The next morning, every person who could be spared was lined up, silent and watchful, black shadows in the sunshine. The woman with the mahogany hair stood towards the back, a purple bruise blossoming under a swollen eye. The horses were ready and eager to be away from the area, stamping and tugging, their mounts struggling to keep them steady. The only person who wasn’t there was Peter, but nobody appeared to notice.
‘This is great news. We’ve had a positive sighting of one of the students. He’s confused. He’s disoriented. He is almost certainly delusional. He needs medical attention asap. So, remember, any sightings, anything, and you report straight back to me. This is a game changer, people. This is what we’ve been waiting for!’
There was a smattering of applause, and Griff stepped back with a wave. He kept a pleasant smile on his face as the troops moved out. Only when he, Jesse and Moses stood alone did he drop the geniality.
‘Goddammit.’
‘They’ll find him,’ Moses soothed. ‘We know where to look. He won’t get away.’
‘He better not,’ said Griff. ‘Worthington’s kid too! And where the hell’s Peter got to?’
‘He’s fine,’ Jesse said. ‘He’s helping us.’
Moses said nothing.
‘If we can get through this, it’ll be a bloody miracle.’ Griff flashed his pass to the lone guard on the gate to the Restricted Area. He glared at the guard to remind him of his partner’s recent punishment for letting an unauthorised person through the gate, and the guard hurriedly made a great show of passing the scanner over the barcode and then over Griff’s unblinking glower.
‘We have to collapse the cliff before anything else can stuff up,’ said Griff as soon as they were out of the guard’s earshot. ‘Two of the crew are already scrambled. We’ve had to send them back for psychiatric assessment. Best we get Destiny buried before the kid’s found.’
‘Or kids,’ said Moses. He sounded sulky. ‘Who knows how many of them are still out there?’
Griff growled deep in his throat and stormed off. Jesse gave Moses a dirty look and went after him, leaving Moses to trail behind.
The teams of searchers split up as they approached the border of Zone 12, following horses that were too fresh to keep reined in.
The cooks were the most unfit of the lot, and the group they were in was travelling at a pace that was more like a Sunday stroll. The rest of the team didn’t complain. There was a rumour going around that the cooks had stuffed their packs with doughnuts pilfered from the mess.
Once over a peculiar sort of ditch that stretched away into the bush, the group took a break under a large tree with spreading branches. They chatted quietly as they ate, wondering what kind of condition the boy, Jahmin Worthington, would be in when they found him, if they found him. And then, reluctantly, for the day was fine and everyone by now was stuffed full of refined sugar and gluten-laden flour, their group leader indicated it was time to continue the search.
They moved out slowly, eyes flicking back and forth for any sign of the boy.
It was a pity none of them looked back. They would have seen a skinny kid with a mop of frizzy ginger hair slither down the tree and take off as fast as he could.
