by John Marsden
It was forty-five minutes before we reached the next road. I still didn’t recognise it, so we had to start the whole process again, me navigating by instinct as we followed fencelines and old wheeltracks. Any time things looked like getting too civilised – any hint of buildings or small well-cultivated paddocks for example – I’d swing away again. No matter how tired and frustrated I got I could always console myself with the thought that they’d never follow us here. We were making ourselves safer with every gate we opened, every remote paddock we crossed, every creek we forded. And at least in the paddocks I didn’t have to worry so much about the truck’s steering. It didn’t matter if we went off course there.
I was glad to see the sky at last begin its change from black to grey. It gave me a bit more energy, woke me up again. All night I’d been using parking lights or no lights at all, and now I turned off the parkers for the last time. I pressed the accelerator down further and pushed the truck harder. I knew we were getting closer to Hell and the knowledge was sweet. I also knew that we had to get to the bottom of Tailor’s Stitch in the next hour, before it got too light, before people started waking up and coming out of houses and travelling the roads. So I used every drop of that new energy, squeezing the bends tighter, forcing the truck up the hills faster, not slowing down for the level crossings. With all the practice I’d had during the night I was getting quite skilled at pushing it through corners, in its controlled drift. There were times when I even enjoyed it.
I was exhausted when we at last got to the track up to Tailor’s Stitch. The burst of dawn energy had gone again and my eyelids felt tired and sore, like I’d been partying all night. I switched the engine off and staggered out of the cab, stretching my legs, making them work. I went around to the back, not sure what I’d find. They’d been pretty quiet in there for a while now. I’d heard a bit of retching at one stage, so I wasn’t too optimistic about them, or the reception I’d get.
What I saw nearly made me laugh. Homer sat there nursing this little kid. The kid was asleep in his arms, her head hanging back and her mouth open. She didn’t look very comfortable. Neither did Homer. He glared at me as if to say: ‘Make a joke and I’ll kill you.’ So I swallowed what I wanted to say and looked past him. Fi had kids either side of her, hanging on tightly to her shirt. Lee was sitting on the floor next to a boy who seemed to be ill. Even Kevin had a girl asleep with her head on his lap. I was amazed anyone could be asleep. I’d thought the way I drove would have kept everyone awake. More than awake, in a state of shock. Seemed like I was wrong. Sometimes you can be so exhausted, so much at the end of your tether, that nothing keeps you awake. I’d been so exhausted at shearing time one year that I’d gone to sleep on the motorbike, in the middle of mustering. That was a bit embarrassing.
The smell in the back of the truck wasn’t too good though. I’d been right about the retching. I guess being truck sick is worse than being car sick. On a bigger scale. Whatever, these guys had been sick. Well, one good thing, I wouldn’t need to worry about cleaning it. I had other plans for the truck.
We got everyone out, which wasn’t easy. I was so busy helping them, and chucking stuff out of the truck, that I didn’t get a clear idea of what the kids were like. I just had an impression of a pale, half-starved pathetic-looking bunch, a lot less scary than they had been back in the alley, when they’d taken us by surprise. They seemed quite organised then. Now they looked about as ferocious as a bunch of starving orphan lambs.
Of course there were fewer of them now. I hadn’t had time to find out what happened to the rest. Explanations would have to wait.
I left them to sort themselves out, while I got back in the cab. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I put the truck in gear and drove it away, up the track a couple of hundred metres then down to the left, down an overgrown escarpment. A few times before the war I’d been here on a motorbike, when I was just mucking around. No-one else would have known about it, because it was so overgrown that it looked like normal bush. But I knew that under the cover of scrubby grass and little shrubs was a line of solid rock. I knew how to follow it and I knew where it led.
There was just room for the truck. I drove it in almost to the end, not worrying about the trees scraping the sides and scratching the duco, or the rocks threatening to rip open the sump. At five k’s an hour, at least the steering wasn’t a problem. The escarpment ended in a dark hole: a drop into rocks and treetops. You couldn’t see the bottom of it. If elves and goblins lived in the Australian bush, then this was where you’d find them. It was quite a spooky place. Unfortunately the elves and goblins were about to get a rude shock.
I stopped the truck fifty metres from the hole, put it in neutral and took off the handbrake. Then I got behind and started pushing. It didn’t take much. It’s amazing how you can make a really heavy vehicle move, as long as it’s on flat ground and there’s nothing to block the wheels.
I got it going all right. It soon took on its own speed and away it went. It reached the edge, paused a moment as though looking at its fate, then dropped slowly into the pit. It crashed through the tops of trees and on, down into the undergrowth. I was surprised at how quietly it disappeared. It didn’t make much noise at all. Maybe the sound got trapped by the sides of the hole. Anyway, down it went. When I peered after it I imagined I could see a dark shape in there, but it was hard to tell.
I went back to the others. The kids wanted to stay there but we were too nervous to agree to that. And right away we had our first crisis with them. They simply refused to go.
Up until that moment I’d found it hard to believe that these could be the kids who mugged us. In my mind, in the little fantasy I’d constructed, I’d stopped thinking of them as vicious crims, more as poor helpless little creatures who needed our love and protection. I’d turned them from Lord of the Flies into the cast of Annie.
There were only five of them. I’d thought there might have been more. But they weren’t all the same ones who robbed us in the alley. I only recognised a couple from there.
While I’d been away pushing the truck over the edge someone had put a splint on one girl’s arm, using sticks and the sleeves of Homer’s shirt. It looked quite professional, so I hoped it would help her. There was every chance it’d be the only first aid she’d get. The leader of the group seemed to be a boy of ten or eleven. When we asked what happened to the others, he just shrugged and looked away.
‘Most of them bolted,’ Lee confirmed. ‘They were too quick for the soldiers. I think they were awake already. What we’ve got here are the sleepers.’ He said it with a grin at them, like he was trying to make them laugh, but that was a waste of energy. They stared away in their different directions, as though they didn’t know what language he was talking.
‘Haven’t you got any food?’ a girl asked me. I realised she was the same girl who asked that question back in the laneway.
‘We’ve got a fair bit in Hell,’ I said.
The girl cringed, like she was frightened. ‘What’s Hell?’ she asked, in a much more timid voice.
It was the first time any of them had shown interest in anything much, so I guess that was a good sign.
‘It’s where we hide out. It’s a safe place. That’s where we want to take you guys. But it’s a bit of a hike.’
‘I don’t want to go to Hell,’ the youngest one said. She started crying again. She sure was good at that. She seemed to have an endless supply of tears. But she was pretty young, about five or six I guessed.
‘Is she the only one with anything broken?’ I asked Lee, nodding at the girl with the splint.
‘I think so,’ he said. ‘It’s hard to tell.’
The girl, as if on cue, said, ‘I can’t walk anywhere. My arm hurts too much.’ She started crying too. Only then did I realise who she was. Casey, the kid I’d hugged in the house in Castlefield Street. I looked at the other two girls more closely then, and recognised one of them as the third girl from that rumpus room. But Bria
nna, the bad-tempered red-head, must have been back in Stratton, coping or not coping on her own.
‘I’m not going with you lot,’ the oldest boy said. His voice sounded unusual, slurred, like he’d been on the grog all night. Then the other boy, who was about nine, said like an echo, ‘Me neither.’
I didn’t have the patience to deal with this. We’d all had a long night, and the driving had been a tough job. No-one had even thanked me for saving their stupid useless lives. I’d taken huge risks, put my life on the line, for this bunch of snivelling brats. I tried to find some patience and understanding, and failed.
Fi was good though. Fi’s the kind of girl who little girls love. Before the war they all followed her around at pool parties and barbeques and Christmas functions. She’s one of those people mothers always asked to help out at birthday parties, because she was so good at organising pass-the-parcel and pin-the-tail.
I didn’t get approached to do that stuff. I was the kind of girl who got asked to fix the PTO on a tractor, or put a backhoe through rabbit burrows.
So now Fi got to work, even though she looked exhausted. I shouldn’t underestimate what it had been like in the back of the truck. Bloody awful. Swinging and bouncing around, getting thrown from side to side, then up and down as well. Seeing kids being sick, and smelling it, and feeling sick yourself, and never knowing what the idiot driver up the front was doing. Never knowing if enemy soldiers might suddenly pull an ambush and kill the lot of you, before you even knew they were there. No, it wouldn’t have been a lot of laughs. Casey, the girl with the wrecked arm, had gone beyond pale to grey: she looked like she was sixty years old.
Fi got some water from a creek back down the track, and as they drank it she started encouraging them. ‘We’ve got some nice food waiting for us at the end of this walk,’ she said. Nice food was an exaggeration, but we had a stockpile of New Zealand freeze-dried stuff, which cooked up into a good meal. ‘And it’s hot,’ Fi went on. ‘How long since you guys had a delicious hot dinner? And you won’t even have to cook it. We’ll do all that. You can just sit there and eat.’
‘Yeah, and Uncle Homer’ll make you a special treat,’ Lee said.
‘Yeah, I’ll make it with my Swiss Army knife, when I get it back from these little shits,’ Homer muttered to me.
Give Fi her due, she got them moving. It was a combination of ‘Let’s see who can get to the corner fastest,’ and ‘There might even be some chocolate for the people who don’t complain,’ and the old ‘You don’t want to be left here on your own, do you?’ routine. The last threat was the only thing that worked with Gavin, the tough little boy who told the others what to do. In fact we all got up and headed along the track at least three hundred metres as he stood watching, as if daring us to leave him. Only when we got halfway around the bend did he give in and start plodding after us, head down, looking like he was at an extremely depressing funeral.
I dropped back and walked with him but he wouldn’t answer my questions, wouldn’t talk at all. I asked him the names of the other kids, but in the end I could only find out by listening to their conversation, after we caught up with them. The littlest one, who said she was seven, although she looked younger, was Natalie, and the girl always asking about food was Darina.
The boy who seemed like Gavin’s shadow was Jack. Like Gavin he walked on his own and didn’t say anything.
We had a fight every three minutes. And I’m ashamed to say it was the girls who were the worst. That bloody Gavin, talk about a stubborn little bugger, now he did the complete opposite of what he’d done before. Every time we stopped to have another argument with the girls about why they should keep walking, he ignored the whole thing and went right through the group and continued up the track. And so of course Jack went with him. I’d be watching the girls with one eye and with the other watching Gavin and Jack to make sure they didn’t get out of sight. I wasn’t expecting any trouble from the enemy, not till we got to the exposed top of Tailor’s Stitch, but with these two I thought it was better to be safe than sorry.
I wish I could have felt more sympathetic towards the poor kids. But hunger, fear and exhaustion are quite a combination. They’d make monsters of anyone. And some of these kids had personalities that would turn oranges into lemons.
Somehow we bullied and bribed and threatened and blackmailed them to the top of Tailor’s Stitch by lunchtime. Well, it would have been lunchtime if anyone had any lunch. Then we let them stop and have a rest, in the same place we waited that day with the Kiwi soldiers. It felt weird being there again. Last time I’d thought Iain and Ursula were over-cautious, making us hang round till dark before we went over the ridge and into Hell. I still thought that, but this time there was no question in my mind of us waiting long. We had to get food into these little tummies. Both Casey and Natalie looked like they might pass out at any moment.
So we sat there for three-quarters of an hour. The five of us had a quiet conversation while the five of them fell asleep. Three of them fell asleep so fast and slept so heavily that I dreaded the thought of waking them again.
The best thing – the only good thing – was that Kevin was functioning fairly well. I think he felt important, having these little kids to look after, and I think maybe he was looking forward to the security of Hell. There shouldn’t be any danger down there.
‘So, what are we going to do?’ Homer asked.
‘Have we got the radio?
‘Yes,’ Lee said. ‘I wasn’t going to leave that behind.’
‘Well, let’s call Colonel Finley again. Maybe he’d evacuate these kids. He does owe us a favour.’
‘Or three,’ said Kevin, who hadn’t done much to deserve any favours.
Everyone seemed to like the idea. I didn’t bother to tell them about a slight complication of my own in the plan.
‘Have we got enough food for them?’ Kevin asked.
No-one could remember very clearly what we’d left in Hell.
‘I think so,’ Fi said. ‘I know there’s some chocolate, anyway.’
‘Lucky for you,’ I said. ‘They’d kill you if we got there and you couldn’t deliver on the chocolate.’
‘There is quite a bit of food,’ Homer said. ‘We had plenty of freeze-dried. And some beef jerky. I can’t remember what else, but we filled one of those green garbage bags. I remember there were stacks of Deb. If all else fails we can live on mashed potato.’
‘There’s a couple of food dumps further along Tailor’s Stitch that we did early in the war, when we were being all efficient,’ I said. ‘There’d only be a day’s food in them, for this many people, but it all helps.’
‘I wouldn’t mind having a go at making some rabbit traps,’ Kevin said. ‘I reckon I could. I’ve heard old blokes talk about them but I’ve never actually done it.’
‘We could raid a farm, too,’ Lee said. ‘Bring back more lambs. Get a few chickens even. The security wouldn’t be that tight on some of those places.’
‘What are we going to do about Casey’s arm?’ Fi asked.
‘Do you think it is broken?’ I asked.
‘I think it is,’ Lee said. ‘Just above the wrist. It was so floppy and loose. I think it’d have to be broken.’
‘It’s really hurting her,’ Fi said.
‘Well, there’s not much we can do,’ Homer said. ‘There’s a few first aid bits and pieces down at the campsite, but no morphine or anaesthetic. No X-ray machines.’
‘It’s been better since Fi put the splint on,’ Lee said. ‘We can do an even better job when we get down there, and make sure it can’t move at all. I mean, the thing is to totally immobilise it, isn’t it? Isn’t that why you put it in plaster?’
‘I guess. I really don’t know.’
No-one else did either.
‘There are pain-killers in my tent,’ Kevin said. ‘They’ll help.’
‘Mmmm,’ Fi said. ‘As long as she sees we’re doing something, that’ll make her feel better.’<
br />
‘They’ve all got heaps of things wrong with them,’ Homer said. ‘That younger boy, what’s his name, Jack, he’s got a bruise right down one leg. And Natalie’s got a whole lot of sores that look infected.’
I heard Casey crying again, little low whimpering noises, so I went over to see what was happening. She was awake all right, holding onto her arm and biting her lip.
‘Is it bad?’ I asked.
She nodded, still biting her lip.
‘We’ve been talking about you,’ I said. ‘We’re pretty sure we’ve got Panadol and stuff in Hell. If you think you can make it down there we should be able to take the edge off the pain.’
She didn’t say any more so I sat there with her for a while.
After forty-five minutes Lee and Fi started waking the kids up, but that proved to be a bad idea. They pretty well spat the dummy. The girls actually performed a bit better this time. I think Casey would have come with us, and maybe Darina, but the others weren’t interested. Natalie, the youngest one, cried and cried and wouldn’t let anyone near her, and Jack took his lead from Gavin. And that was a bad idea. Gavin, in his funny slurring voice, turned on us and said, ‘We’re not going with you lot any more.’
I clenched my fists and counted to twenty. I could have counted to a couple of thousand. It wouldn’t have made any difference.
None of us could think of anything to say. We gazed at them in horror. ‘Come on,’ Gavin said, and to my amazement they started getting up and moving towards him. Apparently they were quite ready to go off into the bush with him, come what may. They didn’t look too excited or happy about it, but then they didn’t look too excited or happy about anything. I have no idea where they thought they’d go. Back down to the road and wait for a bus I suppose.
They stood in a little group, gazing at us. ‘You can’t walk off like that,’ I said. ‘We’re miles from anywhere. You’re in the middle of the bush. You’ll get lost.’
‘We’ll just go back the way we came,’ Gavin said. ‘Come on,’ he said again to the others. ‘We’re going to Stratton.’
