A Killing Frost

by John Marsden

  He shrugged. "I was just floating there, watching them come for me. Then the ship blew up."

  He wouldn't say much more. I asked the others: "What happened at Baloney Creek?" But none of them really knew how they'd been caught.

  "It must have been the chopper," Kevin said.

  "We were pretty slack," Fi confessed. "We didn't..."

  "I didn't even hear their car," Lee said.

  "I guess we were talking too loud or something."

  "I heard you scream," Robyn said to Fi, "and that's the first I knew they were there."

  "God, I'll never forget it," Fi said, shivering.

  "And what you said to them," Robyn said to Lee, laughing.

  "What?"

  "He told them to piss off."

  "You what?"

  "It was the shock," Lee said. "I said it before I knew I'd said it. It just blurted out."

  "I don't think they heard it," Homer said.

  "They heard it," Kevin said, "but they didn't take it in. It was just part of all the shouting and carrying on."

  "Yeah, what was all the shouting and carrying on?" I asked. "What was the shot?"

  "It was lust," Kevin said, but the others didn't laugh, so neither did I.

  "They were after the two girls," Homer said.

  "And the two girls weren't moving," Lee explained.

  "The shot was to make me hurry up a bit," Robyn said.

  Then I started to understand what had been happening, and how lucky I'd been to arrive when I did.

  We ploughed on. The only sign of life was a cream-coloured van that looked as though it might have once belonged to an electrician or plumber. It was parked in a truck stop with its parking lights on, but because it was well away from the road we didn't sec it until we were almost level with it. The bad weather didn't help either.

  There was nothing we could do but accelerate and keep going. We went four k's as fast as I dared, with Kevin looking fearfully through the back windows for signs of pursuit. Then we pulled into a side track and sat there for ten minutes. But there was no sign of anyone and we couldn't afford to waste much more time'if we were going to reach the Isthmus before daybreak. I started the engine and we kept going towards Ferris.

  "It was probably a patrol and they were having a nice quiet sleep," Homer suggested. "In this rotten weather they wouldn't feel much like wandering up and down the road."

  Even though it seemed odd, we still thought that was the most likely explanation. I sure thought so, anyway. That's why it was such a complete and utter shock when we were caught.

  Twenty-two

  They'd chosen the spot well. It was a narrow stretch of road crossing the old Huntleigh Bridge. The road twisted around, then turned on itself to cross the bridge. Beyond the bridge it started to climb again, in a long sweeping bend that led to the Stratton turn-off. It was nearly four in the morning when I dropped a gear to poke the Jackaroo slowly round the bend and onto the bridge. Everyone was asleep, or I would have asked for a volunteer to walk down and check it out. I saw-out of the corner of my eye the NO PASSING ON BRIDGE sign, a dim yellow diamond. Then we bumped across the old wooden roadway. It was like driving down a railway track.

  We crossed it and I started to accelerate again, into ' the long bend. I thought I was imagining things when I saw a big grey obstruction in the middle of the road. A huge dim grey boulder. Stupidly, as I began to brake, I started wondering if there'd been a landslide. People were waking up. Then Homer was yelling something, I don't know what, in my ear, so loudly that the fright of it paralysed me. But I saw what it was in the middle of the road: a dirty great tank with its huge grey gun barrel pointing straight at us.

  My next rational thought was that they might be asleep, like the people in the van we'd passed earlier. I still thought we were in with a chance. I stood on the brake and shoved the gear stick into reverse, not even looking in the rear-vision mirror, thinking there was no need. But I saw enough through the windscreen to realise the trouble we were in. A line of soldiers suddenly appeared either side of the tank. About eight of them in all. Each one carried a gun that I think could fire a shell or missile: the barrels on these guns must have been a metre long, and as big as drainage pipes. I don't know how the soldiers carried the weight of them. Then Homer yelled again in my ear, and this time I heard him clearly. He said, "Stop, stop, they're behind us." Then he said quietly, "No good." Looking in the rear-vision mirror for the first time, I realised what he meant. They had us all ends up. There was a whopping great Army truck, a proper green Army truck, right up our bumper bar. And an instant later, before I'd had time to digest what I was seeing, a soldier was at my window and a rifle muzzle at my right cheek. The soldier was breathing hard, his face shiny with sweat, and his eyes wide open, as if he was on drugs. I guess he was just hyped up at making a bust, but I was scared by how unstable he seemed. I slowly, carefully, very carefully, raised my arms. By moving my head fractionally to the left I could see Robyn and Fi. f hey were still waking up, struggling to understand what was going on. That's how quickly it all happened. Their hair was all mussed up and Fi's mouth was open as she looked around and realised that our good luck had come to a sudden bitter end.

  She too raised her arms, then Robyn did the same. I couldn't see much of the back seat in the rearvision mirror, but guess it was the same scene there.

  The soldier beside me opened the door and I slowly-got out. He turned the engine off and took the keys then, with a nod of his head, pointed me to the side of the road. I went there and stood next to the three boys. Robyn and Fi, with a soldier escorting them, came over to join us a moment later. I said to Homer, "Some holiday this is turning..." but didn't get to finish the sentence: the soldier who stood next to me hit me across the side of my face with the back of his closed fist.

  He was a tall man and he swung hard. I felt like I'd slammed into a wall. The side of my face went instantly numb, and I couldn't hear anything more in that ear. Everything started tingling, my eve, mv cheek, my ear, as though it had all gone to sleep. Tears stung my eyes, not crying-because-of-pain-and-shock tears but reflex tears from my tear ducts. I just hoped the soldier wouldn't think that I'd gone all girly and was crying from being hit. I didn't want to give them that satisfaction. I didn't want mv friends to think I was weak, either.

  Standing by the side of the road I knew all too well there was a good chance we were about to be shot. It was something about the way they had us lined up. It looked chillingly like a scene from movies where they have firing squads. I don't know if the others thought that, but I certainly did. No one spoke again. We just stood there with heads bowed, feeling our own fears. Then Kevin farted suddenly and, unbelievably, we all got the giggles. It was such a loud rattling fart and so unexpected and out of place that we couldn't cope with it.

  I thought we would get our faces smashed in for sure. I stood there almost waiting to be hit, but then I noticed a couple of the soldiers trying not to laugh, too. I guess some things are universal But an officer, one of a group of officers standing talking on the other side of the road, shouted something, and the soldiers hardened up again. By then we'd got over our initial sniggers and when we saw the soldiers getting serious we controlled ourselves. But I still remember that moment. It made things just a fraction easier to bear.

  There was no firing squad. After ten minutes we got marched to the back of the big Army truck. We stood there a few more minutes watching the tank crawl away and then a soldier motioned Homer to climb in the truck. As Homer got onto the steel step the man hit him hard across the back of the head, so that he half fell forward. Kevin was next and he got bashed too, then Robyn. Seemed like it was a part of the routine. But it hurt me when he hit Fi. In all my life I've never seen anyone hit Fi. It was like hitting a beautiful water bird. I watched as the fist smacked against her. Her head dropped lower and her shoulders too but, of course, I couldn't see her face. When my turn came and I got in, getting the same treatment, Fi was already sitting tur
ned away, her face towards the front of the truck.

  It was dark in there and smelt of canvas, and something else, creosote perhaps. A couple of soldiers got in behind us and spent a few minutes tying our wrists to crossbars that ran the length of the truck. When they were done they sat at the back watching us. It made it difficult to do anything, or even talk. All I could do was think.

  Robyn tried to speak to the soldiers, but she didn't get far.' She said to one, "Did you know we were on this road?", but he just looked away. I don't know if he understood English.

  She tried the other one but he said, "Shut up. No talk." That didn't allow a lot of possibilities for conversation. Robyn, who was opposite me, looked at me and made a face. I grinned back, hoping I looked like a hero, but feeling so wild with fear inside that I could hardly make my face work.

  "Does your face hurt?" Robyn asked.

  The soldier who'd told her to shut up made a movement forwards, towards Robyn.

  "You shut!" he shouted. "You bad girl." Then to all of us he shouted "You bad people. You kill my friends. You all die, now you die." And he sat back again, trembling.

  I felt sure then that we would be shot. I felt sorry for the man a bit, too. I'd never really thought about these soldiers having friends, being friends with each other. It must have been as awful for them to have their friends killed as it was for us. It had been a long time since I'd thought about all these issues of right and wrong. We'd become used to doing the things we did, to attacking and destroying and killing, without thinking whether there was right on both sides. Sure in the early days of the invasion we'd thought about it—I remember writing about it. We had so much in our country: so much food, so much space, so much entertainment. But we'd resented sharing it with anyone, even refugees. The longer the war had gone on, the more we'd become used to thinking of the soldiers as the baddies, and us as the goodies. As simple as that. As dumb as that.

  I thought about it all now again, though. And without caring what the soldier would think, or what the others would think, I said to him, "I'm sorry about your friends."

  He looked like I'd hit him. His eyebrows rose and his mouth went into an "O" shape. He looked shocked, angry, then for a moment he stared at me like he was a real person again. For that brief time I saw that he wasn't a mechanical killer, just someone as young and confused and under pressure as we were. Our eyes met almost like friends.

  It didn't last long. His face went back into the sulky aggressive expression he'd had before. But I was glad I'd said it.

  A male officer got into the cabin of the truck, on the passenger side, and a woman soldier on the driver's side. She started the engine and away we went. I could sec the tail-lights of another vehicle through the windscreen and behind us the parking lights of the Jackaroo. There was another vehicle behind that. I began to realise how impossible escape was going to be. Yet I was determined not to go passively to my death. I'd rather be shot trying to escape than just walk to a wall and stand there while they filled my body with bullets.

  We drove for over an hour.'I spent the time shivering with cold, speculating about what might happen to us, while glancing from time to time at the faces of my friends to see how they were going. We all looked so white, so tired, so strained and frightened. How could they ever believe that we were dangerous? How could they send all these trucks and the tank just for us? Yet I knew all too well that we had done more damage to these people than anyone else in this whole district, in the whole state, maybe. We were public enemies, no doubt about it. We'were probably public enemy number one.

  In the dim lights of the trucks I saw a green and white road sign: STRATTON 14.

  So that's where we were headed. It figured. It was good in a way; it gave me something other than death to think about. As we got closer I peered through the windscreen to see how Stratton was looking. It was so long since we'd been in a city. We passed a deserted truck stop that seemed to have been smashed to bits, as though a giant had attacked it with a giant sledgehammer. Then we were in the suburbs. It was a shocking sight. There'd been some damage in Wirrawee, but nothing like this. You could sec that a lot of cleaning up had been done, but it would take years and a billion bucks to clear it up properly. In some blocks the buildings were pretty much untouched but in plenty of others every one had been flattened. The roads were clear but nothing else was. It was all rubble: bricks and wood and stone, and sheets of galvanised iron sticking out and flapping in the breeze, like cold metal leaves.

  My grandmother lived in Stratton, but a long way from where we were now, in a big old house up in the hills. Thinking about her sent a tear rolling down my cheek, a real tear. I brushed it angrily away. I didn't want to show any fear. I wanted to keep my fear all to myself: a storm inside but a desert on my face. That was the only way I could maintain any kind of strength.

  We drove straight through' the CBD. It was a bigger mess than the suburbs. I didn't know if the damage had been done by the enemy during the invasion, or by the Kiwi air attacks after it.'But big bombs had been used. Tozer's, the department store that had been three-storeys high, covering the best part of a block, now looked like it'd make a good car park. The back wall of the electricity building was still standing, but there was nothing else of Stratton's biggest building.

  The saddest sight was the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart. It had been a beautiful old stone church, quiet and peaceful, with glowing stained-glass windows. I wouldn't have liked to be standing near when it was blown up. Those huge stone blocks had been thrown around like bits of Lego. One of them was a hundred metres along the street, where it had fallen on the iron-railing fence of the Mackenzie Botanical Gardens.

  We accelerated up the hill then turned abruptly right at the top. I suddenly realised where we were going. To the most obvious place: the prison. I almost smiled. Many times we'd been past its grim grey walls on the way to visit Grandma, but I guess no one had thought that I'd end up in it before I'd even finished school. What a disgrace. We'd never live it down.

  Then the fear got hold of me again. I'd been hoping that we'd go to some camp, like the Wirrawee Showgrounds, and I'd already dreamed that we'd escape from there in a blaze of glory. But Stratton Prison was different. It was a maximum-security institution, designed for the toughest offenders. We wouldn't be escaping.

  Our convoy came to a halt at the huge steel doors of the prison. There was much shouting and slamming of car doors. Only the soldiers in our truck didn't move, just sat there watching. An officer came and spoke to our driver through the window of the truck. The driver put the truck in gear and we began to move forward. The steel doors rolled silently aside and we drove through. Then closed behind us just as quietly. We were in a dark concrete chamber, like a big garage, but completely bare. We only had to wait a second before a door at the other end opened and we drove on again. I glanced at the others. Then were all sitting forward like me, as far as our cuffs would let us, gazing through the windscreen, wondering what horrors would be revealed.

  What we saw was a vast area of buildings and lawns. A high fence enclosed the whole place, but it was like a little village inside; a village of concrete and wire and steel. There were covered walkways connecting the various buildings. They looked like extended aviaries, long cages that prisoners could be moved along without having any taste of the free air.

  In the few open spaces were a swimming pool and two tennis courts, but I had the feeling we wouldn't be getting much of a chance to use them.

  The truck was only moving at walking pace, and it stopped now on a big bitumen square near a building marked "Administration." I wondered who we'd be sharing Stratton Prison with—prisoners of war, or the "normal" criminals from before the invasion: the murderers and rapists and bank robbers.

  We continued to sit in the back of the truck and wait. I became aware of a lot of movement around us, and looking out the back I realised what it was. Soldiers were coming from different buildings. I could see fifteen or twenty of them. But they wer
e not aggressive soldiers with rifles, coming to torture or shoot us. It took me a while to figure out their mood. But finally it hit me. They were tourists. They were spectators. At last I understood something that only the radio conversation with Lieutenant Colonel Finley had given any clue to: we were celebrities. This was like the arrest of Ned Kelly. Not that these people would have heard of Ned Kelly, but our capture was on about the same scale.

  We sat there in shock as the soldiers crowded round the back of the truck, staring at us and talking to each other. Their voices amazed me. They were so hushed, like they were in church. They pointed to us and made comments, then people at'the back of the crowd pushed their way through. They were all shoving and crowding, trying to get the best views.

  I just hoped we wouldn't get the same punishment as the Kelly gang. I cursed the Jackaroo. If we hadn't been caught in it we might have been able to bluff, to pretend we were normal kids who'd been hiding in the bush since the invasion. But now we had no hope, especially when we weren't getting any chance to put a story together, a story we could all stick to.

  After twenty minutes sitting there shivering, being studied like specimens in the zoo, a senior officer appeared. He had more gold on him than you'd see in a jewellery shop window The crowd parted and this man, a little guy with oiled black hair, walked up, took one look at us'and rattled off a series of orders. Our guards jumped to their feet and started waving their rifles and veiling. I think they were trying to impress the officer. We didn't have the spirit to resist any of them.

  When we were untied we stumbled down from the back of the truck, one by one, and stood in a little group on the bitumen. They prodded us with rifles to get us into single file and marched us to one of the covered walkways. A guard with keys opened a gate and in we went, leaving the tourists behind.