by John Marsden
There was a tremendous crashing smashing clanging noise as the car slid to a stop against another tree. Then there was the hiss of steam escaping from the radiator and creaks and groans from tortured metal, and bangs and rattles from behind us. I was scrabbling around trying to get my hands on the rifle again because I'd lost it in the last second of the crash. I was all the time watching the head of the man at the wheel. But he wasn't moving.
Then I saw the blood.
It was running everywhere. Down the backs of the seats, dripping onto the fragments of glass left in the shattered windscreen, leaking through the back of his seat. Trickles of it flowed past Fi and me and onto the side window. Big heavy globules of it, really thick, fell slowly from the left-hand side of the front seats. Some of it splashed on me and some went right through to the back of the vehicle. I looked at the man. His head was gradually tilting to one side. I saw for the first time the hole in the back of his seat. I felt sick but I admit I also felt savage pleasure that we had won. He'd tried to beat us but he'd failed. We had survived for a few more minutes of precious life. He had not. Tough.
"Fi, are you all right?"
"I ... I don't know. How do you tell?"
I laughed. Strange time to laugh, but that's what I did. "If you can make jokes you're all right."
"I thought that was your blood for a minute."
"I did cop a wound back in town but nothing here."
"Is he dead?"
"Very, I think. But we'll check."
I crawled up to what was now the roof. The door seemed undamaged. Pushing it open was hard because it was so much heavier when you tried to lift it from underneath. The funny thing, the amazing thing, was that the inside light came on when I opened the door. That was a tough little light. Before that, all we'd had was the moon, which wasn't bad, but not as good as this light.
I put my shoulder to the door but it was still difficult, because I couldn't get my feet on anything to push against. I climbed a bit higher and at last was able to lock my feet in an uncomfortable position between the two front seats.
"You're getting so much blood on you," Fi said.
The funny thing was that she was serious. I collapsed completely. I suppose it was more hysteria than anything. I got the giggles. Only Fi could worry about things being messy at a time like this. She'd never make a farmer. By the time I recovered I had more blood on me from falling against the seat as I laughed. Fi sort of joined in, but not very enthusiastically. The way people do when they realise the joke's on them.
But finally I got the door open. I hoisted myself up by whatever little strength I still had and crawled onto the top of the car. Then I helped Fi up and out. I took a look inside, at the young officer. His career was over. I think the bullet had gone through the back of his seat and come out through his chest, because his chest had been ripped open like giant hands had grabbed each side of it and pulled it apart. It was all blood and bone and minced red stuff. His head had now flopped completely to the side, his eyes were wide open and staring and his face was without colour. Fi took one glance and turned away. I didn't look at it too much myself. It was pretty terrible.
Until that moment I hadn't been sure whether it was the car crash or the rifle that killed him.
Now I wonder what would have happened if he'd survived the crash. I didn't wonder that at the time, though.
"Come on, Fi," I said, "we've got to find the others."
I wanted to get her moving because she was starting to look so ill.
We stumbled along the road. My leg stung like hell. I was really worried about it now. I remembered a story the New Zealand soldiers told me about a guy being mortally wounded but not having any reaction for half an hour, then keeling over dead. For the first time Fi noticed I was limping. She hadn't commented at all when I told her I'd been hit. Now I realised she hadn't registered I'd said it, because she suddenly asked, "Did you hurt your leg?"
"I told you."
"No, you didn't."
"Yes, I did. I got hit by a bullet when we were running down the lane."
"Oh my God. Let me see."
"We haven't got time. Anyway I think it's all right."
"No Ellie, stop. Let me look."
A little reluctantly, but pleased to be fussed over, I did stop. She kneeled to inspect it. After a moment she stood again and gave me a disgusted look.
"Ellie, you've got a bit of gravel or stone in there, that's all."
So my bullet wound had been a fragment of flying rock, caused by a bullet, but not quite as directly as I'd thought. I was mortified. We started running. After a minute I said to Fi, "Promise you won't tell the boys about my bullet wound."
"If you promise not to tell them what I said about you getting blood on you."
"Deal."
And suddenly my leg hardly hurt at all. Guess I'm a bigger hypo than I'd realised.
Twenty-one
By one of those rare coincidences that hadn't happened often enough in this war we arrived at the racecourse at the same time as the boys. We came in from the southeast as they came in from the north-west.
Things were pretty tense by then. I think someone back in Wirrawee had found time to do some serious thinking because we could hear the unmistakable sounds of another hunt. There were even sirens, just like when the Wirrawee cops were chasing someone in peacetime. Not that we had many high-speed police chases. Carving your name on the seat at the bus stop was a big crime in Wirrawee.
I could see headlights too, and they were getting awfully close. I'd say they found the wreck of the four-wheel drive at about the same time as we found the boys. I can imagine how the car looked to the soldiers: like I'd shot the guy in cold blood and he'd then crashed the vehicle. Not a good scene for me if they caught me. I was fast getting into one of those "They'll never take me alive" states of mind that they talk about in movies. Instead of being a cliché it was beginning to sound like a smart idea.
We met at the grandstand. It was certainly quiet, certainly deserted, which was a relief. Not many places in Wirrawee would have been safe for us at that moment. Our meeting was kind of funny, though. Everyone panting, everyone crazy with fear, everyone wrecked.
Homer looked at me in horror. "Are you hurt?" he demanded. "What happened?"
For a moment I thought Fi had somehow already told him about the bit of gravel in my leg. Then I realised he could see the blood all over me.
"It's nothing," I said. "Someone else's blood. Did you get the fire going?"
There was no time for this talk, of course. We were in the most terrible danger still. I was hoping against hope that the sirens I'd heard were for a fire at the airfield, not for us. But Homer shook his head and I knew not to ask any more.
We were all completely whacked. Like, completely. Like, hardly able to stand. And things weren't helped by the fact that we felt such a sense of failure. Well, I know I did anyway. But there was no help for our exhaustion or our frustration. No help for us, except what we were able to give each other.
And for once I did do something to be proud of. I reached deep inside to find something extra. I knew that if someone didn't rev up the five of us, then this was the end of the road. We were finished.
"OK guys," I said to them. "Forget the being tired crap. Lee, can you get us to the packs?"
"Yes," he said. But his voice was dead, like he'd had enough.
"Lee!" I yelled at him. I ran at him and turned him round and pushed him hard in the back, pushed him along the road for twenty metres. That was all. It wasn't very much. But I got them moving, and only I know how utterly and hopelessly exhausted I was at the time.
Lee led us to the packs. I think we struggled even to find the strength to get them on. But we helped each other and we did it.
I was trying to think where we should go, what we should do. Hell was the place to go, of course, but we had to be so careful not to lead the enemy there. If we ever lost that sanctuary we would be in more trouble than a Mars Bar in a sch
ool canteen. At first I thought we had to go bush again. That was where I felt safe. I still had faith in the bush, as the place where we were still better than them. I could live in the bush the way an alligator can live in a swamp. There was a kind of comfort about the bush for me.
But there were problems in going bush right now. The main one being that around Wirrawee was mainly light scrub. And less of that since our bushfire. Sure there was enough to hide us for a day or two. But a major search lasting a week or more, possibly using dogs again, that was a different matter. If we stayed in the bush around Wirrawee they'd find us eventually. And if we did the other thing, headed out into the real bush, the serious bush, that was like saying to them, "Look, we're hanging out around Mt. Martin, OK? Try Tailor's Stitch or Wombegonoo." Not quite that obvious maybe, but if we went in that direction, and they knew it, they'd work it out sooner or later.
Then a little image floated into my brain. It was the entrance hall of the house in Wirrawee where we'd met the officer wearing the boxer shorts. The image was of the overflowing ashtray in the entrance hall. And the one tunic hanging on the coat stand, and the one pair of guns, and the one officer's cap. Those images said something loud and clear to me: that here was a man who lived alone. Not even a housekeeper to come and clean his ashtrays. In these days of free labour, slave labour, that was surprising, but maybe he just didn't like to have someone tidy up after him. My father, who never touched a vacuum cleaner in his life, who probably wouldn't know which end of it to use, was like that. Even the noise of the vacuum enraged him. He'd always tell me to come back another time.
"Do you have to do that now? Can't it wait?"
Loading the dishwasher was the extent of his domestic effort.
I tried to put myself in the mind of the enemy. To imagine how they'd think. They'd expect us to go bush. That was the first thing, the obvious thing. To go back into Wirrawee would seem suicidal. They'd credit us with more intelligence. They must know that we were creatures of the bush. And the place in Wirrawee where we were least likely to go was the house of the dead officer. We would have no reason to go there, and because it was the centre of the night's action it would seem too dangerous for us to even contemplate. The only people who might go there in the next little while were his friends, to clean up his things.
I didn't tell the others what I thought. Even though Homer had used the same argument when we were at the lookout—that we should go into Wirrawee because that's what they wouldn't expect —I decided this time to get them moving first. Otherwise I'd have a rebellion on my hands. Things were tougher now than they had been at the lookout even. I wouldn't have blamed them for rebelling—the thought of voluntarily walking back into the hotbed of soldiers and blood and death that we'd just stirred up horrified me enough. Might as well paint jam all over yourself and walk into a nest of European wasps. But I felt strongly that it was our best chance.
I got them going again. "Come on, I know a good place, let's move. Come on, Key, sure you're tired, but just do it. Hate it if you want, but do it. Come on Fi, I'll give you a push start too."
I'm sure it made them mad, my carrying on like that. I felt like a kindergarten teacher. "Now children, have you all been to the toilet? Tim, you take Jodie's hand. Charlotte, you take Rick's. Simon, where's your jumper?"
But I got them going. And what's more, once they started they moved fairly well. That was more than I'd dared hope for. We had a few big hours ahead. We had no hope of getting into Wirrawee from this side, with the noises we could hear through the trees. Noises and lights. This was building up into something bigger than a Grand Final. We had to get away fast and do almost a complete circumnavigation of Wirrawee. I figured if we came in from, say, the other end of Warrigle Road, past the Mathers' place, Robyn's house, we'd be fairly safe. But that meant a hell of a hike, through rough bush, in darkness, in a state of terror and depression and exhaustion.
The only advantage we had now was that the soldiers knew we were armed. They'd seen Fi and me with the officer's weapons, and they'd think, having found his body, that we were happy to use them. Lucky they didn't know what we were really like. I hoped they wouldn't know how much ammunition we had. I hadn't checked the hand gun but the rifle had only one more round. But they would be less than thrilled about plunging into the bush in the middle of the night to confront a gang of trigger-happy half-crazed teenagers. I was as certain as I could be that they'd wait till daylight.
So I led the gang of trigger-happy half-crazed teenagers in a big circle around Wirrawee. As we walked I gradually broke the news to them. I took my time, because the longer I talked the longer they'd have something to think about besides their own exhaustion and sense of failure. It gave me something to think about, too. So I went through all the options, chucking in any joke I could think of, no matter how weak or sad or downright tragic. I told the boys how Fi and I had been forced to run into this house and how I thought only one man lived there, and now he was dead. Until finally I got to the point where I could say: "Our best chance is to go right back into that house. I know you're not going to like it, but we've got to keep doing the unexpected, the unpredictable, or we're dead meat."
Lee said, "I agree."
Homer said, "It wasn't half-obvious that's what you were going to say."
Fi said, "OK."
Kevin said, "Oh God, not more days hiding in Wirrawee."
But he was the only one to complain. And I did have some sympathy with him. The boredom, the solid hour upon hour of doing absolutely nothing, of waiting for the clock to tick away another day, of feeling that each day consisted of 120 hours, of playing stupid meaningless card games, of arguing over trivia, of having to do sentry duty where you'd stare out into the street with nothing to look at but knowing that if you took your eyes away for a second it might mean the death of your friends, the sense that you had all this energy but you couldn't find anything to do with it ... I hated, Kevin hated, we all hated these terrible days holed up in little corners like scared rats.
But we still wanted to stay alive. When all was said and done, that was the ultimate motivation. And so we trudged on, with nothing much to look forward to but the right to stay alive a little longer. Lee came up beside me as we walked along and, although he didn't say anything, I felt a little better that he was there.
Walk, walk, walk, that was all we seemed to do. And towards dawn I had to get everyone to speed up even further, because I realised we were getting short of time. So we had to half-jog to reach Warrigle Street.
The last stretch, through Wirrawee itself, was surprisingly easy. After all our problems it seemed a bit of a joke that this part went so smoothly. But we hurried along the streets, doing our usual things like leapfrogging and keeping to shadows. We heard a couple of vehicles and saw a couple of headlights in the distance, but nothing that really threatened us.
Maybe it wasn't all that surprising. They'd had an exciting night, but after that they'd want their sleep. The ones who were still up, searching for us, would be concentrating their energies on the other side of town and out around the racecourse. Our whole strategy was based on that belief. I suppose my real surprise came from the fact that something I'd thought through in my head actually worked in practise. Life would be a big shock if that happened too often.
So, we got there, without a lot of drama. The drama was in the fear and exhaustion along the way. It was in the anticipation, the expectation. It was in the fear that every step could bring danger. The air crackled with tension, the hot night sweated as much as we did. But the drama was all in my mind.
The house was as still and silent as the cemetery. We tiptoed through each room. Homer and I carried the weapons—he the hand gun, me the rifle. There was nothing but the smell of the man who'd lived there, the smell and the little signs of his stay. He'd more or less camped in the place, it looked like: a couple of kitbags were scattered across the bedroom floor and there were socks everywhere. Two opened cans on the kitchen bench. A load of w
ashing still in the machine. It was kind of sad, to see how little trace of his life was left already.
I still felt, and the others agreed, that the only immediate danger would be from people coming to clean up the house and pack his stuff. And that would only happen during normal hours. We were safe from, say, ten o'clock at night to eight each morning.
The later danger would be from new people moving into the house. But I knew that probably wouldn't happen for a while. There were still plenty of empty places around, and I didn't think people would want to move straight into the house of a dead man. I mean, it was a good house, sure, but not that good.