by John Marsden
Then I turned to the officer. He was facing me now. He didn’t seem to know where to go. I fired for the third time. My hands were shaking badly and the bullet went a little low. The slide locked back; the gun was empty; useless scrap metal. I threw it away, quickly, as if it was contaminated. It fell in the creek.
It had all been very quick, kind of clinical, not at all like our other killings had been. Just popping down targets, with no emotion.
Or maybe that was just a measure of how much I’d changed.
The others handled it pretty much in the same style though. Lee went straight to the bodies and checked each one quickly. Robyn and Kevin grabbed the rucksacks: seemed like they were the current packhorses. Homer ran over and gave me a quick kiss. ‘Thank God you’re all right,’ he said, and I was amazed to see tears in his eyes.
Fi followed him and gave me a longer hug. ‘Thank you, Ellie,’ was all she said.
Without any discussion we ran straight out to the dirt track. We didn’t need any discussion to know that speed was going to save us or kill us. ‘Take the car,’ I yelled to Lee, who was well in front of me. It was a calculated risk, but I thought it was the best thing. If we could get a few k’s away and dump it, we’d at least get a decent start.
No one argued. When I got there Robyn and Lee had already piled into the back, Kevin was following them, and Fi was waiting her turn. Homer had gone around to the passenger side. Seemed like I was driving, though God knows how I was meant to find the energy. But I didn’t stop to discuss it. I jumped in. The key was in the ignition. The Jackaroo started straight away, but it was facing in the opposite direction to the one we wanted. In the narrow track it was hard to see a place to turn; I just shrugged and shoved the car in reverse and drove it hard back along the road.
‘Goddam!’ Kevin gasped, as we careered along, probably doing sixty in reverse. The others didn’t say anything but they looked more scared than when I’d been shooting the soldiers. We were going around the long curve and were nearly through it when I thought I saw a spot coming up that would do to turn; a clearing on my left. I hauled on the wheel but misjudged it badly, missing the clearing and thumping into a small tree. I remembered the damage this car had already suffered to its rear end and realised grimly that I had just made it ten times worse. Kevin was rubbing his head where he’d hit it on the roof at impact, but he didn’t say anything. I was grateful for that. Fi was biting her lip anxiously. Thankfully the car didn’t stall, and still seemed to steer OK. I swung the wheel and we took off again, this time facing the right way.
I was pretty confident that we wouldn’t meet any traffic, and at the speed we were going I had to hope we wouldn’t. Apart from Kevin’s ‘Goddam’ no one had said a word since we started. I was terrified of helicopters but we’d have little chance of seeing or hearing them if they came. I just kept my foot down and moved the car along at speeds that gave me hernias.
After twenty minutes we hit the main road. There was no warning – suddenly we burst out of the bush onto bitumen and I was spinning the wheel again, putting the car into a squealing skidding turn that nearly tipped us over. I straightened it, but it took a hundred metres to get it back on an even keel, steering a straight line. I got it over to the left-hand side of the road and wiped my face, not daring to look at the others.
We raced on, up into the hills. ‘How far do we want to take this thing?’ I asked.
‘Not much further,’ Homer said.
‘They’ll know we’ve got it,’ Robyn called from the back. ‘So we’ve got to dump it where they won’t find it. And the further we get the better, because that’ll give them a wider area to search.’
‘We dumped that BMW in a dam,’ Fi said.
‘I’m just worried we’ll meet a convoy,’ I said.
We were in thick bush now, but still on the main coast road.
‘Do you want your stuff?’ Robyn called out suddenly.
‘What?’
‘Your packs are hidden just around the next corner. Do you want them?’
I thought quickly and decided that I certainly wanted mine. We screeched to a stop and jumped out, grabbing the heavy packs from under piles of leaves and bark. I found I didn’t have the strength to pull my pack into the back of the Jackaroo, and had to ask Robyn to do it for me. She looked at me anxiously. ‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘Just find me some food, please.’
We drove on, and a minute later her hand appeared in front of my face. She was holding something. I was too busy driving to look at it but I opened my mourn and she pressed a date into it. I love dates. I have no idea where she got them – I didn’t know she had any – but she was always coming up with little surprises like that.
We sped on through a couple of big intersections, turning right at a third one to confuse them when they started the next search for us. We were on a road which, according to a sign, led to Stratton via Garley Vale. At least there was less chance of convoys now, but we were all anxious to get rid of the car. We’d pushed our luck hard enough. Our chance came at last when Fi spotted, of all things, a wrecker’s yard.
‘There!’ she said.
‘What?’
‘If you want to hide a book, put it in a bookcase.’
‘What?’
‘Over there, that wrecker’s yard. If we hide the car in there they won’t find it for ten years.’
I looked at Homer and we both laughed. He shrugged. ‘Why not?’
I turned off the road into the driveway. The yard was called Ralston’s Wreckers. It looked funny: several hectares of smashed cars stuck in the middle of the countryside. The ones at the back were old rusted wrecks, most missing their doors and bonnets. Ivy and blackberries, and in one place a passionfruit vine, were growing all over them. With some, it was hard to tell what make they were, or even what colour they had been. But closer to the front were the newer models, some still glossy and bright, spoilt only by a crumpled rear end, a smashed side or a dented roof.
I drove along the rows until I found a gap where the Jackaroo looked at home. I drove it in nose-first so that the wrecked rear was showing.
And at last I could let go. I was in worse shape than the Jackaroo, but I didn’t have to run and fight and starve any more, not for a few minutes anyway. Maybe not for a few hours. I turned off the ignition and leaned forward, resting my forehead on the steering wheel. ‘Someone get the number plates,’ I said, closing my eyes. No other vehicle in the yard had number plates, so we had to get ours off. But I let the others do that. I just sat. I wanted to lie down somewhere and sleep but I was too tired to go find a place. I could hear them unpacking the car and talking to each other, just occasional mumbled comments, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying – not because they were talking too softly or because I was deaf, but because I was so tired I couldn’t turn the sounds into words. The stuff was coming in my ears but not reaching my brain. The energy required to push the words the last millimetre into my brain wasn’t there. I’ve never been that tired before.
I started lying across the front seats of the car: not exactly lying, just letting myself fall sideways. All the bruises and aches and pains were hurting hard now, now that I didn’t have to ignore them, fight them off. But then there was a cold draft as someone opened the door.
‘Don’t,’ I whined, ‘don’t.’ I huddled up a little tighter, trying to keep warm.
‘Come on, Ellie,’ Fi’s voice said. ‘You can’t stay there.’
But I didn’t want to move, couldn’t move. I was like that five-year-old again, wanting someone to carry her into the house after she’d fallen asleep on a late-night ride home.
‘Come on, Ellie,’ Fi said again. She didn’t even sound sympathetic, just bullying and irritated, too tired herself to have sympathy for me.
She tugged on my leg and I kicked out angrily and connected pretty hard with something. Fi squealed, in anger or pain or both, and I realised I’d have to move now. I’d put myself too far in the wrong. So
without a word of apology to Fi, who was holding her side and scowling, I stumbled out of the car and along the row towards Robyn, who I could see in the distance.
They were setting up a rough camp in the back of a Nissan E20 delivery van that had been whacked severely right where the driver had been sitting. He would have got a hell of a headache: it was really a mess in that corner. But the rear section was whole, and dry. I didn’t say anything to anyone, just dragged myself in there and lay like an old sleeping bag. I was still very hungry but had no energy to eat.
It turned out that I didn’t have the energy to sleep, either. I probably did sleep a bit but I didn’t feel like I had. Fi and Homer squeezed in beside me after a while, but I ignored them. Lee and Robyn were doing sentry. I knew sooner or later a patrol would come around, but I had to trust the others to be ready for them, to take the precautions.
At least the patrol didn’t come till the next morning. I slept a bit during the night. It was warmer with the bodies of the others to snuggle up to. I let them do all the sentry duties; no one asked me and I couldn’t have got out of the van. Fi brought me some food quite early in the evening and again at dawn. I ate both times, and gratefully too. It wasn’t until I was busting for a leak that I finally left the van, and even then I put it off until I was desperate.
At about eleven o’clock Robyn arrived at a run. ‘They’re coming,’ she said.
We all came writhing out of the back of the E20, like a nest full of snakes.
‘This way,’ Lee said to me. I followed him down to the back row of cars, and beyond them to an old overgrown collapsed fence. We climbed over that and ran on down to a patch of bush. We grovelled in there till we were well out of sight.
‘How long do you think they’ll keep looking for us?’ I asked Lee, as we lay there. We were so close that we were nearly touching, but I wanted to keep his mind on other things.
‘Until they find us,’ he answered grimly.
That seemed to kill off any romantic thoughts.
‘Did the helicopters wake you?’ Lee asked after a while.
‘What helicopters?’
‘There’s been three this morning already. The first one was just after dawn.’
‘Looking for us?’
‘I guess.’
I couldn’t think of anything else to say that wasn’t too personal or too frightening. So I just lay there. Ten minutes later, Robyn appeared in front of us.
‘Anti-climax, guys,’ she said. ‘They drove in, drove round the yard, and drove straight out again.’
‘They didn’t see the Jackaroo?’ I asked.
‘No, they didn’t go near it.’
We went back into the yard, where I at last had enough energy to start taking an interest in my surroundings. I saw Homer, who was on his way to have a poke around the house at the end of Ralston’s yard; presumably the home of the Ralston family.
‘Do you want to come?’ he asked.
‘OK.’ I was really just tagging along for the ride, something to do.
‘What happened to you in the water?’ Homer asked.
‘Not now, please,’ I begged. ‘I don’t want to talk about it now. I don’t want to talk about anything.’
He shut up.
We approached the house from the back, which was on the gully side. Then we realised that it was actually the front; that it had been built with its back to the road. The effect was strange: it was facing nothing much. It was an old weatherboard place, with a galvanised-iron roof. A verandah ran right around it, and a grapevine ran along that, as thick as a telegraph pole in some places. There were no electricity poles, but there was quite a modern generator almost hidden around the back. The house really was a dump, though. It wouldn’t have been much of a place when it was first built and years of neglect had made sure that it was more of a dump now. The verandah was bowed in the middle, and swayed and sank as we stepped onto it. A row of starter motors was neatly placed along the wall to the left; a dozen of them at least. Half a bird’s nest lay near the front door, and the mat was fraying on all four sides. Stencilled on the mat in faded black letters was the message: take your bloody shoes off.
Yet, after all that, we were surprised to find a big gleaming lock on the front door. It looked expensive, and tough to crack. The door itself was quite solid, so we didn’t bother with either. I picked up a stick and went to break a window. ‘Hope there’s not a burglar alarm,’ Homer said nervously. ‘Someone on the road might hear it.’
I thought for a moment. ‘Doubt it. Why put in a burglar alarm when there’s no neighbours to hear it?’
I smashed the glass out in one pane, then, when there was no sound of sirens and ringing bells, smashed out the other panes, too.
‘Anyway,’ I said to Homer, ‘There’s no power line. It’d have to run off batteries and they’d be flat by now.’
I knocked out the rest of the glass and the cross-pieces of wood, then swung a leg over the sill and climbed inside. It was dark and smelly, like going into a laundry full of over-used socks. Rain had leaked down one side of the wall and stained the wallpaper; it was all mildewy and musty.
‘Imagine living here,’ Homer said behind me.
I went on into the kitchen, where it was too dark to see much. There was a fridge, but I wasn’t going to open that, and an old meat safe with cans on the top that looked worth investigating. It was obvious that no looters had been here, probably because the house was so run down it didn’t look worth the trouble. Homer went through another door into the back of the house and I had a look at the bathroom. There was an old claw-foot bath, a bit like the one at home. I peered into it and was disgusted to see two little grey furry things with tails sticking out of the plughole. It took a moment for me to realise what they were: mice that had died in there, probably so desperate with thirst that they’d stuck their heads down the hole looking for water.
Homer came in but before I could say anything about the mice, he said, with a sort of quiver of excitement: ‘Come and look what I’ve found.’
Chapter Nineteen
I followed Homer through an old crimson curtain that served as a door. It was like we’d suddenly landed in an electronics showroom. I couldn’t even recognise most of the stuff. There was a computer and a printer, a couple of video recorders and a monitor, and a fax machine. That was standard enough. But the whole of the far wall was communications equipment. There seemed to be a variety of radios, two microphones, and a lot of little gadgets, like a walkie-talkie and a mobile phone.
‘Amazing,’ I said.
‘Looks like a branch of Tandy,’ Homer said.
‘Talk about a double life. Living in the nineteenth century half the time and the twenty-first century the other half.’
‘Yeah, toys for the boys,’ Homer said. ‘They say no matter how old guys are, they have to have their toys.’
That sounded so funny coming from Homer that I had to struggle not to laugh.
‘This one’s like the rural firefighting sets,’ I said, walking over to a big radio unit in the corner.
‘Yeah.’ Homer was looking thoughtful. ‘I think this guy’s a real whatever they call it, ham. Short-wave radios and all that stuff. I tell you, Ellie, we could probably talk to other countries using this gear.’
‘E-mail with voices.’
‘Exactly.’
‘You just want to play with these toys yourself.’
‘Yeah, maybe.’
‘What exactly are you thinking? Giving yourself the pleasure of some French practice?’
‘New Zealand. If we could get in touch with the Kiwis, if they knew we were the ones who blew up Cobbler’s Bay, they might, I don’t know ...’
I began to realise where Homer was heading. My mind began to jump at some of the possibilities.
‘They might come and rescue us?’
‘Well, they might.’
‘We’d need to start the generator. I don’t think the noise of that’d be too good.’
‘It’s possible, I suppose. I do like the idea of a holiday in Milford Sound. But surely they’d have too much on their minds to worry about a few kids.’
‘Probably. But still ...’
The thing was that once Homer put the idea in my head, I knew I was stuck with it. For months we’d had no glimpse of even the slightest hope. We couldn’t see any end to this war in the near future; maybe not even in the distant future. So what was to become of us? Were we doomed to wander the countryside, having smaller and smaller areas where we could hide, until one day we were caught? That seemed our only choice. At one stage I’d even had a dream of making a raft and sailing to New Zealand, like ship-wrecked mariners in old adventure stories.
But at least if we could talk to someone, to anyone, really: well, at least they’d know we were alive. That would be comforting, even if they didn’t send a VIP jet to rescue us.
‘We’ll have to ask the others,’ I said at last.
‘Look,’ Homer said, showing me an old exercise book. ‘This is the key. It’s all the call-signs and frequencies and things.’
I took it and had a look. A lot of it didn’t make any sense, just lists of numbers. But it was obvious that this guy could tune in to the emergency frequencies: he had numbers for police, ambulance, fire authority, different airports, air force, state emergency. I had a vague idea that it was illegal to listen in to some of these channels. Oh well. Not many of them would be broadcasting these days.
We climbed back out the broken window and went to find the others. Lee and Fi had joined Kevin and Robyn on sentry duty and they were talking earnestly. It turned out they were discussing the same subject that was starting to obsess us all: our futures. They’d been trying to recall the news Kevin had brought of the counter attacks: troops from New Guinea were holding an area around Cape Martindale; the Kiwis had recaptured much of the southern coastline: the Burdekin and the area around Newington. Trouble was, that was weeks ago; a lot could have changed since. What Lee wanted to do was to get through to Newington. It was a thought that horrified me.