Tomorrow When The War Began (8 page)

We got round to the back of the house, where
it was darker. It was only then that I realised that while thinking
about ambushes I’d actually led Kevin and Corrie into a trap. There
was no back fence or back gate, just a row of old buildings. Last
century they’d been the servants’ quarters, and a kitchen and
laundry. Now they were used as garages, gardening sheds, store
rooms. I stopped the other two. I was horrified by how utterly
terror-stricken they looked; horrified because I knew I must look
the same way. Their teeth and eyes gleamed at me and their
uncontrolled panting seemed to fill the night, like a demonic wind.
My mind was falling apart. All I could think of was how my
arrogance in taking the lead, in being so sure I knew my way, might
cost us our lives. I wasn’t yet sure if the others realised how
ignorant I’d been. I forced myself to speak, through rattling
teeth. I wasn’t even sure what I was going to say, and my fury at
myself seemed to come out as anger directed at them. I’m not very
proud of how I was that night. ‘Shut up! Shut up and listen,’ I
said. ‘For Christ’s sake. We’ve got a couple of minutes. This is a
big garden. They won’t go rushing around in it, in the darkness.
They’ll be a bit unsure of us.’

‘I’ve hurt my leg,’ Corrie moaned.

‘What, you didn’t get shot?’

‘No, I ran into something, just back
there.’

It’s a ride-on mower,’ Kevin said. ‘I nearly
hit it too.’

A volley of gunfire interrupted us. It was
frighteningly loud. We could see the flashes of fire from the guns.
As we watched, trembling, we began to recognise their tactics. They
were keeping together, moving through the garden, firing into
anything that could have concealed a person: a bush, a barbecue
pit, a compost heap. They’d probably seen enough of us to have an
idea that we were empty handed, but they were still moving
cautiously.

I was struggling to get some air, to breathe.
At last I was starting to think. But my brain was operating like my
lungs, in great gasping bursts. ‘Yes, petrol ... we could roll it
... no, that’d give them time ... but if it sat there ... matches
... and a chisel or something ...’

‘Ellie, what the hell are you on about?’

‘Find some matches, or a cigarette lighter.
And a chisel. And a hammer. Quick. Very quick. Try these
sheds.’

We spread out, rushing to the dark buildings,
Corrie limping. I found myself in a garage. I felt around with my
hands, locating the smooth cold lines of a car, then quickly going
to its passenger door. The door was unlocked; like most of us who
lived around Wirrawee, Mrs Alexander didn’t bother to lock her
cars. Everyone trusted people. That was one thing that was going to
change forever. When the door opened, the interior light, to my
horror, came on. I found the switch and turned it off, then stood
there trembling waiting for the bullets to come tearing through the
walls of the building. Nothing happened. I opened the glove box,
which had its own light, but it was small, and anyway I needed it.
And there it was, a blessed box of matches. Thank God Mrs Alexander
was a chain smoker. I grabbed the matches, slammed the glove box
shut and ran from the garage, forgetting in my excitement that the
soldiers could be out there. But they weren’t, just Kevin.

‘Did you get them?’

‘I got the hammer and chisel.’

‘Oh Kevin, I love you.’

‘I heard that,’ came Corrie’s whisper from the
darkness.

‘Take me to the ride-on,’ I said.

Before, two people had found it when they
didn’t want to. Now, when three of us wanted to find it, none of us
could. Two agonising minutes passed. I felt my skin go colder and
colder. It was like icy insects were crawling over it. At last I
thought, ‘This is hopeless. We’ll have to give up.’

But stubbornly, like an idiot, I kept
looking.

Then another whisper from Corrie: ‘Over
here’.

Kevin and I converged on it at the same time.
Just as we did I saw a torch flash for a moment, somewhere near the
front verandah. ‘They’re coming,’ I said. ‘Quick. Help me push it.
But quietly.’

We got it on one side of the driveway, near
the brick wall of Mrs Alexander’s studio.

‘What are the hammer and chisel for?’ Kevin
whispered urgently.

‘To make a hole in the petrol tank,’ I said.
‘But now I think it’ll make too much noise, doing it.’

‘Why do you need a hole?’ he asked. ‘Why not
just unscrew the lid?’

I just kept right on feeling stupid. Later I
realised I was even more stupid again, because a hammer and chisel
would have caused a spark that would have blown us all up.

Kevin had worked out what I wanted and he
unscrewed the cap.

‘We’ll need to be behind the wall,’ I
whispered. ‘And we need a trail of petrol to it.’ He nodded and
pulled off his T-shirt, pushing it into the tank to soak it. Then
he sat the cap back on the tank and used his shirt to lay the trail
of liquid to the wall. We only had seconds left. We could hear the
crunch of gravel under soft menacing feet, and an occasional
muttered comment. I heard one male voice and one female. The torch
flashed again, right at the corner of the drive.

Kevin’s voice breathed in my ear. ‘We need to
make sure they’re all together.’

I nodded. I’d just realised the same problem.
I could see two dark figures but I assumed we were being hunted by
the three patrolling sentries we’d seen before. Kevin confirmed it,
breathing in my ear again, ‘I saw three of them in the road’.

I nodded again, then took a deep breath and
let out a short weak moan of pain. The effect on the two soldiers
was dramatic. They turned towards us like they had antennae. I gave
a little gasp and a sob. One of the soldiers, the male, called out,
urgently, in a language I didn’t recognise, and a moment later the
third soldier came through the line of trees and joined the first
two. They talked for a moment, gesturing in our direction. They
must have known by then that we weren’t armed: we would have surely
let off a few shots by now if we had been. They spread out a little
though, and came walking slowly towards us. I waited and waited,
till they were about three metres from the mower. The small squat
dark shape sat there, as if demanding that they notice it. For the
first time I saw their faces; then I struck the match.

It didn’t light.

My hand, which had been very steady till then,
got the shakes. I thought, ‘We’re about to die, just because I
couldn’t light a match’. It seemed unfair, almost ridiculous. I
tried again, but was shaking too much. The soldiers were almost
past the mower. Kevin grabbed my wrist. ‘Do it.’ he mouthed
fiercely in my ear. The soldiers seemed to have heard Kevin, from
the way their eager faces turned in our direction again. I struck
the match for the third time, almost sure that there wouldn’t be
enough sulphur left to ignite. But it lit, making a harsh little
noise, and I threw it to the ground. I threw it too fast; I don’t
know how it didn’t go out. It should have, and it almost did For a
moment it died to a small dot of light and again I thought ‘We’re
dead, and it’s all my fault’. Then the petrol caught, with a quiet
quick whoosh.

The flames ran along the line of petrol in
fits and starts, like a stuttering snake, but very fast. The
soldiers saw it, of course. They turned, looked, seemed to flinch.
But in their surprise they were too slow to move, just as I would
have been. One lifted an arm, as if to point. Another leaned
backwards, almost in slow motion. That’s the last image I have of
them, because then Kevin pulled me back, behind the brick wall, and
an instant later the mower became an exploding bomb. The night
seemed to erupt. The wall swayed and shook, and then settled again.
A small orange fireball ripped up into the darkness, with little
tracer bullets of fire shooting away from it. The noise was shrill
and loud and frightening. It hurt my ears. I could see bits of
shrapnel hurtling into the trees and I heard and felt a number of
bits thud into the wall behind which we were hiding. Then Kevin was
tugging at me, saying, ‘Run, run’.

At the same time the screams began from the
other side of the wall.

We ran through the fruit trees and down the
slope at an angle, past the chook shed, reaching Mrs Alexander’s
front fence at the corner where it met the next property. The
screams behind us were ripping the night apart. I hoped that the
faster and further we ran the quicker the screams would fade, but
that didn’t seem to be happening. I didn’t know if I was hearing
them only with my ears or in my mind as well.

‘There’s just time,’ Corrie panted, from
behind me. It took me a minute to realise what she meant: time to
meet the others.

‘We can go straight there,’ Kevin called.

‘How’s your leg Corrie?’ I asked, trying
unsuccessfully to return to the normal world.

‘OK,’ she answered.

We saw headlights coming and ducked into a
garden as a truck went past at high speed. It was a tray truck from
Wirrawee Hardware, but with soldiers in the back instead of garden
tools. Only two soldiers though.

We ran on, reaching

Warrigle
Street

, then racing up the Mathers’ steep drive,
taking no precautions at all. We were struggling for breath now. My
legs felt old and slow. They were really hurting. I stopped and
waited for Corrie, then we walked on together, holding hands. We
couldn’t do any more, go any faster, or fight anyone else.

Homer and Fi were there, surrounded by bikes,
a full set of seven now. Our dinking days were over, but
ironically, just when we had enough bikes, there were only five of
us to ride them. There was no sign of Lee and Robyn. It was 3.35,
and from the hill we could see other vehicles leaving the
Showground, all heading for

Racecourse
Road

. One of them was the Wirrawee ambulance. We
couldn’t wait any longer. With only a few tired mumbled words
between us – mainly to find out that Fi’s house too had been empty
– we mounted the cold bikes and pedalled down the hill. I don’t
know about the others but I felt as though I was going round and
round on the spot. I stood and made my legs go harder and faster.
As we warmed up we all started to accelerate. It seemed incredible
that we could find any more energy but for me the simple need to
keep up with the others, not to be left behind, forced me to
increase my rate. By the time we passed the ‘Welcome to Wirrawee’
sign we were going like bats out of Hell.

Chapter
Eight

We arrived at Corrie’s place a few minutes
before dawn. The sky was just starting to lighten. It had been a
horrible ride. At every tree I promised myself that we were nearly
at the turnoff, but I doubt if we were even half way there when I
started promising that. I had pain in every part of me, first in
the legs, but then in the chest, then the back, the arms, the
throat, the mouth. I burned, I felt sick, I ached. My head got
lower and lower, until I was following the back wheel of whoever
was in front of me, Corrie I think. My mind was singing a tired
chorus of a meaningless song:

I must have sung that a thousand times. It
went round and round in my head like the wheels of the bicycle
until I could have screamed in frustration, but nothing would make
it go away. I didn’t want to think about what had happened at Mrs
Alexander’s, or the fate of the three soldiers who had chased us,
or what might have happened to Lee and Robyn, so it seemed I had no
choice but to sing to myself:

I tried to remember more of it than just the
chorus, but I couldn’t.

At one point someone said to me, ‘What did you
say Ellie?’ and I realised I must be singing out loud, but I was
too tired to answer whoever was asking the question – I don’t even
know who it was. Maybe I imagined it anyway. I don’t recall anyone
else speaking. Even the decision to go to Corrie’s seemed to have
been taken by osmosis.

We were half way down her driveway before I
let myself believe that we’d arrived, that we’d made it. I guess
everyone was in the same state. I stopped in front of the
Mackenzies’ porch and stood there, trying to find the energy to
lift my foot and get off the bike. I stood there a long time. I
knew eventually I’d have to raise that leg but I didn’t know when
I’d be able to do it. Finally Homer said kindly, ‘Come on Ellie’,
and I was ashamed of my weakness and managed to stumble off the
bike and even wheel it into a shed.

Inside the house Flip was bounding around
Kevin like she was a puppy in love, Corrie was making coffee on the
camp stove, Fi was sitting at the kitchen table with her head in
her hands, and Homer was getting out plates and cutlery. I couldn’t
believe what a difference it made not having Lee and Robyn; it was
like the kitchen was almost empty. ‘What do you want me to do?’ I
said, kind of stupidly, no longer able to think for myself.

‘Just sit down and eat,’ Homer said. He’d
found cereal and sugar and more long-life milk. I nearly choked on
the first few mouthfuls, but after a while I got into the habit of
eating again, and the food started to stay down.

Gradually we got talking, and then we couldn’t
stop. As well as being tired we were so wound up that the
conversation became a battle of babbling voices, no one listening
to each other, till we were all shouting. Finally Homer stood up,
grabbed an empty coffee mug and threw it hard at the back of the
fireplace, where it smashed into large white pieces. ‘Greek
custom,’ he explained to our astonished faces, and sat down again.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘let’s take it in turns. Ellie, you go first. What
happened with you guys?’

I took a deep breath, and fuelled by the
mixture of muesli and Rice Bubbles that I’d just eaten, launched
into a description of what we’d seen at the Showground. Kevin and
Corrie chimed in occasionally when I forgot a detail, but it was
only when I got to the part in Mrs Alexander’s back garden that I
began to have trouble. I couldn’t look at anyone, just down at the
table, at the piece of muesli box that I was screwing up and
twisting and spinning around in my fingers. It was hard for me to
believe that I, plain old Ellie, nothing special about me, middle
of the road in every way, had probably just killed three people. It
was too big a thing for me to get my mind around. When I thought of
it baldly like that: killed three people, I was so filled with
horror. I felt that my life was permanently damaged, that I could
never be normal again, that the rest of my life would just be a
shell. Ellie might walk and talk and eat and drink but the inside
Ellie, her feelings, was condemned to wither and die. I didn’t
think much about the three soldiers as people: I couldn’t, because
I had no real sense of them. I hadn’t even seen their faces
properly. I didn’t know their names or ages or families or
backgrounds, the way they thought about life. I still didn’t know
what country they were from. Because I didn’t know any of the
things you need to know before you truly know a person, the
soldiers hardly existed for me as real people.

So I tried to describe it all as though I were
an outsider, a spectator, someone reading it from a book. A history
book about other people, not about me. I felt guilty and ashamed
about what had happened.

Another thing I was afraid of was almost the
opposite: that if I told the story of the mower with any drama at
all, the others, especially the boys, would get all macho about it,
and start acting like it was a big heroic thing.

I didn’t want to be Rambo, just me: just
Ellie.

Their reactions weren’t what I expected
though. Half way through, Homer put one of his big brown hands over
mine, which made it harder to shred the muesli box, and Corrie
moved up closer and put an arm around me. Fi listened with her eyes
fixed on my face and her mouth open, like she couldn’t believe what
she was hearing. Kevin sat there grim-faced. I don’t know what he
was thinking but he sure wasn’t doing war cries or carving notches
on his belt, like I’d half-feared he might.

There was a silence after I finished, then
Homer said, ‘You guys did well. Don’t feel so bad. This is war now,
and normal rules don’t apply. These people have invaded our land,
locked up our families. They caused your dogs to die, Ellie, and
they tried to kill you three. The Greek side of me understands
these things. The moment they left their country to come here they
knew what they were doing. They’re the ones who tore up the rule
book, not us.’

‘Thanks Homer,’ I said.

He really had helped me.

‘So what happened to you two?’ Kevin
asked.

‘Well,’ Homer began. ‘We had a good run at
first, along

Honey Street

. But the further into town we got, the more
careful we had to be, and the slower we went. There wasn’t any
excitement till the corner of Maldon and West. There’d been some
kind of action there. Must have been a bit of a battle I think –
there were two police cars, both on their sides, and a truck just
down the road that had crashed into a tree. And there were spent
cartridges everywhere, hundreds of them. But no bodies or
anything.’

‘But blood,’ said Fi. ‘A lot of blood.’

‘Yes, well we think it was blood. A lot of
dark stains. But there was oil and stuff everywhere – it was just a
big mess. So we went through that pretty carefully, then cut
through Jubilee Park. Our idea was to go down

Barker Street

, but honestly, it was a disaster area. Looked
like those American riots on TV. Every shop’s had its windows
smashed, and there’s stuff all over the road and footpaths. I’d say
these guys have had themselves a big party.’

‘They must think it’s Christmas.’

‘I don’t know if they’re heavily into
Christmas. We had to laugh though: straight opposite us was a big
sign in Tozers’ window, saying “Shoplifters will be prosecuted”.
Well, they’ve had themselves some shoplifters. The whole shop’s
been lifted.

‘Anyway, we decided to go down that little
lane beside Tozers’. It was all dark and shadowy, which suited us.
Funny how quickly you adapt to being a night creature. So we
moseyed along there, across the carpark, and into

Glover Street

. Then Fi, who’s got hearing like a bat,
thought she heard voices, so we ducked into the public dunnies.
Into the men’s of course: I wasn’t going to risk being caught in a
ladies’ toilet. Actually it wasn’t that smart a move. You guys seem
to have got into the right kind of thinking pretty quickly, but
we’ve still got to retrain our minds. If anyone had seen us going
in there, or if they’d caught us inside it, we’d have been dead
meat – the place was a perfect trap. And there was someone coming –
I could hear the voices by then too. I’d been thinking of taking a
leak, but when you’re scared – well, I don’t know what it’s like
for girls but a guy can stand there for half an hour, and not a
drip ...’

‘Come on Homer, get on with it. I want to go
to bed soon.’

‘OK, OK. Well, we waited and waited. Whoever
they were, they were sure taking their time.’

‘Homer kept himself busy graffitiing the
walls,’ Fi interrupted.

‘Yes, that’s true,’ Homer admitted
shamelessly. ‘I figured it was one time in my life when I could get
away with it. When this is all over they’ll have more important
things to worry about than my messages on the lavatory walls. And
they were patriotic messages that I wrote.’

‘I don’t see what’s patriotic about “Wogs
Rule”,’ Fi interrupted again.

‘But I wrote other things too.’

‘You’re an idiot Homer,’ Kevin grumbled. ‘You
never take anything seriously.’

But I remembered Homer’s hand on mine when I
talked about the screams of the three soldiers who’d been hit by my
home-made shrapnel. And I remembered what he’d said to comfort me.
I smiled at him, and winked. I knew what he was trying to do.

‘Anyway, these guys kept getting closer. And
when I say guys, I mean a mixture. Like your patrol, there were men
and women. About six or seven altogether, we thought. Our biggest
worry was that they would decide to use the toilets. I wanted to go
into a cubicle and lock the door, so the “Occupied” sign was
showing, and I’m sure they would have respected that. But Fi wasn’t
so keen, so we got in the cleaner’s cubicle instead, by wriggling
under the door. That was one place they still hadn’t looted. There
was no room in there and the smell was terrible, but we felt more
secure, although really, like I said before, we were crazy. The
whole place was a deathtrap. And sure enough, two minutes later
these boots came crunching in: three guys, we thought. Two of them
used the urinal and the other one headed for the throne. So it was
lucky we did hide, because I wouldn’t have liked Fi to be seeing
things like that. The guy in the cubicle was right next to us, and
geez, if the smell had been bad before, it was shocking now. I
think they were trying to save ammunition by gassing us to death.
And as for the sound effects ...’

Homer gave an imitation. The little dog, Flip,
sitting on Kevin’s lap, pricked up her ears and barked. Even Fi
laughed.

‘Lucky we didn’t have Flip with us,’ Homer
commented. He continued his story. ‘We didn’t learn much, except
that they eat a lot of eggs and cheese. They talked a lot, but no
language that I recognised. Not that that means much. All I can say
is that they weren’t Greek. But Fi’s the language student – she
does about six, don’t you Fi? – and she couldn’t tell who they
were.’

I reflected that the night they’d spent
together had given Homer more confidence with Fi. He’d found the
style, the tone, to use with her. And she seemed to enjoy it. She
laughed at his jokes and there was more life and colour in her face
when she looked at him. She was losing the coolness she’d had
before.

‘Well,’ Homer continued. ‘At last they
finished whatever it was they were doing, and we heard them shuffle
off. We gave them five minutes and then slithered back out under
the cleaner’s door. We could see the soldiers though, from the
door, as they disappeared down

Glover Street

. They were a funny looking bunch. There were
eight altogether, and I think three were women. But of the men, two
looked pretty old, and two looked quite young, about our age or
even younger. And they were dressed in rough old uniforms.’

‘I guess,’ said Corrie, ‘that to invade a
country this size they would have had to call up everyone with four
limbs.’

‘We didn’t have any ride-on mowers lying
around,’ Homer went on, ‘so we tiptoed off in the opposite
direction. Nothing much else happened till we got to Fi’s ...’

‘Yes it did,’ Fi cut in. ‘Remember the
shadows?’

‘Oh yes,’ Homer said. ‘You tell them. I didn’t
see them.’

‘About two blocks from my place,’ Fi began,
‘there’s a milk bar, with a little park behind it. The milk bar had
been looted, like all the other shops. We were sneaking across the
park when I thought I saw a couple of shadows coming out of the
milk bar. Shadows of people, I mean. I don’t mean shadows either;
that’s just what I called them, because it was so dark it’s what
they looked like. At first I thought they would be soldiers, and I
grabbed Homer and we hid behind a tree. When I looked out they were
disappearing towards

Sherlock Road

, but I could see they weren’t soldiers, just
from the way they were acting. I called out to them, and they
stopped and looked around, then they talked to each other for a
minute, then they ran off. That’s all.’

‘I never saw them,’ Homer explained. ‘I nearly
died when Fi started yelling out. I thought she must have inhaled
too much Dettol in the cleaner’s cupboard. But when you think about
it, it’s logical that there’d still be people running around loose.
They can’t have caught everyone in the district in this short a
time.

‘Anyway, we kept plugging up the hill. We got
to Fi’s place. It was locked but Fi knew where there was a spare
key. And now I know too, which could be handy one day. Fi sent me
inside with my orders: to open the curtains and pull up the blinds.
The main windows are about a hundred metres from the front door,
across this enormous hall, so Fi sat on the steps outside while I
crept through this pitch-black room. I tell you, it was pretty
spooky. You know how psychic I am, and I could feel a presence in
there, a being. I knew I was not alone. I got about half way across
and suddenly there was this unearthly scream from above, and the
next thing, I was being attacked. Devilish claws were tearing at me
and a ghostly voice was howling in my ear. And that’s how we found
that Fi’s cat was alive and well and living in the rafters. Fi’s
folks have been having the ceiling renovated.’