by John Marsden
There were four bedrooms and a bathroom and a sewing room. Each of the kids had a bedroom. Occasionally as we slipped from one to the next we heard more noise from downstairs. There were shouts, laughter, even, once, breaking bottles. They had occupied the house and were enjoying themselves. I was sure they were getting well and truly into the grog supply.
I just wished I knew what they had done with the Youngs, and I had the worst fears about that.
We ended up in Alastair’s room. He had a poster of Terri Boswell on the wall, and a few photos of her on his cupboard, and more sports equipment than I’ve seen outside a branch of Rebel Sport. Apart from that and the basic bed, desk and dressing table, there wasn’t much else. It was such a boy’s room.
‘So, what do you think?’ I asked Homer as we crouched in a corner.
I’d been thinking desperately and hadn’t come up with the beginning of a plan. But I knew we had to act fast, because if the Youngs were still alive, we had to get to them soon. Their chances would be lower with each minute that passed.
Homer pulled out his phone. ‘Call the cops,’ he said.
‘Oh yeah!’
It seemed so obvious. But I was really startled. For so long we’d lived in a world where police did not exist. I’d gotten out of the habit of thinking of the police: I was used to a life where either you solved your own problems or you died. I rather liked the idea of handing this over to the cops.
I should have known it was optimistic though. No sooner had I said ‘Oh yeah’ than I heard someone coming up the stairs. I made a face at Homer. He went white and put the phone away. I made the same face at Gavin but there was no need – he was always so quick to pick up on what was happening.
I grabbed Alastair’s cricket bat and Homer and Gavin each took a stump. We tiptoed to the door. Homer took one side of it, with Gavin behind him, and I took the other. I had the wardrobe behind me, which wasn’t so good as I wouldn’t be able to get a good swing.
The footsteps outside sounded confident. And they sounded like they were coming straight towards Alas-tair’s room. I had the horrible feeling that it might be Alastair and we were about to knock him into another dimension, but the steps sounded too old and heavy for Alastair.
The handle turned. I have no idea why an enemy soldier was coming into this room, unless he’d suddenly decided on a game of cricket with his mates, but he didn’t hesitate. The door opened and he started to enter. Homer took a swing straight away, before the man was right inside, which was a mistake as it gave him an opportunity to back out again. Nevertheless Homer got him across the forehead, with a hell of a crack. The man put his hands to his face and staggered backwards. Blood spurted between his fingers. But now he was out in the corridor again. He was having trouble standing but he let out a noise, a sort of cry and yell at the same time. I’d followed him but I couldn’t stop him doing that. There wasn’t time for much of a backswing there either, but I belted him as hard as I could, on the top of his head. There was a terrible clunking noise, like I’d hit a solid rock. His eyes rolled and his mouth opened and he dropped to his knees. Homer hit him again with a full backswing, this time to the side of his head. The whole thing was pretty disgusting. I hauled off Gavin, who was sneaking round to my other side so he could have a go. Gavin had been corrupted by the war enough already; I didn’t want him to get even worse.
The man fell sideways and lay on the carpet. Blood poured from his scalp. You could see the stain, the lake, quickly spreading across the carpet. His eyes were now closed.
We waited anxiously, watching over the stair railing, to see if anyone had heard. The door downstairs was still shut, so that was in our favour. But I saw it open again. I darted back. I heard a man’s voice, in a foreign language, calling out what sounded like a name. And he was aiming his voice right up to us.
‘Oh geez,’ I thought. ‘He’s calling for his mate.’ The same mate who was lying on the floor to my left, bleeding so freely that the carpet was already wet and soggy.
I glanced at Homer. He’d picked up my cricket bat and was on the other side of the stairwell. It seemed like a huge gulf suddenly stretched between us. We all retreated a bit, Homer towards Shannon’s room, Gavin and I towards the door of Alastair’s room. A floorboard creaked under me and I shuddered at the sound. The man called again. This time he seemed puzzled.
Still going backwards I got a better idea. On hands and knees I scuttled back to the unconscious body. I knelt beside him and checked his pocket, the one I could reach. Just a packet of cigarettes and some coins. I tried to roll him over. He let out a low groan. Gavin helped me. I glimpsed the triumph in his face as we saw, at the same time, a big bulge in the left pocket. Either this guy was glad to see . . . but no. He was unconscious. It had to be a gun.
I worked it out of the pocket. I wasn’t sure if the man downstairs had heard the groan. But I had to assume the worst. I mightn’t have much time. Thank God the war had taught me how to use a hand gun. It was all right for Gavin to think our troubles were over, now that I had a revolver, but it wasn’t that easy. I didn’t know if the thing was loaded, let alone how many bullets were in it, how many enemy soldiers were down there, whether the gun even worked.
Homer was next to the hall cupboard again. Gavin had retreated to the doorway of Alastair’s bedroom. I thought I heard a creak, a step, on the staircase. I gestured for Homer to go into the closet and Gavin into the bedroom. Neither boy moved. I heard another sound from the staircase. I gestured at the two boys again, furiously, and this time they seemed to take some notice.
I couldn’t waste any more time on them. I had to know about the revolver, whether it was loaded or not. I pulled back the slide as quietly as I could, and felt relieved to see the dull gleam of the shiny little metal cap. But the noise as I closed it again sounded like a car door slamming. I glanced up. The man was almost there already. I could see the top of his head. He didn’t seem too suspicious yet – he was just walking up the stairs. Well, he was about to become suspicious as hell. If only we’d had time to move the body. But the patch of blood would have been there. Anyway, the whole war was full of ‘if onlys’. Couldn’t think about them, not now.
I was crouched over the body when the man reached the top of the stairs. He looked to his left first. Luckily Homer had disappeared. It gave me time to see that the man had a gun in his hand. I had been thinking of something like ‘Put your hands up’. Now I decided I’d say ‘Drop your gun’. But as he turned towards me and I tried to speak, I couldn’t. The words stuck in my throat. My throat felt like a rusted-up hinge. And I had no WD40. I knew no sounds would be coming out of there.
I saw the light of understanding flame in the man’s eyes. Understanding and fear. He started to leap to his lef t. He didn’t have much room to move. He raised his revolver.
That’s when I shot him. I didn’t mean to shoot more than once, because I knew I might need every bullet in the magazine, assuming there were any bullets in the magazine, but my finger kind of spasmed and I let off two shots before I could get control again.
The guy spun around to his left, almost a complete revolution. His mouth opened but his eyes seemed to open even wider. He fell backwards, landing on the top couple of steps. His knees were sticking up and they stopped him from sliding down the staircase. His head suddenly fell to the left and the life went out of him. You could see it go.
I was still frozen, still kneeling on the carpet. I think I would have stayed there half an hour but Gavin burst out from Alastair’s bedroom and grabbed me by the shoulder. I’m sure he heard the shots.
At the same time the door of the room below opened, and a cacophony of voices flooded out. There were shouts directed upstairs and a scrabble of boots across the polished floor. I assumed they were calling to the two missing men. I suppose at that stage they didn’t know whether the shots had been fired in error, from one of their friend’s guns, or whether someone like me was in the house and cutting loose.
When no-on
e answered their calls they figured out that things were not going according to their script.
By then Gavin and I had moved quickly, as quietly as we could, down the corridor. We were outside Homer’s closet. I opened the door a little and whispered, ‘They’re coming, we’ll go in Sam’s room,’ and closed the door again. We went on a few steps. We were now opposite the bedroom. I pushed Gavin in there and I stood in the doorway, trying to keep him behind me, and at the same time keeping a watch down the corridor.
Now I had time to check the magazine and the chamber. Three rounds. Sheez. It sounded like at least three men were coming up the stairs. But the revolver was all we had. Suddenly those other little weapons, the cricket bat and stumps, seemed a waste of time.
CHAPTER 21
A LONG WAIT followed, maybe four minutes. I heard a murmur of voices at one stage: I think when they saw their dead buddy lying on the top steps. I knew they were still making their way up the stairs though. I heard occasional whispered comments, and the slow ‘urrrhhh’ noise of a step as the weight was gradually taken off it.
A head suddenly appeared, almost at floor level, looking along the corridor both ways then quickly withdrawing. It was like a tortoise sticking out its neck, but just for a moment. It happened at a speed no tortoise would have recognised. I was left wondering if I’d imagined it.
I didn’t think he’d seen me. I eased back a little further into the doorway. Gavin prodded me. ‘What?’ he asked, with a whisper. It intrigued me that a deaf kid was so good at whispering and moving quietly. Maybe he’d learned it during the war.
‘One soldier,’ I mouthed back, holding up a finger.
‘One?’
‘I saw one. There are more.’
I took another peep. Lucky I did. I was just in time to see a guy dart across the corridor, crouching low. He went straight into the main bedroom. Another one dashed across almost immediately afterwards. He seemed to be covering the first man. They were both inside the bedroom now. I heard shouts from in there. It seemed like the classic stuff, straight from the manual of how to enter a room which could be full of people with guns.
Sweat was pouring off me, and I mean pouring. I thought my shoes would squelch if I tried to move. I was having trouble seeing through my wet eyelids, wet hair. I shook my head. I tried to control my sweating by a simple act of will. Could I turn it off just with the power of my mind?
I kept peeping. The two men came out of the bedroom. At the same time another guy joined them at the top of the stairs. One guarded the left-hand side, facing my way, the other the right-hand side, towards Alastair’s bedroom, the third knelt by the guy we’d whacked with the cricket stuff. If they were drunk, it wasn’t showing. Maybe fear sobers you up pretty fast.
I didn’t dare peep anymore for a while because of the man looking our way. Instead I glanced back at the window, wishing it were open, like the ones we’d seen from the tank. I wondered what we could do if and when they came for us. Could Gavin and I leap through the glass? A spectacular head-first dive? I nodded at Gavin and then at the windows and I think he got the idea. I left him to try to get them open and had another sneak look out the door.
This time I got down low to do it. As I extended my head a few centimetres I heard a crash. I dared the snatched glance which was all I could allow. One of them was bouncing out of the door of Alastair’s bedroom looking bloody scary; I think another was just behind him. The third was getting up from where he’d been kneeling beside the guy we’d hit. Something about the way he moved made me think that his unconscious friend wasn’t going anywhere for a long time. Or to put it another way, he had already left for a long journey.
And I figured that while one was doing the quick medical inspection the other two had checked out Alas-tair’s room and found it empty. Now they knew we were down this end of the corridor.
I heard a longish squeak behind me. I whirled around and gestured at Gavin. He was trying as hard as he could, but the window was stiff and difficult. I waved him away; it was too dangerous.
I had to look again. The men might be right outside the door and about to burst in to the room. I pointed Gavin towards the bed and made wild hand movements to tell him to go under it, but I didn’t have time to see if he obeyed.
I lined up with the frame of the door and slowly let myself lean out. My flesh crawled. I saw only one of them and he was all of three metres away. I shrunk back in to the room. I ran on soft feet to the bed and took a position on the other side. It had come to a shootout then. I’d get one of them for sure, and maybe a second one if I were lucky, and I generally had been lucky since the war started. But the third one would get me and then Gavin. Homer would have to take his chances, would have to look after himself.
Suddenly one of them flashed past the door. I knew what he was doing. I could see it in my mind so clearly. He would now be standing on the other side of the doorframe, gun held high, waiting for his mates to take up their positions before two of them burst in, with the third backing them up.
As I saw it happen in my mind, so it happened in real life. Two of them, guns ready, appeared in the doorway, gazing into a room that to them looked empty.
And in the next second, the next instant, they swung around instead.
I heard it too, the sound that had distracted them. The telephone ringing. The mobile telephone. It played ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’. It was Homer’s mobile phone. And as they both, with a single movement, like they were choreographed, pointed their hand guns at the cupboard door in order to riddle it and Homer with bullets, I shot them both in the back.
It was the perfect accidental ambush. I saved Homer’s ass. He maybe didn’t deserve it, but I saved him. And Gavin’s ass, and mine with it.
The third guy took off. I heard him leaping down the stairs three, four at a time. I felt too weak to follow him. A door banged. Suddenly the house was silent. From the window Gavin must have seen him because he suddenly called, ‘Ellie, shoot him.’
He pointed down into the yard. I had a bullet left but I wasn’t going to use it. A moment later I heard a vehicle start up and take off. They must have hidden it nearby.
I stepped over the bodies, getting blood on my shoes from the pools that were already puddling on the corridor floor. I opened Homer’s door, being careful to warn him in advance: ‘It’s me. Don’t smash my head in.’
I’d got that right. He had a golf club at the ready.
We went downstairs.
We found Shannon first. She was in the sitting room, tied up, not in good shape. Homer saw her, went white, looked away, folded his arms. I was angry with him, not for any logical reason. I said, ‘I’ll look after her. Go find the others.’ He muttered something I didn’t hear, and skittered out of there, collecting Gavin on the way.
I undid Shannon. She rolled onto her side and covered her face. ‘It’s OK,’ I said, one of those meaningless remarks, not at all true, and not much better than ‘You’ll get over it’, or ‘I know just how you feel’. At least I didn’t say those things.
I wondered what I would feel in that situation and what I’d want done for me if an Ellie-type person dropped in out of the blue, so I ran to the kitchen, got a big bowl, filled it with warm water, picked up some face flannels and towels and soap from the bathroom, and hurried back.
I was getting worried that I hadn’t heard from Homer about Shannon’s parents and brothers. ‘Oh God, please don’t let them be dead,’ I prayed as I knelt beside her.
I cleaned her up and dried her, as gently as I could. There was a bit of blood but I couldn’t see much sign of injury. Physical injury, that is. Then Mrs Young rushed in, pretty much hysterical, as you would be, but that didn’t worry Shannon, although she hadn’t said anything yet. They hugged and hugged. Once I realised I couldn’t do any more, I went out.
When Homer told me that the other Youngs were OK – he’d found them in the basement – the thought went through my mind: ‘That’s what I prayed for. There is a God!’
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br /> But then I figured ‘If there is a God, why did he put them through that in the first place? And in particular, why did he put Shannon through what she suffered?’ It’s like, if one survivor gets pulled out of a coalmine three days after it’s collapsed, trapping a hundred blokes, everyone shouts, ‘God be praised,’ but you’ve got to ask, ‘What was God thinking to have buried the other ninety-nine?’
Homer had called the ambos and the cops already. His mobile had been pretty useful, all things considered.
Once I knew they were on their way, I headed for the open air.
Open air feels good sometimes. I sat gazing at the big machinery shed, wondering who’d called Homer on his mobile at the critical moment. Maybe that was God, using the Royal Telephone.
CHAPTER 22
DURING THE WAR no-one held us to account for the stuff we’d done. That figured. Back then there wasn’t anyone around asking us to fill in forms. Now I found that things had changed a lot. The three of us were at the house for hours, answering questions in between turning down multiple offers of counselling. Finally I chucked a bit of a tantrum and told them we were tired and had done enough for one day and they suddenly reversed direction. Next thing we were on our way home in a police car.
It took a long time to get Gavin to bed. He reminded me of the cow who’d been on Ecstasy. I just hoped he survived it as well as she had. She was in great shape. But Gavin was like a puppy on Ecstasy, jumping around, running around, zigzagging through the house. He broke a cup and a pot-plant holder. It was only when he fell against the window beside the front door and cracked it that he calmed down a bit, and that was only because I got so mad at him. I didn’t want my parents’ house trashed as soon as I took it over. I felt every break, every bit of damage as a failure on my part.