by John Marsden
As soon as I got inside then- threw themselves on me. It was like a football ruck, like a soccer player had scored a winning goal, like tag team wrestling. For a moment I had to struggle for air. We hugged until we bruised.
It was a wonderful reunion.
And after the hugging came the questions. They flew backwards and forwards so fast that every answer was cut off within a few words.
"Which cell arc you in?"
"In that block over..."
"Have you seen Major Harvey?"
"Yes, that bastard! He asked..."
"What do you think'll happen to us?"
"I don't know. Major Harvey..."
"Have you guys been seeing each other every day?"
"Are you OK? Did they beat you up or anything?"
"Be careful what you say. We don't know'if they..."
"Did you have to do that confession thing?"
"They're so horrible. They make us..."
It took a while but eventually I got a sense of what was going on. Homer and I were the only ones left in E Block. The other four were in a totally different situation. They'd been transferred to a block with a lot of other prisoners, some like us who were "war criminals" and some who'd been in there for ages, from before the invasion, for crimes committed in peacetime. At meals they ate together in a big room and, at other times, they could talk to prisoners through the doors of their cells. Most amazingly of all, Robyn and Fi shared a cell. I was jealous of them for that and it made me more fearful of what might happen to me. Homer and I had definitely-been singled out as the ringleaders.
But I forced away all the dark thoughts, all the fear. I was determined just to enjoy the company of my friends. It was such a relief, such a release, to be with them again. And I didn't know how many more chances like this there'd be.
We talked flat out. I had a funny desperate yearning to play basketball, wanting some activity. The cage we were in was about the size of a basketball court; I suppose that's what made me think of it. In the end I grabbed Homer's shoe and ran to the fence, making him chase me. At once guards up on the wall aimed their shotguns at us. "Look out," Fi called. "Stop. They think you're doing something." But I ignored her. I was determined not to be too frightened of these thugs. And, although then- kept watching us closely as we ran around, they didn't take any action.
After we'd been there about an hour the guards who were supervising through the wire from the corridor unlocked the gate again. They beckoned to me first. I'd been the last to come, now I was the first to go. But as then- led me away I saw them signalling to Homer, so I guessed exercise time was over for all of us.
I called out to them all: "Bye! See you!," but, as I said "See you," I wondered if I ever would, ever again. The great dark weight of depression and fear was hovering over me once more, but hovering a little higher, and perhaps not quite so heavily.
Twenty-seven
As it happened I saw the others the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. Regular afternoon exercise became a part of my routine: the most pre cious, exciting, anticipated moments in my life. The worst thing was that Homer and I only got an hour each, which apparently went with the deal when you were in maximum security. The others got two hours.
Maybe the guards couldn't afford the manpower: when Homer and I were out there they had three guards assigned to watch us. The others only got one between the four of them. I think Lee felt a bit insulted by that.
For three weeks our lives remained locked into this pattern. Very little out of the ordinary happened. I saw Major Harvey a couple of times from a distance, when we were in the exercise yard, but he took no notice of us. The only exciting things were air raids: there were two during'the three weeks and even in my soundproofed cell I could hear the wail of the sirens. I pressed my call button during the first one but got no answer. Later when the guards brought my food, I asked them what the noise was, and they said, "Planes in sky drop bombs, very bad." The other five, when I met" them next day on the grass, confirmed that there had been air raids.
"All the guards ran off," Fi said. "I think they've got a shelter somewhere. Not much help to us though, when we're locked in our cells. Even when there are no guards we can't escape. Makes you wonder why they bother to have them at all."
Both the raids were at night; we figured it'd be too dangerous for them to come in daylight.
It started raining a lot and for our exercise hour we were put in a gym more and more often. I didn't like it nearly as much'. I needed fresh air so badly. We were all looking terrible, but Homer—and me,'I suspect— looked the worst. You couldn't exactly call Homer pale, because his skin was naturally dark, but it did get an unhealthy tinge to it, almost green. And he was so thin. Well, so was I. We were skeletal. We looked like Aurora at school when she had anorexia. The others were getting better food and they started smuggling bits out to us but it was difficult: we were watched so carefully.
Yet the passing of time calmed us down a bit. I guess you can't live at full-on intensity forever. Lying on the bed of my cell in the dark, trembling, waiting for soldiers to come in and shoot me—you just can't keep doing that. There's something in the human spirit that won't let you live that way. Gradually, you start forgetting about your death sentence and thinking about more normal things instead. Not all the time, of course, but enough times to keep you existing. You sleep occasionally, and you don't always dream of death. You get a bit numb.
Well, that's the way it was for me anyway.
The day it changed was a day that changed me forever. Of course we're changed by everything that happens to us. Of course I'd been changed dramatically by the invasion and everything that had happened since. But that morning, the morning when I finally had to confront what I'd been avoiding for so long, changed me like nothing else had—or ever will again, I guess. They came for me at about eleven o'clock. I remember every detail of the first few minutes. The way the officer flicked her hand to gesture me out into the corridor. The wax- the door squeaked slightly as it swung heavily open: that little cry from the hinge that I'd never heard before. The faces of the guards: the women and men I'd gotten to know so well by sight but who now, this morning, wouldn't look at me. The long slow walk to a building near the jail entrance, one I hadn't been to vet. The soft throbbing of thunder in the distance. The sweaty palmprint left by the guard as she pushed the door of the building open. I knew when I saw that palmprint that I was walking towards something terrible. From that moment on I hardly remember anything.
They took me into some sort of large room, all lined with light brown panelling. It looked very formal. There were people sitting at a table, about five of them I think, and I think all of them were men. I was in there three or four minutes. No one looked at me. The bloke in the middle read a whole lot of stuff, very fast, in his own language, while a bloke standing behind him translated into English. It was about how I'd destroyed property, committed acts of terrorism, murdered people; how I'd been found guilty of the above charges, and sentenced to death. Sentence to be carried out Monday the 16th, at 7 am. That is all. Do you have anything to say? No? Take her away. Bring in the next prisoner. The next prisoner was Homer, though I didn't know that until he told me himself, in the exercise yard six days later. He'd seen me coming out of the room but I'd walked right past him without noticing him. lie said he'd known then, as soon as he'd seen me.
I remember saying only one thing to the guards, and that was to ask them what day it was. They said Friday the 6th, so I knew I had only ten days to go.
It was the same afternoon that the daylight raids started.
I was lying on my bed, knees up to my chest, hands between mv legs, rocking myself, trying to think of one thing at a time. But I couldn't. Thoughts were screaming into mv head at such speed that it was like a demolition derby in there: the thoughts kept crashing into each other and spinning off into the darkness. I couldn't even slow them down, let alone stop them. I thought mv head would burst into flam
es.
When I heard the dull thundering booms they seemed like the background to the chaos inside me. I hardly noticed them at first. It took a while to realise they were coming from somewhere outside. Just as I realised that, the walls gave a little tremble and a tiny white powder fell from the ceiling. Then I knew: it was an air raid, an afternoon air raid, and close, too, if it could rattle the walls in mv cell.
I wasn't scared, just fascinated to see what would happen. I got off mv bed and stood by the door, waiting and listening. The booms kept going for a few minutes, then suddenly the lights went out. That was scary, but exciting too. I started wondering what would happen if the roof fell in on me. What would my body look like, buried under fifty tonnes of steel and concrete? I was feeling claustrophobic, but still not desperately frightened, more tantalised by the knowledge that something out of the ordinary was happening, and there was no telling what it might lead to.
In fact it led to nothing. The booming noises lasted another ten minutes, then stopped, suddenly and completely. Hours later the lights came back on;'two guards came'in and inspected my cell, and I was left to guess what might have happened outside.
The next two days there were more raids, one in the morning and one in the late afternoon. Again and again the building shook. Several times I cowered in the corner of the cell. Each time the white dust floated down, till the floor looked like light snow had been falling. By the end of the third raid I found long thin cracks in the wall.
On neither day was I allowed into the exercise yard. I started to fear that I'd never see my friends again,'never have a chance to say goodbye. Three more awful days passed, suffocating, excruciating days, when as far as I could tell there were no air raids, 'though the guards were very jumpy. But on Thursday, just four days before the sentences were to be carried out, I heard them unlocking my door. It was the time when we normally had exercise, and now they took me out as though nothing had happened. I guess someone in authority had decided the air raids were finished. But I was shocked at the damage that had been done while I was locked in my square little white coffin. Every second window in'the jail was broken. There was rubbish all over the place—I mean big rubbish, serious rubbish: sheets of galvanised iron, slabs of brickwork, big tree branches. The eastern wall had partially collapsed: about fifty metres of it was more like rubble than a wall. But already they'd put up a huge wire fence to cover the damage. I couldn't see any way of escaping through that.
A couple of minutes later I was in the gym. Conditions were different now. The guards watched us more closely. Homer and I were not allowed any physical contact, with each other or with the other four. We were as signed three different zones in the basketball court and we had to talk to each other from our own zones. I had the keyhole at the southern end.
We each told our news. Homer and I had both been given death sentences, both for Monday. The others got prison terms: thirty years for Lee, twenty-five for Robyn and Kevin, and twenty-two for Fi. I don't know how they'd arrived at the different numbers.
We had a ghastly conversation. No one could think of anything to say. We sat there like we were at a funeral already. Occasionally someone would say something in a hoarse whisper, but usually no one would answer, so the conversations never got far.
It was almost a relief to go back to my cell.
Friday the weather was better and we had an hour outside,' but again we weren't allowed near each other. Saturday we were back in the gym. It was another terrible hour. Fi was hysterical the whole time. The rest of us seemed like zombies, barely functioning at all.
Saturday night was the worst time, I think. I'd written letters to a few people, cramming as much as I could on the few sheets of paper I was allowed, even writing down the sides of the pages. When I asked for more paper I was refused. There seemed nothing else to do. All I could think of was that tomorrow would be my last full day of life. I lay on the bed, trying to find some strength to cope, to get me through the next thirty-five hours. I lay there with my mind running amuck, on the brink of madness. And somehow, gradually, early Sunday morning, I became calm. I can't think of any other word for it. I was thinking about the beach poem again, and I started to feel that I was being looked after, that everything was OK. It was strange: if there was ever a time in my life when I had the right to feel alone this was it. But I lost that sense of loneliness. I felt like there was a force in the room with me, not a person, but I had a sense that there was another world, another dimension, and it would be looking after me. I'm not talking about some place I'd be going to; it wasn't like that. It was like, "This isn't the only world, this is just one aspect of the whole thing, don't imagine this is all there is."
That's about all I can say really; I can't give it a name or paint a picture. It existed in a different form to the things we give names to, or try to illustrate. But I do know that I reached some sort of acceptance of what was to happen.
I had been dreading the last exercise hour, the last meeting with my friends. But I was quite settled as I moved slowly along the walkway. It was very overcast and must have been raining heavily during the morning: there was so much water on the ground. Most of the debris from the bombs had been cleaned up. I was hardly aware of the guards; they were the weekend shift, who seemed sloppier, more amateurish, than the highly drilled and professional ones I had during the week. But they still had the weapons and they still kept them pointed at me, so it didn't really matter if they weren't so neat and polished. I remembered how I'd thought I would throw myself at their guns rather than die tamely, but I knew now that I would never have the strength to rush at death quite as recklessly as that.
We got to the gym and I was ushered in. The others were already there, standing around waiting for me, looking like actors in a weird play.
The security system in the gym was different from the exercise yard, of course. Mv team of three guards always stayed,'whether we were'inside or out. But in the gym one of Homer's squad always stayed as well, to make up the numbers, to compensate for the fact that we couldn't be seen by the sentries on the outside wall. They spread themselves around the space, one at each walk and sat there watching us, rifles at the ready. From the moment we'd arrived in the prison they'd never stopped treating us like violent and dangerous people.
I don't know how many other prisoners there were in the place. I'd seen a couple from a distance, and our four in minimum security said there were dozens in their section, but that was all I knew. Lee had found out that the whitegoods factory in Stratton, quite close to the jail, was working non-stop producing aircraft parts, and that work parties from the jail were going there nearly every day. So maybe that's why I never saw anyone.
Stratton had been a big industrial centre for a long time. Being near a harbour, being close to the Marran coalfields, having a big railyard, meant that even when the rest of the country went into recession the factories of Stratton still worked hard.
So, that was why the city had been bombed heavily. And when days and nights of heavy bombing didn't get the results they wanted, they came back.
They came back on that Sunday afternoon.
When the sirens went off, our guards jumped to their feet and started shouting to each other and gesticulating wildly. It was the first time I'd heard the sirens outside my cell, and I couldn't believe how loud they were. For a moment I was frightened, but suddenly I realised that it hardly made any difference if a bomb dropped on me. And I did feel a sudden kick of hope in my chest. I suppose anything outside the normal routine, the routine that was dragging me towards death, was cause for hope.
Then a bomb fell quite close to the prison. There was a tremendous blast, and the whole building shook. A dozen more windows lost their glass: I saw the sheets fall and smash on the floor but I didn't hear them. My ears were numbed by the explosion. The guards didn't hesitate: they raced for the door. One of them yelled something at us, probably "Stay there," or "Get down," but I couldn't hear him. It mightn't have been in English. But
even with the guards gone our situation hadn't improved. There were still bars on the windows and the guards had enough sense to lock the big gym door as they fled for their shelters.
I ran to the door in a mad sprint, and shook it. I knew this was the only chance I'd ever have. But the door was solid. I looked desperately at the windows: if we could somehow get up to them, maybe the bars might have been loosened by the blast. I shouted something at Homer, can't even remember what, but his ears must have been as deafened as mine, because he shook his head to show he couldn't hear. The six of us were racing around crazily, like mice in the bottom of a grain bin when you take the top off and they realise they can't get up the smooth sides.
Then came a blast so huge that it threw me through the air. It was like a giant had blown at us, with a breath so hot and big and dry that it sent me flying, then spinning and rolling when I hit the ground again. Now I was surrounded by noise. It seemed like it would never end. Debris was flying around me and something hit me in the back so hard I was scared it might have snapped my spinal cord. But I clung to one certain fact: that I had to get to mv feet. Everything depended on my being able to get to my feet. I stumbled up and looked in shock and astonishment at the sight before me. The prison had been half demolished. The gym looked like it had been demolished fifty years ago. The ground was so covered in rubble I couldn't even tell where the gym had been. I could see Fi, amazingly, only two metres from me, but huddled on the ground, not moving. Kevin was wandering around on my right, looking dazed. Robyn was bending over something, something lying at her feet. I couldn't see Homer or Lee. I ran to Fi and touched her cheek. It was warm and I saw her eyelids move. There was blood oozing out of a great gash on her cheek. I couldn't wait: I squatted, got my arms under her and, with a grunt, lifted her and slung her over my shoulders, praying that I wasn't making her injuries worse.