Dirt Circus League by Maree Kimberley

Author:Maree Kimberley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2021-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

The sun’s rays burned through the broken window slats and through my eyelids. I sat up with a start. Today was the day before Summer Solstice. Tomorrow at dawn Herman, a perfectly healthy twenty-year-old male, was going to die to honour a senseless cult law.

I had to do something to stop it. Maybe, if I could prove beyond any doubt that Briony was pregnant, I could convince the leaguers it was a sign from Gaia that the killing must end. To have any chance of changing their minds I had to come up with an explanation that fitted with their twisted beliefs. That meant I needed to understand where they came from. Klae wasn’t going to give me any information, but perhaps I could get something out of Quarter.

My muscles ached and my bones creaked as I forced myself to stand and stretch. I flicked some small ants off my leg and scratched at the bug bites around my ankles. Flea bites, midgie bites, mosquito bites—I’d managed to collect them all. And where my skin didn’t itch from bug bites it itched from grime and sweat. The swim in the waterhole hadn’t done much more than take off a few layers of topsoil and after sweating through another night I was stinkier than a bin full of maggots again. There had to be a shower at the Meat House. Maybe I could sneak one in while I went to get a pregnancy-test kit.

I wished I had Viola or Linny to distract Surgeon while I went into the treatment room. Although I had to go alone they’d given me the combination to the gate lock so at least I was able to get inside the fence. From there, getting into the Meat House was easy enough. Staying out of Surgeon’s way might not be so easy. And then there was Quarter. Part of me ached to see him. I had to remind myself that he was not only part of this crazy, pointless death, but that as leader of the Dirt Circus League he’d be the one making sure it happened. I put that thought front and centre of my mind as I hurried through the rainforest towards the Meat House.

The chickens clucked with alarm as I unlocked the compound gate and walked across the dirt. They made the place seem almost like a normal home garden. Just like Karen’s. A pang of loneliness stabbed my gut. How long had I missed her by? Ten minutes, thirty minutes, a few hours? The one person who could have brought all this craziness to a screaming halt with a single phone call, and I’d left it too late.

Phone call.

I’d been so focused on what I could do to change Herman’s fate I’d missed the most obvious solution. Surgeon surely had some form of communication, maybe a sat-phone or at least a net connection. I hurried into the Meat House.

Inside, the only sounds were the low rattling hum of the refrigerator and the air conditioner.

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