by John Marsden
THE TOMORROW SERIES
JOHN
MARSDEN
THE DEAD
OF THE
NIGHT
PAN
Pan Macmillan Australia
John Marsden’s website can be visited at:
www.johnmarsden.com.au
First published 1994 in Macmillan Hardback by Macmillan Publishers Australia
This Pan edition published 1995 by Pan Macmillan Australia
1 Market Street
, Sydney
Reprinted 1995 (twice), 1996 (three times), 1997 (four times), 1998 (twice),
1999 (six times), 2000 (four times), 2001 (twice), 2002, 2003 (twice), 2004, 2005 (twice), 2006, 2007, 2008
Copyright © JLM Pty Ltd 1994
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
National Library of Australia
cataloguing-in-publication data:
Marsden, John, 1950-.
The dead of the night.
ISBN 978-0-330-35647-3.
I. Title.
A823.3
Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group
The characters and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Papers used by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
To my brother Sam, a loved and loving man.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to: Sean McSullea, Rosalind Alexander, Melanie Smith, Laurie Jacob, Jessica Russell, John Welford, Rob Wingad, Charlotte Austin, Eric Rolls, Gabrielle Farran, Mary Edmonston, Felicity Robb, Frank Austin, Rachel O’Connor, and apologies to those whose names I’ve forgotten, or didn’t record.
Chapter One
Damn this writing. I’d rather sleep. God how I’d love to sleep. But I can’t. It’s been a long time since I had a peaceful night’s sleep. Not since I went to Hell. Since I went to that complicated place called Hell.
When I get a chance to lie down I try everything. I count Border Leicesters, Merinos, Corriedales, South Suffolks. I think about my parents. I think about Lee. I think about Corrie and Kevin and all my other friends. I think a lot about Chris. Sometimes I try closing my eyes hard and ordering myself to go to sleep, and when that doesn’t work I order myself to stay awake. Reverse psychology.
I read a lot, when there’s daylight left, or when I think it’s worth wasting a bit more of the batteries. After a while my eyes get tired and heavy, and I move to turn off the torch or put down the book. And that little movement so often jerks me back into consciousness. It’s like I go all the way down the corridor of sleep, and just as I get to the door, it slams in my face.
So I’ve started writing again. It passes the time. No, I’ll be honest, it does more than that. It gets stuff out of my head and heart and puts it on paper. That doesn’t mean it’s no longer in my head and heart. It’s still there. But once I’ve written about it, seems like there’s more room inside me again. More room for other things. I don’t think it helps me get to sleep but it’s better than lying in the tent waiting for sleep to come.
Before, everyone was so keen for me to write. It was going to be our record, our history. We were so excited about getting it all down. Now, I don’t think they care if I do it or not. That’s partly because they didn’t like some of what I wrote last time. I told them I was going to be honest and I was, and they said that was fine, but they weren’t too pleased when they read it. Chris especially.
It’s very dark tonight. Autumn’s creeping through the bush, dropping a few leaves here and there, colouring the blackberries, giving the breeze a sharp touch. It’s cold, and I’m finding it hard to write and keep warm at the same time. I’m crouched inside my sleeping bag like a hunchback, trying to balance the torch, my pen, and the paper without exposing too much skin to the night air.
‘My pen.’ Funny, I wrote that without noticing. ‘The torch’, ‘the paper’, but ‘my pen’. That shows what writing means to me, I guess. My pen is a pipe from my heart to the paper. It’s about the most important thing I own.
Even so, the last writing I did was ages ago, after the night Kevin drove away from us in the dark Mercedes, with Corrie wounded and unconscious in the back seat. I remember thinking afterwards that if I’d had one wish, it would be to know that they’d made it to the Hospital and were well-treated. If I’d had two wishes, it would be to know that my parents were still OK, locked up in the Cattle Pavilion at the Showground. If I’d had three, it’d be for everyone in the world to be OK, including me.
A lot has happened since Kevin and Corrie left. A couple of weeks afterwards, Homer called us together. We were still edgy and maybe it wasn’t a good time for a meeting, but then maybe we’d been sitting around for long enough. I thought we’d be too depressed to talk much, or to make plans, but once again I’d underestimated Homer. He did so much thinking – not that he ever said so himself, but it was obvious from the way he spoke in our meetings. There’d been a time when a thinking Homer would have seemed as likely as a flying platypus, and I was still kind of slow adjusting to the change. But from his words that day, when we gathered again at the creek, it was obvious that he hadn’t stayed in a slump like some of us.
He stood there, leaning against a boulder, his hands pushed into the pockets of his jeans. His dark, serious face was scanning us, his brown eyes resting on each one for a moment, as though considering carefully what he saw. He first looked at Lee, who sat along the creek a few metres, gazing down at the water. Lee had a stick in his hands and was slowly breaking off little pieces, letting the bits drift away with the current. As each bit disappeared into the tumbling gurgling water among the rocks he repeated the process. He didn’t look up, and even if he had, I knew I’d see only sadness in his eyes. I found that almost unbearable. I wished I could drive it away, but I hadn’t figured out how.
Opposite Lee was Chris. He had a notebook on his knees and was writing in it constantly. He seemed to live more in that notebook than he did with us. He didn’t talk to it – well, not out loud – but he slept with it, took it to meals, and guarded it jealously from snoops like me. He was writing mainly poems still, I think. There was a time when he used to show me all his stuff, but he’d been seriously offended by what I’d written about him, and he’d hardly talked to me since. I didn’t think I’d said anything too bad, but that’s not the way he saw it. I’d liked his poems too, even if they baffled me. But I’d liked the sound of the words.
Trucks grumble in the dark cold,
On the road to despair.
There’s no sun, no clouds,
No flags anywhere.
The men walk with bowed heads.
They have no love to spare.
That was one bit I remembered.
Next to me sat Robyn, the strongest person I knew. A funny thing seemed to have happened with Robyn. The longer this terrible thing lasted, the more relaxed she became. Like all of us, she’d been devastated by what happened to Corrie and Kevin, but that hadn’t stopped Robyn getting calmer with each passing day. She smiled a lot. She smiled at me a lot, which I appreciated. Not everybody smiled at me. Robyn was so brave that in the middle of one of our toughest times, driving a truck through a bullet storm at ninety k’s, she’d kept me sane. Left to myself I think I might have pulled over to the slow lane, to let all the enemy vehicles overtake. Or stopped at a pedestrian crossing, to give way to a soldier with a machine gun. I drew a lot of courage from Robyn that night, and other times too. I just hoped I didn’t leave her leeched dry.
Opposite Homer, sitting with her slender feet and her perfect ankles and her ballerina legs dangling in the water, was Fi. She still looked like she’d always done: ready to pour tea for your grandmother, and hand it over in a Royal Doulton cup. Or ready to step onto the cover of a Western Rose clothes catalogue. Ready to break another guy’s heart or make another girl jealous or make your own father go red and laugh and chatter away like he was twenty years younger. Yes, that was Fi: cute, pretty and fragile. That was Fi, walking alone through the dark night looking for enemy patrols, lighting a petrol-soaked fuse to blow up a bridge, riding a motorbike across country in a wild scramble to escape bullets.
I’d been awfully wrong about Fi.
And I still hadn’t got her figured out. After we’d blown up the bridge she’d been giggling, saying, ‘I can’t believe I did that! Let’s do some more!’ After Kevin drove away with Corrie unconscious in the back seat she cried for a week.
More than anyone, it was Fi who was hurt by what I’d written about our experiences. Chris had been angriest, but Fi had been hurt. She said I’d broken confidences, made her and Homer sound like dorks, like children, and that I’d cheated her by not telling her how I felt about Homer. I know what I wrote had a bad effect on their relationship. They got really self-conscious with each other, really awkward. I should have realised that would happen. I dumbed out.
Homer had been upset too, although he hadn’t said anything directly to me. That was a bad sign, because we’d always been able to talk so easily. But he’d become self-conscious with me too. If we found ourselves alone together he mumbled some excuse and quickly went off somewhere else. I was very upset about that, maybe even more upset than I was about Fi.
Oh, the power of the written word.
But things had improved again. In such a small group we couldn’t stay enemies for long. We needed each other too badly. Half the problem, I think, was that we were tired, and strained like wire in a new fence, so we twanged at any little thing that happened. I just desperately wished for everything to get back to what it had been. Only Lee and Robyn had been pretty much unaffected by what I’d written. They treated me the same all the way through. My problem with Lee was different – it was how he kept disappearing inside himself, fading away in front of my eyes. It was getting harder to get him back when that happened.
Well, we started our meeting, though I don’t know why I call them meetings. They were much less formal than that. Although Homer seemed to run them most of the time, we were all pretty equal and we said what we wanted.
But this was our slowest start. It was obvious that Homer was the only one with much to say. And he seemed nervous. It was a while before he pulled the choke out. We didn’t help much, gazing into the creek as he talked, Lee still breaking bits off his stick, Chris still writing in his notebook. I was scratching at a rock with a bit of bone, but not making any great impression.
‘Guys, it’s time we got our brains back into gear. We can either sit here and wait for something to happen to us, or we can get out and make things happen. We can either be like Lee’s bits of wood, getting chucked around and battered and drowned by the creek, or we can get in and redesign the creek, rip the rocks out of it till there’s no more rapids. The longer we wait, the harder it’ll get, and the more danger we’ll be in. I know sometimes everything’s seemed a big mess. We’re all way out of our league, but at the same time, we’ve got to remember, we haven’t done that badly. We knocked off a few soldiers, got Lee out of town when he had a bullet wound, then blew up the whole damn bridge. For a bunch of amateurs, that’s worth a few points.
‘I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve been sitting around here feeling depressed, only that’s not going to get us anywhere. I think it’s the shock of losing Corrie and Kevin, right at the moment when the four of us were coming back feeling so up and proud and happy. Wrecking the bridge felt good, and it was a shock to go straight from that into a disaster. It’s no wonder we all feel sick and unhappy and angry. It’s no wonder we’ve all been biting each other’s heads off, though there’s no logical reason why we should. The fact is, no one’s made any terrible blunders. We’ve made mistakes, but nothing worth slashing wrists over. Corrie getting shot – no one could have picked that. We’ll never be able to cut out all risks. The way Kevin told it, these turkeys just came from nowhere. We can’t protect ourselves from all possible attacks, twenty-four hours a day.
‘Anyway.’ Homer shook his head. He looked tired, and sad. ‘That’s not what I wanted to talk about. We’ve all thrashed these things out among ourselves often enough since it happened. I want to talk about the future. And by that, I don’t mean we forget the past. No way. In fact, one of the things I want to say will show that, but I’ll come to it. First, I want to tell you what I’ve been thinking about most. And that’s courage. Guts. That’s what I’ve been thinking about.’
He squatted, and picked up a dry old twig and started chewing on it. He was looking down at the ground, and even though you could see he was self-conscious, he kept talking. More quietly but with a lot of feeling.
‘Maybe this stuff is obvious to everyone else. Maybe you all figured it out when you were knee-high to grasshoppers, and I’m just struggling along in the distance trying to catch up. But you know, it’s only occurred to me the last week or so how this courage business works. It’s all in your head. You’re not born with it, you don’t learn it in school, you don’t get it out of a book. It’s a way of thinking, that’s what it is. It’s something you train your mind to do. I’ve just started to realise that. When something happens, something that could be dangerous, your mind can go crazy with fear. It starts galloping into wild territory, into the bush. It sees snakes and crocodiles and men with machine guns. That’s your imagination. And your imagination’s not doing you any favours when it pulls those stunts. What you have to do is to put a bridle on it, rein it in. It’s a mind game. You’ve got to be strict with your own head. Being brave is a choice you make. You’ve got to say to yourself: I’m going to think brave. I refuse to think fear or panic.’
Homer, pale-faced and eager to convince us, was talking earnestly at the ground, only glancing up occasionally.
‘We’ve spun our wheels for weeks. We’ve been upset and we’ve been scared. It’s time for us to take charge of our heads again, to be brave, to do the things we have to do. That’s the only way we can hold our heads up, walk proud. We’ve got to block out those thoughts of bullets and blood and pain. What happens, happens. But every time we panic, we weaken ourselves. Every time we think brave, we make ourselves stronger.
‘There’s a few things we ought to be doing. We’re heading into autumn; the days are getting shorter already, and the nights are sure as hell colder. We’ve got to keep building up our food supplies, stockpiling for winter. Come spring we can plant a lot more vegetables and stuff. We need more livestock, and we have to work out what’s practical to keep down here, given that there’s no pasture. We’ve got enough warm clothes, and we’ll never run out of firewood, even th
ough it’s not easy to get sometimes. But they’re only the basic things, the survival things. What I’m talking about is not just hiding in here like a snake in a log but getting out and acting with courage. And there’s two things in particular I think we should do. One is to go and find some other people. There’s got to be other groups like us, and all those radio reports keep talking about guerilla activity, and resistance in the occupied areas. We should try to link up with them and work together. We’re operating in such ignorance: we don’t know where anything is or what’s happening or what we should be doing.
‘But before we go looking for them I want to look for someone else. I think we should go find Kevin and Corrie.’
To anyone watching (I hope there wasn’t anyone) it must have resembled an outdoors ballet class. We all slowly began to unfurl and turn towards Homer. Lee dropped his piece of wood. Chris put down his pad and pen and stretched out. I stood and moved to a higher rock. Find Kevin and Corrie? Of course. The idea infused us with hope and excitement and boldness. None of us had thought anything about it because it had seemed impossible. But Homer’s saying it had brought it within the realms of possibility, till suddenly it seemed like the only thing to do. In fact, his saying it made it seem so possible that it was almost as if it had happened already. That was the power of the spoken word. Homer had put us back on our feet and got us dancing again. Words began to pour from all of us. No one doubted that we should do it. For once there was no argument, no debate about the morality of it. All the talk was about how, not whether.
Suddenly we’d forgotten about food and livestock and firewood. All we could think about was Corrie and Kevin. We realised that we might actually be able to do something about them. I felt stupid that it hadn’t occurred to us before.