Crown Park (10 page)

Morris had the simplest role,
and yet he was the weakest link. His job was to be the decoy. All
he had to do was feed on the grasses alongside the path. But Morris
was nervous and kept forgetting the instructions. He messed up
every rehearsal by wandering away until he couldn’t be seen from
the path.

“Look,” said Jack, explaining
the plan for the umpteenth time. “Boris has to be able to see you
on the path. He will stop to check things out, and that’s when
Chainsaw jumps on him. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, but it’s hard to stay in
one place when you’re nervous.”

“You don’t have to be nervous.
The adzebill won’t get anywhere near you.”

“What if the furry creature
forgets to jump?”

“He won’t,” said Jack. “Believe
me, he won’t.”

The other animals were easier.
Lucy and Pat had to take the remaining moho further up the path and
keep them there. Emily was the Eyes in the Sky. Her job was to keep
track of the adzebills as they approached, and warn when they were
near.

Fluoro, Jack and Godfrey were
the hostage takers. The moment Chainsaw jumped on Boris they would
leap out of their hiding places, grab the bird around the neck, and
run off with him. Jack figured that the adzebill pack would be
useless without their leader. After all, they were only birds.
Their brains couldn’t be much bigger than a pea.

Once they had Boris secure, they
would release him only when he promised to leave the moho alone in
the future.

That was the plan. It wasn’t
foolproof. Nothing involving the moho ever would be. But at least
it was better than sending Godfrey off to a certain death.

Fluoro, Jack and Godfrey were hidden in
the bushes opposite the tree. The excitement had worn off after the
first half hour. Now, almost an hour later, it was all boredom.
Jack began to fidget.

“Patience, young man,” said
Fluoro. “They’ll come.”

“Yeah, but will it work?”
replied Jack.

“It’s better than Godfrey here
going off on his ‘mild’ goose chase.”

Jack raised a little smile.
“Yeah, I suppose so.”

They were silent for a while
before Fluoro added, “Although I know how you felt, Godfrey. There
comes a time in your life when you wonder about things like life
and death. I hear you’ve recently lost your partner.”

Godfrey gave a sad little nod.
“Yes. We’d been together all our lives. I’ll never have another
partner now.”

Fluoro gave a deep sigh. “Same
with me. My wife died recently, too. That’s the main reason why I’m
here.” He turned to Jack. “It’s why I started living as a
vagrant.”

“Has it helped?” asked Jack.

“Not at first. All I discovered
was how horrible some people can be. But since you came along
things have been better. I think I’m almost ready to return to
normal life.”

“What’s that?”

Fluoro turned to him and smiled.
“Oh, I’m not ready to reveal everything yet.”

Before Jack could ask more
questions, Emily glided in. “Incoming,” she cried. “Boris is
leading the way. It’s going to work,” she said excitedly. “I know
it is.” Then she took off again.

Chainsaw welcomed the news with
a deep growl. He began scratching at the branch, making sure his
claws were at their sharpest. His eyes were fixed on the bend in
the track where Boris would first appear.

Jack was surprised at how
nervous he felt. He was having trouble getting enough air.
Alongside him Fluoro’s breathing had also deepened.

Emily returned. “Very soon,” she
said.

It was meant to be a whisper,
but came out loud enough for Morris to hear. He stopped feeding on
the grasses and began whimpering. “Oh no, oh no.”

“Shush!” hissed Jack. “Get back
to feeding.” Then to Emily. “You can go now. Boris will get
suspicious if he sees you here.”

She left.

By then Morris had stopped
whimpering, but instead of eating, he’d turned so that he was
facing straight down the path.

“Feed!” hissed Jack.

Unfortunately, Morris was now
frozen with fear.

Jack’s breathing got worse.
Everything was falling apart.

He turned to check on Chainsaw.
The cat was now in the attack position, smiling in anticipation. At
least
he
was ready. Maybe it would work after all.

Then Boris was there, coming
around the bend.

Morris gave a cry of alarm.

Instantly, the adzebill stopped,
just as planned. Except he’d stopped too short. Morris’s cry had
messed it up.

Chainsaw couldn’t jump that
far.

More adzebills came around the
bend and stopped behind their leader. Nothing was said. No order
given, nor any signal. Their leader had stopped so they did.

Boris stayed still, except for
his eyes which were scanning either side of the path. They settled
on Morris, which brought another cry from the terrified moho.

Then Boris lifted his foot as if
to take a step.

Chainsaw rocked back, getting
set to leap.

But Boris had second thoughts
and went back to scanning the edges of the forest.

Chainsaw lost patience. He crept
along the branch to get closer to the adzebills. Jack nodded his
approval. If Chainsaw could move another couple of metres he’d be
within range. The trouble was that the branch narrowed towards the
end. It might not hold the weight.

It didn’t. As soon as Chainsaw
stopped moving, it snapped.

Cat and branch crashed to the
ground.

Jack screamed.

Boris never flinched. He called
out a command, and three adzebills rushed towards the struggling
cat. One went for the neck, with the other two each grabbing a
front leg. Soon Chainsaw was being dragged along the path on his
back.

By then Jack was out of his
hiding place and on the path. He tried to run after the adzebills,
but his body refused. His lungs had no air, his legs no energy. He
checked to see what was happening behind. Godfrey was struggling to
free his foot from under a root. Fluoro had made it to the path,
but was now collapsed on the ground. Beyond him, Jack got a glimpse
of Morris cowering in the bushes.

Turning to the adzebills, Jack
saw that more of them had hold of Chainsaw and they were dragging
him around the bend. The only one facing up the track was Boris. He
looked more evil than ever. Jack staggered forward hoping that his
body would respond. But all energy had gone and he fell to the
ground.

He lifted his head to see that
Boris was still there, staring. After a while, the bird turned to
follow the rest of the pack, and soon he too was gone.

That’s when Jack’s world
collapsed. The sky lit up with flashing lights, the air filled with
sound. Pain shot through his head. He covered his ears, but still
the sound got through. The flashing got brighter and the noise
louder until his whole head seemed like it would explode.

Then, after an ear-splitting
crack, there was silence. The flashing lasted for a while longer,
getting dimmer all the time, until that too went, and left Jack
feeling nothing at all.

Jack opened his eyes to a noiseless
world. Some light had returned — an eerie green light that seemed
to form no shadows. He was lying on a surface that vibrated and
rocked back and forth. When he tried to raise his arms they
wouldn’t move.

The adzebills have got me.
They’re taking me back to their camp.

That idea soon went when a face
appeared overhead. It was a human female wearing a uniform of some
sort.
A nurse?

Her lips moved, but Jack heard
nothing. Strangely, that didn’t worry him as much as it should
have. It was better not to hear than to have the pain come
back.

It worried the nurse, though.
She half turned and spoke to someone who moved forward and leant
over him. Jack smiled. At last something that made some sense. It
was his mum.

“Hi, Mum,” he said. Or that’s
what he thought he said. The noise he heard was a couple of
croaks.

The nurse removed a breathing
mask from his face.

“Hi, Mum,” he said again. His
mother’s face lit up with a beaming smile of relief. She bent over
and gave him a hug. The nurse looked relieved too as she replaced
the breathing mask.

After that they left him
alone.

The second time he opened his eyes, he
could make out more of his surroundings. He was lying on a trolley
beside a helicopter. That’s what had been vibrating. He’d had his
first trip in a helicopter and hadn’t known about it.

He was wheeled into a building
and through a maze of corridors until he was parked near other
people on trolleys. He looked around for Fluoro.

His mother came alongside.
“Where’s Fluoro?” he asked.

She answered, but he heard
nothing. Now he began to worry. How could he find out about Fluoro
and Chainsaw if he couldn’t hear what people said? How could he
find out about anything?

His mother saw his distress and
called to a nurse. She nodded and hurried off. Ages later a man
arrived with a whiteboard. After Jack’s mask was removed, the man
began writing.

“Can you hear anything?”

“No!”

“When you talk can you hear
anything?”

“Just croaks.”

The man smiled and wrote, “You
haven’t turned into a frog, have you?”

“More like a tuatara.” That got
everyone smiling.

“We’ll do something about that,”
wrote the man. “We have to do some tests and take some scans. Do
you understand?”

Jack nodded. After that the man
left.

The next 24 hours made little
sense to Jack. There were pills, injections, machines, sleep, more
pills, more sleep, and finally a room with very bright lights. He
knew it was an operating theatre and that they were going to do
something to his ears. Later, he would remember the anaesthetist
making him count her fingers from one to ten, except he only got to
four.

His next memory was waking up on
a trolley. The same man as before was with him, except he no longer
had the whiteboard.

“Can you hear me?” asked the
man.

Jack was so shocked by what he
heard, that he didn’t answer. His eyes went wide in surprise.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” said
the man, smiling. “Sounds different, doesn’t it.”

Different! To Jack it was as if
he had just got a new sense. He’d never heard words so clearly
before.

“I can’t believe it.” Even his
own voice sounded different.

“For the first time in your
life, you’re hearing the way other people do,” said the man. “You
were born with a fault in both ears. A part that we call the round
window didn’t form properly. As you grew, it got worse. Then the
stress of being asphyxiated stopped it working completely. But it’s
all fixed now and you should never have the problem again. That’s
as long as you take it easy over the next few weeks and give
everything the time to heal.”

His dad and mum visited him that
evening. By then he knew it was Tuesday and he was in Waikato
Hospital.

Dave tried to hide his emotions
when he greeted his son, but it was clear that he’d been greatly
affected by what had happened.

“You gave us a bit of a shock,
boy.”

“I thought you were brain
damaged,” said Anna.

“But no more than usual, eh?”
said Dave.

Jack smiled. He knew the joke
was his dad’s way of coping with difficult emotions. “You both
sound so different. Everything’s so clear.”

“That’ll make a difference at
school,” said Anna.

“That’s what your teacher said,”
added Dave.

Jack looked up in surprise.
“You’ve visited Ms Finch?”

Dave nodded. “Yeah! Told them
what had happened. Had a talk with the principal too. Sorted some
things out. Everything’ll be sweet from now on.”

Jack wasn’t so sure about that.
Nothing could be sweet with Liam Bennett still around. But now was
not the time to mention that. Instead he asked, “What happened to
Fluoro?”

His parents gave each other
puzzled looks. “Who?” they asked.”

“Fluoro, the man who was in
Crown Park with me.”

That seemed to make more sense
to them.

“Ah,” said Anna, “Professor
Rackman.”

Now it was Jack’s turn to say,
“Who?”

“Professor Rackman. He was the
man in funny clothes. The one you saved.”

“I saved him?”

Both parents nodded. “You’re a
bit of a hero,” said his dad. “You discovered him lying on the
ground and started screaming for help. Don’t you remember?”

“I remember screaming. But
nothing else.”

“A girl called Melissa heard
your screams,” said his mum. “She called one-one-one. Then she
dragged you out of the gases, but couldn’t shift Professor Rackman.
Luckily the hospital is close, or you could both have died.”

“Is Fluo … Professor Rackman
OK?”

“Yes. There seems to be no
lasting damage. I think he’s already been discharged from
hospital.”

Jack thought about that for a
while. How much should he tell them?
Not everything. They won’t
understand.
But there was something he needed an answer to.
“Was a cat also rescued?”

Again his parents gave each
other a puzzled look. “A cat? What’s a cat got to do with it?”
asked Dave.

“The professor had a cat,” Jack
replied. “A big tabby one like Magic in my book.”

Anna shook her head. “No one
said anything about a cat. Why, is it important?”

“No,” he replied, quietly. “I
just wondered.”

But it was important, and after
they’d left, Jack lay worrying about Chainsaw. While many of the
things he remembered were pretty muddled, one memory was clear as
anything. That was the image of Chainsaw being dragged away by the
adzebills. It still seemed so real. Real enough that he felt sure
it had happened. He was certain that his friend was dead. And the
only person to blame for that was Jack Stewart.