Paradox - Progeny Of Innocence (bk2) (Paradox series) (20 page)

Gary threw his backpack onto the rear seat of his old four-wheel drive, thankful that he hadn’t been sent to another emergency. He hated being late and letting Ambrosia down. He had a huge bunch of flowers, all of Ambrosia’s favorites, sitting on the hood of his car. A voice behind him startled him, and he spun around.

Wade held his hands up. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sneak up on you."

"No, don't worry, it's just me… all this stuff with..." he shrugged, "I guess it's just starting to get to me."

"Hard for it not to," Wade said, shoving his hands deep in his pockets.

"It's getting worse, isn’t it?" Gary said, raking his fingers through his hair.

Wade nodded, "Yep. I've got this gut feeling that things are just about to get a lot worse. The attacks have been escalating for quite a while now. The deaths used to be pretty well disguised, covered up and made to look like accidents. Their tracks were being covered very carefully. And now, well, they're either getting careless or they just don't care."

Gary nodded. "I felt the ripple yesterday, someone powerful has arrived. Was it one of theirs or one of ours, do you know?"

Wade let out a breath. "If it was one of ours, they are keeping quiet about it, and that wouldn't make sense. My money is on it being one of them. I hope I'm wrong, but I don’t think I am." The two men fell silent for a moment, and then Wade raised his eyebrows and changed the subject. "Nice flowers, what’s the occasion?" he asked, leaning against the side of Gary’s car.

Gary slipped his hand into his pocket, pulled out a small blue satin box, and flicked it open. "I’ve been dying to tell someone all day. I’m going to ask Ambrosia to marry me tonight. I’m on my way there now," he said, studying the ring before turning the box toward Wade.

"Very nice, she'll love it," he said.

"Yep," Gary nodded, putting the satin ring box back in his pocket. "I think she'll love it, too. It used to belong to Dina, Sol's wife. She always intended Ambrosia to have it someday. And, well, today is as good a day as any."

"Ambrosia is a great girl, you are lucky to have found her," Wade said, shaking Gary’s hand, "I hope I’m invited to the wedding."

"Actually, I was thinking about asking you to be my best man."

"Absolutely," Wade said. "I’d be honored. When’s the big day?"

Gary put the flowers gently on the back seat then climbed in behind the steering wheel. He pushed the key into the ignition and turned it. "She has to say yes first," he said, raising his voice over the grumble of the engine.

"Good, let me know when, and I'll be there," he said, waving to Gary as he reversed the vehicle out of the car park and into the street.

Wade stood there alone for a moment in the deserted car park and thought about the women that he and Brian had loved. Still loved... he sighed. He wanted so much not to have to hide his feelings from Kate. But he could not honestly determine whose feelings for her were more dominant, his or Brian's. And then there was Natalie, the woman that had been the love of his life and the mother of his children. Not a day passed that he did not think of them.

A horde of moths fluttered their wings in a frenzied panic at the street light high above his head. He watched for a moment as the moths fought against themselves to steal the light. What was it in the light that made them swarm in such a frenzy, he wondered. Then he shoved his hands deep in his pockets and walked away, acutely aware of the restlessness he felt building in his gut.

"They're here!" the voice shouted in Ambrosia’s head, waking her instantly from her restless sleep. She rubbed her face in her hands and heard the guttural sound of a dogfight coming from somewhere downstairs in the complex car park. She jumped up and made her way onto the balcony, then stared up into the starless night sky that hung overhead, dark and unmoving. The calm before the storm… Ambrosia thought and shivered, despite the humidity, and backed herself indoors, closing the glass sliding doors behind her. She went back to the sofa and turned on the television. Then instantly she felt ill, and beads of sweat began to blister on her forehead. She dragged herself back off the sofa and into the bathroom to splash cold water on her face. She gripped the hand basin so tightly that her knuckles turned white. A profound feeling of emptiness moved through her. Memories of her parents, Sol and Dina, flashed through her mind. "No, no, no," she told herself out loud. "This is nothing like that." She shook her head and started to think about one of the last conversations that she had had with Gary, and she smiled, in spite of the nausea turning her insides to liquid.

* * *

They had watched a movie based on the popular belief that the Mayan calendar predicted the end of the world on the 21st of the 12th, 2012. Ambrosia had wanted to watch it because it had the actor John Cusack in it. Gary had wanted to watch it because he was obsessed with end of the world action movies.

Gary said jokingly. "Now that is the perfect date for a wedding. The 21st of December 2012. We can max out all the credit cards, because we won’t have to pay any of them back..." Then abruptly he paused, wondering if he should be joking about such serious things as the end of days. He looked at Ambrosia, then smiled. He thought about how much he loved her, how being with her was all that mattered. All that ever mattered.

"What is it?" she asked pensively, noting the seriousness beneath his smile.

He shook his head and continued. "After I make an honest woman out of you-"

"And about time, too," Ambrosia said, pretending to scowl.

He pushed her long brown hair off her face, and continued. "We can then spend the rest of our lives in bed, where I will make wild passionate love to you until the end of days."

Ambrosia frowned, then wrestled Gary off the sofa and onto the floor, where she promptly rolled on top of him, laughing and squirming as he tickled her.

"And what if the world doesn’t end?" she said, between giggles. "Your plan would be foiled then, wouldn’t it? No house, one kid, and a runaway bride. I’d take the kid with me, of course, because you’d be at the pub every night trying to win your money back on the pokies to pay off your credit cards. Don’t think for one moment that I would stick around to bail you out, either. You’d end up a smelly old homeless bum on a beach somewhere, drinking yourself into an early grave. Or maybe you wouldn’t need a grave, maybe the hermit crabs and fish would finish you off."

Gary held her face tight in his hands and became suddenly serious. "Really? Would you really take off? Take our kid and just disappear?"

Ambrosia stopped laughing and wrapped her arms around the back of his neck and held herself against him. "I’d stick around, and I’d kick your backside out of the pub every night if I had to. And we would have two kids, a boy and a girl. And we would live in a rented house until the day we died for all I care. As long as I’m with you, I don’t care where we live. I don’t need a big house to love you. I just need a happy one."

* * *

Ambrosia smiled at the memory, and looked at her watch. It was well after nine o’clock now. He has been a lot later than this, she told herself, inhaling a long, slow breath in an attempt to dispel the sudden urge to vomit. Then an uncontrollable spasm shot through her, and she retched into the hand basin.

A bang on the front door startled her, but she felt relieved. That would be Gary now, she told herself. She looked at her ghostly reflection in the mirror. She shook her head, relieved with the thought that Gary had probably just forgotten his key. She quickly ran her fingers through her hair, dried her face with a towel, and quickly applied a fresh layer of lipstick. She still had the nauseous feeling swirling in her gut, something wasn't quite right; the knock was more urgent than it should have been. "You're just being paranoid," she told her reflection. Then she put a smile on her face, and ran to answer the door.

It was dark night, a very dark night. The kind of dark where the shadows can play tricks on your mind, and you start seeing things, whether they are there or not. Even your hearing becomes more acute, and you begin to hear noises that may, or may not, be there.

Crickets chirped in the nearby trees. A sultry breeze coming in off the ocean whispered gently to leaves as it danced through the treetops. On the other side of the locked gates, the car park was dark and deserted. Only the bright flood light illuminating the military museum's opening hours sign on the side of the concrete building pierced the smothering darkness. The rising hum of an approaching vehicle drowned out the ear-piercing choir of the noisy crickets.

The headlights of the vehicle wove slowly along the deserted road and came to a gradual standstill, lighting up the rectangular sign on the gates. It read: No vehicles past this point after closing hours. Trespassers will be prosecuted. Moments later, a second car pulled up alongside the first.

The headlights on both vehicles died, leaving them cloaked in a somber darkness. Then the engines became silent. Front and rear doors creaked open. Four silhouetted bodies spilled out of the first car, then another three out of the second. They formed a close group and began to discuss their plan of attack.

Fifteen minutes passed. "They shouldn't be too much longer," Andrew said, pacing back and forth impatiently.

Jackson looked at his watch. "Where the hell are they? They should be here by now... so much for safety in numbers," he mumbled.

Sonndra eased herself up onto the hood of Andrew's car and leaned back against the windshield. "Well I don’t care if the Goths turn up or not, but Eric and Tony are real slackers if they don't show. It was Tony's bright idea to do this."

Joshua leaned against the car next to Angela. "Maybe Tony's shift just finished late?"

They all nodded, happy with this explanation of Tony's and Eric's lateness.

Andrew jumped up next to Sonndra on the hood of the car. "I agree; the Goths are total freaks… especially Lyssa..."

"They're all freaks, if you ask me," Clair added, pulling the hood of her sweatshirt over her crop of short, platinum blonde hair.

"Come on!" Jackson moaned with impatience to no one in particular, before letting his gaze rest on Andrew.

"Hey, don't blame me, man," Andrew replied. "Tony told me that he was going to pick up Eric after he finished his shift and be right behind us..."

Sonndra wriggled closer to Andrew. "I think Eric is seeing someone."

Andrew rolled his eyes. "I'm telling you he's not. If he
was
seeing someone, we would all know about it. He'd be bragging about it big-time, and the whole school would know about it. Remember Monica? She dumped Eric because he couldn't keep his big mouth shut."

Sonndra shrugged. "Maybe he has learned his lesson…"

Joshua chuckled. "I'd like to meet the woman who could teach Eric a lesson…"

"Yeah," Andrew chimed in. "She'd have to be an Amazon woman."

"Maybe we should just leave," Amber suggested, as a breeze coming in off the ocean picked up and scuttled a mass of dead leaves across the dusty car park. She shuddered as the leaves whipped around her ankles, and snuggled up closer to Jackson.

"We'll give them another few minutes, then we'll just go in. We should check out the gun turrets first," Andrew suggested, looking across at the large, round, concrete structure looming out of the dark.

"Forget the gun turrets. Where do you think Mr Munroe's body was found?" Sonndra asked, pulling Andrew's arm around her.

"Could be anywhere, really. There’s over two hundred hectares, thirty of which is natural forest bush land. But I believe it happened over there," she said, pointing toward a patch of dense forest with taller trees.

"She's probably right," Andrew said. "I mean, he hung himself, so wouldn't he need a tallish tree to do that?"

"Not really," Clair said, joining in. "Don't forget about that singer that hung himself on a doorknob."

"I want to go home," Amber whined.

"That's it, I'm going in," Clair said, pulling her parka closed over her chest. "Who's with me?"

"I'm in... come on, Sonndra," Andrew said, grabbing her hand and sliding her off the hood of the car behind him. They followed Clair around the side of the gate and into the car park.

"No, wait. I've got a flashlight," Jackson said, grabbing one from the glove compartment. "I don’t suppose anyone else thought to bring one?" They all shook their heads. "Great, so we only have one flashlight then? Lotta good that's going to do. Now we'll have to stick together."

Amber's head spun around to look at Jackson in astonishment. "Good! I think we should all stick together... safety in numbers, remember? That's what you said."

Joshua looked at Angela. "You okay? You're not scared, are you?"

Angela frowned at him as though seeing something that was completely foreign to her. "Of course I'm not scared!" she scoffed. "What on earth is there to be scared about, getting attacked by mosquitoes, tree branches… the Poinciana Woman?" she said, sliding off the hood of Jackson's car. "You don't really believe in that nonsense, do you, Josh?" Then she had another thought and she smiled despite herself. "Are
you
frightened, Josh?"

Joshua shook his head obstinately. "Absolutely not… I know the story isn’t true," he said, folding his arms and leaning against Jackson's car. "I just thought it would be fun to come along. That's all."

"Well, I'm ready," Jackson announced eagerly. "The others will just have to come and find us when they get here. Come on Amber, let's go," he said, testing the capabilities of his flashlight. He shone the beam around the deserted car park, then along the thick treeline. "Everyone ready?" he asked, shining the light under his chin and making a ghostly noise.

Andrew slapped the flashlight away from Jackson's chin. "Man, you are so not scary. That wouldn’t even get a rise out of my kid brother."

Amber still had hold of Jackson's arm. "I don't know. I really don’t think this is a good idea…"

"Leave her, then, to look after the car," Clair suggested, striding toward the thick treeline with Andrew and Sonndra in tow. "She can stay here and wait for the others. If they turn up, that is." Clair added slyly, casting fear into Amber's mind.

Amber looked around and considered her options. The first option was to stay in the deserted car park by herself; the second option was to go with the rest of them into the dark forest. She wasn't pleased with either of her choices. "Okay, then. I'll go," she said, reluctantly.

"That's my girl," Jackson said, grabbing her hand enthusiastically and pulling her along after him. They all began to walk through the deserted car park toward the dark treeline, with only Jackson's flashlight to guide them.

"Ouch," Amber squealed.

"What is it?" Jackson asked shining the torch in her face.

She shielded her eyes with her hand. "Get that flashlight out of my face," she grumbled, pushing it way. "I'm frigging being eaten alive by blood-sucking mosquitoes." She swatted her leg. "I don’t suppose anyone brought any insect repellant?"

Angela looked at Joshua with one of her 'I told you so' expressions on her face. He shrugged and smiled.

Clair began sprinting toward the forest. "Come on," she shouted as she disappeared out of sight into the shadows. "I thought I saw someone…" Andrew hesitated for a moment, then ran after her.

Angela came to an abrupt halt, forcing Joshua to run into the back of her. "Wait!" she called out holding her hand up. "I have a bad feeling about this…"

"What are you talking about, what is it?" Joshua asked scanning the dark forest.

Amber clung to Jackson. "Listen to Angela, something isn’t right. We shouldn't go in... Please, Jackson, can we just go home," she begged, tugging on his arm. "
Please
… let's just go…"

"No, wait," Joshua said. "We can't just leave. We have to go find them."

There was a strange noise, and they all froze. A flapping noise came from the treetops, followed by a high-pitched screeching sound. Then an ominous cloud-like mass flew out over them. Jackson spun around, shining the flashlight into the sky, slicing it though the darkness like a luminous sword.

"It's nothing, Obi-Wa
n
Kenobi," Joshua said to Jackson. "It's just a flock of harmless flying foxes."

Jackson put one leg out in front of him, bent his knees, and then began to fight an imaginary opponent with his torchlight. "Oh, but I sensed an unpleasant disturbance in the Force, young Jedi," he said, quoting the lines from a Star Wars movie. He followed the path of the flying foxes across the ink-black sky with the beam of his flashlight. "But yes," he concluded. "Just harmless flying foxes. These are not the droids we are looking for."

Angela was completely perplexed, and looked from Joshua to Jackson. "Flying foxes are not harmless," she announced. "Haven't you ever heard of the Hendra virus? Look it up sometime," she said, scanning the forest to concentrate on the sounds only she could hear.

"Clair, Andrew!" Jackson shouted. "Get back out here now!"

"It was probably just Clair or Andrew that disturbed the bats," Sonndra offered.

"No, it wasn't," Angela said, shaking her head emphatically.

"Clair, Andrew!" Sonndra shouted this time. Her shout was met with a bloodcurdling scream.

"That was Clair," Jackson said. Then there was a rustle of bushes, and Andrew stumbled out and fell onto his hands and knees on the ground.

"Oh my god," Sonndra screamed, running toward him. "His face is covered in blood… what happened, where's Clair? Andrew, talk to me… please!"

They all ran to Andrew, except Angela. They stared into his face in horror; his eyes bulged open wide with fear. "It was her. The Poinciana Woman… it was horrible. She's got Clair!" Then he buried his face in his hands, rolled onto his back and shook, as though he was having a seizure.

"Andrew, Andrew, my God, what happened, where's Clair?" Sonndra shouted, rolling him on his side. They all crowded around, wondering how they could help.

"Here, put this under his head, so he doesn’t hurt himself." Joshua said, handing Sonndra his pullover.

Then Andrew stopped shaking, rolled onto his back, and stared up blindly into the sky. "She… she… monster... and she attacked us…" He buried his face in his hands again, and started sobbing.

"We should call for help," Joshua said, holding up his phone, searching for a signal. "Shit, no signal. Anyone got a signal?" They all reached for their phones and held them up, frantically searching for a signal. "Nothing," they replied.

"Give me your keys, Jackson," Joshua said.

Jackson was speechless, staring at Andrew in shock.

Sonndra began to cry as she tried to comfort Andrew. "You'll be okay. You'll be okay," she said, tears running down her face.

"Jackson, car keys," Joshua repeated, louder this time. "I'll go and get help," he said, looking around. "Oh no, where's Angela? Angela? Oh shit, Angela's gone now, too…"

Andrew sat bolt upright then. "Maybe the Poinciana Woman has them both. Maybe she isn't just into guys," he said, straight-faced. Then, seconds later, he broke down into fits of laughter.

Sonndra pushed him over. "You idiot, you had us scared to death. And what is that all over your face if it isn't blood?" she asked, glaring down at him.

"Tomato sauce from
O'Regan's
," he said, wiping it off his face with the sleeve of his jacket. "You should have seen your faces... epic..."

Amber walked over to him and kicked him in the back.

"Ouch, cut it out," he said, slapping her foot away. "We were just mucking around…"

"You're a total wanker, you know that! We should just leave you both here," Sonndra said, wiping her tears away.

"So where is Clair, then?" Jackson asked, shining the torch back into the thickest part of the forest.

"Who cares," Amber muttered. "I'm going home, are you coming?" she asked, looking at Jackson.

"Clair's in on it," Andrew said, holding his sides from laughing. "We planned the whole thing at the Bean, Friday after school…"