Excerpt: Scaring the Birds

Heat haze shimmered over the Kansas cornfields. The five boys sat in the common room of their wood-built farmhouse, the younger two restless and fretful in the high temperatures, their elder brothers listless and washed out by the heat.

“Boys.” Grandma Tracy’s voice was firmer back then, lacking the tremulous quality that old age had brought to it. “I need your help scaring the birds.”

Alan was confused. He screwed up his five-year-old face uncertainly as his brothers stirred around him.

“But, Grandma, I don’t want to scare little birds. What have they done to you to deserve it?” It was his big brother’s favourite question at present, not to encourage thoughts of revenge, but rather to persuade little Alan to consider the consequences of his sometimes-thoughtless actions.

“They’ll be eating the corn I sowed this morning, Alan.” Grandma answered the question at face value. Alan was going through a ‘why’ phase, but she never complained. She understood how important it was to her grandson to understand how the otherwise big, confusing and frankly frightening world around him worked. “And if they eat the seed corn, then the seeds won’t grow into plants, and the plants wont produce cobs, and there will be no food and no money next year.”

Alan’s eyes widened and he jumped to his feet. Gordon took his hand as the two of them ran out of the house towards the newly ploughed and sown east field. Grandma exchanged knowing looks with her three elder grandsons. They all listened to the sound of their little brothers running up and down the field, screaming at the birds to fly away.

“Well, that should burn off some of their energy,” Grandma noted with satisfaction. “Johnny …”

“I’ll make sure none of the crows fly off with them, Grandma,” John agreed readily, standing to follow his brothers. He smiled. “Some of those birds are almost as big as Alan.”

“And on my corn too,” Grandma harrumphed. She turned back to Scott and Virgil. “Right, so are the two of you just going to sit there, or are you helping me make a scarecrow?”

--

“Alan? Alan!”

He came to consciousness with his eyes already wide-open, his expression glazed. He felt Tin-Tin shudder against him, and shared her disquiet, knowing that, until seconds before, hers had been just the same. He couldn’t see her, but he felt the movement as she leaned over again to jostle Alan’s shoulder with her own.

Alan blinked, opened his eyes, and then blinked again, keeping them screwed shut longer this time as the dehydrated corneas complained. All he could remember at first was the other man’s staring eyes - unnatural eyes, glowing from within - and all he could feel was the stinging of his own. The jungle heat had leached any moisture from them, leaving his vision fuzzy and his head splitting with pain. Ironic really. Somehow, it seemed unlikely that the Hood even considered this aspect of his torture when he picked out a victim.

The Hood! Alan’s eyes snapped open and his head jerked up. The back of his skull impacted against something hard and unyielding, a dull metal clang complimenting the ringing of his ears. Panicked, he tried to move, only to unbalance as he discovered his hands were bound behind his back, a taut rope connecting them to his equally constrained ankles. He fell sideways, a high-pitched cry combined with his unexpectedly soft landing reminding him that he wasn’t alone.

“Tin-Tin?” he called urgently. He hesitated, uncertain whether shifting his weight or lying still would hurt her more.

She sighed in a combination of relief and exasperation, pushing against him as he struggled to right himself and worming her way out from under him. He caught a glimpse of her dark hair, and of slender wrists bound with thick rope, rubbed raw where she had tried to work free.

He felt a blaze of anger on her behalf, but her voice was quiet as she answered. “Yes, Alan. I am here.”

After several seconds of awkward squirming, the two were facing one another, each taking comfort in the sight of the other, dishevelled but essentially unharmed.

Alan blinked again, looking from the slim girl in front of him to the overturned vehicle against which they’d both been propped. Despite the alarming situation, he couldn’t help wincing in dismay. His brothers were never going to let him get away with writing off another car, even one as unwieldy as the jungle buggy. He was going to get the ribbing of his life. If only he could remember exactly how it had happened. And how they had ended up trussed like turkeys in its shadow.

He remembered Tin-Tin’s desire for a holiday in the jungles of her native Malaysia, the pair of them setting out from Kuala Lumpur in the buggy, and then nothing but the Hood’s bright eyes.

Alan shook his head. “He had us at his mercy! He could have killed us!”

Tin-Tin’s skin was pale, her dark eyes anxious as she studied him. “Don’t you remember anything else, Alan?” Her gaze slipped sideways, sweeping across a wide jungle clearing. The open space brought back memories, an uncomfortable feeling creeping down his spine. They’d crashed on the edges of it, Alan swerving the buggy to avoid the thick-set man who stepped into their path. Now the jungle vehicle was on its side, and he and Tin-Tin were bound prisoners. What had happened in between?

“I was dreaming,” he noted, irrelevantly. “I was back on the farm. Grandma was telling us to scare the birds away.”

Tin-Tin’s eyes were sombre, looking again towards the clearing. Alan’s eyes widened as the final fragments of his memory returned. He stared at the broad sweep of open ground, the only clear space of any size for miles around. He closed his eyes, listening desperately for the sound of powerful engines in the clear sky. He knew they were coming. He remembered the Hood taking their wristcoms, activating the emergency signal before stamping on both devices until they crackled with tiny flames. A promise of things to come, the man had laughed, as he watched the fire die away.

Alan’s dream crashed back on him in a vivid moment, but now it was a nightmare. The grey Kansas dustbowl swallowed the birds that landed on it, spitting out nothing but dry bones.

They couldn’t have long. He had to scare the ‘Birds away! He had to stop them landing!

--

Tin-Tin cried silent tears of frustration as her fingers probed the knots on Alan’s bindings. Alan could feel the trembling of her shoulders and the frantic energy in her hands. The two of them were back-to-back, both tense with anxiety and the need to be free. Alan’s fingers had gone completely numb, the ropes tight enough to cut off the circulation. Tin-Tin’s weren’t much better. She could feel the appendages, she said, but they seemed separate from her, unresponsive to her commands.

“Come on, Tin-Tin. Come on!” Alan’s voice was urgent, commanding. This was his International Rescue tone, and he felt Tin-Tin respond to it automatically. Alan wouldn’t be speaking this way unless he was seriously worried, and both he and Tin-Tin knew that while their own situation was perilous, his fear was all for his brothers.

Tin-Tin sobbed as Alan felt the knot slip from her deadened fingers yet again. She forced a little composure into her voice, struggling for the detachment from danger that Alan and the other boys had perfected. “I can’t do this. We have to find another way.”

Alan hesitated. He could feel the tension in the shoulders pressed back against his own, and he knew she wouldn’t have given up if there were any chance. Finally he gave a quick nod. “All right.”

He shuffled forward on his knees, the bindings ensuring that his back was bowed at an awkward angle as he did so. She edged around to face him, falling awkwardly onto her side. Alan’s eyes studied her, and then slipped past her. The overturned jungle buggy has been sheltering them both from the sun. Now Alan scanned the suspension and transmission mechanisms carefully. His eyes lingered on the vehicle’s front left corner. It had taken the brunt of the impact when they overturned, and distortion had rippled outwards from it through the undertray. As far back as the wheel arch, there were signs of twisted metal.

There was no time for hesitation, or even for caution. They had minutes at best.

Painfully slowly, Alan closed the few feet between him and the ruined buggy. With every muscle in his body screaming, he made it to his feet, his back bowed almost double so he was staring up into the cloudless sky above. He felt Tin-Tin’s weight pressing against his knees, trying her best to hold him steady as he moved his nerveless hands across the metal surface. The edge of the wheel arch brushed against his lower arm, just above his wrist, and he tried to line up against it. Taking a deep breath, he brought his bound wrists down against the jagged metal, again and again, putting all the force he could into the blows, not caring when he felt a tearing sensation all the way up his lower arms, not stopping until the rope parted and the rush of blood to his fingers brought a pain so intense that he blacked out.

--

“Alan?” Tin-Tin was kissing him, whispering his name against his lips as she tried to wake him.

The sensation was a pleasant one, but it was washed away by agony. The world’s worst pins and needles was burning through his hands, and this wasn’t some mild child’s complaint. This felt as if every square micron of his skin was being pierced, sharp blades stabbing through the muscles below.

Tin-Tin pulled away as she felt him flinch, but her voice was urgent.

“Alan! They’re coming!”

Alan jerked upright, only now realising that he could sit without his spine snapping backwards. He could hear the sound of the engines now, and he worked through the pain, scrabbling madly at the ropes around his ankles. Blood was flowing freely from his wrists, almost concealing the swollen, bruised fingers beneath. On the plus side, the bleeding wasn’t surging in time with his pulse, and it didn’t have the violent colour of arterial blood. Cutting one’s own wrists was harder than most people thought. He’d depended on that, and it looked as if he’d been lucky. Now if only that luck would hold a little longer.

He staggered to his feet, and, while they too were screaming with pins and needles, he managed to stand upright. He took a few steps towards the clearing, watching helplessly as a familiar grey shape streaked overhead on a reconnaissance sweep. He had to stop this, and he had no idea how. If he ran out there, Scott would land all the more quickly, and everything would be over before he had time to react. He looked back towards Tin-Tin, lying in the shadow of the buggy, trussed up and immobile. They wouldn’t escape the conflagration, even here. The Hood had taunted them with that, as they stood hypnotised and helpless in front of him. They would watch, bait in the trap, and then they would die, consumed as the fires spread outwards.

He could carry Tin-Tin, get them away from here before the Thunderbirds landed. The two of them might survive if they could keep ahead of the flames. He knew before she met his eyes that she would never forgive him if he tried.

He clenched his fists, his mind working overtime. He could hear Thunderbird One swinging around, her retros firing as she manoeuvred to one side of the clearing before she began her descent, leaving space for her bigger sister. Thunderbird Two’s engines were a deep note on the air now. This close to the Island, there was little difference in their response times. They would land simultaneously.

He had to stop them! There had to be a way. Somehow, he had to make his brothers see how unsafe the clearing was. Already he could see the fires that would result if he didn’t.

Fires. He moved on the idea as soon as it occurred to him, running to the rear of the jungle buggy, popping the distorted trunk lid with a sharp blow from one elbow. The eight-gallon bottle of gasoline was stowed securely, held in place by crash nets and by the weight of their other supplies packed around it. Alan hauled it free, tearing at the securing cables with bleeding hands, sobbing in his impatience.

He wrenched the cap off the bottle as he ran, not caring that the clear liquid splashed in every direction, swinging the bottle around him as he tried to spread it as far as he could. He was a third of the way from the tree-line to the centre of the clearing before he heard Thunderbird One’s engines hiccup above him. There was a roar of landing thrusters as Scott tried to shift sideways rather than land on his frantically running brother.

Sideways was no good. Up! Thunderbird Two was circling uncertainly now, Alan’s erratic path and Scott’s manoeuvring leaving them insufficient space to land, but Thunderbird One had to gain height!

Alan was in the centre of the clearing before a stray spark from the rocket-ship’s retros met the trail of liquid gasoline he’d left behind him. No thought at all was required for Alan to fling himself face down on the ground, hands protecting the back of his head as the fire took with a roar, sweeping across the clearing.

It was two seconds later that the heat triggered the first of the landmines.

The explosion caught Thunderbird One in the belly, throwing her upwards into the already chaotic thermals. Dirt and ash and flaming sparks rained down on Alan’s back, and he turned his face, expecting to find his eldest brother’s ship in ruins, torn apart by the force of the blast. He waited for the bigger explosion that must follow – the detonation of her atomic engines. It didn’t come. Despite his own pain, despite the fire now spreading in every direction, Alan laughed as he saw Thunderbird One intact, cushioned by the six metres of air between her and the explosion.

The second mine exploded, and then the third, both of them threatening to bury Alan beneath the debris they threw into the air. Still flat to the ground, Alan tried to shelter his eyes with his hands, searching for any glimpse of his brothers’ ships in the turbulent air. He blinked hard, trying to clear his eyes of wind-blown dirt. Thunderbird One’s engines had hit a high note, the scout craft clawing for height above the ongoing explosions. Alan could imagine Scott’s grim face as he fought against his sensitive controls, feeling his way through the fire-driven air currents to safety.

A shadow blocked his view of Thunderbird One, and he panicked before his eyes refocused, blinking away the tears the brilliant explosions had brought to them. A solid mass of colour filled the sky above him, blocking the sunlight and leaving him bathed in the yellow and red fire-glow. Thunderbird Two hovered above the clearing, her retro rockets blasting the ground as Virgil held her, steady as a rock, against the force of the mine blasts. Alan rolled onto his back, not even aware of the action smothering the smouldering flames in his clothing, and stared up at the dark green bulk, wondering yet again how something so solid could appear so graceful in the air.

He watched through hooded eyes as the lower hatch opened, a window into darkness, and the ladder descended, a blue-clothed form clinging to its bottom rung. He frowned. Lowering someone into an unstable furnace like this? His brothers should know better than to take a risk like that.

He must have lost some time, because the next thing he remembered was being pulled to his feet. Gordon’s honey eyes were wide and worried as he urged Alan towards the ladder. His brother was in protective gear, thick gloves and a visor making him seem almost like a stranger. Alan spared a thought for the victims of their many rescues. It was strangely disconcerting to see no more than a six-inch wide glimpse of your saviour through a Perspex window.

His hands and feet were dead weight now, but Gordon nudged him onto the second lowest rung of the ladder, and physically curled his fingers around the one at chest height, urging him to hold on. Gordon himself took the lowest rung, his arms either side of his brother, holding Alan firmly between the wire frame of the ladder and his own chest.

Wind whistled past them, and Alan glanced up, expecting to be drawn up into the belly of Thunderbird Two. It was only as another blast rocked them that he realised that Virgil had lifted the ship bodily, carrying them above the worst of the flames and sideways, back towards the jungle buggy at the edge of the clearing. Alan’s hands were going numb now, and he couldn’t make sense of Gordon’s shouted instructions. He looked back up at the ship. Of course, with Gordon down here, and Virgil fighting against the force of the ongoing explosions, there was no one to operate the winch.

His blood-slicked fingers were slipping against the ladder rung, and they must still have been half a metre off the ground when it curled out of his grasp completely. His weight fell backwards, and he landed on Gordon, knocking them both off the ladder. They rolled back into the tree-line and into the deep, and thankfully soft, leaf-litter. His brother grunted, shoving on his shoulder to give himself room to roll clear, stripping off the hood of his protective gear, and then scrambling back to kneel by Alan’s head. Alan rolled onto his side, trying to ease the pain in his back. He sighed as he felt his brother checking quickly for broken bones and other injuries, pausing over his torn wrists and what felt like a still-smouldering fire above his spine.

“Alan Tracy, you are certifiably insane, you know that?” Gordon’s voice was severe, but Alan relaxed with a smile. If his brother was insulting him, he was probably going to live. His smile faded.

“Tin-Tin!”

Gordon nodded, and was gone. He returned a few seconds later, the still-bound Tin-Tin slung over one shoulder. Her face was reddened, and streaked with perspiration, but she fell to Alan’s side with a soft cry, more concerned for him than for herself.

Gordon was frowning as he pulled a knife from his utility belt, severing the ropes that bound her. Carefully, he massaged her hands, trying to ease the pain as the blood returned to the numb extremities. Tin-Tin gave him a watery smile, biting back the pain, even as Alan managed a nod of gratitude to his brother for helping her.

Gordon went for his wrist radio, his eyes scanning the trees that screened them from the ongoing explosions in the clearing beyond. “Thunderbirds One and Two. I’ve got them both. We’re clear,” he reported.

“Thunderbird Two is clear,” Virgil added

“Beginning missile run.” Scott’s grim voice came almost simultaneously with the scream of Thunderbird One’s engines. Alan’s eyes widened as his brother strafed the clearing with debris-clearing missiles, detonating the few mines that remained with brutal efficiency. Even through the trees, they felt the force of the blasts, and Gordon threw himself on top of Alan, Tin-Tin held safely between them. By the time Thunderbird Two descended with dicetyline blasting from her belly to extinguish the fires, the ground looked like the ruins of a First World War battlefield, but there was no cannon-fire as the Thunderbird touched down, no blast of landmines. Alan closed his eyes in relief.

He opened them as Gordon shook his shoulder, concern apparent in his expression. “Feeling up to a short walk, little brother? You can rest in Thunderbird Two’s medical bay.”

Alan groaned. “I’m really not sure I can,” he admitted, not bothering to even try sitting.

He heard Gordon calling for a stretcher, anxious questions coming from their brothers.

“We’ll soon have you up and out of here. There’s nothing too serious, Al.” Gordon was talking to him again, and Alan nodded, knowing his brother well enough to recognise that Gordon meant what he was saying, before Gordon returned to reassuring Scott and Virgil.

Tin-Tin leaned over him, checking his injuries for herself with trembling hands. He smiled up at her, and saw her relief in return, not just for him but for all they could have lost in the last few frantic minutes. Gordon seemed to read their minds, finally breaking off communications with the others. The young man stared into nothing for a long moment as the urgency of the rescue faded, and the reality of what had happened crashed in on him. Gordon shuddered and rested a hand reassuringly on Alan’s shoulder, meeting his eyes with shell-shocked gratitude.

“Alan, I haven’t a clue what happened here, but thanks. If Thunderbird One had landed out there, Scott …”

“The Hood!” Tin-Tin blurted the name, the rest of what she intended to say lost in a sudden flood of exhausted tears. Gordon froze, and then nodded, his expression angry as he rubbed her back to soothe her. Alan felt the same anger. He’d never thought he’d long for the days when their insane stalker was merely trying to rob them. Now it seemed the rules of the game had changed. It was two months now since Scott had dived Thunderbird One clear of a missile attack, narrowly avoiding a mountain along the way, and barely two weeks since Virgil had found bullet craters in the toughened glass windscreen of the Mole after one hectic rescue. Alan raised a hand to scrub at his smoke-reddened eyes. Gordon met his gaze and held it, reminding him wordlessly that the Hood had failed once again, promising silently that he always would. Tin-Tin choked back her tears and reached out a hand to each of them, touching their cheeks in quiet reassurance.

All three of them looked up as Virgil and Scott came through the screen of trees, a hover-stretcher held loosely between them. The elder brothers studied the little tableau, their eyes quickly assessing the assortment of injuries in front of them, and ruling them out as life threatening.

Scott leaned back against the nearest tree, folding his arms across his chest, as Virgil guided the stretcher to Alan’s side. His eyes lingered on Alan for the longest, before accepting Alan’s rolling eyes and relaxing with a grateful smile. He raised an eyebrow.

“Well,” he drawled. “If it isn’t my little brother, the arsonist. Thinking of taking up a new career, Alan?”

Strong arms helped Alan sit upright, then lifted him onto the hovering platform. He bit back a cry of pain, looking from Scott’s face to Virgil’s with glad eyes.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I reckon I make a pretty fine scarecrow.”

His brothers’ laughter as they took him home was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard.