Дэниел Смит - Below Zero

Zak hung his head. It was such an impossible situation. Maybe it was time to give up. They’d be better off joining Mum and Dad and the others instead of being so scared all the time. It seemed so long ago that he was sitting in the plane, reading his book, hoping for an adventure.

Zak unzipped his left pocket and pulled out the paperback. He held it in both hands and stared at the cover. It was frayed now, from being stuffed in his jacket. The right corner was bent over, and there were a few scratches where he’d caught it on the zip. Jackson Jones would know what to do. He would have faced this whole nightmare with a witty remark and a few mishaps, but he wouldn’t have given up. Jackson Jones never gave up.

Zak ran his fingers over the cover before shoving the book back into his pocket. ‘OK, so we might not be able to figure out what they are or what they want, but I’m not going to let them take us without a fight. That’s what Jackson Jones would do.’

‘He’s not real, Zak.’

‘I know that, but we have to think like him. And the first thing he’d do is arm himself.’ Zak raised the shovel. ‘And I reckon the next thing he’d do is find a way to attack them. We’ve done nothing but run so far. Now it’s time to find a way to fight.’

‘How? There are too many,’ May said. ‘We can’t fight bugs .’

‘We have to go right to where they came from.’

‘We don’t know where they co— Wait, are you talking about the Storage place we saw on the video?’

Zak shook his head. ‘Do you remember the map on the wall in The Hub?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘On the right-hand side, it said “To The Chasm”. I didn’t think about it until just now but that’s where they were taking the ice cores from. Sofia said that on the video. So if that’s where the ice core came from, it must be where the bugs come from. There might be some kind of hive.’

‘Oh, Zak, really? A hive?’

‘I’m telling you, I’m right. That’s where we have to go. That’s where we destroy them. You have to listen to me. For once, you have to listen to me and do what I want.’

‘Zak, it could be anywhere out there – if it even exists. And what are we going to do? Swipe them to death with our hammer and our snow shovel?

‘All right, so maybe there’s something else in here we can use. I don’t know, May, I’m trying to be brave here. Trying to make a plan .’

‘And I’m trying to be realistic .’

Zak was losing concentration. There were too many things to think about. ‘I’m as scared as you are but we have to do something. We can’t just sit here and freeze to death. We have to find a way to stop them; to get Mum and Dad back. We have to do something .’

May’s face was drained of colour, and her lips were pale. Her teeth clicked gently as she shivered. ‘You are brave, you know.’

‘What?’

‘You are brave. The bravest person I know.’

‘But?’ Zak was still trying to imagine him and his sister in The Hub, hiding from the bugs.

‘But nothing,’ she said. ‘It’s true. What you’ve got. The… you know. In your head.’

‘The cancer.’ Zak said it for her.

‘Yeah. That. If I had that; if I was told about it like you were, I couldn’t deal with it the way you did. You just got on with it, but I’d have been unbearable.’

‘You already are.’

She snorted a short laugh.

‘You’re still my favourite sister, though.’

‘You took it all in your stride.’

‘It only looks that way,’ Zak said.

‘No, you accepted it and now look at you. You’re being brave again. You’re not scared; you want to fight these things. You’re brave and you’re tough.’ May gave her brother a thin smile. ‘Like Jackson Jones. I wish I was like that.’

Zak could hardly believe what he was hearing. ‘You wish you were like me ? No way. Those girls at school – Vanessa Morton-Chandler and the ones who hang around with her – they’re mean to you all the time, but you just deal with them. I wish I was like you !’

May sighed. ‘It’s just an act. I pretend it doesn’t bother me, them saying things and making stuff up, posting things online, but it does. It makes me feel…’ She searched for the right words. ‘Angry? Upset? I dunno. Embarrassed sometimes.’

‘You don’t let them see that, though. You don’t give them the satisfaction.’

‘I guess.’

‘Same for me. I might not look scared but I am scared. I’m scared all the time. When I woke up in the French lesson that day, lying on the floor, seeing everyone staring at me, I was SO scared. The look on everyone’s faces; they were… it freaked them out. It freaked me out. And then the doctor, and the drilling and… what if the treatment doesn’t work? What if this thing keeps getting bigger? What if it fills my head? What if the doctors are wrong, and I die from it tomorrow?’

‘Oh, Zak.’ May’s eyes glistened.

‘But I hate being scared. I hate it. And the only way to stop being scared is to fight. So that’s what we have to do now. We have to fight and—’

‘What?’ May turned to the window and saw what her brother had seen.

A group of red-jackets was advancing across the airstrip. Behind them, the Spider was making its way closer. Tick-tack-tick-tack .

‘I’m sorry,’ Zak said. ‘I lost concentration. They’ve found us.’

The monsters were coming.

A line of red-jackets was moving towards the plane, while the Spider waited by The Hub. There was nowhere left for Zak and May to run. There was nobody to help them. They might as well have been the only people left on earth.

May was swearing. A lot .

Zak gripped the shovel in both hands and moved along the plane. He was determined not to let anything happen to her: not just for her sake, but for his sake too – the last thing he wanted was to be left out there alone. He went to the ripped-open cockpit and squinted at the airstrip. The red-jackets were close, and Zak could hear the sound of their boots shuffling on the ice. It formed a kind of ugly beat along with the tick-tack-tick-tack of the Spider.

Zak leant the shovel against what was left of the instrument array and tugged one of the flares from his pocket. He popped off the cap and used it to scrape along the top of the red stick, as if he were lighting a giant match. The flare sparked first time and burst into life. It fizzed and hissed like a firework, bathing the cockpit in bright red light and white smoke. Zak threw it out on to the airstrip in front of the army of red-jackets who stopped as soon as it hit the ground. Zak lit two more and threw them out. They sputtered and popped, shedding a sinister red light across the ice. The smoke engulfed the red-jackets in an eerie, swirling cloud.

‘The flares make them stop,’ Zak shouted to his sister as he grabbed the shovel and planted his feet firm. He swung the weapon back over his shoulder, like a baseball bat, ready to smack the first person who tried to climb on board the trashed aircraft.

He watched the line of monsters standing in the red light and the churning smoke and, for the first time since seeing them, he realized they were not all wearing red jackets. Two of them were wearing orange jackets, just like his, and when he looked closely at their faces, his heart faltered.