter and, in any case, by the start of the second day Woody's fever had completely abated. He stopped babbling his set phrase in Styx and, indeed, clammed up altogether and became very withdrawn.

Werner's diagnosis was that Woody was suffering from shock because of his abrupt physical transformation. In an effort to help him to readjust, Jürgen had spent time with the bushman in his room, trying to communicate with him as he had done previously using the medium of the hand-drawn hieroglyphs. At the very least, Jürgen wanted to make him understand that he was immune to the virus and could leave the quarantine ward whenever he wanted.

Then they had put that to the test. After many weeks of being cooped up inside, it was quite an occasion when the New Germanian brothers, along with Karl and Woody, filed through the decontamination areas without suiting up. Nobody spoke as they emerged from the shadowy interior of the hospital and stepped from the main entrance, followed by Will and Elliott. The rains had come and washed much of the
ash away so that the streets looked cleaner than before. It was almost as if the city had returned to normal, except that the mound of charred bones remained as a testament to the terrible impact of the plague.

As they stood in the glaring sunshine, everyone was looking at everyone else. Then Werner spread his arms like an opera singer about to burst into song and gulped down a large breath of air. He held it in for several seconds as if savouring it, then exhaled slowly and dramatically through his nose. For so many weeks all that the New Germanians and the bushman had known was the highly filtered atmosphere of the quarantine ward, but now they were free to go where they wanted in the city.

‘Well, so far so good. I can't feel any symptoms yet,' Werner finally announced, then began to laugh. ‘I'm kidding. The tests showed the vaccine is effective. We're going to be okay!'

Jürgen was laughing too and hugging his son – only Woody remained unmoved, angling his face to catch the sun's rays on his new skin.

Jürgen turned to Will and Elliott. ‘Without you, we might never have seen this day. It was only a matter of time before the reserve power ran out, and we'd have been exposed.'

‘No problem,' Will answered, enjoying the moment with them. ‘And now I'm going to raid that sweet shop. Anyone interested?'

On hearing this, Karl's eyes lit up.

Later that evening they had returned to the quarantine ward laden with several carrier bags of food that they'd scavenged. They didn't have to worry about sterilising any of it now they
all had immunity. Jürgen had prepared a meal to celebrate their newfound freedom, and they were all sitting around the table feeling very contented when, without any warning, Woody started to jabber away ten to the dozen in Styx, as if it had finally sunk in that he was safe from the plague.

‘I can't get it all,' Elliott said, doing her best to understand what Woody was saying. ‘But I think it's about his people … he believes they could be still alive in … I don't recognise the word, but he may mean the pyramids. Far down inside them.'

‘Is that possible? After all this time?' Jürgen asked his brother.

‘Anything's possible,' Werner replied. ‘You said that they lived in the pyramids for months on end. Maybe they knew something was wrong as the jungle fauna began to die, and they confined themselves in good time.' He looked across at Woody, who was still babbling away. ‘It all depends on the air circulation inside the pyramids. I think it's highly unlikely but …' he tailed off.

Jürgen pondered this for a moment. ‘We can't just ignore what he's telling us. If we can save more of the indigenous people, we have to act, and act quickly.'

Will and Karl had been enjoying the
Kriesel
lollies that they'd plundered earlier that day when Will caught Elliott's eye. It seemed that their simple way of life back at the pyramid wasn't going to be restored to them quite yet.

And now here they were in the half-track, embarking on a mission to rescue more bushmen when they had no idea if any of them had survived for this long.

‘This is where the main trail ends. We're on foot from here,' Jürgen shouted, as he brought the half-track to a stop in
a clearing that obviously served as a turning circle. As he turned off the engine and jumped from the vehicle, he glanced briefly in the direction they'd just driven from.

‘So what do we do now? Wait for Werner and Karl to catch up with us?' Elliott asked.

‘No, we go on without them,' Jürgen replied, as he went round to the rear of the half-track and undid the tailgate. ‘They won't be here for a while yet, and they'll radio me when they're close. In the meantime, we can make a start on shifting some of the equipment over to the pyramid,' he said.

Jürgen, Will and Elliott each took one of the sizeable crates from the rear of the vehicle, the low gravity enabling them to lift far more than they could have managed on the surface. They balanced these crates on the tops of their heads as Woody led them in a procession into the dense undergrowth. Nobody really expected him to carry anything, but at least he used his knowledge of the jungle to steer them onto an animal track so they weren't forced to cut themselves a path using their machetes.

They had quite a distance to cover, and Woody seemed so determined to reach the pyramid that he kept increasing his pace. Each time Jürgen urged him to slow down. Finally they stepped from the treeline, and there was the pyramid. Still damp from the recent deluge, the droplets of water on it were catching the sun and sparkling like thousands of tiny diamonds.

‘There's nothing like coming home,' Will puffed. He edged further out so that he could see the base he and Elliott had built in the branches of the nearby tree, and felt more than a twinge of regret. What he was actually thinking was,
I wish we'd never left it in the first place.

Although lives had been saved as a result of their foraging
expedition into the metropolis, part of him wished that he'd never let Elliott talk him into it. He didn't like to admit to himself that there was some truth in what she'd said about him growing old and set in his ways. He recognised that he was different – he'd lost some of his taste for adventure. Perhaps the constant struggle against the Styx had beaten it out of him, but right now, all he wanted was his simple life in the jungle back again, with Elliott, and without any outside interference from the New Germanians or babbling bushmen.

‘Home,' Will repeated, as he realised the significance of the word, and how very happy he'd been there with Elliott. With both the Ancients' passage and the void sealed, neither he nor Elliott had any serious expectations that they'd ever return to the outer world again. This place, with their base in the tree beside the pyramid, and this world in the centre of the world, had become the best home he'd ever known in his short life. And as it now seemed to be coming to an end because of these new people in their lives, his heart began to race with a sort of panic.

He'd earned this time with her. He'd done his bit in the fight against the Styx, and wanted to put all that behind him now. He felt so far away from his mother in the Colony, and his friend Chester. And as for Parry and Eddie, of course he wondered how they were faring in their search for the second Styx female. But he couldn't help feeling all that wasn't his battle any longer.

‘Hello! I was speaking to you!' Elliott called, pulling Will from his thoughts. ‘You joining us today?'

‘Yeah, sorry … I was miles away,' Will smiled, and hurried to catch up with her and Jürgen.

Still lugging the crates, they climbed up the side of the
pyramid. They stopped short of going onto the flattened upper platform at the very top, instead following the ledge around on the tier just below, until Woody brought them to a halt.

‘Back here again,' Will said, surveying the very place where he and Dr Burrows had tumbled in when the Styx had surrounded the pyramid in a bid to capture them. ‘There's an entrance here,' he added for Jürgen's benefit.

‘Yes, we were aware of that,' Jürgen replied, as they all put their crates down. ‘The invaders didn't get very far, did they?' Jürgen noted, as he began to inspect the damage inflicted by the Styx's attempt to blow a way inside the pyramid using charges. ‘Interesting …' he said, passing his hand over what remained of the stones with the carvings on them, and then the underlying masonry that had been exposed, which was considerably darker in colour. ‘Do you see the difference between the two materials?'

Although the outer facing stones had been blasted away, the supporting structure seemed to be completely unmarked.

‘Yes, it does look sort of … sort of new underneath,' Will agreed. ‘And the Styx explosives took out what my dad called the
moving stones
, but there are still those to show where they were.' He was pointing at a row of ten squares visible on the otherwise smooth surface.

Woody let out what might have been a curse in the Styx tongue, although much of their language sounded precisely like that.

‘Will, he wants you out of the way,' Elliott translated.

‘Fine,' Will said, peeved by the bushman's brusqueness. Nevertheless he stepped aside for Woody, who went straight to the squares. Standing on tiptoe, he began to touch them one after another.

‘My dad and I thought there had to be a combination to get in. We spent ages pushing the blocks in and out in different sequences to try to crack it,' Will said, watching as Woody continued to touch the squares at lightning speed. ‘But I don't know what he thinks he's doing?'