The Repossession (27 page)

‘It was you I saw in the Synchro building, wasn’t it?’ he asked, studying her in the mirror again. ‘I don’t know how you got in there, or how you got out, but you must know, we can’t overlook a thing like that.’

‘How many?’ Genie croaked. ‘How many kids have you killed?’

‘It’s God’s work, Genie. Transforming pathetic lonely kids into souls. I know you know them. Little Denis Malone and that red-headed girl, Renée. You think we can’t tell where they are at any time? Of course, we found a way to stop that. Can’t have our little souls escaping now, can we, scaring the nation. All stored safely now, can’t harm anyone. And your boyfriend Rian will be right behind you. He’ll have to follow. If he loves you at all, he’ll follow.’

The worst of it was that Schneider was right.

The moment he found out who had abducted her, he’d follow.

‘And my soul?’

‘You, Genie Magee are going straight to hell, where, incidentally, you belong. This is the end of the line for the Munbys. The absolute end of the line. As your friend Satan says, “Abandon hope all who deign to enter my kingdom”.’

Reverend Schneider’s phone began to ring. He checked the number of who was calling and sighed.

He pulled over and got out of the vehicle to take the call.

Outside he seemed to be arguing with someone, pacing up and down beside the car.

Genie frantically began to look for a way to escape but the doors were locked. She couldn’t move her arms or

feet. She knew once he got her into the Fortress it would all be over for her.

He got back into the car and swore, glancing back at her a moment. He looked annoyed about something.

‘Got to pick someone up on the way. Don’t get up any hopes, Genie Magee. You know where you’re going. Makes no odds if it’s an hour later, you’ll get there and you’ll be out of my hair forever.’

The Ferryman gas station five Ks outside Cedarville was run down, a last outpost before Highway 1 that clung to life with a grim determination, with a flickering neon Coke sign in the window that always said
Happy Holidays
.

It was the kind of place where old tractors came to be fixed but mysteriously always lay dead in the field out back, along with the old yellow school buses, gutted vehicles and abandoned pick-up trucks. Optimistically they stood ready in case a part was ever needed. The gas was overpriced and most people passed on by to fill up elsewhere if they could.

Rian knew this place well. He used to ride out here on his bike in summer, always trying to improve his time.

He’d buy an apple, maybe have a milkshake in the half-assed drug store tacked on to the side of the building.

Then he’d ride home, uphill all the way. Best time: one hour and twenty minutes.

It was eleven at night. He was exhausted, eyes red-rimmed. He filled up with gas and knew in his heavy

heart that he’d set out too late. There was no way he could intercept Reverend Schneider or gain access to the Fortress. He’d let Genie down. At least Moucher had tried to bite the man, done some damage. But Reverend Schneider had her and could pretty much do what he liked with her.

Rian felt empty and powerless. He did not want to admit that he was never going to see that girl ever again. He didn’t know how to stop the man, didn’t have a plan to rescue his girl. They didn’t train you for this kind of stuff in school. Equally he knew that if he didn’t go, didn’t at least give chase, Genie would never ever forgive him, and that was why he was filling up under the dim naked light of the gas station with the bugs swirling around his head.

‘Rian Tulane, ain’t it?’ the old man asked. Rian looked up, surprised anyone would recognize him or know his name. Then again the old man must have been there since they built the place in 1950, or whenever. Maybe longer. He stared at him and the jacket and scarf he was wearing. It was a warm, windless, stuffy kind of night.

The man looked liked he’d been fixing something, his hands were covered in oil and his broken nails looked sore and infected.

‘That’s Marshall Miller’s vehicle you got there.’

Rian nodded. ‘Marshall’s in hospital. His son asked me to run his truck back to the farm.’

The old man didn’t look convinced. ‘Max said that?’

Rian nodded. ‘You can check. Someone burned down the barn, left Marshall for dead.’

The old man’s huge hairy eyebrows raised up.

‘Burned the barn? You don’t say. Bad business.

Marshall’s one of the good guys. I am very sorry to hear that. How is he?’

‘In hospital. He’s got burns and breathing problems, but he’s conscious. Officer Miller’s been to see him.’

‘How old are you, boy?’

Rian shrugged. ‘Old enough.’

‘You been coming out here few years now. Always on your bike. People reckon I don’t see ’em but I do. Shame about your sister. She was a good kid.’

‘You knew Renée?’

The old man smiled, exposing extraordinarily white unnatural teeth. ‘Like peas in the pod you two. Only she’s ginger. You got the same nose.’

Rian was staggered. Everyone knew he had a sister except him. Spurlake was like a . . . he didn’t know what it was like, but he knew he didn’t like it.

‘Your father did my accounts. You seen him lately, by the by?’

Rian shook his head. He couldn’t get his head around the idea that Renée looked like him. No way.

‘Last place on the road and first place the cops look.

Every missing kid comes by here. Never buy anything sensible. I tell them, stock up with water, take beef jerky, but they buy chocolate and Coke. They leave and no one ever hears from them ever again.’

There was an awkward pause. The old man looked at him with penetrating eyes.

‘You’re not planning to disappear, are you, kid?’

‘I already did.’ He spotted a calendar on the wall. No nudes in this garage. It was pictures of Reverend Schneider and his flock on his wall with his disciples. He couldn’t believe that this old man was one of Reverend Schneider’s flock. Didn’t seem the type.

‘You seen Reverend Schneider today?’ Rian asked casually.

The old man spat on to the floor. The sound of it nearly made Rian retch. ‘You don’t want to be messing with him. He’s the devil himself, that one. He keeps giving me calendars. God knows why people don’t see through him.’

Rian frowned.

‘But he was here?’

‘Filled up about thirty minutes ago.’

Rian’s heart began to rush.

‘Was he alone?’

The old man narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing Rian more carefully. He wasn’t sure if he could trust this kid. His father was OK, but . . .

‘Smoked windows, can’t see shit, but he wasn’t alone.

Had a girl in there, sat in the back.’

He pointed to the CCTV screen on the wall. Rian turned to see Marshall’s truck parked by the pump, the swarm of bugs around the light. The image was unusually clear and in colour. ‘Had new camera fitted. Can see everything now. Got robbed, insurance company fitted it.

You’d be surprised what people do in their cars, kid. Some of it ain’t polite either.’

‘Can I see the picture?’ Rian asked, his heart pumping harder still.

‘If you’re chasing him, or her, you’ll lose. He’s thirty minutes up on you on his way to the Fortress. It’s what I told the cops. If kids go that way, they ain’t coming back.

Ever. No one listens to me.’

Rian ran out of the booth to the truck. He called back to the old man who was watching him carefully now. ‘Call Officer Miller. Tell him you saw me, tell him there’s a girl in the back of Reverend Schneider’s car. Her name’s Genie Magee. Tell him.’

The old man watched Rian drive off, noticing that the vehicle had no licence plate. The cops would stop him for sure if they saw that. His hand hovered over the phone, but then he noticed the time. 11.15 p.m. Time to close up. Wouldn’t be anyone else passing this way tonight.

Rian drove off at high speed. The Fortress was at least half an hour’s drive away. No way he’d catch up now.

Didn’t rightly know what he’d do if he did. Had no plan.

Just knew he wasn’t giving up on Genie. Never giving up on her.

‘Genie,’ he said to the night. ‘I swear I’ll kill him. I swear I will kill him, if it is the last thing I do.’

Genie was already in the prep room. They’d shaved off all of her hair, made her shower, then almost freeze-dried her and forced her to put on some one-piece underwear that felt like a second skin. It was clammy to touch.

A female technician with fierce nasal hairs had then examined her, probing everywhere to make sure she was ‘fit’. Then someone else had painted the outer extremities of her body with a kind of silver liquid. Painstakingly applying it to her head, arms, legs and the undersoles of her feet.

She didn’t protest. Didn’t do anything to resist. She knew it was pointless and these were her last moments of life – at least as flesh and blood. She was extraordinarily calm. She had no idea why, but she felt as if this had always been her destiny. To be chewed up and spat out.

The last month had been the very best of her life, even counting being ill. She had been loved and had loved in return, and it was as if Rian was with her every moment.

She only had to think of him and he was holding her hot

hand, their fingers entwined and making sure she was OK. Moucher had loved her, Marshall had been kind, even the darn pig saving her life was special. Everything had been perfect, every day. Warm sunshine. A safe place. Without all that she’d be hysterical right now, but she knew that when she was gone Rian would always have a space for her in his heart. She’d exist there, just like the kids in the Fortress who were still here, somewhere, forever stored in the system, ready to be alive at any time . . .

There was an annoying electrical buzz coming from a screen in the prep room and it soon became apparent that there was a fault on the transmission platform. They heard the system suddenly power down and Genie heard everyone moan with irritation. She didn’t have to be told she’d have to wait. She knew from Marshall’s explanation that they couldn’t transmit unless the Fortress and Synchro were in complete harmony.

‘You have to drink this,’ the technician was telling her, clearly irritated that there was going to be at least an hour’s delay to transmission.

‘What is it?’

‘It’s just juice, but you have to irrigate your body.’

Genie looked at the fluid and she knew without any doubt that it wasn’t ‘just juice’. It might as well be poison

because as soon as the system was up and running they were going to kill her.

As soon as the woman turned away Genie poured the juice down a heating duct. Hopefully none of the cameras or technicians witnessed this. She imagined the pink goo sliding down towards some really important electrical equipment – any moment everything would explode.

Sadly though, nothing happened.

‘Hello? I seriously need to pee. I don’t know what you put in that stuff but . . .’

The woman looked at her with impatience.

‘You’re prepped and ready,’ she snapped.

‘But I have to go. Come on, the system’s down, I heard it, you heard it. I really have to go.’

The woman sighed. She was clearly reluctant to help, but equally she knew it would be a while before everything was up and running again.

‘We will have to process and prep you all over again. It’s—’

‘Seriously, I am going to have to pee right here, right now, unless you let me go.’

The technician swore under her breath, but she could tell from the way Genie was hopping from one leg to the other that she was serious, and an accident was not what she needed on her sterile transmission platform right now.

‘Follow me. Don’t touch anything.’

As she turned Genie smiled. Anything to be annoying and occupy her time. She followed the woman to the heavily reinforced doors and watched her flip her finger over the button. It flashed up her name: Ulrich, Helen. Then it turned green. The doors opened on to a brightly lit corridor.

‘Follow me. I have to check there’s no one inside the bathroom first, we don’t want you contaminated.’

Genie waited in the corridor, hopping from leg to leg and doing her best impression of someone desperate.

There was a noticeboard on the wall nearby with all kinds of information. Sign up here for the softball team, vacation swap in La Paz, and a photo of a chubby man with severe black-framed glasses and a ruddy complexion, like he’d drunk too many whiskeys:
Employee of the Month –Mr Jim Yates, Assistant Finance Director, Fortransco Synetics Development
.

Jim Yates? The same Jim Yates who was practically living in Rian’s home and dating his mother? The man Ri detested more than anything in the whole world? Did Ri know he worked in the Fortress? Did his mother? Was this possible, or was it just a man with the same name?

No, couldn’t be. Spurlake was a small town, couldn’t be two of them.

‘You can go in,’ the technician told her. ‘When you finish, strip off and step into the ion shower. It will snap on the moment you enter. You understand? Pee then shower. Got it?’

Genie looked at her with loathing. What did she think she was, five years old? Couldn’t work out that you pee first. She entered the bathroom and the door shut behind her and was locked. As if she was going to escape from this place. They were at least a hundred metres underground.

She sat on the toilet. Her brain was racing. Mr Yates worked in the Fortress. If he knew Rian, he knew about her. How many others were working here and living in Spurlake? They would all know what’s going on. They would know kids were being sacrificed in the name of science. They would all know these kids were dying right here. How could they look their neighbours in the face? How could Mr Yates lie to Rian’s mother?

This was a terrible secret. If people knew, they’d riot, for sure. Wouldn’t they? Or that was it. They
did
know and didn’t care as long as it wasn’t
their
kid that disappeared. Reverend Schneider turns up and prays for your kid’s reappearance to keep it all respectable, but they weren’t coming back. People like Mr Yates and this ice queen technician woman, Helen Ulrich, would be