by John Marsden
"I'll bet that was your idea," I said to Homer.
"I didn't enjoy it, you know."
"Sure, sure."
I have to admit, the two boys were great nurses. I'd wake, burning with fever, and they'd be there within a minute, whether it was three o'clock in the morning or three o'clock in the afternoon. Not that I had any idea of time.
Maybe antibiotics would have cleaned us all up in twenty-four hours—probably. But we didn't have them and so we suffered and our bodies had to do the healing themselves, with a little help from the two boys. They wiped us down with cool clamp towels, made us drink, and even eat, a couple of times, kept warm clothes on us, talked to us, soothed our fevered brows.
One day I woke feeling weak as a paper tissue but perfectly dear-headed. I knew it was early in the morning, and I had a vague memory of a moment during the night when I'd felt the fight go out of my body. It had been followed by a kind of sweet peacefulness and, after it, I'd slept soundly and warmly. Homer came in holding a billy and a water bottle and I looked at him lazily.
"What's it like outside?"
"Oh, you're back in the land of the living, are you?"
"Mmm. I don't feel too bad."
"Good."
"How're the others?"
"Fi's been on the up and up since yesterday. She's out the back having breakfast with Lee. Robyn and Kevin are still just as crook."
I glanced across to their beds. They certainly didn't look well. Both were asleep, but Kevin was mumbling and moving around and Robyn looked horribly white.
"God, did I look like that?"
"Worse."
"How long has this been going on?"
"Four days."
"Oh yeah."
"I swear! Lee and I have had about an hour's sleep in the last four days."
I was silent, for once. I was deeply impressed by the fact that my life could lose four days without my having any awareness of it. Maybe this was a preview of death: continuous visions and dreams and vague glimpses of reality. Only with death you never wake up; you keep having the weird images forever. I thought a lot about death and what it might be like, of course; I still do.
When I tried to get up I realised it was not such a good idea. My limbs had no strength and my mind had no strength to force my limbs to obey. That was unusual for me but I was too tired to care. I went back to sleep.
Next time I woke it was the next day. I was even more astonished by that; in fact, it took Homer and Fi half an hour to convince me. I'd had enough of bed; besides, I was busting for a leak and was enormously hungry. I staggered outside and relieved myself, then got some biscuits and, for the first time in nearly a week, started taking an interest in my surroundings.
We were close to the coast now; I could smell it. I guessed that by the route we'd taken we were probably about twenty k's from Cobbler's Bay. Some time we'd have to start thinking seriously about Cobbler's Bay again. The thought almost gave me an immediate relapse into fever. We were still in quite clear country but nothing like the plains we'd crossed five nights before. The grass was wirier and the trees had a windswept desolate look. There were no dwellings in sight but a line of trees fifty metres away indicated a road. The ram had gone but it was a cold day with a fresh wind; a few clouds scudded across the sky like they were in a hurry-to get somewhere.
I went back into the silo and helped Lee do a bit of housework; well, silowork really. "Where's the water supply?" I asked him, picking up an armful of empty-water bottles.
"I'll show you."
He looked tired and nervous; no wonder, with the work Homer and he had done.
We went across to the road and walked for a few hundred metres. I felt strange walking along so openly, in broad daylight.
"Don't any cars come along here?"
"Four in five days. And there's plenty of cover. You can hear them coming."
"How are you feeling?" I asked, but I didn't care very-much. I was'too tired, too feeble and perhaps still too sick about what had happened back at the well.
"OK. Just totally stuffed by nursing you guys."
"Have a sleep when We get back. Fi and I can take over and give you a break."
"Yeah, thanks, I think I will."
I realised quite suddenly, with a sense of shock, that my relationship with Lee' was over. I felt nothing for him any more. He seemed like a stranger and this seemed'like the kind of polite conversation you have with strangers.
Although I didn't admit it to myself then, I think, looking back, that part of the reason was the killing of the soldier when we rescued Kevin. It wasn't the first time we'd killed, of course; it wasn't the first time Lee had killed in cold blood; but this time it had been too horrible, too disgusting. I didn't want to touch Lee; didn't especially want to talk to him, even. I felt sick every time his long fingers touched me.
It's unfair, I know that. It's like making Lee do our dirty work and then blaming him when he does it. But fair'and unfair is for the mind; emotions don't know anything about fair and unfair.
We filled the bottles at a wide shallow river, squatting in the gravel and watching the little gurgles as the water rushed in. It was cold, though, and the bottles were cold in our hands when we carried them back.
By that evening, Kevin was through the worst of it and Robyn was sensible enough to understand what was going on. The silo smelt terrible, with the stench of us humans having filled it for nearly a week. There were three concrete silos in a row and two steel ones. I checked out the other two concrete ones, thinking we could maybe move into one of them for some fresh air, but they both had a strong smell of chemicals. Probably pesticides. The steel ones had the nice smell of dry grain but they would have been uncomfortable to live in.
I went back to our silo. The first room wasn't too bad. The manager must have used it as his office, where he could peer down through the wire grille into the deep hole and watch the grain slowly filling it. There was a filing cabinet, and a desk and chair where Homer and Lee had spent a lot of time playing cards. There was another room where we sickles had slept, and some little concrete cells, like a medieval convent.
I sat at the desk and played patience for a while.
With Kevin getting better we finally got to have the big conversation that we'd all wanted to have. It was the next day, after breakfast, in the office. Robyn moved her sleeping bag in and lay in it, watching and listening, the rest of us sitting quite comfortably around the walls, drinking cold Milo as a special treat. Homer had the chair.
"So, Kevvy, tell us a story," Homer said, starting the ball rolling.
"Tell me a story," I sang, and Robyn and Fi immediately joined in.
"Tell me a story,
Tell me a story,
Tell me a story, remember what you said.
You promised'me, you said you would,
You promised me, you said you would,
Tell me a story, remember what you said."
"Where do you want me to start?" Kevin asked.
"At the beginning," we chorused.
After horrible times, killing times, we often seemed to regress like this. At that moment I'd say we were about seven years old. Kevin's story forced us to grow up again fast, though. It wasn't a very funny story but it was the first detailed description we'd had of life on the inside.
"OK, I'll go right back, then. After Corrie and I left you guys at Ellie's place—my God, it feels like years ago. That night: it all changed after that night. One bullet, it changed everything."
He looked down into his cup without drinking from it.
"We got to the hospital about two in the morning. I drove so slowly. I was scared she'd die in the back seat, and I kept looking over my shoulder to see how she was doing. She looked worse and worse; you could see the colour going out of her. But every time I sped up she'd groan, these horrible deep groans like I've never heard before. It was bloody awful.
"By the time we got there I wasn't even thinking about the war and the soldiers. It s
ounds dumb but it's true. I'd half forgotten there was a war on. All I could think about was getting Corrie to hospital and getting her treated. I drove up to that main entrance with the lights on full beam, the hazards on, and the horn blasting. So they knew I was coming. And arriving like that, I guess they knew I wasn't a threat. They all came bustling out: a nurse and a doctor and a bloke with a trolley—and a couple of soldiers. When I saw them I remembered there was a war on, all right.
"At first it wasn't too bad. The soldiers knew there were still a few people around the district who hadn't been rounded up, so they weren't too surprised to see me. And the hospital staff were our mob, prisoners, so they were cool. The problems started when the soldiers found out Corrie had a bullet wound. The hospital staff tried to keep it secret. They pretended she'd fallen off a cliff, but the trouble was that one of the soldiers knew English and hadn't told anyone he did. I mean, he deliberately pretended he didn't know it, so he could spy on people. They talked quite openly in front of him, and that's how we got found out."
Kevin paused for a moment. He lifted his eyes from his Milo and gazed up at the funnel of the'elevator shaft.
"Well, it was on for young and old then. Come was a 'bad girl, bad girl,' and right away they tried to frame us for blowing up the bridge. The two soldiers had me in a corner, on the floor, and they were bashing me in the back with the butts of their'rifles. Going right for the kidneys, and finding them too, no worries. I was pissing blood for a fortnight. Even" time I went to the dunny I remembered those guys. Then they brought three sentries in from the bridge—the ones who'd had the best view of von gins—and they were meant to identify us. The only thing that saved us then was that they were so positive it wasn't us. Bloody lucky—they were honest. That stopped the soldiers kicking me for a minute.
"They still weren't happy, though. They were telling the doctor that Come had to go straight to the Showground; she had to stop treating her. They were really worked up. 'No more, no more,' they kept screaming. They were waving their rifles around, and trying to wheel the trolley outside. That bloody doctor but, she's a legend. She just said no; like, 'Don't even ask, don't waste my time, stop bothering me.' I don't think they knew quite what to do about her. There was a full-on tug of war going on over Come, and Corrie lying there unconscious in the middle of it. Sort of funny if you'd been in the mood for jokes."
"Was her name Dr Crassini?" I asked.
Kevin nodded. "Yeah, that's right, that's her."
"Figures." I'd seen Dr Crassini handling my father. She was pretty awesome. Young, but strong.
"Next thing," Kevin continued, "two more soldiers came in. The two blokes who'd been there all along had turned their attention back to me, seeing they weren't getting anywhere with the doe. They had me on the floor again and were putting the boot in. The nurse was screaming at them, in between working on Corrie, and I was starting to black out. I was scared they were going to kill me. I'd told them the truth, how she was shot when we were trying to get my uncle's ferrets, but I wasn't convincing them. I had blood all over me and I knew my nose was broken. Every time I breathed I just seemed to breathe blood. I thought I might drown in it. I really thought I was on the way out."
I glanced around me. There were four pale faces, all intent on Kevin's story. Kevin was looking down at his mug again. I don't know whether he realised the effect he was having.
"So, anyway, in came these other two soldiers. I was hardly aware of them, but the wardsman told me all about it later. lie was a bit of a wimp and he hadn't done a thing to help me when I was getting beaten up, but he wasn't a bad bloke. So in came these two soldiers and one of them was hurt, and they made the doctor leave Corrie and treat him. He had a sprained ankle, and how do you think he got it? Chasing two people through the bush out at my uncle's place, that's how. Geez, I tell you, did they ever show up at the critical time. Saved'my life. The doc called the two sentries who were giving me the third degree and made the other two repeat their story. When they said they'd fired a few shots at some dark shapes in the bush, the soldiers realised what an honest, respectable person I was. We'd still been naughty, according to them, but we hadn't been sabotaging stuff and that was the important thing. We were just average naughty, instead of highly trained professional naughty.
"'Naughty' is one of their favourite words. 'Bad boy' and 'naughty boy' that's what they were always calling me.
"But I tell you what, guys, if we ever get caught, don't get lagged for any of the things you've done, the bridge and the ride-on mower, and getting Lee out of Wirrawee. They're still steaming about all those things."
"What about blowing up Turner Street?" Homer asked, with just a touch of smugness.
Kevin sat up. He got so excited. "Was that you? Was that really you? Unbelievable! Some people said it was you, but I couldn't believe it. That must have been about a tonne of TNT! How did you do that? My God, it was a hell of a bang. I thought someone had'nuked Wirrawee. Wow, I tell you, if they ever bust you for that, you're dead."
"Thanks a lot."
But we were proud and excited by Kevin's response. It was nice to be able to boast a bit. That was one of the worst things about our isolation. We felt no one was appreciating or even noticing the battles we'd fought and the risks we'd run—risks that made me go giddy every time I thought about them. The way Kevin went on made us feel, for a few minutes at least, like we were the Foreign Legion, the Green Berets and the Rats of To-bruk, all rolled into one.
"How the heck did von do it?"
We spent ten minutes telling him, tripping over ourselves with corrections and contradictions, having a wonderful time being heroes. But it didn't last too long, as we then had to go on and tell him about the death of Chris. That sobered us up again, fast enough. Kevin didn't seem all that shaken by it, though. I guess he was getting immune to death.
"So, anyway," I said finally, "tell us what happened to you after the hospital, and then we'll tell you the rest of our stuff."
"OK. Where was I up to? Getting my head beaten off my shoulders? OK. So, in the end they generously let Corrie stay in the hospital but she had'to be moved to the Prisoners' Block, where you don't exactly get five-star service. And that's where you guys caught up with her. Mrs Slater told me you'd been there and she'd had a good goss with you."
"Yeah, that's right."
"Well, I haven't seen her since the night I drove her in there. They wouldn't let me stay—I got chucked in the back of a station wagon and'taken to the Showground, feeling like a bloody mess. I was one, too. We had a big family reunion but I don't remember much about it. I got nursed there and eventually I recovered. Took about three weeks. It wasn't easy! though—I guess my nerve had gone, a bit, so I wasn't good for much for a while.
"The Showground was getting ugly. People were so stressed. Conditions probably weren't bad at first but they didn't stay that way for long. I don't think it was ever planned as a long-term residential centre for a thousand people. Most of the buildings arc galvanised iron, so they got very hot. The food was OK though, most of the time. Geez, there's enough food in the Wirrawee district to feed a zillion. But these buggers got lazy—they couldn't be bothered going to a lot of trouble to get three-course meals for us. Fair enough, I suppose. But it wasn't really the food that was the problem."
"What was it then?"
Kevin searched his mind, trying to figure out what had caused the build-up of tension. "It was a mixture of everything, really," he said slowly. "The crowding, that was terrible. Not being able to have showers. Especially when we had those incredibly hot days. And all those dickheads trying to tell everyone else'what to do. You know, Mr Rodd and Mr Nelson and Troy South? And Mrs Olsen? Geez, they drove me crazy. I suppose everyone was under stress 'and that made' for a lot of arguments. But some people didn't make any effort. That bloody Mr Rodd, seemed like he was following me around, trying to pick me. I think that's how he got his thrills. I can see why he's had two wives leave him."
Kevin pause
d again and sat thinking. We all waited in silence, not liking to interrupt.
"No, that's not what it was," he said at last. "It was the boredom, that was the worst thing. Day after day-after day, nothing to do. Absolutely totally nothing. People tried organising a few things! but there wasn't much that appealed to me, I guess. They got a school going, for instance, and that was good for the little kids, but for people our age—well, school didn't seem like much of a go. Then some people started classes for adults in a few things. There were cattle-judging lessons, and Chinese, and Indonesian. Old Doc Robbo gave first-aid classes—they weren't bad.
"No," he said, leaning back against the wall with his hands behind his head. "There was only one interesting thing I learned, the whole time I was there."
"What was that?"
"Explosives."
Eight
"Explosives?" Homer asked politely. "Did you say explosives?"
"Mmm. I thought you might find that interesting."
"Explosives." Homer rolled the word around his tongue, like he was trying it out, to see how it tasted. "So how far did you get?"
"Well, quite a way. Jock Hubbard taught us. He's got his ticket, his shot-firer's ticket. He got the idea that the time might come when we could use a bit of knowledge. He made up dummies and we practised on them. It would have been better with the real things, of course, but the soldiers weren't too keen to lend us those."
"OK," Homer said. "I know it's possible to make a bomb using fertiliser and diesel, because I remember Dad blowing up tree stumps. The trouble is I never bothered to ask him how to do it. I've often regretted that."
"Yeah, well that's easy. Ammonium nitrate. For us, in our situation, that's probably the easiest and best way to go." Kevin had suddenly become transformed. It was the first time I'd seen him like that. It was interesting to see how being an expert changed someone. "We could expect to find a lot of other stuff in farm buildings too, like gunpowder and dynamite. But the soldiers have probably taken most of that. Yeah, anfo's the way to go."