Darkness Be My Friend (17 page)

To get to the end we had to go into the staff room. It felt funny doing that. It still seemed like forbidden territory. There were two swinging doors that we pushed open carefully, then we scuttled around the table tennis tables to the windows. There seemed to be no moon now, and it was so black outside that we couldn't see much at all.

"What do you think?" Homer muttered to me.

"I don't know We've got to have a go though, not just stay here and wait for them."

"But they mightn't even know we're here. We might draw attention to ourselves if we try to break out."

"Yeah, I guess. But it seems weird that they'd come here." I was tired, and struggling to find the words to say what I meant. To my right Kevin was making scraping noises with something that sounded dangerously loud, but I didn't want to stop him because I assumed he was working on getting a window open. We had to take some risks. I tried to concentrate on what I wanted to say to Homer. "Unless they've got a million soldiers, they wouldn't be searching every building in town. Plus they'd have to search the bush. They wouldn't come here especially, unless they knew we were here."

Homer didn't say anything.

"It might just be a kid playing around," I said hopefully.

Homer shook his head. "I only saw his shadow, but he was too tall for a kid."

There was a crunching noise from Kevin's window. I couldn't help myself. "Shut up," I hissed savagely.

Kevin wriggled over to where we were whispering. He ignored my comment. "I've opened it," he said. "I'll go out if you want."

Every so often Kevin amazed me with these acts of courage. I had to keep reminding myself not to sell him short. Just when I thought he was a bit of a wanker he'd do something like this.

Perhaps I should have volunteered to go out there instead of Kevin. But I didn't. The truth is, I got sick of having to do so much. Cobbler's Bay, that nearly killed me. I think it affected me in ways I hadn't even realised yet. Like, it changed me deep inside. And that's why I was struggling with so much stuff now. I know the prison was the worst thing, and affected me the most, and the deaths of Robyn and Chris, and what happened to Come, and the invasion itself ... oh, I'll go on forever if I start. But staying in that container, then thinking I was going to be killed after the explosion, then seeing the soldiers at Baloney Creek with my friends, and what I had to do to them: somehow that seemed to get me in a terrible horrible way that had a bad bad impact on me.

So when Kevin volunteered, no, I didn't say a word.

We went over to the window he'd opened. It didn't seem quite so dark outside after all.

"I can't see anyone," Fi whispered.

The window still wasn't open enough. It would have been a tight fit for Fi, and Kevin had no hope. I touched the frame. The timber was pretty rotten. I could see and feel where he had splintered the wood in levering it open. Gingerly I pushed it up another thirty or forty
centimetres. I was doing it from underneath, and it creaked and squeaked as it went.

"Careful, can't you," Kevin muttered, echoing the way I'd told him to shut up a couple of minutes earlier.

Still, once I'd got it up enough, he didn't hesitate. Right away he started crawling over the sill, then at the finish he took a quick dive and disappeared under the window. For one horrible moment I thought he might have been shot, he went so quickly, but there'd been no sound of a gun, so I guessed he was OK. Sure enough, a few seconds later I saw him running swiftly into the darkness, crouched over and zigzagging.

It was a brave thing he did there, a really brave thing.

Then followed six or eight minutes of silence. We were straining every nerve, watching, listening, sniffing the air, trying for any clue that would help us work out what was happening.

Finally Homer whispered: "I've had enough of this. I'm going after him."

Fi and I spoke at the same time. "No, Homer, please don't."

"Wait a while," I added. "If something's happened to him, it'll happen to you, too."

They knew what I meant.

So we waited. Another five minutes I'd say. Then I heard the sound I least expected to hear; a sound so unlikely that I thought I had finally flipped my lid. Or if I hadn't, Kevin definitely had. Because either I was imagining things, or else Kevin, somewhere out there in the darkness, had just laughed.

I gazed at Homer in astonishment. Kevin had one of those laughs that once heard you never forget. If you
crossed a donkey with a machine-gun you'd get close to it. It's not the kind of laugh you can easily imitate. It was definitely laughter that I'd heard, and it was definitely Kevin's.

I risked standing a little higher, so I could get a wider view of the school grounds. It was so frustrating not being able to see. But only a moment later I saw two people coming towards the building from the black gloom of the trees. One of them was Kevin.

And the other was Lee.

Forgetting everything we'd ever told ourselves about security I wriggled through the window and ran towards him. I wanted to have one of those great reunion hugs, like you see in the movies and like I'd once had with Kevin, but as I ran up to him I realised he was in poor shape. He smiled at me, but it was more a contortion of his face muscles than a smile. His chin was trembling and his head hung low. He was walking very slowly. Kevin on the other hand was grinning like a kid who's won pass-the-parcel at three birthday parties in a row. I guess having risked his life by going out into the night he couldn't believe how lucky he'd been, how well it had ended up.

"Are you OK?" I said to Lee, in one of those dumb questions you ask when you can't think of anything better.

"I could use a good meal," he said.

We arrived at the window. Homer was hanging out of it beaming at Lee, but I said to him, "Get some food."

His smile disappeared quickly, and so did he. A moment later I heard the swing doors of the staff room open and shut.

Fi and I helped Lee through the window. He was very weak. When we got him inside he sat on a stool, then changed his mind and lay on the floor. I ran down the corridor to find Homer. He was still pulling stuff out of his pack. We had New Zealand army food these days, freeze-dried stuff mostly, that was in little foil packets. It was incredibly light and actually cooked up into a decent meal. Savoury Rice was my favourite. But you had to soak it then cook it, and I didn't know if we could cook it here. I didn't even know if the power was on. So instead of waiting to find all that out I grabbed some muesli from Homer, got the last of Kevin's orange juice powder from his pack, and took it to the sink in the staff room. The water was still running so it was easy to mix some OJ to pour on the muesli.

I'd heard somewhere, vaguely, that it's not good to eat heaps if you haven't eaten for ages. Actually I've just remembered where I heard that. It was one of those World War Two stories about prisoners on the Burma-Thai railway. Apparently when the war ended and the Americans arrived to save them, some of the prisoners died from overeating.

I mean, how unfair can life get?

Well, I didn't remember that story at the time but I had a feeling it wouldn't be a good idea to give Lee heaps of food. So I shovelled a few spoonfuls into him, then told him he'd have to wait an hour for some more. He wasn't too amused but I stuck to my guns, and Homer and Fi backed me up.

While I was feeding Lee, Kevin shut the window and locked it again. But he didn't use the security lock. It made me feel a little safer to know we at least had an
escape route now. Then at last we could ask Lee the questions we'd been sweating to ask.

"What happened, Lee?" Homer asked, crouching beside him. "Where are Iain and Ursula and the others?"

Lee shrugged. "I don't know," he said. He spoke very slowly, like talking was a big effort. "I haven't got the foggiest. After they'd finished their recce they got me to hide in the bush outside town, past the church, you know, Church of Christ. They told me they'd pick me up after the attack and we'd go back to Hell flat out. So I waited and waited and they just never came."

We waited, too, for Lee to go on, but he didn't.

"So what happened?" I asked finally.

Lee shrugged again. "That's just it. Nothing happened."

"Nothing?"

"I waited there all night. I wasn't too worried because they said if there was a problem, they'd either come back and get me, or they'd hole up in town for the day. They told me to go bush and meet them the next night. But the next night was exactly the same. Nothing."

"And that's it?" Homer asked. "Do you mean you don't know a single thing about what happened to them?"

He sounded angry, like it was Lee's fault.

Lee just nodded and closed his eyes. He kept talking with his eyes shut. "There wasn't even a hint," he said. He took about a minute between each word. He sounded old and tired. After all, he'd been on his own in Wirrawee for six days. "Not the faintest clue," he said. "No noise from the airport, no soldiers racing around, no gunfire. I don't know what's going on. All I know is,
something's gone wrong. Ellie, can I have some more to eat?"

I gave him half-a-dozen spoonfuls of muesli. "You'd better get some rest," I said. "If you can struggle down to the sick bay, there's a nice bed in there."

"I'm OK here," he said. "I do want to sleep, that's true. I haven't had much of it lately. But I've got some more news for you yet."

"Come down to the sick bay," I said, "and you can tell us then."

Even though he didn't want to, we made him move. He got there under his own steam, then we helped him to lie down and I pulled off his shoes. "Pooh," I said, "what a stink."

I was trying to make him laugh, but it was a waste of breath. He was already asleep.

Trust Kevin. And trust Mrs. Gilchrist. You never know what Principals get up to. Kevin took it into his head to have a little look around her office, and surprise surprise, what does he find in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet but her own private grog supply. There was half a bottle of brandy, three-quarters of a bottle of dry sherry and a couple of cans of dry ginger.

"Jackpot!" Kevin yelled, coming back into the staff
room grinning, and holding his trophies above his head.

We'd established ourselves in the staff room because it had the most comfortable chairs. Trust teachers for that.

Fi was on sentry duty, but we decided she could have one glass without any serious risk. Lee was sound asleep. We realised that we'd have to keep some for him, and maybe another glass or two for Fi, and we started getting worried about what would be left for us.

Still, it seemed we'd be able to have a little party. Homer got some glasses from the staff kitchen area. It's amazing how good the boys were at catering when there was grog involved.

Kevin poured us all a sherry, then leaned back in his chair and raised his glass in a toast. "Underage drinking in the staff room," he said. "All my dreams come true."

"And it's Mrs. Gilchrist's shout," Homer added. "Makes it even better."

"Here's to happy endings," I said. "May we all live happily ever after."

"That's looking less and less likely," Homer said. But he didn't say it like he was incredibly depressed, he said it with a laugh, like he was coping OK.

It was funny, that's how we were all reacting, I think. The news Lee brought—or the lack of news—should have depressed us, because it was now very obvious that something had gone badly wrong for the Kiwis.

But we'd already known that. Well, we hadn't known it, but we'd guessed it. So Lee confirming it didn't depress us any further; instead we were rapt to find that he was alive and in fairly good shape. We were rapt that
we'd found him at all. We cared deeply about the New Zealanders, of course, but the five of us had a bond that went beyond anything.

There were two dark thoughts that lurked in the bottom of my mind, in the murkiest depths. I could never bear to take them out and look at them but occasionally, when I was mega-depressed, they'd sneak out for a moment or two. One was the thought that I might never see my parents again. The other was the thought that another member of our group might get killed.

Either way, that would have been the end of me. It would have been the absolute end. I'd never contemplated suicide, even in the worst times in Stratton Prison, but if either of those things happened it would have been the end of my life, no mistake about that.

So, with Lee returned, we did have something to celebrate, we did have an excuse for a party. And although it wasn't the wildest or happiest party I've ever been to, it was a lot better than my last one, back in Wellington. This time it was with friends, true friends.

We wiped out the sherry pretty quickly, then Homer and Kevin took care of the brandy and dry. Without ice I didn't like the idea of it and, besides, the sherry was already doing funny things to my head. I decided I'd better stop, especially as I was taking over sentry in an hour's time. I figured I'd already be blowing .05 or worse, and I didn't want to do sentry duty if every tree looked like a Martian, and the moon floated in the sky like a helium balloon.

Plus, the last time I'd had too much to drink had ended so badly that I wasn't keen to do it again.

Lee slept on and on. It was like he was heading for a
record. Somehow I got through my sentry duty, but it wasn't helped by Homer and Kevin getting totally wasted and making more noise than a kindergarten at lunchtime. They had a mad game of table tennis in the staff room, which wasn't easy in the dark, then they went chasing through the building trying to tackle and wrestle each other. I kept telling them to shut up, and they weren't too bad I suppose, but compared to the noise we normally made it was way out of control.

Then Kevin crashed on the other bed in sick bay and dropped asleep as fast as Lee had done, and all Homer's efforts to wake him failed. So Homer was left with no playmate. He came and talked to me for a while but he was pretty wiped out so he wasn't making much sense. Then he suddenly fell asleep in the chair and lolled there looking disgusting and making gross snoring noises.