Burning for Revenge (21 page)

I munched on some more broccoli as Fi continued.

"The trouble is, everything's so young. It's too early in the season. But there's quite a lot of stuff growing. Pumpkins and lettuce and zucchini. We'll get a better idea in the morning, when we can see properly."

"Are you planning to cook the spuds?" Homer asked. I could imagine what he thought of raw vegetables for a diet.

"Well, what does everyone think? We could light a fire in the dining room fireplace and turn it into a barbecue. We had a quick look and it seems OK."

"It should be safe enough," Homer said. "We just have to be careful not to make smoke."

"What about the smell?" I asked. "I don't know about you guys but I can smell a wood fire a kilometre from a house. We don't want our visitors to come back."

"Well, the dining room's in the middle of this house," Fi said. "So that might cut the smell down."

I wasn't convinced.

"Those people won't come back," Homer said. "Why should they? There's hundreds of places they can pick from. They don't want any grief."

I thought, "There are hundreds of places we could pick from too," but I didn't say it, because I felt quite emotional being in Grandma's house again.

Lee asked: "Is there any food in the pantry?"

"Oh, do you know, we completely forgot to look."

That gave us a moment or two of excitement, as we rushed in, thinking maybe we'd find a treasure trove of goodies. It wasn't quite that. There was half a bottle of vinegar, an unopened jar of chutney, half a jar of stale coffee and a packet of gelatine. And the spice rack, with most of its little bottles still nearly full, and Grandma's so-familiar row of blue-and-white kitchen canisters. I opened each one: flour, no sugar, half a cup of rice, a few grains of castor sugar, quite a lot of salt, that was all. It was a depressing collection.

In the end we did cook the spuds. We were so low on energy and spirits that we thought we should take the risk. Fi and Lee went out in the street as sentries while Homer and I did the cooking. I'm not sure what we'd have done if Fi and Lee came sprinting in to say there was a patrol of enemy soldiers, or a gang of squatters, advancing on the house. I don't think I could have left the spuds there for someone else. Maybe I'd have chased intruders away with the poker.

But we finally had a meal, and a hot one at that. Spuds and broccoli with salt and chutney, followed by coffee. Afterwards we trooped out to the back garden and tried to call New Zealand. I'd been excited every time I'd had a chance to think about this. It was our lifeline to the normal world, to sanity, to calm pipe-smoking Colonel Finley in his book-lined study in Wellington. And somehow every time we called, I expected magic and miracles. I'm not sure what kind exactly, or why I expected them. Maybe because it seemed so miraculous that we could call them on the radio in the first place.

Well, this time I sure got disappointed. We'd allowed ourselves six minutes to make the call, and as usual we didn't stick to our own time limit. We tried for nearly twelve before Homer switched it off. All we got was different varieties of static again: loud, soft, whistling, crackly, humming, stormy. Maybe there was some problem with the weather. Maybe it was atmospheric disturbance. Worse still, maybe someone was on our wavelength. I was disappointed and relieved when silence again took over the chill night air.

Homer took first sentry and after we'd cleaned up a couple of bedrooms we found enough clean blankets and sheets in the linen press to make proper beds. It was a night of sheer luxury.

I gave Fi breakfast in bed: cold potatoes with chutney.

She took one look at the chutney and said: "Oh, you put chutney on it."

"But you like chutney."

"No I don't. I didn't have any last night."

Downstairs, Homer and Lee had done a bit more exploring. We already knew the toilet didn't work, but surprisingly the water was still on, so we flushed the toilet with a few buckets of water from the sink, and put the bucket in there for the next person who used the dunny.

Kevin had at last found something he seemed to enjoy. Perhaps our encouragement the night before helped, but for whatever reason he was out in the garden digging for vegetables. He had quite a good little pile of spuds. Some were half ruined by a mouldy wetness and a lot were sprouting new growth, but some were fine and we could cut the bad bits off the others. Up the back of the garden were heaps of dead white canes with a bit of new growth at the base. I thought they might be Jerusalem artichokes, which are pretty boring, but they seemed like chocolate now. I gave Kevin the hint to check them out, and left him to it. I've never been keen on gardening, so with Kevin looking relatively happy I didn't push my luck by hanging around.

Fi and Homer and /talked Lee into doing guard duty and we went up the hill at the back of West Stratton to see what was going on. It was dangerous moving through the suburbs in daylight again but we couldn't afford to stay in one spot, slowly dying. We had to make things happen.

Stratton didn't have a nice lookout like Wirrawee. It was about the only thing Wirrawee had that Stratton didn't. But from the hill we thought we'd get a good enough view. It was a kilometre and a bit from Grandma's, but it was in a different suburb. They called it Winchester Heights, and if that sounds pretentious, well, that's the kind of area it was. Huge new houses each bigger and grander than the next. No interesting wild gardens or strange secret places or funny little outbuildings. A billion bricks and a million roof tiles had gone into building those houses, and I reckon they wasted the lot of them.

The conditions there were very different to West Stratton. It was back to the tension of the previous day. That was good news and bad news. The good news was that I didn't feel the constant tingling in my back that I got around Grandma's: the feeling of being watched or followed. Here the dangers were obvious, out in the open. The bad news was that this area was definitely occupied. Seems like these spectacular new homes proved irresistible to the invaders. It all reminded me of the new-look Wirrawee, with families living in the houses again. Not "our" families, but if you didn't know that you wouldn't have guessed it. The same washing hung from the lines, the same cars were parked in the streets, the same flowers grew in the same carefully manicured gardens. I felt like we'd stepped out of the lightless world of West Stratton and into an American TV show.

Homer and I looked at each other from our hiding place in a creek bed. We were in a small park at the bottom of the hill.

"No point going up into that," Homer said flatly.

"I agree."

"Oh thank goodness," Fi said. "The way you two carry on I thought you'd want us to charge in and take them all hostage."

"Hmm, now that's not a bad idea," Homer said.

We withdrew as delicately as we could into West Stratton. It had once been an unfashionable nice old suburb. But it didn't feel all that nice any more. Again I found myself looking around all the time. My neck could have twisted like a coil spring on a car.

"Do you get the feeling something's wrong around here?" I muttered to Fi, as we crouched behind a garden shed in someone's backyard.

It seemed, even to me, like a stupid question to ask in a war zone when your country's been invaded. Fi looked at me so strangely that I thought that's what she was about to say. But to my relief she said: "Yes, it's creepy. I feel like I've been drinking tonic water."

I've never drunk tonic water, but it seemed like at least we agreed there was a problem.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Homer grumbled. "I don't feel anything. Except hungry."

Fi and I grinned at each other.

From the backyard with the shed we took a shortcut to a lane that would get us within a block of Grandma's. We reached the entrance of the lane. Going into it I felt the strongest sense of danger I'd had since the war started. I don't know why I didn't stop right there. Well, I do know; it's because Homer and Fi were already twenty metres in and it was too late. I could have called out but it would have been noisy. I could have stopped where I was but I didn't want to be separated from them. I could have ... oh I don't know. The point is I didn't do anything except follow along tamely. And I suspect the real reason is I didn't trust my instincts enough and I didn't want to make a fool of myself in front of Homer.

It did look safe. It was one of those narrow lanes that in the old days was used by the night cart for its pickups. A modern car would have trouble getting down there. The lane was only short but was lined all the way by high fences. The fences made us feel secure from a side attack but at the same time caused all my tension to be concentrated in a small area.

Whatever, halfway down, I'd had enough. I called softly to the other two: "Hurry up," and started running. Fi started too, before the first word was out of my mouth, so I knew she felt the danger. But as soon as we started, the lane erupted. It was the most frightening thing. Like lifting the dags on a sheep and finding it swarming with maggots. Like being bombed by a magpie you didn't even know was there. Like picking up a log and finding, not one snake underneath but a whole nest, mother and babies, writhing and rearing.

They came over the fences. I suppose we knew, subconsciously at least, that fully armed enemy soldiers in their combat uniforms couldn't come swarming over high fences like gymnasts springing off trampolines. That's the only excuse I can give for going down the stupid lane in the first place. But we didn't know how much things had changed in Stratton, in our own country. Because these weren't fully armed enemy soldiers in uniforms. These were kids.

They were a mixture of ages. The youngest might have been six or seven, but they were so skinny and undernourished that I couldn't tell. The oldest were probably twelve or thirteen. There were six that came over the fences and another two at the end of the alley, in front of us. When I looked around I wasn't surprised to find another one blocking the light behind us.

They were all armed. One even had a bow and arrow. Two had rifles, which they cocked as soon as they landed and aimed straight at us. The rest had knives. I thought they were going to shoot us on the spot, that's how frightening they were. They looked half mad.

I couldn't believe it was happening. These weren't the enemy. These were our people, the kind of kids you'd share the school bus with, the kids you'd muck round with at the Wirrawee pool. And they were attacking us. It was all wrong, horribly disgustingly wrong. I looked at them frantically. Stared at them. I was trying to find something I could recognise. I wanted to find one friendly pair of eyes, and then I would have said to them: "Hi! It's us! Let's talk. We've all been through the same stuff. We can help each other."

I found no face like that. Just glaring, wild, scary eyes. In some of them, yes, I thought I saw expressions more scared than scary, but that was probably me being overimaginative. There wasn't time to think about it anyway.

They were shouting and screaming at us to get down on the cobblestones. Homer and Fi were already down. A boy was pointing a rifle at me so aggressively, so viciously, thrusting it forwards with such violently shaking arms that I thought he was about to pull the trigger. His finger was already squeezing the trigger far too hard, and I dropped fast. "Oh God," I thought dumbly, "is this how it's going to end? Shot dead in a lane with no name, by the very people we thought we were helping?"

I lay on the cobblestones. I've never felt anything more uncomfortable. A rifle got pushed into the back of my head so hard that I thought it had broken the skin. Hands started wriggling into my pockets. They felt like little claws. I simmered, furious at my helplessness. "Turn over," a girl's voice said, and I did. She went through my shirt pockets.

I was trying to think, to come up with some way to calm the situation. It wasn't easy. I heard Fi say: "Stop it, you little moron." and Homer say: "Give up." It was weird. These were the words we'd have used to kids on the school bus if they started chucking their lunches at each other, or mooned someone through the back window. They weren't the words to use to violent thugs.

I focused on one of the older girls. She could have been any age between ten and twelve. I chose her not because she looked kinder but because she was a girl, so I assumed she might be more reasonable. "What are you doing this for?" I asked. "We're on your side, you know."

"Fuck off," she said, looking away.

"Haven't you got any food?" a boy asked me. It was the first time any of them had spoken in a voice halfway normal. He looked very young, and his voice was so helpless and unhappy that I did feel a bit sorry for him.

Still lying on the cobblestones, I shook my head.

"We just got here," I said. "We've been living out in the bush. We don't know where anything is."

I thought that if we could get them talking there might be some hope; we might get a calmer atmosphere.

"You must have food somewhere," a girl said. I couldn't see what she looked like. She was standing behind my head, quite a way back.

"Nothing, I swear" I said.

"We haven't eaten for three days," Homer lied.

"You're breaking my heart," the same girl sneered.

"Want a tissue, cry-baby?" another voice asked.

I was sure this was how they talked to each other. It'd stop the little kids from crying or showing weakness. After all, they'd survived, how long? I was losing track of time, but it was probably about ten months, probably without adults. Weakness wouldn't have got them far.

I asked: "Have you been on your own the whole time? Have you ever had adults with you?"

A boy started to answer, saying: "We had a couple of..." but a girl interrupted him. She barked a word that sounded like "Exit," but could have been anything, and suddenly they were gone. They might have been undernourished but they were as quick as rats. One moment there, the next a patter of feet, the next an empty alley and silence.

We picked ourselves up. Fi wiped a tear out of her eye and sniffed. Homer looked furious. "Those little mongrels," he said. "They've taken everything."