by John Marsden
‘Not that long,’ Homer said.
‘Yes, that long,’ I answered him. ‘And we can get longer.’
I glanced at the line of thick cloud away on the horizon. ‘What I’m thinking is, if we carry all the bodies down into Hell and bury them, and if that cloud brings a good shower, we could make a big difference. If the rain washes away the blood and stuff, and wipes out our scent – I’m saying that in case they bring dogs up here – then what have they got? A few thousand square kilometres of mountains and somewhere in them an entire patrol disappears without a trace.’ I tried to laugh. ‘It could become the great mystery of the war. It might start rumours. Like the Marie Celeste. In years to come people might refuse to come up here in case it’s haunted. It’ll be the Bermuda Triangle on land. That’d be excellent for us.’
They had listened in silence, and the silence continued after I’d finished.
Finally Homer said, ‘That sounds fair enough. But I think we should call New Zealand and give them an idea of what’s happened. They might have some advice.’
We were all keen to do that, again more for the reassurance of adult support.
We went back to where I’d hidden the radio and pulled it out. When we made contact it was with the same woman.
‘We’ve had a big problem,’ I said. ‘We’ve been attacked. I don’t think this is safe any more. We’re not sure what to do from here. Or where to go. Over.’
She just said, very crisply, ‘Can you call back in thirty?’
‘OK. Over.’
We busied ourselves on the big clean-up, taking the dead soldiers’ packs and rifles to the top of our track and using belts and straps to make a couple of stretchers. We knew that when the sun rose we’d have to pick up the hundreds of empty shells scattered around the landscape.
The clouds were getting closer and looking heavier, so that was one good thing.
We’d barely started the stretchers before it was time to call New Zealand again. The voice that came out of the radio receiver was a big surprise.
‘Good morning Ellie,’ Colonel Finley said.
Everyone crowded around the set. We were very excited to hear the man who had such a big impact whenever he entered our lives.
‘Oh, Colonel Finley, we’re glad to hear your voice. We’ve had a lot of trouble. We nearly got caught by a patrol. I think they knew roughly where we were hiding. We had a full-on battle. Over.’
‘Any casualties?’ That was unusual, Colonel Finley asking about our health before anything else.
‘Not on our side. Total casualties on theirs.’
‘How many? Over.’
‘Eight. Over.’
There was a couple of seconds of crackle: thinking time I guess. Somehow I felt my answer had been important. I think maybe the knowledge that we had taken out a patrol of eight soldiers convinced Colonel Finley yet again that we were seriously successful at what we were doing; we weren’t just kids who got lucky once in a while.
‘Do you think you’ll be safe for another twenty-four hours?’
‘Yes. We’re taking steps now that we think will give us three days, maybe longer. Over.’
Now his voice came back swiftly, decisive and firm again.
‘All right. Call me at 2100 your time tonight. Things are getting interesting over there. And I may have some news for you.’
With that mysterious comment he cut us off.
We looked at each other, wondering what he might mean. But there wasn’t time to discuss it. We had a lot of hard work ahead. Homer and I finished the stretchers, while the other four took all the stuff they could carry down into Hell. Fi stayed there to start digging a mass grave. Gavin woke the other kids, who had managed to fall asleep in spite of the gunshots echoing around on the ridge. He brought them up to Tailor’s Stitch, so they could start picking up the empty shells. Most of them could be seen, glinting in the moonlight, but we’d have to check and recheck that we’d found them all.
That left Homer and Lee and Kevin and me to do the gory disgusting job of collecting the bodies and carrying them down the track, on our rough bush stretchers. It wasn’t the first time we’d carried a body into Hell but it wasn’t an experience I wanted to have too often.
We started a couple of hours before dawn, knowing we needed to clean up the whole place before first light. If they sent helicopters over, the evidence had to be well and truly gone, and we had to be out of sight.
The clouds rolled in fast, and we found ourselves in a white-out. It wasn’t raining but the light moisture of the mist sprinkled our face, and before long my skin and clothes were quite damp. I kept pushing my wet hair back from my face. The weather wasn’t much help – it would stop helicopters but it wouldn’t wash away the blood. And the dampness made the rocks slippery, which was quite dangerous, as the stretchers were heavy and some of the downhill sections going into Hell are pretty steep.
It was a horrible few hours. When I remember how in the old days kids played war games on computers as though they were a good fun-filled way to pass the time, I just wish they could have seen us rolling those mutilated bodies onto the stretchers. I never heard of a computer game that included that in its graphics. I wish they could have seen us slipping and swearing and sweating as we negotiated that path, sobbing with weariness and grunting at each other because we were too tired to talk. I wish they could have seen the shallow grave where we left the eight soldiers to rot, under a thin layer of soil and rocks, deep in the bush in an alien country, thousands of kilometres away from their homes and families.
Once again we had killed others so we could stay alive. I was tired of tearing myself apart trying to figure out whether that was OK. Nowadays I just pulled the trigger, justifying it on the grounds that it was human nature to do everything possible to keep yourself alive. And of course we’d accidentally done one thing very right. We’d killed the entire patrol. There were no survivors. That meant no-one could go back to dob us in, and we didn’t have any prisoners to worry about. Long ago in Stratton Lee had pointed out the advantages of a one hundred per cent kill. It was the most cold-blooded thing I’d ever heard, but he was right.
The temperature dropped sharply, and by early afternoon it was really cold for summer. The bulk of the mist had rolled on, but wisps of it still hung around. We finished our work. We’d been able to do a thorough job, with no fear of being seen from the air or the surrounding mountains. We’d even got rid of most of the rocks that were chipped by bullets, chucking the small ones over the edge and rolling the big ones so the damaged side was hidden.
I headed off to bed, stopping only where the others were checking the packs. I watched for a few minutes, but it was a fairly disgusting job. The kids, used to being scavengers from their days of living rough in Stratton, were excited by it. To them it was like a second Christmas, so soon after the first one. It didn’t seem to bother them that we didn’t share their good spirits.
Perhaps it would have been all right if there hadn’t been personal stuff in the packs. But I couldn’t handle the sight of photos and letters and good luck charms. The only good thing was the amount of food, if we could bring ourselves to eat it. The packets of rice and soup and noodles and dried fish were further proof that the soldiers were planning a long stay. It could well mean no-one would come looking for them just yet.
There was some ammunition, although I think they’d used most of it in their fight with us. There were two radios, but very different from our little gadget, and probably not safe for us to use, in case they sent out automatic signals or something. At least they were deep in the packs, so we knew they hadn’t been used to send out calls in the middle of the battle.
The rest seemed to be the usual clothes and stuff.
I chased the kids away. It was like trying to keep flies off a leg of lamb. But once I’d convinced them they weren’t welcome, and then got the food safely stored, I crawled to my tent for a few hours’ sleep.
No luck there
. Casey and Natalie were playing some complicated noisy game with a stack of empty cans, and cooking tools that seemed to be doing rude things to each other. I sighed in frustration and went to one of the boys’ tents instead. At least it was deserted, and peaceful.
I crawled onto a bedroll and put my head on the pack that was there for a pillow. It was awfully uncomfortable and hard. I tried to rearrange the lumpy shape into something better but it was like a cushion of rocks. And it smelt a bit funny too. Curious, I opened the top flap, to see exactly what was stuffed into it.
And I found a little treasure trove.
Ryvitas, cans of salmon, dried apricots, Cup-a-soups, cans of corn, Violet Crumbles, rotting apples: it all came pouring out, over my astonished fingers, in front of my astonished eyes.
‘You mongrel,’ I thought. ‘All that food we were going through too fast ... even the food that went missing on Christmas Day. We’ve been risking our lives going out over Tailor’s Stitch and you had enough to feed us for a week.’
Food-stealing, in the situation we were in, was a major crime. I was furious.
I still didn’t know if it was Gavin’s or Jack’s pillow I was exploring, but I soon found out. There was a shadow at the entrance to the tent; I looked up, and saw a quivering Jack, standing looking at me. A moment later and he was gone, without a sound. It was like he’d been nothing more than a shadow.
Forgetting my tiredness I raced after him. He went like a whippet. Homer, coming along the path, stood in surprise as Jack swerved around him, then, seeing me in hot pursuit, assumed it was some trivial fight, and called after Jack, ‘Go, mate, you can do it.’
Rather than swear at Homer I saved my breath; just glared at him as I brushed past.
Jack was faster than me over the flat, but that’s not saying much: a rabbit with myxo would be faster than me over the flat. But once he started climbing the rocks I caught him easily. He was too short and didn’t have enough reach to get up the steep bits. About a quarter of the way up I got him by the shoulder and wrestled him into a little hollow in the cliff. We lay there glaring at each other.
‘Why’d you steal our food?’ I hissed at him.
He looked away, his lips pressed together like they’d been supaglued.
‘Were you hungry?’ I asked. ‘Didn’t you get enough to eat? Why didn’t you tell us?’
But I knew as soon as I said it that he hadn’t been starving. If he’d been hungry he would have eaten the food as fast as he collected it.
My anger started to fizz out. ‘Why did you do it?’ I said, feeling more helpless than hostile now.
I couldn’t understand Jack. He was such a reserved kid.
He still wouldn’t answer, but I saw his shoulders drop a little, now that my voice wasn’t so angry. His face seemed to relax slightly. I took full advantage and pushed harder.
‘Don’t you realise every time we go outside for food we risk our lives? We could have saved ourselves an entire trip, with the food you’ve got there.’
Now he just looked sulky.
I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I knew I was already sounding like a nagging parent, and if I kept going, I’d sound even more like one. After a while I almost forgot Jack was there. I lay back and studied the sky. The mist had gone but a new front of clouds was blowing in. There was a baa-baa lamb and a moo-cow and a choo-choo train. Was that the way these kids would see them? Or would they see a bomb blast, a smear of blood, a corpse? I tried to imagine the world through Jack’s eyes. It wasn’t easy. All my life adults have been decent to me. Sure, a few teachers got up my nose, and Mr Nelson was a pain in the butt, and my parents could be extremely annoying when they wanted. But nothing bad had ever really happened to me.
Before the war started I’d trusted people. I’d had years of experience at it. Jack, on the other hand, didn’t have a clue. His life before the war sounded pretty crummy. He hadn’t told us heaps about his father or the high-rise flats, but I picked up enough to know that almost everything had been the complete opposite to me. For example, when I was a kid, it never crossed my mind that the next meal mightn’t be on the table. I’d never gone to bed hungry. I had a feeling Jack hadn’t been that lucky.
In the middle of one of our meals he said, ‘We didn’t have anything except chicken noodle soup to eat, for four days once.’ I made some comment about the war being tough on everyone, but he said, ‘No, this was before the war, with my dad.’ Then he realised by the way everyone suddenly looked at him that he was making himself conspicuous, so he shut up fast and got stuck into his roast lamb.
So as I lay there I started to get a feeling for how Jack saw the world. Maybe it had always been him and his father, on their own. As far as he knew, it was going to be him against the world for the rest of his life. At the age of nine that must look like a pretty tough gig.
Solo man, that was Jack. He didn’t trust anyone, probably hadn’t trusted anyone for a long time.
If there was food around, I could imagine how he’d want to get himself a guaranteed supply, a stockpile to keep himself alive. It probably never crossed his mind that he could rely on us to look after him, to feed him, to keep him safe. We didn’t mind doing it, but I guess he thought we had some other agenda, or that we might be here today and gone tomorrow.
I was getting a headache trying to think like Jack, trying to get inside his skull. Feeling more tired and weary than any time since this war started, I got up and held out my hand. He looked at me suspiciously and wouldn’t take it. We walked down the track, Jack following quite a way behind.
As we came into the campsite Homer, who was arm-wrestling Gavin, called out, ‘You got him, huh?’
‘I guess I did.’
‘What did he do?’
I glanced back at Jack, who had stopped dead in his tracks. I knew how much he admired Homer. He was staring at me, and his face was about the colour of some of the corpses we’d buried.
‘He bet me he could beat me up to Chicken Rock,’ I said.
Jack turned and walked away.
My tent was empty now so I had my second attempt at a sleep, on my own bed this time. I actually slept quite heavily. I woke to the best noise I could possibly hear: the steady drumming of rain on the tent fly. Even as I lay there it got louder and harder. There was a bit of wind: the fly stretched and strained, and pulled at the pegs, but nothing we needed to worry about.
Beside me Fi was snoring lightly, and between us Natalie and Casey lay sprawled in their own restless sleep. These days it seemed like they spent more time in our tent than they did in their own. It was musical tents around this place, musical chairs.
I lay back and closed my eyes again.
If Homer hadn’t woken me a few hours later I would have slept through the radio call to Colonel Finley. Homer looked exhausted, and I was angry with myself, and embarrassed, when he told me he’d been up on Tailor’s Stitch the whole time I’d been asleep, keeping watch. He’d taken over from Lee, then come down to get me for the call. I couldn’t believe I’d neglected something so obvious. Your judgement goes straight out the window when you’re tired. Of course we needed sentries: from now on we could never again count on being safe in Hell. All our objections to sentry duty, which we’d gone through when we first sussed out the enemy campsite and their warm fireplace, counted for nothing now.
In fact we would need quite a complicated system of sentries, so that if a patrol came along Tailor’s Stitch the sentry could notify us without exposing themself to danger.
We woke Fi but she didn’t want to come, and Kevin was the same. Lee was already waiting. Grumbling at myself and apologising to Homer I stumbled along behind the two boys, up the path, trying to shake off the weariness but without much success.
I didn’t shake it off until I was at the top of Wombegonoo, and heard Colonel Finley’s calm voice speaking quietly from across the Tasman. He woke me up.
‘Do you still consider you can hold your position safely for another fo
rty-eight hours?’ he asked.
I nodded.
‘Yes,’ Homer said. ‘Over.’
Now that the rain was falling steadily I was quite confident. The bloodstains, and our tracks, would be wiped out. For a hundred years or so, maybe longer, only the Hermit and us had found a way into Hell. I didn’t think that enemy soldiers, not knowing the ways of the bush, would get down into it too quickly. We could hole up there for a while.
‘All right,’ Colonel Finley said. ‘We’re heading into a critical time. I want to ask for your help again. But be aware that I’m talking about active and dangerous service. And I need an affirmative response before I go any further. Over.’
‘You’ve got it,’ Homer said.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to consult among yourselves and call me back in an hour? Or later?’
‘No,’ said Homer. ‘Over.’
For once I didn’t mind Homer making decisions on my behalf. In fact I nodded encouragingly at him. Admittedly we were on shaky ground making these promises while Fi and Kevin were blissfully asleep in Hell, but we knew they wouldn’t go against us.
‘All right. The drop-off point, where you landed when we sent you back from here, is that still secure? Over.’
‘Yes. As far as we know. We haven’t been there for a couple of weeks. Over.’
‘All right. At 0300 tomorrow you can expect a visitor. He’ll be with you for twenty-four hours only. Understood? Over.’
We looked at each other in astonishment. My first thought was that so soon after Christmas we were really getting a Santa Claus. Amazing.
‘OK,’ said Homer.
‘I want you to check the site at 2300 hours tonight and confirm by radio that it is secure. Your date of birth will be the password. Again at 0100 and 0245 you are to confirm that it is secure. Use Ellie’s date of birth, then Lee’s, for those two calls. Understood?’