The Third Day, The Frost (18 page)

So we drove on and I talked about all that, a
bit. Not a lot, mainly because it was so hard to get a word in.
Everyone was cutting across everyone else, jumping in before the
other person had finished what they were saying, finishing their
sentences for them, even. It was like some of our drama rehearsals
at school. Homer was still the quietest but he did say a few
things, each of them making me realise how much the time in the
container and the escape across the Bay, into the arms of the
enemy, had affected him. I remember hoping desperately that he
wouldn’t get caught again, because I didn’t think he’d be able to
stand it. It had really fazed him, the swim, then being grabbed by
those guys at the creek. It had damaged his confidence.

‘I’d given up,’ he said, when I asked him
about the time in the water.

‘You’d given up?’ I said, shocked.

‘They’d seen me, and I was too tired to dive
anymore.’

‘Who’d seen you?’

‘The guys in the boat, and the ones in the
chopper.’

‘So what happened? Were they shooting at you?
How’d you get away? You hadn’t really given up?’

He shrugged. ‘I was just floating there,
watching them come for me. Then the ship blew up.’

He wouldn’t say much more. I asked the others:
‘What happened at Baloney Creek?’ But none of them really knew how
they’d been caught.

‘It must have been the chopper,’ Kevin
said.

‘We were pretty slack,’ Fi confessed. ‘We
didn’t ...’

‘I didn’t even hear their car,’ Lee said.

‘I guess we were talking too loud or
something.’

‘I heard you scream,’ Robyn said to Fi, ‘and
that’s the first I knew they were there.’

‘God, I’ll never forget it,’ Fi said,
shivering.

‘And what you said to them,’ Robyn said to
Lee, laughing.

‘What?’

‘He told them to piss off.’

‘You what?’

‘It was the shock,’ Lee said. ‘I said it
before I knew I’d said it. It just blurted out.’

‘I don’t think they heard it,’ Homer said.

‘They heard it,’ Kevin said, ‘but they didn’t
take it in. It was just part of all the shouting and carrying
on.’

‘Yeah, what was all the shouting and carrying
on?’ I asked. ‘What was the shot?’

‘It was lust,’ Kevin said, but the others
didn’t laugh, so neither did I.

‘They were after the two girls,’ Homer
said.

‘And the two girls weren’t moving,’ Lee
explained.

‘The shot was to make me hurry up a bit,’
Robyn said.

Then I started to understand what had been
happening, and how lucky I’d been to arrive when I did.

We ploughed on. The only sign of life was a
cream-coloured van that looked as though it might have once
belonged to an electrician or plumber. It was parked in a truck
stop with its parking lights on, but because it was well away from
the road we didn’t see it until we were almost level with it. The
bad weather didn’t help either.

There was nothing we could do but accelerate
and keep going. We went four k’s as fast as I dared, with Kevin
looking fearfully through the back windows for signs of pursuit.
Then we pulled into a side track and sat there for ten minutes. But
there was no sign of anyone and we couldn’t afford to waste much
more time if we were going to reach the Isthmus before daybreak. I
started the engine and we kept going towards Ferris.

‘It was probably a patrol and they were having
a nice quiet sleep,’ Homer suggested. ‘In this rotten weather they
wouldn’t feel much like wandering up and down the road.’

Even though it seemed odd, we still thought
that was the most likely explanation. I sure thought so, anyway.
That’s why it was such a complete and utter shock when we were
caught.

Chapter
Twenty-two

They’d chosen the spot well. It was a narrow
stretch of road crossing the old Huntleigh Bridge. The road twisted
around, then turned on itself to cross the bridge. Beyond the
bridge it started to climb again, in a long sweeping bend that led
to the Stratton turn-off. It was nearly four in the morning when I
dropped a gear to poke the Jackaroo slowly round the bend and onto
the bridge. Everyone was asleep, or I would have asked for a
volunteer to walk down and check it out. I saw out of the corner of
my eye the NO PASSING ON BRIDGE sign, a dim yellow diamond. Then we
bumped across the old wooden roadway. It was like driving down a
railway track.

We crossed it and I started to accelerate
again, into the long bend. I thought I was imagining things when I
saw a big grey obstruction in the middle of the road. A huge dim
grey boulder. Stupidly, as I began to brake, I started wondering if
there’d been a landslide. People were waking up. Then Homer was
yelling something, I don’t know what, in my ear, so loudly that the
fright of it paralysed me. But I saw what it was in the middle of
the road: a dirty great tank with its huge grey gun barrel pointing
straight at us.

My next rational thought was that they might
be asleep, like the people in the van we’d passed earlier. I still
thought we were in with a chance. I stood on the brake and shoved
the gear stick into reverse, not even looking in the rear-vision
mirror, thinking there was no need. But I saw enough through the
windscreen to realise the trouble we were in. A line of soldiers
suddenly appeared either side of the tank. About eight of them in
all. Each one carried a gun that I think could fire a shell or
missile: the barrels on these guns must have been a metre long, and
as big as drainage pipes. I don’t know how the soldiers carried the
weight of them. Then Homer yelled again in my ear, and this time I
heard him clearly. He said, ‘Stop, stop, they’re behind us.’ Then
he said quietly, ‘No good.’ Looking in the rear-vision mirror for
the first time, I realised what he meant. They had us all ends up.
There was a whopping great Army truck, a proper green Army truck,
right up our bumper bar. And an instant later, before I’d had time
to digest what I was seeing, a soldier was at my window and a rifle
muzzle at my right cheek. The soldier was breathing hard, his face
shiny with sweat, and his eyes wide open, as if he was on drugs. I
guess he was just hyped up at making a bust, but I was scared by
how unstable he seemed. I slowly, carefully, very carefully, raised
my arms. By moving my head fractionally to the left I could see
Robyn and Fi. They were still waking up, struggling to understand
what was going on. That’s how quickly it all happened. Their hair
was all mussed up and Fi’s mouth was open as she looked around and
realised that our good luck had come to a sudden bitter end.

She too raised her arms, then Robyn did the
same. I couldn’t see much of the back seat in the rear-vision
mirror, but guess it was the same scene there.

The soldier beside me opened the door and I
slowly got out. He turned the engine off and took the keys then,
with a nod of his head, pointed me to the side of the road. I went
there and stood next to the three boys. Robyn and Fi, with a
soldier escorting them, came over to join us a moment later. I said
to Homer, ‘Some holiday this is turning ...’ but didn’t get to
finish the sentence: the soldier who stood next to me hit me across
the side of my face with the back of his closed fist.

He was a tall man and he swung hard. I felt
like I’d slammed into a wall. The side of my face went instantly
numb, and I couldn’t hear anything more in that ear. Everything
started tingling, my eye, my cheek, my ear, as though it had all
gone to sleep. Tears stung my eyes, not
crying-because-of-pain-and-shock tears but reflex tears from my
tear ducts. I just hoped the soldier wouldn’t think that I’d gone
all girly and was crying from being hit. I didn’t want to give them
that satisfaction. I didn’t want my friends to think I was weak,
either.

Standing by the side of the road I knew all
too well there was a good chance we were about to be shot. It was
something about the way they had us lined up. It looked chillingly
like a scene from movies where they have firing squads. I don’t
know if the others thought that, but I certainly did. No one spoke
again. We just stood there with heads bowed, feeling our own fears.
Then Kevin farted suddenly and, unbelievably, we all got the
giggles. It was such a loud rattling fart and so unexpected and out
of place that we couldn’t cope with it.

I thought we would get our faces smashed in
for sure. I stood there almost waiting to be hit, but then I
noticed a couple of the soldiers trying not to laugh, too. I guess
some things are universal. But an officer, one of a group of
officers standing talking on the other side of the road, shouted
something, and the soldiers hardened up again. By then we’d got
over our initial sniggers and when we saw the soldiers getting
serious we controlled ourselves. But I still remember that moment.
It made things just a fraction easier to bear.

There was no firing squad. After ten minutes
we got marched to the back of the big Army truck. We stood there a
few more minutes watching the tank crawl away and then a soldier
motioned Homer to climb in the truck. As Homer got onto the steel
step the man hit him hard across the back of the head, so that he
half fell forward. Kevin was next and he got bashed too, then
Robyn. Seemed like it was a part of the routine. But it hurt me
when he hit Fi. In all my life I’ve never seen anyone hit Fi. It
was like hitting a beautiful water bird. I watched as the fist
smacked against her. Her head dropped lower and her shoulders too
but, of course, I couldn’t see her face. When my turn came and I
got in, getting the same treatment, Fi was already sitting turned
away, her face towards the front of the truck.

It was dark in there and smelt of canvas, and
something else, creosote perhaps. A couple of soldiers got in
behind us and spent a few minutes tying our wrists to crossbars
that ran the length of the truck. When they were done they sat at
the back watching us. It made it difficult to do anything, or even
talk. All I could do was think.

Robyn tried to speak to the soldiers, but she
didn’t get far. She said to one, ‘Did you know we were on this
road?’, but he just looked away. I don’t know if he understood
English.

She tried the other one but he said: ‘Shut up.
No talk.’ That didn’t allow a lot of possibilities for
conversation. Robyn, who was opposite me, looked at me and made a
face. I grinned back, hoping I looked like a hero, but feeling so
wild with fear inside that I could hardly make my face work.

‘Does your face hurt?’ Robyn asked.

The soldier who’d told her to shut up made a
movement forwards, towards Robyn.

‘You shut!’ he shouted. ‘You bad girl.’ Then
to all of us he shouted ‘You bad people. You kill my friends. You
all die, now you die.’ And he sat back again, trembling.

I felt sure then that we would be shot. I felt
sorry for the man a bit, too. I’d never really thought about these
soldiers having friends, being friends with each other. It must
have been as awful for them to have their friends killed as it was
for us. It had been a long time since I’d thought about all these
issues of right and wrong. We’d become used to doing the things we
did, to attacking and destroying and killing, without thinking
whether there was right on both sides. Sure in the early days of
the invasion we’d thought about it – I remember writing about it.
We had so much in our country: so much food, so much space, so much
entertainment. But we’d resented sharing it with anyone, even
refugees. The longer the war had gone on, the more we’d become used
to thinking of the soldiers as the baddies, and us as the goodies.
As simple as that. As dumb as that.

I thought about it all now again, though. And
without caring what the soldier would think, or what the others
would think, I said to him, ‘I’m sorry about your friends.’

He looked like I’d hit him. His eyebrows rose
and his mouth went into an ‘O’ shape. He looked shocked, angry,
then for a moment he stared at me like he was a real person again.
For that brief time I saw that he wasn’t a mechanical killer, just
someone as young and confused and under pressure as we were. Our
eyes met almost like friends.

It didn’t last long. His face went back into
the sulky aggressive expression he’d had before. But I was glad I’d
said it.

A male officer got into the cabin of the
truck, on the passenger side, and a woman soldier on the driver’s
side. She started the engine and away we went. I could see the
tail-lights of another vehicle through the windscreen and behind us
the parking lights of the Jackaroo. There was another vehicle
behind that. I began to realise how impossible escape was going to
be. Yet I was determined not to go passively to my death. I’d
rather be shot trying to escape than just walk to a wall and stand
there while they filled my body with bullets.

We drove for over an hour. I spent the time
shivering with cold, speculating about what might happen to us,
while glancing from time to time at the faces of my friends to see
how they were going. We all looked so white, so tired, so strained
and frightened. How could they ever believe that we were dangerous?
How could they send all these trucks and the tank just for us? Yet
I knew all too well that we had done more damage to these people
than anyone else in this whole district, in the whole state, maybe.
We were public enemies, no doubt about it. We were probably public
enemy number one.

In the dim lights of the trucks I saw a green
and white road sign: STRATTON 14.

So that’s where we were headed. It figured. It
was good in a way; it gave me something other than death to think
about. As we got closer I peered through the windscreen to see how
Stratton was looking. It was so long since we’d been in a city. We
passed a deserted truck stop that seemed to have been smashed to
bits, as though a giant had attacked it with a giant sledgehammer.
Then we were in the suburbs. It was a shocking sight. There’d been
some damage in Wirrawee, but nothing like this. You could see that
a lot of cleaning up had been done, but it would take years and a
billion bucks to clear it up properly. In some blocks the buildings
were pretty much untouched but in plenty of others every one had
been flattened. The roads were clear but nothing else was. It was
all rubble: bricks and wood and stone, and sheets of galvanised
iron sticking out and flapping in the breeze, like cold metal
leaves.

My grandmother lived in Stratton, but a long
way from where we were now, in a big old house up in the hills.
Thinking about her sent a tear rolling down my cheek; a real tear.
I brushed it angrily away. I didn’t want to show any fear. I wanted
to keep my fear all to myself: a storm inside but a desert on my
face. That was the only way I could maintain any kind of
strength.

We drove straight through the CBD. It was a
bigger mess than the suburbs. I didn’t know if the damage had been
done by the enemy during the invasion, or by the Kiwi air attacks
after it. But big bombs had been used. Tozer’s, the department
store that had been three-storeys high, covering the best part of a
block, now looked like it’d make a good car park. The back wall of
the electricity building was still standing, but there was nothing
else of Stratton’s biggest building.

The saddest sight was the Cathedral of the
Sacred Heart. It had been a beautiful old stone church, quiet and
peaceful, with glowing stained-glass windows. I wouldn’t have liked
to be standing near when it was blown up. Those huge stone blocks
had been thrown around like bits of Lego. One of them was a hundred
metres along the street, where it had fallen on the iron-railing
fence of the Mackenzie Botanical Gardens.

We accelerated up the hill then turned
abruptly right at the top. I suddenly realised where we were going.
To the most obvious place: the prison. I almost smiled. Many times
we’d been past its grim grey walls on the way to visit Grandma, but
I guess no one had thought that I’d end up in it before I’d even
finished school. What a disgrace. We’d never live it down.

Then the fear got hold of me again. I’d been
hoping that we’d go to some camp, like the Wirrawee Showgrounds,
and I’d already dreamed that we’d escape from there in a blaze of
glory. But Stratton Prison was different. It was a maximum-security
institution, designed for the toughest offenders. We wouldn’t be
escaping.

Our convoy came to a halt at the huge steel
doors of the prison. There was much shouting and slamming of car
doors. Only the soldiers in our truck didn’t move, just sat there
watching. An officer came and spoke to our driver through the
window of the truck. The driver put the truck in gear and we began
to move forward. The steel doors rolled silently aside and we drove
through. They closed behind us just as quietly. We were in a dark
concrete chamber, like a big garage, but completely bare. We only
had to wait a second before a door at the other end opened and we
drove on again. I glanced at the others. They were all sitting
forward like me, as far as our cuffs would let us, gazing through
the windscreen, wondering what horrors would be revealed.

What we saw was a vast area of buildings and
lawns. A high fence enclosed the whole place, but it was like a
little village inside; a village of concrete and wire and steel.
There were covered walkways connecting the various buildings. They
looked like extended aviaries, long cages that prisoners could be
moved along without having any taste of the free air.

In the few open spaces were a swimming pool
and two tennis courts, but I had the feeling we wouldn’t be getting
much of a chance to use them.