Long Dark Dusk Read online

  LONG DARK DUSK

  J.P. Smythe is an award-winning author. The Australia Trilogy is his first series for Young Adult readers. He lives in London, where he teaches Creative Writing.

  ALSO BY J.P. SMYTHE

  NO HARM CAN COME TO A GOOD MAN

  THE MACHINE

  THE TESTIMONY

  THE ANOMALY SERIES

  THE ECHO

  THE EXPLORER

  THE AUSTRALIA TRILOGY

  WAY DOWN DARK

  LONG DARK DUSK

  New York • London

  © 2016 by J.P. Smythe

  Jacket photo (lake) (c) Chris Niemann/shutterstock

  First published in the United States by Quercus in 2017

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of the same without the permission of the publisher is prohibited.

  Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use or anthology should send inquiries to [email protected].

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Smythe, J. P. (James P.), 1980– author.

  Title: Long dark dusk / J.P. Smythe.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Quercus, 2017. | Series: The Australia trilogy ; book 2 | Summary: When the violent intersteller transport ship Australia crashes back to Earth, seventeen-year-old Chan finds herself living in poverty on a planet she has never known but always dreamed of, and as she tries to muster the will to survive, Chan learns that Mae, the little girl she once rescued on Australia, could be alive.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016037522 (print) | LCCN 2017002335 (ebook) | ISBN 9781681442037 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781681442020 (paperback) | ISBN 9781681442013 (ebook) | ISBN 9781681442006 (library ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Science fiction. | Survival—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Science Fiction. | JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Values & Virtues. | GSAFD: Science fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.S6572 Lo 2017 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.S6572 (ebook)| DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016037522

  Distributed in the United States and Canada by

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10104

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, institutions, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  www.quercus.com

  It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility:

  They must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

  —Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Part One Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Part Two Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Part Three Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Guide

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Contents

  i

  ii

  iii

  iv

  v

  vi

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  73

  74

  75

  76

  77

  78

  79

  80

  81

  82

  83

  84

  85

  86

  87

  88

  89

  90

  91

  92

  93

  94

  95

  96

  97

  98

  99

  100

  101

  102

  103

  104

  105

  106

  107

  108

  109

  110

  111

  112

  113

  114

  115

  116

  117

  118

  119

  120

  121

  122

  123

  124

  125

  126

  127

  128

  129

  130

  131

  132

  133

  134

  135

  136

  137

  138

  139

  140

  141

  142

  143

  144

  145

  146

  147

  148

  149

  150

  151

  152

  153

  154

  155

  156

  157

  158

  159

  160

  161

  162

  163

  164

  165

  166

  167

  168

  169

  170

  171

  172

  173

  174

  175

  176

  177

  178

  179

  180

  181

  182

  183

  184

  185

  186

  187

  188

  189

&nb
sp; 190

  191

  192

  193

  194

  195

  196

  197

  198

  199

  200

  201

  202

  203

  204

  205

  206

  207

  208

  209

  210

  211

  212

  213

  214

  215

  216

  217

  218

  219

  220

  221

  222

  223

  224

  225

  226

  227

  228

  229

  230

  231

  232

  233

  234

  235

  236

  237

  238

  239

  240

  241

  242

  243

  244

  245

  246

  247

  248

  249

  250

  251

  252

  253

  254

  255

  256

  257

  258

  259

  260

  261

  262

  263

  264

  265

  266

  267

  268

  269

  270

  271

  272

  273

  274

  275

  276

  277

  278

  279

  280

  281

  282

  283

  284

  285

  286

  287

  288

  289

  290

  291

  292

  293

  294

  295

  296

  297

  298

  299

  300

  301

  302

  303

  304

  305

  306

  307

  308

  309

  310

  311

  312

  313

  314

  315

  316

  317

  318

  319

  320

  321

  322

  323

  324

  325

  326

  327

  328

  329

  330

  331

  332

  333

  334

  335

  336

  337

  338

  339

  340

  341

  342

  343

  344

  345

  346

  347

  348

  349

  350

  351

  352

  353

  354

  355

  356

  357

  358

  359

  360

  361

  PART

  ONE

  ONE

  She says that her name is Alala but I’m not sure if I believe her. She says that it has a meaning, that in the language her ancestors spoke it would carry some weight, but she doesn’t know what it is now. Nobody remembers. It’s a word that has been lost from a language that went under the sea. She wears a wrap around her head that comes down to cover the bottom half of her face, a scarf of swirled patterns trimmed with fur, a kind of golden color that looks like dirt or vomit when you’re up close but you know it’s worth something from the way she handles it. Along the edge of the scarf, silvery tufts and tassels hang down over her neck. You can’t tell how old she is. She tries to hide that from everybody.

  Alala buys what I steal; that’s our arrangement. That’s the joy of her, what makes her so different from everybody else. She’ll take anything if she trusts you—doesn’t matter what it is. She’ll give absolutely anything a price. It’s always a struggle to see her, because there are lines—others with stuff to trade or junkies who want whatever she sells that they need. Or her own people—she calls them her fingers, fingers in pies, she says, then twitches her fingers while she says it, even the stump of the half-missing one.

  I hold today’s merchandise out for her to examine. It’s a knife of sorts: a filthy black blade threaded with red knots like veins. Not blood or gemstones or anything like that, but glowing metallic, running with electrics. When I picked it up, it sparked me so violently that I almost passed out. It’s serious technology, probably from somebody working on the Wall. It’s protected, which means it’s got to be worth something. I pass it to her, blade first.

  “Don’t touch the handle,” I say.

  “Little girl. Give me credit. You think I was born yesterday?” She doesn’t know much about me. Just my name, where I live, where I came from, and what I’m after. That’s it. Some people here give her sob stories when they try to sell to her. They tell her about who they used to be, or what they’ve lost, or who they’ve lost. I keep all of that to myself. I’m a criminal, escaped and running. Nothing too personal.

  “Will they be coming back for this?” she asks. “They know where you are.”

  “They won’t be coming.”

  “But you did steal it?”

  “In a way,” I say.

  She nods. She understands. Technically it was stolen. I found it next to the unconscious body of a mugger who had been chasing me. Finders keepers. He chased me nearly the length of the slums, persistent as nearly anybody I’ve known. Whatever he wanted, I wasn’t going to give it to him. Climbed as well, which is rare. Usually they’re addicts, and usually addicts don’t have the strength to climb. I led him through the trickiest route I could find and still he kept it up. He only gave up when he had to, when I jumped a gap I knew he would never make. He fell, and I backtracked slowly, down to his body. He dropped the knife, even; like he wanted me to take it.

  “I need his imprint. Otherwise . . .”

  She reaches down to the pockets that she’s sewn into her clothes. She’s got lots, most of them secret, so that she can turn any of the obvious ones out—show you how poor she is without giving away what’s in the others. She’s got tricks, and they’re obvious to anybody who’s lived where I have, haggling with the salesmen as I did. Not what I’m after. “I only have a cheap card, ten units. If I have an imprint, it is maybe worth more, but . . .” She shrugs this exaggerated gesture where she puts her hands up in front of her, empty apart from the cheap money card. “Take it, go on. You rob me.” She covers her face with her empty hand, makes out that she’s not looking at me.

  I take out the other package from my pack: the guard’s thumb, wrapped in a scarf that looks not unlike the one she’s wearing around her neck. She smiles through her fake blindness, pulls a card from her sash, and hands it over, snatching up the thumb so fast, pocketing it even faster. She’s got her imprint now.

  “Don’t be spending this all at once,” she says, handing over the cash.

  I walk toward my home—it is home, even if it feels transitory—past the junkies, past the families huddled around homemade water distillers and trashcan fires, through the rows and rows of shanty houses with their makeshift walls and corrugated metal roofs. On the ground, outlines of yellow lines still exist, faded nearly to nothing. In some places, you can see insignias printed onto walls: a printed shape of a bird here, a flag there. I go past the warehouses and the sheds, their walls opened up, their inside
s gutted, replaced with a maze of tents and makeshift shelters. I keep going toward the Wall, as far as you can get before the shanties drop away almost completely and there’s just a few of us, propped up against the back wall of the last warehouse. This is where I like to live. Nobody asks you anything and everybody keeps to themselves. There’s a peace and quiet like I’ve never known before.

  I’m nearly to my own home when I hear the sound of a baby crying. That’s the worst sort of alarm. It could be a visitor, but who would bring a baby here? Everybody hunkers down when they hear it because no good can come of this. This means police and Services both, flooding in here like they own the place. Only a matter of time.

  I watch the people here pull shut whatever they have that passes for a door, yanking across plates of sheet metal if they have them, cardboard if they don’t. Fires are extinguished because they’ll only draw attention. You want the darkness. If you’re in the dark and quiet, chances are the police won’t bother to check you out.

  I miss the warmth I used to take for granted, but I’ve adjusted. I didn’t know how warm it actually was on Australia until I got here. Now I only know months of prickled skin on my arms. Months of it.

  The crying’s coming from inside one of the warehouses. It won’t stay there—you’re trapped inside those things, nowhere to run if you’re cornered. I climb up onto the top of the closest building, one that’s burned out and slightly more fragile than some of the others. Still, it takes my weight. I look over to see if I can spy them, spot any movement. The baby’s mother—seems like it’s never the father trying to hide them—will either find somewhere to hide or she’ll be immediately on the move. Either way, this isn’t going to end well. I don’t know why she didn’t have the baby muted—that’s the easiest way of keeping them quiet, as cruel a thing as it is to do. Now, instead, the baby will be taken, pried from her hands, because babies here are always taken away from the people that live here. The Services swoop in, take them somewhere they’ll be better cared for. That’s what happens every time. It’s what’ll happen now.

  Unless.

  I stay on the rooftops and listen. She’s moving. The sound stops echoing; it’s no longer coming from the warehouse. Now she’s winding her way through the shanty village. I hear them shouting at her to move on. They won’t help her if she needs it.

  So I run with her. Maybe I can help her. Could be that we take her somewhere to get the operation done. I know that Alala’s done some, so her, maybe; though she probably won’t touch one that’s this hot. I can’t hear any car sirens yet, so she’s still got a few minutes. She could still hide, maybe set the baby unconscious just for the time being, hide it somewhere. But that’s risky. I’ve seen it where the baby wakes at the worst possible moment, hidden in some compartment in the ground or something; they open their eyes and don’t have a clue where they are, then just start screaming again. They don’t even know what happened. Babies always seem to cry when they wake up. When do we learn that it’s safer to be awake?

  I get from the warehouses to the shanties and I don’t stop. Uneven roofs make it hard to sprint, but at least they’re stable enough to take my weight.