Viridian (15 page)

On the edge of the crowd, they found Dr Moran and the other Immunes. They were frantically giving the Verdans the vaccine, squirting it into their mouths from little plastic bottles. The Verdans were so used to obeying orders that they simply opened their mouths wide like baby birds.

Dad said, ‘Here, give me some of that stuff, I'll help.'

‘Six drops each,' said Dr Moran, his face haggard and grey with fatigue.

Jay sidled up close to Dr Moran – he didn't want Dad to hear their conversation. ‘Give me one of those bottles.'

‘What do you want it for?' Dr Moran asked Jay. ‘Are you going to help?'

‘I'm going to take it into the dome,' said Jay, ‘and if I find Toni, I'm going to give her the vaccine.'

Dr Moran's haughty face suddenly crumpled. His lip trembled.

‘Thank you,' was all he said, handing Jay a bottle of vaccine. ‘Make sure she gets six drops.' Then he carried on with his work, saving the human species.

Jay raced up to Dad, who'd been barging through the crowd, dosing every Verdan that got in his way. Now some of them were clamouring for the vaccine. ‘Stand in line!' Dad was telling them. ‘You'll get your turn.'

Jay dodged between Verdans, unzipped Dad's backpack, got out the torch. Then he raced, with the torch and the precious bottle of vaccine, to the second dome. Like the first dome, he couldn't see inside; its glass walls were coated, on the inside, with sticky black stuff. He found a door but it was locked. The drain was the one sure way he knew to get in. He hardly noticed that the bright green algae that lined it had turned black. He just wriggled through, to the other side.

Jay played the torch beam around and gave a sharp intake of breath.

It was like a plant morgue in here. The giant pitcher plants, sundews and Venus fly traps were all dead or dying. Some were covered in black sooty mould, some had already collapsed into black slimy jelly. There was a terrible stink of rotting vegetation. Jay took a step and a cloud of buzzing bluebottles rose up from the decayed remains of some plant.

Jay walked through the slimy graveyard. Great sheets of black slime hung from plants, like funeral flags. Strings of sticky gloop stuck to his soles of his shoes.

‘What's happened?' Jay murmured, horrified. Then he saw a pitcher plant leaf, not as putrefied as the others. It was covered in fuzzy black dots that seemed very familiar.

Black spot fungus
, thought Jay. The disease Toni's carnivorous plants had. The most deadly plant fungus there was.

Maybe he and Toni had brought it here, on their hands and clothes. Toni had said it was very contagious. The
dome, with its extra light and heat, had provided the perfect conditions for its spores to grow and spread like smallpox in humans.

It felt like a small triumph, destroying Viridian's collection of killing machines. As if, at last, humans had started to fight back.

Jay headed into the third dome to search for Toni. She'd said the Cultivars' living quarters were there, and the labs, where the Verdan scientists did their experiments. She'd said that was the most likely place they'd keep a prisoner.

A sliding door between the domes stood open. His torch beam lit up a wide, empty corridor, with doors on either side. He played his torch around some more, looking for signs of life.

But the only thing he saw was the fungus. It had spread even here, creeping like a sinister black tide up the walls.

He stepped into the corridor, crept along it. He switched off his torch, since dim yellow lights were glowing from the corridor's ceiling. He came to a T-junction. Which way now? He gazed down the left-hand corridor, then the right.

Was there something moving, at the end of the right-hand corridor? His eyes strained through the gloom, trying to see. Then the shadows suddenly took form.

There was a mob of Cultivars at the other end, racing this way, sprinting on long, green springy legs. There was no way he could outrun them. Jay held his hands up in surrender.

At the last second he realized,
They aren't going to stop!

He flung himself against a wall so he didn't get trampled. Dozens streamed past. The last one grabbed his throat. It was the woman Immune Hunter and Jay thought he was done for. But she didn't use her strangling tendrils. And Jay saw that her green skin was spotted with black mould.

She thrust her diseased face into his, showing her teeth in a green snarl. ‘I need the vaccine. Have you got it?'

Jay's hand was clasped round the vaccine for Toni, in his pocket. There was no way he was going to give that up.

Jay stammered, half-choking, ‘Dr Moran's got it, outside.'

She flung him back against the wall and sprinted away.

Jay staggered away from the wall, coughing. He turned down the right-hand corridor. The fungus was here too, sliming the walls. It had spread right into the heart of the Cultivar HQ.

The corridor opened into a larger space, dimly lit. There were benches, with big, powerful lamps positioned over them. None of the lamps was switched on. Fungus dripped from them, like Gothic Christmas decorations.

Jay slipped on the slimy floor, and almost fell into a black rotting heap by one of the benches.

He sprang back, swallowed the sour bile rising in his throat. The heap was all that remained of a Cultivar.

Fighting nausea, Jay peered closer. It was the Immune Hunter, the one who'd crouched, waiting, underwater, when he and Toni had gone to the shipping container. Jay could tell by the sticky hairs, black now, on one outstretched hand.

The fungus had killed him.

Now he noticed there were blackened heaps here and there around the room. Other Immune Hunters?

Jay didn't wait to find out. He yelled, ‘Toni? Are you here?'

Unbearable thoughts tormented him. If they'd made Toni Verdan, maybe she'd caught this fungus too.

He yelled again, ‘Toni, where are you?'

Then, from somewhere in the room, came a groan. Someone was still alive.

Jay saw something twitching by the door. He raced over. But it wasn't Toni.

It was Viridian.

The Cultivar Commander's massive body lay stretched out on the floor. Black mould covered his skin. He raised his crested head like a sick dinosaur. The fire in his eyes wasn't as bright as before but it was still burning.

Jay crouched down beside him. He said, ‘Where's Toni?'

‘It was the grafts,' said Viridian. Black spores puffed out as he spoke.

‘I asked you about Toni!'

‘We used our carnivorous plants for grafts,' said Viridian, coughing out spores like smoke. ‘The fungus spread through our bodies. We infected the other Cultivars. Then our best warriors started dying…'

He moved his great head from side to side. He almost seemed to be smiling in admiration, that such a powerful
elite had been brought down by a humble fungus.

Black tears rolled down his face. He said, ‘I wanted to go further. Much further. But it's too late for me…' His voice trailed away.

Jay shook him angrily. ‘Don't you die yet!'

Viridian had opened his eyes. He was smiling. ‘This has been the biggest adventure ever.' He grasped Jay's arm with one mouldy hand, as if they were friends. ‘
The biggest adventure ever.
'

Then Jay saw how Viridian had got the fungus. The Commander had a graft, surgically implanted into his wrist. It was a beautiful little Venus fly trap, too small to be a weapon. Had he had it put there like some kind of living jewellery? To feed it like a pet?

Jay shuddered. He couldn't believe that once he'd thought they had something in common.

‘Where's Toni,' said Jay again. ‘Tell me!'

A new fire flamed deep in Viridian's eyes. ‘Toni,' he repeated. ‘She is our legacy. Our greatest creation. She is the Future.'

‘Where is she?' Jay shouted. ‘What have you done to her?' He reached out to shake the dying Commander's shoulder, but then snatched back his hand as he remembered those stinging spines that bristled all over his chest and shoulders.

‘Toni's an angel now,' said Viridian.

‘You killed her!' yelled Jay.

‘I can die happy,' said Viridian, ‘knowing she's an angel.'

Then, with a smile on his face, Viridian turned his head aside and closed his eyes.

‘I hope you're dead, you sadistic freak!' screamed Jay.

He sprang up from Viridian's body and hardly knowing where he was going, raced out of the terrible room. He ran wildly, almost crashing into a wall. Instead of backing off he started hitting it, over and over again, howling out his grief for Toni. He stopped when he saw his knuckles were bleeding.

He wiped snot and tears from his face and walked on, very upright, eyes straight ahead.

He was in a corridor with a glass wall. On the other side of the glass was a science lab. Or was it an operating theatre? It didn't seem important any more.

He shouldered his way through another set of doors, carefully keeping his mind numb, and saw he was in a little triangular outdoor courtyard between the three domes. Overhead the stars still sparkled, the moon still looked down.

There were three or four trees, bunched together in the courtyard. Jay heard a rustle behind them. Could it be an Immune Hunter, who'd somehow escaped the fungus infestation? Jay tried to make himself care. He looked wearily towards the trees.

An angel rose above the courtyard trees and hovered there, beating its great wings. Except it wasn't a heavenly angel. It had green skin. And the wings on its back weren't feathery white, but green, edged with spines like teeth and
deep blood-red inside. They'd been grafted on from a giant Venus fly trap.

The Research Station's scientists had performed the surgery. They'd called their latest creation
Venus Angel
.

The Venus Angel slowly flapped its beautiful, deadly wings. It gazed down at Jay. Its green eyes seemed totally alien – there was nothing human in them at all. Its green hair was spiky, hacked off.

‘Toni!' gasped Jay

They'd made her Verdan. They'd put wings onto her back. But she was alive. A rush of joy took Jay's breath away. He scrabbled in his hoodie pocket for the vaccine bottle. He couldn't find it. Feverishly, he searched again. It was definitely gone. He'd dropped it somewhere, in his frantic rush through the dome.

The magnificent, mutant creature came closer. She swooped down from the tree tops until she was right in front of Jay. She snapped her main wings shut. Smaller Venus fly trap wings on her wrists and ankles were beating fast like hummingbird wings, keeping her centimetres above the ground.

Now her eyes were on a level with Jay's. She looked at him curiously, but totally without fear. Like you'd look at some weird caterpillar that had suddenly wriggled across your path.

‘Toni?' said Jay. He thought he saw a gleam of recognition suddenly flash across her face. ‘Toni, it's me, Jay.'

The Angel said, ‘Jay?' They stared at each other without speaking. She opened her mouth to say something more.

A door crashed behind Jay. Dr Moran came racing out into the courtyard. He stopped for a moment, astonished, as he recognised his daughter.

Then he came running up. ‘Toni!' he cried. ‘It's all right. I've found a cure. We can make you human again. We can take those horrible things off your back…'

He held out a bottle of vaccine. ‘Just open your mouth. And this nightmare will all be over.'

Toni raised an arm, her wrist wings vibrating in a crimson-green blur. Contemptuously, she dashed the bottle out of his hand. It went rolling away across the courtyard.

‘Toni!' yelled Dr Moran. He went racing after the bottle. Toni opened her main wings. With one last look at Jay, she rose into the air.

‘Wait!' shouted Dr Moran.

But a Venus Angel doesn't obey human commands. In all her terrible splendour, Toni rose above the domes.

‘I'll come and find you!' yelled Jay. ‘I promise!'

He had no idea whether she heard or not. For seconds Toni hovered, the moonlight shining through her wings. Then she soared higher into the night sky until she was lost among the stars.

Dr Moran and Jay walked back through the domes in silence.

Dr Moran spoke first. ‘I'll find her,' he said. ‘It's not too late to make her human again.'

‘
I'll
find her,' Jay said.

He felt clear-headed and full of purpose. He didn't know yet
how
he was going to find Toni. But he knew he would never give up until he did.

Then a terrible thought struck him, ‘What if she's infected with the black spot fungus?' he asked.

‘She isn't,' replied the doctor with certainty.

‘How can you be so sure?' Jay demanded. ‘She got grafted, and Viridian said the fungus spread through grafts. Viridian's dying,' he added. ‘He's probably dead by now.'

Dr Moran looked at Jay, astonished. ‘Are you sure?'

‘I've just seen him,' said Jay. But he wasn't interested in Viridian any more. All he cared about was Toni.

He challenged Dr Moran again. ‘How'd you know Toni's not infected?'

‘Once the Cultivar scientists found out about the black spot, they made their labs sterile, used plants that were fungus free. They kept Toni in quarantine after surgery. So she never caught it.'

‘Who told you all this?' Jay asked him.

‘That Immune Hunter who ran out of the dome. I refused to give her the vaccine until she did. She was one of my colleagues once,' added Dr Moran. ‘A very good scientist.'

They were passing the labs behind the glass walls. ‘See?' said Dr Moran.

‘See what?' said Jay, his eyes sweeping over the gleaming stainless steel surfaces, the white walls. Then he caught on. ‘There's no fungus in there.'

Dr Moran nodded. ‘That's why I think there's still hope for Toni. If I can find her.'