The Third Day, The Frost (7 page)

‘So, anyway, in came these other two soldiers.
I was hardly aware of them, but the wardsman told me all about it
later. He was a bit of a wimp and he hadn’t done a thing to help me
when I was getting beaten up, but he wasn’t a bad bloke. So in came
these two soldiers and one of them was hurt, and they made the
doctor leave Corrie and treat him. He had a sprained ankle, and how
do you think he got it? Chasing two people through the bush out at
my uncle’s place, that’s how. Geez, I tell you, did they ever show
up at the critical time. Saved my life. The doc called the two
sentries who were giving me the third degree and made the other two
repeat their story. When they said they’d fired a few shots at some
dark shapes in the bush, the soldiers realised what an honest,
respectable person I was. We’d still been naughty, according to
them, but we hadn’t been sabotaging stuff and that was the
important thing. We were just average naughty, instead of highly
trained professional naughty.

‘“Naughty” is one of their favourite words.
“Bad boy” and “naughty boy”, that’s what they were always calling
me.

‘But I tell you what, guys, if we ever get
caught, don’t get lagged for any of the things you’ve done, the
bridge and the ride-on mower, and getting Lee out of Wirrawee.
They’re still steaming about all those things.’

‘What about blowing up

Turner Street

?’ Homer asked, with just a touch of
smugness.

Kevin sat up. He got so excited. ‘Was that
you? Was that really you? Unbelievable! Some people said it was
you, but I couldn’t believe it. That must have been about a tonne
of TNT! How did you do that? My God, it was a hell of a bang. I
thought someone had nuked Wirrawee. Wow, I tell you, if they ever
bust you for that, you’re dead.’

‘Thanks a lot.’

But we were proud and excited by Kevin’s
response. It was nice to be able to boast a bit. That was one of
the worst things about our isolation. We felt no one was
appreciating or even noticing the battles we’d fought and the risks
we’d run – risks that made me go giddy every time I thought about
them. The way Kevin went on made us feel, for a few minutes at
least, like we were the Foreign Legion, the Green Berets and the
Rats of Tobruk, all rolled into one.

‘How the heck did you do it?’

We spent ten minutes telling him, tripping
over ourselves with corrections and contradictions, having a
wonderful time being heroes. But it didn’t last too long, as we
then had to go on and tell him about the death of Chris. That
sobered us up again, fast enough. Kevin didn’t seem all that shaken
by it, though. I guess he was getting immune to death.

‘So, anyway,’ I said finally, ‘tell us what
happened to you after the hospital, and then we’ll tell you the
rest of our stuff.’

‘OK. Where was I up to? Getting my head beaten
off my shoulders? OK. So, in the end they generously let Corrie
stay in the hospital but she had to be moved to the Prisoners’
Block, where you don’t exactly get five-star service. And that’s
where you guys caught up with her. Mrs Slater told me you’d been
there and she’d had a good goss with you.’

‘Yeah, that’s right.’

‘Well, I haven’t seen her since the night I
drove her in there. They wouldn’t let me stay – I got chucked in
the back of a station wagon and taken to the Showground, feeling
like a bloody mess. I was one, too. We had a big family reunion but
I don’t remember much about it. I got nursed there and eventually I
recovered. Took about three weeks. It wasn’t easy, though – I guess
my nerve had gone, a bit, so I wasn’t good for much for a
while.

‘The Showground was getting ugly. People were
so stressed. Conditions probably weren’t bad at first but they
didn’t stay that way for long. I don’t think it was ever planned as
a long-term residential centre for a thousand people. Most of the
buildings are galvanised iron, so they got very hot. The food was
OK though, most of the time. Geez, there’s enough food in the
Wirrawee district to feed a zillion. But these buggers got lazy –
they couldn’t be bothered going to a lot of trouble to get three
course meals for us. Fair enough, I suppose. But it wasn’t really
the food that was the problem.’

‘What was it then?’

Kevin searched his mind, trying to figure out
what had caused the build-up of tension. ‘It was a mixture of
everything, really,’ he said slowly. ‘The crowding, that was
terrible. Not being able to have showers. Especially when we had
those thirty-five degree days. And all those dickheads trying to
tell everyone else what to do. You know, Mr Rodd and Mr Nelson and
Troy South? And Mrs Olsen? Geez, they drove me crazy. I suppose
everyone was under stress and that made for a lot of arguments. But
some people didn’t make any effort. That bloody Mr Rodd, seemed
like he was following me around, trying to pick me. I think that’s
how he got his thrills. I can see why he’s had two wives leave
him.’

Kevin paused again and sat thinking. We all
waited in silence, not liking to interrupt.

‘No, that’s not what it was,’ he said at last.
‘It was the boredom, that was the worst thing. Day after day after
day, nothing to do. Absolutely totally nothing. People tried
organising a few things, but there wasn’t much that appealed to me,
I guess. They got a school going, for instance, and that was good
for the little kids, but for people our age – well, school didn’t
seem like much of a go. Then some people started classes for adults
in a few things. There were cattle-judging lessons, and Chinese,
and Indonesian. Old Doc Robbo took first-aid classes – they weren’t
bad.

‘No,’ he said, leaning back against the wall
with his hands behind his head. ‘There was only one interesting
thing I learned, the whole time I was there.’

‘What was that?’

‘Explosives.’

Chapter
Eight

‘Explosives?’ Homer asked politely. ‘Did you
say explosives?’

‘Mmm. I thought you might find that
interesting.’

‘Explosives.’ Homer rolled the word around his
tongue, like he was trying it out, to see how it tasted. ‘So how
far did you get?’

‘Well, quite a way. Jock Hubbard taught us.
He’s got his ticket, his shot-firer’s ticket. He got the idea that
the time might come when we could use a bit of knowledge. He made
up dummies and we practised on them. It would have been better with
the real things, of course, but the soldiers weren’t too keen to
lend us those.’

‘OK,’ Homer said. ‘I know it’s possible to
make a bomb using fertiliser and diesel, because I remember Dad
blowing up tree stumps. The trouble is I never bothered to ask him
how to do it. I’ve often regretted that.’

‘Yeah, well that’s easy. Ammonium nitrate. For
us, in our situation, that’s probably the easiest and best way to
go.’ Kevin had suddenly become transformed. It was the first time
I’d seen him like that. It was interesting to see how being an
expert changed someone. ‘We could expect to find a lot of other
stuff in farm buildings too, like gunpowder and dynamite. But the
soldiers have probably taken most of that. Yeah, anfo’s the way to
go.’

‘Anfo?’

‘Yeah, anfo. It stands for ammonium nitrate
fuel oil. That’s the stuff Homer’s talking about. It’s perfect for
us because most farms have heaps of ammonium nitrate for
fertiliser. It produces oxygen, so it’s better even than petrol,
cos the more oxygen the better, for a really big bang.’

‘So that’s all we need? Ammonium nitrate and
diesel?’ Homer asked.

‘It doesn’t have to be diesel. Any fuel’ll do
the job. Charcoal even.’

‘But is that all we need?’

‘Well, a detonator of course. But again, if we
check out the farms we’ll find a stack of them somewhere. Jock
worked for ICI and he said they sold over a thousand plain
detonators every month in Wirrawee alone. What I can do is make a
small bomb from anfo, with a detonator, and if we buried that in a
big pile of loose anfo, and confined it, well, we’d make a bigger
blast than Texas Harbour.’

‘What’s Texas Harbour?’ Fi asked.

‘Texas Harbour was an explosion that blew up a
port and killed 400 people. There was a ship loaded with ammonium
nitrate and they’d been spraying the holds with mineral wax, so
that was the fuel. Then someone chucked down a cigarette and the
cargo caught fire. They shut the holds, thinking that’d cut off the
oxygen, but they didn’t realise the fertiliser produces its own
oxygen. Being in a confined space, it built up so much pressure
that when it blew, it basically blew the whole town away. Oklahoma
City, that was anfo, too. Half a tonne of it, and they blew a
nine-storey building in half.’

We listened intently. ‘You see,’ Homer said at
last, ‘like we told you, we’re on our way to Cobbler’s Bay. We
don’t know what we’re going to do there; we mightn’t have a chance
to do anything. But it’s probably the most important target we
could ever have. All we know for sure is they’re not likely to have
petrol tankers sitting around waiting for us. If we make our own
bomb we at least reduce the problems by one. Then all we have to do
is get the thing in there and detonate it.’

‘God,’ said Fi. ‘I don’t know about this.
We’re not professional soldiers, remember. I don’t think we should
get out of our depth. This is the most scary conversation we’ve
ever had.’

‘It may never happen,’ Homer said.

Fi looked troubled. ‘We’ve done so well when
we stayed in our own district and did what we could there. We can’t
do everything. This sounds too big.’

‘I just don’t know if there’s any point,’ I
said, joining in. ‘This war looks hopeless. I don’t think we’re
going to make a difference, no matter what we do.’

‘Yeah, we’re on a hiding to nothing,’ Lee
said. It was unusual for Lee to have so little fight in him, but he
was in one of his depressions. Sooner or later the killing of the
soldier at the well had to catch up with him, and I think now it
had. Plus he was still really tired from nursing us.

‘I remember you guys talking like that the
other day,’ Kevin said. ‘I don’t think it’s quite that bad.’

I was interested in that.

‘What do you know that we don’t?’ I asked.

‘Well, there’s good news and bad news, of
course. But the good news adds up. This war isn’t over yet, not by
a long way.’

‘Go on,’ Homer said eagerly. We were all
getting excited. We needed to hear this.

‘Don’t you listen to the radio any more?’
Kevin asked. ‘What happened to Corries trannie?’

‘We ran out of batteries. We left it back in
Hell. Anyway, there hadn’t been much news of the war at all, and
what there was seemed all bad. And then wherever we looked we saw
colonists. We’ve hardly seen any opposition. Except ours.’

‘Well, there’s been quite a lot going on. They
had a radio at the Showground, a secret one, that not even all the
prisoners knew about. But Dad listened to it, and he passed on news
to me. See, there’s not just the international radio stations,
there’s quite a few guerilla ones, and there’s the ones in the Free
Zones.’

‘What are the Free Zones?’

Kevin looked astonished. ‘Geez, you don’t know
much. There’s a few Free Zones.’

‘The Outback?’

‘Nuh, not really. They control that too, now,
because it’s so bare they can easily pick up anyone moving around.
They use radar and aircraft there. No, the main Free Zones are
CapeMartindale, where New Guinea troops landed, and from Newburn
right through to the mountains, where the Army had a heap of troops
stationed. And Newington and all the Burdekin, where the Kiwis
landed. They hold that whole area now.’

There was a pause while we digested all
that.

‘What else is good news?’ I asked.

‘The attack on Cobblers Bay, for one thing. Do
you know about that?’

‘Yes, tell us,’ I said excitedly. ‘We saw a
bit of it. Well, at least Robyn and Lee heard them, and I saw the
smoke.’

‘OK, they bombed it pretty heavily. According
to the radio they sank seven ships, but there were some casualties
taken to Wirrawee Hospital, prisoners who’d been working there, and
they said the real figure was three. Whatever, it was quite a
success.’

‘That might make it more dangerous for us,’
Robyn said.

‘It could. The rumour at the Showground was
that they were putting in more ground-to-air missiles, but that
could work in our favour. They wouldn’t be expecting a land
attack.’

‘But they are still using Cobblers?’ Fi
asked.

‘Yeah, apparently. It’s a big part of their
operation.’

‘Let’s not get too uptight about it all,’
Homer said. ‘We’re not locked into anything. If we get to Cobbler’s
Bay and decide it’s too much for us, we’ll just go quietly away
again.’

‘Sounds good in theory,’ I said. ‘But knowing
you, Homer ... I mean, at every birthday party we ever had, you
were the one who went around sticking pins in the balloons. Somehow
I can’t imagine you sneaking quietly away without trying
anything.’

‘Tell us more about our families,’ Robyn said
quickly, before I could stir Homer up too much.

Kevin sighed. ‘Aw gee,’ he said, ‘like I told
you, they’re not too bad. I mean, Ellie, honestly, your Dad, talk
about putting pins in balloons, he couldn’t walk past a bull
without sticking a pin up its backside. Every time a sentry comes
near him, he’s looking for a fight. What is it with the guy? He’s
going to get himself in trouble.’

‘I don’t know what it is with him,’ I said.
‘If you ever work it out, let me know. He’s a mystery to me.’

‘And your brother aggravates them, too,’ Kevin
said to Homer.

‘Yeah, the old George doesn’t have much sense
of humour.’

‘How’s Tori?’ Fi asked.

Victoria, Fi’s little sister, got asthma
pretty badly.

Kevin made a face. ‘Well, there’s no Ventolin
any more, so she’s had a few bad attacks. They got permission to
move her and a couple of others into the Show Secretary’s Office,
because they realised they were allergic to something in the Cattle
and Horse Pavilions.’

‘Mmm, all that horsehair, and straw, and grass
seeds,’ Fi said. ‘Tori’s allergic to everything.’

‘She’s been better since then,’ Kevin said.
‘But everyone gets sick at the Showground. It’s terrible. You’ve
got no idea. Gastro goes through the place every second day. Like
locusts through lucerne. We’ve had mumps, we’ve had measles, we’ve
had everything. That’s why I volunteered for work parties.’

‘Yeah, what’s the story with these work
parties?’ I asked.

‘What’s the story? They’re just a way to get
out of the Showground. At first it was all a bit rough and ready
but now they’re quite organised. You have to be part of a family so
they can hold hostages to stop you escaping. You have to have some
skills and you have to be fairly fit. That’s about all.’

‘How come we didn’t see anyone we knew around
Wirrawee? You were the first person we recognised, and you were a
long way from Wirrawee.’

‘Yeah, they do that deliberately. Like I said,
they’re quite organised now. They keep you away from your own
district. It’s just a security thing. And I think maybe it’s
because people get too emotional when they see colonists moving
into their homes.’

We told Kevin all the other things that had
happened to us; and went into more detail about the death of Chris.
It was no fun having to recall stuff that I’d started to forget,
and badly wanted to forget. But I suppose it was good for us to
talk about Chris – we’d never really discussed it among ourselves.
His death was so stupid and senseless. Rolling a car when he was
drunk – it’s the sort of thing that happens in peacetime, and it’s
bad enough then, but it seemed such a waste when we’d survived so
much already. Plus, maybe we all felt a bit guilty about leaving
him on his own in Hell, even though that’s what he’d wanted.

So we talked about all that, a bit. And that
led us on to telling Kevin about Harvey’s Heroes: this bunch of
middle-aged adults who’d blundered around in the bush, trying to be
tough, and nearly getting us wiped out. And afterwards we’d
realised that their leader, Major Harvey, had sold out to the
enemy.

Kevin got excited then.

‘This Major Harvey. What’s he look like?’

‘Like a forty-four gallon drum,’ Homer
promptly said.

‘With a head on top,’ Lee added.

‘Like a garden gnome,’ Robyn said.

‘Like a revolting little pile of sheep poo,’
Fi said. I was impressed. At least we’d taught Fi one thing about
rural life: what sheep poo looked like.

‘He’s got black hair,’ I said to Kevin. I
shivered a little as I recalled my first meeting with the Major.
We’d stumbled onto his group by chance, and even though we’d felt
relieved to be with adults again, I’d sensed from the start that
something was wrong about the whole setup. ‘He’s quite plump in the
face. He’s got a big nose. And his head, he holds it in a funny
way, like he’s got a stiff neck or something.’

‘Yeah, that’s the guy,’ Kevin said. He leaned,
back nodding his head.

‘What do you mean? You saw him?’

‘Well, he’s not like a personal friend, not my
best mate, no. I met him once, before the war. But I’ve heard
plenty about him lately, and I’ve seen him from a distance a few
times.’

‘What? That’s impossible,’ Fi said.

‘When was the last time?’ Homer asked
quickly.

‘Oh, gee, about three weeks ago.’

‘Oh no!’ I cried.

‘Are you sure?’ Homer asked.

‘Yeah, probably a bit less than three weeks.
He came round with a group of high-ranking soldiers to have a look
at the work we were doing. We all had to stand there seriously and
act like we were impressed.’

‘We thought we’d wiped him out ages ago,’ I
explained. ‘When we blew up

Turner Street

we thought we’d got him. That was half the
reason we made the attack.’

‘Mmm, but remember, you said his car wasn’t
there that night,’ Fi said to Homer.

‘Yeah, true, I did say that.’

‘So he’s alive,’ I said. I sat there, stunned.
I didn’t want to believe it, but I had to. ‘Tell us what you know
about him,’ I finally said to Kevin.

‘OK, he’s an asshole. What else do you want to
know?’

‘Everything.’

‘Geez, where do I start? He turned up in
April, I think. He’s from Risdon. He’s a teacher, I know that much;
in fact, he was Deputy Principal at Risdon High. I remember when we
played footie against them. He walked over to me at half-time and
yelled at me for tackling one of their players. Reckoned I’d gone
in too high. Fair dinks, I thought he was going to hit me. I
thought he was a real wanker then, and I know it for sure now. That
was the only time I’d met him before the war. When he came to the
Showground they called us all together and he gave us a lecture on
how the invasion wasn’t as bad as we might think, and how this
country needed a good shake-up, and if we work with these turkeys
instead of against them we’ll be better off in the long run.

‘The soldiers loved it; they were beaming
away, but geez, Ellie, if you could have seen your father’s face!
Lucky Harvey didn’t see him or he would have been the first one
picked. Cos, yeah, I forgot, you don’t know what he’s been up to:
after that speech they started picking people to be interrogated by
him. It got really heavy for a while. Harvey seems to know a lot
about Wirrawee. He picked out anyone with military training, plus
all the coppers. Some of them were allowed back, if they gave the
right answers I guess, but some just disappeared. We only found out
a few weeks ago that they’ve been taken to a maximum-security
prison somewhere. But the rumour is that a few of them got shot;
like, executed.