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Seventeen: Death in the Melaleucas
I made it, I climbed that bloody cliff. After the rock face there had been the great disconnected boulders but they were easier to climb than I had imagined. From the bottom it had looked like hard work, and dangerous, although danger is my middle name, and there were some steep drops in between some of them but really, it was a piece of cake. After jumping and climbing from boulder to boulder I had come to the crumbly rock face of limestone rubble, as I tried to climb the rubble crumbled away but the slope wasn't vertical and I clung on in there, dug my hands and feet into any slight indentation I could find and fought my way up. Next had been the scree, it was like walking on rubbly quicksand, the quicker I went the more I slid around so I slowed right down, put my impatience to one side and got across. After the scree it was steep but the ground was covered in melaleuca trees. This had been child's play, I just climbed from stunted tree to stunted tree. There was then only the final cliff face, this was ten meters high, smooth and deadly, but by now I was thinking that in a past life I must have been a mountain goat and it proved an easy climb.
I reached the top, I was on the Roof. I stretched, took a great gulp of air and then started to sing Oh what a beautiful morning, I don't know why, I'm not exactly a Rodgers and Hammerstein fan. I was doing my superb rendition of songs from Oklahoma when bullets started to zap all around me. I was stunned but not stunned enough to stop me reacting, I ran to the cliff edge and jumped. I hit the ground with a thump and ran into the melaleucas, the ground was steep and I started sliding downwards, I grabbed at a melaleuca branch but it snapped off in my hand. I hit the scree and started sliding faster towards the edge of the steep section of the cliff face, it was so much quicker going down instead of up, below me was a two hundred meter fall to the black rocks that jutted out of the sea. I grabbed a tree root, it broke but it was still anchored into the ground, I went over the cliff but I hung on to that tree root with all the strength I had left and I was able to hang there, well dangle. I slowly pulled my way up to the scree and was climbing back across when a machine gun started to chatter at me. I looked up and there was a Thompson sub machine gun looking at me with a lot of interest.
The Thompson sub machine gun has an interesting story. We've all seen them in the movies, they are the gangster guns, they were also called Tommy guns. Invented by a guy named General John T Thompson in America in 1918, they were used by police and bootleggers in the American prohibition era, they were also known as the Chicago typewriter, the Chicago organ grinder and the Chicago piano. Civilians, soldiers, police and criminals all used them because of their good feel, compactness, you could easily fit one inside a violin case, and the large .45mm bullets that spat out, reliably and at a high volume of fire. The prototype was named the annihilator and that was pretty much how I figured things would pan out for me but the Tommy gun has two weaknesses, it's very heavy and its bullets, although it can spit them out fast, have limited penetration, so if I kept moving and stayed in the trees, I was in there with a chance. And did I move, I dodged and ducked as bullets ate up the ground around me.
My assailants had only one Tommy gun but they had two hands guns, not good, but not as bad as it could have been. They had jumped over the cliff top in my wake and were scurrying about in the melaleucas trying to get a clear shot at me but at the same time, trying to stay on their feet, it was steep up there. One of them let rip with the Tommy gun but it seemed to flip upwards as he fired and he missed me. Not having a great choice of weapons I grabbed a handful of rocks from the scree and threw them, one of my attackers screamed and went down, the others stopped the pursuit to help their wounded comrade. It was then that I was able to stop for air and I saw that I was fighting Kashmere's brothers. Young Stan had been hit with the rocks, Theodore was helping him up and Hugo was firing in my general direction but wasn't really aiming. I hit back with more rocks but it was an uneven contest, I would soon succumb if I didn't think of something. Hugo, the Aryan super hero, began working his way around behind and above me, Theodore picked up the Tommy gun and started firing intermittently in my general direction and Young Stan was slowly working his way towards me, looking pretty unsteady on his feet, but getting closer.
I went for my old plan, it had worked against the Black Shirts so why not now, I charged at my assailants throwing rocks as I careered forward. Theodore couldn't fire as he would hit Young Stan, Hugo had moved out of sight and couldn't get a shot at me either, young Stan held up his gun but stumbled and I had him down and disarmed. I scurried back into the scrub, now armed, but I had a big problem, there was no way I wanted to hurt any of Kashmere's brothers. Young Stan scrambled back to Theodore and Theodore sprayed the world with gun fire to cover him.
'He's got Young Stan's gun!' Theodore called out just as Hugo emerged from the cover of the melaleucas, I sprayed the sky above him with bullets and he dived for cover but he was near the edge of the cliff, in fact he was standing on the scree when he dived and the marble like rocks just gave way under him. He started to slide, I lunged and caught his hand as Theodore ran forward firing all over the place, he also slipped on the scree and, unfortunately for his brother, his gun kept firing and he unintentionally filled Hugo with those little pieces of lead that hurt so much and can prove fatal. They did prove fatal. Hugo was dead but I didn't let go, I pulled him up. Theodore was reloading and Young Stan came at me with an ugly looking knife, he lunged, I dodged and he was over the cliff in the blink of an eye. Theodore had reloaded, he wasn't five meters away from me, I was dead meat.
'Stand up you bastard!' he shouted, I stood up and he opened fire. He wasn't much of a shot, bullets winged me drawing blood but nothing bringing home the bacon. But surely even Theodore couldn't keep missing forever, I waited for the final shot but Theodore's gun jerked up and fell silent.
'I got your message,' said Ollo as he swung down into the melaleucas and holstered his automatic pistol. 'Streuth Boss, what have you done to yourself?'
Shakespeare on the Roof Page 17