TUESDAY, JUNE 2
72 DAYS
We rode straight to the south end of town, to the place where all the bike paths and walking trails start out into the bush. It was bucketing down by the time we got there. On the plus side, this meant the streets were all but deserted – no sane person would be out here in this. But the pouring rain also meant that we couldn’t count on Reeve waiting around for long.
Assuming he’d come out here in the first place.
Assuming he’d even got the message.
Assuming the million other things that could’ve gone wrong hadn’t gone wrong.
Don’t think about it.
We shot straight off the concrete path and down one of the dirt riding tracks. My head swam with déjà vu. This was the same path we’d started out from two weeks ago, when we were following Crazy Bill’s map out to the wall. This time around, the path was wet and slippery and turning to mud at the edges. The trees pressed in from both sides, and in my head I saw armed security guards hiding behind every one of them, training their weapons on me.
Then again, anyone out here who wanted me dead could just wait for the pneumonia to set in and save themselves the trouble.
Jordan was ahead of me, dark skin and the outline of a singlet showing up through her soaking white shirt.
More rain. More mud. More imaginary guards with imaginary guns.
And then, finally, I spotted the Nest coming up on our left.
Jordan reached it first. She slid to a stop, sending mud splattering back at Luke and me.
‘Sorry.’
‘No worries,’ I said, wiping the worst of it away from my face. I jumped off my bike and checked to make sure no-one else was coming along the path. ‘All right, let’s go.’
The Nest is this rock formation that’s basically one giant boulder with a couple of little boulders sitting on top of it. Looks nothing like a nest, but whatever. Jordan had decided that this would be a safe enough place for us and Reeve to have our little chat.
We lifted up our bikes and started dragging them off the path, into the bush.
I’d been hoping we wouldn’t feel the rain so much once we were under the trees but, if anything, it was worse. All the trees did was collect all the little raindrops and dump them down on top of us in massive sheets.
We tracked around to the far side of the Nest, until we found an outcropping that jutted out far enough for us to cower under. Although by this point, it wasn’t like we were getting any wetter.
There was no sign of Reeve. Nothing to do but stand there, staring out at the bushland, watching the rain pelt down all around us.
I tried to listen for footsteps, or the sound of someone moving through the trees, but it was impossible to hear anything over this ridiculous downpour.
‘How long do we wait?’ I asked after a while.
‘We wait until he gets here,’ said Luke firmly.
‘What if he’s not coming?’ I asked.
‘He’s coming.’
I checked my watch. It was almost 4 p.m. ‘He might have already been and gone,’ I said.
Jordan made a noise which I reckon was meant to tell me I was being insensitive. Like I wanted to be right about this.
But drowning out here in this rain wasn’t going to help anyone.
I stepped away from the outcropping.
‘What are you doing?’ Jordan snapped.
‘Just gonna do a quick circuit round the rock,’ I said, holding my hands up. ‘Make sure Reeve isn’t waiting around the other side.’
I walked off into the bush, feet squishing through the mud and leaves, dragging my right hand along the rock wall.
Thunder cracked above my head.
This was insane. Who would be dumb enough to –?
I swore loudly as a uniformed arm grabbed my shoulder.
I wrenched my body forward, pulling free of the guard’s grip, and stumbled to the ground, sprawling on my hands and knees in the mud. My hand came down on a big stick. I grabbed it, lifted it above my head, and brought it around to –
I stopped in mid-swing.
‘Whoa. Easy there, mate.’ Reeve was staring down at me, looking wary.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Hey. How’s it going?’
I dropped the stick, and Reeve reached out to pull me to my feet.
Jordan and Luke came running around the rock towards us. They saw Reeve and their faces lit up.
Reeve was soaking wet like the rest of us. He’d wrapped up his broken arm in a plastic bag or something, but it didn’t look like that was doing him much good. The whole left side of his body was covered in mud, like he’d taken a dive off his bike on the way here.
‘This had better be good,’ he said.
Jordan started leading him back towards the outcropping. ‘We got into Ketterley’s office,’ she said. ‘Thanks heaps for your note.’
Reeve ran a hand down over his face. ‘I should never have given it to you.’
‘Yeah, you should,’ said Luke. ‘We found out what’s behind those security doors.’
‘That doesn’t –’ said Reeve. ‘If someone had seen you … Look, kids, I didn’t come out here to help you again. I came to tell you that you need to give this up.’
‘Give what up?’ said Luke.
‘All of it,’ said Reeve. ‘All of this sneaking around. Do you know what would’ve happened if I hadn’t bailed you back in after being outside the wall?’
‘We would’ve been dead,’ I said as we reached the outcropping. ‘Yeah, you told us already.’
‘Right, and that was before you were targeted as security risks,’ said Reeve. ‘Something like that happens again and you’re not going to walk away from it.’
‘Then we’re just gonna have to try really hard not to get caught,’ said Jordan.
‘Jordan, no,’ Reeve pleaded, a pained look flashing across his face. ‘Trust me, whatever you’re trying to achieve here, it’s not worth getting on the wrong side of Mr Shackleton. I’m not going to help you put your lives in danger.’
‘It’s not our lives you should be worried about,’ said Jordan.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ asked Reeve.
Jordan dragged her hands through her hair, pushing the glistening braids back out of her face. She turned to Luke and said, ‘Show him.’
Luke pulled out his phone. It wasn’t good for much in this place, but it could still play audio files. Before school this morning, we’d loaded it up with the recording Crazy Bill had given us.
Luke hit play and handed the phone to Reeve.
Static crackled out from the speaker, barely audible over the downpour. Reeve’s brow crinkled, like he thought we were having him on. But then he heard Shackleton’s voice and his eyes went wide.
For the next few minutes, we watched Reeve’s expression shift from shock to disbelief to a sort of shaky despair as he listened to Shackleton and Calvin talk about using Tabitha to ‘cleanse the outside world of the human plague’.
We’d listened to the recording a thousand times before. But, for some reason, seeing Reeve hear it for the first time made the whole thing seem brand-new again.
‘A hundred days, Bruce,’ said Shackleton in his too-polite voice as we reached the end of the recording. ‘That’s all. A hundred more days and then this will all be over.’
The recording sputtered and died.
Reeve reached for the side of the rock to steady himself. He stared up at the dark grey sky. I could see his mind ticking over, scrambling for some other explanation, some reason to believe that none of it was real.
Trying to do exactly what I’d done.
‘Where did you get that?’ he asked eventually, handing the phone back to Luke.
‘Does it matter?’ asked Jordan.
Reeve didn’t answer.
‘Like we said,’ Jordan went on when it was clear that Reeve wasn’t going to say anything, ‘we found out what those security doors are guarding. There’s a network of tunnels under the town, leading up to a secret part of the Shackleton Building.’
Reeve just nodded. I’d expected him to be at least a little bit surprised by this news, but I guess he’d already reached his maximum shock level for the day.
‘There’s some kind of communications centre up there,’ Jordan continued. ‘We need to get inside and call for help. But first we need your help to get us past security.’
Still no answer from Reeve. He looked completely dazed, and I wondered if what Jordan had said had gone in, or whether he was still reeling from the recording.
Reeve let go of the rock and stepped out into the rain. He paced a bit, like he was considering just walking away from the conversation.
Then he stopped. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
‘It’ll have to be tomorrow,’ he said.
Luke’s face broke into a grin.
‘Whoa – what?’ I said. ‘Tomorrow?’
Reeve opened his eyes again. ‘There are two separate security grids in Phoenix,’ he explained. ‘Grid One covers the mall, the Shackleton Building, and the security centre. You can access it from any computer in Phoenix, so long as you’ve got the right security clearance. Then there’s Grid Two, which – well, we’ve never really known what it was protecting. But I guess this is it, isn’t it? These tunnels of yours. And probably the hidden bit of the Shackleton Building, too.’
‘Can you shut it down?’ asked Luke.
‘Should be able to,’ said Reeve, sounding not nearly as confident as I would’ve liked. ‘But, like I said, tomorrow night’s our only shot. You can’t access Grid Two remotely like you can Grid One. The only way to get at it is by going down into the security centre basement and shutting it off manually.’
‘And you can only do that tomorrow?’ said Jordan, shivering in the cold.
‘That’s when I’m on night shift at the security centre,’ said Reeve. ‘It’s not usually my job, but Lazarro’s still out of action and I’ve been rostered on to cover one of his shifts.’
Lazarro. The security guy Crazy Bill had hospitalised out at the airport.
‘But the main reason,’ Reeve continued, ‘is that the chief isn’t around tomorrow night. He’s off overseeing some special project of Shackleton’s.’
‘Perfect,’ said Jordan, like we were arranging to go see a movie. ‘Tomorrow, then. What time can you have the security disabled?’
Reeve took a breath, eyes turned up to the clouds again like he couldn’t believe he’d let himself get dragged into this.
‘Probably best to leave it as late as possible,’ he said. ‘Wait until everything dies down in town.’
‘So, what? Midnight?’ said Luke.
‘All right,’ said Reeve heavily. ‘Yeah. All right. Tomorrow, midnight.’ Then, like he was having second thoughts, he said, ‘Guys, are you sure you want to do this?’
‘You kidding?’ I said, as thunder cracked the sky again. ‘A moonlit stroll into the secret hide-out of a pack of mass-murderers? Who wouldn’t want in on that? ’
We gave Reeve a ten-minute head start towards town, then got back on the bike trail, taking the long way home in case anyone was watching.
The path carved a wide arc through the bush, circling around to emerge at the north end of town, just over from Jordan’s house. By now the endless rain had turned the whole trail into a winding mud puddle.
I was still jumpy. Still half-expecting gunfire to start ringing out from among the trees.
Tomorrow.
Were we seriously going through with this?
It was too soon. There was no time to plan. No time to figure out –
‘Crap!’
A giant tree root had just appeared out of nowhere. I slammed straight into it and suddenly I was airborne.
I wrenched at the brakes, scanning desperately for a place to land.
The bike touched down again, tyres squelching into the mud at the edge of the trail.
But I wasn’t sitting on it anymore.
I soared over the handlebars and tumbled into the bush, somersaulting across the mud and leaves until I smacked into the base of an old eucalyptus tree.
‘Peter!’
I sat up, eyes refocusing just in time to see Jordan and Luke sliding towards me.
‘I’m all right,’ I said, moving to get to my feet.
But then my hand came down on something cold and smooth. Something metal. I wrapped my fingers around it, pulling it up out of the mud.
‘What’s that?’ asked Jordan, stretching out a hand.
I grabbed on and stood up, not taking my eyes off the container in my other hand. It was square and grey and rusty, with a silver keyhole on the front. An old cashbox or something.
I wiped a hand across the top of the container, clearing away some of the mud, and instantly regretted it.
Because now there was something else gleaming up at me.
A silver word, scratched into the lid of the box.
TABITHA.