The Third Day, The Frost (14 page)

Chapter
Eighteen

I’ll never forget the next minute. The image I
most remember is the first view I had of the soldiers and my
friends. They were all gathered around the creek in a little
cleared area. They looked like they were having a meeting. There
were three soldiers, all men and all on my side of the creek. Two
were standing to my left, the other on my right. They looked tense
but excited, very happy with themselves. The two on my left held
rifles, but the one on the right, who was an officer, seemed
unarmed. I guessed it was his revolver that I carried.

I could still smell a trace of gunpowder in
the air but none of my friends seemed hurt. They were standing in a
line on a big flat rock, across the other side of the shallow
gurgling creek. Their hands were on their heads. Fi was white and
trembling uncontrollably; Robyn had her chin out, defiantly; Lee’s
face was totally expressionless. Homer looked desperate, dun and
tired, with his dark eyes sunk deep in his face. But I was so
relieved to see him at all: I’d had the worst fears about what
might have happened to him.

Kevin was standing a little apart from the
others and he looked absolutely terrified.

I didn’t even think about what to do. It was a
relief, not having to think: for once the choice was made for me. I
stood very still, feet well apart, lifted the revolver, held it
with both hands, aimed carefully at the chest of the first soldier,
and squeezed the trigger. Gently, gently, squeeze, squeeze. I
thought it would never fire, it took so long. Then the bang, the
explosion, the smoke, the smell. The gun kicked up hard, like it
had been given a jolt of electricity, and the empty shell shot out,
to my right. I saw the soldier go staggering backwards, dropping
his rifle, his hands to his chest as though trying – unsuccessfully
– to hold himself together. But I had no time to think about him. I
aimed again, fired again: shot the second one before he had his
rifle halfway to his shoulder.

Then I turned to the officer. He was facing me
now. He didn’t seem to know where to go. I fired for the third
time. My hands were shaking badly and the bullet went a little low.
The slide locked back; the gun was empty; useless scrap metal. I
threw it away, quickly, as if it was contaminated. It fell in the
creek.

It had all been very quick, kind of clinical,
not at all like our other killings had been. Just popping down
targets, with no emotion.

Or maybe that was just a measure of how much
I’d changed.

The others handled it pretty much in the same
style though. Lee went straight to the bodies and checked each one
quickly. Robyn and Kevin grabbed the rucksacks: seemed like they
were the current packhorses. Homer ran over and gave me a quick
kiss. ‘Thank God you’re all right,’ he said, and I was amazed to
see tears in his eyes.

Fi followed him and gave me a longer hug.
‘Thank you, Ellie,’ was all she said.

Without any discussion we ran straight out to
the dirt track. We didn’t need any discussion to know that speed
was going to save us or kill us. ‘Take the car,’ I yelled to Lee,
who was well in front of me. It was a calculated risk, but I
thought it was the best thing. If we could get a few k’s away and
dump it, we’d at least get a decent start.

No one argued. When I got there Robyn and Lee
had already piled into the back, Kevin was following them, and Fi
was waiting her turn. Homer had gone around to the passenger side.
Seemed like I was driving, though God knows how I was meant to find
the energy. But I didn’t stop to discuss it. I jumped in. The key
was in the ignition. The Jackaroo started straight away, but it was
facing in the opposite direction to the one we wanted. In the
narrow track it was hard to see a place to turn; I just shrugged
and shoved the car in reverse and drove it hard back along the
road.

‘Goddam!’ Kevin gasped, as we careered along,
probably doing sixty in reverse. The others didn’t say anything but
they looked more scared than when I’d been shooting the soldiers.
We were going around the long curve and were nearly through it when
I thought I saw a spot coming up that would do to turn; a clearing
on my left. I hauled on the wheel but misjudged it badly, missing
the clearing and thumping into a small tree. I remembered the
damage this car had already suffered to its rear end and realised
grimly that I had just made it ten times worse. Kevin was rubbing
his head where he’d hit it on the roof at impact, but he didn’t say
anything. I was grateful for that. Fi was biting her lip anxiously.
Thankfully the car didn’t stall, and still seemed to steer OK. I
swung the wheel and we took off again, this time facing the right
way.

I was pretty confident that we wouldn’t meet
any traffic, and at the speed we were going I had to hope we
wouldn’t. Apart from Kevin’s ‘Goddam’ no one had said a word since
we started. I was terrified of helicopters but we’d have little
chance of seeing or hearing them if they came. I just kept my foot
down and moved the car along at speeds that gave me hernias.

After twenty minutes we hit the main road.
There was no warning – suddenly we burst out of the bush onto
bitumen and I was spinning the wheel again, putting the car into a
squealing skidding turn that nearly tipped us over. I straightened
it, but it took a hundred metres to get it back on an even keel,
steering a straight line. I got it over to the left-hand side of
the road and wiped my face, not daring to look at the others.

We raced on, up into the hills. ‘How far do we
want to take this thing?’ I asked.

‘Not much further,’ Homer said.

‘They’ll know we’ve got it,’ Robyn called from
the back. ‘So we’ve got to dump it where they won’t find it. And
the further we get the better, because that’ll give them a wider
area to search.’

‘We dumped that BMW in a dam,’ Fi said.

‘I’m just worried we’ll meet a convoy,’ I
said.

We were in thick bush now, but still on the
main coast road.

‘Do you want your stuff?’ Robyn called out
suddenly.

‘What?’

‘Your packs are hidden just around the next
corner. Do you want them?’

I thought quickly and decided that I certainly
wanted mine. We screeched to a stop and jumped out, grabbing the
heavy packs from under piles of leaves and bark. I found I didn’t
have the strength to pull my pack into the back of the Jackaroo,
and had to ask Robyn to do it for me. She looked at me anxiously.
‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘Just find me some food, please.’

We drove on, and a minute later her hand
appeared in front of my face. She was holding something. I was too
busy driving to look at it but I opened my mourn and she pressed a
date into it. I love dates. I have no idea where she got them – I
didn’t know she had any – but she was always coming up with little
surprises like that.

We sped on through a couple of big
intersections, turning right at a third one to confuse them when
they started the next search for us. We were on a road which,
according to a sign, led to Stratton via Garley Vale. At least
there was less chance of convoys now, but we were all anxious to
get rid of the car. We’d pushed our luck hard enough. Our chance
came at last when Fi spotted, of all things, a wrecker’s yard.

‘There!’ she said.

‘What?’

‘If you want to hide a book, put it in a
bookcase.’

‘What?’

‘Over there, that wrecker’s yard. If we hide
the car in there they won’t find it for ten years.’

I looked at Homer and we both laughed. He
shrugged. ‘Why not?’

I turned off the road into the driveway. The
yard was called Ralston’s Wreckers. It looked funny: several
hectares of smashed cars stuck in the middle of the countryside.
The ones at the back were old rusted wrecks, most missing their
doors and bonnets. Ivy and blackberries, and in one place a
passionfruit vine, were growing all over them. With some, it was
hard to tell what make they were, or even what colour they had
been. But closer to the front were the newer models, some still
glossy and bright, spoilt only by a crumpled rear end, a smashed
side or a dented roof.

I drove along the rows until I found a gap
where the Jackaroo looked at home. I drove it in nose-first so that
the wrecked rear was showing.

And at last I could let go. I was in worse
shape than the Jackaroo, but I didn’t have to run and fight and
starve any more, not for a few minutes anyway. Maybe not for a few
hours. I turned off the ignition and leaned forward, resting my
forehead on the steering wheel. ‘Someone get the number plates,’ I
said, closing my eyes. No other vehicle in the yard had number
plates, so we had to get ours off. But I let the others do that. I
just sat. I wanted to lie down somewhere and sleep but I was too
tired to go find a place. I could hear them unpacking the car and
talking to each other, just occasional mumbled comments, but I
couldn’t hear what they were saying – not because they were talking
too softly or because I was deaf, but because I was so tired I
couldn’t turn the sounds into words. The stuff was coming in my
ears but not reaching my brain. The energy required to push the
words the last millimetre into my brain wasn’t there. I’ve never
been that tired before.

I started lying across the front seats of the
car: not exactly lying, just letting myself fall sideways. All the
bruises and aches and pains were hurting hard now, now that I
didn’t have to ignore them, fight them off. But then there was a
cold draft as someone opened the door.

‘Don’t,’ I whined, ‘don’t.’ I huddled up a
little tighter, trying to keep warm.

‘Come on, Ellie,’ Fi’s voice said. ‘You can’t
stay there.’

But I didn’t want to move, couldn’t move. I
was like that five-year-old again, wanting someone to carry her
into the house after she’d fallen asleep on a late-night ride
home.

‘Come on, Ellie,’ Fi said again. She didn’t
even sound sympathetic, just bullying and irritated, too tired
herself to have sympathy for me.

She tugged on my leg and I kicked out angrily
and connected pretty hard with something. Fi squealed, in anger or
pain or both, and I realised I’d have to move now. I’d put myself
too far in the wrong. So without a word of apology to Fi, who was
holding her side and scowling, I stumbled out of the car and along
the row towards Robyn, who I could see in the distance.

They were setting up a rough camp in the back
of a Nissan E20 delivery van that had been whacked severely right
where the driver had been sitting. He would have got a hell of a
headache: it was really a mess in that corner. But the rear section
was whole, and dry. I didn’t say anything to anyone, just dragged
myself in there and lay like an old sleeping bag. I was still very
hungry but had no energy to eat.

It turned out that I didn’t have the energy to
sleep, either. I probably did sleep a bit but I didn’t feel like I
had. Fi and Homer squeezed in beside me after a while, but I
ignored them. Lee and Robyn were doing sentry. I knew sooner or
later a patrol would come around, but I had to trust the others to
be ready for them, to take the precautions.

At least the patrol didn’t come till the next
morning. I slept a bit during the night. It was warmer with the
bodies of the others to snuggle up to. I let them do all the sentry
duties; no one asked me and I couldn’t have got out of the van. Fi
brought me some food quite early in the evening and again at dawn.
I ate both times, and gratefully too. It wasn’t until I was busting
for a leak that I finally left the van, and even then I put it off
until I was desperate.

At about eleven o’clock Robyn arrived at a
run. ‘They’re coming,’ she said.

We all came writhing out of the back of the
E20, like a nest full of snakes.

‘This way,’ Lee said to me. I followed him
down to the back row of cars, and beyond them to an old overgrown
collapsed fence. We climbed over that and ran on down to a patch of
bush. We grovelled in there till we were well out of sight.

‘How long do you think they’ll keep looking
for us?’ I asked Lee, as we lay there. We were so close that we
were nearly touching, but I wanted to keep his mind on other
things.

‘Until they find us,’ he answered grimly.

That seemed to kill off any romantic
thoughts.

‘Did the helicopters wake you?’ Lee asked
after a while.

‘What helicopters?’

‘There’s been three this morning already. The
first one was just after dawn.’

‘Looking for us?’

‘I guess.’

I couldn’t think of anything else to say that
wasn’t too personal or too frightening. So I just lay there. Ten
minutes later, Robyn appeared in front of us.

‘Anti-climax, guys,’ she said. ‘They drove in,
drove round the yard, and drove straight out again.’

‘They didn’t see the Jackaroo?’ I asked.

‘No, they didn’t go near it.’

We went back into the yard, where I at last
had enough energy to start taking an interest in my surroundings. I
saw Homer, who was on his way to have a poke around the house at
the end of Ralston’s yard; presumably the home of the Ralston
family.

‘Do you want to come?’ he asked.

‘OK.’ I was really just tagging along for the
ride, something to do.

‘What happened to you in the water?’ Homer
asked.

‘Not now, please,’ I begged. ‘I don’t want to
talk about it now. I don’t want to talk about anything.’

He shut up.

We approached the house from the back, which
was on the gully side. Then we realised that it was actually the
front; that it had been built with its back to the road. The effect
was strange: it was facing nothing much. It was an old weatherboard
place, with a galvanised-iron roof. A verandah ran right around it,
and a grapevine ran along that, as thick as a telegraph pole in
some places. There were no electricity poles, but there was quite a
modern generator almost hidden around the back. The house really
was a dump, though. It wouldn’t have been much of a place when it
was first built and years of neglect had made sure that it was more
of a dump now. The verandah was bowed in the middle, and swayed and
sank as we stepped onto it. A row of starter motors was neatly
placed along the wall to the left; a dozen of them at least. Half a
bird’s nest lay near the front door, and the mat was fraying on all
four sides. Stencilled on the mat in faded black letters was the
message: TAKE YOUR BLOODY SHOES OFF.