The last twenty or so words were heavily underlined, everything from 'go bush' onwards.
We looked at each other for a moment, then had a big hug. We both cried a bit, then ran outside to show the others.
I think I must have run out of tears after that day, because I haven't cried again since.
When we left the Mackenzies' we moved cautiously. For the first time we acted like people in a war, like soldiers, like guerillas. Corrie said to us, 'I've always laughed at Dad for being so cautious. The way he carries his spirit level everywhere. But his big motto is "Time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted". Maybe we'd better go with that for a while.'
We had another bike, Corrie's, so we worked out a way of travelling that we thought was a compromise between speed and safety. We fixed a landmark—the first one was the old Church of Christ—and the first pair, Robyn and Lee, were to ride to it and stop. If it was safe they'd go back and drop a tea towel on the road, two hundred metres before the church. The next pair would set out five minutes after Robyn and Lee and the last three five minutes later. We agreed on total silence, and we left Kevin's old corgi, Flip, chained up at the Mackenzies'. Out fear was making us think.
For all that, the trip to Robyn's was uneventful. Slow, but uneventful. We found her house in the same condition as the others, empty, smelling bad, cobwebs already. It made me wonder how quickly houses would fall apart if people weren't there to look after them. They'd always seemed so solid, so permanent. That poem Mum was always quoting, 'Look on my works ye mighty and despair'. That was all I could remember, but it was the first time I started to understand the truth of it.
It was 1.30 in the morning. We went up to the hill behind Robyn's house and looked at Wirrawee. Suddenly I was very tired. The town was in darkness, no street lights even. There must have been some power though, because there were quite strong lights at the Showground—the floodlights they used for the trotting track—and a couple of buildings in the centre of town were lit. As we sat there we talked softly about our next move. There was no question that we had to try to reach Fi's house, and Lee's. Not because we expected to find anyone, but because five of us had seen our homes, had seen the emptiness, had been given a chance to understand, and it was only fair that the last two should get the same right.
A truck drove slowly out of the Showground and to one of the lit buildings, in Barker Street I think. We stopped talking and watched. It was the first sign of human life, other than our own, that we'd seen since the planes.
Then Homer made an unpopular suggestion. 'I think we should split up.'
There was a whispered howl of protest, if you can have that. It was different to Kevin and Corrie offering to go on their own before. They just hadn't wanted to drag us away from Homer's. But now Homer wouldn't give in.
'We need to be out of town before dawn. A long way out of town. And we're running short of time. It's not going to be quick and easy, travelling around these streets. We're getting tired, and that alone will slow us down, not to mention the care that we'll have to take. Also, two people can move more quietly than seven. And finally, to tell you the truth, if there are soldiers here and anyone's caught ... well, again, two's better than seven. I hate to mention the fact, but five people free and two people locked up is a better equation than no people free and seven locked up. You all know what a whiz I am at Maths.'
He'd talked us into silence. We knew he was right, except for the Maths part maybe.
'So what are you suggesting?' Kevin asked.
'I'll go with Fi. I've always wanted to see inside one of those rich houses on the hill. This is my big chance.' Fi aimed a tired kick at him which he allowed to hit his shin. 'Maybe if Robyn and Lee go to Lee's, what do you think? And you other three take a closer look at the Showground. All those lights ... maybe that's their base. Or it could be where they're keeping people even.'
We digested all this, then Robyn said, 'Yes, it's the best way. How about anyone not wearing dark clothes come back to the house and help yourselves to some? And we meet back here on the hill at, say, three o'clock?'
'What if someone's missing?' Fi asked quietly. It was a terrible thought. After a silence Fi answered her own question. 'How about we wait till 3.30 if anyone's not back. Then move out fast, but come back tomorrow night—I mean tonight. And if you're the ones missing and you get back late, lie low for the day.'
'Yes,' said Homer. 'That's all we can do.'
Kevin and Corrie and I didn't need any darker clothing, so we were ready to go. We stood and hugged everyone and wished them luck. A minute later, when I looked back, I could no longer see them. We picked our way down the hill towards Warrigle Street, climbed through the Mathers' front fence and crept along the side of the road, keeping very close to the treeline. Kevin was leading. I just hoped he didn't come across any creepie-crawlies. It wouldn't be a good time for him to start yelling and screaming.
Although the Showground was on the edge of town, it was the opposite side to the edge we were on, so we had quite a walk ahead. But we could move fairly quickly, because we were well away from the main streets. Not that Wirrawee's got many main streets. I was glad that we were moving: it was the only thing keeping me sane. It was so hard concentrating on walking and watching and keeping quiet at the same time. Sometimes I forgot and made a noise, then the other two would turn and look angrily at me. I'd shrug, spread my arms, roll my eyes. I still couldn't comprehend that this might be a matter of life and death, that this was the most serious thing I'd ever been involved in. Of course I knew it; I just couldn't keep remembering it every single second. My mind wasn't that well disciplined. And besides, Kevin and Corrie weren't as quiet as they thought they were.
It was hard being so dark, too. Hard not to trip over stones, or tread on noisy sticks or, on one occasion, bump into a garbage can.
We got into Racecourse Road, and felt a little safer, as there are so few houses along there. Passing Mrs Alexander's I stopped for a moment to sniff at the big old roses that grew along her front fence. I loved her garden. She had a party there every year, a Christmas party. It had only been a few weeks since I'd been standing under one of her apple trees, holding a plate of biscuits and telling Steve I didn't want to go with him any more. Now it felt like it'd happened five years ago. It had been a hard thing to do, and Steve being so nice about it made me feel worse. Maybe that's why he was so nice about it. Or was I just being cynical?
I wondered where Steve was now, and Mrs Alexander, and the Mathers and Mum and Dad and everybody. Could we really have been attacked, invaded? I couldn't imagine how they would have felt, how they would have reacted. They must have been so shocked, so stunned. Some of them would have tried to fight, surely. Some of our friends were hardly the kind of people who would lie down and take it if a bunch of soldiers came marching in to take over their land and houses. Mr George for instance. A building inspector came onto his land last year, to tell him he couldn't extend his shearing shed, and Mr George had been summonsed for threatening him with a tyre lever. For that matter Dad was pretty stubborn too. I just hoped there hadn't been violence. I hoped they'd been sensible.
I stumbled along, thinking of Mum and Dad. Our lives had always been so unaffected by the outside world. Oh, we'd watched the News on TV and felt bad when they showed pictures of wars and famines and floods. Occasionally I'd tried to imagine being in the places of those people, but I couldn't. Imagination has its limits. But the only real impact the outside world had on us was in wool and cattle prices. A couple of countries would sign an agriculture treaty thousands of k's away, on another continent, and a year later we'd have to lay off a worker.
But in spite of our isolation, our unglamorous life, I loved being a rural. Other kids couldn't wait to get away to the city. It was like, the moment they finished school they'd be at the bus depot with their bags packed. They wanted crowds and noise and fast food stores and huge shopping centres. They wanted adrenalin pumping through their veins. I liked those thing
s, in small doses, and I knew that in my life I'd like to spend good lengths of time in the city. But I also knew where I most liked to be, and that was out here, even if I did spend half my life headfirst in a tractor engine, or pulling a lamb out of a barbed-wire fence, or getting kicked black and blue by a heifer when I got between her and her calf.
At that stage I still hadn't come to terms with what had happened. That's not surprising. We knew so little. All we had were clues, guesses, surmises. For instance, I wouldn't allow myself to really consider the possibility that Mum or Dad—or anyone else—had been injured or killed. I mean, I knew in my logical mind that such things were logical outcomes of invasions and fights and wars, but my logical mind was in a little box. My imagination was in another box entirely and I wasn't letting one transmit to the other. I guess you can't really comprehend that your parents will ever die. It's like contemplating your own death.
My feelings were in another box again. During that walk I was desperate to keep them sealed up.
But I did let myself assume that my parents were being held somewhere, against their will. I pictured them, Dad, frustrated and angry, like a bull in a pen, refusing to accept what had happened, refusing to accept anyone else's authority. He wouldn't let himself begin to try to understand what was going on, why these people had come. He wouldn't want to know what their language was, or their ideas, or their culture. Even through my shock and horror I still wanted to understand; I still wanted answers to those questions.
Mum would be different. She'd be concentrating on keeping her mind clear, on not being taken over mentally. I pictured her staring out over the bare hills, through the fence of a prison camp maybe, ignoring the petty distractions, the background voices, the deliberate irritations.
Then I realised I was just thinking of both my parents as they were at home.
We'd reached the end of Racecourse Road. I'd fallen a little behind Kevin and Corrie, and they were waiting for me. We formed a little dark huddle between a tree and a fence. Anyone seeing us might have mistaken us for a strange black growth that had sprouted from the ground. It was getting quite cold and I felt the other two shivering as we crouched together.
'We'll have to be extra careful now that we're so close,' Kevin whispered. 'Try not to get so far behind, Ellie.'
'Sorry. I was thinking.'
'Well, what's the plan?' he asked.
'Just to get close enough to have a look,' Corrie said. 'We don't have all that much time. The main thing's to be careful. If we can't see anything then we just go back to Robyn's. If there's anyone there the dumbest thing we could do would be to have them see us and come after us.'
'OK, agreed,' Kevin said. He started standing. That annoyed me. It was typical Kevin not to ask me what I thought. I pulled him back down.
'What?' he said. 'We've got to get a move on El.'
'That doesn't mean rushing in like idiots. For example, what if we do get seen? Or if we get chased? We can't just run back to Robyn's place. That'd lead them there.'
'Well I guess, separate. It'd be harder for them to chase three different people than one group. Then, if we're sure we're not being followed, make our own way back to Robyn's.'
'OK.'
'Is that all?'
'No! If we're being strictly logical, like Homer was before, we shouldn't all sneak in close to the Showground. One of us should go and the other two stay here. Less chance of being seen, and less loss if one gets caught.'
Corrie gave a little cry. 'No! That's being too logical! You're my best friends! I don't want to be that logical!'
Neither did I, when I thought about it. 'OK then,' I said. 'All for one and one for all. Let's go. The three musketeers.'
We slipped across the road like shadows and moved around the corner. The light from the Showground reached even here, faintly, but enough to make a difference. We stopped at its edge, feeling nervous. It was as though a single step into that light would immediately make us visible to a whole army of hostile watchers. It was frightening.
That was the first moment at which I started to realise what true courage was. Up until then, everything had been unreal, like a night-stalking game at a school camp. To come out of the darkness now would be to show courage of a type that I'd never had to show before, never even known about. I had to search my own mind and body to find if there was a new part of me somewhere. I felt there was a spirit in me that could do this thing, but it was a spirit I hadn't known about. If I could only find it I could connect with it and then maybe, just maybe, I could start to defrost the fear that had frozen my body. Maybe I could do this dangerous and terrible thing.
A small single movement was my key to finding my spirit. There was a tree about four steps away, in front of me and to my left, well inside the zone of light from the Showground. I suddenly made myself leave the darkness and go to it, in four quick light steps, a dance that surprised me, but made me feel a little light-headed and proud. That's it! I thought. I've done it! It was a dance of courage. I felt then, and still feel now, that I was transformed by those four steps. At that moment I stopped being an innocent rural teenager and started becoming someone else, a more complicated and capable person, a force to be reckoned with even, not just a polite obedient kid. There wasn't time then to explore this new and interesting me, but I promised myself I'd do it later.
I still felt light-headed when Kevin, then Corrie, joined me, moments later. We looked at each other and grinned, proud and excited and a little disbelieving. 'OK, what's next?' Kevin asked. Suddenly he was looking to me for directions. Maybe he recognised how I'd been changed in those few seconds. But then surely he had been too?
'Keep heading left, from tree to tree. We need to get to that big gum. That'll put us opposite the wood-chop area. We'll get a bit of a view from there.'
I took off as soon as I'd finished speaking, so psyched up that I didn't realise I was doing to Kevin what I'd objected to his doing to me, moments earlier. From my new vantage point I could see human movement three men in uniforms emerged slowly from the shadows behind the grandstand and walked steadily around the perimeter of the wire fence. They carried weapons of some kind, big rifles maybe, but it was too far to see them clearly. Despite all the evidence that we'd had already, this was the first confirmation that an enemy army was in our country, and in control. It was unbelievable, horrible. I felt my body fill with fear and anger. I wanted to yell at them to get out, and I wanted to run away and hide. I couldn't take my eyes off them.
After they'd faded out of sight again, behind the trotters' stables, I heard the quick rush of light feet as Kevin and Corrie reached me.
'Did you see the men?' I asked.
'Well, yes and no,' Corrie whispered. 'They weren't all men. At least one was a woman.'
'Really? Are you sure?'
She shrugged. 'You want to know the colour of their buttons?'
I took her point. Corrie does have good eyesight.
We kept going, making our little dashes from tree to tree, until at last we were gathered, panting, behind the big river gum. From there we peered out cautiously: Corrie, kneeling, looking around the base from the right; Kevin, crouching, looking through a low fork; and me, standing on the other side, peeping around the trunk. We were in quite a good spot, about sixty metres from the fence and able to see a third of the Showground. The first thing I noticed was a number of big tents on the oval. They were all different shapes and colours, but they were all big. The second thing was another couple of soldiers, with weapons, standing on the trotting track. They weren't doing anything, just standing, one facing the tents and one facing the pavilions. It was obvious that they were sentries, guarding whatever was in the tents probably. One was a woman, too; Corrie had been right.
The Showground was still set up for the Show, even though it should have been packed away four days ago. But the Ferris wheels and sideshows, the tractor displays and caravans, the logs for the wood-chop and the trailers selling fast foods, all were still in po
sition. Away to our left was a silent ocean of parked cars, most sitting like dark still animals, a few glinting in the artificial light. Our car would be in among them somewhere. Some cars would have had dogs in them too. I tried not to think about their horrible deaths, like the dogs back at our place. Maybe the soldiers had compassion and had rescued them when the fighting was over. Maybe there would have been time for that.
We watched for eight minutes—I was timing it—before anything happened. Just as Kevin leaned around the trunk and whispered to me, 'We'll have to go', and I nodded, a man came out of one of the tents. He walked out with his hands on his head and stood there. Immediately the sentries came to life, one of them going quickly to the man, the other straightening up and turning to look at him. The sentry and the man talked for a few moments, then the man, still with his hands on his head, walked to the toilet block and disappeared inside. It was only at the last second, as the light above the lavatory door shone on his face, that I recognised him. It was Mr Coles, my Year 4 teacher at Wirrawee Primary.
So, at last we knew. A coldness crept through me. I felt the goose bumps prickle on my skin. This was the new reality of our lives. I got the shakes a bit, but there was no time for that. We had to go. We slid backwards through the grass and began to retrace our tracks, from tree to tree. I remembered from a couple of years ago a big controversy when the Council had wanted to cut these trees down to make a bigger carpark. There'd been such an outcry that they'd had to give up on the idea. I grinned to myself in the darkness, but without humour. Thank God the good guys had won. But no one could ever have imagined how useful those trees were going to be to us.
I got to the last tree and patted its trunk gently. I felt a great affection for it. Corrie was right behind me, then Kevin snuck in. 'Nearly home free,' I said, and set off again. I should have touched wood once more before I did. The moment I showed my nose, a clatter of gunfire started up behind me. Bullets zinged past, chopping huge chunks of wood out of a tree to my left. I heard a gasp from Corrie and a cry from Kevin. It was as though I left the ground, with sheer fear. For a moment I lost contact with the earth. It was a strange feeling, like I had ceased to be. Then I was diving at the corner of the road, rolling through the grass and wriggling like an earwig into cover. At once I turned to yell to Kevin and Corrie, but as I did they landed on top of me, knocking the wind out of me.