Pocket Apocalypse: InCryptid, Book Four (33 page)

Sighing, Shelby turned back to Raina. “And when we all come crashing through the brush and scare the life out of her, how’s that going to help her? We need to have a real plan. I need to know where you’re taking us.”

Raina frowned. “You
have
been away too long,” she said. “Dad said you’d gone native on us, but I thought if I dragged you out here, you’d catch on and snap back to being normal. Gabby
needs
you, Shelly. She needs you to be on top of your game and looking at things like a Tanner, not like some pretty Covenant trophy wife.”

Shelby slapped her.

The noise echoed through the eucalyptus trees. Somewhere above and to the right, a bird screeched, and then everything was silent. Raina stared at her sister, slowly raising a hand to touch her reddening cheek.

“You hit me,” she said.

“You don’t call me a trophy wife,” said Shelby. “You know better than that. Our mother raised you better than that. Now where are we going?”

“You hit me in front of
him
.” Raina dropped her hand. “I don’t know you anymore.”

Shelby audibly groaned. “Don’t. Just don’t. This isn’t a soap opera, no matter how much it may look like one, and we don’t have time to piss around out here. Gabby’s in trouble. She needs us. And I need to know where you’re taking me. Alex is already hurt.”

“Alex is also the only one here with silver bullets,” I said. This earned me a glare from both sisters. I paused, reviewed the statement, and amended, “I’m not intending to harm Gabby in any way unless she presents a clear and immediate threat to one of our lives. In that case, yes, I will shoot; being your sister doesn’t mean she gets a free pass to murder either one of you. But we don’t know if she’s alone. Cooper may have told her there was a cure, and said he would provide it if she’d just go along with whatever it was he told her to do. If he’s here, then yes, I’m going to do my best to at least incapacitate him. We need to know how many werewolves we’re dealing with.”

“If you shoot my sister, I’ll scalp you,” said Raina, with the utmost civility. She looked back to Shelby and said, “She’s gone to the old playhouse.”

Shelby’s eyes widened. “Oh, lord. Right, Alex, come on: we’re running again.” Then she took off, and Raina took off with her, leaving me to try to catch up with them—and leaving any questions I might have about the nature of the “old playhouse” blithely unanswered. The Tanner sisters knew the score. I was just the man who got to trust that they weren’t going to get us all killed.

The trees grew larger and closer together as we ran, and other things began to appear alongside the eucalyptus. Twisting-trunked trees with glossy brown bark and broad green leaves; smaller, scrubby trees that looked almost like a form of evergreen. Still we ran, until the trees opened up around us and we were standing on the verge of a large, green-surfaced pond that stretched away into the distance, canopied by more trees I didn’t recognize. There was a small dock near where we were standing, but there was no boat there; no, the boat was anchored some twenty yards from shore, at the base of a particularly large and impressive barrel-shaped tree. In the tree was a fort-like construction which looked like it was made mostly of plywood. I stared.

“Oh,” I said finally.

“She’s taken the boat,” said Shelby. “How are we supposed to get to her if she’s taken the boat? I’m not swimming in that water; it has things in it.”

“Things?” I asked. I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer.

“Eels,” said Shelby. “Turtles. Sometimes really big snakes, although not as many as you’d think, on account of the bunyip around here eating them.”

“You built a playhouse in bunyip territory?” I couldn’t stop myself from squeaking slightly. Both Raina and Shelby turned to blink at me.

Finally, Raina said, “Where else would you suggest we build a playhouse? New Zealand? Everywhere is bunyip territory, except for maybe the middle of Sydney, and that’s because even the bunyip don’t want to deal with the fucking funnelweb spiders. Those nasty bastards will kill you as soon as look at you.”

“. . . right,” I said. “I’m sorry, for five seconds, I forgot we were in an unholy murder paradise. What do you suggest we do if we don’t have a boat and the water is full of ‘things’?”

“We ask the things.” Shelby cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, “Hey! Basil! Hey! I know you’re out there! Gabby’s gone and snitched the boat again! Come on, you lazy bastard, haul your ass out of the substrate and come help us out!”

Her call echoed over the swamp. I frowned at her, then at the playhouse. Nothing moved. If Gabby was there, she had to hear her sister shouting, but it wasn’t drawing a visible reaction from her. I didn’t know whether or not I should be regarding that as a good thing. Under the circumstances, I was no longer sure how I should be regarding much of anything.

“He’s not going to come out,” said Raina. “He hasn’t been answering us lately.”

“Did you keep bringing him Tim Tams and
Doctor Who Magazine
?” asked Shelby.

“No,” said Raina. She pushed her lower lip out in a pout. “Dad cut my allowance when I refused to go on survey for those blasted manticores that you were supposed to be helping us get rid of. Like I should go and get myself stung to death because you couldn’t be bothered to come back and do your job? I had to make cuts in the budget.”

“So you cut Basil’s Tim Tams? Oh, real smart, Raina, real smart.” Shelby turned back to the swamp, taking a deep breath. She cupped her hands around her mouth, and shouted, “I brought Raina and I will let you hit her with an eel if you’ll come out and help us get the boat!”

“I want my Tim Tams,” said a sullen voice from what looked like an undifferentiated patch of swamp. Then, with no further fanfare, the swamp . . . stood up. What I had taken for floating water weeds became hair; an upturned branch became an impressively pointed nose, and the rest became a tall, stocky, aggressively male humanoid wearing nothing but whatever had happened to adhere to his olive green skin while he was submerged. He scowled at the three of us and Jett, scratching one muddy buttock with his left hand. “Who’s the fellow? And the dog?”

“Basil, meet Alex Price, my fiancé. Please do not drown him, bury him in mud, or attempt to feed him live frogs because you think it’s funny when humans scrunch their faces up. Alex, meet Basil, our local yowie. The dog is Jett, she belongs to Raina.” Shelby gestured between us violently. “There, now you’ve met. Basil, will you please go get the boat? Raina and I need to talk to Gabby.”

“Hi, Basil,” said Raina.

“Fuck off, Raina,” said Basil. He stabbed a finger in my direction. “How come I get told all the things I can’t do to him, but he doesn’t get told what he can’t do to me? You’re favoring the humans again.”

“Well, yes, I am,” said Shelby. “I generally do. As to why Alex doesn’t get a list of thou shalt nots, it’s because he’s a gentleman, and he knows that it’s rude to attack your new friends. You’ve never shown that sort of civility. If you start, maybe I’ll stop giving you commands.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” I said, before the argument could proceed. “I’ve never met a yowie before. I’d love to discuss your ecological niche, after the current crisis has passed. I can bring Tim Tams to pay you for your time.”

Basil blinked. A small frog fell out of his hair and leaped for the swamp, choosing freedom over remaining on Basil’s head. Basil snatched it out of the air and jammed it into his mouth, crunching twice before he said, “I like this one, Shelby, he understands basic commerce. All right, Price, you can come back here and talk to me. I’ll let you open your own tab, rather than drawing on this pair’s.” He jerked a thumb toward Shelby and Raina. “Their credit’s shot. Which is why I’m interested to hear what makes them think I’m going to bring the boat over here for them. Strikes me that watching them go wading might be a great way to spend an afternoon.”

“I wasn’t even in the country when Raina decided to stop paying you,” protested Shelby. “You can’t punish me because she’s an unthinking brat!”

“Can, will, am,” said Basil. “You’re the older sibling. You should have drilled it into her head that she needed to keep paying me while you were away. You didn’t, and now you’re paying the price. Sucks to be the eldest, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does,” I said. All three of them turned to look at me. “I’m the eldest in my family, and I’m betting you are too, Basil. You know it’s your job to make sure your younger brothers and sisters are taken care of. That they understand right and wrong. Don’t you?”

Basil frowned slowly before he nodded and said, “That was my job before we all left home, yeah. Someone’s got to do it.”

“Well, we’re here, and asking you to please, ah, get the boat,” I gestured toward the boat, just in case he was the sort to interpret my words to mean “any boat he could find” and dredge one up from the bottom of the swamp, “so that we can go and help Shelby and Raina’s
other
sister. The one who isn’t standing here in front of you, being very sorry that she didn’t get your cookies when she was supposed to.”

On cue, Shelby dug her elbow into Raina’s side. Raina reddened, looking down at her feet, and said, in a staccato rush, “I’m sorry I didn’t bring you the Tim Tams I promised. There was a new Pokémon game and I really wanted it, but I should still have kept my word to you before I did something for myself and I’m sorry.”

Basil blinked. “See, that’s all I wanted,” he said. “Apologies are the glue that makes the world go ’round. Wait here, you lot, and I’ll expect everything that’s coming to me to be delivered here before the full moon, or it’s no more Mister Nice Yowie.” He stood up still further, rising out of the muck until it became very clear that the hypothesized evolutionary link between yowie and Sasquatch was more truth than fiction. Scratching his mossy bottom one more time, he turned and lumbered toward the boat.

“Do you think he’d give me some hair and maybe a blood sample for later analysis?” I asked, transfixed by the sight of the giant green man wading through the swamp.

“That’s my little scientist,” said Shelby, sounding amused. “Tell you what, how about you come back here and negotiate that with him after we’ve finished handling the current crisis? I’ll bring popcorn.”

I blinked, the strangeness of the scene finally crystalizing into something logical, if bizarre. I turned to Shelby. “Your father didn’t even want us to call Dr. Jalali, because the Society doesn’t treat nonhumans as people. How is it that you and your sisters are friends with a yowie?”

“We found him,” said Raina. Her head was up again, and her coloring was back to normal. Embarrassment was apparently not a long-term thing with her. “He’d been bit by a snake. Was all sick and moaning and making a muck of things here on the bank. Right over there, in fact.” She pointed to a spot a little farther along.

“Luckily, Jack and I were with them that day, and since he was already training to be Dad’s assistant, and I wanted to do anything he was doing, we both had our snakebite kits and medical supplies on us,” said Shelby, smoothly taking up the story. “Basil never did tell us what had bitten him, and we thought he’d die even after we suctioned the venom out and gave him some basic medical care, since we couldn’t provide antivenin if we didn’t know what he needed. But it turns out yowie are tougher than anything living has the right to be. As soon as we got the bulk of the poison out of him, and some fresh water into him, he bounced right back. Was up and moving about normally by the end of the afternoon.”

“Jack insisted we come back here to check on him; said that once you’ve saved something, you’re responsible for it, even if it’s as smart as you are. Basil started asking for Tim Tams after the third time we came by. He helped us build the playhouse, and the skiff.” Raina paused, looking down again. “They were real good friends. He hasn’t been the same since Jack died, you know? He’s still friendly enough, but it’s like he’s not really glad to see us, not like he says. He’s just going through the motions so we don’t get upset enough to tell our parents he’s down here. So we haven’t visited much.”

Which explained why Raina had been willing to seize on the excuse afforded by the reduction in her allowance. They couldn’t come to visit Basil. They couldn’t afford the cookies, and that meant they had no business bothering him. Keeping my voice as gentle as I could, I asked, “Did you let him come to Jack’s funeral?”

“No, of course not,” said Raina, sounding baffled by the idea. “He’s not a people. He’s just Basil.”

I looked to Shelby. She looked horrified. Good. At least one of the Tanner sisters understood why the yowie was angry—and while I could forgive Raina for not seeing him as a person when she first met him, I couldn’t forgive her for continuing to see him as something less than she was after spending all the time she had described in his company. Basil wasn’t human. He should still have been allowed the opportunity to join in the mourning for his friend.

Shelby’s thoughts seemed to have run along similar channels. When the yowie waded back to the bank, now dragging the small boat in his wake, Shelby ran and splashed a few feet out into the water, throwing her arms around as much of his thick, weed-covered torso as she could manage. “I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed. The water swirled around her ankles as Basil blinked bemusedly down at her. She continued, “I should have realized you missed Jack almost as much as we did. I should have told my father you were coming to the funeral, so that you could say good-bye, and damn anyone who thought you didn’t belong there. I didn’t realize I was being horrible, Basil, and I’m
so
sorry. Can you forgive me?”

“Ah,” he said, and raised one muddy hand to pat her shoulder, awkwardly—less, it seemed to me, because he didn’t want to offer comfort, and more because he was so much bigger than she was that he was afraid of hurting her. He could easily have crushed her, but all he did was pat twice and then pull his hand away. “It’s all right, Shelby, don’t cry on me, all right? You know how I hate getting wet.”

Shelby lifted her head and laughed thickly. She
was
crying, and the funereal look she always had when she wasn’t smiling had deepened, becoming an almost overwhelming sadness. “You’re always wet, you swampy bastard. You haven’t been dry a day in your life.”