December (2 page)

Eric Blair poses the question–what if the illness that killed my dad, and caused his own illness, was not a virus, but something deliberate?

The cops have taken Boges for questioning, Winter is scared, and Sligo is becoming increasingly suspicious. I receive a message from Winter, but before I can call her, I am crash-tackled by police! Just as they are dragging me to the car, Sharkey appears and presents my fake passport, saving me with my new identity.

I now have a few missed messages from Winter,
but am spotted by Capsicum Cop and chased into a sports stadium with wild crowds of fans. Somehow I end up running onto the field with the players, and a massive close-up of my face appears on the big-screen. The crowd is chanting my name as I'm pursued. I run down to the underground quarters and am forced to find a hiding place in a locker room. I jump inside an empty koala mascot costume–successfully hiding in plain sight when the cops search the place.

Rafe admits he believes I saved him at the chapel and that he's been trying to protect me from the dangers of the Ormond Singularity.

While I'm waiting for Winter at the beach, Griff Kirby shows up, telling me that he saw her being tossed into a black Subaru. Sligo has her! We race to the scene of the kidnapping, then to Sligo's car yard. There we see Zombie Two locking up a shipping container–Winter might be trapped inside. Zombie Two and Bruno are alerted to our presence and they attack. Before we know it, we're tied up and shoved into the container ourselves.

Griff makes a horrifying discovery–Winter's body, cold and lifeless. Her voicemail messages
reveal that she'd found out Sligo killed her
parents
by cutting the brake lines of their car. She confronted him, alone, because I didn't call her back. I wasn't there for her.

Now it's too late.

1 DECEMBER

31 days to go
…

I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, almost couldn’t breathe. Winter’s final words echoed through the black, suffocating space we were locked in, like a haunting message from the grave.

I held her slumped body next to mine. Her wild hair fell over my knees and onto the floor of the container. I tried to say her name, but all that came out was a croaking sound.

She’d saved my life so many times, and I had completely failed her. The one time she’d needed
me
I had ignored her calls until it was too late. She was gone. The beautiful raven-haired stranger who’d saved me from drowning in an oil tank was now dead.

If I’d been there for her–calmed her down and talked sense into her–she would never have confronted Sligo. She would have waited until it was
safe. If I had answered just one of her calls, she wouldn’t be lying cold and silent in my arms. She would still be alive.

A numbing sensation took over me as I rocked back and forth with her body in my arms.

‘Cal!’

Griff was elbowing me in the ribs–his hands were still bound behind his back.

‘Cal, let go of her!’

I shook him off. He was the last person I wanted to talk to right now, but he kept persisting.

‘Let her go!’ he shouted, shoving me with his shoulder.

I swung my arm out and pushed him away. ‘I don’t want to let her go!’ I shouted back at him, tears now stinging my eyes. ‘I won’t let her go!’

‘You have to, Cal.’

‘I don’t have to do anything! Winter was my friend! She was–’

‘She’s breathing, Cal,’ Griff spoke over me as he steadied himself. ‘I swear. That’s all I’m trying to tell you. Listen.’

I ignored him. I didn’t want to hear his voice right now.

‘Winter’s
breathing
,’ he said, urgently kneeling closer to her. ‘Listen to me! Here, help me sit her up.’

His words finally penetrated the blackness of my thoughts.

‘She’s breathing?’ I repeated. As I spoke, I felt Winter stir.

I loosened my hold on her and a second later her body convulsed into life. She started
struggling
, groaning, trying to pull away from me.

‘Winter!’ I gripped her shoulders, crazy with relief. ‘Winter? Are you OK?’ I asked, trying hopelessly to keep my voice steady. ‘It’s me! Cal!’ I added, half laughing, half crying.

‘Let me go!’ she screeched, squirming with panic. ‘Get your hands off me!’

‘It’s me!’ I said again. ‘You’re OK, you’re with me!’

‘Huh?’ she said, sounding dazed, as I helped her sit up. ‘What’s happened? Where am I? Cal, is that you?’

‘Yes, I’m here!’ I squeezed both of her hands, and tried to move her towards some moonlight that was creeping in through a rusty crack in the container.

‘Where have you been?’ she murmured.

‘I’m
so
sorry I didn’t call you back,’ I said, my guilt gushing out. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you rang. I just–,’ I stopped, not
knowing
how to explain myself. ‘I can’t believe this; I thought you were dead a second ago!’

‘Give her some air, Cal,’ suggested Griff. He was awkwardly trying to rub Winter’s arm to
help warm her up. ‘She doesn’t need to hear your apologies right now.’

‘Who’s that?’ asked Winter, squinting into the darkness of the container.

‘You’re in here with me and Griff Kirby,’ I explained.

‘You and
Griff
?’ she said slowly, bewildered and fearful. ‘What are you talking about?
Why?
Where are we?’

‘We’re all in the same boat,’ said Griff. ‘Or should I say
container
?’

‘Container? Cal, what is he talking about?’

Winter tried to get up, but toppled right over.

‘They must have drugged you,’ said Griff, helping her straighten up, ‘and you’re still feeling the effects of it. I saw them dragging you into the black Subaru. You yelled out to me,’ he reminded her, as I worked on unwrapping the tape around his wrists. ‘You told me I had to go and get Cal.’

‘Yeah,’ she murmured. ‘From the beach.’

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘You told Griff he’d find me at the beach.’

‘And I did find him,’ added Griff, ‘but by the time we got back to the spot where you’d been shoved into the Subaru, all that was left behind were your things, scattered all over the road.’

Winter began groping around in the darkness.

‘We’re in the car yard,’ I explained. ‘Griff and I came looking for you, but Zombie Two and Bruno caught us. Next thing we knew, they’d locked us in this container. You were already in here.’

‘We’re in a
shipping
container?’

‘Yep,’ said Griff. ‘On the back of a truck.’

‘Are they going to take us somewhere? How will we get out?’

They were questions we couldn’t answer. Winter continued fumbling her way around the walls. She was nothing but a faint, wobbly silhouette in the darkness.

Next, she started banging, like she was testing the walls for a weak spot or a potential
opening
. Before long, Griff–whose hands were finally free–joined her.

‘Help!’ Griff shouted as he thumped on the walls. ‘Let us out!’

The metal shuddered, sending reverberations around us.

‘Help!’ they both called out, repeatedly, each cry more desperate than the last. ‘Help!’

It was getting louder and louder–Griff and Winter weren’t letting up. Now they were both throwing themselves at the walls, like they were desperately trying to crack the container open. The noise was throbbing like a giant gong in my head.

I covered my ears–I couldn’t take it any longer.

‘Stop!’ I screeched over the top of them. ‘Stop it! Banging on the walls isn’t going to get us out of here! Would you both just calm down and think about this? There’s nobody out there, and anybody that
could
be out there wants us to stay trapped in here! You’re wasting your time!’

Winter and Griff slumped onto the metal floor. Silence returned to the container.

I stared into the blackness, hopelessly
wondering
how we were going to get out.

Finally, Winter broke the silence. ‘Cal, when I didn’t hear back from you I just lost it. I wanted to talk to you so bad. I had the biggest news, ever, and no-one to share it with.’

My stomach twisted with guilt.

‘It was like everything inside me was boiling over,’ she continued, sounding increasingly
agitated
, ‘and I couldn’t cool down. At first I was so relieved to have found the truth, but then fury took over! I always
knew
he killed my parents! I always knew it wasn’t just an accident, and finally I’d found the proof. That lying murderer!’ she screamed, kicking her boot into the wall.

‘Hey,’ I said, softly, trying to calm her down again.

‘My head was telling me the time wasn’t right–it was telling me it would be stupid to
confront
him. But my heart couldn’t wait. I knew he’d forged my dad’s signature on the will, and I had the evidence to prove it. I’d also found our car in his car yard–more proof of foulplay.’

I shuddered at the thought of her facing up to Sligo. ‘And you found a drawing or something?’ I asked, trying to recall what she’d said in her voicemail messages earlier.

‘Remember when we first went searching together, I told you I was looking for a little
something
extra on the upholstery in the back?’

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘you mean the drawing of a bird or something?’

‘A swallow. When I was about nine, I got into a tonne of trouble after a long drive up the coast … I was bored and drew a small bird on the back seat of the car. As soon as I spotted our gold BMW in the yard, I crawled into the wreck and located the drawing, scrawled onto the seat fabric, just where I’d left it. It was faded, but it was there. That was our car, all right.’

A sliver of moonlight fell through a crack and across Winter’s face as she held her wrist up to look at her bird tattoo. No wonder it meant so much to her.

Her hand abruptly fell back to her lap with
a slapping sound. ‘So next I checked the brake lines,’ she said. ‘Those brake lines weren’t worn down like the police reported–they’d been cut. Clean cuts–the sort made by sharp pliers. That car crash was no accident. It had nothing to do with the weather. It was–’

‘–
murder
,’ I whispered.

‘Somehow, after the crash, he must have swapped vehicles, replacing my parents’ car with another one of the same make and model that
did
have worn brakes. So the police accident report didn’t lie–it just described some other wreck.’

‘He must have broken into the secure police car yard to do that,’ I said. ‘Or paid someone to do it for him.’

‘Sligo has his tentacles everywhere,’ she said. ‘He’s proven he’s capable of anything. Like I was saying, I charged over to his house and into his study, in a fit of fury. He was sitting behind his desk, drinking from some fancy, gold-rimmed, glass tumbler. I started yelling at him, accusing him of forgery and sabotage. He denied it, of course. He brushed me off and told me to get out and stop being a drama queen.’

‘You should have gone straight to the police,’ I said.

‘I realise that now. It’s probably the dumbest
thing I’ve ever done. He wasn’t taking me
seriously
, so I showed him the proof I had–photos I’d taken on my mobile phone–’ Winter stopped talking abruptly. ‘
My phone!
’ she screeched. ‘Do you have it?’

‘Battery’s dead,’ Griff answered quickly. ‘I just checked it a second ago … I can’t believe I don’t have
my
phone on me.’

‘
My
phone!’ I shouted, practically throwing my bag off my back and fumbling over the floor for it.

As soon as I picked it up I tried to switch it on, but it too was dead. I’d forgotten to hang it up after hearing Winter’s voicemail messages, so the battery had completely drained.

‘No good?’ asked Winter, hopefully.

‘Nup.’

Griff swore.

Frustrated, I shoved everything back into my bag.

‘So how did Sligo react to the photos?’ I asked Winter.

‘He looked at them, just to humour me at first, but once he realised what I had found, his
pompous
grin disappeared. He puffed up like a great big toad, purple with rage. He crushed the glass tumbler he was clutching, with his
bare fist
. I was so scared, I thought I was dead. He came at
me with his eyes bulging and fists raised and I snatched my phone away from him and backed off, thinking he was about to grab me and wring my neck!’