by John Marsden
Instead we had more of this awful waiting.
In a temper I threw myself on a bed and started reading the magazines from the newsagent, hoping to find something I could get into. It was impossible to concentrate. I turned page after page, not noticing whether I was seeing ads or articles or horoscopes or crosswords. Then suddenly I did take notice. In Who Weekly I was looking at a photo of a bike racer flying through the air. The bike was somersaulting over a wall with the rider somersaulting in the opposite direction. The headline said ‘Isle of Man Tragedy’.
It gave me an idea.
Homer was on sentry so I climbed our lookout tree again to talk to him. Unfortunately I made the mistake of giving him a tractor magazine before telling him my idea, which meant that from then on I had to work extremely hard to get his attention.
I got it eventually though. ‘You know those motorbike patrols?’ I asked.
‘Motorbikes? Sure.’
‘And how scary they are?’
‘Uh huh. Look, that’s the John Deere 8300, the tracked one. Dad wanted to buy one of those before the war.’
‘Beautiful. Very sexy. Well, while we’re waiting, waiting for the green light, I reckon we should do something with these patrols.’
‘Yeah, fair enough.’
He still wasn’t concentrating.
‘I want us to start attacking the patrols.’
‘Attacking the patrols? Are you serious?’
At least now he was listening.
‘We have to do something. I’m like an addict waiting for a fix. I’m jumping out of my skin. I think this war’s made me into an action junkie.’
He laughed.
‘And we’re all the same. We’ve got to do something tonight. I mean, what else is there? Go to bed early and get a good night’s sleep? I don’t think so. No-one’s going to sleep a wink. All we have to do is work out ways to attack which won’t put us in danger.’
‘Like, drop something on them from a rooftop?’
When Homer did catch on he was quick.
He added: ‘What we really need is to sabotage them and make it look like an accident.’
‘Yeah. That’d be better still.’
We sat in the tree, talking over ideas. It was funny: there we were, held by the strong smooth white arms of the gum tree, stopping every few minutes to watch the little green and yellow birds with their black and white crests as they ripped at the bark, listening to their noisy confident babble, and working out how to kill people. Is there any comeback after a war? Can normal transmission ever resume? I didn’t know the answers but I guessed not. After World War II my grandfather had come back to the old way of life, right away resuming the yearly cycle of drenching, clutching, lambing, shearing, dipping, selling. But I had no idea of what he’d really done in the war. I knew he’d gone overseas, to Italy and Malaya, that he’d been in the Artillery, firing huge guns like cannons, and every year he went to reunions with his mates. But I didn’t know the answers to the big questions. Had he killed anyone? Had he seen their faces? Did he kill in cold blood? I suspect he probably had, but I never got to know him very well, so I could be wrong.
Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that there’s quite a difference between strangling someone with a belt, and firing a shell into a distant patch of jungle.
When Lee came out of the house to take over sentry from Homer we included him in the discussion. Right away he added a new element. As soon as he understood what we were talking about he said: ‘If we kill them all they won’t know if it was an accident or what.’ I was trying to figure out what he meant, so he added: ‘Like the first patrol up on Tailor’s Stitch. If we set a booby trap that kills one soldier, the others will see it and know how he died. If we set a booby trap that wipes out the whole patrol, no-one need know how they died. As long as we get rid of the evidence.’
Trust Lee to come up with a savage twist like that. It shocked me into silence.
The boys talked about how they could do it, but they didn’t have any ideas, and neither did Fi or Kevin when they got involved. In the end we decided to try for something a bit simpler. After all, it’s often the simplest things that work best.
As soon as it was dark we left the house. We had to do it early, to be back in time for the next radio check. Only Homer and Fi and I went. We decided to do it that way in case any of us were caught. It was one of those tough hard-nosed decisions we had to make so often these days. If we three were caught, Lee and Kevin would still be available to carry out Ryan’s orders.
We snuck out while Lee entertained Gavin, so he wouldn’t know what was going on.
What we did was to get under a diesel bus parked outside a truck depot in Brougham. We drained the sump into four plastic half-buckets, then went down the hill towards the city centre.
It was too dangerous to go all the way into town of course. We got as far as the Safeway carpark in Morris Street. The Safeway was trading again in something—clothes I think, judging by the huge pile of empty cartons out the back—but it was closed at night. We hung round for twenty minutes, watching, until Homer finally said: ‘Well, there’s no point sitting here waiting to be caught. We better do it and get clear.’
So we used the shadows of the carpark as cover, skulking around the edges like alley cats afraid of dog packs, until we were standing under an elm tree on the side of the road. Fi had two buckets, I had the other two. When the street was quiet, we stepped out into the wide-open spaces of Morris Street. I felt very exposed. It reminded me of the first moment when I’d taken a real risk in this war: outside the Wirrawee Showground, when we realised our families were prisoners there. Then I’d darted out of the safe cover of trees, across some clear ground to the next tree. At the time I felt like I was doing something dramatic, that would change my life forever. I was right about that.
Although there was power in this part of town, they had no streetlights. They had no streetlights anywhere; so New Zealand bombers couldn’t see them. A lot of buildings had heavy curtains over their windows, to make sure no lights showed at night. But there was a bright moon shining when we stepped onto the road, enough for me to feel we were in the middle of a footie ground with a large crowd watching. A day-night match.
We trotted up to the corner, Fi and I on opposite sides of the street. We started pouring the oil. I wanted to look around, to see if anyone was coming, but I had to discipline myself. There was no point and it would waste time.
The whole thing only took twenty seconds. I watched the oil pour out onto the warm black bitumen. It seemed to lie there invisibly, black on black. I sprinted on soft feet back to Homer and Fi.
We decided to wait a while, in the hope of seeing some fun. We waited so long I started getting cold, but when I suggested to the others that we give up, Fi, who could hear the blink of an owl’s eye, said: ‘I think they’re coming.’ So I shut up and huddled in closer to the smelly overflowing Dumpmaster, trying to hear what Fi had heard.
In fact I didn’t hear anything until they turned into Morris Street. As usual the first sound was sudden and loud. There was the rasping roar of half-a-dozen engines, and down the road they came. I stood up a little and peered between the cartons. Two of the soldiers nearly caught me because they unexpectedly swung off left and came burning through the carpark. I shouldn’t have been surprised; after all, this was exactly the kind of stuff they did all the time. But the big rowdy black bikes both accelerated past where I was crouched. In long curves they arced away from each other. I think they were more interested in doing some freestyle riding in the wide-open spaces of the carpark than in seriously looking for enemy agents. They seemed to be having a good time, going pretty damn fast.
They were way down the other end of the carpark when I heard the chaos from the road. To my left Homer gave me a thumbs up. Beyond him Fi watched with her hands to her face. There was a gleam in her eyes though, that was just another of the confusing things I’d noticed about her during this war.
I q
uickly peered through the cartons again. Two bikes were down already, and stopping, as their riders struggled to their feet. A third was on its way down. Its rider was flying, helmet aiming at the footpath ten metres away, arms in front of him. His bike slid away in the other direction. The soldier spun over onto his back, bounced on the road, and skidded along until he hit the gutter with a dull clunk. Then he lay still. The bike crashed into a telegraph pole with a ripping, smashing sound that must have echoed for a dozen blocks. Homer grabbed my shoulder, giving me a hell of a shock. I hadn’t realised he’d moved so close to me. He looked demented with joy. ‘Time to go,’ he hissed in my ear. I backed away. The two bikes that had been in the carpark were now out on the road, the riders rushing to help their friends. So we had clear ground behind us. We turned and ran.
We ran nearly the whole distance to my grandmother’s. It was funny really, that we did that. It was like a cross-country race. At first it was natural enough, rushing to get clear before the reinforcements arrived. But even when we were far enough away to be safe, we kept running. After a couple of k’s I stopped thinking about patrols and concentrated on getting my breathing right. Glancing across at Homer and Fi, on the other side of the street, I saw the same expression on their faces that I’m sure was on mine. Kind of concentrated. Panting away, skin getting paler as the streets rolled by, keeping the legs going, keeping the arms going.
But it was fun too in a way. It was the kind of dumb thing we did before the war, running for the hell of it: because we were young and didn’t need an excuse to be stupid. In the old days you’d see little kids in the main street of Wirrawee holding their mum or dad’s hand, and because their mum or dad was walking too boringly the kids would skip and hop and dance. It was like they had so much energy they had to work it off somehow.
We were a bit old for that but we still had some energy and there were still times when we felt like skipping or dancing. Not so many of those times lately but once in a while . . .
Back at the house we waited while Kevin and Lee did the next radio check. They came back with the same message. Pineapples. Nothing doing till tomorrow. At the earliest. Twelve hours more waiting.
We were revved up, like city kids going out to start nightclubbing at one o’clock in the morning. Lee went outside to do sentry, and Kevin came in, so we talked to him about the attack on the motorbikes. He was in a good mood: sensible and interested. He was a lot better these days.
‘I want to go out again,’ Homer said. ‘But not with the oil.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, face it, what damage did we do? Stuffed up a few bikes, gave at least one of them a headache, but that’s all.’
‘Do you think we only gave him a headache?’ I asked. ‘He looked worse than that.’
‘No way,’ Homer said. ‘He didn’t hit the gutter hard enough to do any real damage.’
‘But,’ Kevin said helpfully, ‘there’s a place on your temple, on the corner here I think, and if you hit that it’ll kill you stone cold dead straightaway. You don’t have to hit it hard at all.’
‘He had a helmet on,’ I said, not liking this kind of gory detail. ‘OK, geniuses, if we’re not going to spread oil again what can we do?’
It was actually Kevin who came up with our next idea. It was his fault that three-quarters of an hour later I found myself lying in wait on McManus Street. I was behind a tree on the west side of the street, Homer was behind a telephone box on the other side. Kevin was lurking somewhere further along, doing nothing in particular, just being a back-up.
Two patrols had passed already but we had to let them go. I was getting bored and, although I’d said to Homer earlier that none of us would sleep tonight, I was tired now. I wandered across the street to talk to Homer. ‘Let’s wait for one more,’ he said. ‘If it’s no good we’ll go back to the house.’
I heard yet again the buzzing noise of a patrol. Like a big slow wasp. In this street, more open than Morris Street, you could hear them coming. These guys were still a distance away but they moved so fast sometimes, and I was on the wrong side of the road. I ended my conversation with Homer in mid-sentence and ran back to the flowering gum. I picked up my end of the wire.
A minute later they came into McManus Street. The throbbing of the engines reached me loud and clear, no longer muffled by houses or trees. But unless my ears were lying there was something different this time. They did sound more spread out. Maybe our chance had come. The first two were already halfway along the street, almost level with me. The other four were quite a way behind. I tensed even further, if that was possible. The first two passed quickly. I saw their bright red brake lights come on for the corner, before the others had even reached me. Three more came past. I knew this was it now. There was one still coming, and he was the one we wanted. He was fifty metres behind, but as the others got to the corner he accelerated, to catch up with them. Big mistake. Huge mistake. If he’d been going slowly he would have fallen more gently and probably not have done himself much damage. But a few metres before he got to us he went for it.
With a roar from the engine he powered into a wheelstand. I couldn’t believe our luck. As his rear wheel reached our wire I was already grabbing my end and pulling as hard as I could. Homer was doing the same. I’d been thinking of wrapping the wire around my wrist so I’d get a good grip on it. Lucky I didn’t. I think I would have lost my hand. The wire whipped out of my grasp like it had been electrified. But it did the job. The guy flew through the air, almost in slow motion. The motorbike banged and slid its way towards Homer. It definitely wasn’t going in slow motion. The man hit a tree with a dull thud, the same sort of sound you’d make if you hit the trunk with the back of an axe. The tree shook and leaves fell. The man dropped to the footpath and lay there sprawled out, completely lifeless. I’m not saying he was dead, I’m just saying he was totally unconscious, and he may have been dead. I don’t know.
While I’d been watching this frightening sight Homer was already out of his hiding place and gathering the wire. He wasn’t even looking at the rider. I was annoyed with myself that Homer was doing the work while I was being a tourist. Lucky I didn’t have a camera; I’d probably have been taking photos.
So I ran to help. We had to get the wire out of the way so they would find no reason for the crash. We wanted it to be a mysterious, inexplicable accident.
The wire was in two parts. The impact had snapped it. Already I could hear the other bikes coming back. All of this had taken only five or ten seconds. The previous three bikes had just got around the bend when we tripped the last guy, so it was taking them no time to return.
‘Come on,’ I said to Homer. I was badly scared. We had almost a hundred metres to get into safe cover. We wanted to be down a driveway and into the next block before anyone started looking.
Homer took off and I followed, trailing about ten metres of cable and trying to roll it up as I went. It caught in something behind me and nearly ripped my hand off again. I pulled fiercely, determined to make it come free, determined that the sheer strength of my willpower would get it free. No way in the world was I going to go back and get it.
Unfortunately my willpower wasn’t enough. The bloody thing wouldn’t move.
Like it or not, I had to do something. I started charging towards it, then saw, even in the darkness, that it had caught around a tap. I yanked it from a different direction and felt it come loose at last.
I turned and followed Homer again, reeling the wire in as I ran. He was as good as out of sight, down the end of the driveway, getting ready to climb the fence. He didn’t seem worried about me. Maybe he thought I was right behind him. Maybe he didn’t think about me at all. I went at that fence as though I was at the school sports day and running the last leg in the relay. A beam of light came down the driveway, lighting my legs. I understood that it was one of the headlights, either searching the driveway or a bike turning round and accidentally lighting the place up. Whichever, I felt totally exposed.
I didn’t know whether to stop, so that my movement didn’t attract their attention, or to keep going, to outrun their bullets. I kept going. I figured they’d already had heaps of time to see me.
The fence seemed an awful long way off. Homer was lying along the top of it like an old-fashioned high jumper rolling over the bar. He seemed to have realised at last that I wasn’t breathing down his neck. I leapt at his outstretched arm and grabbed it, chucking the wire over into the darkness, then using my left hand to scrabble my way up the fence. I gripped the crossbar and hauled myself to the top, Homer rolling over just before me, so that I landed on top of him, in someone’s garden.
‘Do you think they saw you?’ he panted from underneath.
‘How should I know?’ I said crossly.
I could feel him trembling. We couldn’t take much more of this, I thought. Even simple little operations were riddled with danger now, like old timber rotten with borer.
‘Where’s Kevin?’ Homer asked.
‘Will you stop asking silly questions?’
That was probably a silly question. Anyway, Homer didn’t answer it. At the same moment a slight rustling told us Kevin was coming from the next-door garden. He crouched down beside me.
‘Do you two want to be left alone?’ he asked.
I’d been in a bad enough mood already and he’d just made it worse.
‘What happened?’ I asked coldly. I disentangled myself from Homer.
Kevin must have got the message because he didn’t try any more jokes.
‘I think we’re OK,’ he said. ‘The guy’s badly hurt. Might even be dead. They didn’t see anything. And the bloke himself, if he does survive, won’t remember a lot.’
‘Fair enough,’ Homer said, then, to Kevin, ‘do you want to go back and have another look?’
He meant, to go back and get their thrills by perving on the body of the motorbike rider.