Doomsday, page 1
Dedication
FOR THE STAFF AND STUDENTS OF
YERONGA STATE SCHOOL
CONTENTS
Dedication
ONE Testing a New Weapon
TWO Dangerous Drums
THREE The Newest Rat and the Oldest
FOUR Help from the Smallest Rat
FIVE A Hundred Hissing Snakes
SIX Despair
SEVEN Doomsday is Here
EIGHT Cowardice!
NINE Just a Few Hours
TEN One Last Mission
ELEVEN Rebellion
TWELVE The Obsidian
THIRTEEN Fungicoccus Seven
FOURTEEN On the Roof
FIFTEEN Eaten Alive
SIXTEEN A Swarm of Rats
SEVENTEEN After Doomsday
Excerpt from The Tunnels of Ferdinand
Excerpt from The Scorpion’s Tail
Excerpt from Malig Tumora
Excerpt from In the Lair of the Mountain Beast
About the Author
Others Books by James Moloney
Copyright
ONE
Testing a New Weapon
THE WIND WHIPPED THE boy’s hair against his face and up over his dirty forehead. He loved the wild sensation of travelling so fast, the slapping of his tattered shirt against his chest, the cold, the roar in his ears. His eyes were narrowed, only a slit letting him see the way ahead as a dull yellow light punched a hole in the darkness.
The boy’s name was Berrin. He was travelling through a concrete storm-water pipe beneath a city he could not name even though it was his home. Why underground? Because the surface was too dangerous for his kind. To stay alive, Berrin and his companions lived in tunnels like this one. They called themselves the Rats, which seemed to suit a bunch of kids who spent so much time crawling through tight places and scrounging for whatever they could find. To get around more comfortably, they had built themselves tiny cars out of parts stolen from an abandoned amusement park. Once, cars like these had been called Dodgems so they had borrowed the name. Powered by batteries and able to carry two passengers, one behind the other, these Dodgems could go like a rocket.
‘We must be getting close,’ called a voice from behind Berrin.
The voice belonged to Olanda, Berrin’s closest friend. Her hair was longer and even more matted with grime than his. If she washed it, it would still be black, but Olanda never washed anything. Where Berrin’s eyes were round, with grey and blue at their centre, Olanda’s were shaped like almonds and the irises were as dark as her hair.
Berrin eased his grip on a lever on his right side and the Dodgem slowed. When the first hint of natural light appeared ahead, he stopped altogether. ‘Better be careful. It’d be a shame to die now, when we’re so close to winning.’
‘Be a shame to die at any time,’ said Olanda with a sniff. She drew a razor-sharp sword from the scabbard tied to her back and with her free hand switched on the light on the front of her helmet. Berrin did the same, and led the way.
‘Do you really think we’re close to winning?’ Olanda whispered as they crept towards the light.
‘Yes, as long as our plan works the way it’s supposed to,’ Berrin answered.
Olanda stopped, making Berrin turn to face her. ‘But that’s just it. Every time I let myself believe it, every time I get excited that we’re actually going to beat Malig Tumora, I think about those little moths we brought back from Mount Windenbeck. Not much of a weapon.’
‘Not against bombs and bullets, maybe, but our war is different.’
The Rats had discovered that Malig Tumora controlled the city’s grown-ups with a gas produced from millions of purple flowers that were grown in huge glasshouses. They needed to destroy the flowers to free the grown-ups, and the moths were their secret weapon.
What Berrin didn’t tell his friend was that he suffered the same doubts. He was leader of the Rats now and he couldn’t share his worries with any of them, not even Olanda. During his early days in the tunnels, when he’d gladly followed a girl named Dorian as leader, he’d never once heard her despair or speak of defeat. The silent courage she’d shown had helped him and now he must keep up his own spirits for the sake of the rest.
However, things weren’t going as well as they’d hoped. Months earlier, Berrin and Olanda had brought a sackful of special moths back from distant Mount Windenbeck. The caterpillars, which hatched from eggs laid by these moths, were said to prefer the purple flowers more than any other food. The Rats’ plan was to breed as many as they could. Remembering the way the moths had hidden in a cave during the daylight, Berrin and Olanda had released the precious insects in the largest tunnels close to an opening to the outside.
At first the moths had ventured no further than the roof of the concrete pipe where Berrin’s companions watched them anxiously. ‘Be patient,’ Berrin said to them, and sure enough, when darkness fell the little moths fluttered out onto the lush creek banks fed by the storm-water pipes. There, they laid their eggs on wide-bladed grasses and the leaves of shrubs. Weeks later, tiny white caterpillars hatched from the eggs, and within days they’d turned green. This was exactly what they were meant to do. Berrin could barely contain his glee.
‘It’s working. This crazy scheme is actually going to work,’ he told Ruben and Vindy and others in the grubby gang who looked to him now as they’d once relied on Dorian.
But Berrin had spoken too soon. The green caterpillars were supposed to be ravenous. They were going to munch away on the leaves of the purple-flowered plants with such ferocious appetites that the plants would die before new leaves could grow. That was the plan! Except no one had told the little green caterpillars of their part in this plan. They proved to be lethargic eaters. When Berrin stole out to grab a handful of grass and some leaves, he found only small holes nibbled here and there. There weren’t many caterpillars, either.
‘At this rate, it’ll take a year to build up the numbers we need,’ he’d lamented.
That was why he and Olanda were scouting the system of tunnels now, looking for different places to bring the moths. Maybe the grasses and plants near the opening of this storm-water pipe would prove more to the insects’ liking. It was the third spot they had explored today.
‘Do you think Quinn’s having any better luck?’ said Olanda.
‘We’ll find out when we get back to base. That’s if Quinn doesn’t get himself killed,’ Berrin added.
‘Yes, he does get a bit reckless with the Gadges,’ Olanda said with a sigh.
‘I wasn’t thinking about the Gadges. It’s the way he drives a Dodgem. I couldn’t ask any of the others to go with him — they’d die of fright.’
Olanda laughed, then cut herself off abruptly. ‘There’s something up ahead,’ she whispered. ‘The sound’s coming from just outside the opening.’
They moved like real rats after that, with their helmet lights switched off and feeling for loose gravel underfoot with each step. At last they could see the perfect circle of the opening in the distance. Brilliant sunlight made them turn away until slowly their eyes adjusted.
A figure passed briefly before the opening. The silhouette was enough to identify it: a long wolf-like snout with cruel fangs emerging from the upper jaw, powerful shoulders, yet it walked on two legs and had arms like a human being. ‘A Gadge,’ whispered Olanda. ‘We’d better back up before it sees us.’
Gadges were the creation of a man whose name had already been heard in these tunnels in the last few minutes. A name that was never far from Berrin’s mind. Malig Tumora had been a brilliant scientist who learned how to combine the genes of animals and plants to produce any creature he wanted. He had built breathtaking robots too, and a gigantic computer which he turned into a copy of his own inventive mind. Unfortunately for the brilliant scientist, his computer was as ruthless and unfeeling as he was and, when the opportunity came, it took his place. Malig Tumora, the human being, was dead now and the city above these tunnels was controlled by a heartless machine that was known by the same name.
Gadges, however, were flesh and blood. They were the old Malig Tumora’s most terrible success, mixing the killing power of a giant wolf with a human’s intelligence. Berrin wasn’t about to confront a Gadge. He was turning to follow Olanda back along the tunnel when a second Gadge called to the first.
‘Wait,’ Berrin whispered to Olanda. ‘They’re testing something, some kind of experiment. We’d better find out what it is.’
Before Olanda could argue (and she certainly wasn’t going to shout at him with two deadly enemies so near) Berrin edged closer to the circle of light. If the Gadges peered into the tunnel now, they would surely see him. Berrin looked out through the opening. The pipe fed into a huge storm-water drain with concrete bottom and sides, open to the sky. It would have been useless for breeding the moths because no vegetation lay close by. But the Gadges didn’t seem interested in the tunnel. What were they up to?
Berrin went even closer to the end of the pipe, with Olanda hovering nervously at his back. ‘You’re worse than Quinn, the risks you take,’ she hissed.
‘Shh.’
He could see now that both Gadges were staring at something on the ground. The whirr of a small electric motor reached his ears. Then one of the Gadges stooped to pick up whatever it was.
Some kind of robot, Berrin told himself. It was circular and the length of a man’s shoe in diameter. When the Gadge set it on the ground again, it zoomed off on an erratic path.
‘It’s a toy,’ said Olanda.
But Gadges didn’t play games, and if they needed any more evidence that these small robots weren’t toys they got it when a new shape appeared. Berrin heard the noise first, a high-pitched whiny sound. Then he saw the shadow, a dark circle on the concrete near the Gadges’ feet. He pulled back.
‘The observation ball,’ he whispered.
The pair had encountered this shiny sphere before and each time it had almost brought their death. Now that Malig Tumora was a massive computer taking up three floors of a building many kilometres away, it could no longer move around like a man. The observation ball was its eyes and ears: half a metre across and able to hover above the ground like a well-controlled balloon. It had Malig Tumora’s voice too.
‘Continue-the-testing,’ said the hovering sphere in its peculiarly stilted way.
The Gadges hurried to obey, picking up the odd little robot.
‘Look out, they’re coming this way,’ said Olanda and together the two Rats scurried back into the darkness. Just as well, because moments later the Gadges set the tiny robot down inside the pipe. Berrin and Olanda didn’t wait around to find out why.
‘That thing reminds me of the robot scorpion Malig Tumora sent after us months ago,’ said Berrin, keeping his voice low as they scurried back to the Dodgem.
‘But it didn’t have a tail or any weapons I could see,’ Olanda replied.
‘So what’s it for?’ Berrin wondered aloud.
Instead of voicing a suggestion, Olanda clamped her hand over his mouth. ‘There’s something ahead,’ she whispered into his ear.
This meant trouble. With Gadges behind them, their path back to the Dodgem was now blocked too. They didn’t dare flick on their helmet lights in case the Gadges saw the glow and came to investigate.
‘What is it?’ Berrin asked softly.
‘I don’t know. All I heard was some kind of movement.’
They stood still and silent, wondering whether to go forward or back. Then out of the darkness came a new sound, low and rumbling, a kind of growl like a wolf.
TWO
Dangerous Drums
‘WHERE DO YOU WANT to die, Berrin?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well,’ said Olanda, ‘we can go back to those two Gadges behind us and be torn to pieces out in the open, or we can go forward and be torn to pieces inside this pipe.’
‘Haven’t you got any other choices?’ Berrin said. It wasn’t the first time Olanda had asked him a question like this. It was part of life as a Rat. They’d added another word to their name not so long ago to become the Doomsday Rats, because one way or another the end was coming and it would bring doom either to the brave children of these tunnels or their mortal enemy, Malig Tumora.
The growling started up again. For Berrin and Olanda, it seemed death had come calling earlier than expected.
‘It was probably a trap all along,’ Olanda said. ‘Those two Gadges were meant to distract us with their little robot while the third caught us off guard.’
‘Maybe,’ said Berrin. ‘One thing’s for sure, though. We stand a better chance against one Gadge than two. Time to turn on our helmet lights. Are you ready?’
Olanda took a tighter grip on the handle of her sword. ‘I’m ready. Let’s see what we’re up against.’
They turned on their helmet lights together and instantly the tunnel filled with their gasps. Almost as quickly, the sound became mingled not with more growling or a vicious roar, but with laughter.
‘You should have heard yourselves,’ said a familiar voice. ‘Where do you want to die?’ And before any more mocking words could escape, the laughter took over again.
Berrin was too stunned to respond, but not Olanda. She pushed past him and raised her sword towards the laughing figure. ‘I’m going to kill you, Quinn,’ she seethed. There was no Gadge waiting to slash them with its terrible claws, just their friend, the grin on his face as wide as the tunnel.
‘Did you like my growl?’ he asked, unafraid of Olanda’s threats. ‘Sounded like the real thing, didn’t it?’ And he growled again to demonstrate.
Despite her anger, Olanda had let the sword drop to her side. ‘All right, you tricked us,’ she said. ‘What are you doing here anyway? You’re supposed to be looking for places to breed more moths.’
‘Yeah, yeah, I know, but I found something else instead.’
‘What?’ Berrin asked. His heartbeat was returning to normal now, but he knew Quinn all too well and the suspicion in his voice was as sharp as his sword.
‘Come and see,’ Quinn said.
Quinn was travelling in his own Dodgem, which he’d parked directly behind Berrin and Olanda’s. They moved the lights from one end of each Dodgem to the other and swivelled the seats around to face in the opposite direction. ‘Follow me,’ called Quinn.
Easier said than done. It was always a wild ride behind Quinn. He led them through large pipes and small, into an entirely different part of the storm-water system. When they finally came to a halt, the pale daylight reflected on the tunnel wall told them they were close to another opening.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever been in this area before,’ said Berrin. He started towards the light.
‘Not that way,’ called Quinn and he led them up through an access hole into the harsh sunlight. Leaving the tunnels this way was always a heart-pounding occasion for any Rat. How could they be sure that a Gadge or a Rhino Dog or any other of Malig Tumora’s strange creations wasn’t lying in ambush, or simply passing at the wrong moment?
Their luck held fast, however, and Quinn wasn’t one to stay in the open for long. Less than a minute of hard running took them into the comforting shadows of a large building. Seconds more and they were inside.
‘What is this place?’ said Olanda.
‘Some sort of storage space.’
‘A warehouse,’ said Berrin, wondering how he knew the word.
‘It’s not used much, is it?’ Olanda swept away the cobwebs that clung to her hair. ‘Everything’s covered in dust.’
‘An abandoned warehouse then, forgotten about, like so many other buildings in the city since Malig Tumora took over,’ said Berrin. ‘This isn’t going to help us much with the moths, Quinn. Why did you bring us here?’
‘Because of these.’ Quinn strode deeper into the gloomy interior, stopping only when he reached a line of drums, each reaching as high as his chest. There were six or seven different types, all dusty except where Quinn’s hand had wiped a patch clean to read the labels. Like the drums, the labels were different colours, but all had two things in common: the outline of a human skull in the top right-hand corner, and across the bottom the word Danger in big red letters.
Berrin sighed. He’d been hoping for some way to help the moths breed more quickly, or to encourage the caterpillars to eat more heartily.
‘Don’t you see?’ said Quinn, too caught up in his own enthusiasm to notice Berrin’s disappointment. ‘All the stuff in these drums is dangerous. We might be able to make a weapon of some kind to use against Malig Tumora.’
‘A bomb, you mean?’ said Olanda, sounding interested.
‘Yes. If we mix the right chemicals together, we can make our own dynamite.’ He threw his hands wide, imitating an explosion.
‘And blow ourselves up, most likely,’ said Berrin. ‘We don’t know anything about chemicals and explosives. It’s too risky.’
Quinn wasn’t ready to give up. ‘What about these then?’ he said, pointing to a row of yellow drums. ‘See the label. Hydrochloric acid. You know what acid does, don’t you, Berrin? It burns stuff, kills it.’
‘All right, all right, I see what you mean. What are the other chemicals in these barrels?’
Quinn read from the labels: ‘Potassium nitrate, sulphate of ammonia, and this one just says PFI concentrate.’
Berrin memorised the names and strange symbols that went with them. ‘We’ll ask Ferdinand what he thinks,’ he said. Ferdinand was the Rats’ true leader, a grown-up who’d been trapped underground for years. Only the help of his smaller companions kept him alive; in return he offered guidance and advice. If anyone could find a use for these chemicals, it was Ferdinand.
They returned to the access hole and slithered through. Quinn replaced the heavy metal cover above their heads, leaving all three in total darkness until they turned on their helmet lights.
