by John Marsden
And I did hear the helicopter again. For fifteen minutes, even two helicopters. Both of them were further away, except for one sweep that came close enough for me to feel again the loud chattering was almost on top of me.
I didn't see it, though. Just felt it and heard it, and that was enough. But it seemed the search was being scaled down as night came on. I guessed they would throw a cordon around the area, maybe run patrols through it, and then start the full search again at dawn.
My bladder was bursting and I didn't think I could wait much longer. As soon as it was dark I knew I had to take the risk and start down the tree. I prayed there would be no one in the clearing below, no soldiers waiting with rifles in their hands and expressions of wolfish delight on their faces. I moved as slowly and ponderously as a koala, but as quietly too, inching down, feeling cautiously for my footholds, stopping and listening after each downward move.
The scariest bit was the last three metres. I felt very vulnerable. I had absolutely no way of defending myself, and this was the time when they would find it easiest to see me. I could get shot in the back and die without even seeing the face of the person who shot me. I tried not to think about what that would feel like, but I'd imagined it often enough in the past. I figured it'd be such an impact that my whole body would go into shock: it would shut down so quickly and suddenly that I wouldn't actually feel a lot, it'd be over in seconds. That was the only consolation I could offer myself.
When my feet touched the ground I dropped instantly and whipped around, trying to get an immediate look at the clearing. But the pack on my back hit the trunk of the tree and knocked me sideways. As well, I was suffering from not having moved properly for so many hours, so I couldn't get up again easily. The result was that I didn't get a good view at all. Instead I had to struggle to get upright. True to form, I was not the athletic jungle fighter but still the awkward koala. Nothing had changed.
When I did manage to get my balance I crouched on my haunches to take a good look at the clearing. For a few minutes I actually forgot my bladder. I wouldn't have believed it possible a moment earlier, but I guess it's just another thing fear does for you.
It was all quiet in the clearing. For about ten seconds, anyway. Then I heard a noise. It was a typical bush noise, the sound of another koala, or a possum coming down a tree at nightfall to begin its evening prowl. Only this was no possum. It had to be a human possum, a Fi or Kevin or Homer possum. But I didn't wait to see which one. There was something more important to worry about. I fumbled at the buttons of my jeans, hoping I'd be able to get them down in time.
It was a close call, but I made it.
Only then—and it took a while—did I bother to see who was coming down the tree. Whoever it was had nearly reached the ground. I just hoped I hadn't made as much noise as him or her. But I snuck over there, walking as quietly as I could. It was Homer. I went to hug him but he wasn't interested. He had his mind on the same thing I had. Only when he finished was he ready for a reunion.
Then I could hear Kevin and Fi climbing down, too. Homer and I kept our eyes on the darkness around us hoping desperately we wouldn't see some fatal movement.
Reunited, we had a quick whispered conversation. Our whispers were so quiet, so brief, that the whole conversation reminded me of butterflies, touching slightly and lightly on each leaf.
"We've got to get out of here," Fi breathed in my ear.
"I know. But there might be patrols."
"We've got to risk it," Homer said, in his low rumble. "It'll be too dangerous here tomorrow."
Kevin didn't say anything. The only other comment was mine, and it was unnecessary.
"Keep very quiet."
I didn't blame them for the looks they gave me.
Eleven
Was I breathing? I wasn't sure. I actually put my hand to my heart to check. I thought I felt something, so I resumed staring into the darkness. If only I had the eyes of a cat. If only I had high-beam headlights instead of eyes. If only I could be home, a year ago, coming in after setting up the shed for the next day's shearing and heading straight for the shower.
But this was one of those times when I had to be tough with myself. Strict and stern. I forced those soft weak thoughts out of my head and stared even harder through the night. If there was the slightest movement I wanted to see it before an enemy saw me. To my right and left Homer and Fi, and further across Kevin, were doing the same thing.
We'd worked out our plan. Take ten steps, stop, get the go-ahead from the others before moving again. It had to be a definite hand motion from the others before you went on. If they stood still, you assumed it was because they'd seen something.
So when I took my umpteenth ten steps, stopped, looked across at Fi and saw her frozen to the spot I felt my face go hot and prickly. I knew I was breathing now. I too froze, partly out of terror, partly so Homer would know there was a problem.
I didn't actually see him stop but I felt that he had.
I turned very gently and slowly so I could get a better look at what Fi had seen. It was difficult, of course, because of the darkness. I felt like I was staring so hard I might damage my eyes.
In fact I saw nothing. It was my ears that gave the clue. The crunch of feet on rough ground. I'd heard it a few times now in this war, and each time it was with the knowledge that these might be the feet bringing death. I kept thinking it should get easier, this constant staring in the face of death, but it never did.
We all stood like statues. There was nothing else to do. We couldn't run away, and we had no weapons so we couldn't charge at them. It was a paralysing feeling. I don't know if Homer or Kevin even saw the patrol, but Fi and I did. Three shadowy figures, walking slowly past. Their heads were turning from side to side, their rifles held ready: they weren't relaxed and casual like some patrols we'd come across, at other times and in other places.
And still we stood. I think they must have reached a point which was the limit of their territory, because five minutes later back they came, as silent, as wary, as deadly as before.
When they melted into the darkness again we melted in the opposite direction. It was funny, we did it by osmosis or telepathy or something. We just all headed the same way, without a signal or word being needed.
We kept going in that direction. Same slow careful strategy. We crossed the open grassed area again. I got the biggest shock of my life when, with a sudden silent swish of their hoofs, the horses loomed up. This time they were really friendly, crowding into us, looking for sugar or oats or attention. It terrified me, and I spun around frantically, hoping no one was coming up on us and using the horses as a distraction. But no one was there.
We pushed the horses away and went on. We walked quite a distance, ten steps at a time, and I at last started to allow myself the first faint glimmer of hope. Maybe they had given up. Maybe they didn't have enough people to cover the whole area, and we'd walked right through their patrol line. Maybe...
Then I saw Homer, frozen just like Fi an hour earlier.
Again I stopped, trembling, sick with rage and fear. We couldn't keep getting away with this. Either this time or the next time or the time after, our luck would run out. I'd learned that, after our attack on Cobbler's Bay. Would this be the time we were caught or killed? Did it really matter which time it was, if it was going to happen anyway? And of course it was.
I didn't see the patrol Homer had heard, but after ten minutes he slowly and silently began to withdraw. The three of us withdrew with him.
We met back in the middle of the grassy plateau. It seemed to be the only safe place. We huddled together and again talked in the faintest whispers. Three of us talked, anyway. Fi just wept, silently. The awful relentless pressure had got to her.
The only one sure of anything was Homer, and he was only sure of one thing. He was insistent.
"We've got to get out of here," he said. "We must get out tonight. We absolutely can't be here in the morning. Or it's the end of us."
As I recall, Kevin and I thought of it simultaneously.
"The horses," I said.
"Those bloody horses!" Kevin exclaimed suddenly.
Homer realised immediately. Fi looked puzzled, but she was still crying her silent tears and maybe finding it hard to concentrate.
"The horses?" she asked, her mouth twisting with her distress. I saw the white line of her scar.
"We ride the horses out of here," Homer whispered. "That's what you mean, isn't it?"
"At full gallop," I confirmed.
My heart was pounding with excitement and hope—and my old enemy, fear. It was an outrageous idea, wild, crazy, and maybe impossible—but we had no other ideas, no other way of escape.
And yet ... There were so many problems, so many dangers. Riding at full gallop, on unknown horses, through darkness, through bush, through gunfire. One branch in our faces and we'd be lucky to escape with multiple fractures to the face and skull. One hoof in a rabbit hole and we'd fly straight into the nearest tree trunk, or land at the feet of a soldier who, in my imagination, was already raising his rifle. One tree in the wrong place and the horse would smash into it at fifty k's an hour and both he and I would be as dead as if we'd hit a concrete wall on a motorbike. No helmets, no reins, no saddle. If he shied or refused or bucked, or stopped at the sight of a soldier or the sound of gunfire...
"Let's do it," I said, but hating the sound of the sob in my voice.
There was one consolation. Fi, who knew as much about farm life as she did about the history of Venetian blinds, was a great rider. She'd had lessons from Daphne Morrisett, and Daphne was the pride and joy of Wirrawee, having ridden in the Olympics three-day event. Not many of us could afford Daphne as a teacher but Fi's parents were heavily into stuff like tennis lessons, piano lessons, riding lessons. Fi turned out to be a good natural rider who won lots of ribbons at pony club. Daphne said she reminded her of herself at the same age, which was high praise.
So although the danger was terrible and real for all of us, it was perhaps a little less so for Fi. We could just worry about ourselves. We didn't have to spend a lot of energy worrying about Fi, who seemed to be falling apart quickly.
The horses nodded and danced as wc came to them. It's just the way horses arc. It's one of the things I've always liked about them. Their soft noses prodded and poked at our pockets. Soft, with surprising strength and hardness behind them. I was reminded again of their power.
But not powerful enough to stop a bullet.
We each chose one. Mine was a chestnut, a gelding, a bit overweight, like they all were. I let him sniff my hands for a while, giving him a chance to get used to me. I rubbed his nose and neck, then ran my hand down his flank. I could feel the tension, his quivering muscles. These were stock horses, used to work, to tricky jobs and hectic riding. The chestnut had picked up my mood and was getting charged up already.
I thought I'd better get on, and try to settle him. Homer held him at the neck while Fi helped me to mount. It was difficult without stirrups. But it was fair enough for me to go first for once because I was the shortest of the four of us and probably the weakest rider. I slithered up over his neck and got myself balanced. The horse trembled, and tried to shake his head. I don't think he'd been ridden for a long time.
"They always get excited when you get on bareback," Fi said.'
Sure enough as soon as Homer and Fi let him go he moved away quickly. He kept moving sideways until I could persuade him to stop by swearing in his ear and kicking him hard. Kevin mounted the same way I did, with the help of Fi and Homer. He wasn't very graceful about it, though. For a minute he was lying across the back of the horse, trying to get himself up and facing the right way. He was on a brown gelding which went for an angry little canter with Homer still holding on to the horse's head. But when Kevin did get up and Homer let go, the horse seemed to settle down.
I was worried about the noise we were making, but what could we do?
Nothing.
Fi got Homer onto a big black mare, who immediately took him for a quick trot around the clearing. The horses were getting really excited now. That was good and bad for us. We needed them to charge at full speed but we didn't want to be thrown. Fi was the last to mount and I thought with no one to help her she'd have trouble, but she just kept talking to the horse. He was tossing his head and prancing but he seemed to be listening. She led him over to a tree stump and stepped onto it, still whispering to him. Then, with a quick easy spring, she vaulted across his back and sat easily and lightly. It was sickening.
So there we were, ready for our first, and perhaps our last, ride together. Something flashed into my mind about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Who the hell were they? I had no idea, but it seemed that maybe that's what we were: four riders galloping into an apocalypse.
With the horses barely under control we tried to choose a direction to go. The one we chose was the worst in some ways: towards Wirrawee. But again, as so often in this war, we had little choice. Behind us, towards the Shannons' place, was no good because it was downhill, and that was just too dangerous at speed and at night. To our left and right the bush was too thick. We didn't want to go riding straight into town but we were still about two and a half k's away, so we should be able to get off the horses before we found ourselves in Barker Street stopping for a red light.
Of course, we wanted to get to Wirrawee. It was just a question of how and when we got there.
Anyway, that was the least of our worries. Getting through the cordon of patrols, those armed and deadly soldiers: that was all we could think about. There was nothing else worth worrying about compared to that.
The sinking feeling in my stomach told me it was time to go. We turned our horses' heads as best we could and faced the clearer part of the plateau. I gave Fi a nervous grin but she was too busy lining her horse up, and too far away to see my expression anyway. I tried to calculate how long we'd have before we were on top of the soldiers: probably about a minute and a half; two minutes at the outside. It depended on how fast the horses were, how much their months of good grass and little exercise had slowed them down, how reluctant they would be to gallop at night through bush ... and on the other hand how churned up they were getting, how springy and stoked they were. It was vital that we built up enough speed to hit the patrols at maximum revs. And then, of course, would come the big test: how the horses would react if they were fired at. I had a vague idea that police horses were put through training drills, where people burst paper bags near their heads to get them used to shocks and loud noises. Our horses gave the impression that they would go berserk if a gun went off anywhere near them.
Homer looked around at us. I heard his whispered question: "Ready?"
I nodded and croaked yes, my mouth and throat suddenly so dry that my tongue seemed to swell and fill my whole mouth. I didn't look at the others but I guessed they must have said yes too, because Homer turned and gave his horse a belt', and we were off.
It was unbelievable: the strangest feeling of my life, terrifying, and in some wild way the most exhilarating as well. My horse twisted sideways just as we started—I don't think he liked what was happening—and by the time I pulled him round and got him straight again the others were five lengths in front. And they were accelerating fast, too. The horses got the idea really quickly. Maybe they'd been longing for a good hit-out. Whatever, I was astonished at the way they started moving. Within a few seconds we were rushing through the night, the sweat already cooling on my face, the big rumps of the other horses in front of me, their tails flying, their three riders crouched low on their backs, heads down, holding on, like me, for dear life. It was absolutely the eeriest thing, and one of the eeriest th
ings about it was the silence. Apart from the quick thudding of the hoofs and the hot breathing of the horses there was not another sound.
For the first couple of hundred metres we were in clear country. Our biggest danger there was rabbit holes. I eased my horse a little to the right as I started to make up the lost ground. Coming up fast was the sight I didn't want to see but knew I would, sooner or later. It was the dark, dark patch of bush, all shadows. I felt we were lemmings, racing to the edge of the cliff. There was no cliff—I hoped—but there were death and destruction waiting for us. We were fools to think we could gallop at full speed into that, in pitch blackness, and hope to survive. This was suicide.
And suddenly it was on us. I took a deep breath as we plunged in. It was like a ride I'd been on once at Wild World, called the Super Chiller. I'd taken a deep breath on that too. We'd been at the top of a vertical drop and the little cage we were in seemed certain to drop straight to the ground, smashing into a million pieces.
In this bush I expected we would crash into a thicket of trees and rocks and bushes and be smashed into a million pieces.
The horses tossed their heads wildly, but they didn't slow down. Horses can be pretty mad sometimes. I remember when we had the Southern Region Cross-Country Titles, and Wirrawee High School hosted them. I wasn't running but I volunteered to be an official, just so I could get out of school. I was stationed at a gate on the Murdochs' property to make sure the runners didn't miss the turn-off. Near the Murdochs' house were their stockyards and they had a young colt in there that they'd just bought. As more and more runners went past, the horse got more and more excited. He started galloping up and down in the yards, faster and faster, getting wilder and wilder. Soon he was galloping full pelt at the fence and stopping just in time. He was so worked up that 1 got worried about him. I ran up to the house to tell the Murdochs but, when I was still fifty metres away from the gate, the colt ran into the fence at full speed. I guess he just forgot to stop. He was dead by the time I got there. Broken neck. I'll never forget it. He was a beautiful horse. Old Tammie Murdoch was devastated. She never let runners go through her property again, although it wasn't their fault, of course.
