by John Marsden
'But blood,' said Fi. 'A lot of blood.'
'Yes, well we think it was blood. A lot of dark stains. But there was oil and stuff everywhere—it was just a big mess. So we went through that pretty carefully, then cut through Jubilee Park. Our idea was to go down Barker Street, but honestly, it was a disaster area. Looked like those American riots on TV. Every shop's had its windows smashed, and there's stuff all over the road and footpaths. I'd say these guys have had themselves a big party.'
'They must think it's Christmas.'
'I don't know if they're heavily into Christmas. We had to laugh though: straight opposite us was a big sign in Tozers' window, saying "Shoplifters will be prosecuted". Well, they've had themselves some shoplifters. The whole shop's been lifted.
'Anyway, we decided to go down that little lane beside Tozers'. It was all dark and shadowy, which suited us. Funny how quickly you adapt to being a night creature. So we moseyed along there, across the carpark, and into Glover Street. Then Fi, who's got hearing like a bat, thought she heard voices, so we ducked into the public dunnies. Into the men's of course: I wasn't going to risk being caught in a ladies' toilet. Actually it wasn't that smart a move. You guys seem to have got into the right kind of thinking pretty quickly, but we've still got to retrain our minds. If anyone had seen us going in there, or if they'd caught us inside it, we'd have been dead meat—the place was a perfect trap. And there was someone coming—I could hear the voices by then too. I'd been thinking of taking a leak, but when you're scared—well, I don't know what it's like for girls but a guy can stand there for half an hour, and not a drip...'
'Come on Homer, get on with it. I want to go to bed soon.'
'OK, OK. Well, we waited and waited. Whoever they were, they were sure taking their time.'
'Homer kept himself busy graffitiing the walls,' Fi interrupted.
'Yes, that's true,' Homer admitted shamelessly. 'I figured it was one time in my life when I could get away with it. When this is all over they'll have more important things to worry about than my messages on the lavatory walls. And they were patriotic messages that I wrote.'
'I don't see what's patriotic about "Wogs Rule",' Fi interrupted again.
'But I wrote other things too.'
'You're an idiot Homer,' Kevin grumbled. 'You never take anything seriously.'
But I remembered Homer's hand on mine when I talked about the screams of the three soldiers who'd been hit by my home-made shrapnel. And I remembered what he'd said to comfort me. I smiled at him, and winked. I knew what he was trying to do.
'Anyway, these guys kept getting closer. And when I say guys, I mean a mixture. Like your patrol, there were men and women. About six or seven altogether, we thought. Our biggest worry was that they would decide to use the toilets. I wanted to go into a cubicle and lock the door, so the "Occupied" sign was showing, and I'm sure they would have respected that. But Fi wasn't so keen, so we got in the cleaner's cubicle instead, by wriggling under the door. That was one place they still hadn't looted. There was no room in there and the smell was terrible, but we felt more secure, although really, like I said before, we were crazy. The whole place was a deathtrap. And sure enough, two minutes later these boots came crunching in: three guys, we thought. Two of them used the urinal and the other one headed for the throne. So it was lucky we did hide, because I wouldn't have liked Fi to be seeing things like that. The guy in the cubicle was right next to us, and geez, if the smell had been bad before, it was shocking now. I think they were trying to save ammunition by gassing us to death. And as for the sound effects...'
Homer gave an imitation. The little dog, Flip, sitting on Kevin's lap, pricked up her ears and barked. Even Fi laughed.
'Lucky we didn't have Flip with us,' Homer commented. He continued his story. 'We didn't learn much, except that they eat a lot of eggs and cheese. They talked a lot, but no language that I recognised. Not that that means much. All I can say is that they weren't Greek. But Fi's the language student—she does about six, don't you Fi?—and she couldn't tell who they were.'
I reflected that the night they'd spent together had given Homer more confidence with Fi. He'd found the style, the tone, to use with her. And she seemed to enjoy it. She laughed at his jokes and there was more life and colour in her face when she looked at him. She was losing the coolness she'd had before.
'Well,' Homer continued. 'At last they finished whatever it was they were doing, and we heard them shuffle off. We gave them five minutes and then slithered back out under the cleaner's door. We could see the soldiers though, from the door, as they disappeared down Glover Street. They were a funny looking bunch. There were eight altogether, and I think three were women. But of the men, two looked pretty old, and two looked quite young, about our age or even younger. And they were dressed in rough old uniforms.'
'I guess,' said Corrie, 'that to invade a country this size they would have had to call up everyone with four limbs.'
'We didn't have any ride-on mowers lying around,' Homer went on, 'so we tiptoed off in the opposite direction. Nothing much else happened till we got to Fi's...'
'Yes it did,' Fi cut in. 'Remember the shadows?'
'Oh yes,' Homer said. 'You tell them. I didn't see them.'
'About two blocks from my place,' Fi began, 'there's a milk bar, with a little park behind it. The milk bar had been looted, like all the other shops. We were sneaking across the park when I thought I saw a couple of shadows coming out of the milk bar. Shadows of people, I mean. I don't mean shadows either; that's just what I called them, because it was so dark it's what they looked like. At first I thought they would be soldiers, and I grabbed Homer and we hid behind a tree. When I looked out they were disappearing towards Sherlock Road, but I could see they weren't soldiers, just from the way they were acting. I called out to them, and they stopped and looked around, then they talked to each other for a minute, then they ran off. That's all.'
'I never saw them,' Homer explained. 'I nearly died when Fi started yelling out. I thought she must have inhaled too much Dettol in the cleaner's cupboard. But when you think about it, it's logical that there'd still be people running around loose. They can't have caught everyone in the district in this short a time.
'Anyway, we kept plugging up the hill. We got to Fi's place. It was locked but Fi knew where there was a spare key. And now I know too, which could be handy one day. Fi sent me inside with my orders: the first light switch is about a hundred metres from the front door, across this enormous hall, so Fi sat on the steps outside while I crept through this pitch-black room. I tell you, it was pretty spooky. You know how psychic I am, and I could feel a presence in there, a being. I knew I was not alone. I got about half way across and suddenly there was this unearthly scream from above, and the next thing, I was being attacked. Devilish claws were tearing at me and a ghostly voice was howling in my ear. And that's how we found that Fi's cat was alive and well and living in the rafters. Fi's folks have been having the ceiling renovated.'
'God you're hopeless Homer.' Kevin yawned. 'Get on with it.'
'Well, I won't go into the depressing details. Like we told you back at Robyn's there was no one home. But everything was in good nick. I'm sure they're OK, that everyone's folks are going to be OK. It sounds like they're all bailed up at the Showground, and once these people have got themselves organised they might start letting them out again. Plenty of food there, anyway. They've got my mum's decorated cake for a start, and that was a prize-winner if ever I saw one.'
There was a bit of a pause, then Corrie asked, 'Did you have any trouble on the trip back to Robyn's?'
Homer became serious, and his voice softened. 'Do you know the Andersens?'
'Is that Mr Andersen who coaches the footy team?'
'Yes. You know their house? Well, we came back a different way, to avoid the shopping centre, and we passed the Andersens' place. Or what's left of it. My mum always says my room looks like a bomb hit it. I know what she means now. I think a bomb did hit th
e Andersens' place. And two more houses between there and the railway. There's been a bit of damage done round that part of town.' He sat gazing at the table, as though he could still see the wrecked houses. Then he lifted his head and shoulders and kept talking. 'That's about it really. We got back to Robyn's about a quarter to three. We'd been hoping we might see Lee and Robyn on the way, but there was no sign of them. That wait at Robyn's sure seemed a long time. We were terrified that none of you would turn up, that you'd all been caught. Then we heard the shots from the Showground. Scared the buttons off my shirt. Then more shooting, and finally this explosion, in Racecourse Road. My God, it was like fire and brimstone shooting up in the sky. Would have cracked a five on the Richter scale. It was dramatic. You guys sure know how to put on a fireworks show. But of course, standing there and watching it, but not knowing, that wasn't so good. I wouldn't like to do that again.'
He yawned too. 'I think we should have a sleep. It's no use sitting here trying to guess what's happened to Lee and Robyn. We'll only depress the hell out of ourselves. And we can work out our tactics later. What we need is to keep our energy levels high. If we take it in turns to be on watch, we should be OK here for today. I don't think these people would have the manpower to search the whole district in a day.'
'That's fair enough,' I said. 'But we should have an escape route, in case they do come. What you realised when you and Fi were in the cleaner's cupboard applies here too.'
'Those little yellow balls,' Fi said, wrinkling her nose. 'There must have been a thousand of them in there. Why do boys' toilets always have those little yellow balls?'
'How do you know what boys' toilets always have?' Homer asked.
Corrie said, 'Suppose we sleep in the shearers' quarters? Whoever's keeping watch can sit up in the treehouse. If we have a vehicle behind the shearers' quarters we could be away and across the paddock into the bush before anyone gets too close.'
'Would they see or hear the vehicle?' Homer asked.
Corrie considered. 'They might. They shouldn't, if the sentry picks them up early enough, and if everyone moves fast.'
'Well let's take the bikes up there too, so we've got the silent option if we need it. And let's clean up this kitchen, so there's no sign that we've been here.'
Homer was becoming more surprising with every passing hour. It was getting hard to remember that this fast-thinking guy, who'd just spent fifteen minutes getting us laughing and talking and feeling good again, wasn't even trusted to hand out the books at school.
Chapter Nine
Fi woke me at around eleven o'clock. That's what we'd agreed, but it was a lot easier to make the agreement than to keep it. I felt heavy and stupid and slow. Climbing the tree was an ordeal. I stood at the trunk and looked up at it for five minutes before I could find the energy.
Some people wake up fast and some people wake up slow. I wake up dead. But I know from experience that if I sit it out for half an hour the energy gradually comes. So I sat lethargically in the treehouse, watching the distant road, waiting patiently for my body to begin to function again.
Once I got used to it, sitting there was OK though. I realised to my disbelief that it had been only about twenty hours since we'd emerged from the bush into this new world. Lives can be changed that quickly. In some ways we should have been used to change. We'd seen a bit of it ourselves. This treehouse, for instance. Corrie and I had spent many hours under its shady roof, holding tea parties, organising our dolls' social lives, playing school, spying on the shearers, pretending we were prisoners trapped there. All our games were imitations of adult rituals and adult lives, although we didn't realise it then of course. Then the day came when we stopped playing. We'd gone a couple of months without our usual games, but a few days into the school holidays I got my dolls out and tried to start up again. And it had all gone. The magic didn't work any more. I could barely even remember how we'd done it, but I tried to recapture the mood, the storylines, the way the dolls had moved and thought and spoken. But now it was like reading a meaningless book. I was shocked that it could have all gone so quickly, sad at how much I'd lost, and a little frightened about what had happened to me and how I'd fill the future hours.
There was a sudden sound from below, and looking down I saw Corrie's red head as she started to climb the tree. I moved to the left to make room for her, and she swung up beside me a moment later.
'I couldn't sleep,' she explained. 'Too much to think about.'
'I slept, but I don't know how.'
'Did you have awful dreams?'
'I don't know. I never remember my dreams.'
'Not like that Theo what's-his-name at school. Every morning in Home Group he'd tell us his full dreams from the night before, in detail. It was so boring.'
'He's just boring full stop.'
'I wonder where they all are now,' Corrie said. 'I hope they are at the Showground. I hope they're OK. It's all I can think about. I keep remembering all the stories we read in History about World War Two and Kampuchea and stuff like that, and my brain just overloads on terror. And then I think about the way those soldiers were shooting at us, and the way they screamed when the mower blew up.'
She picked unhappily at a piece of bark. 'Ellie, I just can't believe this is happening. Invasions only happen in other countries, and on TV. Even if we survive this I know I'll never feel safe again.'
'I was thinking about the games we used to play here.'
'Yes. Yes. The tea parties. And dressing the dolls up. Remember when we put lipstick on them all?"
'Then we lost interest.'
'Mmm, it just faded away, didn't it? We grew up, I guess. Other things came along, like boys.'
'They seemed such innocent days. You know, when we got to high school and stuff, I used to look back and smile and think "God, was I ever innocent!" Santa Claus and tooth fairies and thinking that Mum stuck your paintings on the fridge because they were masterpieces. But I've learnt something now. Corrie, we were still innocent. Right up to yesterday. We didn't believe in Santa Claus but we believed in other fantasies. You said it. You said the big one. We believed we were safe. That was the big fantasy. Now we know we're not, and like you said, we'll never feel safe again, and so it's bye-bye innocence. It's been nice knowing you, but you're gone now.'
We sat there, looking out across the paddocks to the dark fragment of road in the distance, lying across the countryside like a thin black snake. That's where people would appear, if they came in search of us. But there was no movement, just the birds going about their unchanging routines.
'Do you think they'll come?' Corrie asked presently.
'Who? The soldiers? I don't know, but there's something Homer said ... about them not having the manpower to search the whole district. There's a lot of truth in that, I think. See, my theory is that they're using this valley as a corridor to the big towns and the cities. I reckon they've landed at Cobbler's Bay, and their main interest in Wirrawee is to keep it quiet so they can get free access to the rest of the country. Cobbler's Bay is such a great harbour, and remember, we couldn't see it when we came out of Hell, because of the cloud cover. I bet it's full of ships and there's traffic pouring down the highway right now. But it's not as though Wirrawee's going to be a major target for anyone. We don't have any secret missile bases or nuclear power plants. Or at least we didn't, the last time I looked.'
'I don't know,' said Corrie doubtfully. 'You never know what Mrs Norris was getting up to in the Science Lab at school.'
'You children come down from that tree right now!' said a voice from below. We didn't need to look to know who it was. 'Great bloody sentries you are,' Homer said, climbing to join us. 'And I heard what you said about Mrs Norris, my favourite teacher. I'm going to tell her when we go back to school.'
'Yeah, in twenty years.'
'Wasn't it Mrs Norris's class when you went out the window and down the drainpipe?' I asked.
'It could have been,' Homer admitted.
'What?' s
aid Corrie, laughing.
'Well it got a bit boring,' Homer explained. 'Even more boring than usual. So I thought I'd leave. The window was closer than the door, so when she turned to write on the whiteboard I went over the windowsill and down the drainpipe.'
'And then Ms Maxwell came along,' I chipped in.
'And said, "What are you doing?".'
'Quite a fair question really,' I said.
'So I told her I was inspecting the plumbing,' Homer finished, hanging his head as if he remembered the storm that followed. We were laughing so much we had trouble keeping our grip on the branches.
'I've heard of people being out of their trees,' Corrie said, 'and you nearly are.'
A familiar sound interrupted us. We stopped talking and craned our necks, searching the sky. 'There it is,' said Corrie, pointing. A jet screamed across the hills, so low that we could see the markings. 'One of ours!' Homer yelled excitedly. 'We're still in business!' The jet lifted a little to clear the range and turned to the left, belting away into the distance towards Stratton. 'Look!' Corrie called. Three more jets, dark and ominous, were in hot pursuit. They were flying a little higher but following the same course. The noise was piercing, splitting the peaceful sky and land, like a long Velcro tear. Homer sank back to his position in the bole of the tree. 'Three against one,' he said. 'I hope he makes it.'
'He or she,' I muttered, absent-mindedly.
The long day wore on. When everyone was awake we had a late lunch and talked endlessly of Lee and Robyn, of where they might be, of what could have happened. After a while we realised we were going round in tired circles. Homer had been silent for ten minutes or so, and as our voices trailed off we found ourselves looking at him. Maybe that always happens when someone's been quiet for a while. Maybe it happened because we were starting to recognise Homer's leadership. He didn't seem to notice, just began talking naturally, as though he had it all worked out.