Sister Mary Sacred Heart had forgotten to close the archway door.

Half was secured, its bolt in place. The other half was open a crack, a splatter-pattern of stars showing through. The breeze shifted, cutting the perfume of cactus flower with the acrid, sterile smell of sun-baked blackglass.

The night sky brought back a memory of my mother pointing out constellations as I sat on her knee and stared up, repeating their names. But Sister Enuncia Immaculate Conception said we couldn’t talk about our mothers because we no longer had any. That’s why we were all here in the desert, God’s lost sheep. There hadn’t seemed much point in trying to remember the names of the stars after that.

The steps were still warm under my feet. On the horizon, the Disaster Zone was no more than a tumble of rocks rubbed out by the night. I stepped off the veranda. Something scurried through the dirt near my feet. It was a scorpion, or a beetle. Sister Cecelia Holy Martyr said the biggest nightbeetles didn’t like light or noise or the smell of incense, so once the arched doors were double-bolted and the window shutters were closed, we were safe. Sister Cecelia Holy Martyr had a favourite story about a nun who’d been disembowelled by a nightbeetle during the re-settlement. We’d listened in horrified silence as she’d recounted the tale with sound effects and facial expressions, but I doubted any of it was true. I tiptoed over the dirt to watch the insect disappear between chunks of blackglass. It was only the size of the palm of my hand.

A soft creak and a click came from behind.

I spun around.

The arch doors were both closed.

I ran back up the veranda steps. There was no door handle on the outside. Security, the Sisters said. I pushed gently. It didn’t give. From the other side came the sound of a metal bar grinding very slowly into place.

‘Sister Mary… Sister Mary, is that you?’

Silence.

‘Sister!’ I hissed, slapping my palms against the door. ‘Sister, it’s Six. You’ve shut me out.’

A pause, then the second bolt began to move into place, softly, slowly.

‘Sister Mary!’ I shouted and hammered with my fists. ‘Please, let me in...’

I glanced over my shoulder into the darkness. A moon hung above the horizon like a silver claw. I shivered.

Sister Enuncia Immaculate Conception would be on curfew duty. Sister Enuncia was not a kind woman. Would she come looking for me when she realised I was missing? Or would Casey, who the nuns called Five, push her rag-pillow underneath my sheets to save the entire dorm a punishment?

I glanced back to the horizon. The breeze kissed my face, the acrid stink of hot stone and cactus flower suddenly sickening enough to turn my stomach. I put my ear to the door and listened.

If Sister Mary had left the door momentarily unattended, then wasn’t it possible that she’d left a window shutter open somewhere, too?

I stepped off the veranda.

On the horizon, something detached itself from a pile of boulders and began to move across the dirt. The shape was nebulous, reflecting smears of moonlight as though made of sections that were shiny smooth. It was long and low and it wriggled and undulated until my eyes told my brain I was crazy because nothing that big could be moving so fast.

It was coming towards the convent.

The creature raised its head to scent the air, then adjusted its direction. Its long black body rattled along behind the head like a grotesque pantomime animal. As it drew closer, its mandibles clicked together like scythes. It paused, antennae flicking, tiny eyes glowing with reflected moonlight. My nightshift was white and the convent façade was blackglass…

I began to run. Squeaking with excitement, the thing came for me, strewing stones in its wake. It hurtled towards the convent like an out-of-control electrocab. My foot hit the bottom step of the veranda and I fell. The nightbeetle stopped at the courtyard wall, setting a mini-avalanche of rocks tumbling. I tried to scream for Sister Mary but my voice jammed up in my throat. It began to move again, sliding over the wall, body plates folding in and out like an Old World concertina.

I scrambled to my feet.

The first floor window shutters were closed. From somewhere high up, a chink of light fell onto the sand. It was the girls’ dorm, lit by one glowball on the sill, its shutters half closed. Two hands appeared and pulled them shut.

Behind me, the squeak of the beetle’s armour plates and the myriad thump-thump-thump of its feet grew closer. Its shell rasped the side of the building. I stumbled, hardly feeling the wound on my knee where I’d hit a rock. A stack of wood-gathering baskets were piled by the side of the convent. The darkness was absolute here, but I’d been sent out only that morning to stack them. If I could remember the path…

I ran blindly, catching my bare toes on baskets, whacking a tower of them with one arm, dimly aware that they’d littered the ground behind me and that the nightbeetle was chirruping with irritation as it tried to find a way through. I veered left into the smallest courtyard. An emergency nightflare flicked on, its silver-white tip shooting sparks as it began to claxon an alarm. My retina were burned out, the raised plant beds and insect nets a monochrome of vivid black and white. In a moment, the nightbeetle was almost on me. Its mandibles shot out towards my shoulder. I pulled away and they connected mid-air, missing me by inches. I twisted around and cowered against the wall, slithering down and trying to curl myself into a ball, but the beetle’s front feet were already on my own, its leg-pikes pushing into my flesh and pinning me to the ground. The front part of its body towered over my head while its small forelegs thrashed as it prepared to snap again. The smell of the thing was overpowering: baking blackglass tainted by rotting meat. The claxon fell as the beetle lashed out with its tail. The siren died with a whine, and the light flicked out.

A flash of electric blue cut the air. I cowered back. The light hit the nightbeetle’s shell and it swung away, slamming to the ground. A shower of stones flew into my face. The barbs retracted from my feet. I scrambled away as the beetle screamed and another blue flash whipped out. Somebody was standing in front of me - a silhouetted figure holding a beetleprod. Another flash skimmed the beetle’s shell.  It turned abruptly and rattled off down the side of the convent, strewing baskets and smashing them under its half-collapsed body as it went. I lay in the dust, exhausted. Eventually, when the sounds grew faint, I pushed myself up and scanned the darkness for the figure with the beetleprod.

The courtyard was silent. The shutters were still closed.

‘Hello?’ my voice was weak with effort. ‘Sister – Sister Mary? Is that you?’

But nobody was there.

Whoever had come to my aid...Continue Reading