by John Marsden
I don’t know if anyone was firing at us at that stage. It was all too dark and wild and noisy to know what was going on. At least now though, I could look through the front windscreen and get a bit of a view. It sure beat trying to use the wing mirrors. We went for a mad swerving drive through the park. As I chucked a crazy left across a big garden bed Lee came slithering into the seat beside me. He did it awkwardly, kind of head first and side on all at the same time, but he was up in a moment and staring through the windscreen as anxiously as me. I had a glimpse of his white knuckles on the dashboard. We crashed over a footpath and straight through a small low fence. We must have been travelling at somewhere between eighty and a hundred k’s.
It was a speed of absolute insanity, but sometimes a thought takes over your mind so completely that everything else is pushed into limbo. And the thought that possessed me was the desire to get away from the men with rifles. All thoughts of sane, careful driving, of consideration for the passengers, were erased from my memory. I’d lost them on my computer.
We went straight at the iron railings on the far side of the park. If we could get through them we’d be out on the street a block away from the soldiers. The truck was big and heavy but the railings looked hard and sharp. ‘Jesus Christ,’ Lee swore. ‘Hang on tight,’ he yelled at the kids in the back. I felt him ducking down as we raced at the pickets. I remembered how well we’d crashed through the fence at the airfield, but this looked to be a higher degree of difficulty. Like, a nine compared to a two.
Just as we were about to hit I saw that at the bottom of the fence was a concrete base. This was going to be the biggest speed bump I’d ever seen. Not to mention the steel spikes on top. I actually hauled back on the wheel as we raced at it, like this was a plane and I was operating the rudder. Then we hit.
It was the most God-awful crash. The shudder came up through the steering column and ripped the wheel out of my hands. I don’t know what it did to the suspension but it would have been something chronic. The windscreen dissolved and cascaded all over me, a waterfall of glass. We became airborne. It wasn’t like in the movies where you see the car fly across the bridge that’s half open, or off the end of the unfinished freeway. In those the car is like a seagull, soaring gracefully. We were airborne for only a second and when we hit the road again it was with a crash that rattled every tooth in my head. I’d scrunched up in the seat, so I didn’t hit my head, but there were screams from the back, so I guess they weren’t so lucky. I had a mental image of the smallest kid bouncing around like a superball, and felt sick at the thought. The impact was so violent I was scared the floor of the cabin was going to rise and tear open. Everything not fastened down got thrown around: a Stratton street directory and a spanner both hit me before dropping to the floor, and a half-filled bottle of Coke fell from somewhere and lay on the seat pouring its insides out.
We raced across the road out of control, the wheel wobbling wildly from side to side. I had to swing it with all my strength. It wasn’t enough and we went over the footpath on the other side of the road and into the front lawn of a house. The best I could do was to straighten up enough to get on the driveway. I didn’t have my foot on the accelerator but we’d built up so much momentum that it didn’t make a lot of difference. The brakes were cactus, just went flat to the floor. At the end of the driveway was something, some structure: I couldn’t quite see what. I prayed it wasn’t a brick garage. I was scared to try changing down a gear, because if I missed the change and ended up in neutral – well, we were gone then.
It wasn’t a garage. It was a carport, with a little aluminium shed behind it. At the last minute I actually accelerated, thinking it was better for us to try to smash it out of our way. We hit it hard. Aluminium panels went flying, and I saw the roof pop up way above us like a shining silver kite. Then we were through. Through it, and the fence beyond, accelerating still, smash or be smashed, ten tonnes moving at eighty k’s. The screams from the back blended with the screams from the ripping metal, till I couldn’t tell the human noise from the noises outside. I gripped the wheel like it was a lifebelt and I was in a whirlpool. All I could do was to keep it straight and keep going. I gripped that wheel till I couldn’t even feel my hands any more.
Then we were through to the next driveway, back to back with this one, and here there was no garage, thank God, no carport, just an old rusted wheelbarrow that had probably been there since the invasion and which the truck dismembered. I wasn’t worried about that: I hardly noticed it, because I had something else to think about.
That something else was getting the truck out of the driveway and around into the street, a turn as tight as a twanging wire. There was pressure back in the brakes, but I knew even as I pushed the pedal that it wouldn’t be enough. We had built up too much speed, too much momentum. I also knew I couldn’t keep braking this hard and turning at the same time, or we’d be over. I’d roll it and kill the lot of us.
So I had to make a wide arc for the turn. And when I say wide, I mean the front verandah of the house opposite. It was held up by poles and we snapped them like matchsticks. The roof of it started coming down but I didn’t see much of that, because we were already through the fence and thumping back over the footpath. Only then could I get the thing under control and straighten up. And suddenly there we were, rocketing down the street in the dark, the fresh night air blowing sweetly on my face.
Chapter Three
We pulled up outside Grandma’s house. It gave Homer and Fi and Kevin a hell of a shock. I jumped out of the truck and ran across the lawn, but before I was halfway to the front door the three of them emerged from the trees.
‘What have you been doing?’ Fi asked. ‘Listen to those sirens!’
I could hear them all right. There were so many that they filled the night air: you couldn’t tell what direction they were coming from. It sounded like they were everywhere at once. But the way Fi said ‘What have you been doing?’ almost made me laugh – she sounded so like my father saying, ‘What have you been doing to those sheep? Why are they making all that noise?’
At the time I’d been riding them around the paddock, until one of them dragged me along the barbed-wire fence. I’d stood there with holes in my moleys and blood running down my leg, trying to look cool while I lied my head off, saying, ‘Gee I don’t know, maybe they heard the dogs barking, or maybe there’s a fox around,’ and all the time the pain was like I had an abscess in every tooth and I was scared I was bleeding to death.
‘I’ll explain later,’ I said. ‘Just grab what you can. We have to get out of here.’
‘Where to?’Fi asked.
‘Where do you think?’
Lee ran past and after a moment’s pause Fi followed him into the house. Only then, with them gone, did I notice the chorus of thin wailing voices from the truck. It sounded like a kindergarten that had run out of milk. I was about to go and look but Lee came back with his pack. ‘What’s happening?’ I asked him.
‘I think there’s a few broken limbs,’ he said. They’re not as used to the way you drive as I am.’
My head spun with guilt, and it took me a moment to stop it spinning. Everyone else was in the house getting stuff and I had to join them. I hurried towards the door but as I did I heard the yowling tyres of a car that was horribly close, and I realised we couldn’t afford to do anything except go like crazy out of Stratton. I screamed at the house, ‘Hurry!’ and ran back to the truck.
I’m afraid the crying in the back doubled in volume and terror when I put it in gear. I’ve never claimed to be the world’s greatest driver but I was a bit discouraged by their reaction. I didn’t think I was that bad.
The others came stumbling out of the house, hauling all kinds of odds and ends. I already had the truck rolling, to encourage them. I know it annoyed the hell out of Homer and Kevin but things were desperate; we’d already wasted too much time.
Maybe they thought it was like that stupid and annoying trick certain adults love to
play: they make you open the gate, then they drive through and keep going. Actually not just adults. Homer did it all the time.
They came running after the truck and I slowed down while Lee hauled them in. As soon as Homer’s feet were off the ground I shoved the accelerator hard to the floor.
We’d gone two-and-a-half blocks when I saw a flash of headlights away to the left. I wasn’t even sure they were headlights, because the high trees and narrow streets cut them off. But a moment later, while I was still asking myself if I’d imagined it, a car came skidding across the road at the next intersection, its back hanging out as the driver tried to get it around. He was aiming to come straight at me.
I only had one chance. There was a little gap behind the car. I gunned the engine and went for it. The car was fishtailing everywhere. The driver made it worse by swinging the wheel around to get after me. I don’t know how he didn’t roll it. The car was trying to recover from the first turn and already he was putting it into a second one.
I made the gap. I glanced at the car and saw it go down hard on its nose as the driver got some control again. A blast of smoke came from the tyres. Then we were gone, skidding around the next corner almost as violently as he had. I accelerated hard and we thundered down the street. At the end of the block I turned left, but in the wing mirror saw his lights. He was after us all right, with a vengeance. I was surprised he wasn’t closer. He must have had some trouble taking that corner.
I knew if we relied on speed and handling we had no chance. He’d have us by the time we’d gone another block. We had to outsmart him.
I used every trick I knew, and made up some new ones. It was tough work, because the steering and brakes were both in poor shape. I went up a lane, chucked a right, and turned the wrong way down a one way street. He went left, and we lost him for a few moments. I cut across another park. I think he got a glimpse of us at the last second. His lights swung into the park, as we belted under a bridge.
I hit a stretch of dirt, probably roadworks that were abandoned when the war started. The trouble was that we made a lot of dust, and he would pick it up in his headlights. At the end of the dirt I slammed on the brakes, crashed the gearstick into reverse and rammed the truck backwards into a bitumen parking area, outside Bunnings.
He screamed past. His engine made a kind of moaning noise. It was weird.
As soon as he was gone I went the other way. We went back under the bridge and this time I turned left.
We raced along a road that ran parallel to the freeway, but much lower. We were going through another big industrial area. There wasn’t much bomb damage, but only a couple of factories seemed to be operating at this time of night.
I heard Homer yell from the back: ‘He’s after us again.’
We were just about to drive over a level crossing. I suddenly thought, ‘Well, why not?’ and swung the wheel hard. We bumped along the train tracks. If the suspension was stuffed already from hitting the concrete base of the fence – and it was – then it was really stuffed by the time we’d gone a kilometre along the railway. It got the kids screaming again too. I could hear Homer and the others trying to shut them up, but I wasn’t paying much attention.
I paid a lot more attention to the train.
Luckily, like the car, the train was using headlights, or to be more exact, a single headlight. It was like a beam from a torch, but a lot stronger and longer than my Eveready flashlight. I couldn’t tell how far away it was, but I’d guess a kilometre and a half, and coming straight at us.
The trouble is that when two objects are travelling towards each other at a hundred k’s an hour, a kilometre and a half doesn’t amount to much.
I looked for an escape route. It was hard to see far ahead in the dark. My eyes tended to be hypnotised by the light of the train anyway. From the back Homer yelled again: ‘He’s on the train tracks too Ellie!’
I realised he was talking about the car. They were so busy looking out the back that they hadn’t seen the bigger problem out the front. Likewise, I’d forgotten about the car.
As far as I could tell, we were heading into a narrower section of the track. We were on a hiding to nothing. If I kept going we might end up in a cutting with steep sides, where a head-on with the train was our only choice. On my right was uphill, leading to God knows what. On my left was downhill, leading to God knows what. I didn’t think the truck could handle the uphill. I spun the wheel left and we went for a slide.
It was pretty hairy. For the first fifty metres we were side-on. I knew not to brake; I just had to hang onto the wheel and try to bring the nose around. I was half standing, straining every muscle to make the truck obey me.
At least they’d shut up in the back. I think they were too scared to make a noise.
I’d almost got the nose around when we hit the road. The truck nearly broke in half. I thought I felt it bend. Above us the train rocketed past.
I don’t know if it met the car or not. If it had, I think we would have seen and felt the explosion. But by the time they would have met, we were gone, herbing down the road. We were at the outer limits of Stratton and I gunned it. We went for ten kilometres before I started to think that we might just have shaken them off.
There was no slowing down though of course. I went herbing along at over a hundred k’s in some parts. At least the road was smoother, and I think a couple of the kids calmed down, but a couple of them were really upset, and I wondered how tough things were back there. Broken limbs sounded like seriously bad news.
The biggest problem wasn’t the crying from the back though; it was the steering. It was so badly damaged. I’d point the wheel in a certain direction but we’d go off in another one. The only way we could get around corners was to use the brakes and accelerator, and float in a kind of controlled skid. I got better at it as we went along. It took huge concentration. I couldn’t relax for a moment, and what was worse, I knew that if we were going to come out of this alive I’d have to concentrate for hours to come. I had quite a number of lives in my hands.
We didn’t need to stop and hold a big conference about where to go. At times of worst stress and worst danger our minds always turned to the one place. That was why I hadn’t bothered answering Fi’s question.
Hell. The basin of rocks and bush, so wild that no-one except us could get in. Apart from the Hermit no-one else in living memory had been down there.
And now that we’d started out I couldn’t wait to get to Hell again. Stratton had its attractions – houses were much better than tents when it rained – but I hated living in the daily fear of Stratton. Or maybe it was just that I hate city life. Whatever, my feelings that Hell might be too claustrophobic, too unsafe, that we could do more important stuff in Stratton – all of that was replaced by an ache to be back there again.
Occasionally I could hear the others trying to calm the kids. The truck was noisy, so I only heard little moments, like hearing the chorus of a song but not the verses. I sure had upset them, but I guess it wasn’t just me. It would have been everything they’d been through. I began wondering if maybe they’d be like us when we first met the horrible Major Harvey: we’d collapsed in a heap, and stopped being independent. We’d been grateful to have adults running things again, happy to let them take over. The kids might see us that way. I just hoped we’d do a better job than Major Harvey.
I could only stay on the good road for half-a-dozen k’s, and even that was terribly risky. Then it was back to short cuts and detours and improvisation. Creative driving. The steering was even worse on the rough stuff. So I hardened myself against the chaos behind me. If they had to suffer a bit longer then they had to suffer a bit longer. We couldn’t compromise our hide-out, no matter what. There was no way in the world I would drive straight to Hell. We had to take heaps of precautions. That wild country may have been the only safe area for hundreds of square kilometres. Without Hell we were lost.
I didn’t think about how we were going to get the kids up to Tailor
’s Stitch. If they were badly injured it might be quite a problem. I couldn’t believe they were that bad though. What had Lee said? Broken limbs? That meant arms or legs. Well, they’d survive that. We’d have to worry about it later.
As the crow flies it’s not far from Stratton to Hell, but firstly we weren’t crows and secondly we sure weren’t going the fastest way, even for humans. One old dirt road looked like it hadn’t been used since the gold rush. It took us straight down into a steep gully and at the bottom it forded a river that was running hard. I switched on the lights for a minute to look, but couldn’t judge the depth. I just had to take the risk and go for it. Halfway across I had second thoughts. The water got deeper and deeper and the road felt rougher and crumblier. If a part of it had washed away we were in big trouble. We hit a couple of huge potholes and lurched around. I felt the rear shift from side to side. Even though the truck had a high clearance, water was coming in through the floor and swishing around my ankles.
I think my armpits were as wet as the chassis of the truck by the time we started up the other side.
I didn’t know this country but I knew our general position. The mountains behind our place were away on the left, to the east. When we started to climb a little I thought it was time to head more directly homewards. I swung off the road at the next gateway into a paddock, stopped, hopped out, and opened the gate, cursing a little as I did it. A truckful of people, and I had to open the gate. And shut it.
We bumped slowly across the paddock, disturbing a few Herefords who got up clumsily and turned around to watch. Then another gate and another paddock. And another. And another. At least Homer opened and closed these gates for me.
It was forty-five minutes before we reached the next road. I still didn’t recognise it, so we had to start the whole process again, me navigating by instinct as we followed fencelines and old wheeltracks. Any time things looked like getting too civilised – any hint of buildings or small well-cultivated paddocks for example – I’d swing away again. No matter how tired and frustrated I got I could always console myself with the thought that they’d never follow us here. We were making ourselves safer with every gate we opened, every remote paddock we crossed, every creek we forded. And at least in the paddocks I didn’t have to worry so much about the truck’s steering. It didn’t matter if we went off course there.