'Go like stink,' Kevin said, pulling me up. 'They're coming.'
Somehow, with no air in my lungs, I started to run. For a hundred metres the only sounds I could hear were the rasping of my own lungs and the soft thuds of my feet on the roadway. Although we'd agreed, so logically, to split up if we were chased, I knew now I wasn't going to do that. At that moment only a bullet could have separated me from those two people. Suddenly they'd become my family.
Kevin was looking back all the time. 'Let's get off the road,' he gasped, just as I was starting to get some wind back. We turned into someone's driveway. As we did I heard a shout. A burst of bullets chopped through the branches with tremendous force, like a sudden short gale. I realised that it was Mrs Alexander's driveway we were sprinting along. 'I know this place,' I said to the others. 'Follow me.' It was not that I had any plan; I just didn't want to follow someone through the darkness if they didn't know where they were going. I was still operating on sheer panic. I led them across the tennis court, trying desperately to think. It wasn't enough just to run. These people were armed, they would be fast, they could summon help easily. The only thing we had going for us was that they couldn't be sure if we were armed or not. They might even think we were leading them into an ambush. I hoped they'd think that. I wished we were leading them into an ambush.
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 glovebox 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 li
ght 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 look at your picture and what do I see?
The face of an angel looking back at me...'
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:
'The face of an angel, come from Heaven above,
You're my sweet angel, the one that I love.'
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 h
eroic 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.'