Burning for Revenge (24 page)

"It sounds," Fi said, "like jumping into a lions' cage and offering the lions our livers for afternoon tea."

"Look," said Homer, "how about this. We leave the stuff there while we go and get a lamb. By then it'll be dark. We come back and have a sniff around. If they're trying to ambush us, they'll have given up by then. I reckon they probably hide out not far from here. All I want is a bit of a look-see. If we can work out where they're living then we can keep an eye on them, and at the same time have a think about how to calm them down. I know they're dangerous, but it's only because they're a bit mad. We've got to be careful, but we shouldn't give it away as a bad job, not that easily."

That was the longest speech I'd heard Homer make for ages. There was a time when you couldn't shut him up, but that was a long time ago.

"I don't like the idea of leaving my only photo of Mum and Dad on the ground," I objected. "At first I thought I'd never see it again. I don't want to risk losing it a second time."

"But they won't bother picking it up," Homer said. "And it won't rain. It'll be safe for today at least."

"How about we ambush them," Lee said. "Drive them out of this district once and for all."

"Yeah" Homer said. "But there's something in me, I don't know what, that makes me want to give them another chance. If your little brothers or sisters were in that gang, you'd want to help them."

It reminded me of something I didn't think about very often—that when Homer was eight his mum had a third little boy, but he only lived a couple of days.

So I backed him up and we went on out into the countryside, found a paddock full of sheep, and culled a nice fresh spring lamb.

Once upon a time Grandma could be relied on to have good knives. Must have been a hangover from her farm days—all farmers are fussy about their knives. But the only knives left in her house now were fruit knives and dinner knives.

So we did a rough job of butchering. We chucked away so much good stuff. We were too tired, and Homer and I kept arguing about the best way to do it. I wanted to bury the rubbish, to stop foxes and wild dogs getting it, but Fi said: "What does it matter if they do?" I thought, "Yeah, I suppose that's true." Just another change from the old days, from the way we used to do things. Dad would have killed me.

By the time we got back to Stratton it was really late. I didn't expect the gang would still be out and about. I suppose I was thinking of a world where kids go to bed at 8:30. But as we came down the wide avenue near the lane where we'd seen our things I again had the feeling of being watched, followed, haunted by little dark shadows. I was last in our group and I kept taking quick glances behind. Three times I saw a flicker of movement, like a wild cat darting away from the lights of a car. I knew there was a chance they would attempt to mug us again, especially as they could no doubt see Homer carrying the sack that held the lamb. Maybe they saw the little drops of blood that dripped along the footpath. Maybe they could smell the fresh raw meat. It wouldn't surprise me. Such little savages probably could smell like feral cats or dogs.

We had our plans ready though. For one thing we were spread out very widely, about seventy-five metres between each of us. That made it difficult for them to attack. For another we moved irregularly, sometimes running half a block, sometimes crossing to the other side of the road with no warning, sometimes taking shortcuts through front yards. Even though they'd seemed organised when they attacked us, we assumed they'd fall apart in a situation where nothing was predictable. We'd made it easy for them the first time by going into the alley. We wouldn't do that again.

We had a quick conference, in the middle of a footy oval. I told them I thought we were being followed. We agreed there was nothing we could do. With all our precautions we'd hoped to be the watchers, instead of the watched; the hunters, instead of the hunted. But I wasn't prepared to leave my photo on the ground any longer. It was time to forget whatever grand plan Homer was dreaming up. We did a quick check of the nearby yard, then Homer and Lee and Fi formed a protective cordon, while I picked up our bits and pieces. A pathetic little pile they were too.

Then we went back to Grandma's. It was nearly midnight. Homer and I spent ten minutes trying to call New Zealand while Lee got the dining room fire going again. Another risk, but the temptation of grilled spring lamb was hard to resist.

New Zealand was a washout. It seemed most likely that the airwaves were being jammed, but we couldn't be sure.

We had a good pigout on loin chops and half-cooked spuds. I'm exaggerating really: when you've been hungry for a while your stomach must shrink or something, because you can't eat much, you don't even want much.
So I ate what I could, then went out to take over sentry from Fi, so she could have a feed.

When I relieved her, the first thing she said was: "They're out there."

"The kids?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. And I think they know I'm here. I think the smell of cooking might be attracting them."

"Like flies," I thought.

After Fi went into the house I sat quietly on the lowest branch of a peppercorn tree, watching and listening. It wasn't long before I knew Fi was right. Either there were some very big cats or some small to medium size humans around. It was quite weird. It made me uncomfortable. I wondered if maybe we could use cooking smells to attract them. If Fi was right about their ignorance of food, the attraction of a lamb chop might be hard to resist. We could put on a barbecue for them. I smiled grimly to myself as I pictured it. It'd be a weird barbecue. A bit different from the ones we'd had down by the river in the days of peace.

Part of our sentry technique in this kind of situation was to keep moving, so after a while I got off the branch and started patrolling, creeping around the garden. But the night passed slowly. I didn't have my watch anymore, thanks to these little mongrels, and it seemed like no one came to relieve me for many hours. Eventually Lee appeared, rubbing his eyes. "Sorry," he said. "My fault. I flaked out."

By then I was wide awake and wanting to talk but he didn't seem in the mood, so I gave up and went upstairs to bed. Then, of course I found I couldn't sleep. It was like that most nights. I started wondering about those kids again, and after a while, without planning it, without even thinking about it really, I got up and went downstairs again.

I slipped over the side fence, hoping Lee wouldn't see me, and went for a stroll up the street, keeping to the shadows. It was refreshingly cool after the warm day. Now at last the suburb felt free of its vicious wild-life. Perhaps even the street kids of Stratton were in bed.

I walked almost directly to the lane where we'd found our stuff. It still felt quiet. I went up the lane, very carefully. Halfway along it took a dogleg to the left. I inched my way around that. I certainly wasn't sleepy now. Every sense was on alert, every part of me wide awake.

And almost immediately I heard a sound. For a moment I thought it was a cat wailing, in that terrible way they do sometimes. But then I realised it was a child crying.

It went on for a while. It sounded like a young child, but it wasn't the crying of someone hurt or in panic. It was a sort of tired noise. You had the feeling this kid might have been crying for a long time, all night maybe. All war maybe.

I tried to work out where it came from. That's the trouble at night—it's much harder to locate sounds. At home sometimes I had to follow the barking of a wild dog or the bleating of a distressed lamb or the bellowing of a calving heifer. And it is tricky at night. Here, in such a built-up area, it was harder again.

I decided after a while that the most likely place was a long dark building, which might have been an old stable. It was about fifty metres ahead on the left. I started tiptoeing cautiously towards it.

When I was only twenty metres away I felt something grab at my leg. That's what it felt like anyway. I froze for just a moment. A second later a whole wall of stuff moved, right in front of me. It seemed to fall away, like an earthslip.

I jumped back. There was a hell of a crash. A sort of clattering smashing noise that echoed around the alley for the next half-hour. And kept echoing through the whole damn suburb. I heard it all right. I heard it as I ran for my sweet life. I thought it was following me, but I didn't need that to make me run. I kept thinking of the guns these kids had, the guns these kids held with shaking hands and crazy eyes. I didn't want those guns pointed at me again.

I was five blocks away before I ducked into the front verandah of a little semidetached cottage, and crouched behind its brick wall. I'd heard no sounds of a chase, and although I stayed there for nearly forty minutes, I saw no sign of one. But as I crouched there I figured out what had happened. Those cunning little brats had rigged up a booby trap. They had a trip-wire and a whole heap of stuff connected to it, so when I hit the wire a wall of pots and pans or whatever they were came crashing down. It was smart. Not only did it give them warning that someone was sneaking up on them, it also gave them time to get away. The soldiers would be so shocked by the noise that they wouldn't go rushing in. In fact they were more likely to rush away, like I'd done.

It was a high-risk system but it wasn't a stupid one.

I had a long walk back to Grandma's, because I'd run in the wrong direction when the noise went off. And I had to be incredibly careful. We hadn't seen many soldiers in West Stratton but if there were some who'd heard the booby trap, they'd be on the alert.

We whistled to tell each other we were on the same side. Like birds. It was the five note whistle from
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
, and I used it as I approached the house. Fi had taken over sentry, and she was startled to see me come slipping in from the darkness.

I was tired now but we talked for a while and I told her where I'd been. To tell the truth I was hanging out for another good goss, a good conversation. I still felt guilty about how I'd upset Fi when she talked about Homer. There hadn't been a chance to make up for that. We were always racing to keep one step ahead of death. And even though I knew I'd regret it in the morning, I nestled in next to her and we talked about Kevin, and the old days, and the airfield and the kids who'd taken our stuff. I felt a lot better these days than I had after our first, failed, attempt on the airfield. Not for the obvious reason that this time we'd succeeded, but because I felt a bit older, a bit more confident, a bit more in control. The issues had been clearer. There hadn't been time for agonising arguments about what to do, whether we were doing the right or wrong thing. We just had to do it and worry later.

Fi didn't feel the same though. As we talked I realised to my surprise that she was doing it hard; harder than ever. She started crying when we talked about the airfield. "It was horrible," she said. "All that blood. One man, I saw his legs blown off, right under him, his whole body just shook up and down like some sort of horrible dance, his face went all blurry, and he went down on the ground and I couldn't see what happened after that. And another man, I saw the flames whoosh across the ground like they were chasing him and they caught him before he'd moved even three steps..."

"Stop it, stop it," I said. She was bringing up all the things I didn't want to think about. "Stop it." Suddenly I didn't feel so good. But I had to shake her to shut her up. She wanted to talk about the jeeps crashing, about being trapped in the back of the truck with Kevin, about the officer she'd seen pull out a revolver and shoot himself as the flames closed in. I didn't want to talk about any of it. I'd more or less convinced myself it was all OK, that we were soldiers doing it for our parents and Colonel Finley and Iain and Ursula, and here was Fi dragging me back into the world of reality.

"Talk about something else," I begged. "We can't talk about this. Not here. Not now. Wait till we get back to New Zealand, or till the war's ended. Remember ages ago, back in Hell, Homer said we had to think brave? Well, we still do. If we let our minds go crazy, we're finished. We have to keep our heads together."

I was talking as much to convince myself as to convince her. I just wished Andrea, the counsellor I'd had in New Zealand, would materialise suddenly, so I could pour it all out to someone who understood.

Fi calmed down but she didn't say anything then; just sat there looking miserable. "I didn't mean to shut you up completely," I said. "I want to talk. But not about all the terrible things. I don't care what we talk about as long as it's not that."

"Oh," she said, "I know this stuff was happening in other countries when we were growing up: East Timor, Irian Jaya, Tibet. And I cared about it, I really did. But it's so different when it's right in front of you; when you see it. Or when it's your family and friends who get hurt and killed. Those kids, Homer's right, we should do something about them. Like he said, they could be our brothers and sisters."

I was glad she'd given me a chance to change the subject.

"They're pretty wild," I said. "Do you think we can do anything for them?"

"Well, why did you go there tonight if you thought it was hopeless?"

"I'm not sure. I just couldn't sleep for thinking about them. I suppose if we know more about them we can decide if we want to have a go."

"When that little kid said, 'Have you got any food?'," Fi said, "that was awful. I wanted to pick him up and hug him."

"Fi, they were mugging us at the time!"

"I know. But they looked so desperate. Do you think they really are starving?"

"They did look hungry. When we were eating the lamb I was trying to work out how we could leave some out for them, as a present, and then they'd trust us and know we could help them. At home I only fed the possums once in a blue moon, but that was all it took. They knew I'd never hurt them."

"Isn't it amazing the way the New Zealanders hate possums?" Fi said. She'd calmed down a bit, at last.