Doomsday Read online

  I jumped again, backing up and hurriedly switching off the lantern.

  Footfalls on gritty concrete. One of Calvin’s men, still down here. Left behind to take care of Luke and me. Or maybe he’d just been too injured to leave with the others.

  Silently, I lowered the lantern to the floor and wrapped both hands around the pickaxe. I edged across the lab until my shoulder nudged the wall, then felt along to the doorway out of here.

  He was just around the corner. Hard to tell how close he was in the darkness. But close.

  I brought the pickaxe out in front of me, feeling the weight of it in my hands. One chance. Either I got him on the first swing, or I got shot full of holes.

  I held my breath, straining to hear him coming, and almost shouted as a torch beam shot out from back up the passageway, lighting up the wall opposite me. The circle of light grew steadily smaller as the guard crept closer.

  I shifted my grip on the pickaxe, preparing to swing.

  Three …

  Two …

  A rifle poked out from around the corner and I swung, throwing all my weight behind the weapon in my hands. It sailed out in a wide arc, almost pulling out of my hands, momentum carrying me out across the doorway. The guard yelped, leaping back, and a shudder ripped through my arms as the pickaxe swung past him and struck heavily into the wall. I squeezed down on the pickaxe, desperate to get out of the line of fire before –

  ‘Whoa whoa whoa! Jordan!’

  The voice cut through everything and I froze up. The pickaxe slipped from my hands, clanking noisily to the floor.

  The man lowered his weapon, spinning it around to light up the space between us. And there, in the glow of a stolen rifle, dirty but completely uninjured, completely alive …

  ‘Luke?’

  2½ HOURS EARLIER …

  THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 12.34 A.M. 16 HOURS, 26 MINUTES

  For the first time in twenty years, I had no idea what was supposed to happen next.

  I limped along the dark road, eyes on the town centre, my lungs rattling. Pain roared from feral gums, seeping cuts, and even worse going wrong on the inside. It was my same old screwed-up body, but somehow getting my head back together had turned up the dials on all of it.

  I gasped for breath and it tasted like smoke.

  Phoenix was burning.

  Gunfire echoed in the streets, flames surged through the school and the mall, the whole town glowed orange in the light of the fire and the crackle of the shield grid strung out across the sky, and none of it even came close to the chaos raging inside my head.

  I tried to block it all out. Focus. But I couldn’t block out the sound of Jordan’s voice. My head was full of it. The same word, over and over again, dark and poisonous and so unbearably freaking true.

  MURDERER.

  I was a murderer.

  And now, finally, I could see it. I could feel it. Two full decades as a professional crazy person, and all that blood and death and guilt had finally come crashing down on top of me in one massive, soul-destroying heap.

  And to top it off, it had all blown up just as I’d succeeded. Just as I’d won. Twenty years stuck in the past, twenty years waiting and scheming to get back to the girl I’d murdered for, and I’d finally done it. I’d got the portal to the future back open and made it home to my own time, just a few moments after I’d left it. And there was Jordan, all alone and crying on the ground, with no Luke to distract her from falling all over me.

  All hail Peter, the romantic freaking mastermind.

  And not only had my spectacular display of murder and craziness failed to impress Jordan, but somehow this second trip through time, this trip that was meant to be my big shiny victory, had ripped away the decades of insanity and brought me face to face with the sickening reality of who I really was.

  MURDERER.

  It was gone now. The haze of fallout clawing at my brain. Rewiring my thoughts. Twisting me around. In an instant, it had all been blown away. My sanity had been given back to me.

  Crazy Bill was gone. I was Peter again.

  Right. Like it’s that simple.

  Like I could just write the last two decades off as my Crazy Years and let myself off the hook. Like it wasn’t me, right there, making every single one of those decisions. I might’ve been messed up by the fallout, but my mind was still there. It was still my mind.

  What a twisted bloody nightmare to see yourself for who you really are.

  I made it to the park at the end of the main street and crouched in the overgrown grass, knees cracking. Shouts rang through the shadows up ahead. Guardsturned-firefighters, swarming around what was left of the mall, spread too thin to do anything much. Whatever was going on inside the Shackleton Building, it had the Co-operative even more worried than what was happening out here.

  I clenched my filthy hands around the key card I’d dug up from one of my old hiding places in the bush – the one I’d stolen all those weeks ago to sneak in and spy on Shackleton and Calvin.

  Fear churned through me. Not the familiar, always-there crazy person panic. This was sane man’s fear. Survival fear.

  Deal with it, Murderer. Move.

  I stood, pain creaking up through my legs again, and lumbered out across the park, my grotty old hospital gown rippling out behind me. I yanked it up around my waist, and broke into the closest thing to a run I could manage.

  And suddenly, there it was. Sliding into view from behind the mall, lit up by the fire but still in one piece. The building that’d been my prison for more than half of the last hundred days: Phoenix’s medical centre.

  I forced myself forward, chest heaving, dodging the guards and the minefield of debris buried in the grass. My mind reeled with the long-lost terror of not knowing what was up ahead, the future suddenly wide open in front of me again.

  It was bloody disorienting. For so long now, I’d been living my whole life according to the same prewritten plan, working obsessively to make sure history repeated itself exactly the way it was supposed to. And somewhere along the line, I’d convinced myself that all of it was inevitable. That my future was fixed, because I’d already seen it happen.

  And maybe that was right. Maybe I couldn’t change anything. Maybe it really was all locked in from the beginning and even now I was just playing into the same endless loop. But I was getting pretty bloody sick of second-guessing myself.

  Screw time travel. All I knew was that right here, right now, I was making a choice.

  I knew I could never unbreak it all. Even if this worked, I couldn’t cancel out all the evil I’d done just by stacking some good on top of it now. But back in the medical centre, somewhere in the blur of my imprisonment, I’d seen something. Something that might actually make a bit of difference. Not for me, but for her.

  I crashed out from the grass at the edge of the park and staggered across the street to the medical centre, firelight crackling over me. A firefighter shot past without even noticing I was there.

  Up the side of the building to the main street. It was a war zone. Wreckage from the mall littered the street. This was more than just fire damage. Someone had tried to blow it up. A big hunk of concrete had punched through the razor-wire around the front of the Shackleton Building, twisting it out of shape and demolishing the fountain on the other side. The security centre had been destroyed days ago now, but no-one had even bothered to rope it off.

  Now and then, I saw movement in the darkness. Escaped prisoners, but not many of them. It seemed like most of the fighting was still going on inside the –

  I lurched back, crouching in the shadow of a parked delivery truck as the Shackleton Building doors slid open. Two figures raced out into the light of the fire. I felt a little pull in my chest as I realised who they were: Mr Larson, my old English teacher, getting dragged along by his wife.

  Another guy ran out after them, dressed in black and armed with a rifle. He shouted at the Larsons to get back inside, and I felt another jolt of recognition, this ti
me laced with icy hatred. Mr Hanger, our bastard of a history teacher. Trust him to sign up for Calvin’s death brigade. He was never happy unless he was making someone else miserable, so this had to be pretty much the perfect –

  I caught myself, disgust washing over me as a memory floated to the surface of my mind. My fists around Mr Hanger’s throat, smashing his face into the floor of the school gym while he begged me to stop.

  If he was a bastard, then what was I?

  I shook my head, pushing it all away. No time for this.

  Larson darted in front of his wife as Hanger charged over to meet them, still shouting but apparently unwilling to actually use the weapon in his hands.

  I dragged my eyes away from them and kept moving, up the little wheelchair ramp behind me to the entrance.

  My bare feet crunched on crumbled bits of safety glass. The front doors of the medical centre had already been smashed open. I jumped across the threshold, thudding down on all fours on the other side.

  I grunted, picking myself up. The lights were all off, had been for weeks, but an orange glow flickered in from the street, just enough to see by. I scratched at my beard, trying to remember. I hadn’t been in through the front in years. Which way was I meant to –?

  An arm shot out from behind me, wrapping around my throat and dragging me back into the shadows. A twisted bit of metal hovered in my peripheral vision: the broken leg of a food court chair. ‘Easy, mate. We don’t want any –’

  I shifted around, yanking free, my mind lashing out to shove him away, send him flying into a wall.

  Nothing happened. The guy stayed right where he was. Someone screamed behind him.

  I tried again, channelling all my adrenaline out into his chest.

  Nothing.

  I froze up, feeling suddenly defenceless, realising for the first time that it had been a package deal. My trip through the portal hadn’t just stripped me of my insanity. It had taken my sci-fi mind powers away from me too.

  ‘All right, mate. Just – just stay back.’ The man stepped shakily out of the shadows, clutching his chair leg like a caveman holding a spear. His voice registered in my head and I swayed under a sudden weight, realising who he was a second before his face caught the light.

  Dad.

  THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 12.49 A.M. 16 HOURS, 11 MINUTES

  Dad’s eyes narrowed at the sudden change in my expression. Mum came up behind him, freaked out but alive. Unhurt. Tears stung my eyes, and I stumbled to touch her, seeing both of them clearly for the first time in forever. She cringed away, terrified, and with an ache in my chest, I realised how I looked to them.

  ‘HEY!’ Dad stuck out his chair leg to ward me off. ‘Hey. That’s close enough.’

  He might as well have run the thing straight through me. But what was I expecting? I wasn’t their son. Not anymore.

  ‘Listen,’ said Dad. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have attacked you. We’re only trying to –’

  ‘How did you get out?’ I asked, shocked at how weirdly unfamiliar my own voice sounded in my ears.

  Dad didn’t answer. ‘Look, I swear I’m not going to hurt you. I just …’

  Dad cocked his head, like he was trying to work out how Crazy Bill was suddenly capable of coming out with a complete sentence.

  ‘We were in the showers when the food court blew up,’ said Mum, and for the first time I took in her wet hair and the nurses’ uniforms she and Dad had found to cover themselves. ‘They move us through in shifts during the night. We ran. Crawled through that hole in the fence.’

  Dad lowered his weapon and glanced into the shadows behind them. ‘I think we’re all right, Alyssa.’

  A girl stepped out. Green eyes, caramel-coloured skin, dirty Phoenix High uniform. Couldn’t have been older than thirteen. She had a guard’s utility belt hanging over her shoulder like a beauty pageant sash.

  Alyssa looked up at me, nervous but standing her ground. She glanced sideways at my mum. ‘Are we bringing him with us?’

  ‘Bringing me where?’ I asked.

  Dad frowned, sussing out how far to trust me. I looked away from him, pushing back another surge of tears. It was too much. Too familiar. How many times had I been on the receiving end of that look, back when the worst I’d been guilty of was skipping class?

  ‘Vattel Complex,’ he said finally. ‘An old place under the town. It’s where we were hiding out, back before –’ He hesitated. ‘Hang on. Is that where –? Have you been down there with them?’

  My gut turned in on itself. ‘Yeah. I have, but –’

  ‘Are they okay?’ Dad’s hand hovered in midair, like he’d been about to touch me but then thought better of it. ‘Peter. My son. Is he …?’

  ‘He’s – alive,’ I said. ‘He’s still down there.’

  Mum let out a little shudder of relief. She wrapped a hand around Dad’s arm and swallowed hard. What was it going to do to her when she found out the truth?

  I glanced around the reception area. I couldn’t do this. I had maybe an hour left before Luke’s murder.

  ‘Hey, where are you going?’ Dad called after me as I started towards a doorway across the room.

  I ignored him, pushing through to the corridor on the other side.

  ‘The tunnels?’ he guessed, trailing after me, Mum and the girl right behind him. ‘Yeah, I thought of that too. But how are you going to get in without a –?’ His eyes dropped to the card in my hand. ‘Oh.’

  I limped around a corner. Now what? I couldn’t bring them with me. Not back to the Complex. Not now. But I wasn’t about to just abandon my parents.

  Keep moving, Murderer. Work it out later.

  There was a click and a flash of light as the girl found a torch on her belt. She handed it to my dad.

  I watched my shadow lumber along the walls in front of us, all huge and ragged, and that sickening sane man’s fear flooded over me again. I was naked. Unarmed. Powerless except for my bare, blistered fists. A lifetime of hurling my problems across the room with my brain, and now –

  ‘Shh!’ Dad hissed, and the torch cut out behind me. Everyone fell silent. I strained my ears. Nothing but the muffled sound of the chaos outside. Dad flicked the torch back on again, shaking his head. ‘Never mind. Thought I heard something.’

  I hurried down the next corridor, even more on edge now. What was I meant to do if someone did come?

  Dad’s torch flashed off again.

  I skidded to a stop, just short of the next bend in the corridor, clamping my mouth shut, suddenly aware of how loud and rasping my breathing was.

  A round of gunfire echoed in from somewhere on the street.

  ‘C’mon,’ Alyssa whispered. ‘There’s nothing –’

  The whisper turned into a squeak as a door clunked open, just out of sight. There was a burst of light and a cold, venomous voice spilled out from inside.

  ‘– honestly think him foolish enough to leave that option open to you? The countdown is locked, Louisa. Not even Shackleton can override it now.’

  I stepped back, crashing into my dad.

  It was Dr Galton. Shackleton’s second-in-command, last seen as a hazy nightmare swimming past my prison cell. I stumbled to the nearest door and wrenched at the handle. It didn’t budge. Mum yanked on Dad’s arm, urging him to run.

  Galton strode closer, footsteps splitting the air like gunshots. And in between, a buzzing sound. Another voice, coming through a phone. Whatever it was saying, Galton didn’t like it.

  ‘To protect himself!’ she snarled. ‘To protect the world from invertebrate cowards who would have us turn tail at the first sign –’

  Her torch flashed around the corner, lighting us up. Ending the conversation.

  Mum screamed. Dad dragged her back, waving his chair leg. Alyssa turned to run, but –

  SMASH!

  Before she’d even made it one step, she shot into the air and through the nearest window, tangling in the blinds. How –?

  Galton. Steely concentration in h
er eyes. She was like me.

  I charged, diving before she had time to react. Her phone and torch flew from her hands. Pain sparked through every joint I had as we dropped to the ground. She thrashed around but couldn’t shake me. Her powers really were like mine: useless at point blank range.

  They worked fine on Dad, though. I heard frantic footsteps behind me as he rushed in, then a breathless shout as Galton threw him back up the corridor.

  I got to my knees, still pinning Galton down, one hand mashed into her face. I felt the force of her mind against me, shoving me back, but I held on, bringing my other hand around to catch a fistful of her hair. Galton cried out, eyes squeezing shut. A massive overreaction.

  Too slow, I realised what she was up to. Her hand flashed around, all silky precision, aiming the pistol she’d just whipped out from her hip.

  BLAM!

  But the one upside to twenty years in the wild was that it kept your survival reflexes pretty sharp. I jerked sideways, deafened by the noise. Plaster raining down from the roof as the shot went wide. I grabbed Galton’s wrist and smashed it hard against the floor, sending the weapon skittering away.

  Galton snarled at me. She kicked and clawed, drawing blood. Her nails jabbed at one of my nastier wounds and a howl of pain burst from my throat. I dragged her head up off the floor, appalled all over again as I flashed back to the scene with Hanger in the gym.

  Do it.

  I smashed her back down again.

  She cried out, whole body shuddering, and I flinched. A half-second of pity. Galton took it, rolling under me, knocking me to the ground. I rolled to catch her. Grabbed at her hair again. Missed. I threw out my other hand and caught Galton by the arm, just in time to feel her tense up and shriek as a spraycan hissed into her eyes. Galton crumpled, face red and streaming.

  I twisted around. The kid. Alyssa. Back out in the corridor, armed with the capsicum spray from her guard’s belt. She pumped another blast into Galton’s face and I squinted away, catching the edge of it.