by John Marsden
It had been a cold night, and it was a cold morning, but for once I didn’t feel it. Fi was huddled against me, her face turned away from the soldier, and she helped keep me warm. Every so often she shook, with a spasm that might have been caused by the cold. Robyn sat beside the soldier’s head, watching him calmly. There was something beautiful about her face as she gazed at his. Homer sat behind his head, also watching calmly, but there was a dark shadow on his face and an impatience in the way he sat bent forward, like a cocked rifle. It made me nervous to see him like that.
There was a distant crack through the trees, like the falling branch I’d heard earlier. There’d been noises all night of course, as there always are in the bush: the yowl of possums, the howl of a feral dog, the wing-beating of owls; a breeze through the trees and mysterious rustles in the undergrowth. I was used to all that and didn’t respond; hardly noticed it. But this was different somehow, and I sat up a little and turned a little towards it. And then heard the shout.
‘Ellie! Homer! Are you there?’
Wild relief ran through me.
‘Lee! Over here!’
We heard his blundering footsteps then, running and crashing towards us. I stood and moved a few steps in his direction. He came clumsily through the tall trees, squeezing through a narrow gap right in front of me. I held out my arms and he grabbed me and hugged me, but all I could feel were the bones of his body. I didn’t feel love or affection or warmth from him, just an ugly roughness, and relief perhaps. He pushed me away and looked around him. ‘Anyone got any food? I’m starving.’
‘No,’ Robyn said, ‘nothing.’
‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ Lee said. His eyes had passed over the soldier on the ground, but he hadn’t shown any surprise. Now he focused on him. ‘What’s he doing here?’
‘He followed Fi,’ Homer said.
‘He’s still alive,’ Lee said.
‘Yes.’
‘Well, what are you waiting for?’
I wasn’t sure what he meant. ‘We were waiting for you,’ I said. ‘And we didn’t know what to do with him. But I think he’s close to dying.’
‘We’ve got to go,’ Lee said again. His eyes scanned the ground. Suddenly he bent down and picked up the soldier’s knife from the sad little pile of possessions. At first I thought he’d then overbalanced and fallen on the boy. I even gasped and started to say ‘Look out!’ But I realised at once that it was deliberate. Lee had landed clumsily with his knees on the boy’s chest and at the same time had buried the knife in him, aiming at the heart. The boy gave a terrible gasp and both his arms lifted slightly, with the fingers flailing. Homer switched on the torch and in its sharp, focused light, like a scalpel, I saw the face go very white, and a rush of blood pour from the mouth as it slowly opened. It stayed open. Then something left the face, a spirit or something fled from it, and he was dead. His face became the colour of water, no colour at all.
Fi was screaming but then she took a big gulp and stopped herself, as though she’d swallowed the last scream. She put her hand to her mouth and gave a little hiccup. Her eyes were wide open and she was staring at Lee as though he were a monster, Jack the Ripper. I was scared of him myself, wondering if he’d changed forever, if he’d become a devil. Robyn was hyperventilating, with her hands to her throat. Homer backed away, eyes staring, his hands behind him as though looking for support. There was no support there. I just stood with my mouth open, looking at the young body on the ground. Homer had dropped the torch and I bent down and picked it up.
Lee stood and walked away a couple of steps, then came back. ‘Let’s get rid of him,’ he said, but all the anger and harshness had gone out of his voice. He sounded almost normal, except that I didn’t know if he’d ever be normal again.
‘We can’t bury him,’ I said, my voice shaking, on the edge of hysteria. ‘There’s no time and we haven’t got tools.’
‘We’ll move him down to the gully,’ Lee said.
None of us moved, until Lee shouted at us, ‘Come on, don’t just stand there. Help me.’
I took his head, which was amazingly heavy, and Lee picked up his feet. None of the others was in any shape to help. We struggled along with the body, trying to pick a wide enough path through the bush. After we’d covered only ten metres I was sweating. I couldn’t believe how heavy this light guy was. I was starting to drop him, but then Robyn arrived beside me and helped.
‘We’d better not drag him,’ I said, ‘Or they might see the tracks,’ I was shocked at myself for saying something so cold-blooded, but neither of the others reacted. We limped on, each of us reluctant to be the one to say stop, until somehow we’d reached the head of the gully. We swung our arms as much as we could and rolled him heavily into it.
‘He sure didn’t help much,’ I said, shocking myself again, but I was trying to make everyone feel better, to drag us back from madness a little.
We stood there, looking at him. His body was all arms and legs now, a sprawling broken doll, with his head tipped back at an awful impossible angle. Without a word Lee turned away and went into the bush and came back towing a branch in each hand, which he then tossed over the soldier. Robyn began to help him, then I joined them. We spent ten minutes throwing rocks and branches on the body. It wouldn’t stop the smell, and it wouldn’t stop the feral dogs and other carnivores, but we had to hope that if there was a search it wouldn’t last more than a day or two. That seemed a reasonable hope.
Soon we seemed to arrive at an agreement that we’d done enough. The grey among the trees was lightening quickly as the day spread into the bush. We stood there for a moment. I felt weird, like I didn’t want to walk away without saying anything. I glanced at Robyn, and although her eyes were open and her lips weren’t moving, I felt certain she was praying. ‘Say it out loud,’ I urged her. She looked at me in surprise. I said it again: ‘Say something out loud.’
‘I can’t,’ she said. She wrinkled her brow for a minute, then said, ‘God, look after him.’ Then after a pause she added in a strong voice, ‘Amen.’
‘Amen,’ I said, and after a moment Lee said it too.
As we walked back to the others he said to Robyn, ‘If you’d seen what I saw last night you wouldn’t be praying for any of them. And you wouldn’t be wondering if we’ve done the wrong thing. They’re filth. They’re vermin.’
I understood then why he’d pushed the knife into the soldier’s chest, but I was still scared of him for having done it.
Chapter Eleven
So often it’s the little things that are the hardest. We’d had a night of death and horror, of fear and panic; we’d seen many people die and we’d seen one die at the closest of quarters. We’d lost many of our possessions – anything we’d had in the tents at Harvey’s Heroes campsite was gone forever. But trying to climb that tree to get back into Hell was the hardest thing of all.
Before that though I found I hadn’t lost everything. We were standing waiting at the base of the tree for Robyn to return. She’d taken the odds and ends from the soldier’s pocket and gone back to his bush grave to throw them in. She’d even picked up the knife, all sticky and red. It made me think of picking up Homer’s bloody shotgun at the Buttercup Lane ambush, and I shuddered in memory when I saw Robyn reach for the knife.
The only thing we kept was the torch.
So there Lee and Fi and I were, waiting for Robyn, watching Homer, who was using a small branch to sweep the ground and conceal our tracks. We had to avoid drawing any attention to our stepladder. And as we watched, Lee felt for my hand and put a small object in it. It was warm and furry, and for a second I thought it might have been something horrible. I looked down with my mouth squirming. It was my little chocolate brown teddy bear, Alvin, only the size of a cigarette packet, one eye missing and both ears chewed, a big worn patch on his bum, but my Alvin, my bear.
‘Oh Lee,’ I said, my eyes filling with tears. ‘I thought I’d lost him.’
I also meant: ‘And I
thought I’d lost you.’
He just shrugged, but I knew he was pleased.
‘How’d you find him? Oh Lee, I was getting scared of you. You seemed like you’d changed so much.’
He ignored the last part of what I said, and answered my question instead.
‘I got him from your tent.’
‘What? How could you?’
‘I was just sneaking in the back of it, to wait for you. You were the only person I felt like talking to, after what happened on the road. Then the shooting started. Alvin was on the ground, at my feet, so I grabbed him and got out of there.’
‘Where’d you go?’
‘Along the ground. Then I found some cover.’
‘How? Where?’
‘Behind some bodies.’
‘Behind some bodies?’
‘There were four people who’d been sitting together in the eating area. They’d fallen in a row when they were shot, each one leaning on the next one. I hid behind them.’
‘Oh God.’
‘I stayed there till the soldiers started coming through the camp. They had a few prisoners. Everyone else was dead. I saw what they were doing to the bodies and I saw what they were doing to the prisoners. So I ran.’
‘Did they see you?’
Robyn had returned and although we should have been going up the tree we were all too hypnotised by Lee’s story.
‘Yes, but they couldn’t shoot because they would have hit their own soldiers. They weren’t very organised. They fired a few dozen rounds in the bush after I was out of the camp area, but I was expecting that and I was dodging round and keeping flat, and using the trees. Last I saw of them they’d started burning tents. They didn’t follow me.’
‘They followed me,’ Fi said in a small voice.
‘Yes, but you’re a girl,’ Lee said grimly. ‘I saw how they were treating the women they’d caught.’
Homer started climbing the tree.
‘What happened next?’ I asked urgently.
‘I just ran and ran. By the time I’d calmed down a bit I didn’t know where I was. Eventually I figured out that you might be here, if you’d survived, but then I had to figure out how to get here.’
Robyn began to follow Homer up the tree and Fi moved into position to do the same.
‘What happened to you back at the firebreak?’ I asked.
‘Well, I ran like mad when they started shooting at us. When I realised I’d lost you guys I thought I might as well go straight to the camp.’
‘Thank you for my bear,’ I said. I gazed at the cliff for a few moments, thinking all kinds of thoughts, wondering how long this wall of rock would stand here and what else it would see and hear. I wished I could write its story, do something lasting, something good. I turned to Fi. ‘Come on, Fi from Wirrawee. Make like a koala. Make like Alvin.’
I slung the dead soldier’s rifle across my back and watched the three of them. Homer was now at the top, which was the thick base of the old white tree, because of course it had toppled from the top. Robyn was right behind him. Fi started slowly edging up towards them.
‘I told you we should have got some rope,’ Homer called down.
‘Remember that Outward Bound stuff?’ Robyn said. ‘You’ve got to dig your toes in and use your fingertips.’
That was the extent of our knowledge about rockclimbing.
Homer abandoned the safety of the tree and began working his way up the last stretch of cliff. Even from the bottom I could see the tension in his arms and legs as he searched for holds. His head was sideways and he looked like a gigantic insect crawling up the vertical rockface. We watched nervously, knowing that we would soon have to follow him. It was only a few metres but the cost of failure was pretty high. But then he flung an arm over the top and with a last gigantic effort pulled himself up, rolling out of our sight for a moment before reappearing, standing, at the top, looking down and smiling.
‘Piece of cake,’ he said.
Robyn followed, doing it very quickly, going up in one continuous burst till she too rolled over the top. By then Fi was at the top of the tree and looking up anxiously.
‘Come on Fi,’ I called from the bottom.
Lee started up the tree as Fi began tentatively to reach out and feel for a handhold. Homer and Robyn were like stereo speakers, urging her on. She went very slowly, using the sides of her shoes instead of her toes, and halfway up she froze. I could see her legs shaking. ‘Come on Fi,’ we were all calling. ‘I can’t,’ she cried. ‘Come on Fi,’ Robyn said urgently. The soldiers are coming.’ They weren’t, but it worked. Fi gained another metre with a little scrambling movement, then flung her arm up and grabbed at Robyn’s. Luckily she caught it. I hate to think what would have happened if she hadn’t. Even so Robyn had to haul and haul before Fi, hanging like a dead weight, was dragged over the top.
Fi had been brave so many times, shown such strength, but it seemed like she’d been wiped out by the last twelve hours.
Lee got up quite easily. It was a definite advantage being tall. I was at the last branch by then and watching him. I worked out my route, a bit further to the right than Lee’s, and with a big gulp of pure fear I left the security of the tree and started out. The main thing was not to panic. Every time I started getting the wild feelings that I would fall, must certainly fall, I told myself to think brave, to get control of my mind, to be strong. But I found myself getting physically tired. I was hungry, my knee was hurting, and I was taking too long to make the climb, using up my energy. I accelerated a bit, glanced up, and saw Homer’s hand outstretched towards me, just within reach.
‘I don’t need any help,’ I said crossly.
At that moment I fell. It was so quick, without warning. My fingers all lost their grip simultaneously. I knew I was too far across to catch the tree and I knew quite clearly that I had two choices: to use my hands to brake myself, and rip up my hands doing it, or to go into free fall and break my legs. I used my hands. I was so close to the cliff face that I could deliberately press into it, grabbing at it, scraping against it, using any point of contact possible, knees, toes, chest a few times, and hands, all the way down. I landed at the bottom without ever having reached out-of-control speeds, but I hit heavily, jarred my knee again, and rolled across the ground till I fetched up against a rock. I lay there grimly, hating everything. I didn’t dare look at my fingers. I got up and shook the dirt off my clothes, then walked back to the tree. Angrily I started climbing it again, ignoring the stinging in my hands, the dull pain in my knee, the ache in my back. There were cries of distress above me, the other four leaning over and calling out, like lonely cockatoos. ‘I’m OK,’ I muttered, knowing that they couldn’t hear me. I got to the top of the dead, white trunk again and paused there for a minute, hugging it, shaking a bit.
‘Chuck up the rifle,’ Homer called. I realised the automatic weapon I had slung across my back was still there. That was the ache in my back. I was lucky the rifle hadn’t started firing. I clumsily slipped it off and held it balanced in my hands for a moment, then flung it hard and high up over the top. It only just got there, but Robyn grabbed its butt as it started to fall again, and hauled it up. A minute later she reappeared over to my left.
‘Come this way Ellie,’ she called.
There was an easy ledge over there but it didn’t lead anywhere, so none of us had used it. But I saw what they were trying to do. They’d formed a human chain. Lee was holding Robyn and she was dangling over the cliff holding the rifle. I couldn’t see who was holding Lee. I edged my way over there and reached up. I could just grab the barrel of the gun.
‘Oh Ellie, your poor hands,’ Robyn said.
‘I hope you’ve unloaded this thing,’ I said.
‘Yes, we have actually. Can you hold on?’
‘Yes, go on.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Just do it.’
She began to shuffle back, as we both held on grimly. For a moment she had all
my weight but then I was able to use my feet to help her, walking up the last wall of rock. Then Homer and Fi were grabbing me under the armpits, hauling me over the top. I landed on top of Robyn, then crawled off and collapsed by myself, utterly done.
Fi took my right hand and fussed over it. I lifted my head and looked curiously. The hand was shredded and bloody. The fingertips were red raw, all the pads gone, except on the thumb. The left hand looked almost as bad. The more I looked at them, the more they stung.
There was nothing any of us could do, except cry, and so we did that. ‘Nothing like a good cry,’ I remember my grandmother saying. We were cold, we were ravenously hungry, we all had aches and bruises and cuts, and above all we were shocked and desperately unhappy. It was probably only about seven-thirty and the sun was not yet strong enough to lighten or warm the terrible darkness that had filled us during the night. So we sat there, in under the trees – we were still security-conscious – and bawled like little kids. My eyes ran, my nose ran, and when I tried to wipe all the drips away, my hands hurt too much to use them. Fi lay with her head in my lap and cried until my jeans got damp.
Eventually I dried up a bit. I lifted my head and looked around. We were a miserable sight. Robyn had dried blood all over her face, Lee had a swollen eye that was starting to darken. We smelt like we hadn’t washed in months. Our clothes were torn and dirty. We’d all lost weight since the invasion, which made our clothes loose and shabby. I looked at Lee. He stood there with the bush behind him, gazing calmly back at me. Like a lot of tall people he usually stood with his head down a bit, so you could see the back of his neck, the way it arched. He wore a grey T-shirt with a lightning flash across it, and the words ‘Born to Rule Tour’. I knew what was on the back, the name of his favourite band, Impunity. His jeans were gone at the knee and one boot had a lace which had been broken and retied so many times that it was hard to tell which was the bow. As always he wore the T-shirt out, not tucked in. It was torn off the right shoulder, torn again at the heart, and had a hole burnt in it under the world ‘Rule’. The bottom of it was like ribbons, it was so wrecked.
