Armageddon Read online

  ‘Me and my children? What about us and our children? What has happened to you?’

  Hooper was barking, excited by the raised voices. Kirstie was in the lounge room, looking from Mum to Dad and back again, her eyes wide.

  Dad saw Jarli in the doorway. ‘Jarli, get in the car,’ he said. ‘We’re leaving.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ Jarli asked.

  ‘I booked a hotel in Axe Falls,’ Dad said. ‘Grab a change of clothes. Nothing else.’

  ‘You booked a hotel already?’ Mum demanded. ‘How?’

  ‘You really want to fight about that now?’

  Dad never spoke to Mum like this. He’s losing his mind, Jarli thought. It was true that they needed to get out of town, but Dad was freaking Mum and Kirstie out.

  ‘I’ll ride with Dad,’ Jarli said, hoping to defuse the situation. Luckily, they had bought a second car when Dad got his new job. ‘Mum, you can take Kirstie in the other car. That way we can take more of our stuff.’

  ‘Jarli . . .’ Mum looked betrayed.

  ‘We have to go, Mum. I’m sorry.’ Jarli hugged her, like Dad should have done. Like he had done in every previous crisis. Mum squeezed Jarli tightly.

  ‘This is our home.’ There were tears in her eyes.

  ‘I know. I love living here.’ Jarli’s own eyes were stinging. ‘But I don’t love the idea of dying here. Hopefully this will turn out to be nothing, and we can come back. OK?’

  Mum finally nodded. ‘OK.’

  Jarli waited for Dad to apologise for losing his temper. He didn’t.

  ‘Grab some clothes,’ Dad said. ‘All of you.’

  ‘And anything else that will fit in the cars.’ Jarli met Dad’s gaze. ‘It will only take an extra minute.’

  Dad gritted his teeth, but nodded. ‘Fine.’

  KNOWING TOO MUCH

  Reynolds picked up on the second ring. ‘Detective,’ she said. ‘Do you have a statement for me yet?’

  Arno gritted her teeth. ‘I told you not to post that video.’

  ‘And I told you that the public has a right to know that they’ve been threatened.’

  Arno swung the steering wheel. She was on her way to Kelton police station, but it was taking forever. The roads were already clogged by frightened people, their back seats piled high with all their possessions.

  ‘Don’t get self-righteous with me,’ Arno spat. ‘You don’t care about the public. You were just afraid that some other vulture would get the scoop. So you did exactly what Viper wanted, and created a frenzy.’

  ‘You’ve misjudged me, Detective,’ Reynolds said, and she sounded sincere—just like she did on the TV every night. ‘I absolutely care about the public. But it’s true that Viper almost certainly sent his video to other journalists. How long did you think you could keep this under wraps?’

  Finally Arno pulled into the police station. A crowd of desperate, angry people blocked the front door. Civilians trying to get in, cops holding them back. Maybe they thought they would be safe in there.

  Arno wished that were true. But the building wasn’t airtight, and from the short briefing about BOTULISM H, she knew that a particle smaller than a speck of dust could kill. It paralysed the body bit by bit, weakening the muscles until they couldn’t move at all. When it reached the lungs, the victim suffocated.

  The canister containing botulism H had been at the Kelton Research Hospital because the doctors were trying to synthesize an antitoxin. They hadn’t succeeded. Then Viper’s mercenaries had stolen it.

  Arno grabbed her phone and clambered out of the car. ‘Thanks to you,’ she told Reynolds, ‘the public knew before the mayor did, which gave us no time to plan the evacuation of the town. If anyone gets hurt in the panic—and they will—it’s on you.’

  ‘Can I quote you on that?’ Reynolds asked. ‘“Senior detective threatens journalist” would make a great lead story for my next broadcast.’

  The detective ignored this. Something Reynolds had said a minute ago had caught up to her. Viper almost certainly sent his video to other journalists. His video.

  ‘In the recording, Viper’s voice was distorted,’ Arno said, thinking aloud. ‘Run through some kind of filter.’

  ‘Obviously,’ Reynolds replied.

  ‘I didn’t pay much attention, because his voice has always been distorted. But this time we could see his face. Why bother disguising his voice if he was revealing his face?’

  She could almost hear Reynolds shrugging on the other end of the phone. ‘Habit, maybe?’

  Arno pushed through the crowd towards the door. ‘I doubt that. Everything Viper does, he does deliberately. I think he was wearing a mask.’

  ‘It didn’t look like a mask.’

  No, Arno thought, but someone like Viper would have the means and connections to obtain a convincing, realistic mask. Besides, if a man with scars like that lived in Kelton, she would have noticed him. By supposedly revealing his face, Viper had stopped everyone from wondering what he looked like, and had made himself more invisible than ever.

  ‘We don’t know anything about him,’ Arno realised.

  ‘We know the threat is real,’ Reynolds said. ‘I ran Truth Premium over the recording. So did a million other viewers. He’s telling the truth about making Kelton uninhabitable.’

  Arno wrenched the door of the police station open. She remembered a conversation she’d had months ago with Jarli Durras, the kid who had invented the original Truth app. He’d had a theory that Truth Premium had a white-list. It was programmed to trust certain voices, no matter what they said.

  ‘Truth Premium is compromised,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It makes some people appear as though they never lie.’

  Reynolds didn’t reply.

  ‘I can see why you wouldn’t want to believe the app was flawed,’ Arno continued. ‘What’s your honesty rating, again? A hundred per cent, right?’

  More silence. It was possible that Reynolds had bought her way onto the white-list, so the app always trusted her. Or maybe she was always completely honest. She was either very good, or very bad.

  In fact, Arno realised, no-one had never proven Viper was male. Everything they knew about him came from rumours.

  ‘What are you implying?’ Reynolds asked coldly.

  ‘I’m not implying anything,’ Arno said. ‘Do me a favour—don’t leave town. I’m sure you want to stay here anyway, to report on the evacuation. For the benefit of the public.’

  She ended the call and grabbed the nearest police officer—a young man with tanned skin and a thin moustache. ‘Hey, you.’

  The young man bristled. ‘We’ve met. My name is Terry.’

  ‘Good for you. I need you to put a trace on Dana Reynolds’s phone.’

  ‘Are you joking?’ Terry demanded. ‘We have half the people in Kelton jamming up the roads and the other half trying to get into this building. At the same time, we’re searching the whole town for a biological weapon and a terrorist. You want me to take a break from managing all that so I can bug a journalist?’

  ‘Yes,’ Arno said. ‘I think it’s possible that journalist is Viper.’

  DAD?

  ‘You’re scaring Mum and Kirstie,’ Jarli said.

  Dad kept his eyes on the road, squinting against the reflected glare of the headlights. His knuckles were tight around the steering wheel. The sight reminded Jarli of something, but he wasn’t quite sure what.

  ‘They should be scared,’ Dad said.

  ‘Not of you. We’re all supposed to look out for each other.’

  Dad just grunted.

  ‘I know you’re afraid, too,’ Jarli said. ‘And I know it’s been hard, since the crash. But you’ve gotta try to—’

  ‘Shut up and let me focus on driving,’ Dad said. Which was ridiculous. They were stuck in a traffic jam. Like Bess had said, there were only two roads out of Kelton, and both were full. Exhaust fumes pooled under a seemingly endless line of cars. The trees on either side of the road were lit by a blood-red glow of brake lights.

  Over the last hour, the suburbs had turned into a warzone. A mixture of police, army and emergency services people had been driving through the streets with lights flashing and sirens screaming. Some were knocking on doors while others shouted into megaphones: ‘Evacuate the town. Take your loved ones. Leave your belongings behind. This is not a drill. Evacuate the town. Take your loved ones . . .’

  Despite all this, Jarli couldn’t staunch the worry that some people would be left behind. Heavy sleepers. People who were hard of hearing, or didn’t speak English. People with mobility issues, like Bess.

  Jarli turned his face to the window. There was no getting through to Dad. When they got to the hotel, maybe Jarli could contact Dr Vorham somehow. Let him know that Dad’s mental state was getting worse.

  Mum and Kirstie had left five minutes before Jarli and Dad did. Jarli couldn’t see their car ahead—maybe they had gotten out of town before the traffic slowed to a crawl. He checked his phone. No messages.

  Ding! A notification from kGram appeared. Battery-saver mode was switched on, so mobile data only downloaded when the phone was unlocked.

  Jarli frowned. He hadn’t used kGram in weeks. Not since Doug died—no-one else he knew had an account.

  He opened the message.

  Jarli’s eyes grew wider and wider as he read the message. Was this a sick joke? Had someone hacked Doug’s account?

  Doug had used long pass-phrases to protect his accounts, and his username was MajorGriff. Nothing like his real name. A hacker wouldn’t have enough information to fake a message like this.

  It was real. Doug was alive!

  ‘Stop the car!’ Jarli cried.

  ‘The car is stopped,’ Dad said.

  ‘I just got a message from Doug.’ Jarli brandished the phone. ‘He’s alive! Viper is holding him captive!’

  Dad didn’t look surprised. ‘Your friend is dead. You were at his funeral.’

  Jarli stared at him. What was Dad talking about? The funeral didn’t prove anything. The COFFIN had been empty.

  Beep. LIE There must be a bug in the latest version of Jarli’s code, since what Dad had said was true. Jarli had been at the funeral.

  Dad swore. ‘Will you turn that thing off?’

  ‘You don’t understand.’ Jarli was already forwarding Doug’s message to Bess and Anya. ‘Doug is being held captive. He needs our help.’

  ‘No, you don’t understand.’ Dad honked the horn at the driver in front of him, as though they could somehow get out of the way. ‘We’ll all be dead if we don’t get out of here by noon tomorrow. Even if your friend is somehow still alive, there’s nothing we can do for him.’

  Jarli’s phone dinged again. A message from Anya.

  ‘We can’t just leave him to die,’ Jarli said, typing as he talked.

  ‘That’s exactly what we’re going to do,’ Dad snapped.

  Jarli opened his mouth and closed it again. Being forgetful and rude was one thing. But when had his father become so heartless?

  ‘I’m going to call the police,’ Jarli said.

  Dad looked sharply at him. ‘Why?’

  ‘What do you mean, why?! To tell them to rescue Doug!’

  Dad snatched the phone out of Jarli’s hands. ‘No. I told you to turn that off.’

  Jarli was furious. ‘And I told you Doug needs help!’

  Dad stuffed the phone in the right-hand pocket of his jeans, where Jarli couldn’t reach it. The phone didn’t seem to fit, so he took out some leather gloves to make room.

  Jarli stared at the gloves in Dad’s lap. Cobra, the old man who had rammed Dad’s car a year ago, had worn leather gloves just like those. Jarli had seen his emotionless face moments before impact, and his gloved hands gripping the steering wheel of the brown ute. The image was burned forever into Jarli’s mind.

  ‘Where did you get those?’ Jarli asked.

  ‘Get what?’ The traffic started moving again, a painful crawl up the highway.

  ‘The gloves.’

  Dad said nothing. He braked as the traffic ahead slowed to a stop once more.

  Jarli felt like he was trapped in a falling lift. He thought of all the things ‘Dad’ seemed to have forgotten. His changing personality. The way his face still didn’t look right, more than a year after the crash.

  Part of Doug’s message flashed through his brain: That’s how Viper is making people disappear—he’s giving them new faces and new identities.

  ‘Never mind,’ Jarli said. His mouth was suddenly dry. Unless he was losing his mind—and that was what it felt like—he was trapped in this car with Cobra. Someone who had once tried to murder him.

  And Dad—his real Dad—was missing.

  ‘I feel sick,’ Jarli said, unbuckling his seatbelt and opening the passenger door. His phone didn’t beep in Cobra’s pocket, because this was true. But as soon as Jarli’s feet hit the ground he was running, off the highway and down the grassy slope into the darkness of the bush.

  ‘Hey!’ Cobra yelled. ‘Get back here!’

  Jarli heard the other door open, but he didn’t dare look back. He reached the trees and kept running, pushing branches aside and trampling leaf litter. Maybe he should have run back along the highway instead, calling out to the other drivers. No-one would have believed him—Help! A killer stole my Dad’s face!—but Cobra might not have attacked him in front of witnesses. Too late now.

  Jarli ran deeper and deeper into the bush. Looking back, he couldn’t see the road anymore. But he could hear Cobra crashing through the undergrowth somewhere in the darkness. Jarli took an abrupt left turn, ducked under a thick bough and crawled into a gloomy hollow between two trees, out of sight. He stayed perfectly still, knees and fingertips on the dirt, heart racing.

  ‘Get back here, kid,’ Cobra yelled. Dad never called him ‘kid’. Where was Dad?

  The footsteps drew closer. Jarli trembled in his hiding place. If Cobra found him, there was nothing he could do. He should have stayed on the road. Or even in the car—pretended he didn’t know the truth.

  The footsteps stopped. Jarli clenched his teeth so hard they hurt. Had Cobra spotted him? Or was he listening, because he’d lost the trail?

  Ding! It was Jarli’s phone, in Cobra’s pocket. He was standing right next to the bough which concealed Jarli’s hiding place.

  Cobra pulled the phone out of his pocket. ‘I know you’re there, son,’ he shouted. ‘I’m sorry I took your phone. Come out and you’ll be safe. I promise.’

  The phone beeped. LIE

  Cobra cursed, threw it on the ground and stomped on it.

  Then Jarli heard something else. Footsteps, further away. Someone was hiking through the bush towards them.

  A torch flitted between the trees. Jarli heard Cobra duck down, trying to get out of sight.

  Too slow. The torch beam swung around towards him. ‘There! I see him!’ called a voice. Male . . . and somehow familiar to Jarli.

  Cobra turned and bolted. The torchlight flickered as his pursuers ran closer and closer.

  ‘Don’t let him get away! If he tells Viper what he knows—’

  ‘On it.’ The second voice was younger, and female. Also familiar.

  Jarli stood up. ‘He went that way!’ He pointed with one hand, shielding his eyes with the other.

  The man lowered the torch. ‘Jarli. Are you hurt?’

  ‘No.’ Jarli looked around, but couldn’t see the young woman.

  ‘It’s Cobra, right? Is he alone?’

  Jarli recognised the man now. He had a square nose, curly brown hair and dark circles around his eyes. Jarli didn’t know his real name, but in his head he called him Scanner. He was—or had claimed to be—a police officer, undercover in Viper’s gang.

  ‘He’s alone,’ Jarli said. ‘He’s disguised as my dad.’

  ‘Glen Durras. I know. Follow me.’ Scanner ran past Jarli into the thick scrub, and disappeared.

  Jarli scooped up his phone. It had a waterproof, shock-resistant cover which would survive an asteroid impact. Cobra’s foot didn’t appear to have damaged it.

  Jarli wove through the trees after Scanner, branches snagging the threads on his shirt. He couldn’t see Scanner anymore, but he could follow the sound of the footsteps in the undergrowth. As he stepped around a thick tree, he came face to face with—

  ‘Anya?’ he said, stunned.

  Anya covered her torch and looked him up and down. ‘Hello, Jarli. I am glad to see that you are OK.’

  ‘How . . . what are you doing here?’ Jarli asked.

  ‘I got your message,’ Anya said. ‘We came as fast as we could.’

  Scanner emerged from the trees behind her. ‘Anything?’

  ‘Sorry, Dad,’ Anya said. ‘I lost him.’

  Jarli boggled at her. ‘Dad?’

  Scanner and Anya looked at each other.

  ‘There are some things I have not told you,’ Anya said.

  THE FAIL SAFE

  ‘Excuse me, Minister.’

  Aaron Fisher looked up from his prawn linguini. ‘I’m eating dinner,’ he said. Was an hour’s peace and quiet too much to ask?

  The assistant minister for defence, Sandra Rizvi, hovered in the doorway. ‘We need to talk about a contingency plan,’ she said. ‘In case that biological weapon is released in Kelton.’

  Fisher dabbed at his mouth with a napkin. ‘I thought that was taken care of.’

  ‘We’ve dispatched hundreds of troops to search for the weapon,’ Rizvi said. ‘But there’s no guarantee that they’ll find it. Even if they do, they may not be able to defuse it.’

  She sat down in the plush chair opposite Fisher, who sighed with annoyance. His dinner was going cold.

  ‘So what?’ he said. ‘Haven’t we evacuated the town anyway?’

  Rizvi looked worried. ‘We’re trying, but even in a well-planned evacuation—which this isn’t—there are some people who cannot or will not leave. And all our troops are obviously in the danger zone.’

  Fisher looked out the window over the sparkling lights of the city. He had a flight tomorrow. He should be packing right now.