Blood Junction Page 18

  She gave him a hard look. “If I find out you’re bullshitting—”

  “Shut up, India, and go and keep an eye out.”

  He waited until she’d gone, and crept inside. He left the door open a crack behind him, felt his way along the corridor, listened, crept to the central stairwell, listened again. He slipped up the stairs to the first floor and approached the row of offices. He tried the first door, marked with a little brass plate: IAN TURNER, HEAD OF RESEARCH. Locked. The second too was locked, and Mikey prowled quickly along the corridor, ticking off each plate as he went until he came to the one marked GORDON T. A. WILLIS, DIRECTOR, opposite the lift. Automatically, he glanced at the panel above the lift to check it wasn’t in use, and paused.

  There were four floors.

  He’d thought there were only three. Two above ground, and a possible storage basement. But there was another floor below that: B2.

  He’d check it out later; first things first. He tried Willis’s door, also locked. He quickly freed the lock and entered, shutting the door behind him. Mikey crossed to the windows and pulled the blinds shut. Then he switched on his penlight and scanned the room. His heart gave a bump at the hammerhead shark jaws, and settled to a steady pounding as he moved the beam around. Lots of chrome and black, and trophies of fish and photographs of more fish on the walls. There were four shelves filled with technical books and journals, a three-tier filing cabinet and a computer on the desk. He crossed the room to the desk and turned on the computer. Sweat pooled in the small of his back; the hum of the machine seemed overly loud. He searched the desk while the computer booted. Internal memos, a handful of checks needing a countersignature. Nothing startling there. A book on big game fishing. Another on sharks.

  He shut the last drawer and leaned over and clicked the mouse. The screen lit into blue and demanded a password. Mikey cursed softly. He tried Willis’s name, his initials and a handful of words including Hammerhead and Great White. Deciding not to waste any more time he shut down the computer and went to the filing cabinet. Locked. He broke it open easily. Swiftly, he started his search.

  It took him twenty minutes before he fell upon a register of testers that told him when they had answered an advertisement, what tests they’d undertaken and when, and what they’d been paid. He saw Debs’s name and Roxy’s. He pulled out the next register and immediately his attention sharped because, while the previous register showed white testers, this register listed blacks—including the Mullett family.

  He frowned. This register revealed the date when an Aborigine arrived at the Institute, but not what they were testing. None of them seemed to have been paid. Mikey folded both registers in half and pulled out his shirt. He stuffed the sheets in the back of his jeans and tucked his shirt over them.

  A noise made him stiffen. He thought he could hear a low rumble coming from the corridor, like a distant engine. He hastened to the door, put his ear against it. Silence.

  Cautiously, he opened it a crack. He peered up and down the corridor. Nothing. He stepped outside, shut the door and headed to the lift, pressed the button. The ping when it arrived made him flinch. He stepped inside, pressed B2. The lift doors closed. The lift dropped downwards, stopped at B1. Mikey pressed B2 again. The lift didn’t move. He scanned the lift’s panel. His pulse leapt. There was a tiny camera set above the panel. A camera with EYE TECH etched onto its bodywork. A camera that zoomed in to examine your iris for identification. He jerked his gaze away. His body streamed with sweat. He pressed G and the lift ascended. He decided to push his luck and try another route to B2.

  The lift doors opened.

  A low growl greeted him.

  He looked down.

  A pair of yellow eyes stared into his.

  Oh, shit.

  The dog was big, at least a hundred pounds, and jet black. Its ears and tail were cropped, and its teeth gleamed white in a dripping snarl. Its hackles were raised. Its massive chest emanated a deep continual growl.

  Mikey started desperately stabbing the lift button. The dog’s muscles bunched at his movements and the growl turned into a roar. Tortuously slowly, the lift doors started to close. To his surprise, the dog immediately stopped snarling, spun around and raced off.

  Shit, shit, shit!

  The lift rose silently, stopped.

  Ping. 1.

  The doors opened. Mikey craned his head into the corridor, listened hard, took one step, heard something moving. Put his finger on the lift button. The dog came charging around the corner, head low, ears flat against its skull.

  Mikey stabbed G.

  The doors were half closed when the dog appeared. It made no effort to spring inside, simply raced off again. Mikey’s adrenaline was pumping. He slipped the hunting knife from its sheath, held it hard.

  Ping. G.

  He sprang outside and ran for the fire exit. He was two-thirds along the corridor when he heard something behind him. He ran harder. A rhythmic panting reached him. He pumped his legs faster, willing himself to reach the door before the dog reached him. The panting grew louder and louder, until it seemed to match his own frantic breaths.

  Mikey hit the door with the full force of his left shoulder. He flew outside, spinning in midair, knife poised. The dog piled on top of him, snapping and snarling. Mikey tried to stab the dog but it was too close and trying to bite his face. He rolled onto his front, felt the jaws close on his shoulder. He tried to wrench free, but the dog had a good grip and was biting hard, shaking its head furiously. Mikey heaved himself off the ground in an attempt to pass the knife under his body and into the dog’s stomach but there was no room so he jabbed the dog as hard as he could with his elbow. It simply bit harder, enraged.

  Suddenly the animal went still, stopped snarling. Its body slumped, a dead weight on Mikey’s back.

  He pushed it off, scrambled to his feet. India stood there, Whitelaw’s cosh in both hands. She was trembling.

  “It wouldn’t stop,” she said. “I kept hitting it, but it wouldn’t stop.”

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” was all he managed between gasps. His chest was heaving, his body shaking and sweat-soaked.

  “It wouldn’t stop,” she repeated.

  He grabbed her wrist and pulled her away. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Something kicked up dust next to him. He heard the muffled phut from a gun with a silencer. “They’re shooting!” he yelled to India. Another bullet whizzed between them. India veered away sharply. Mikey raced for the hole in the fence. He slowed abruptly, scrambled as carefully as he could through the hole, straightened up and sprinted dead ahead. A third bullet sang past his right shoulder and he started to zigzag, attempting to head for the rocky slope.

  “Over here!” a man shouted behind him.

  Mikey sprinted through the bush, dodging trees and shrubs. He risked a glance over his shoulder, expecting India to be hot on his heels. She was nowhere to be seen. Instead, three men were right behind him. Maybe more.

  A bullet walloped into the tree ahead of him and Mikey dived left. More bullets slapped into the ground and snapped twigs. He ran in the opposite direction, trying to stoop, keeping his silhouette low.

  The moon slid behind a bank of clouds. It was as though a light had been switched off. Mikey crashed into a rock, losing his balance and hitting the ground. He surged upward and kept running, straining to see obstacles ahead. He could hear men behind him, shouting urgently.

  Mikey charged down a hill, bumping painfully against stumps and rocks and overbalancing, sometimes falling to his knees, but he continued his charge, moving fast and hard as he could. He tried to figure out where he was. He had started out by heading for the rocky slope but in the darkness had lost his sense of direction. He had to find the slope, and then he could locate the car. Go and get help. Help India, wherever she was. He came to the bottom of the hill and pelted along the valley for several minutes before climbing the next hill. His legs were tiring when he reached the top, and his breath burned in his
throat, but when a flashlight bobbed into view in the valley he accelerated downwards and then up for the next ridge, the thought of India keeping his body moving at a crippling rate.

  He was going so fast he nearly fell when he got to the top of the ridge. He paused and looked back, panting. Flashlights bobbed below, hard on his trail. Men shouted. A dog barked.

  A bloody dog! He could never outrun a dog. He hoped it wasn’t the same black bastard. It was fucking huge.

  “Over here!”

  “This way!”

  To his surprise, the flashlights changed direction. Moved directly away from him. He watched them for several minutes, his legs weary, his lungs aching. He couldn’t see the Institute anywhere. Or anything, for that matter. Murky bush stretched endlessly in every direction. He saw the flashlights dwindle into tiny yellow dots, and eventually vanish. He sank to his knees and knelt there, gasping. When his breathing slowed and his heart rate steadied, he shuffled into a more comfortable position. He felt his sweat drying cold. His shoulder started to throb where the dog had gripped him. There was a deep ache at the back of his neck as well, and both his forearms and wrists, and his right knee. In the dark he couldn’t tell how badly he had been bitten, just that his jeans and jacket were sticky with blood. He was aware that the sooner he treated the wounds the better. He looked around him again. Nothing but dark gray bush, as far as he could see.

  And silence.

  Dense bush silence. Nothing moved, not a bird or bat or a leaf on a tree. He looked into the sky. Nothing but thick clouds roiling in weighty slow motion across the moon.

  He hunched there for quite a while, trying to ignore the increasing pain. Maybe an hour passed, but in the silence it felt like half the night. He decided to settle where he was, until dawn, and then move. If he set off not knowing where he was going, he might—

  Something brushed his upper arm and he jerked wildly to one side.

  “It’s only me,” said India. “Are you all right?”

  He swallowed the yell that had formed in his throat.

  “I … um, I guess.” His voice was strangled.

  “I’ve thrown them off your track for a bit.”

  “Ah,” he managed.

  “Are you okay to keep moving?”

  “Sure.”

  She touched him again. “Come on, then. Follow me.”

  Mikey followed India through the thick dark gloom. She kept angling to the right, scooping around trees and bushes, heading downhill all the time until they reached the bottom of a valley, where she immediately increased her pace. They followed a wild animal track, bordered with saltbush and rocks and stones, for some time. He stumbled and lurched behind her, and found himself resenting his clumsiness. India hadn’t tripped or faltered once.

  They reached the end of the valley. Mikey looked upwards and at the steep cliff ahead, and groaned. He felt exhausted. In need of a hot bath, antiseptic, a stiff drink, a massage, cool sheets, a soft pillow …

  The blanket of clouds parted for a brief moment, and the bush blazed silver. Mikey reeled in his tracks.

  In front of him was a naked woman. Her head was held high, and her back and shoulders were straight, the dip above her buttocks pronounced. She had long muscular thighs and her calves curved to narrow ankles. She made no sound as she moved.

  Cloud folded over the moon.

  Mikey followed the gleaming shadow that was India until they reached the car.

  EIGHTEEN

  DO YOU NORMALLY STRIP IN TIMES OF STRESS?” HE ASKED lightly as he drove.

  India was curled on the passenger seat. She was wearing his shirt. It came down to her knees.

  “Only when necessary.” She sounded distant and distracted.

  “Well, thank you. Without you I’d still be sitting frozen solid on that hilltop. Scared shitless I was lost forever.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “How in the hell did you divert them? And what about that bloody dog?”

  “I picked up a few survival skills in the bush.”

  “Did you do a course or something?”

  “Just last week’s sojourn.” Her face was turned to the window.

  “You learned all that in a week?”

  “I had a good teacher.”

  India was staring outside, as though she wished she were somewhere else. Mikey decided to leave her be.

  When they got to Whitelaw’s all he wanted to do was sleep.

  “No,” said India. She marched him into the bathroom, passed him a towel. “Get undressed.” She started to run the bath, then opened the cabinet and pulled out a pack of cotton wool, sticking plaster, bandages and a bottle of Dettol, put them on the loo cistern. She poured half the bottle of Dettol into the bath, turning it cloudy.

  “I’ll be fine,” he protested.

  “We’ll see about that after you’ve bathed.” She glanced at her watch. “You’ve ten minutes. Then I’m coming in.”

  “Yes, commandant,” he said wearily.

  The water was hot and he had to grit his teeth as he slid down until he was immersed up to his chin. He couldn’t see the damage on his shoulder or neck, but he could make out two punctures behind his knee, the way the skin was already turning dark purple from the pressure of those massive jaws. He exhaled and felt the heat penetrate his aching muscles. He leaned back and closed his eyes.

  What seemed seconds later, India knocked on the door, demanded he sit on the loo seat. Towel intact, please. Feeling oddly vulnerable, he sat.

  “Ready,” he called, and gritted his teeth once more when she stepped inside, looking determined.

  “When did you last have a tetanus shot?”

  “Recently.”

  “How recently?”

  “Recently enough, thank you.”

  He stared at the floor as she gently pushed his ponytail aside. Heard her hiss between her teeth. “This might hurt,” she warned.

  It did.

  But he refused to make a sound.

  With infinite care, India disinfected and bandaged each of his wounds, made him swallow two Panadol. When she’d finished, she said, “Look at me.”

  He raised his head. Slowly, she lowered her face to his, and pressed a kiss against his mouth.

  “That’s for being so brave,” she said, and smiled.

  He found himself grinning inanely as he headed for bed.

  Mikey slept like the dead. Immobile. Comatose.

  In the first instant when he awoke he wondered if he’d dreamed the past night, but then the pain in his shoulder and neck entered his consciousness. He struggled up and went to wash. In the bathroom he inspected India’s first aid, downed some more Panadol and got dressed. He headed for the kitchen and coffee and toast.

  India was struggling to open a jar of apricot jam. Her lips were compressed and her knuckles stood out white.

  She thrust the jar at him.

  “Having trouble opening it, India?”

  She gave a curt nod.

  “Not strong enough to open it by yourself?”

  Another nod.

  “Say: ‘Please, Mikey, could you help me open my jar of apricot jam?’”

  She sent him a look that could have stopped an elephant in its tracks. “Say: ‘Please, Mikey, don’t be a shithead,’” she said.

  He couldn’t help grinning. She may have resembled an untouchable wraith in the bush last night, kissed him like an angel, but deep down she was the same old India. Spiky and defensive.

  He took the jar of apricot jam and with a single twist snapped it open. “Happy Christmas, India.”

  At eleven o’clock Mickey was basting the turkey.

  “If Santa could bring you anything right now,” he said to India, “what would you like?”

  “A decent potato peeler.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with it. You need more practice, that’s all.” He slid the turkey back into the oven.

  “Please, Santa, make all potatoes skinless from tomorrow.”

  “I’ve
never had a Chrissy pressie,” said Polly wistfully. She was swinging her legs on the divan as she watched them.

  “What’s on the kitchen table, then?” Mikey said.

  Polly shoved her hands beneath her thighs. “Pressies.”

  “Whose are they?” asked Mikey.

  “Don’t know.”

  “Hadn’t you better look?”

  Polly sidled up to the three gift-wrapped presents.

  “Can you read out what’s on their labels?” said India.

  Hesitantly, Polly peered at the first. Her face split into a smile. “It says Polly!”

  “And the others?”

  “Another one for me! And one for Jed! Can I open them?”

  “Only yours. Jed gets his when Mikey takes him his Christmas lunch.”

  “What’s Jed’s pressie?”

  “A cake with a file in it.”

  The following evening, Mikey was sprawled on the grass with India and Polly at back of Whitelaw’s house watching the sun set. It was ten past seven when his mobile rang.

  “It’s Sam.”

  Mikey stiffened. “So what’s up?”

  “I want to meet.”

  “Give me a time and a place, and I’ll be there.”

  “Martin Place. Outside the post office. Eleven tomorrow.”

  Mikey’s brain raced. “It’s going to take me longer than that to get to Sydney. Can we make it Wednesday?”

  “Not Wednesday.”

  “Thursday then.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “Can you bring the—”

  “No. I’m not bringing anything.”

  “That’s okay.” Mikey took a breath. “How will I know you?”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll know you.”

  “Okay, I’ll be—” he started to say, but Sam had gone.

  “I bet Sam’s got Peter Ross’s disc,” said India. “My guess is Peter sent it to him.”

  “Sam never said anything about a disc. Just some files he found.”

  “I reckon they’re computer files.”