Lauren headed inside the mall and towards the offices at the far end of the ground floor. The corridors were busy and she’d learned that you had to move purposefully around the commune unless you wanted a bunch of over-helpful angels asking what you were up to.
She passed through the open-plan offices where she’d taken her aptitude test a few weeks earlier and found them deserted. The trouble was, she’d never gone past this point and didn’t know what to expect beyond the double doors that led to the senior staff’s private offices.
After poking her head through the door for a cautious glance, Lauren stepped into a reassuringly empty corridor, containing a water cooler and piles of stationery. There was a glass-fronted office on either side of her, with Venetian blinds blocking off the view inside. She crept between a photocopier and a stack of boxed paper and peeked between the slats into the office on her left. She felt a rush of nerves and ducked down when she saw Ween, sitting at her desk having a highly animated telephone conversation.
It took Lauren a couple of seconds to get her composure back. She popped her head above the copier paper and took a longer look. There was no sign of James, so she stepped across the corridor and looked into the other office.
James was on a sofa, with the back of his head touching the glass. Lauren was tempted to rap on the glass and make him jump, but these were hardly the right circumstances. She crept around and stepped into the office. James looked well scrubbed. His hair was wet and he wore nothing but trainers and his favourite pair of ragged denim shorts.
‘What’s going on?’ Lauren whispered, as her brother turned and smiled at her.
James explained briefly, keeping to the essential details. He told Lauren to find Dana and Abigail and tell them everything, but Ween came into the room before she got a chance to leave.
‘What are you doing here?’ Ween said, so fiercely that her opening word sounded like a whip cracking.
Lauren played the innocent little sister, making herself sound scared and whiney. ‘I was frightened that the devils had got my brother. I came to make sure he was OK.’
Ween huffed, but then her mood changed abruptly. ‘Oh well, I was about to call your mother up here anyway.’
‘What for?’ James asked.
‘Remember the aptitude test you sat the day after you arrived?’
‘Now you mention it, yeah.’
‘Well, I’m pleased to say that your test results were outstanding. Your mark was easily high enough for you to ascend to our elite boarding school inside the Ark. Unfortunately, the Ark is undergoing a lot of rebuilding work and the school isn’t currently accepting new pupils. However, present circumstances dictate that it would be a sensible precaution if you were taken out of this area until the incident with Elliot blows over. I’ve explained the situation to Eleanor Regan and she’s agreed to accept you into the Survivors’ boarding school as a special case.’
James’ mind raced. He was well pleased to get into the boarding school, but the mission plan had been based upon two, or even all three, agents being accepted.
‘Wow,’ James gasped. ‘I’ve heard about the school. It’s like a massive honour, only …’
Ween screwed up her face. ‘Only what?’
‘I don’t know,’ James shrugged. ‘My dad buggered off, then we moved out here, then we moved to the commune. Now you want me to go off into the outback.’
‘James,’ Ween said reassuringly, ‘your family isn’t Lauren, Dana and Abigail any more. You have a family of angels, ten thousand strong.’
‘I know.’ James shrugged sullenly, looking down at the carpet. ‘It’s not that I don’t want to go, I just think I’d be scared going all that way on my own.’
Lauren realised what James was trying to do and butted in. ‘Did I pass the test?’ she asked enthusiastically. ‘I’d love to go to the Ark and I could keep James company.’
Ween looked stressed out. She clearly didn’t relish the prospect of having to call Eleanor Regan and ask her to accept another pupil, but on the other hand she desperately wanted to hush up the whole thing with Elliot. James being hundreds of kilometres away in the middle of the outback greatly reduced the chances of him opening his mouth to someone he shouldn’t.
Ween looked at James and spoke firmly. ‘If I call the Ark and try getting them to accept Lauren too, will you both definitely agree to go?’
‘What about Dana too?’ Lauren asked.
‘No,’ Ween said, with surprising firmness. ‘There’s no prospect of Dana going. She’s been chosen for another path within our movement.’
James and Lauren exchanged a quick glance, hardly able to avoid grinning at each other.
‘Well, I guess I’ll go with Lauren,’ James said. ‘As long as it’s OK with our mum.’
24. ARK
Abigail acted like you’d expect from a mother facing the prospect of her children being sent to boarding school seven hundred kilometres away. Of course, she eventually let Ween talk her into allowing James and Lauren to leave.
The Survivors owned a small aircraft that spent its life shuttling provisions, mail and people between a private airfield twenty kilometres outside of Brisbane and the Ark. The evening flight was due out at 10 p.m. Ween pulled rank and bumped two other passengers so that James and Lauren could skip town.
All the two kids owned now were the clothes they stood up in and a few personal items like toothbrushes and deodorants. This lack of money and possessions was deliberate, because it left Survivor families dependent on their commune for everything and made it extremely difficult for them to leave the cult and resume a normal life.
Abigail volunteered to drive out to the airport. Dana abandoned her precious Survivors timetable to come along and say goodbye. She rode in the back of the Mercedes wagon beside James, while Lauren was up front with a map spread over her legs.
Although Abigail hadn’t officially donated the car to the Survivors, she’d allowed members to use it for errands over the previous month. The interior was now grubby, the smell of baby puke lurked in the air and there were even a couple of punctures in the leather upholstery.
James looked back at the commune as they pulled out of the parking lot, knowing he wouldn’t be back. Everywhere else he’d been on a mission – even prison – there’d been something or someone that he’d miss. But none of the Survivors he’d met gave him that feeling. They were all dedicated to cult life and so obsessed with devils and the Ark that he didn’t care for any of them. It had been impossible to make an emotional connection with a bunch of people who only smiled when they were supposed to.
Dana looked miserable at the way things had panned out.
‘You OK?’ James asked.
‘What do you think?’ Dana asked bitterly. ‘I never get any of the breaks on my missions. I’m gonna retire in a grey shirt.’
Abigail spoke. ‘That’s the wrong attitude, Dana. We’re all part of a team.’
Dana bit her head off. ‘Spare me the patronising crap, Abigail.’
Lauren looked back over her shoulder. ‘Me and James did ask, but Ween acted really strict. She said they’ve chosen a different path for you, or something.’
‘Whatever,’ Dana said miserably. ‘I expect they’ve got me marked down for an epic career in dishwashing.’
‘You never know,’ James said. ‘It might be something good.’
‘Can you just stop going on about it, please?’
James turned away and looked out of the window at the setting sun.
Once they’d driven about five kilometres towards the airfield, Abigail pulled up at a Hungry Jack’s burger joint. She called John Jones from a payphone. After getting an update, John asked to speak with James.
‘You nervous?’ John asked.
‘A bit,’ James admitted. ‘They’re a bunch of loonies and we’re gonna be totally isolated up there.’
‘I know,’ John said. ‘But remember, if you’re ever in any danger the number one priority is always your safety.
Just grab the keys to the first vehicle you can find and head the hell out of there. Chloe and I have already been up there to stake the Ark out. We’ve got the lease on a disused ranch house twenty kilometres away. Chloe and I will need cars to get around, so I expect we’ll set off by road first thing tomorrow. We should be there by the evening.’
‘What about communications?’ James asked.
‘I was just coming to that. The miniature receivers are on a flight up from Melbourne as we speak. The ASIS engineers have done a lot of testing to make sure that they’re robust enough to survive the pounding and moisture of life hidden inside a shoe and the boffins reckon they’ve cracked it.’
‘How will you get them to us?’
‘There’s no way we can get them to you tonight. The Ark itself is sealed off tight, but the kids run around it every morning, like you’ve been doing around the outside of the mall. Try staying behind the pack and keep your eyes and ears open for a signal or hidden package.’
‘What kind of signal?’
‘We haven’t thought it out yet.’
‘That’s not exactly encouraging, John.’
‘I know, James, I’m sorry. Everything about this mission has been done at short notice. One other thing. Don’t attempt to use any of the telephones inside the Ark if you’re talking about the mission. Several of Miriam’s patients told her that Eleanor Regan has the switchboard bugged. There are also rumours that the offices and bedrooms of some senior staff are bugged too, so if you’re talking about the mission, keep your voices down and try to do it outdoors or in public areas.’
‘Gotcha,’ James said. ‘I’ll pass all this info on to Lauren.’
‘Great,’ John said. ‘Good luck.’
James shook his head. ‘Sounds like we’ll need it.’
*
The propeller-driven aircraft carried six passengers. James and Lauren sat in the cramped third row of seats, with aluminium cargo pallets strapped into position behind their heads. It was dark by the time they took off and the two-and-a-half-hour flight passed over seven hundred kilometres of nothing: black desert, with no artificial lights and just the occasional rocky outline illuminated by the half moon.
The sense of distance and isolation combined with the aircraft’s brutal ventilation kept sending chills down James’ back. There were a million things he wanted to say to Lauren, but with four Survivors lined up in front of them they had to keep quiet. The seats were upright and too cramped to attempt sleep, so James had to content himself by flipping through the in-flight reading: a well-thumbed catalogue of tacky Ark souvenirs and DVDs of Joel Regan’s finest speeches with his day-glow white grin on the cover.
As he flipped through the pages, James found his sister’s head on his shoulder, then her hand sliding under the armrest and resting on his bare knee. James put his own hand on top, with his fingers spread between Lauren’s and they stayed that way for ages.
An orange glow lit up the horizon for the last one hundred and fifty kilometres of the flight. It grew ever bigger, until you could make out three gigantic spires, painted gold and basking in yellow light, with one of the world’s largest domes set between them. There were six turrets, one at each corner of the hexagonal perimeter, topped off with a thirty-metre-high cross designed to ward off devils.
James had seen photographs of the Ark, but nothing had prepared him for its outrageous scale. It was part fortress, part Las Vegas glitz, and one hundred per cent the last thing you expected to see in the middle of the Australian outback. James didn’t think much of Joel Regan and the way he’d made his fortune through brainwashing and deceit, but he couldn’t help being impressed by the spectacle.
Lauren whispered in James’ ear as the plane took a sharp turn to line up with the runway. ‘That has got to be the maddest thing I’ve ever seen.’
The small aircraft had taken off from a landing strip edged with grass, but touched down on a runway big enough to handle jumbo jets. There was a two-storey terminal building alongside the control tower, with an illuminated sign above its glass frontage: Welcome to Joel Regan International Airport. The airport was built in the 1980s, at a time when Regan had planned on turning the Ark into a money-spinning tourist attraction, with thousands of hotel rooms, golf courses and a Disneyland-style theme park.
Regan later changed his mind and declared that the Ark was a sacred place that devils were unfit to enter. Critics of Regan say this simply hid the fact that very few tourists wanted to spend their vacations as guests of a religious cult in the oppressive heat of the Australian outback.
As a result of Regan’s failed ambition, James, Lauren and the other passengers faced a lengthy walk from the aircraft to the Ark itself. It took them through several hundred metres of eerily deserted corridors and into a silent arrivals lounge, where most of the lights were burned out and the dust-covered baggage carousels hadn’t moved in a decade. Finally, they headed outdoors and along a wide ramp that led towards the Ark itself.
James and Lauren didn’t know where they were going, so they walked behind the four other passengers. As they passed through a reinforced steel gate, each passenger bowed reverently at a spindly woman with straight dark hair. James and Lauren had seen photographs and knew it was Joel Regan’s eldest daughter Eleanor, the one they all called The Spider.
James thought there was something wonderfully appropriate about the nickname, as The Spider stepped forwards to introduce herself. She wore a tight black poloneck sweater and had long fingers as slender as pencils. Her voice ought to have been a witchlike cackle, but she opened with a smile and an ordinary Australian accent.
‘Hi,’ Eleanor said. ‘You must be James and Lauren. Congratulations on ascending to the Ark.’
The kids both smiled back as they shook The Spider’s hand. She led them through the turret and outside on to a broad path. The Ark had six pedestrianised roads inside its walls. Each one ran from a turret towards a giant square in the centre of the Ark which contained the Holy Church of the Survivors, with its gigantic dome and three golden spires.
While the church itself was impressive, the rest of the buildings were surprisingly ordinary. They were mostly one or two storeys high and constructed in the most basic utilitarian style, with corrugated metal roofs and white plastic windows. It smacked of cheapness. James felt as if he’d arrived at the swankiest restaurant in town and found Big Mac and fries on the menu.
25. RISE
‘Wakey, wakey,’ a great slab of a woman called Georgie shouted as she burst into James’ bedroom.
It was better than the makeshift facilities at the Brisbane mall, with eight metal-framed beds, personal lockers, plus a purpose-built shower and laundry area at the end of the room.
James was bleary-eyed as he rolled out of bed. He’d arrived at one in the morning and stripped off without waking the room’s seven other residents. These boys were now scrambling into a uniform that looked like a PE kit: white rugby shirt, blue shorts and blue football socks. James took longer than the others, because he had to grab new clothes from inside his locker and remove a mass of plastic bags, tags and stickers.
Once dressed, James joined the back of a line, queuing up to pee into the single stall or the urinal. He was the last to go, and even though he skipped washing his hands, James couldn’t catch up in time to see where everyone had legged it to.
Georgie came in from another bedroom. She screwed up her eyes as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing and bellowed in James’ ear, ‘Why the hell are you still here?’
‘I haven’t got a timetable,’ James explained. ‘I don’t know where I’m going.’
‘All pupils are on the same timetable,’ she shouted, spraying James with spit. ‘Follow the others.’
‘But they’ve gone.’
‘You’d better learn to keep up with them if you don’t want a punishment. Down the stairs, through the doors and on to the quadrant for morning exercises.’
James sprinted down the corridor, through a d
oor and into a face-full of sunlight. A set of steps on the outside of the building took him down to a dusty patch at the rear of the accommodation block. The hundred and fifty pupils ranged between ten and seventeen years old and stood in four long lines. Everyone wore the same white shirts, but each line wore different colour shorts and socks signifying the building they lived in.
As he joined the end of the blue line, James spotted Lauren standing two rows ahead in yellow kit. Georgie and a couple of other teachers stood up front and started the kids off with some old-school warm-up exercises. They did stretching and toe touching, working their way up to thrusts, push-ups, crunches and star jumps. They had to chant a short sentence between each movement:
‘Good morning, Lord. We are your angels. Here to serve you. Make us strong. Please protect us. Our souls are honest. Our thoughts are pure. We are leaders. We will take humanity. Through the darkness.’
The ten-sentence chant matched the ten repetitions of each exercise. After fifteen minutes of springing up and down in the dirt, James was breathless. His skin was covered in a layer of reddish grit and the lines of the chant were the only things in his head.
After getting two minutes to catch their breath, the four lines were led out through one of the turrets for their run around the perimeter. James estimated that each lap was about a kilometre and a half. They ran a lap in formation at a modest pace, keeping up the chant. At the end of this, the instructors shouted break and the kids were expected to run two more laps as fast as they could. James spotted Lauren and ran alongside her.
‘You OK?’ James puffed.
‘Could have done with more sleep,’ Lauren said, her words jerking as her trainers pounded the tarmac path around the perimeter. ‘And I’ve got grit all down my shorts.’