Lockdown, page 5
part #4 of Liars Series
Jarli pulled out his phone and checked the screen. ‘No. They’re blocking our phones with a jammer.’
‘What sort of range would that have?’
‘I dunno. About the same as a wi-fi router, probably. Twenty to forty metres, but there could be more than one. Hang on.’ Jarli ran over to the nearest radio antenna, which stuck out of the roof like a leafless tree.
‘What are you doing?’ Anya asked.
Jarli was tracing the cables down to the power source. ‘This antenna would have a signal booster built into it,’ he said. ‘If I can disconnect it from the hospital line and plug in my phone instead, that might get my signal beyond the range of the jammer. Got a screwdriver?’
Anya shook her head.
Jarli peered down at the metal plate which fixed the antenna to the roof. ‘The booster would be under there. Maybe we could just . . . bash through it somehow.’
Anya ran back into the stairwell and grabbed the fire hose. It was coiled up on a giant wheel, designed to unspool quickly and easily. The nozzle was heavy steel. It might work.
She left the stairwell door slightly ajar and ran back out to Jarli, unspooling the fire hose as she went.
Jarli banged the nozzle against the metal plate. It left a scratch but didn’t break through.
‘Let me try.’ Anya swung the nozzle. Clang. Another scratch.
Footsteps echoed from the stairwell. The door burst all the way open. Mamba stepped out with her crossbow raised, her face contorted with anger. Taipan was right behind her, looking puffed.
‘Kill them!’ he gasped.
Mamba aimed the crossbow.
Anya quickly wrapped the fire hose around her arm. ‘Jump!’ she cried. And without waiting to see if Jarli had understood, she hugged him and leapt off the roof.
GETAWAY DRIVER
Jarli couldn’t even scream. Anya was squeezing him too tight, and he was squeezing her right back. They plummeted upside-down towards the ground, the fire hose ribboning through the air. The wall sped past like a speeding train, windows flitting upwards.
An ambulance was parked below. The roof looked hard, but Jarli thought they would miss it. Unfortunately, the concrete next to it looked harder.
Snap! The hose jerked taut just before they hit the ground. Jarli felt Anya’s arms tighten around him as they bounced in the air and swung sideways into the ambulance. Jarli’s head hit the door hard enough to leave a dent. He lost his grip on Anya. They both tumbled to the ground and lay still. The world spun. For a minute Jarli felt like he was still falling.
Anya was already scrambling towards the ambulance. Jarli crawled woozily after her. They crouched behind it, out of sight of the roof.
Just in time. A crossbow bolt pinged off the top of the ambulance. Mamba was firing from the rooftop. ‘We’re trapped,’ Jarli hissed. ‘What do we do?’
Anya pulled out her phone. She stabbed at the screen and groaned with frustration. ‘Does yours work?’
Jarli checked his phone. No signal. ‘We need to get further away from the jammer.’
Another bolt struck the ambulance. ‘We’re stuck here,’ Anya said. ‘If we run—’
Jarli heard the whoosh of sliding doors. Someone was coming out of the hospital. Probably Rattler, the woman with the sword who had been guarding the front entrance.
He looked around for a way to escape. If they stayed here, they would be caught. But if they left the cover of the ambulance, they could be shot from the roof.
Which left only one possibility.
Anya was closest to the driver’s side door of the ambulance.
‘Are the keys in that thing?’ Jarli whispered.
Anya’s eyes widened. She raised her head and peeped through the window. Then she nodded at Jarli.
‘OK, get in!’ Jarli hissed.
Anya opened the door and slipped in, crawling across to the passenger seat. Jarli followed. He heard Rattler’s footsteps getting faster—she had realised what they were doing.
Jarli slammed the door closed. Rattler appeared at the glass a split-second later. She reached for the handle, but Jarli locked the door just in time. Click. Rattler pulled on the handle, bracing her foot against the side of the ambulance. The door creaked. Then the handle snapped off in Rattler’s grip, and she tumbled over backwards.
‘Do you know how to drive?’ Anya asked urgently.
Jarli was in the driver’s seat. He looked at the controls. He knew how the steering wheel and the pedals worked, but the rest looked alien. In a country town like Kelton, a lot of kids had practised driving, but Jarli wasn’t one of them. A golf cart was the closest he’d come to driving a real car.
‘How hard could it be?’ he asked, and twisted the key.
The engine started purring. Lights blinked on across the dashboard.
Rattler raised her sword and charged at Jarli’s window. She was going to smash the glass.
‘Go!’ Anya yelled.
Jarli slammed his foot on what he thought was the accelerator. The ambulance lurched, but didn’t actually go anywhere. Something beeped and a warning light flashed. HANDBRAKE. Jarli looked around frantically. Where’s the handbrake?
Rattler struck the handle of her sword against the window. Glass shattered into slivers and her other hand snaked in, grabbing Jarli’s shirt. He screamed as she tried to pull him out the window.
Anya found the handbrake and released it. The ambulance jerked forwards, dragging Rattler off her feet. She clung to Jarli through the window as the ambulance bumped over the curb and onto the scorched grass.
Jarli spun the wheel. The ambulance swerved left. Rattler’s grip loosened, and then she was gone, sucked out the window by the centrifugal force.
‘Turn! Turn!’ Anya cried.
Jarli looked up at the windscreen in time to see that the ambulance was hurtling towards a solid-looking tree. He stamped on the brake pedal and spun the wheel at the same time. The ambulance went into a skid, churning up the mud until the wheels caught. It stopped just in time to avoid the tree trunk.
THWACK! A crossbow bolt punctured the side of the ambulance and got stuck halfway through the metal. Jarli shielded the side of his face with one arm and planted his foot on the accelerator again. The ambulance started bouncing down the hill towards the road.
He had to shout to be heard over the wind roaring through the broken window. ‘Does your phone have a signal yet?’
Anya held her phone up in the air. ‘No.’
‘What about that radio?’ Jarli pointed to a complicated-looking device on the dashboard.
Anya prodded some buttons. ‘I don’t know how it works.’
Jarli steered the ambulance onto the road. The rain had eased off to a light mist, but the asphalt was still wet and slippery. He slowed right down. There was no other traffic.
‘We must be out of range by now,’ he said. ‘Try the phone again.’
Anya peered at the screed. ‘Still no signal.’
‘How can that be?’ Jarli demanded. ‘The range of the jammer should be less than—’
He broke off as he realised what this meant. Fear stabbed his heart. A jammer was following them.
He looked in the side-mirror and saw a four-wheel drive hurtling down the hill with Rattler behind the wheel. She was catching up to them, fast. A message on the mirror caught Jarli’s eye: OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR.
‘Hold on to something!’ he yelled.
SMASH! The 4WD rammed the back of the ambulance, shunting it forwards. Jarli’s head hit the headrest and his hands flew off the steering wheel. The sudden ringing in his ears drowned out whatever Anya was trying to say. He tried to look at her, but realised he couldn’t move his neck.
His legs worked fine, though. So he pushed his foot down on the accelerator.
Broken glass jingled outside, maybe from the tail lights of the ambulance. Then they were zooming forwards again, along the road towards the town.
Have to get out of range, Jarli thought. Gotta call for help.
The 4WD shrank in the rear-view mirror—
Then it started to grow again. Giving chase.
Jarli found himself hurtling towards Kelton at top speed in a stolen ambulance, trying to outrun the criminal who had just rammed him. Where had today gone wrong?
‘Anya,’ he shouted. ‘You OK?’
‘I still have no phone signal.’ Anya’s voice was barely audible over the roar of two engines going flat out.
‘Send a text message to Constable Blanco.’ Jarli pulled out his phone, unlocked it with his thumb-print and held it out until he felt Anya take it. Blanco was the only cop in his contacts list.
‘No signal. A text message will not go through.’
‘Try anyway.’
Behind them, the 4WD was getting closer. It was trying to ram the ambulance again. Jarli abruptly swerved left onto a suburban street. A sedan was parked on the street a few houses up. Jarli tried to avoid it, and almost succeeded. The ambulance knocked off a side-mirror as it screamed past, showering the street with BROKEN GLASS.
‘Whoops,’ Jarli said.
Anya was typing. Kelton hospital taken over by four armed criminals. School kids held hostage. Hurry.’ Anything else I should add?’
‘No. Send it.’
Anya tried. ‘Sending failed,’ she said.
‘Chuck the phone out the window,’ Jarli said.
‘What?!’
‘Onto one of those lawns. Quick!’
Now Anya seemed to understand. She wound down her window and tossed the phone. Jarli didn’t see where it landed—hopefully somewhere soft. The phone would keep trying to send the message. As soon as the jammer was out of range, it would go through.
The 4WD had caught up again. Jarli clung to the steering wheel, gritting his teeth. The bull bar of the 4WD nudged the back of the ambulance, knocking it off course.
‘Hang on!’ Jarli cried.
The ambulance ploughed through a pair of wheelie bins, showering the windscreen with pizza boxes, shattered plastic and a splurt of rancid milk. The smell was disgusting. Jarli steered blindly, unable to see through the garbage. He couldn’t find the switch for the windscreen wipers.
Anya poked her head out the window. ‘Tree!’ she shouted.
Jarli slammed on the brakes. The ambulance skidded over a driveway and hit something—the tree, maybe—with a hard thud. The airbag exploded out of the steering wheel like a mushroom cloud and thumped Jarli in the face. He rocked back in his seat, gasping.
Anya was already fighting her way out of the seatbelt. ‘Run!’ she cried.
Jarli pushed the airbag away and grabbed the doorhandle. His eyes were streaming from the force of the airbag hitting his nose. Finally the door popped open and he fell out onto the road.
‘Split up,’ he yelled. ‘She can’t chase both of us.’
He turned to run, but his legs collapsed under him. The crash had turned his muscles to jelly. He hit the ground like a puppet with cut strings.
‘Look,’ Anya said, pointing.
Jarli rolled over and looked.
The 4WD was gone.
SEARCH AND RESCUE
Ten minutes earlier
Bess heard the blast even through the thick walls of the hospital. Something, somewhere, had gotten blown up.
Possibly her oldest friend.
Her whole body shook. It wasn’t like her normal tremors and spasms. It was as though every nerve in her body had frayed and was shooting sparks. None of her limbs were listening to her brain. She didn’t even realise she was on the floor until Doug was standing over her.
‘Bess. You OK?’
She tried to tell him she was fine—she didn’t want his help—but her jaw had locked up.
Doug crouched down next to her and took her hand. ‘You’re having a panic attack,’ he whispered. ‘It feels life-threatening, but it’s not. You’re going to be OK. Just wait it out.’
Bess couldn’t breathe. Her palms had gone clammy. What if Jarli was dead? Something roared somewhere outside. An engine. The other students squeaked with terror, cowering in the corners of the room.
‘Think of a song you know.’ Doug kept his voice low. So far, no-one else had noticed Bess’s distress. ‘Try to remember the words. That always helps me.’
Bess tried to think of something. But it felt like she was having a heart attack. How was she supposed to come up with a song while her whole body was seizing up?
‘How about “Girls Like You”?’ Doug suggested. He hummed a few bars of it, very badly. Bess would have laughed if she wasn’t so scared.
‘Jarli,’ Bess managed to say. And Anya, she thought suddenly. The guilt winded her. It shouldn’t have taken her so long to worry about Anya.
‘I know,’ Doug was saying. ‘I’m worried, too. But we’ll figure something out together. OK?’
‘OK.’ Bess closed her eyes. She listened to her own breaths, cool on the way in, warm on the way out. Her galloping heart slowed to a canter.
That was the worst, she thought. She’d never had a panic attack before. It was weird to think of Doug having them. He hardly ever looked scared.
‘You alright?’ Doug asked.
Bess nodded and sat up, rubbing her sweaty hands on her pants. ‘Thanks.’
‘When my family first came to Kelton,’ Doug said, ‘I used to have moments like that. I’d see the same car twice, or I’d notice someone walking in the same direction as me, or I’d hear noises outside my bedroom window—and I’d think Viper had found us.’
Bess knew that Doug had been in witness protection, but she hadn’t thought about how scary it must have been. ‘How did you get past that?’ she asked.
‘Well, Viper did find us,’ Doug said. ‘Hard to be scared when the worst has already happened. Now he knows where we are, and I just . . . live with it, I guess.’
When Bess looked around, she saw that the doctors had barely reacted to the noise of the explosion. They were both bent over Mr Plowman like mechanics examining an engine. Plowman was covered in so many sheets that Bess could hardly see him. The bright lights made the bed hard to look at.
‘More internal bleeding here, under the eighth rib,’ Lanagan was saying. ‘And tissue damage on this lung. Is that a pacemaker? I’ve never seen one like it.’
‘Focus on the stitches,’ Vorham said. ‘This is the last transfusion.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘After this bag, we’re out of O-negative blood.’
Lanagan didn’t respond to that, but Bess could sense her anxiety. It sounded like Plowman wasn’t going to make it.
Horrified, Bess looked at the half-empty bag of donor blood, slowly trickling down a tube into Plowman’s arm. They had sent Nurse Amon to get more, but he hadn’t come back—the criminals must have caught him. Plowman was dying in front of them, and there was nothing they could do.
‘Hey,’ Doug said suddenly. ‘Are the bad guys still outside the door?’
The whole room fell silent. Bess realised she hadn’t heard the criminals say anything since Anya had shouted, ‘Run, Jarli!’ There had been a flurry of footsteps fading into the distance, and then nothing.
Maybe the door was unguarded.
‘Is there more donor blood?’ Doug was asking. ‘Somewhere else in the hospital?’
Lanagan nodded. ‘You remember the hazardous materials room? Next door to that is an equipment storage area. We keep blood in a fridge in there.’
‘But we can’t get it,’ Vorham said. ‘Donor blood is no good to a corpse. This patient needs full attention from both myself and Dr Lanagan.’
‘I’ll go,’ Doug said.
Everyone looked at him.
‘The fridge in the storage area right next to the hazardous materials room,’ he said. ‘O-negative, right?’
‘Right,’ Lanagan said.
‘No. You’re in my care right now,’ said Mr Hayes, the PE teacher. ‘Sorry, Doug—but, legally, I can’t let you leave.’
‘Is it legal to just let that guy die?’ Doug asked.
‘If the alternative means risking your life, yes.’
‘That’s a dumb law,’ Doug said, crossing the room to the door.
‘Wait.’ Mr Hayes got up off the floor and started moving towards Doug. But Doug was already pulling out the crutch to unlock the door.
‘Be careful,’ Bess told him.
‘I will.’ Doug opened the door and slipped out.
CHANGE OF PLAN
Doug looked up and down the corridor. No sign of the criminals. But they would be around somewhere. He had to be quick.
He slipped off his shoes and sprinted silently up the corridor, carrying them in one hand, socks stuffed inside. The tiles felt cool under his bare feet.
He reached a corner and peeked around it. No-one. But he could hear voices. It sounded like Taipan and Mamba were coming back.
Doug hesitated. If he ran back the way he came, he might make it to the surgical theatre before the criminals arrived. But then he’d be trapped there again. And without another blood transfusion, Plowman would die.
There was a cleaning closet just around the corner. Doug tried the handle. Unlocked. He pulled the door open, slipped inside and closed the door gently behind him.
It was pitch black in the closet. The smell of bleach was overpowering. Doug didn’t risk trying to find a light switch. Instead, he covered his mouth and nose with one arm while he held the door closed with his other hand. If they tried the door, hopefully the criminals would think the closet was locked.
Their footsteps came closer. Soon Doug could hear what they were saying:
‘. . . think Viper wants with this stuff?’
‘Not our problem. But don’t drop the canister. I don’t feel like dying today. What’s that?’
‘A message from Rattler. She says the police have been alerted. They’ll be here in ten.’
‘I thought Viper was keeping them distracted on the other side of Kelton?’
‘Right, but this stupid town is barely twenty kilometres across. And there’s something else. Apparently a signal is getting through the jammers somehow.’
