Tomorrow When The War Began (10 page)

Between the rest of us we had only a .22
hornet and a .410. My father had a .303, but ammunition for it had
become so expensive that I didn’t think he still had any.

I was in the middle of explaining to the
others where we kept our ammo. I’d already figured out I’d be one
of the people going to town. Suddenly we heard a distant disturbing
noise. It sounded like a plane, but louder and rougher, and it was
getting closer very quickly. ‘It’s a helicopter,’ Corrie said,
looking scared. We ran for the windows. ‘Get away from the bloody
windows,’ Homer yelled, then to me, ‘We forgot to have a sentry.’
He rattled out a string of orders. ‘Kevin, go to the sitting room;
Fi, the bathroom; Corrie, your bedroom; Ellie the sunroom. Look
carefully out of the windows to see if there’s anyone coming by
road or across the paddocks. Report to me in the office. I’ll be
getting the .22.’

We did what he said. He’d chosen four rooms
that together gave us a 360 degree view of the countryside. I
scuttled across the floor of the sunroom like a big startled
cockroach, then stood behind the curtains, wrapped myself in them
and peeped out. I couldn’t see the helicopter but I could hear it,
loud and coarse and threatening. I scrutinised the countryside
carefully but could see nothing. Then something did move into my
view. It was the little corgi, Flip, waddling across the courtyard.
I felt sick. They would have to see her from the air, and what
would they make of that? A healthy dog wandering happily around a
house that was meant to have been deserted for a week? Should I
call her, I wondered, in case they haven’t seen her yet? But if she
responded too enthusiastically to my call it might make them even
more suspicious. I made a decision, to do nothing, and at that
moment the helicopter itself came swooping around to my side of the
house. It was a great big ugly dark thing, like a powerful wasp,
buzzing and staring and hungry to kill. I shrank back into the
curtains, afraid to look into the faces of the people in the
machine. I felt that they could see through the walls of the house.
I squatted, then retreated along the wall of the room, around the
next wall, fled through the door and down to the office, where the
others were waiting.

‘Well?’ Homer asked.

‘No soldiers,’ I said, ‘but Flip’s out there,
wandering around. They must have seen her from the helicopter.’

‘That might be enough to make them
suspicious,’ Homer said. ‘They’d be trained to notice anything out
of the ordinary.’ He swore. ‘We’ve got a lot to learn, assuming we
even come out of this. How many soldiers in the chopper?’

He got various answers: ‘Hard to say’, ‘Maybe
three’, ‘I didn’t see’, ‘Three or four, maybe more sitting up the
back’.

‘If they do land they’ll probably spread out.’
Homer was thinking aloud. ‘A .22 won’t be much use. The Toyota’s
still up at the shearing shed. I can’t believe we’ve been so
stupid. It’d be no use trying for that. Go back to the same rooms,
and see what they’re doing. And try to count the number of
soldiers. But don’t give them the slightest chance to see you.’

I ran back to the sunroom but the helicopter
was not in sight. Its ugly angry sound seemed to fill my head
though, to fill the house. It was in every room. I hurried back to
the office. ‘It’s on the west side,’ Kevin said. ‘Just hovering
there, not landing.’

‘Look guys,’ Homer said. ‘If it lands I think
we’ve only got two options. We can sneak out on the opposite side
to where it’s landed, and use the trees to try to get away into the
bush. The bikes are no use and the Toyota’s out of reach. So we’d
be on foot and relying on our brains and our fitness. The second
option would be to surrender.’

There was a grim and frightened silence. We
had only one option really, as Homer knew.

‘I don’t want to be a dead hero,’ I said. ‘I
think we’d have to take our chances and surrender.’

‘I agree,’ Homer said quickly, as though
anxious to get in before someone disagreed.

The only one likely to disagree was Kevin. The
four of us looked at him. He hesitated, then swallowed and nodded:
‘All right.’

‘Let’s go back to the sitting room,’ Homer
said. ‘We’ll see if it’s still there.’

We ran down the corridor, then Kevin eased
himself into the room and sidled to the window. ‘Still there,’ he
reported. ‘Not doing anything, just watching. No, wait ... it’s on
the move ... coming down a little ...’ Fi gave a cry. I glanced at
her. She’d been very quiet all afternoon. She looked like she was
about to pass out. I grabbed her hand, and she squeezed mine so
hard I thought maybe I’d be the one to pass out Kevin kept up his
commentary. ‘They’re staring right at me,’ he said. ‘But I can’t
believe they could see me.’

‘Don’t move,’ Homer said. ‘It’s movement
that’s the giveaway.’

‘I know,’ Kevin complained. ‘What do you
think, I’m going to start tap dancing?’

For another two minutes we all stood like
mannequins in a shop window. The room seemed to grow darker and
darker. When Kevin did speak again it was in a whisper, as though
there were soldiers in the corridor.

‘It’s moving ... can’t tell ... sideways a
little, up a bit, up some more. Maybe going over the house, to have
a look at the other side.’

‘This’ll be the big move, one way or the
other,’ Homer said. ‘They won’t hang round much longer.’ Fi gripped
my hand even tighter, something I wouldn’t have thought possible.
It was worse than carrying a lot of plastic shopping bags loaded
with dog food. Kevin kept talking as though he hadn’t heard Homer.
‘Still going sideways ... up a bit more ... no, backing off a bit.
Come on, back off beautiful. Yes, backing off now, and accelerating
too. Oh yes. Make like a hockey player sweetheart; get the puck out
of here. Yes! Yes! Fly away, fly away home.’ He turned to us with a
casual shrug. ‘See! All I had to do was use my charm.’ Corrie
picked up the nearest object and threw it at him, as the helicopter
began to sound more like a distant chain saw. The object was a
little statue of Mary, which luckily for Corrie, Kevin caught. Fi
burst into tears. Homer gave a shaky smile, then swung into action
again.

‘Let’s get cracking,’ he said. ‘We’ve been
lucky. We can’t afford to make that many mistakes again. He herded
us all into the sitting room and out the front door. ‘We’ll have
this conference out here, where we can see the road,’ he said. ‘Now
look, I’ll tell you what I think. If there’s any major holes in it,
tell me. Otherwise, let’s just do it, OK? We haven’t got time for
long debates.

‘All right. Starting with the dogs. Flip and
the other one, at my place, whatsitsname.’

‘Millie,’ I offered.

‘Yes,’ said Homer. ‘Millie. Guys, we have to
abandon them. Leave out all the dry dog food you want for them, but
that’s all you can do. Second, the milkers. I’ve had a look at
yours Corrie. She’s not only got mastitis, it’s gone gangrenous as
well. We’re going to have to shoot her. It’d be too cruel to leave
her here to suffer.’ I glanced at Corrie. She was absorbing this
dry-eyed. Homer continued. ‘Third, the Toyota. We can’t take it
now. They will have seen it from the air, so if it goes missing
they might notice that. The three people packing the vehicles will
have to take everything they can on bikes, and ride to Kev’s and
pick up another four-wheel drive there, to go with the Landie.’ He
glanced at Kevin, to check if that were possible.

Kevin nodded. ‘The Ford’s still there.’

‘Good. One thing I was hoping we could get
from here is lots of vegetables from Corrie’s mum’s garden. But I
don’t think there’ll be time, unless it’s done in darkness. For
now, I think we should go bush till tonight. Take the bikes and
anything else that’s absolutely vital, and get going, in case they
send troops out from town. I’m sure they won’t come out after dark,
but till then there’s a risk.

‘Finally, about tonight.’ He was talking very
fast, but we weren’t missing a word. ‘I think Ellie and I should go
into town. We need a driver to stay here, and Kevin and Ellie are
our best drivers. And it wouldn’t be fair to have an all girls
group and an all guys group. Then if you three aim to get to
Ellie’s by dawn, we’ll meet you there. If we’re not there tomorrow,
give us till midnight tomorrow night, then leave for Hell. Leave
one car hidden at Ellie’s and hide the other one at the top
somewhere, near Tailor’s Stitch, and go down to the campsite. We’ll
find our own way there when we can.’

As he talked, Homer had been nervously
scanning the road. Now he stood. ‘I’m really spooked about that
helicopter. Let’s get out right now, and save the looting till
tonight. I’ll meet you at the shearing shed. We’ll have to take all
the bikes. We need them.’

He picked up the rifle and glanced at Corrie,
raising his thick brown eyebrows. She hesitated, then murmured ‘You
do it’. She came with us as Homer went off alone, to the trees at
the end of the house paddock, where the cow was standing
restlessly. The shot came a few minutes later, as we jogged up to
the shearers’ quarters. Corrie wiped her eyes with her left hand.
The other one was holding Kevin’s hand. I patted her back, feeling
inadequate. I knew how she felt. You do get attached to your
milkers. I’d seen Dad shoot working dogs that were too old,
kangaroos that were trapped in fences and too weak to get up, sheep
that were a glut on the market. I knew Millie’s days were numbered.
But we’d never shot a milker.

‘I hope Mum and Dad don’t mind us doing these
things,’ Corrie sniffed.

‘They’d have minded if you’d broken that
statue,’ I said, trying to cheer her up.

‘Lucky I play first base,’ Kevin said.

We got to the shearers’ quarters, where Homer
joined us a couple of minutes later. He was just in time. It was
maybe ninety seconds after that when a black jet, fast and lethal,
came in low from the west. It sounded like every dentist’s drill
I’d ever heard, magnified a thousand times. We watched from the
little windows of a shearer’s bedroom, too fascinated and afraid to
move. There was something sinister about it, something diabolical.
It flew with a sense of purpose, deliberate and cold-blooded. As it
crossed the road it seemed to pause a little, give a slight
shudder. From under each wing flew two little darts, two horrible
black things that grew as they approached us. They were coming
terribly fast. Corrie gave a cry that I’ll never forget, like a
wounded bird. One rocket hit the house, and one was all it took.
The house came apart in slow motion. It seemed to hang there in the
air, as though it were the kit of a house, a Lego set, about to be
assembled. Then a huge orange flower began to bloom within the
house. It grew very quickly, until there was no more room for it
and it had to push the pieces of house out of the way, to give it
room to flower. And suddenly everything exploded. Bricks, wood,
galvanised iron, glass, furniture, the sharp orange petals of the
flower, all erupting in every direction, till the house was spread
all over the paddock, hanging from trees, clinging to fences, lying
on the ground. Where the house had stood was now black: no flames,
just smoke rising slowly from the foundations. The noise of it
rolled across the paddocks like thunder, echoing away into the
hills. Bits of debris rattled on the shearers’ roof like hail. I
couldn’t believe how long they kept falling, and after that, after
the rattling of the heavy fragments was starting to fade, how long
the soft snowflakes took to float down: the pieces of paper, the
bits of material, the fragments of fibro, gently and peacefully
scattering across the countryside.

The second rocket slammed into the hillside
behind the house. I’m not sure if it was meant for the shearing
sheds or not. It didn’t miss us by much. It hit the hill so hard
the whole range seemed to quiver; there was a pause, then the
explosion, and a moment later a whole section of the hill just fell
away.

The jet turned steeply and did a circuit above
the river paddock, so they could watch and enjoy the show I
suppose. Then it turned again and accelerated into the distance,
back to its foul lair.

Corrie was on the floor, hiccupping, and
thrashing around like a fish on a line. Her pupils had rolled back
so far into her head that you couldn’t see them any more. Nothing
would calm her. We became frightened. Homer ran and got a bucket of
water. We splashed some in her face. It seemed to calm her a bit. I
picked up the whole bucket and tipped the water over her head. She
stopped hiccupping and just sobbed, her head on her knees, her
hands clasped around her ankles, water dripping off her. We dried
her and hugged her, but it was hours before she calmed enough even
to look at us. We just had to stay there and wait, hoping the
planes would not come back, hoping they would not send soldiers in
trucks. Corrie would not move, and we could not move until she
did.

Chapter Ten

With the coming of night Corrie seemed to
regather some reason, to be able to understand and to whisper back
to us. Her voice was lifeless though, and when we got her up and
walking she moved like an old lady. We had her wrapped in blankets
from the shearers’ beds and we knew that we would never get her on
a bike. So at dusk Homer and Kevin took the Toyota and drove to
Kevin’s, bringing back the Ford and the Toyota. Homer still thought
it important to leave the Toyota at Corrie’s, to make it look as
though we hadn’t used it. He was hoping that they’d think we were
blown up in the house. ‘After all, they may not even be sure that
anyone was here,’ he argued. ‘They may have just seen a movement in
the house, or Flip might have made them suspicious.’

Homer had an ability to put himself into the
minds of the soldiers, to think their thoughts and to see through
their eyes. Imagination, I suppose it’s called.

I went looking for Flip, but there was no
trace of her. If she’d survived the explosion she was probably
still running. ‘Be at Stratton by now,’ I thought. Still I’d
promised Kevin I’d look, while he was getting the Ford.

The two boys came back at about ten. We’d been
nervous while they were away; we’d come to depend on each other so
much already. But at last the cars came lurching slowly up the
driveway, dodging around pieces of wreckage. It was easy to tell
that Homer was driving the Toyota. He wasn’t much of a driver.

We had another argument then though, when
Homer said that we had to go through with the original plans,
including separating into two groups. Corrie had been bad enough
when the boys had gone to get the cars. But now, at the thought of
Homer and me going into Wirrawee, into what she feared was
dangerous territory, she sobbed and clung to me and pleaded with
Homer. But he wouldn’t back down.

‘We can’t just crawl under the bed and stay
there till this is over,’ he said to her. ‘We’ve made a lot of
mistakes today, and we’ve paid a hell of a price. But we’ll learn.
And we’ve got to get Lee and Robyn back. You want them back, don’t
you?’

That was the only argument that seemed to
work, a little. While she was thinking about it, Kevin got her into
the Ford. Then he and Fi hopped in either side of her; we said
quick goodbyes and mounted our bikes, for the ride to Wirrawee.

I can’t pretend I was keen to go. But I knew
we were the right ones to do it. And I wanted to spend more time
with this new Homer, this interesting and clever boy whom I’d known
but not known for so many years. Since our trip to Hell I’d been
getting quite interested in Lee, but a few hours away from him, and
in Homer’s company instead, were making a difference.

I remember going to the meatworks once with
Dad for some reason, and while he talked business with the manager
I watched the animals being driven up the ramp to the killing
floor. What I’d never forgotten was the sight of two steers half
way up the ramp, just a couple of minutes away from death, but one
still trying to mount the other. I know it’s a crude comparison,
but that’s a bit the way we were. ‘In the midst of death we are in
life.’ We were in the middle of a desperate struggle to stay alive,
but here was I, still thinking about boys and love.

After we’d been riding silently for a few
minutes Homer came up beside me to ride two abreast. ‘Hold my hand
Ellie,’ he said. ‘Can you ride one-handed?’

‘Sure.’

We went like that for a k or two, nearly
colliding half a dozen times, then had to let go so we could make
more speed. But we talked a bit, not about bombs and death and
destruction, but about stupid little things. Then we played
Categories, to pass the time.

‘Name four countries starting with B, by the
time we get to the turn-off.’

‘Oh help. Brazil, Belgium. Britain, I suppose.
Um. Bali? Oh! Bolivia! OK, your turn, five green vegetables, before
we pass that telegraph pole.’

‘Cabbage, broccoli, spinach. Slow down. Oh,
peas and beans of course. Now, five breeds of dog, by the
signpost.’

‘Easy. Corgis, Labradors, German shepherds,
border collies, heelers. Right, here’s a Greek one. Name three
types of olives.’

‘Olives! I wouldn’t know one type!’

‘Well there are three. You can get green ones,
you can get black ones, or you can get stuffed.’ He laughed so much
he nearly ran off the road.

At the five k sign we started getting serious
again, keeping to the edge, staying quiet, Homer riding two hundred
metres behind me. I like taking charge – that’s no secret – and I
think Homer had had enough for a while. Approaching each curve I’d
get off and walk to it, then wave Homer up if the road was clear.
We passed the ‘Welcome’ sign, then the old church, and were into
what Homer called the suburbs of Wirrawee. As the population of
Wirrawee would barely fill a block of flats in the city, the idea
of suburbs was another Homer joke. The closer we got to Robyn’s,
the more tense I became. I was so worried about her and Lee, had
been missing them so much, was so scared at the prospect of any
more confrontations with soldiers. So much had happened during the
day that there’d hardly been time to think of Robyn and Lee, except
to say to myself the trite and obvious things, ‘I wonder where they
are. I hope they’re there tonight. I hope they’re OK.’

They were true thoughts though, for all that
they were trite and obvious.

The last k to Robyn’s we moved very very
carefully, walking the bikes and ready to jump at anything, the
movement of a branch in the breeze, the clatter of a falling strip
of bark from a gum, the cry of a night bird. We got to the front
gate and looked up the drive. The house was silent and dark.

‘I can’t remember,’ Homer whispered. ‘Did we
say we’d meet at the house or on the hill at the back?’

‘On the hill, I think.’

‘I think so too. Let’s check there first.’

We left the bikes hidden behind a berry bush
near the front gate, and detoured around the house, through the
long grass. I was still in front, moving as quietly as I could,
except for a couple of surprises – like bumping into a wheelbarrow
and falling painfully over a tall sprinkler. After the ride-on
mower at Mrs Alexander’s that had got Corrie I began to wonder if
anyone ever put anything away. But I couldn’t see any hope of
converting the wheelbarrow or the sprinkler into weapons. Maybe we
could turn the sprinkler on and wet the enemy? I giggled at the
idea, and got a startled look from Homer.

‘Enjoying this are you?’ he whispered.

I shook my head, but truth to tell I was
feeling more confident and relaxed. I always prefer action; I’m
happier when I’m doing things. I’ve always found TV boring for
instance; I prefer stock work or cooking, or even fencing.

At the top of the hill nothing had changed.
The view over Wirrawee was the same, the lights were still on at
the Showground, and in a few other places. One of those places, as
Homer pointed out, was the Hospital. It looked like they had it
functioning. But there was no sign of Robyn or Lee. We waited about
twenty minutes; then, as we were both yawning and getting cold, we
decided to try Plan B, the house.

We stood, and started down the hill. We were
fifty metres from the house when Homer grabbed my arm. ‘There’s
someone in there,’ he said.

‘How do you know?’

‘I saw a movement in one of the windows.’

We kept watching for quite a time, but saw
nothing.

‘Could have been a cat?’ I suggested.

‘Could have been a platypus but I don’t think
so.’

I began to inch forward, not for any
particular reason, just because I felt we couldn’t stand there
forever. Homer followed. I didn’t stop till I was almost at the
back door, so close I could have reached out and touched it. I
still wasn’t sure why we were doing this. My biggest fear was that
we were about to be ambushed. But there was a chance Robyn and Lee
were in the house, and we could hardly walk away while there was
that possibility. I wanted to open the door, but couldn’t figure
out how to do it without making a sound. I tried to recall some
scenes in movies where the heroes had been in this situation, but
couldn’t think of any. In the movies they always seemed to kick the
door down and burst through with guns drawn. There were at least
two reasons we couldn’t do that. One, it was noisy; two, we didn’t
have guns.

I sidled closer to the door and stood in an
awkward position, pressed backwards against the wall and trying to
open the door with my left hand. I couldn’t get enough leverage
however, so instead turned and crouched, reaching up with my right
hand to grip the knob. It turned silently and smoothly but my nerve
failed me for a moment and I paused, holding the knob in that
cocked position. Then I pulled it towards me, a little too hard,
because I had half expected it to be locked. It came about thirty
centimetres, with the screech of a tortured soul. Homer was behind
me, so I could no longer see him, but I heard, and could feel, his
breath hang in the air and his body rise a little. How I wished for
an oilcan. I waited, then decided there was no point in waiting, so
pulled the door open another metre. It rasped every centimetre of
the way. I was feeling sick but I stood and took three slow careful
steps into the darkness. I waited there, hoping my eyes would
adjust and I’d be able to make some sense of the dull shapes I
could see in front of me. There was a movement of air behind me as
Homer came in too: at least, I hoped it was Homer. At the thought
that it might be anyone else I felt such a violent moment of panic
that I had to give myself a serious talk about self-control. But my
nerves sent me forward another couple of steps, till my knee bumped
into some kind of soft chair. At that moment I heard a scrape from
the next room, as though someone had pushed back a wooden chair on
a wooden floor. I tried desperately to think what was in the next
room and what it looked like, but my mind was too tired for that
kind of work. So instead I tried to tell myself that it hadn’t been
the scrape of a chair, that no one was there, that I was imagining
things. But then came the dreadful confirmation, the sound of a
creaking board and the soft tread of a foot.

I instinctively went for the floor, quietly
slipping down to the right, then wriggling around the soft chair
that I’d just been touching. Behind me I felt Homer doing the same.
I lay on the carpet. It smelt like straw, clean dry straw. I could
hear Homer shuffling around, sounding like an old dog trying to get
comfortable. I was shocked at how much noise he was making. Didn’t
he realise? But in front of me came another noise: the unmistakable
sound of a bolt being drawn back in a breech, then slid forward to
cock the rifle.

‘Robyn!’ I screamed.

Afterwards Homer said I was mad. And even when
I explained, he said it wasn’t possible I could have worked all
that out in a split second. But I could and I did. I knew that the
soldiers who’d chased us had modern automatic weapons. And the
weapon I’d heard being cocked was just a typical single-shot rifle.
Also, I remembered that Mr Mathers had gone hunting with Dad quite
often, and he did have his own rifle, a .243. So I knew it had to
be Robyn or Lee, and I thought I’d better say something before the
bullets started flying.

Later I realised it could have been someone
else entirely, a looter, deserter or squatter, or someone on the
run from the soldiers. Luckily it wasn’t, but I don’t know what I
would have done if I’d thought of that at the time.

‘Ellie,’ Robyn said, and fainted. She’d always
been a bit prone to fainting. I remember when the School Medical
Service came around and in Home Room Mr Kassar had announced the
girls would be having rubella injections. As soon as he’d mentioned
the word injections, Robyn had been on the floor. And in Geography,
while we were watching a film on face carving in the Solomon
Islands, we’d lost her again that time.

Homer had a torch and we got some water from
the bathroom and splashed it in her face till she came around. We
seemed to be giving a few facewashes that day. I was interested to
see that the town water supply was still working. There was no
electricity at Robyn’s, even though we’d seen the power on in other
parts of Wirrawee.

I was still pretty calm through all this but
one of our worst moments was about to come. When Robyn sat up, the
first thing I asked her was ‘Where’s Lee?’

‘He’s been shot,’ she said, and I felt as
though I’d been shot and everything in the world had died.

Homer gave a terrible deep groan; in the
torchlight I saw his face distort, and he suddenly looked old and
awful. He grabbed Robyn; at first I thought it was to get more
information from her, but I think it was just that he needed to
hold on to someone. He was desperate.

‘He’s not dead,’ Robyn said. ‘It’s a clean
wound, but it was quite big. In the calf.’

Robyn looked ghastly too; the torchlight
didn’t help, but her face was more like a skull than a face, high
cheekbones and gaunt cheeks and sunken eyes. And we all smelt so
bad. It seemed a long time since our swim in the river, and we’d
sweated a lot in the meantime.

‘How do we find him?’ Homer asked urgently.
‘Is he free? Where is he?’

‘Take it easy,’ Robyn said. ‘He’s in the
restaurant. But it’s too early to go back there. Barker Street’s
like rush hour in the city. I took the worst risks to get
here.’

She told us what had happened. They’d had
trouble at every street corner, nearly running into a patrol,
having to hide from a truck, hearing footsteps behind them. Lee’s
parents’ restaurant was in the middle of the shopping centre, and
their house was above the restaurant. As Homer and Fi had
found,

Barker Street