The Dead of Night

by John Marsden

  So we'd become deadly serious. And I mean deadly.

  We decided that Wirrawee should not be our main target. Much as we loved Wirrawee, much as it was the centre of our lives, we had to recognise that the fate of the country wasn't going to depend on our little town. To hit the enemy hard we had to find a more important part of their operations, and that meant going back to the highway from Cobbler's Bay. The last time we'd been there it had been lousy with convoys; Cobbler's Bay was obviously a major landing place for them, and trucks were flowing from there to the major battlefields. Blowing up the bridge must have complicated their lives, as it would have caused them a big detour. But it wasn't going to lose them the war.

  So we took another long walk out into the countryside. We left Wirrawee at 2.30 am, when we were at our coldest and most tired, and trudged along, going through the routines that we now followed for self-protection: travelling in pairs, checking each intersection, keeping silent through the streets of the town. We went via the bridge, which none of us had seen since the big night of the petrol party. I walked with Fi this time, as I needed a break from Lee, and although I was still very depressed after seeing how ill Corrie was, I did cheer up a bit when I got to the bridge and saw the damage we'd done. Basically it had burnt to the ground. Or to the river, to be more accurate. It had been an old wooden thing, and after the explosion it must have burnt so fiercely that no one was able to do much about it. There were just a few blackened pillars sticking out of the water and the mud, and no other evidence that there'd been a bridge there. On the bank though, on the town side, were long rows of concrete slabs. It looked like Wirrawee was going to get the new bridge people had wanted for so long, and it looked like being more solid than the one it replaced.

  Fi and I stood there a while, giving each other big grins, mainly of disbelief, but with a bit of pride. We felt a bit shocked, I think, to see what we'd done—at least I did. I can't speak for Fi. So many times we'd driven over that bridge. I'd never thought that one day I'd destroy it. It seemed strange that we'd go down in local history as the people who'd blown it up. I wanted to be remembered as someone who built things, not someone who wrecked them. But we'd done it in a good cause. So many things had changed as a result of this war, and one of the smallest changes was that teenagers could now wander round the countryside blowing up anything they wanted, and being praised for doing it. When the Careers teacher at school, Mrs Goh, had given us all those forms to fill out, I sure hadn't put "terrorist" or "guerilla" down.

  We crossed the river about a kilometre downstream, where a narrow timber structure carried a large pipe across. Probably for sewerage or something; I don't know, but I felt nervous and exposed crossing it. We went one at a time, but we still would have been completely helpless if soldiers had appeared and started firing.

  When we got out to the highway, we found a few changes. There was traffic, even at that hour of the morning. In ninety minutes we saw two small convoys going from Cobbler's Bay and one going to it. But they were leaving the highway at Jigamory and going down Buttercup Lane, past the Jacobs' place. That was one change, but it was one we'd expected. We'd figured that was the most likely route for a detour, though it took them through some rough country. There was a bridge about eight kilometres down the road that could take heavy traffic. "I'll bet they've got it heavily guarded," Robyn said, with a little smile.

  The other important change was that the patrols were much smaller. We saw two, both on foot, one with three soldiers, one with four. We couldn't figure out any reason for this. Maybe they were confident that they now had this part of the country under control, although it hadn't been that long since we'd blown up the Heron Bridge. Maybe they needed soldiers so desperately in other areas' that they'd been forced to cut numbers around Wirrawee. And although it sounds like small patrols would be better for us, it actually made things more difficult. The bigger patrols had been easy to spot, because they made so much noise. These two patrols both came close to catching us, because they moved so stealthily. Maybe that was why they'd cut down their numbers.

  Before we knew it, dawn was starting to nibble away at the edges of the sky, and we'd almost left it too late to get back to our hideout in Wirrawee. We had to go like stink to make it before peak hour. Peak hour in Wirrawee was never going to cause major traffic jams, invasion or no invasion, but good boys and girls were home in bed by daybreak, and we were good boys and girls. The last half-hour, going through the streets in the first grey daylight, did scare me. We heard a truck in Maldon Street and we saw two cars speed through an intersection. But we got back to the house and we had the information we needed.

  After we'd slept we continued our planning, but this time we planned details: times and places and equipment.

  Part of our planning was to give ourselves a decent night's sleep before we made our attempt. We were rather pleased with ourselves for being so well-prepared. We didn't know of course that you can't prepare for luck and coincidence. Watching the street from an upstairs bedroom, as I did my afternoon sentry duty, seeing work parties from the Showground being driven past in old trucks and buses, wondering if my parents were among them, I felt strangely peaceful and confident. It was the sense of Tightness that we were doing things again, instead of hanging sourly about in Hell. Action is its own kind of thinking. We had to fight now: these people were a cancer who had crept into our stomachs and infected us all. We had to be surgeons, bold and clever, not thinkers and talkers.

  Nevertheless the next day crept so slowly. It was like watching an eggtimer filled with clay. Late in the morning I ordered mvself not to look at the clock for at least half an hour, but ten minutes later my eyes were creeping round to it again.

  When my sentry duty ended I went looking for company, for distractions, and found Chris in the upstairs sitting room, gazing at the grey television screen again.

  "Good?" I asked, dumping mvself on the sofa beside him.

  "Mmm. Not bad. There's not much on, but."

  "So, what are you watching?"

  "Um, MTV."

  "New band?"

  "Yeah, it's a whole new style of music. Blank rock. It's very subtle."

  "Sure looks it. It's strange, isn't it? I've hardly thought about TV. I never used to watch it much anyway, so I s'pose that's why."

  "I watched it heaps. TV addict. But I don't miss it that much." He turned to me suddenly, laughing, to say something. But a moment later, before his words began, his breath reached me, and I recognised the sweet sickly smell of alcohol. I was so shocked I didn't even hear what he was saying, something about setting up a radio link so he could hear the TV in his bedroom. It was only 11.30 in the morning and he'd been drinking already! I struggled to control my face. Now that I'd smelt his breath, I noticed other little signs too: he was having trouble saying long words, his eyes weren't quite focusing, and his smile was a bit lopsided, as though he couldn't quite make it fit his mouth. I muttered something about having to go to the bathroom, and walked out, my face burning. I couldn't get a grip on this at all. In fourteen hours we were going to attack a whole convoy, and we'd be relying on a drunk to help us.

  For want of a better place I did go to the bathroom, closed the door, and sat on the dunny seat. I leaned forward and hugged myself. I was starting to get really scared for us all. Corrie in hospital, Kevin a prisoner, and now Chris drinking on the sly. We were in big trouble. We were cracking up. One or two or six of us could get shot tonight. By tomorrow, who would be left? Five bodies and Chris with a hangover? They said God looked after babies and drunks. I wished I was a baby again. I was hugging in y stomach now, because that's where things seemed to hurt most. I wondered what would happen if I got appendicitis. Would Homer cut me open with a Swiss Army knife? I started biting the side of my left hand, still holding my stomach with the right. I sat there for a long time. Before, I'd been overconscious of time; now I had no awareness of it at all. In the end I got so cold I thought I'd frozen there; that I wouldn't be able to mov
e again, that if I straightened or stood up my bones would crack and break.

  After a long while someone knocked on the door, then Robyn called, "Ellie, are you in there? Are you OK?" I didn't answer but she opened the door anyway and came in.

  "Ellie! What's wrong?"

  "I think I've got appendicitis," I mumbled.

  She laughed, but only a little bit, and quietly, which I was grateful for. "Oh Ellie, vou've got the panics. Boy, do I know the feeling. You start imagining every disaster possible, and before you know it you've convinced yourself that every one of them is totally and absolutely inevitable. In fact, you think they're already happening."

  She sat on the edge of the bath. I wanted to tell her about Chris but didn't know how. Instead I asked her, "Robyn, do you think we're falling apart?"

  She didn't give a flip answer, like a lot of people would. That wasn't Robyn's style. She thought for a while, and then said, "No, I don't think so. We're doing OK. It's not a normal situation, is it? So there's not much to compare us with. But I think we're doing OK."

  "It's all so hard. I don't know how we'll survive. Maybe we'll all go mad. Maybe we're mad now, and don't know it."

  "You know what it reminds me of?"

  "What?"

  "Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego."

  "What the hell are they?"

  "They're from my favourite story. They're my heroes, I guess."

  "They sound like a Russian rock band."

  She laughed. "Nuh uh. Not quite."

  "So tell me the story." I guessed it'd be from the Bible. When it came to religion Robyn was rock solid, not that I minded that. Anyway I've always liked stories. The three names sounded vaguely familiar to me, but I couldn't think from where.

  "Well Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego lived in Babylon, way back, way way back. They wouldn't worship a golden idol and so the King had them thrown into the furnace. The furnace was so hot that even the guys who chucked them in got burned to death. No one could get close; but from where he was watching, the King got glimpses of the three men, through the flames and smoke. And the funny thing was that it looked like there were four people, not three. And even stranger was that no matter how hard the flames burned, the men walked around as though they were untouched by the fire. So after a while the King ordered the furnace door to be opened. And out came the three men, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. And the King realised that it had been an angel in there with them. And he also realised that the god who'd looked after them in his furnace had to be stronger than any golden idol, so he was converted."

  "Mmm, that's a good story," I said.

  I liked the way Robyn didn't preach at me, and never had. After a while I said, "So what's the connection with us?"

  "Well, we're in the furnace."

  "With an angel?"

  "Sometimes I feel that there's someone with us, that we're supported."

  "But not all the time?"

  "I guess all the time. I just can't explain how certain things happen, like Corrie being shot. It seems sometimes that nothing can stop the man with the scythe, not even God. Death comes walking across the countryside swinging that scythe, and he might get you or he might not. Or to put it another way, sometimes God saves you and sometimes he doesn't." I don't know why he makes those choices; I just have to trust him and have faith that he's doing it for his own good reasons."

  "Hmm."

  There was more knocking on the door: Homer.

  "Come in," we both called, and he did.

  "Honestly," he said. "Girls in bathrooms. Someone could write a TV series about girls in bathrooms."

  He wanted to go through his checklist for the night. There were a few things we needed, that we had to pick up from farmhouses, things more likely to be found in farmhouses. We .went down to the dining room, spread his sheet of paper out on the table, and went to work. Not for the first time I was amazed at the knowledge of odd things Homer had picked up from all over the place. He'd had some help from Chris, who also knew a lot of weird facts, and I had the suspicion that he'd been listening in Chem more than I'd realised. I'd always known he was a smart guy, but I'd never thought of him as having much interest in Science.

  The list wasn't that long—there weren't many things we needed—but it was obvious we'd have to leave town early, as soon as it was dark. That was increasing our risks a little, but it was the only way we could do everything we wanted.

  So at about nine o'clock we went, moving with maximum caution. We had a lot of walking ahead of us. I knew we'd be tired by morning. I was just tired of walking anyway. I longed for those motorbikes that we'd used to escape from the bridge, and that were still hidden on our property. But safety first. We hardly took a step without looking around.

  We got most of what we wanted at the Fleets' place, which we'd used before as a hideout. The hardest thing to find was nails that were big enough, long enough, strong enough. After a bit of scrounging and a bit of carpentry and a bit of improvisation, we left there at one-thirty, running late, but not too bad. And an hour and a half after that we were where we wanted to be: approaching a steep cutting on Buttercup Lane. It was thick bush up there. We'd already dived into it once when we heard a convoy coming; and just before we reached the cutting, Fi, who was leading, gave the signal to hide again. It had to be a patrol, so I crouched, and scuttled into the scrub as fast as I could. Behind me a dark shadow that was Lee dived off the embankment and landed about two metres away. I couldn't see the others. Chris and Homer were behind me, and Robyn ahead somewhere, with Fi. Almost as soon as I was in hiding I heard the scrunch of the boots: three soldiers in single file walking quite casually along the road above my head. I crouched even lower and hoped that the others were well hidden. The soldiers' footsteps seemed to be slowing, and then they stopped completely. I risked a glance and saw just the back of one of them moving slowly away from me. It was a woman, I thought, and an instant later she was out of my sight.

  I didn't know what to do. I couldn't imagine why they'd stopped, unless they'd seen one of us, but there were none of the urgent sounds I'd expect if they had. Desperate thoughts rushed through my head. What should I do? What could I possibly do? I lifted myself and crept forward a metre, frightened that if I went any further I might crawl straight into a trap. Then suddenly I flattened myself: a shotgun fired to my right, so close that my ears rang with the noise. I lay there unable to breathe. I could hear several cries, then a scream, hoarse and horrible. The shotgun fired again, a little more muffled this time. I could smell its spicy burnt smell now. I hoped that it was a double-barrelled one and that no one else had a weapon, and with only that thought in my head I launched myself up the bank and onto the road.

  The first thing I noticed was the sound of footsteps; someone running in panic down the road. I couldn't see much, just a dark shape, but it was one of the soldiers, not one of us. Then there was a crashing sound from the bushes. I spun round, wondering if this was my death, the last movement I would ever make, the last sight I would see. But it was Homer, stumbling towards me, and Chris just behind him, a little to his left, making awful retching noises. I realised as Homer reached me that he had blood all down the front of his shirt, thick and sticky. The others were now emerging from their hiding places and rushing at us. I ripped Homer's shirt open and felt around his chest and shoulders but couldn't find any wound.

  "No, no," he said, pushing me away. "I'm not hurt."

  "What happened?" I shouted at' him. I was completely bewildered. "Did you grab their guns?"

  He shook his head and waved his arms around. He didn't seem able to answer. But Chris, who was trembling but becoming suddenly and amazingly calm, answered for him. "Homer had a shotgun in his pack," he said. "Sawn-off."

  Fi gasped. We all looked at Homer in shock. We'd talked about our meagre little stock of weapons a few times and agreed that with such limited firepower we were better off with nothing. We knew if we were caught with weapons on us we were gone, one hundred per cent certa
in.

  A willy-willy of feelings stormed up inside me—anger, confusion, disbelief. But I had to postpone them, and I did. I was still holding Homer by the tail of his shirt but now I let him go and shouted at Chris, "What happened? What happened?"

  "It was just the worst worst bad luck. There were three of them, two men and a woman. The men decided to take a leak, right where we were. They dropped their rifles and came down into the scrub. They were about three steps from us and still coming, unbuttoning their daks. They would have walked right over the top of us. Homer had his pack beside him and his hand inside it, holding the shotgun I guess. He just suddenly pulled it out and lifted it up and fired." Chris was talking fast, reconstructing it in his mind as he went, trying to recall it all, then describing it to us as he ran the movie in his head.

  "The guy fell backwards. The other guy gave a shout then dived at Homer. Homer seemed to swing the gun around. He was still lying down. The guy landed half on top of him, then there was another shot and all this blood was coming out and Homer got out from under him and came up here. The woman ran off down the road, but we couldn't do anything about her. It's a double-barrel gun but I don't know if he's got any more shells, and there wouldn't have been time to reload anyway. She was running flat out."