It was hot and stuffy inside the sub. Although there were windows along the side and front, darkness pressed in around them. Bo and Callum were jammed into a corner where Roc could keep an eye on them.
‘Take-off,’ said Roc and the sub plunged downwards with a sickening surge. He turned to Bo and Callum. ‘We’ll be in the harbour tunnel soon. Then home in no time.’
The tiny light at the front of the sub barely lit the way through the tunnel. Callum cupped his hands together and whispered into Bo’s ear, ‘I don’t like this plan. We shouldn’t be doing this. Festers give me the creeps. And that Roc is bad news.’
Bo watched Roc as he leant over the controls and gave instructions to Blister. He looked like a man. His arm muscles were bigger than any of the others, and his face, though still boyish, had a hard, adult cast to its features. Though his skin was a golden tan, every hair on his body was blond. Even his eyebrows were white-blond. The other Festers were mostly dark and scruffy-looking but there was something sleek and disturbing about Roc.
A pinprick of light appeared in the soupy harbour waters. The sub lurched to one side and passed through a hole in the tunnel. They surfaced near the end of a stone pier that jutted out into a cove from a mass of broken rock. Blister and Flakie opened the hatch at the top of the submarine and the boys scrambled up into the daylight. Bo drew in long, warm breaths of the outside air with relief. It smelt sharp with the tang of eucalyptus.
The boys pulled branches over the edge of the pier and covered the moored sub so that from a distance it merged with the ragged landscape.
While the other boys climbed a narrow track into the bush, Roc held Bo back. They stood on the end of the pier, Mr Pinkwhistle between them. Roc squatted down beside him.
‘Where did you get this? I used to have a toy that looked like one of these but it stopped working and no one knew how to fix it.’
‘Mr Pinkwhistle is not a toy,’ said Bo. ‘We hunt together.’ She snapped her fingers and Mr Pinkwhistle jumped into her arms.
Roc looked up and noticed Callum, glaring from the edge of the track.
‘Hey, Scab,’ he called. ‘Come here.’
Callum climbed back down onto the dock. ‘My name is Callum, not Scab.’
‘If you’re going to be a Fester you need a real name.’
‘I don’t want to be a Fester. I don’t need to live off garbage. I was chosen. I have two fathers who are happy to raise me. Tomorrow, me and Bo are going to find them,’ said Callum.
‘Maybe you will,’ said Roc, smiling coldly. ‘But if you don’t, you’ll need me. Remember what I named you when you come crawling back and ask for my help.’
‘And you,’ he said, taking one of Bo’s hands and pulling her close to him so she could feel his warm breath on her face, ‘you can be Ebola. You’ll make a lethal Disease.’
A shout from one of the younger boys caught Roc’s attention and, with a nod to Bo, he pushed past Callum and sauntered away, following his Festers up the winding bush track.
‘What a strange boy,’ said Bo.
‘Strange? Psycho more like it,’ said Callum.
‘I think he’s interesting.’
‘You thought Mollie Green was interesting.’
Bo ignored him and set off along the track, following Roc. Callum grabbed her by the arm.
‘How can you be so smart and so dumb at the same time? We shouldn’t have come with them. Those Festers, they probably want to barbecue us for their dinner.’
‘You have to take a chance on people sometimes,’ said Bo. ‘I took a chance on you when I found you in the desert.’
‘Yes, but I am not a Fester. You can’t give yourself away to everyone. Festers are factory fodder gone feral.’
‘No, they’re people. Like you and me.’
‘They’re not like me. My fathers chose me.’
‘People are people. Where we come from isn’t as important as who we choose to become.’
‘Once a freak, always a freak.’
‘Like me?’ said Bo sharply. She strode ahead of him, catching up to the tribe of Festers. She followed the path the boys had made and emerged from the scrub onto a wide, cracked bitumen road. Piles of rubble lay strewn along the broken footpaths but weeds and vines sprang up through every crack. Unlike the ravaged city on the south side, everything on the north side was covered with a mantle of green. Nature was reclaiming the landscape. They crossed a stream that flowed swiftly over the side of a crumbling stone wall and turned into the driveway of a dilapidated mansion. The glass was broken in most of the windows and the front entrance was a gaping cavern, but the boys tramped inside regardless. Roc was waiting on the threshold for Bo.
‘This is our base for the moment. The North Shore is full of empty old places. We move around a lot so the Colony can’t track us, but we meet here to plan our attacks.’
Inside the mansion, Bo discovered Festers camped in every room. Every corner was filled with crowds of boys. The air reverberated with their voices as they crowed Roc’s name, acknowledging his return. He led Bo to the rear of the building and they passed through broken French doors into an overgrown garden.
A boy with a mane of russet hair sat on the edge of an old swimming pool with a net, fishing the lily-covered water. Further, in a clearing beyond the pool, an area that was once tennis courts, boys were hauling bracken and wood into a huge pile.
‘Hey, Festie,’ called Roc.
The boy who was fishing secured his line and then jogged over to join them.
‘This is my baseman,’ said Roc. ‘He runs the place when I’m away. Festie, I found a new Disease. I’ve named him Ebola.’
Festie’s right arm hung limply by his side but he slapped Bo firmly on the shoulder with his strong left hand. He smiled at her, his expression warm and welcoming. At that moment, Callum came charging across the garden, skidding to a stop beside Bo.
‘Thanks for waiting for me,’ he said.
‘This is Callum,’ said Bo.
Roc looked at her coldly. ‘No, he’s Scab.’
‘Ebola and Scab?’ asked Festie.
‘I’m Callum, he’s Bo,’ said Callum, looking at Roc pointedly. ‘There’s no one called Scab or Ebola.’
‘We used to have a Scab,’ said Festie, looking confused. ‘We lost him a few weeks back. I thought you’d come to take his place. Your name needs to show you belong.’
‘Maybe we don’t belong here,’ said Callum.
Roc frowned and turned on him. ‘Look, you’re lucky I brought you here. You can go back to the city and get gunned down, you can head out into the scrub and get baited or starve for all I care.’
Roc walked away and was immediately surrounded by a swarm of small boys demanding his attention.
‘You shouldn’t wind him up,’ said Festie. ‘We’d all be dead without him. He’s the boss around here.’
‘He’s not our boss,’ said Callum.
‘You should wish he was,’ replied Festie.
Callum folded his arms across his chest and looked away. Bo wanted to shake him but she turned to Festie instead. She liked his pale, freckled face, his gentle manner. She felt she could trust him.
‘Roc means a lot to you,’ she said.
‘I was the first boy he saved. He fished me out of a dumpster, brought me here. Made me whole again. He’s saved hundreds since me.’
‘What do you mean “saved”?’ asked Bo.
‘I was dying.’ He pushed up his sleeve and displayed his wizened, twisted right arm. ‘He called me Festie cause I smelt bad – rotting flesh and all. But he healed me. He used to fish us wounded boys out of dumpsters when we were given up for dead, bring us over to the North Shore and give us time to heal. Now he don’t need to do that any more. Now we got runaways, dumpster kids, all types. Lots of them are whole. Not like me.’
Bo gently touched Festie’s scars.
‘What were you doing in a dumpster?’
‘When drones get injured bad or too sickly to work, the boss men chuck you in dumpsters. They’re not meant to but it happens all the time. Drones don’t count as anything to the Colony.’
‘You can’t be a drone,’ said Callum. ‘Drones are made from pigs and sheep. They’re not the same as regular people. They’re not like us.’
‘Where did you hear that garbage?’ asked Festie.
Bo looked across the pool at the crowd of boys foraging beneath the trees. Were they really made from pigs and sheep?
‘You two need to know your place,’ said Festie. ‘It don’t matter how you was brewed. It’s what you do that counts.’ He turned to Callum. ‘Ebola, he has to go on missions with Roc ’cause that’s what Diseases do. If Roc reckons you’re Scab, means you’re a Clot, like me. We stay here at the base and help look after the wounded and the little ones. That’s what Clots do. We make everything stick together.’
‘I’m not staying! And what is it with these gross names, Ebola and Scab, Blister and Flakie? They sound disgusting.’
‘They’re meant to. They’re meant to make you think. See, we’re like sores on the skin of Vulture’s Gate. That’s why Roc gives us names like that. He says we’re a scourge and that once the Diseases become like a plague, we’ll get rid of all the men who hurt boys, and make the city for the young ones, the way it should be.’
‘But everyone grows old one day,’ said Bo.
‘Not us,’ said Festie. ‘We’re brewed different. Genetically manured.’
‘He means genetically manufactured,’ said Callum.
Festie kept his focus on Bo, ignoring Callum. ‘Roc says most of us GM boys will be lucky to get twenty years. He knows how boys get cooked. He was a Colony kid.’
‘I don’t believe you. I don’t believe any of this,’ said Callum. He ran away from them, beating his way through the grass with a stick. Bo watched him until he stopped in the shade of a giant Moreton Bay fig tree and slumped in the tangle of roots at its base. All of a sudden, she wondered if she’d been right to persuade him to come with the Festers.
Apologising to Festie, she followed the path Callum had beaten through the long grass. When she knelt beside him, he put his arms around her neck and pulled her close.
‘Did you tell Roc?’ he whispered in her ear. ‘Did you tell him you’re really a girl?’
‘No.’
‘I think he knows,’ said Callum. ‘Why else would he want you to be one of his Diseases?’
Bo frowned. ‘Because he likes me and I like him.’
Callum scowled and pushed her away. ‘You like him? He’s a killer!’
‘He’s not like an Outstationer,’ argued Bo. ‘I think he wants to do good things for these boys and make a proper home for them.’
‘But we don’t need him. If we can find my fathers, we’ll have our own proper home.’
Bo drew a deep breath. She didn’t want to say it but she had to make Callum face the truth. ‘What if we can’t find your fathers? They weren’t at the Tower. We don’t know where they are. Perhaps, for now, we do need Roc. Perhaps we should be his friend.’
‘You don’t want someone like Roc to be your friend. You don’t need him. You have me.’
Bo sighed. She put Mr Pinkwhistle on the ground beside her and drew Callum close. ‘You are my first friend, Cal. There will never be anyone like you. You will always be my first.’
Callum went limp in her arms and buried his face against her neck.
‘I’m so tired,’ he said. ‘I wish it was night so we could lie down and sleep. I wish we were still in the desert, just the two of us.’
They lay entwined for a long time, listening to the peaceful sound of each other’s breathing. Suddenly, Bo was aware that someone was watching. She looked up into the branches of the Moreton Bay fig. In every bough of the tree, a small boy sat watching. Scores of small faces stared down at them. Callum followed her gaze and groaned.
‘I hate this place,’ he muttered. He grabbed Bo’s hand and dragged her away from the watchers, into the bright, harsh sunlight.