Tomorrow 3 - The Third Day, The Frost

by John Marsden

  ‘No,’ he said, leaning back against the wall with his hands behind his head. ‘There was only one inter­esting thing I learned, the whole time I was there.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Explosives.’

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Explosives?’ Homer asked politely. ‘Did you say explosives?’

  ‘Mmm. I thought you might find that interesting.’

  ‘Explosives.’ Homer rolled the word around his tongue, like he was trying it out, to see how it tasted. ‘So how far did you get?’

  ‘Well, quite a way. Jock Hubbard taught us. He’s got his ticket, his shot-firer’s ticket. He got the idea that the time might come when we could use a bit of knowledge. He made up dummies and we practised on them. It would have been better with the real things, of course, but the soldiers weren’t too keen to lend us those.’

  ‘OK,’ Homer said. ‘I know it’s possible to make a bomb using fertiliser and diesel, because I remember Dad blowing up tree stumps. The trouble is I never bothered to ask him how to do it. I’ve often regretted that.’

  ‘Yeah, well that’s easy. Ammonium nitrate. For us, in our situation, that’s probably the easiest and best way to go.’ Kevin had suddenly become transformed. It was the first time I’d seen him like that. It was interesting to see how being an expert changed some­one. ‘We could expect to find a lot of other stuff in farm buildings too, like gunpowder and dynamite. But the soldiers have probably taken most of that. Yeah, anfo’s the way to go.’

  ‘Anfo?’

  ‘Yeah, anfo. It stands for ammonium nitrate fuel oil. That’s the stuff Homer’s talking about. It’s perfect for us because most farms have heaps of ammonium nitrate for fertiliser. It produces oxygen, so it’s better even than petrol, cos the more oxygen the better, for a really big bang.’

  ‘So that’s all we need? Ammonium nitrate and diesel?’ Homer asked.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be diesel. Any fuel’ll do the job. Charcoal even.’

  ‘But is that all we need?’

  ‘Well, a detonator of course. But again, if we check out the farms we’ll find a stack of them some­where. Jock worked for ICI and he said they sold over a thousand plain detonators every month in Wirrawee alone. What I can do is make a small bomb from anfo, with a detonator, and if we buried that in a big pile of loose anfo, and confined it, well, we’d make a bigger blast than Texas Harbour.’

  ‘What’s Texas Harbour?’ Fi asked.

  ‘Texas Harbour was an explosion that blew up a port and killed 400 people. There was a ship loaded with ammonium nitrate and they’d been spraying the holds with mineral wax, so that was the fuel. Then someone chucked down a cigarette and the cargo caught fire. They shut the holds, thinking that’d cut off the oxygen, but they didn’t realise the fertiliser produces its own oxygen. Being in a confined space, it built up so much pressure that when it blew, it basically blew the whole town away. Oklahoma City, that was anfo, too. Half a tonne of it, and they blew a nine-storey building in half.’

  We listened intently. ‘You see,’ Homer said at last, ‘like we told you, we’re on our way to Cobbler’s Bay. We don’t know what we’re going to do there; we mightn’t have a chance to do anything. But it’s prob­ably the most important target we could ever have. All we know for sure is they’re not likely to have petrol tankers sitting around waiting for us. If we make our own bomb we at least reduce the problems by one. Then all we have to do is get the thing in there and detonate it.’

  ‘God,’ said Fi. ‘I don’t know about this. We’re not professional soldiers, remember. I don’t think we should get out of our depth. This is the most scary conversation we’ve ever had.’

  ‘It may never happen,’ Homer said.

  Fi looked troubled. ‘We’ve done so well when we stayed in our own district and did what we could there. We can’t do everything. This sounds too big.’

  ‘I just don’t know if there’s any point,’ I said, join­ing in. ‘This war looks hopeless. I don’t think we’re going to make a difference, no matter what we do.’

  ‘Yeah, we’re on a hiding to nothing,’ Lee said. It was unusual for Lee to have so little fight in him, but he was in one of his depressions. Sooner or later the killing of the soldier at the well had to catch up with him, and I think now it had. Plus he was still really tired from nursing us.

  ‘I remember you guys talking like that the other day,’ Kevin said. ‘I don’t think it’s quite that bad.’

  I was interested in that.

  ‘What do you know that we don’t?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, there’s good news and bad news, of course. But the good news adds up. This war isn’t over yet, not by a long way.’

  ‘Go on,’ Homer said eagerly. We were all getting excited. We needed to hear this.

  ‘Don’t you listen to the radio any more?’ Kevin asked. ‘What happened to Corries trannie?’

  ‘We ran out of batteries. We left it back in Hell. Anyway, there hadn’t been much news of the war at all, and what there was seemed all bad. And then wherever we looked we saw colonists. We’ve hardly seen any opposition. Except ours.’

  ‘Well, there’s been quite a lot going on. They had a radio at the Showground, a secret one, that not even all the prisoners knew about. But Dad listened to it, and he passed on news to me. See, there’s not just the international radio stations, there’s quite a few guerilla ones, and there’s the ones in the Free Zones.’

  ‘What are the Free Zones?’

  Kevin looked astonished. ‘Geez, you don’t know much. There’s a few Free Zones.’

  ‘The Outback?’

  ‘Nuh, not really. They control that too, now, because it’s so bare they can easily pick up anyone moving around. They use radar and aircraft there. No, the main Free Zones are Cape Martindale, where New Guinea troops landed, and from Newburn right through to the mountains, where the Army had a heap of troops stationed. And Newington and all the Burdekin, where the Kiwis landed. They hold that whole area now.’

  There was a pause while we digested all that.

  ‘What else is good news?’ I asked.

  ‘The attack on Cobblers Bay, for one thing. Do you know about that?’

  ‘Yes, tell us,’ I said excitedly. ‘We saw a bit of it. Well, at least Robyn and Lee heard them, and I saw the smoke.’

  ‘OK, they bombed it pretty heavily. According to the radio they sank seven ships, but there were some casualties taken to Wirrawee Hospital, prisoners who’d been working there, and they said the real fig­ure was three. Whatever, it was quite a success.’

  ‘That might make it more dangerous for us,’ Robyn said.

  ‘It could. The rumour at the Showground was that they were putting in more ground-to-air missiles, but that could work in our favour. They wouldn’t be expecting a land attack.’

  ‘But they are still using Cobblers?’ Fi asked.

  ‘Yeah, apparently. It’s a big part of their operation.’

  ‘Let’s not get too uptight about it all,’ Homer said. ‘We’re not locked into anything. If we get to Cobbler’s Bay and decide it’s too much for us, we’ll just go qui­etly away again.’

  ‘Sounds good in theory,’ I said. ‘But knowing you, Homer ... I mean, at every birthday party we ever had, you were the one who went around sticking pins in the balloons. Somehow I can’t imagine you sneak­ing quietly away without trying anything.’

  ‘Tell us more about our families,’ Robyn said quickly, before I could stir Homer up too much.

  Kevin sighed. ‘Aw gee,’ he said, ‘like I told you, they’re not too bad. I mean, Ellie, honestly, your Dad, talk about putting pins in balloons, he couldn’t walk past a bull without sticking a pin up its backside. Every time a sentry comes near him, he’s looking for a fight. What is it with the guy? He’s going to get him­self in trouble.’

  ‘I don’t know what it is with him,’ I said. ‘If you ever work it out, let me know. He’s a mystery to me.’

  ‘And your broth
er aggravates them, too,’ Kevin said to Homer.

  ‘Yeah, the old George doesn’t have much sense of humour.’

  ‘How’s Tori?’ Fi asked.

  Victoria, Fi’s little sister, got asthma pretty badly.

  Kevin made a face. ‘Well, there’s no Ventolin any more, so she’s had a few bad attacks. They got per­mission to move her and a couple of others into the Show Secretary’s Office, because they realised they were allergic to something in the Cattle and Horse Pavilions.’

  ‘Mmm, all that horsehair, and straw, and grass seeds,’ Fi said. ‘Tori’s allergic to everything.’

  ‘She’s been better since then,’ Kevin said. ‘But everyone gets sick at the Showground. It’s terrible. You’ve got no idea. Gastro goes through the place every second day. Like locusts through lucerne. We’ve had mumps, we’ve had measles, we’ve had every­thing. That’s why I volunteered for work parties.’

  ‘Yeah, what’s the story with these work parties?’ I asked.

  ‘What’s the story? They’re just a way to get out of the Showground. At first it was all a bit rough and ready but now they’re quite organised. You have to be part of a family so they can hold hostages to stop you escaping. You have to have some skills and you have to be fairly fit. That’s about all.’

  ‘How come we didn’t see anyone we knew around Wirrawee? You were the first person we recognised, and you were a long way from Wirrawee.’

  ‘Yeah, they do that deliberately. Like I said, they’re quite organised now. They keep you away from your own district. It’s just a security thing. And I think maybe it’s because people get too emotional when they see colonists moving into their homes.’

  We told Kevin all the other things that had hap­pened to us; and went into more detail about the death of Chris. It was no fun having to recall stuff that I’d started to forget, and badly wanted to forget. But I suppose it was good for us to talk about Chris – we’d never really discussed it among ourselves. His death was so stupid and senseless. Rolling a car when he was drunk – it’s the sort of thing that happens in peacetime, and it’s bad enough then, but it seemed such a waste when we’d survived so much already. Plus, maybe we all felt a bit guilty about leaving him on his own in Hell, even though that’s what he’d wanted.

  So we talked about all that, a bit. And that led us on to telling Kevin about Harvey’s Heroes: this bunch of middle-aged adults who’d blundered around in the bush, trying to be tough, and nearly getting us wiped out. And afterwards we’d realised that their leader, Major Harvey, had sold out to the enemy.

  Kevin got excited then.

  ‘This Major Harvey. What’s he look like?’

  ‘Like a forty-four gallon drum,’ Homer promptly said.

  ‘With a head on top,’ Lee added.

  ‘Like a garden gnome,’ Robyn said.

  ‘Like a revolting little pile of sheep poo,’ Fi said. I was impressed. At least we’d taught Fi one thing about rural life: what sheep poo looked like.

  ‘He’s got black hair,’ I said to Kevin. I shivered a little as I recalled my first meeting with the Major. We’d stumbled onto his group by chance, and even though we’d felt relieved to be with adults again, I’d sensed from the start that something was wrong about the whole setup. ‘He’s quite plump in the face. He’s got a big nose. And his head, he holds it in a funny way, like he’s got a stiff neck or something.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s the guy,’ Kevin said. He leaned, back nodding his head.

  ‘What do you mean? You saw him?’

  ‘Well, he’s not like a personal friend, not my best mate, no. I met him once, before the war. But I’ve heard plenty about him lately, and I’ve seen him from a distance a few times.’

  ‘What? That’s impossible,’ Fi said.

  ‘When was the last time?’ Homer asked quickly.

  ‘Oh, gee, about three weeks ago.’

  ‘Oh no!’ I cried.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Homer asked.

  ‘Yeah, probably a bit less than three weeks. He came round with a group of high-ranking soldiers to have a look at the work we were doing. We all had to stand there seriously and act like we were impressed.’

  ‘We thought we’d wiped him out ages ago,’ I explained. ‘When we blew up Turner Street

  we thought we’d got him. That was half the reason we made the attack.’

  ‘Mmm, but remember, you said his car wasn’t there that night,’ Fi said to Homer.

  ‘Yeah, true, I did say that.’

  ‘So he’s alive,’ I said. I sat there, stunned. I didn’t want to believe it, but I had to. ‘Tell us what you know about him,’ I finally said to Kevin.

  ‘OK, he’s an asshole. What else do you want to know?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘Geez, where do I start? He turned up in April, I think. He’s from Risdon. He’s a teacher, I know that much; in fact, he was Deputy Principal at Risdon High. I remember when we played footie against them. He walked over to me at half-time and yelled at me for tackling one of their players. Reckoned I’d gone in too high. Fair dinks, I thought he was going to hit me. I thought he was a real wanker then, and I know it for sure now. That was the only time I’d met him before the war. When he came to the Show­ground they called us all together and he gave us a lecture on how the invasion wasn’t as bad as we might think, and how this country needed a good shake-up, and if we work with these turkeys instead of against them we’ll be better off in the long run.

  ‘The soldiers loved it; they were beaming away, but geez, Ellie, if you could have seen your father’s face! Lucky Harvey didn’t see him or he would have been the first one picked. Cos, yeah, I forgot, you don’t know what he’s been up to: after that speech they started picking people to be interrogated by him. It got really heavy for a while. Harvey seems to know a lot about Wirrawee. He picked out anyone with military training, plus all the coppers. Some of them were allowed back, if they gave the right answers I guess, but some just disappeared. We only found out a few weeks ago that they’ve been taken to a maximum-security prison somewhere. But the rumour is that a few of them got shot; like, executed.

  ‘They reckon Harvey’s setting himself up to be Governor or something; that he’s going to turn him­self into a little dictator. It’s probably right. If you’d seen him with these geezers – they were all like the greatest mates, best buddies. It wasn’t a pretty sight.’

  ‘After we’ve finished at Cobbler’s Bay well go and kill him,’ Lee said to me.

  I’d given up getting angry with Lee when he talked like that. He did it so often now, whenever he got upset about some bad thing that had happened. He just suddenly said things like he was a robot, pro­grammed to kill, when I knew he wasn’t, not at all.

  Mind you, I’d gone the same way when I’d seen Corrie in hospital.

  Kevin didn’t have much to add to what he’d told us. We sat around for another hour or more, talking endlessly about the problems, trying to think of pos­sible solutions. We were depressed to know that Har­vey was still on the loose, and Lee’s direct approach got quite a bit of support. In the end I got sick of it and went off and started getting lunch ready.

  Chapter Nine

  Cobbler’s Bay was like something out of a war movie. OK, so I’m just a simple little rural who’s never been anywhere beyond Stratton in her life. To me, seeing traffic lights was a big thrill. Every time we went to Stratton I grabbed any excuse to ride up and down the escalators, like a six-year-old. So to look out over Cobbler’s and see an aircraft carrier, an oil tanker, two small patrol vessels and three con­tainer ships was unbelievable. Two long large jetties had been built and all the ships, except the aircraft carrier and the patrol ships, were moored to them. The others were parked at buoys out in the clear water. Prefab sheds had been put up along the shore and huge bitumen loading areas laid down. There were cars and trucks everywhere, and people wan­dering about in all directions. Around the perimeter was a high barbed-wire fence, very temporary look�
�ing, and three tanks just sitting there. There were other things too, like big gun barrels poking out of mounds of dirt: Kevin thought they were the ground-to-air missiles he’d heard about.

  One thing was certain though: that air raid had been a ripper. We could see a long hull over near the rocks to our left, a destroyer maybe, that was a com­plete wreck, jammed upside down. Lee pointed to a shape we could see shimmering under the water near the heads that looked like another large ship, totally submerged. To the left of the prefabs was the wreck­age of a group of buildings; nothing but blackened rafters and a few sheets of torn metal flapping in the wind. Over in the bush even further to the left were two huge craters of torn earth and shattered trees where they must have missed their aim. It looked like the beginnings for a new woodchip industry.

  The only entrance to the new port of Cobbler’s Bay was a gate with a hut for sentries, and a barrier that they raised and lowered by hand. I’m sure the US Marines would have done the whole thing better, with electric fences and laser beams and electronic security checks, but there was none of that stuff. It looked like it had all been thrown together quickly for the least amount of money possible. This was def­initely not twenty-first century technology.

  Still, it was formidable enough. It scared the hell out of me. When we were younger, and Dad wasn’t around, we sometimes shot up a wasps’ nest for fun. You’d get what you hoped was a safe distance away and then empty a .22 magazine or a couple of shells into it. It got pretty wild at times. This place was big­ger and meaner than any wasps’ nest, and I wasn’t in such a hurry to stir it up.

  It did make me angry. Cobbler’s Bay was among the most beautiful places on Earth. Well, seeing I’d never been beyond Stratton, perhaps I couldn’t really go around saying that. ‘Yes, ladies and gentlemen, in my vast experience of international travel, after exploring every corner of the globe, I can honestly tell you that Cobbler’s Bay is one of the seven scenic wonders of the world.’