Wildfire

Chapter Twenty-three

Ben walked down the corridor, a bunch of flowers in one hand, looking for room 319. The private hospital in Melbourne didn’t smell like a hospital, or even look much like one. With its pale yellow walls and pastelcoloured paintings it seemed more like a hotel. At the moment, filled with an overspill of patients from other hospitals, it was like a hotel that had been seriously overbooked.

He found the room and knocked. He heard the TV being silenced and then a voice called out, ‘Come in.’ The voice was American. It sounded hoarse.

Ben walked in.

‘Oh, it’s you.’

Kelly was sitting up in bed. The bandages on her hands looked a bit cleaner than the last time Ben had seen her. There was an oxygen mask hanging from a rail above the bed. As usual, she was anything but pleased to see him.

‘I brought you some flowers,’ said Ben, ‘but now I

wish I hadn’t. I’ll give them to the orphan next door.’

‘They don’t have an orphan next door,’ croaked Kelly. ‘They have a hunky rock star. Why don’t you go and send him in here and you can go and sit in his room on your own.’

‘Why do you get a room to yourself?’ said Ben. ‘Did you tell them you’re a rock star?’

‘It’s for security reasons. Half the world seems to think Uncle Sam is responsible for war, famine and the global recession. Given the trouble my dad had with those protestors yesterday, the authorities figured I could use a little extra privacy.’

‘You’re lucky you’re not in a jail cell for wasting police time. I hear they sent two helicopters to intercept the Ghan.’

‘Yeah, well, it was an honest mistake. And they don’t have time to worry about that with everything else that’s happened—’

Talking made her cough. She tried to grab a tube dangling down from a water container above the bed, but instead of pulling it towards her, her bandaged hands only succeeded in batting it away. Cursing, she tried to retrieve it.

Ben let her struggle for a moment, then his better nature took over. He reached over and moved the tube so that she could reach it. She sucked on it, then let it fall from her mouth.

‘Thanks,’ she said grudgingly, then started coughing. ‘It’s smoke inhalation. They say it’ll pass in a day or two. How come you’re not suffering with it, anyway?’

‘I don’t open my mouth as often as you do, I guess.’ Ben realized he was still holding the flowers, so he dropped them on the table at the end of the bed. They landed with a slap. He nodded at the saline bag hanging beside her bed, and the line leading into her arm. ‘So what’s with the drip?’

‘My burns got infected. Something to do with not keeping them clean, running around in the desert all afternoon, then landing in the sea and being hauled out by some guys who’d been gutting fish and hadn’t washed their hands. So now I’m on mega-strong antibiotics. Why are you here?’

Ben shrugged. ‘We’re staying in the hotel next door. There’s nothing on TV except The Towering Inferno and I didn’t fancy that. I heard you were here and thought I’d see what you were up to.’

Kelly began to laugh, a dry sound like a seal barking. ‘Yeah, well, I’m not your babysitter any more. Run along now and let me be miserable.’ She tilted her head back and clamped her lips around the water tube again.

Ben turned towards the door.

Kelly waved him back. ‘No — don’t go. I either talk to you or I watch endless news reports about the fire. Come and sit down. Where’s your mum?’

Ben pulled up a chair and sat down next to the bed.

‘She’s busy. She’s obsessed by finding out all she can about that US base we found.’

‘Oh yeah? Why?’

‘I told her about the big dome and she thought that sounded odd for a listening station. She made some calls. It turns out it’s some kind of top secret research place. Just like the protestors said.’

Kelly bristled. She clearly felt that any criticism of Americans was a personal attack on her. ‘Oh yeah? What are we meant to be researching?’

‘Weather control.’

‘Weather control? I’ve never heard anything so far-fetched!’ She folded her arms defensively, then remembered she had a drip in her arm and looked down in alarm in case she had dislodged it. ‘Stop thinking that because we’re the most powerful nation on the planet we’ve got a god complex.’

Ben wasn’t surprised that she found it all incredible. He’d had trouble believing it himself. ‘Apparently it’s not so far-fetched. It’s called the High Active Auroral Research Project. They have technology that can make wind and rain and even tornadoes. Do you remember those scientists thought we’d come over in that big plane from Alaska? That’s where the other HAARP research station is based. They’ve been shipping HAARP equipment to Australia.’

Kelly folded her arms tighter. ‘Baloney. I thought your mother was a scientist, not another of these kooky activists. Give me a break.’ She was starting to get angry.

‘My mum got this from respected scientists, not crackpots.’ Ben leaned forward. ‘Listen, in Alaska, a lot of people living near the HAARP station have been getting weird illnesses … and their dogs and cats were dying. Does that sound familiar? That was happening in Coober Pedy.’

‘According to a bunch of hairy, sandal-wearing, mud-wallowing bums. People get sick all the time. That doesn’t prove anything.’ Kelly ended up coughing again, a long attack that turned her face red.

‘Look, I’m telling you because you might need to get checked out by a doctor. If you don’t believe me, that’s fine. This HAARP thing fires a super-charged, high-frequency radio wave into the sky. It’s like detonating a nuclear bomb in the ionosphere. The fall-out can give people migraines, allergies … I just thought you might want to know—’ Ben stopped. Kelly was waving her hand at the mask.

‘Oxygen.’

Ben stood up, pulled the mask down and put it over her nose. She took some deep, slow breaths, then nodded that she’d had enough. Ben took the mask away and sat down again.

Kelly leaned forward and pulled her knees up beneath the sheets, hugging them. She looked like she was thinking seriously about what he had said. ‘When we were near the base,’ she said in a small voice, ‘it got very windy and I thought I was covered in crawling insects. And then you got it too.’

Ben nodded. ‘And the plane instruments went haywire. I said it felt like an electric shock. HAARP can also knock out communications systems. Apparently that’s another reason the military are interested in it. We definitely got hit by fallout from this thing.’

Kelly shuddered and hugged her knees tighter. ‘Did you see a doctor? What did they say?’

‘The doctor couldn’t find anything wrong.’

Actually, that wasn’t the whole truth. The doctor who examined Ben hadn’t had experience of that type of radiation. Bel was trying to find some experts who did.

‘I expect your mum’s got everyone running around in a panic. At least the base is in the middle of Australia, so it can’t be harming that many people.’

Ben shook his head. ‘That’s not what Mum says. She thinks they chose Australia for a more sinister reason. Alaska has given them control of weather in the northern hemisphere. Australia gives them the South Pole too. It’s like a world domination thing. She’s gone straight to the Australian prime minister about it.’

‘It sounds like we stumbled on something pretty big,’ said Kelly thoughtfully.

‘Big and sinister. I thought we were chasing red herrings out there in the desert, but we might just have blown the lid on research that could be as dangerous as the hydrogen bomb.’

Kelly looked down at her knees, deep in thought. ‘Remind me, what’s your mom’s organization called? Fragile Planet, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Ben.

‘I’m thinking maybe I should join. Can you ask her?’

Ben snorted. ‘If I ever see her. On top of the halfterm break, I only got a few extra days holiday off school so I’ve got to fly back home in a few days. She’s working round the clock again. I might as well have stayed in Britain.’

Kelly smiled weakly. ‘That’s like my dad. I’d just caught up with him here in Melbourne, and he immediately had to go off somewhere on army business.’

‘Does he know we — er — wrecked the microlight?’

Kelly sat bolt upright, her eyes wide. ‘No way. And I’m not going to tell him we broke into a top secret base either.’ She lay back against the pillow. ‘Hey — at least you have some good stories to tell about your holiday. You’re getting to be something of an expert on disaster zones, what with the flood in London and now this.’

Ben suddenly started laughing. He laughed so hard that tears ran down his cheeks. It was almost a minute before he could compose himself enough to talk again.

Kelly was looking at him, mystified. ‘What did I say?’

Ben sighed. ‘My whole family is one big disaster zone.’