Divine Madness (21 page)

‘I’m not scared of you,’ Rat said, but he looked less sure as James closed him down. He ended up with his back against the tiles and James’ chest a few centimetres from his face.

‘Go on, batter me,’ Rat said defiantly. ‘I don’t care. That cow wants you to and you won’t be the first.’

After lashing out and landing himself in trouble more times than he cared to count, James had recently become a master of turning the other cheek.

‘Why’d you play such a stupid,
 
pointless
 
trick on me?’

Rat tutted. ‘Beat me up and get it over with, but don’t expect me to squirm in front of you.’

James didn’t know what to make of this kid. Was Rat some kind of Survivor rebel, or did he just have a screw loose?

‘What’s our punishment gonna be?’ James asked.

‘Oh, you’ll love it,’ Rat grinned, turning around and showing James his bum.

James recoiled as he looked at a mass of scabs and bruises, some of them still pretty fresh.

‘Are you
 
kidding
?’ James gasped, suddenly a lot more worried about the trouble he was in.

Rat shrugged. ‘They can paddle me all they like. I’m not gonna toe the line. Come to think of it, you’re not one either, are you?’

‘One what?’

Rat smiled. ‘You don’t
 
really
 
believe.’

‘How do you figure that?’ James asked nervously, as he lathered up his pit hair. ‘I took the oath. I’ve got the necklace.’

‘You might wear a necklace,’ Rat said, ‘but if you really believed, you never would have come into that boiler room to look at naked girls. And right now, you’d be telling me to repent and accept our punishment.’

‘Maybe I’m just easily led,’ James said.

Rat shook his head. ‘If you were dumb, I’d be sitting on the floor with a bloody nose right now.’

‘Don’t get too full of yourself, Rat. It might still happen.’

‘So how come you ended up here?’

James explained about Elliot getting stabbed and Ween covering it up as they stepped through to the bedroom and started towelling off.

‘I know him,’ Rat nodded. ‘We used to call him Elliot the Eel, ’cos he’s so slippery. Do you realise, you and your sister are the first new faces to come inside the Ark in three months?’

‘Yeah, the people in Brisbane said there’s a lot of construction work going on, or something.’

Rat smiled. ‘Have you seen any?’

James realised he hadn’t. ‘So what
 
is
 
going on?’

‘Joel Regan’s dying,’ Rat explained. ‘The Spider doesn’t want people outside the Ark finding out, because when my dad dies several billion tons of crap are gonna hit the fan.’

‘Why?’ James asked.

Rat was clearly getting a kick out of finding someone who wanted to hear what he had to say. ‘The whole Survivor religion is based on the idea that god asked Joel Regan to build an Ark and save humanity. But how can he save us when he’s dead?’

‘Yeah.’ James nodded thoughtfully. ‘I can see that’s tricky.’

‘On top of that, there’s a war raging over who takes control when he dies.’

‘Between who?’

‘My dad’s fourth wife, Susie, and my eldest sister, Eleanor – The Spider. Susie is sane, she doesn’t even wear a Survivor necklace. Eleanor’s lot are the opposite, they believe every word in the manual. They say that if my dad dies before the apocalypse, it’s a sign that the devil is winning. When he dies, they’re gonna freak.’

‘Like how?’

‘They think the devil is going to rise up from hell and try to kill them when my dad dies and they live in a fortress with guns, explosives and ammunition stashed in the basement. It’s not a healthy combination.’

James remembered that he was supposed to have fallen into the cult’s belief system. ‘But how can this be true?
 
The Survivors’ Manual
 
says …’

Rat burst out laughing. ‘Yeah right, James. Your Survivor beliefs are somewhere between paper thin and non-existent.’

‘That’s
 
not
 
true,’ James insisted unconvincingly, as he pulled on a pair of boxers.

He was worried. If an eleven-year-old could see through him, who else was going to?

‘Do you know, when my dad joined the Australian army, they gave him an IQ test and he scored one hundred and ninety-six. That basically means he’s a certified genius. They tested me and guess what I got?’

‘Low thirties?’ James grinned.

‘One-nine-seven,’ Rat said. ‘I’m the smartest kid you’re ever likely to meet, so don’t even
 
try
 
pulling the wool over my eyes.’

James couldn’t help smiling at the irony of this situation. ‘If you’re so clever, how come your butt looks like a rugby team used it for kicking practice?’

Rat shrugged. ‘People are always telling me I’m too smart for my own good.’

Except when non-members were present, Survivors’ services were always single-sex affairs. James and Rat were taken into a large hall and made to lie face down on the wooden floor at the centre of the two circles, which contained all the girls in the boarding school. James didn’t know what to expect, but it was reassuring having Rat alongside him, because the smaller boy had been through this before and didn’t look too scared.

The service was taken by Georgie, whose instruments of choice were a harmonica and a twangy steel guitar. After the standard fifteen minutes of clapping, singing and chanting, Georgie’s voice took on a sombre tone:

‘The Ark is a place of godly purity. But to sin within the Ark is to invite devils into the holiest place on earth. Before we can forgive, such sin must be severely punished. The Devil must be beaten from the souls of the miscreants.’

Georgie gleefully slipped a wooden paddle out of her shorts and snapped her fingers. Two girls carried a school desk into the centre of the circles. James caught an awkward glance at Lauren as he was made to stand up.

A padded belt that fastened with Velcro was wrapped around James’ waist, to protect the base of his spine from injury, then the back of his shorts were tugged down, exposing his bum. A plastic bit was placed in the boys’ mouths to stop them biting their tongues and they were made to lean over the table.

‘It is the duty of those whose dignity was undermined by these perverted and
 
lustful
 
boys to step forward and offer punishment,’ Georgie said, bouncing on the balls of her bare feet.

James was alarmed as a dozen blue-socked girls stood up and formed a queue. There had only been seven or eight in the shower, but James was in no position to complain with a chunk of rubber jammed in his mouth.

‘The older boy is new to this Ark, one stroke each,’ Georgie said. ‘Rathbone is a persistent menace, give him three.
Commence
.’

James had his head dangling over the edge of the table, so he could only see an upside-down view of the girls’ trainers through the underside of the table. The first one stepped up and took the small paddle from Georgie. There was a sharp crack and the table rocked forwards on to its front legs as Rat took his first lick.

By the time he’d taken three, James could see tears in the corner of Rat’s eyes.

‘I forgive you, Rathbone,’ the blue-socked girl said as she stepped across to James.

James quaked with fear as he braced for the first lick. The force of the paddle made him jolt violently, but it hurt less than he’d feared.

‘I forgive you, James,’ the girl said tautly, as she stepped back and handed the paddle down the line.

James’ relief didn’t last long. The second hit hurt more than the first and each one after that grew more painful.

After the thirteenth girl took the final swing at James’ bare buttocks, Georgie hauled him off the table and snatched the bit from his mouth. As the girls filed out of the room to start morning lessons, James ripped off the padded belt and hitched up his shorts. He noticed that the wooden paddle on the ground beside him was spattered with blood, but James felt his bum and found nothing but one slightly bloody graze.

Then he stepped back and looked at Rat. The eleven-year-old had taken thirty-nine paddle strokes. He was struggling to find the strength to pull himself off the table and had streaks of blood trickling down his legs.

‘Stand up then, lad,’ Georgie said, sounding extremely pleased with herself. ‘We’ll beat the devils out of you yet, young Rathbone.’

Rat used the table to push himself up and James grabbed his arm to steady him. He wiped tears off his face and scowled defiantly at Georgie.

‘Didn’t hurt a bit,’ he said.

Georgie ignored him and stepped across to eyeball James.

‘So, new boy,’ she said, as she picked up the bloody paddle and waved it in James’ face. ‘That was a taste of what you can expect if you tempt devils into the Ark. I will demand
 
absolute
obedience from now on. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, Miss,’ James said, hardly able to conceal his sense of outrage.

A further glance at Rat’s bloody legs gave James an urge to pick up the paddle and give Georgie a taste of her own medicine. He had the strength, but he’d known there was a risk of physical punishment when he’d signed up for the mission and he wasn’t going to blow six weeks of work in one crazy outburst.

‘
Riiiiight
,’ Georgie said, twisting her face into an evil smirk. ‘Let’s have the pair of you off to the sweatbox.’

*

James guessed that something called a sweatbox wasn’t going to be an air-conditioned space filled with fluffy cushions, and he was spot on. Georgie frogmarched the two boys to a metal shed near the Ark’s concrete perimeter. The inside was three paces across, with a sand floor and two buckets. The one containing drinking water had a plastic beaker bobbing in it, while the other served as an emergency toilet.

James and Rat reluctantly stepped inside. There was no window, but the brilliant sunlight escaping through gaps in the metal was enough to see by.

‘Contemplate your sins,’ Georgie said severely.

The metal door clattered shut before it was secured with two sliding bolts. James panicked as the searingly hot air reached into his lungs.

Rat saw James was struggling and spoke firmly. ‘Calm down.’

‘I can’t breathe.’

‘Take little breaths until your lungs adjust to the heat,’ Rat said, as he rubbed James’ shoulder to reassure him. ‘You’ll be OK. Just don’t get too close to the metal: it’ll fry your skin.’

While James steadily took deeper breaths, Rat used his shoe to turn over the baking sand so that part of the floor was cool enough to sit on.

‘How long are we in here for?’ James asked.

‘Until school ends at one.’

‘That’s five hours,’ James gasped.

James copied Rat, turning over the baking dirt, before lying on his side so that his throbbing bum didn’t touch the floor. He remembered the tortures he’d been through in basic training and began thinking of the slogans they chanted:

This is tough, but cherubs are tougher. This is tough but cherubs are tougher
.

He smiled at the irony, as he realised that this was part of CHERUB’s own brand of thought control. But the similarities between the tough regime on CHERUB campus and life inside the Survivors’ Ark were only skin deep: everyone who joined CHERUB knew what they were signing up for and if you wanted to leave it was as simple as asking.

Within a few minutes, James had got his breathing back to normal and he’d rehydrated himself from the morning run with three beakers of water.

‘You know,’ Rat said, speaking slowly because of the heat, ‘this is all my fault. I reckon I owe you a favour. Anything you like.’

James smirked. ‘What
 
exactly
 
does a kid with a sore butt and attitude problems have to offer me?’

‘More than you think,’ Rat said indignantly. ‘Being one of Regan’s kids counts for quite a bit and feeding gossip into the right ears can earn you plenty of favours around here.’

James tried thinking of something that would be good for the mission, without making his goals seem obvious.

‘OK, Mr Big Shot,’ James said. ‘I take it we get work assignments here, the same as in Brisbane?’

‘Sure, school lasts until one, then we work until dinner.’

‘Could you fix me and my little sister up with something cushy? Like, a nice desk job, instead of cleaning toilets, or laundry.’

‘No sweat,’ Rat said, surprising James with his air of confidence. ‘I’ll have a word with my stepmum, Susie. That’s my dad’s fourth wife. She’s the second most powerful person in the Ark after The Spider.’

‘What about your mum?’ James asked.

Rat made a gesture like there was a noose around his neck, followed by a gagging sound. ‘My mum couldn’t handle all the other women my dad was carrying on with. She ended up going ga-ga and hanging herself.’