by John Marsden
"All aboard for Hell," I said. "Please fasten your seat belts and extinguish all cigarettes. We'll be cruising at an altitude of a metre above road level, and at speeds of up to 40 k's per hour. Weather conditions for Hell are expected to be wet and cool."
"Except in Lee's tent, where it'll be hot and steamy," Homer called out.
"He hopes," added Fi.
I ignored this childish behaviour and put the car in first. Away we went.
As we neared the bottom of the drive Homer called out again. "There's something funny over there," he said.
"Funny peculiar or funny ha ha?"
"Funny peculiar."
I slowed down a bit and tried to peer across the paddock in the direction he was pointing. It was too difficult to do that and drive at the same time, so I asked him, "Do you want to stop?"
"No, doesn't matter."
"Yes, stop," Robyn called out suddenly, in a strange voice, like someone was twisting her throat.
I hit the clutch and brake and the Landie rolled to a halt. Robyn was out the back door and running.
"What is it?" Fi asked.
"Over there," Homer said. "Near the dam."
I could see the reflecting water of the small earthen dam, and the dam wall itself, but that was all. Perhaps, though, I thought I could see an odd dark shape to the left of the dam and slightly below it. Then I heard a strange sound, a weird, unearthly sound, that brought all my skin out in bubbles, in an instant rash of fear. My scalp burned. I felt like small insects were crawling through my hair.
"Oh sweet Jesus," said Fi. "What's that?"
"It's Robyn," said Lee.
The sound was not a screaming or a crying, more a wailing. The sort of keening that you hear in documentaries about other countries sometimes. I jumped down from the Landie and ran round the back of the vehicle towards the dam. When I was about fifty metres away I began to recognise that there were words to the noise she was making. "Too much," she kept saving. "Too much. It's too much." It was almost like she was singing it. It was the most horrifying sound I've ever heard, I think.
When I reached her, I'd intended to grab her, to hold her, to calm and comfort her. I could hear the others coming a bit behind me, but I was the first one there. But when I did reach her, and my eyes saw what she had seen, I forgot about holding her and instead stood wondering if anyone would hold me, or if I'd just have to comfort myself.
Before the war I'd seen a lot of death. You get used to dead bodies, working on a farm. You never like it; sometimes it makes you sick, sometimes you rage against it, sometimes you mourn for days afterwards. But you get used to the ewes killed by foxes as they're giving birth; the lambs with their eyes picked out by crows; the dead cows who are bloated with gas till they look like they might float away. You see myxo'd rabbits, roos caught in fence wire, tortoises that you've run over with the tractor when you're down at the creek filling the furphy. You see ugly death, dry death, quiet death, death full of pain and spit and blood, and intestines torn out with flies laying maggots in them. I remember one of our dogs that took a poison bait and became so frenzied with pain that he ran full speed into the side of a parked truck and broke his neck. I remember another old dog that was blind and deaf. We found his body in the dam one hot day. We think he went in to cool off and couldn't find his way out when he'd finished his swim.
Chris's body was different. It should have been like the others, like the corpses of animals. He'd been there a few weeks, like they often were before anyone noticed them. Like them he had been attacked by predators: foxes, feral cats, crows, who knows? Like them the earth around him told the story of his death: he lay ten metres from the overturned ute, and the rain had not been able to rub out the marks that his hands had made as he gouged at the soil. You could see where he'd been thrown, how far he'd crawled, and you could tell he'd lain there a day or more, waiting to die. His face still stared at the sky; his empty eye sockets gazed up as if searching for the stars he could no longer see; his mouth was locked open in an animal snarl; and his back was arched in agony. I wondered if he'd tried to write anything on the ground beside him, but if he had, it was no longer readable. That would be so like Chris, sending messages that nobody else understood.
It was hard to think though that from this body and inside this head had once come wonderful messages. This stinking ugly body had once written "Stars love clear sky. They shine."
Beside me Robyn had stopped wailing and was now on her knees, sobbing quietly. The others were still behind me. I don't know what they were doing, just watching, silently I think, too shocked to move. I looked over at the wrecked car. It was easy to see what had happened. It was the Ford four-wheel drive that I'd thought was safely hidden on Tailor's Stitch. It had tipped on the slope beside the dam. It had slid downhill as it rolled. Half a dozen cartons of grog had spilled across the ground. Broken bottles and empty boxes were scattered everywhere. Some of the bottles still looked intact. I couldn't help thinking what a stupid thing it was to die for. And I couldn't help wondering what figure Chris would have blown in a breathalyser when he took that short cut across the paddocks.
It seemed like every time we came back from a major hit against the enemy we lost one of our friends. Only this time the enemy hadn't had anything to do with it. Not directly, that is. And Chris had been dead quite a while before we'd gone and attacked Turner Street. A lot of things had killed Chris. Us leaving him alone in Hell was one of them.
We stood there some time without saying anything. Surprisingly, without being surprising, it was Robyn who at last took charge. She walked back to the Land Rover and returned with a blanket. She still hadn't said a word. She spread the blanket out beside Chris and began to roll him onto it. She sobbed and hiccuped as she worked. A constant shaking, like a wind, was blowing through her, and made it hard for her to do it neatly, but she wrapped him up quite firmly, not gently or nervously like I would have done. But her actions, so deliberate, caused us to start to move. We gathered around the body and helped Robyn finish her task, wrapping Chris securely, tucking the blanket in at his head and feet. Then with Fi holding a torch to light our way, Robyn and Homer and Lee and I took a corner each and carried Chris back to the Landie. We made room in the back and dragged him in, clumsily, knocking and banging him around, although we were trying our best. We were just too tired. Then we got in the car, wound the windows down because of the smell, and drove on. No one had said a word. We hadn't even discussed what to do with the body of our friend.
* * *
Epilogue
We haven't left Hell for about a month now. It's hard to be sure exactly—I've lost my sense of time a bit. I don't have a clue what day it is, for instance, and I wouldn't know the date to the nearest week.
It's cold, I know that much.
The planes and helicopters kept coming over every day after we got back. I think they suspect we're hiding up in these mountains, because the choppers seemed to spend a lot of time patiently searching, moving slowly backwards and forwards, like giant dragonflies. It was hard on us. We had to be very sure that everything was concealed from the air and we had to keep under cover all day. It's been OK the last week or so though. I can't remember exactly when the last one came over. It gives me quite a thrill to think what damage we must have caused in Wirrawee that night. A thrill that's three-quarters fear, but definitely a thrill.
But we may have had one failure. I didn't realise until Homer said something yesterday that there were no vehicles parked in Turner Street when he snuck across it to get to the house he tried to blow up. As far as he can remember, anyway, but he says he's pretty sure. That leaves just a little doubt in my mind about Major Harvey. The Range Rover had been sitting in Turner Street when I left the church. I did want to get Harvey, and at the moment there's no way we can check whether we did or not.
We brought back some fresh batteries, so we've been able to listen to the radio a bit more. Things have bogged down a bit in most areas. We don't seem to have l
ost any more ground, but we haven't won any back either; and in lots of the best farmland, like our district, they seem pretty confident. The radio says a hundred thousand new settlers have moved in and there's heaps more with their bags packed, just waiting to come. The Americans don't talk about us much on their news now, but they've given us a fair bit in the way of money and equipment. Planes in particular. They send all the stuff to New Zealand—that's where everything's being organised.
The Kiwis have been pretty gutsy. They've sent landing forces over and they've fought hard in three different places, and they've won back some important areas, like Newington, where there's a big Air Force base. They haven't been near us though. The only action around here was at Cobbler's Bay. We heard a lot of planes go over three nights ago and Lee and Robyn both thought they could hear bombs way in the distance. In the morning, when I snuck up to Tailor's to take a look, there was a lot of smoke hanging over Cobbler's. So that was good.
It's not over yet, that's how I look at it.
I guess we'll have to try to help out again soon, too. I hate the thought, but there's no choice really. It's going to scare the crap out of me, because it's going to be so much harder. I hate to think what changes we'll find. More colonists and tougher security, for two. It's a worry.
Last night was the first time anyone mentioned it. Lee said, "When we go out again we should have a crack at Cobbler's ourselves."
No one else said anything. We were all eating and we just kept our heads down, shovelling the food in. But I know what it's like. One cockatoo takes off from a tree, and suddenly the air's full of white birds. Lee just became the first cockatoo.
Lee and I are like an old married couple these days. We're so used to each other, I guess. We're good mates. But we're not like an old married couple in some ways—I like my space too much for that. I prefer sleeping alone—not that I sleep much. I'd feel a bit suffocated sleeping with someone every night. But we've made love five times now. It's nice. I like the way my body starts off feeling tingly and excited in one spot and then gradually it spreads and spreads until I'm freaking out all over. The only worry is those condoms. They're not that reliable; ninety-something per cent I think. When this is all over I sure don't want to roll up to Mum and Dad and hand them a baby. And another thing, I don't know what we'll do when Lee's supply runs out. There's only four left.
Maybe that's the'real reason he wants us to take another trip out of Hell.
Fi told me this morning that she wants to do it with Homer, which had me choking on my Cornies. I never thought Fi would be game. I think it's more that she's jealous of Lee and me maybe, because she and Homer really don't have that kind of relationship any more. But there's not a wide choice of partners down here. And she's not having Lee.
The only other thing I have to write to bring this up to date is about Chris. And what I put won't be very logical. I'm so mixed up in my feelings about it all. We brought him down here and buried him in a nice spot: a hollow between some big rocks, about halfway between our tents and the spot where the creek runs into the bush. There was a soft piece of green grass there, almost like turf. Of course when we started digging we found that the softness didn't go far down. It was just a surface softness. Inside was all hard and rocky. In the end it took us three days to dig the deep hole that we wanted. We weren't too organised about it. Whenever we felt in the mood we'd wander over and do a bit more. We put him in there at dusk and covered him up straightaway. That was the worst part. That was just awful. I still get weepy when I think about it. When it was filled in we stood around for a minute or two but no one seemed to know what to say, so after a while we drifted away to our private spots, to sit on our own and think. We weren't able to do for our friend what we'd been able to do for the soldier we'd thrown in the gully in the Holloway Valley.
There's always a flower or two on the grave though. Every time anyone goes for a walk they bring one back and stick it there. The problem then is to keep our last lamb from eating it.
It makes me wonder if the Hermit's body is here somewhere in Hell too. It'd be funny if they were both here, because I think they were probably alike in some ways.
Anyway, that's not the illogical part. The illogical part is the way I feel about it all. About Chris. I miss him and I feel terrible that he died like that and it seems so unfair and such a waste. But I feel other things too, guilt especially. Guilt that we left him on his own, that we didn't try harder. When he was in one of his moods we usually gave up and didn't make an effort to humour him out of it. I think we should have done more. And I feel angry, angry at him. Angry that he was so weak and didn't try harder. Angry that he was such a genius but didn't do enough with it.
Sometimes you just have to be brave. You have to be strong. Sometimes you just can't give in to weak thoughts. You have to beat down those devils that get inside your head and try to make you panic. You struggle along, putting one foot a little bit ahead of the other, hoping that when you go backwards it won't be too far backwards, so that when you start going forwards again you won't have too much to catch up.
That's what I've learned.
There's a rustle in the grass to the left of my tent. Some little night creature, probably hoping to raid our food. Same as us, I think, searching around the countryside, trying to avoid the predators, just finding enough to keep ourselves going. I can hear Homer snoring, Fi calling out in her sleep, Lee wriggling into a new position, Robyn breathing steadily. I love these four people. And that's why I feel bad about Chris. I didn't love him enough.
They will carry me to the field
Through the wreaths of mist
Moist on my face,
And the lamb will pause
For a thoughtful stare.
The soldiers, they will come.
They will lay me in the dark cold earth
And push the clods in upon my face.
* * *