by John Marsden
And it wasn’t just yourself who got wiped out. You could kill your friends by not concentrating.
Oh, I suppose you could do that in peacetime by driving too carelessly, or using a firearm recklessly, but here the probabilities were much higher. In peacetime there weren’t people looking for you to kill you.
So I made myself snap out of my little daydream of the heifers and calves in the stockyards. Daydreams now were like watching TV in the old days – something to do when your jobs were finished.
That was the theory, anyway.
I was standing by the kitchen sink of my grandmother’s house in Stratton. I’d half-filled the sink, using a bucket, so I could peel some potatoes. I was thinking about Christmas and wondering when it was. I’d lost track of dates pretty much completely. We’d managed to pass almost a whole year without celebrating any birthdays. Unbelievable. It was mainly because half the time we didn’t know what week it was, let alone which day. Sometimes someone would say, ‘Is this August? Hey, it’s my birthday in August.’ But as we were usually attacking an enemy at the time, or hiding in a blacked-out school building, or changing sentries at three o’clock in the morning, the comments about birthdays tended to float off into the Milky Way, to be read by any passing aliens.
Plus birthday cakes were in short supply.
It was sad though, to think I’d missed a birthday. When I was little it never crossed my mind that this could happen. Birthdays were so important. No, more than important. The whole year revolved around birthdays and Christmas. Months of waiting and dreaming and hoping. The funny thing was that afterwards you didn’t spend months reliving the wonderful day. Within twenty-four hours it was gone and you just had to think how long it was till the next big one.
One thing I could never understand about adults was how they didn’t seem to enjoy Christmas or birthdays any more. They said sterile things like, ‘The best present would be if you got better grades in school,’ or ‘You don’t really want presents when you get to my age.’
Not want presents! I couldn’t imagine that! For me, that day would never come. Never! But the adults turned it all – Christmas especially – into a nightmare. They spent weeks complaining about stuff like shopping and the rellies and the cards they hadn’t written and why you hadn’t got a tree yet and why you hadn’t put up the decorations. They sounded so tired and cross and cranky, going around saying, ‘Sometimes I wish Christmas was only every second year,’ or ‘It’s just a big commercial rip-off.’
Didn’t they realise that for us kids it wasn’t that way at all? Had they forgotten so much already about what it was like to be a kid?
I saw a poem once, in a book, and it was by a kid, and there was a bit that said:
No one can get in
Our world.
It has a wall twenty feet high
and adults
have only ten foot ladders.
Boy, was that ever right.
Yet here I was, peeling spuds and thinking, ‘Well, Christmas sure doesn’t mean much to us any more. There isn’t going to be a Christmas this year.’
What was that Dr Seuss book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas? The soldiers had stolen Christmas from us.
Chapter Two
It was Homer who first had the idea of making another approach to the ferals. The ferals was the name we gave to the gang of kids who were running wild in the streets of Stratton. And I mean really wild. They weren’t just average naughty little tackers. They were ferocious, dangerous, frightening. They had caught us and mugged us more successfully than the soldiers. They had at least two guns, and a bow and arrow that would be as lethal as a gun, assuming they could use it.
But we’d had vague ideas for a while about doing something for the ferals. It was horrible to see kids so young and so crazy. Homer said once that we wouldn’t have given up on them if they were our little brothers or sisters. In a vague abstract kind of way we all agreed with that idea. We just hadn’t ever got around to doing anything about it. We had enough worries of our own. And I don’t know about the others, but I was pretty damn nervous of these kids. With the frights and the horrors we’d been through already I wasn’t anxious to go looking for more trouble.
Once I’d offered them some food. I left it on the footpath near their hide-out, with a sign saying FOOD – HELP YOURSELF. But to my surprise, they hadn’t touched it. It was strange, because I was sure they were hungry. When they mugged us in the alley they seemed desperate for food. If they were city kids, like we thought, they probably weren’t too good at foraging for food. Before the war they’d probably had a life of supermarkets and milk bars, opening the fridge door and helping themselves to a yoghurt or a tomato or a Mars Bar. Like the Grade 2 kids from the city who’d camped on the Mackenzies’ property. One of them asked Mr Mackenzie, ‘How do you get the wool onto the sheep?’
Anyway, whoever suggested having a go with the kids certainly started something. Fi in particular got quite worked up at the idea of making contact with them again. I suppose enough time had passed for her to forget how scary it was to be at their mercy. My talking about Christmas set her off in a big way. I think she immediately imagined a happy Christmas dinner with everyone sitting around a decorated table and Santa making a surprise visit down the chimney. I didn’t get the same picture when I brought it up on my monitor. These kids would eat the reindeer and strangle Santa. But I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to spoil her dreams.
Fi’s the last of the great romantics.
Kevin wasn’t so tactful. ‘Are you kidding?’ he said, when we started talking about it. ‘You guys told me they were a hair and a freckle away from killing you.’
‘I agree,’ Lee said. ‘We’ve got enough problems of our own. We’re just setting up a lot of grief for ourselves if we think we can save everyone.’
We didn’t go as far as putting our hands up for a vote, but we were obviously divided. Our discussion, which was in Grandma’s lounge room, broke up without a decision.
But I didn’t confess to the others that I’d been keeping an eye on the ferals anyway. They were hanging out in a deserted milk bar on Mikkleson Road. I’d taken to going past it at night, just quietly, across in the park, a hundred metres from the shop, so as not to provoke them. I’m not sure why I did it, just some vague feeling that I wanted to make sure they were OK. If I was in the area anyway, it was easy enough: no big deal.
Then I did get closer to them, briefly, but not in a way I’d expected.
It was late in the afternoon. We never seemed to see the motorbike patrols between four and six o’clock, maybe because they were changing shifts. I was doing a little patrol myself, at the other end of West Stratton, near one of those shopping centres that have only a milk bar and a fish-and-chip shop, and a newsagent and a chemist. This one had a computer repair shop and a Red Cross op shop as well, but it was pretty boring, and of course there was nothing valuable left in the shops.
In both Wirrawee and Stratton there were certain houses that seemed to attract attention. Any nice-looking place, or big rich place, was guaranteed to be worked over by looters. My grandmother’s was one of the biggest in West Stratton, so it had been plundered, but not as badly as some. We’d learned not to bother with big places much because there was never anything worthwhile left in them, just like the shops. We mainly checked out the smaller houses.
So I don’t know why I went into this big house on Castlefield Street. No particular reason. I was wandering. The house was solid dark brick and stretched along the street for a hundred metres. It wasn’t pretty but it sure was big. They had a pool in the backyard. Like all pools these days it was filthy and stagnant, the water such a dark green it was almost black. The front door was so solid no-one had even tried to smash it down, and the back door had been attacked but not broken. Around the corner though, was a side door which had been easily forced. It led into a rumpus room, a big area with a polished wooden floor.
As I stepped into that I heard voices
. For a moment I thought, ‘No way, it must be birds outside, or water gurgling somewhere.’ I’d been caught out by both those sounds before. But then I heard a high-pitched voice say, ‘It’s my turn,’ and I knew that it was no bird or broken pipe. It was a child.
The instincts I’d developed during the war gave me a strong message. Strong and unmistakable. ‘Get out!’ was the message, and it yelled at both my ears from the inside. So I couldn’t pretend I didn’t hear it.
But I went forward. I tiptoed across the room to the far side and crouched next to the door, so if anyone came in they wouldn’t see me straightaway. The voices had faded and I thought they might have moved off, but a minute later I heard them again.
‘Put her up here,’ the same voice said, and another child answered, ‘Wait, I’m changing her dress.’
‘Hurry up.’
Then a new voice, quieter, murmured, ‘The pin thing’s broken. Try this one.’
I still hadn’t heard an adult. The door was half open and I put my left eye to the crack. There was nothing to see, just a long corridor stretching somewhere, quite dark, with the same polished wood.
I crept around the door and looked down the corridor. At the end was a short flight of steps, only three or four, going up to another half-open door.
The biggest danger was that my boots would squeak. I started along the corridor, putting my feet down carefully and slowly. I was half-way towards the door when it moved suddenly, swinging towards me. I froze. The blood rushed to my face so fast it seemed to burn the skin. The door had moved maybe twenty centimetres.
Then it moved the same distance back again, and I relaxed. The draught was shifting it.
The voices came again, much more clearly. The first child, a girl, said, in a highly aggravated tone, ‘But she has to be lying down.’
I went another five steps, which took me right to the end of the corridor. I could see the beginning of a carpet, a deep red colour with a green crest stamped on it every ten centimetres or so. The girls were heading into a fight now. I thought there were three separate voices and I was sure they were all girls.
‘Put her on the bed,’ one of them said loudly and aggressively.
‘No,’ another one answered. ‘We did that last time. Put her on the chair. Then the soldiers can come in through this door.’
I’d heard enough to know they were playing. The sounds of kids playing are different to any other sounds. You can’t mistake them. They get so absorbed in their game, and I think they actually put on more adult voices. That’s what these kids were doing.
The argument suddenly flared into a full-on fight. One of the girls, the second one, said, ‘No, don’t touch her, she’s mine!’ and the third one said, ‘Yeah, Brianna, don’t be so bossy.’
Brianna screamed, ‘Well, you’re not doing it right, you’re so stupid. Why don’t you listen to me for once, you’re always sticking up for Casey.’
The next minute the door was flung open and Brianna – it had to be her – was standing there. I recognised her from the hold-up in the alley. She’d been one of the noisiest. She was a fiery little thing, all red hair and burning red face. About ten years old and with a haircut that a kid must have given her: some bits too long and some bits too short, and a fringe they might have done with a whipper-snipper. She held a large stupid-looking doll with blonde hair and a dirty bride’s dress.
She took one look at me and her mouth opened like she’d seen Jack the Ripper. She made a little gulping noise, clutched the doll, and ran back through the door. ‘That girl’s out there,’ she yelled at the others as she ran past them, with me right on her heels. But she was too quick. She had the next door open and was through it and gone, like a mosquito wriggler slipping through your fingers in a cattle trough.
I turned around. The other two were heading out the first door, just as fast as Brianna. ‘Wait,’ I called. I lunged at the closer girl and grabbed her by the back of her T-shirt. She sobbed and swung around, hitting at me with her spare hand, but missing. I let her go anyway, partly because I didn’t have a good grip, partly because I didn’t like to hold her, didn’t like to make her a prisoner. But when she charged off again she ran straight into the open door, hitting herself hard. Her forehead, her nose, her chin: she really cracked them.
She staggered back holding her face and crying, and I grabbed her a second time. ‘It’s OK,’ I said, ‘don’t cry. You’ll be right.’ This time she didn’t fight, but stood there letting me hug her. She sobbed heavily, like someone who hadn’t cried for years, like she was crying from somewhere deep inside. I hugged her for maybe a minute. Then the third girl reappeared at the door, very cautiously. She obviously didn’t know what she was going to find. She stared at us for a moment. She was a pretty kid, a dark slight little thing with solemn brown eyes. She looked like an autumn leaf who’d blow away in a breeze.
In an uncertain voice she said, ‘Come on Casey.’
Casey hesitated, then pulled away from me. I let her go. It actually hurt me to do that, hurt me quite a lot. But I couldn’t force her. ‘If you love something let it go. If it doesn’t come back, it wasn’t yours in the first place.’ I didn’t love these kids but I felt sorry for them. They were Lord of the Flies come to life. One minute they could play with dolls, the next they were a savage street gang, dangerous and violent. Casey looked back at me, kind of sadly. I shrugged and said, ‘I won’t hurt you,’ and she got a very serious puzzled expression, like ‘Do I believe her or don’t I?’ but then the other girl said, ‘Come on,’ with a lot of emphasis on the last word, and they ran out together without another glance at me.
I didn’t try to follow them, just stood having a look around the room. It seemed like a regular playground. Toys were scattered everywhere. I suppose they had their pick of toys from all around the suburbs. The invasion came so suddenly that there wouldn’t have been time for the average kid to pick up his toy collection. But maybe there’s such a thing as having too many toys, because the ones in this room seemed to have been given a hard time. I counted six broken porcelain dolls, and a lot of other stuff. A Barbie mobile home, for instance, that looked like someone had sat on it. The remnants of two Hungry Hippos. And a telephone set that had been ripped apart. I guess anything like telephones, which relied on batteries, would have been a bit frustrating when the batteries ran out.
There were lots of toy guns, too. I thought that was kind of interesting. I assumed they’d be so sick of guns that they wouldn’t play with them. By now they should all hate guns.
Sitting on a windowsill was one of those cute little bears that are made of plastic or something, and dressed in different outfits. This one was in a suit with a waistcoat and a gold watch chain, and carrying a briefcase. He looked very pleased with himself. I put him in my pocket as a present for Fi. Sometimes we needed our toys too.
I wasn’t taking over sentry till midnight, so I decided I wouldn’t go straight back to Grandma’s. It was a nice evening, the kind where the light fades so slowly that you don’t notice it getting darker. It changes gradually, losing its hardness, its brightness. The glare goes. It was at that softer stage now and it gave me the urge to get out of town again. For an excuse I decided I’d look for mushrooms. There’d been a bit of rain, so I figured there should be a few around.
I took a couple of bags from the house on Castlefield Street, and set out along the back streets till I got to the factory area. There were still a few factories that hadn’t been bombed, and they often worked nights, so I avoided them, detouring round the back of the bowling club.
I found a lot of mushrooms along the roadside, but it was too dangerous hanging around there, so I went into the paddocks. There were plenty in among the damp grass too, but mostly yellow-stainers, that look like perfect field mushies, but when you scratch them they go yellow and you know they’re poisonous. So I didn’t do as well as I hoped. Still, I found a couple of nice patches, ate half a dozen on the spot and brought back a bagful to share with the ot
hers.
I was approaching the milk bar, still a hundred metres from it, when I smelt something funny. When you’re a non-smoker you can smell a cigarette from miles away. You can smell it on someone’s clothes the day after they’ve had a smoke at a party. Or on your own clothes, if someone near you has been smoking. And wafting towards me down the street, was the smell of a burning cigarette.
My first thought was, ‘Don’t tell me these kids are smoking, at their age,’ which was pretty silly considering they seemed quite capable of murder. When they mugged us I’d wondered if they were on drugs. But I didn’t know where they could have got cigarettes. At this stage of the war everything perishable had been looted. Cigarettes and grog were among the first to go.
Still, they could have found a hoard somewhere.
I crept twenty metres closer, and waited. Minutes and minutes and minutes ticked by. The smell of the cigarette had gone but the person who smoked it had to be there. If I wasn’t patient before this war I was now. I don’t think impatient people survived too long. I didn’t see anyone; all I had to go on was that smell. As time went by I started telling myself I might have been mistaken, maybe I’d imagined it, or maybe it was the smell of smoke from our cooking fire, or maybe it was the kids and now they’d gone back into their shop. But I didn’t move. It must have been an hour; could have been one and a half. My legs ached – the backs of my thighs especially – my feet got really sore, and I had to keep rolling my shoulders to ease the tension in my neck. I did a little dancing on the spot, but really just wriggling my toes, to stop my calves cramping. I’d almost forgotten why I was there.