by John Marsden
I underestimated them there.
After a while the nice warm soothing water wasn’t so nice and soothing. My clothes got soggier and heavier and more uncomfortable, until they started rubbing and chafing. My pack got waterlogged, and although it still floated I had to keep one arm under it. The water stopped feeling so warm, and in some places – in the long dark stretches overhung by trees – it got extremely cold. I swam vigorously at times, but I hit a couple of underwater obstacles and banged my bad knee hard on a log or rock that I hadn’t seen.
Nevertheless, we kept going. It was the best option. Face it, it was the only option. We had travelled probably fifteen kilometres in an hour, maybe more than that, before I swam a bit closer to Homer, to have a chat. Or rather a conference.
Until then no-one had said anything, except for my comment about the snakes and leeches. Our silence was partly for security, but more I think because we were so shell-shocked after the airfield. We needed time to gather our thoughts, to get used to the idea of what we’d achieved. To come to terms with the fact that our lives would be different after this. The most obvious difference, in the immediate future anyway, was that we’d be the most hunted people in the country. Public enemies numbers one, two, three, four, five. A bit tough on Kevin, who hadn’t wanted anything to do with it.
But I thought it was time we started talking again. We couldn’t swim forever. We had to plan and think. We had to do that all the time, if we wanted to live till the next day, and maybe even the day after that. So I paddled across to Homer.
‘What do you reckon?’ I asked him.
He turned lazily onto his side so he could see me better. I think Homer’s naturally lazy, so this style of transport suited him.
‘Just float on down here forever,’ he said with a grin. ‘Where does it go anyway?’
‘Didn’t you ever listen to anything in school? It goes to Lake Murchison.’
‘Through Stratton?’
‘Yes, exactly.’
‘Thought so. Thought I’d seen the name on the bridge at Stratton.’
There was a pause, then he said: ‘How far from Stratton do you reckon we’d be?’
‘I don’t know. Probably forty k’s.’
‘Yeah, you could be right. Although, I don’t know, it depends on the river, doesn’t it? If it takes a straighter line than the road it might only be thirty k’s. If it winds around a bit it might be sixty.’
‘I think it’s fairly straight,’ I said, trying to remember what it looked like on a map.
‘You see,’ said Homer, ‘the trouble is, we have to go as far as we can. They’ll have a net around this district that’ll go for a bloody long way. And what I’m thinking is, if we go a long way, we’ll be in Stratton. So do we get out of the water before Stratton or after it?’
‘Or in it?’ I added.
‘Yeah, I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose we could. Again, it’s the last place they’d think of.’
‘We’d have to be ultra-careful,’ said Lee, who’d come over to join us. It was a funny way to have a war conference, floating down the river, but it took my mind off the cold and the aches and the chafing of my wet clothes.
‘Yes,’ Homer said. ‘Stratton would be heavily guarded, with all the factories and stuff.’
‘I don’t know how many of those are still operating,’ I said. ‘The Kiwis bombed the crap out of it for a while.’
‘Saved our lives,’ Homer agreed.
‘Cost Robyn her life,’ I said, which wasn’t the normal kind of comment we made to each other, and it caused an awkward silence for a bit.
‘I’m hungry,’ Lee complained suddenly, breaking the silence.
‘I know. I’m bloody starving,’ Homer said.
I realised I was the same, but there wasn’t much anyone could do about it. But it helped explain why I felt cold and tired. I tried to remember when I’d last eaten, but couldn’t.
‘So what’s the decision?’ I asked. ‘How long do we keep going like this?’
‘A long time,’ Homer said.
‘Yes, I think we need to be another thirty or forty k’s away,’ Lee said. ‘If it’s possible. If we can stay in the water that long.’
‘That could take us to Stratton,’ I said.
‘Oh don’t let’s go to Stratton,’ Fi said. She’d floated near us too. ‘I hate it there. It’d be too dangerous.’
‘My parents are meant to be somewhere near Stratton,’ Homer said.
‘Oh,’ Fi said. ‘Yes. I’d forgotten that.’
I didn’t say anything because I didn’t know what was best. But no-one else seemed sure either, so we floated and swam in silence for a long time. In the end, like so many things in this war, the decision was made for us.
Chapter Eleven
After another hour I was waterlogged. I thought I’d better get out, before I sank like a large rock. We’d had no more conversations, and it worried me that everyone was so quiet. We were getting too tired. I didn’t think we should be screaming and laughing and partying exactly, but I thought there should be a bit more activity. I was really cold now. With no food in your belly, it’s amazing, you lose so much energy, warmth, everything.
We passed a number of places that came right down to the river: holiday houses mainly. And I saw some walking tracks. But as we came around a long slow bend I realised that a ford was ahead. The river entered a wide shallow section. To prove it I found my knees scraping on gravel.
I stood and waded forward a little. I was incredibly soggy. Water poured from me. I’d thought before that this river had no waterfalls but it sure had one now. I was it. I must have weighed a hundred kilos. I couldn’t wait any longer to get out of there, so I staggered up onto the bank. It was such a relief. I collapsed on the grass. Within a couple of minutes the others had joined me.
But no sooner had we sprawled along the bank, just next to the road, than we heard a vehicle noise, a light purring. It sounded horribly close. ‘Quick,’ Homer called, not that we needed to be told. We dived into whatever cover was available: mainly grass and sand along the bank. I found a fallen gum tree that stuck against another tree when it fell, so it wasn’t quite lying on the ground. I got behind that, and thought I was fairly well hidden. Then I peered out, hoping to see nothing more ominous than a farm ute.
It was, unfortunately, a lot more ominous. It was another jeep, another of the big green insects that kept crawling into our lives. It held four soldiers, all men. And it stopped at the edge of the water.
I felt sick. I just couldn’t take any more of this. I hoped against hope that they were stopping for a drink, but no. They made it obvious they were there for something special. Two took up positions on the other side of the river, the side they’d come from, and the other two drove the jeep slowly across the ford. Once they were over it they got out and found themselves good possies for watching the water.
From the way they peered so intently upstream it was obvious what they wanted. They had their rifles ready. Some genius had worked out our escape route. Right now they were probably rushing soldiers into strategic spots all the way down the river.
I gazed at them anxiously. I wanted so much to hate them. It’s easy when you hate someone. You can persuade yourself that anything you do is OK then. Hassle them, pick at them, bully them: no problem, you hate them, it’s fair enough, they deserve it. Sometimes at school Fi would say there was no-one she hated. It always amazed me when she said that. Corrie and I, we could both hate, and Robyn too, even though she was so religious.
I wondered if Fi hated now, if she hated these soldiers. I looked at them again, trying to whip myself up into a frenzy of loathing. The two on my side had their backs to me but I could see the other two clearly enough. They could have been a father and son. One was about forty, a small man with a patient, calm face, who kept looking at the flowers as though he was more interested in them. The other was around fifteen. He seemed angry about something. He frowned a lot; well, g
lared really. I got the feeling he’d shoot a flower, given half a chance.
I couldn’t even hate him though. He was in a bad mood, sure, but it was no worse than some of my moods. He looked like Steve, my ex-boyfriend, when he was fighting with his mum. Or Chris, when the bell went for afternoon school just as he got to the head of the line at the canteen. He even looked like me when Dad blamed me for a fox getting in the chookyard.
It wasn’t often we got a chance to look at the enemy soldiers at close range, for a good period of time. Only when we’d been caught and chucked in Stratton Prison. And the more I looked at these two now, the more they reminded me of people I knew.
After all, how can you hate someone you’ve never met? That’s probably the silliest thing there is.
It was already quite late in the afternoon: about three hours before dark, I guessed. Three hours doesn’t sound much, but I didn’t know if we could stay in our uncomfortable little hiding holes for that long. We were all so wet and tired and cold. Sooner or later someone would sneeze or their leg would cramp up or they’d lose their nerve. It’d be utterly pathetic if we got caught by four ordinary little soldiers, after all we’d done, but it could easily happen.
I tried to put myself in their place. There didn’t seem much point, but on the other hand, what else was there to do? It passed the time. If I was them, I’d be thinking, ‘Well, the chances of us finding them are about one in a hundred. They probably didn’t go down the river at all or they probably didn’t come this far or they’re probably past this point by now or someone else has probably caught them already ... But the boss said stand here and watch, and I’m going to do that, because they’re very dangerous and besides, I’ll get in huge trouble if they do go past and we miss them.’
The jeep sat on the steep slope of the bank, quite a way from the soldiers, and I began wondering if I could get to it without them noticing, and whether it would do any good if I did. By the time I started the engine and put it in gear I’d be wearing bulletholes. So I continued to lie still, gazing at the jeep wondering what to do, getting colder and colder.
Then I thought I saw a movement. I stared even harder at the jeep. And after about twenty seconds I swore it did begin to move. I blinked several times, positive that I was seeing things. But no, it was definitely rolling. The handbrake must have failed! Amazing coincidence though. Maybe it wasn’t the handbrake; maybe it was the power of my looking at it and thinking about it. Maybe I was a poltergeist.
The soldiers on the other side of the river saw it first, both at the same time. They yelled desperately, and waved, to get the attention of the other two. And those two, as soon as they realised, dropped their rifles and ran up the hill as hard as they could go.
The jeep accelerated quickly on the steep slope. It rolled steadily towards the river, but off the line of the road, heading straight for a pool that looked quite deep. So it wasn’t surprising the soldiers were keen to stop it. They sprinted up on the track, yelling advice at each other, while the other two, on the opposite side, actually stepped into the water, watching anxiously and yelling more advice.
None of them saw what I saw. Lee’s lean body, silent, stealthy, slipping out of the bushes and grabbing the rifles the two soldiers had dropped. Lee retreating quickly into the bushes and training one of the rifles on the two armed soldiers. Lee lying there, waiting, ready to shoot them when he felt like it. And after what had happened to Lee’s parents, I felt he would be pulling the trigger sooner rather than later.
The jeep, travelling fast, careered past the two soldiers on our bank. Both of them made attempts to stop it. The older man ran alongside it for about ten metres. He had a hold of the doorframe on the driver’s side and pulled back on it, trying to stop it with his own strength, but he had no hope. Jeeps are light, sure, but this one had built up too much speed. It dived into the water with a great splash and settled quickly, sinking straight away with clouds of bubbles erupting around it, until only its windscreen and the top of the body were visible. It was well and truly sunk.
What happened then was fascinating. I’d realised by then that I wasn’t really a poltergeist: Lee had worked his way around through the bushes, and caused the jeep’s little accident. But from then on, I felt maybe I was psychic. Because the soldiers did exactly what I anticipated. At every step of the way, they were like characters in a play I’d written. It was as though they’d read the script. It would have been funny except that the whole situation was too serious.
First I thought: ‘Well, they won’t want to admit to their officers that they’ve been so stupid, so they’ll try to get it out themselves.’
And that’s what happened. The two on the other side waded across the ford, with much shouting and arm-waving and arguing. They gathered at the jeep and stood staring down at it. ‘Look for a tree, guys,’ I thought. ‘That’s your only hope.’ Sure enough, they started gesturing at the nearest big tree and it was so obvious what they were saying: ‘We could tie a rope or a chain to this trunk and haul the jeep out.’
They still glanced up the river from time to time, so they hadn’t completely forgotten what they were there for, but their main interest had changed a lot.
‘They’ll decide to get a winch,’ I thought, ‘and two of them’ll go to get it while the other two stay here.’
About a minute later, after more arguments, the two who’d been on my side of the river came down the bank to where they’d dropped their rifles. My heart suddenly felt pain. If they were going to look for a winch, why couldn’t they have done it without their rifles? Now, because of their stupid attention to detail, because they were good soldiers instead of careless ones, we were back in the most awful situation. Lee would have to shoot all four of them before they could retaliate. The odds were on his side, with two of them unarmed, but it was still terribly dangerous. Even if he survived the gun battle, we didn’t know how many more soldiers might be just over the hill. There could be an entire army. Besides, I was sickened by all this killing. My stomach rose, my gorge rose, at the thought of more blood. I couldn’t take any more, not today, please.
But I couldn’t look away either. I stared at the soldiers. When was Lee going to rise up from the bushes and start firing? Now Lee, better do it now, before they get any closer. Now Lee! Come on, hurry up, don’t leave it too late, you need the advantage of surprise, don’t throw that away. Lee, what are you doing?
The soldiers reached the spot where they’d left their rifles, bent over, picked them up, and walked back up the rise.
I was astounded. I was in shock. I lay there with my mouth open, gaping at them. Psychic powers, OK, but this was ridiculous. Was the rifle fairy operating around here? Was this cool shady clearing a magic place, an enchanted forest? I didn’t know. I wasn’t even sure whether the soldiers had rifles or not now. Maybe Lee hadn’t picked them up in the first place. Maybe I was on another planet. Maybe I was hallucinating. I nearly pinched myself, but didn’t bother. I knew I would feel a pinch, and I was already hurting enough from the bruises I’d collected at the airfield.
The two soldiers walked past their mates and on, up the hill and over, until they were out of sight. Seemed like they’d drawn the short straw.
The two who were left stood above the jeep, discussing its situation. They were very anxious. Their commanding officer must have been a real bastard. I think they were scared of going back to him without a jeep. Or they were just unhappy at the thought of a long walk back to base.
I had been so interested in what was happening that I’d stopped thinking about my cold and cramps and discomfort. I’d stopped thinking about the others too. So I was startled out of my brain when Homer and Lee suddenly leapt up and down out of the bushes, waving at me.
They were mad. Crazy mad, the worst kind. It was like those telecasts of football matches, where after the game the kids are behind the guy doing the interviews, and they act as if they’re on pogo sticks, waving at their mums and screaming
stupid comments.
Well, I’m glad to say Homer and Lee didn’t scream. And they didn’t hold up signs saying ‘Hi Mum’ or ‘Molong Football Club’. But they did everything else. They leapt around like they’d camped on an ants’ nest and the ants had invaded their jocks. It was a dumb thing to do. But the soldiers were so engrossed in the jeep, and in looking up the river for us, that they didn’t see anything behind them. Homer and Lee could have stripped and done The Sound of Music in the nude and the two soldiers wouldn’t have noticed.
There was a point to it of course. Well, I don’t know why I said ‘Of course,’ because those two idiots didn’t need a reason for anything. But they were sending the rest of us a message. Then I realised they weren’t sending the message to the rest of us. They were sending it to me. I saw that Kevin and Fi were behind the other two. They’d already gotten around the ford and were well past the danger. I was the only one left on this side.
The trouble was, that right from the start my position hadn’t been as good as theirs. They’d all hidden higher up the bank. That meant they’d been able to get to the top, go over the crest, and work their way around. With me there was a big difference. I had so far to go up the bank that the risk was simply too great. I felt terrible being the only one there, being so alone, but I knew I’d have to wait for something to change for me to get away. It was good that the soldiers had been reduced to two, but they were still too alert.
I stayed there for another half an hour. Homer and the others gave up trying to attract my attention. I was relieved about that. I didn’t like people doing anything too crazy these days. It upset me. I wasn’t even sure if they knew where I was hiding. It depended on whether anyone had seen me scuttling behind the fallen tree.