The Detachable Boy (10 page)
‘Yes. I mean no! No! Stay away from there. The place is actually the front door of the Hive.’
‘I see it – a dump and a half surrounded by cactus.’
‘Find somewhere else to hide near here. If I don’t make it back by night, head for the road. Just get out of here. Get a ride with somebody. Anybody. Find a phone and call your dad. Tell him you’re okay. Okay?’
I took the money from my jacket pocket and peeled off several notes.
‘Here,’ I said. ‘Take this.’
Crystal took the cash. ‘What about you?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ I lied. ‘I’ll collect my foot, then I’ll meet you back here. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘Put the lid back in place. Quickly.’
Crystal made little squeaks of effort as she pushed and dragged the lid into position. Her face appeared at one of the ventilation slots. ‘John?’
‘What?’
‘You wouldn’t believe what it looks like from the outside. Wow. They’ve done a great job. Just looks like a pile of rocks.’
‘Go! Find somewhere to hide.’
I watched her through the gap until she’d jogged out of view, and then turned to look down the vent shaft.
‘. . . yes. That’s right. Some sort of vent,’ a guard said. ‘I think she’s headed for the surface.’
I realised, with a gulp, that climbing down after my foot wasn’t going to be an option.
I could hear the guards grunting as they made their way up the vent towards me.
I held my breath as I stepped off into nothingness.
M
IRACULOUSLY, MY BODY
held together for the best part of the fall.
‘What was that?’ I heard, as I zipped past the guards. They were climbing in the gloom and hadn’t seen me.
‘Just the wind,’ said the other guard.
And the wind it was.
I shut my eyes and wrapped my arms around myself in preparation for impact. There was an updraught of wind and when I finally hit the mess of sticks and twigs at the bottom of the vent I was travelling as if I’d fallen from a mere ten storeys, though the impact still managed to bust me apart.
It took two and a half minutes for me to gather my senses and a full complement of limbs.
I shook my little foot. ‘I swear, one day you’ll be the death of me.’
I could hear voices echoing in the vent but couldn’t make out any of the words. Many voices. I imagined the place swarming with men in vinyl and knew I had to find another way out.
I detached and crawled through the pipe into the lift shaft. Above me, the clear lift reflected flashes of light as it passed floors on its way up.
Against the wall, a huge pulley carried the cable that raised and lowered the lift. It must have been a continuous loop powered in another part of the Hive. The pulley whirred quietly while the lift was in motion and stopped abruptly when the guards reached their destination. When the lift went up, the cable on one side of the pulley would go up too while the cable on the other side went down. When the lift changed direction, so did the movement of the cable – that which went up would now be going down, and vice versa.
I touched the cable. My hand came away covered in grease. If I grabbed the right cable at the right time, I’d be hoisted into the air. If I grabbed the wrong cable, I’d be slammed into the floor, the wall – or alternatively, minced in the workings of the pulley.
The cables ran up the shaft barely a metre apart and I thought I could possibly swap from one to the other and always go up, regardless of the direction of the lift.
The idea was great. In theory.
In practice, I felt like a yo-yo. I would gain ten floors before the lift changed direction too fast to swap cables and I’d lose five of the floors I’d gained. Up and down. Down and up. Down and down. It wasn’t long before my brain scrambled totally and my hands were ready to bail out. If my hands didn’t fall off then some other part of me would.
It was then I noticed the clear lift box – loaded with figures clothed shiny and black – hurtling towards me. The lift was coming down. I was going up, up, up on a collision course with the narrow gap between the lift and the wall. The gap where the cables ran. The gap I’d fallen down after I’d escaped from the lift.
I made myself skinny against the cable, sucked a breath and held on tight as the lift shot past.
The lift continued down and I was hoisted higher. Then the sound of the lift motor became ominously loud. I looked up and let go of the cable just in time to avoid being dragged into the drive mechanism. I hurtled through the air like a skier over a jump and landed – on two feet – in a concrete service tunnel.
I looked in amazement at my greasy hands, my torso, my legs. I couldn’t believe that – for once in my life – I’d actually landed on my own two feet. As if I’d meant it. As if I was a professional. As if I was a secret agent and I did that sort of stuff all the time. Then I spoiled it by bursting into a spontaneous Highland fling, though I resisted the urge to shout and holler.
The service tunnel was lit every ten metres or so by a small globe screwed into the ceiling. I watched my shadow grow then shrink as I moved beneath each light. Then the tunnel forked. There was no flashing neon sign, no daylight to follow, no giant ‘GO THIS WAY’ arrow painted on the wall. Right or left? Left or right?
From the right-hand tunnel, I thought I heard the low rumble of a diesel engine and I started to run.
The lights in the tunnel strobed by as my feet clack-clacked on the concrete. The tunnel curved and I ran until the air was surging in and out of my lungs. There, on the dead-end wall in front of me was the sort of sign I’d been looking for. It was green with white lettering, illuminated from within like a holy vision.
EXIT
T
HE HEAVY DOOR
under the Exit sign had a large flat handle that I rested on for a full minute, puffing and whispering my prayers. I prayed that when I pressed the lever, the door would open.
And open it did.
There were no alarms or flashing lights, just a blast of warm air that tasted of diesel exhaust. The door opened inward with a squealing creak that echoed along the tunnel like a sound effect from our House of Horror. Giant hydraulic rams extended from the floor to the steel roof of the chamber. The roof could be raised and lowered.
There were two walls – one that housed the door and another opposite, both blackened by exhaust fumes. To the right and left, big echoey nothingness.
The door bonged shut behind me and the sound cannoned off into the darkness and made me squint.
I was in a huge tunnel. A tunnel big enough to drive a truck down.
I knew where I was. I was underneath the shed at the back of the Lost Head Diner, in the tunnel that ran in a circuit through the Hive’s loading bays. I was underneath the floor of the shed – the platform that raised and . . .
The chamber began to shake. I covered my ears and stopped breathing. The steel roof above me hammered and clanged like a drummer in a stairwell, and I gritted my teeth.
A truck had arrived.
There was a moment of stillness then, with a clunk, the roof began lowering towards my head.
I ran in small panicked circles, hunting for an escape route. The tunnel lit up with the truck’s headlights. A dash down the tunnel in either direction would at best mean recapture and at worst annihilation. The door I’d come through had no handle on the outside – to allow the smooth passage of the steel platform – just a flat screw head.
I fumbled with Ravi’s granddad’s penknife, flicked open the blade and dug it into the screw on the door and twisted it open. The descending platform bumped into the top of my head, knocking it clean off my shoulders. My noggin bounced once then was punted – a beautiful shot for goal that would have looked amazing in slow-motion replay – by my distressed foot, through the door into the concrete tunnel beyond. My body dived after my head, the bundle of limbs clattering to a halt some distance from the door as the platform shunted home.
‘Quick!’ my head shouted.
My body was groping around for missing parts and dusting itself off.
‘There’s no time! Hurry! I’m over here!’
The tunnel filled with exhaust smoke as the truck powered away. My head watched the wheels roll past and the platform start to lift.
‘Hurry!’
My body propped my head into position and ran for the doorway. With a diving leap I made it through the door and onto the platform.
The floor slid into position with me dancing and punching at the roof of the shed.
‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ I shouted in a whisper.
I crept to the side door, turned the handle quietly and opened it a crack. The sun was setting, painting the strip of desert I could see warm orange. I gently pushed until the door was open enough for me to scamper through. The air smelled of rubbish.
I counted to three under my breath and ran for it.
Something grabbed at the mop of my hair.
My head stopped abruptly, but my body kept running. My head tore free and I watched as my body ran in a large arc before slamming noisily into the shed wall and falling apart.
‘Oh crud,’ my head said, as it hung in the air.
‘Well, now, what have we here?’ asked a heavy man’s voice.
My head was spun around to look at the face of my captor. My brainbox was being held at arm’s length by the monster from the Lost Head Diner. Doug DeGraves. His bald head glistened in the last of the sunlight and he laughed.
‘Well, my boy, where did you think you were going? The Head’s looking for you.’
My own head cursed.
‘L
ET . . . HIM . . . GO
!’
squealed a familiar girl’s voice.
The next thing I saw was Doug DeGraves’ head careening off his shoulders and into the big, smelly rubbish bin.
Crystal stood at the back of the diner holding an autographed baseball bat. Her mouth was open in disbelief. She looked at the bat in her hands and then into the bin at Doug De Grave’s head.
His body stood there, frozen, still holding my head.
‘I said let . . . him . . . go!’ Crystal swung the bat and landed another blow on Doug’s shoulder.
It was a good hit. There was nothing girly about the way she swung that bat.
Doug’s body reeled and bumped into the bin that contained his head.
Crystal hit him again and again until, eventually, Doug’s body dropped my head and toppled into the bin.
Crystal poked my head with the toe of her shoe until I was looking at her. I smiled, embarrassed about being so detached in her company but more than a little in awe.
‘Wow,’ my head said. ‘That was impressive.’
Crystal patted the bat. ‘Thanks.’
‘What are you doing here? You were supposed to stay hidden.’
She shrugged and burped quietly. ‘Holy guacamole, those burgers are good.’
She jumped as Doug’s body began kicking at the air.
‘We have to get out of here,’ my head said. ‘Quick, take me to my body.’
Crystal grabbed me by the hair and dumped me near my hands.
In no time, I was reassembled and we were running, running, running, headlong into the desert. Away from the diner and into the arid twilight.
We ran out of steam before we ran out of light. We slumped behind a boulder, puffing.
‘Now what?’ Crystal panted.
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. How about we go home?’
Crystal nodded. ‘My legs feel like they’re about to fall off.’
‘Hey, don’t joke about that sort of stuff,’ I said. ‘Listen, I’m sorry you had to see me all apart like that. I hate it when I fall apart around my friends. It’s just so . . . I don’t know . . . rude.’
‘Don’t worry about it. I can think of ruder things like blowing your nose on someone else’s shirt, cleaning the toilet with their toothbrush or shaking dandruff in their porridge. Don’t worry about it. Do we keep running?’
I nodded, but suddenly felt deflated. Where could we run? As it turned out, I didn’t have to worry about where we were running to for long. A few seconds later, the desert exploded with activity and blinding lights. The torches were held by men in vinyl suits. We were surrounded. We were tackled to the ground and bundled into green bags.
‘NOOOO!’
W
HEN THE BAG
was finally removed from my head, I discovered I’d been tied to a board. My ankles, wrists and torso were bound, my hands were strapped into woollen mittens and a band around my brow held the back of my noggin tightly to the board. I was pinned in a perpetual star-jump. Whoever constructed the boards knew a lot about detachability. I could unplug every joint in my body and I’d still be unable to escape.
A single bulb overhead made me blink and squint and cast the rest of the room in darkness. I could hear activity in the shadows but could see nothing. Presently, another board was wheeled under the light.
‘Crystal?’
‘Hi John,’ Crystal said.