The Third Day, The Frost (9 page)

Chapter
Eleven

We started the night with our own little
convoy, and a very odd convoy it was. Though we still seemed a long
way off a workable plan, we had decided to at least take the next
step.

‘Every journey begins with a single step,’ Lee
said gravely, trying to sound like an ancient philosopher.

This journey began with a roll actually. We
wanted to shift the ammonium nitrate and the diesel and hide it in
the bush near the road, so if anything happened we’d be in a
position to swing into action. So we rounded up a mob of
wheelbarrows, one for each of us, to collect the bags. It took a
while to get six barrows and then a while longer to find a bicycle
pump, as all the tyres were flat. Then the hard work began. We had
to get not just the bags that Kevin and I had found but also
another cache that Robyn and Lee found while looking for
wheelbarrows. This was twenty bags, another three-quarters of a
tonne, give or take. Each bag was forty kilos. We sure had the
makings now.

Pushing wheelbarrows through bush at night is
a shocking job. They don’t make four-wheel-drive barrows, that’s
the problem. We didn’t dare use the road at all. We hadn’t seen any
patrols in this district but that’s probably because we weren’t
looking for them. We’d kept away from the road most of the time.
Our convoy soon broke up and we found ourselves going at our own
various speeds, passing or overtaking each other from time to
time.

To keep my mind occupied while I was lurching
along with my barrow I thought about our truck problem. It was a
good distraction from the hard heavy work. Only when the barrow
tipped over, as frequently happened, did I have to come back to
reality. But try as I might, I couldn’t think of anything that
would have the slightest chance of success. Spray oil over the
windscreen? Put a bullet through the engine? Jump on the back of a
prime mover and pull out the air brakes? There were so many good
reasons why those things wouldn’t work, and no good reason why they
would.

‘OK,’ I thought. ‘Suppose I dig a hole in the
road, lie in it, and when a truck goes over the top, I’ll reach up,
grab the undercarriage, haul myself up and then cut a few lines and
drop off again. Should work, no worries.’ I suggested it to Fi, who
was following me with her barrow, and for a few moments she thought
I was serious. Sometimes I really did wonder about Fi.

Then Kevin left me for a few minutes at one of
the farmhouses and came back with a white object in his hands, the
size of a tennis ball. It was hard to see it clearly in the
darkness.

‘What have you got?’ I asked.

‘Stove timer.’

I was a bit surprised but recovered well.
‘What’s the matter, your boiled eggs not quite right for
breakfast?’

‘Yeah, that’s right. Listen, there were a few
vehicles round this place, weren’t there?’

‘Mmm, I think so. There’s the tractor, and a
couple of ag bikes in that green shed. And wasn’t there a paddock
basher over by the tank?’

‘Let’s have a look. Leave the barrows for a
sec.’

‘We can’t use a vehicle to take the ammonium
down to the road, if that’s what you’re thinking. Too noisy.’

Kevin didn’t bother to answer. I was way off
the point. He led me to the paddock basher. It was an old Falcon
ute, white, but with a lot of rust, like all the cars that lived
close to the coast. And, like all paddock bashers, its keys were in
it. Kevin gave them a turn, getting nothing but a tired whine as
the battery opened one eye, then went straight back to sleep.

‘Give it a push,’ he said. He had the driver’s
door open and started pushing from his side. I still didn’t know
what this was about but I put my head down and shoved. There wasn’t
much of a slope so it was hard work. But after fifty metres we were
on a roll and a few seconds after that Kevin leapt into the
driver’s seat and gave it the gun. The engine coughed into life.
Kevin brought it to a halt and as I arrived by his window he said,
‘Hop in. We’re going for a drive.’

‘Kevin! This is too dangerous. We can’t go
fanging around the countryside. If anyone hears us ...’

‘Stop treating me like an idiot, Ellie,’ was
all he said.

I bit my bottom lip and went round to the
passenger side. The door wouldn’t open, even with Kevin trying from
his side. So I got in the back, the tray. We U-turned and went
along the flat and up the hill, past the silent house, through a
gate (which I had to open) and further up an old dirt track till we
were probably about halfway up the hill. There Kevin turned the
Falcon again, to face downhill, and got out, switching the engine
off. He lifted the hood as I came round to the other side. He had a
pair of pliers and he’d parked so that he was getting maximum
moonlight. With his pliers he cut the lead between the coil and the
distributor. I watched, fascinated. He was obviously in no mood to
answer questions, but I didn’t mind. When the lead was severed, he
reconnected it through the back of the timer, each end coming in
from opposite sides, so that the lead was now detoured through it.
Then he rotated the dial on the timer, setting it for five
minutes.

‘OK,’ he said, ‘let’s start it up.’ He jumped
in and turned the key again but the battery was still too flat to
turn the engine. With the ute pointing downhill we only needed to
give it one shove and it rolled quickly away. Kevin stepped
gracefully in, put it in gear and let out the clutch. The engine
leapt into life.

I heard a noise behind me and spun round in
sudden panic. Homer was looming up out of the darkness.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked irritably, as
Kevin left the ute engine running and stood next to the vehicle,
gazing at the bonnet. ‘Leaving us to wheel the barrows? You’re
making enough noise.’

‘Fair go,’ I said, annoyed. ‘We’ve done our
share. Kevin’s working out some idea to do with our attack on
Cobbler’s.’

Homer became a little more interested.
‘What?’

‘I don’t know. He’s attached an oven timer
between the coil and the distributor.’

‘An oven timer? Serious? Is he cooking a cake
in there? Kevin, what are you doing?’

He strode down the hill to the ute. I
followed. As we got there Kevin said, without looking at us, ‘Wait.
You’ll see. I hope.’

We waited about two minutes. Just as Homer
started saying, ‘I really don’t think we should be making so much
noise ...’ the engine of the Falcon cut out. There was no warning.
One moment it was throbbing away in good health, the next the cold
night air was completely silent. Homer and I looked at Kev in
astonishment. ‘How did you do that?’ Homer asked. ‘Just with an
oven timer?’

‘While you were mucking around in Physics I
was paying attention,’ Kevin said proudly. He looked absolutely
delighted. ‘All I’ve done is create another circuit, to go with the
one that’s already under the bonnet. The circuit I created is
regulated by the timer, OK? So when the timer reaches zero, that
circuit cuts out, and takes the whole engine with it.’

I was dumbstruck. I gazed at Kevin admiringly.
‘That’s so simple,’ I said at last. ‘And so clever.’

‘But how do we get it attached to a truck?’
Homer asked. ‘Cos that’s what you’ve got in mind, isn’t it? To fake
a breakdown?’

‘Yeah, exactly. And there is a way. What we
have to do is create an obstacle for a convoy, so they stop for a
few minutes. While they’re stopped I’ll sneak out, stick the timer
on a truck, and set it for whatever time we decide, five minutes,
ten, twenty. All I’ve got to do is make sure it’s a petrol engine
not a diesel. Twenty minutes later, when the truck breaks down,
they won’t connect it with the hold-up way back along the road. If
it’s night-time, and if the drivers aren’t good mechanics, I think
they’ll give up pretty quickly. I don’t think they’ll be able to
figure it out, and they won’t want to spend hours looking. It ought
to work.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And while we’re loading the
fertiliser we can take the timer out and make it look like
something else caused the breakdown.’

‘Yeah, exactly,’ Kevin said again.

A wave of fear hit me as I realised that we
were steadily solving all our problems. That meant only one thing:
that we would go for it. It made me quite dizzy. Dear God, was it
possible? We had already reached too far, tested our luck too
often. Instead of quitting while we were ahead we were doing the
opposite. I didn’t say another word to the boys, couldn’t. I went
back down the hill, got my wheelbarrow, filled it with another
heavy load and began another long push back to our ammonium dump.
It was all very well for Kevin. He wouldn’t be the one going right
into Cobbler’s Bay. Why did it always have to be me who took the
biggest risks? I was scared and that made me angry.

Down at the pile of fertiliser bags I met Fi.
She was sitting in her barrow.

‘Oh Ellie,’ she sighed, ‘why’s everything so
hard? I can’t push this thing another inch, I swear.’

‘Huh. You think you’ve got problems.’

I emptied my barrow and collapsed into it
beside her, then told her Kevin’s plan. As we talked we heard
another convoy coming, and soon we could see the big semis through
the trees, rolling along pretty fast, considering they were on
dimmed lights. Nearly all of them carried containers and the speed
at which the trucks went made me think the boxes must be empty.
There were fourteen of them and an escort truck at each end.

‘How would we stop them to put the timer on?’
Fi asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I said crossly. ‘I don’t want
to know. We must be mad. This is much too big for us.’

‘Oh, I’m not so sure,’ Fi said, as if looking
at a difficult line in
Macbeth,
when we
studied it last year.

‘OK, go on, talk me into doing it and getting
killed, and then you can feel guilty for the rest of your
life.’

It was a cruel thing to say and almost as soon
as I’d finished saying it I was apologising. But I’d really hurt
Fi, and it took me ten minutes to get her to talk again.

‘I was just going to say that little people
can do big things,’ she finally said huffily.

‘I suppose so,’ I said humbly.

‘It looks big,’ she said, with a bit more
warmth, ‘because those ships and trucks and jetties are so big. But
it’s really just people, and they’ll be like people everywhere.
They’ll be careless and they’ll be lazy and they’ll make mistakes.
But you’ll be totally alert and concentrating, and that gives you
an advantage.’

‘Mmm.’ I was anxious to have her forget what
I’d said, but I was also anxious to believe in what she was
saying.

‘It’s a good plan, Ellie, it really is. We can
out-trick these people, and that’s all we have to do. Stop thinking
about causing a huge explosion; that’s got nothing to do with it.
It’s just a matter of being smarter than a few dozen soldiers.’

A few hundred would have been closer, but I
pressed my lips together. Homer and Kevin arrived at that moment,
with Lee and Robyn, who they’d found bringing back the last bags of
fertiliser. We were all exhausted but Homer wasn’t interested in
that.

‘I think we should do it tonight,’ he
said.

‘Geez, Homer, it’s two o’clock in the
morning.’

‘Yes, but this ship loading containers is
perfect for us, and it might be nearly full now. We’ve got to get
it while they’re putting them in the holds, before they start
stacking them on the decks. If Ellie and I can get in a container
with all these bags, and get put on board, we’ve got the bomb to
end all bombs. How else can we get on board if not in a
container?’

‘There mightn’t be another convoy
tonight.’

‘Yeah, but there might be. They seem to have
been running night and day.’

A long silence followed.

‘Have you worked out how to stop the trucks?’
I asked.

‘Robyn has.’

I looked at Robyn. Seemed like she was going
to be the one to give me my death warrant.

‘OK, what’s the deal?’

‘It’s got to look natural, unsuspicious,’ she
said. ‘Like, a tree across the road’s too obvious. They’d be
looking for an ambush.’

‘Agreed.’

‘Well, Ellie, isn’t it time you had a chance
to get reacquainted with your very best friends?’

Chapter
Twelve

It was a big paddock and well stocked,
probably a hundred and fifty head. It looked like it had been
overstocked before the invasion, because the paddock was dotted
with sad little piles of wool and bones. Foxes, feral dogs,
wedge-tails, disease; they all would have contributed. The sheep
left alive were in poor condition, toddling around feeling sorry
for themselves. There certainly wasn’t much feed left – it looked
OK from a distance but it was poor dry grass, no value in it.

Being so big, though, the paddock was hard to
muster. These sheep hadn’t seen humans for a long time and they
were getting a bit feral themselves. A dozen times as we flushed
them out of blackberries, and from behind trees, I wished that we
had a dog to help us. Instead we had Lee and Robyn and Fi, who were
as much use as a couple of untrained budgies. We didn’t need all
the sheep, of course, which was lucky, or else we’d still be there,
cursing and sweating and trying to make them do what we wanted. We
ended up with maybe a hundred and twenty.

We got them out on the road after thirty
minutes work. Then it was a matter of droving them along to a woody
section of bush, and holding them till a convoy could be heard.
That might sound easy but it wasn’t. As soon as the sheep got out
the gate they spread along the sides of the road and started
eating. We pushed them along slowly but once we got them out of the
open country and into the bushy section, the feed along the road
disappeared. This upset the sheep and they revved up and started
forward to find better stuff. Kevin and I had to head them off fast
and then, with Homer at the rear to back us up, persuade them to
stay right where they were. We needed that bush for cover, so the
sheep had to stay out of open country.

Robyn was dressed entirely in black and had
blackened her face as well, with shoe polish from a farmhouse. Shoe
polish was one thing that never seemed to get looted. A few months
ago we would have thought that blacking faces, wearing camouflage
and synchronising watches was a bit over the top, Hollywood movie
style, but now we did these things as a matter of course.

I’m not too sure how Robyn got the job of
cutting the wire and attaching the timer. The obvious person was
Kevin and at one stage he seemed to be volunteering, but somehow
Robyn was left holding the pliers. There was a bit of mumbling
about Robyn being good with her hands, and Kevin being needed to
hold the sheep until the trucks appeared, but I think we all knew
that this kind of thing just wasn’t Kevin’s style. He didn’t have
the nerve for it. It soon became clear that he didn’t want to do it
and Robyn said she would and so it was settled.

I think Robyn was always quite keen to do
things that didn’t directly hurt anyone.

When the sheep settled down and Kevin and I
were holding them OK, Homer and Lee disappeared for a few minutes
in the direction of the backpacks. I didn’t think anything of it
until they returned. When I next saw them they were each holding a
sawn-off shotgun. This was a whole new move that I hadn’t
anticipated.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked angrily.

Homer looked away, guiltily, but Lee was cool
enough.

‘Don’t be stupid about this, Ellie,’ he said.
‘We’re going to give Robyn cover.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Ellie, this is dangerous stuff, really
dangerous, let’s not kid ourselves. These convoys are guarded front
and back. If anyone comes up behind Robyn while she’s working on
the circuit she’s got no hope. Well, she will have a hope now,
because we’ll shoot them.’

‘Oh yeah, and what happens then?’

‘We all melt away into the bush. They might
fire after us but they won’t chase us through the bush in the dark.
We call the plan off and go somewhere else. We won’t have lost
anything but we will have saved Robyn’s life.’

‘Shouldn’t Robyn have a say in all this?’

Lee hesitated. ‘Yeah, OK, fair enough. Robyn,
what do you think? You want cover or not?’

Robyn didn’t look at any of us. From out of
her dark face a pair of white eyes gazed away through the trees. I
was puzzled that she was taking so long to answer. I’d thought that
she’d have told them pretty fast what to do with their guns.

‘Yes,’ she said at last, still not looking at
us, ‘I think I would like cover, thank you.’

I didn’t say anything, just walked back to the
sheep, trying to keep my face controlled. I didn’t like this
situation. I also don’t like being surprised by people, especially
Robyn, whom I thought I’d figured out a long time ago.

I also like getting my own way.

‘What do you think of these guns?’ I asked Fi,
looking for support.

‘I think they’re right,’ she said. ‘Robyn’d be
a sitting duck otherwise. If she got shot we’d never forgive
ourselves.’

I gave up then. I still thought that it was
stupid: that if we ever got involved in a shooting war we’d be
massacred. But I’d been outvoted.

We waited about forty minutes and then heard
the unmistakeable low rasping buzz of a convoy. ‘Oh God,’ I
thought, ‘here we go.’ It was still a long way off but it got
louder quite quickly. At one stage I almost convinced myself that
it wasn’t a convoy at all but a low-flying aircraft. Sound does
funny things at night.

‘We’re mad,’ I said to Fi.

She gave her little nervous smile.

‘Do you think anyone’ll ever know about the
things we do?’ I asked her.

‘I know what you mean,’ she said. ‘It’d be
awful if they didn’t. I want my parents to know I’ve tried really
hard to help and to do brave things. I’d hate it if they didn’t
know that.’

I felt better that she understood, that she
felt the same way.

We were on a fairly straight stretch of road
so we could see the lights of the trucks quite a way off. But these
ones surprised me because they were using parking lights. It was a
while later that I realised it was a good sign; they must be
getting more nervous about air attacks. Up until then we’d seen a
lot of convoys with dimmed headlights but never one on parkers
only. It meant also that they travelled slowly, which was good news
for the sheep.

Kevin at one end of the mob of sheep, and I at
the other, were the only people left on the road now. We shook the
sheep up and got them onto the bitumen as much as we were able.
They weren’t all that keen but we had them spread out enough to
take up lots of space. At the last moment we slipped into the trees
and joined the other four. We heard the brakes of the first truck
come on and saw the little parking lights come to a halt. Other
trucks quickly stopped behind it, as far back as we could see. It
was a big convoy. I saw Robyn sneak forward, followed by Homer and
Lee with their guns. I felt sick. I heard truck doors slam,
footsteps, voices yelling at the sheep. We figured on having a bit
of time, as these guys probably wouldn’t have a lot of experience
with sheep, plus the sheep only understood English. And the
soldiers wouldn’t want to leave them wandering all over the road,
where they’d be a hazard to other convoys.

A bright spotlight suddenly came on, and swung
around towards us. They might have been nervous of planes but they
weren’t fools either. They’d obviously weighed up the odds and
decided the spotlight was worth the risk. Fi and I silently went to
ground. I couldn’t see Kevin, who was somewhere behind us, but I
assumed he was eating dirt, too. I lay there, my heart thudding
madly. The sheep were bleating hysterically up on the road, and
starting to move away from the soldiers. I could hear the sharp
trotters start to accelerate again, tap-dancing on the bitumen.
We’d had a cattle stampede, ages ago; seemed that now we were
having a sheep stampede. I giggled, and saw Fi’s right eye peep at
me, startled. That startled me, then: I hadn’t thought I’d giggled
so loudly. I started worrying that the soldiers had heard.

The spotlight continued to search. It was so
bright that it seemed to burn the air, to burn the branches and
leaves. A small bird erupted out of a nest to my right and flew
away in a wild panicky ungraceful rush. I could see by a reflection
in the sky that there was another spotlight scanning the other side
of the road.

Then the shooting started. I nearly lifted off
the ground with sheer fright. I’m amazed my hair didn’t turn white;
it felt funny, all frizzy. Shots were being fired at a regular
rate, one after another, on both sides of the road. At first they
were away to our left but we could tell they were gradually moving
closer. I began to realise what was happening: the soldiers,
suspicious, were firing methodically into the bush, just to
discourage anyone who might be lurking, waiting to attack. I
pressed myself down even lower, feeling the cold earth on my lips
and forehead. A bullet blasted across my head with horrifying speed
and force, rushing away into the darkness. I hoped there weren’t
too many koalas out there. I was worried sick about Homer and Lee
and Robyn but there was nothing we could do, and so far I hadn’t
heard the shouts of discovery you’d expect if they’d been spotted.
I didn’t dare move.

The firing continued for several minutes. They
must have had tonnes of ammo. They certainly weren’t taking risks.
Then suddenly I heard a truck engine cough into life. Then another,
then another. They merged into a loud purring and I heard the heavy
clunks of gears engaging. The convoy was on the move.

I wasn’t though. I lay there, waiting for the
night to become silent and clear again. But before it did, Homer
and Lee arrived, two big dark clumsy figures crashing through the
scrub in front of me. Fi and I hauled ourselves up, shaking off
twigs and leaves and dirt.

‘What happened?’ I begged them.

Kevin arrived, behind me.

‘What the hell happened?’ he echoed.

‘They were just so paranoid,’ Homer said. Both
he and Lee looked wild-eyed with excitement. ‘We couldn’t do
anything. Once they started popping off bullets we hid behind trees
and hoped to God they wouldn’t come looking for us.’

‘Did they see you?’ Kevin asked.

‘No, no, they were just being cautious.’

‘Where’s Robyn?’

‘I don’t know. Up on the road I hope. We
didn’t dare look out from behind our trees. I don’t think she was
caught or we would have heard. But I don’t know if she managed to
get the timer on. It would have been hard.’

We ploughed our way up to the road. There was
no sign of Robyn, no sheep either. I was starting to panic. Then I
saw a pair of white eyes, and the gleam of white teeth, coming
towards us. It proved to be not a wolf, but Robyn.

We engulfed her with questions and
emotion.

‘Wait! Stop!’ she said. ‘Let’s walk and talk.
We can’t waste time.’ We hurried along behind her, like a gaggle of
geese. The first thing we saw was the paddock where they’d put the
sheep. Both Homer and I stopped in disgust.

‘We can’t leave them in there!’ Homer
exploded.

‘We haven’t got time,’ Lee said.

‘We’ll have to make time,’ I said. ‘These
sheep helped us a lot tonight. We owe them.’

Homer and I ran to the gate and opened it. I
realised we’d have to fake it, so the sheep looked like they’d
escaped by themselves.

I called out to Lee: ‘See if you can knock the
fence down somewhere. Make it look like the sheep did it
themselves.’

Grumbling, he went off to do it. Homer and I
ran into the paddock and exhausted ourselves rounding the stupid
animals up again. The paddock was very small, with no feed at all,
and thirty starving tukidales in it already, to go with the merino
crosses we’d been droving. We ran them out of the gate so fast that
it’s a wonder they didn’t smother themselves. A few did go down but
they got themselves up again. We let them spread out along the
sides of the road and graze where they wanted. The road was much
wider here and with the sheep off the bitumen I hoped the convoys
would let them stay there. Whatever, there was no more we could do
for them. At least they’d have full bellies for their next
adventure.

We ran off after Robyn and Fi, who were
further up the road, talking.

‘So what happened?’ I asked Robyn,
panting.

She was grinning. I got the impression she’d
enjoyed herself, despite the danger.

‘It was insane.’

‘OK, OK, I believe you; but what
happened?’

‘Well, they stopped and I picked one right
away, a semi with a container on the back. It was only a short one,
about six or seven metres long I’d say, but the long ones were all
diesels, I think. I just went straight to it in the shadows before
people started getting out of their trucks, and I got in from
underneath, like we’d said. It wasn’t hard finding the lead, but
just after I’d cut it the security guys came past. That’s when
things got serious. There was nothing to do except crouch there and
pray. But they were more interested in the bush than what might be
happening in the trucks. The outside, not the inside.’

‘Makes sense,’ I said. ‘They’d be thinking of
guerilla attacks, not of one person putting a timer on a
distributor lead.’

The others had joined us at this stage and we
were walking along fast, hoping to find a broken-down truck. But
although the convoy had been travelling slowly we knew we’d have a
long way to go.

‘Then they started firing,’ Robyn continued.
‘That was awful. I thought they’d spotted you guys. I turned to
stone. I’d thought I was the one in the dangerous spot, then it
seemed like you were. I couldn’t seem to think or function at all.
But I noticed there was no excitement: no one calling out or
running like you’d expect if they were suspicious. Then one of the
soldiers doing the shooting walked past me firing into the bush,
and I realised it wasn’t aimed at anyone: they were just playing it
safe. I hoped you guys hadn’t copped an accidental bullet. But I
unparalysed myself and got back to work. It was really hard because
my hands were so wet and sweaty. I couldn’t get a proper grip. The
wires wouldn’t do what I wanted, then I dropped the pliers. But I’m
pretty sure I got it right. Then I taped the timer way down and
tried to make my move. That’s when my real problems started –
people were coming back to their trucks and security guys were
still wandering around. The truck started and revved up and I still
couldn’t get off. I thought, “Better flatten myself,” and I did. I
waited till the truck had gone over me then rolled off the road
full speed. I was terrified then. The trucks travel so close
together. You should have seen me roll. Still, I survived. Bruises,
scratches, scars for life, that’s about all.’