by John Marsden
I heard the distant trilling of the whistle, and the sentry was gone, without a backward glance. I didn’t have time for any more caution. I stood straightaway and walked quickly to the back door. These sentries were going to be in a heap of trouble tomorrow, if they survived. My biggest fear now was the door itself. If doors were locked we’d agreed to use our discretion: either to give up, or to wrap a hand in our jumpers and punch a pane of glass out. But Fi was sure they wouldn’t be locked. Her theory was that most of the people who lived in Turner Street were so security-conscious that they’d all have deadlocks, like on her house. For the soldiers to get into these houses in the first place, they’d have had to break in. That meant, that unless the doors had been repaired, they’d still be unlocked – and unlockable.
It was a very logical theory and for once logic worked. When I turned the handle of the door and pushed, the whole door nearly fell off. It had been smashed open, then stood up again and propped against the doorframe. ‘Onya Fi!’ I grinned, hoping the others were going as well as me. It was so dark that I had to use the torch; I fished it out and put my hand over its lens and switched it on. In the dim pinkish light I saw a row of boots and knew I was standing in the back porch. It was just the way Fi had described it.
I moved fast, straight through to the kitchen. With a tiny thin ray of torchlight I found the stove. One glance was enough to make me feel sick. It was electric. That meant I’d have to search further, take longer. I hurried through into the dining room, sweat starting to rush out of my pores. Here I found what I wanted: a gas heater. I turned it full on, and jammed the timer and toaster into a power point, throwing the switch on. I’d set the timer to an approximate time, as we all had, in case we were too rushed to fine-tune them. Now, I didn’t know if I had time or not, but I was too scared to think about it, and to be honest, too scared to care. But I did check the broken filament in the toaster if the two broken ends weren’t close enough together there’d be no spark and all this would have been for nothing. Gas was gushing into the room and I was trying not to breathe it in. The smell was terrible. It was frightening how quickly the gas rushed out. I moved the ends of the filament a little closer together, put it down gently, and ran into the sitting room. Another heater here, good. Turn it on. Is there time to check the rumpus room? And the study? Yes. Well, one anyway. The rumpus room. Into there on fast feet, and another quick search with the covered torch. And yes, lucky lucky, a third heater. I switched it on and scrambled for the back door, desperate to get away, full of desperate fear that the new guard would be in position. I could smell the gas even at the back door. I couldn’t believe how it was spreading. I got to the door and took a quick peek out. I couldn’t afford to take any more time, to show any more caution. I propped the door up again behind me and scurried for cover. Scrunch, scrunch, scrunch. That was the sentry’s boots on the gravel, coming around the side of the house. I dived like a footballer, landing under a bush with tiny leaves and tiny flowers, but banging my knee on a rock as I did. Oh, that poor knee. Every time I hit anything it seemed to be with that knee. I stuffed my fist in my mouth in agony and lay there with tears smarting my eyes. At the same time I couldn’t help noticing how sweet and fragrant the bush smelt. It seems crazy to have been aware of that, but I was.
I let myself have a few seconds under the bush, but I knew I had to move. With the rough job I’d done on the timer, the whole place could go up much earlier than I’d planned. I crawled out from my cover and began another interminably slow hike through the garden to the back wall I gave myself ten minutes, but I was terrified there’d be an explosion before that. Sweat was streaming down my face, as though I’d run five k’s. I kept picturing the timer suddenly throwing its switch on, the rush of electricity into the toaster, the sparks flying from the end of one broken wire to the other, the gas erupting in a sudden huge blast ...
At the compost pit I ignored my knee and hauled myself over the wall, then did a kind of limping run down the lane. I went straight to the bikes and with wild joy saw Fi, holding a bike with each hand.
‘What are you doing?’ I hissed. ‘It’s too dangerous to wait here.’ But I grinned at her.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘But I couldn’t bear to go off on my own.’ And I saw her perfect white teeth gleam back at me from her grubby face.
I grabbed the bike and without another word we pushed off. As we did I heard running feet behind me. I looked round, startled, but hopeful. It was Lee, panting hard.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said.
‘Good line for a movie,’ I whispered. He gave me a puzzled glance, then remembered, flashed me a smile, and took off. Inside a second he was five metres ahead of me. Fi and I had to pedal hard to catch up.
It took us ages to get to Mrs Alexander’s. We had to go such a roundabout way, and most of it was uphill. But as we were finally dismounting outside her garage, the hill opposite seemed to catch fire. I’ve never seen a volcano, but I imagine that’s what it’d be like. There was a kind of ‘whoosh’ and flames shot into the air like a Roman candle. A moment later a thunderclap of sound hit us. At exactly the same time there were two more eruptions. We couldn’t exactly see the houses but I saw the roof of one lift into the air and disintegrate, and the next moment all the trees around them caught fire and were blazing fiercely.
‘Golly gosh,’ Fi said, gazing in awe. That was about the strongest expression she ever used.
The roar of the fire was so loud we could hear it from our possie. A wind of energy from the explosion suddenly came through the garden like a wall, bending trees and plants over and buffeting us. Small dark shapes blipped past me. They seemed to come from nowhere: birds fleeing from the blast. The whole of one side of Wirrawee was gradually being lit up. There was a hellish red glow in the sky; I could almost smell the burning.
‘Quick,’ Lee said. ‘Let’s move it.’
We rushed into the garage. At least this time we had some light, from our torches, unlike the last time I’d been in that garage, groping around looking for matches, and in desperate danger.
‘I hope Robyn and Homer were well out of that,’ I said. There was no time for more talk. I threw open the door of the nearer car, clambered in, and turned the key. There was a weary grinding sound.
‘Oh God,’ I said. ‘Flat battery.’
Lee leaned into the other car, a ute, and tried that, with the same result.
As he stood up again Robyn came bursting into the garage, puffing and wild-eyed.
‘Are you all here?’ she asked.
‘Not Homer. And the cars won’t start.’
‘Oh help,’ she said, and disappeared outside again, to look for Homer, I imagined.
I tried the first car again but the weary noise got more and more tired, until it became just a faint murmur.
‘It’ll have to be the bikes,’ I said to Lee. We ran outside and retrieved our bikes from behind a shed, where we’d dumped them. I couldn’t help stopping to look at the furious fires raging on the hill. There were lights on in every occupied part of Wirrawee, and we could see the headlights of many vehicles converging on Turner Street. And I could see two fire engines trundling out of the Showground.
‘We’ve got one thing going for us,’ Lee said. ‘If we’ve wiped out a lot of their officers they mightn’t have anyone smart enough to take charge or give orders.’
I nodded. ‘Let’s take advantage,’ I said. ‘What about Homer? Can we leave him a note?’
Robyn came over, out of the darkness, wheeling her bike.
‘I’ll wait for him,’ she said.
‘No, Robyn, no, it’s too dangerous. Please Robyn, don’t do that.’
She paused. Then we were all saved by a voice out of the night.
‘Anyone for toast?’ said Homer.
‘Stay on your bike,’ I said quickly. ‘The cars are both stuffed. Where’s Fi?’
‘Here,’ came her little voice.
‘Let’s go, famous five.’
Chapter Seventeen
Daylight came too fast, catching us when we were still a long way from my place and from the faithful Land Rover. We made an emergency decision, to swing off the main road and into the nearest property, the Mackenzies’.
It was only the second time I’d been here since a jet had destroyed the house, in our full view. We’d watched from the shearers’ quarters as the house had exploded, so many weeks ago. Seeing it again, in the cold, grey, miserable light of dawn, made me feel better about blowing up half of Turner Street. I felt sorry for the owners of those houses, but I knew we’d probably done the enemy more damage there than in all our previous operations put together. And it was at least a little repayment for the way these people had smashed the lives of the Mackenzies, bombing their house and shooting their daughter Corrie, their daughter, my friend.
The others went straight on up to the shearing shed but I wandered through the ruins of the house for a few minutes. Already some little weeds had taken root and were starting to spread. Angrily, I pulled them out. Maybe I was wrong. They were life, in their own way. There was little else of it around. Nothing among the ruins was undamaged. Every piece of crockery was smashed, every saucepan warped and bent, every piece of timber splintered and scarred. I looked in vain for something that was unmarked. At least my teddy bear Alvin, a little scrap of love, had survived the Harvey’s Heroes’ massacre.
I did find one thing though, as I turned towards my bike and started walking away from the house. Poking out from under a brick was something that gleamed silver. I pulled it out. It was a letter opener, long and thin and sharp, with a short crossbar as a handle. I pocketed it. Maybe one day I’d be able to use it. I thought of it as a weapon. It never occurred to me that one day I might use it to open letters. But I did hope that maybe one day I’d be able to return it to its owners.
‘Ellie!’ a voice screamed.
Startled, I looked up. Robyn was waving at me from the shearing shed. ‘Plane!’ she screamed.
I realised then that there was a low buzzing noise in the background that I hadn’t consciously noticed. Maybe I’d been too tired. But exhaustion was pumped out of my system by adrenalin as I ran for my bike, stumbling over bricks, feeling the ache in my knee becoming a sharp pain again.
I ignored the pain, fumbled to pick up the bike, wondered if I would lead the planes to the shed by riding towards it, but realised at the same time that there was no other cover, and so pedalled like mad straight at it. As soon as I was in its shadows the others grabbed me and hauled me into the old building. I lay on the floor sobbing for breath. The noise of the plane swept straight over our heads and kept going. I lay there, my face in the dust, wondering if it had seen me, if it was going to return. I thought of it as an evil creature with its own eyes and its own mind. I couldn’t visualise the humans who were sitting at its controls, directing it.
The roar of the plane faded again and I let Robyn help me to my feet.
That was the start of a terrible day. We were proud of what we’d done, but before long we were scared too. We began to realise that whatever and whoever we’d blown up must have been bigger, more important than we’d ever dreamed, ever thought. Planes and helicopters prowled the sky constantly. Their endless buzzing, like angry chainsaws, seemed to seep inside my brain, till I didn’t know if they were in my head or in the sky. After a couple of hours we were so nervous that we left the shearing shed, hid the bikes, and went up through the trees into the hills. Not until we were holed up in thick bush did we feel safer. We had no food, except for a packet of dry biscuits that Homer had brought, but we preferred to starve than go into the shooting gallery of the open country.
As we sat there we at last had a chance to tell our stories. It was exciting to compare notes, and it helped take our minds off the endless snarling of the aircraft. I told them my experiences first, then Robyn described hers. She’d taken the next house to me, which we’d thought was a less important office building. But she hadn’t been able to get in.
‘The door was locked,’ she explained, ‘so as soon as the sentry marched off at four o’clock I broke a window. I tried to do it gently but it was quite a way above my head, and the whole pane fell out and smashed onto something inside the house. The noise! It was unbelievable. I was starting to panic but I thought I still had time, so I tried climbing up to it. There was a drainpipe running down the wall that forked in opposite directions, so I got up on that. I started stretching to the window to grab the sill, and the pipe broke under me. That made even more noise than the window. I’m sorry, but I chickened out then. I got the shakes and convinced myself that I didn’t have time to get in. Looking back, I think I probably could have done it, but all that noise had freaked me out. Then I realised the broken pipe was leaking water all over the ground. It just seemed like everything was against me. I propped the pipe up and set off for the place next door to see if I could help Ellie, but I ended up getting caught between the two sentries coming back, so it took me ages just to get away to the lane. So, I didn’t do anything, I’m afraid. You guys can have all the credit.’
Lee had also met a locked door. Maybe they’d locked the buildings they used as offices but not the ones they used as residences. But Lee had one advantage: Fi knew Dr Burgess’s house almost as well as she knew her own, so she’d been able to give him a good detailed plan. When he found the back door locked he ran straight to the coal chute, opened it, slid down into the cellar, and from there up into the house.
‘Dr Burgess was always talking about putting a lock on that,’ said Fi looking smug. ‘He was hopeless about security. Dad always said that’s why he’d never get burgled.’
Lee had found a gas stove and three gas heaters, so with those on full blast he would have caused quite a bang. I asked him if he’d had any problems getting away, and he just shrugged, looked up into the trees, and said ‘No.’ I didn’t know what that meant. Why couldn’t he look at me? I had a horrible feeling that there might be more blood on his hands, on those long graceful musician’s fingers.
Homer had got into his house easily, but had found no gas appliances at all. When he left he decided to wait a few blocks away, to see if anything happened.
‘You love doing that,’ Fi said. ‘You did it when we blew up the bridge.’
‘He’s a mad bomber,’ I said.
‘This was even better than the bridge,’ Homer said. ‘It was massive. There was one explosion, then another one, a huge one. Maybe they had explosives stored there. You should have felt the shock wave. It was like this gale suddenly hit me. Wow! And the noise! I can’t believe it. There were a lot of secondary explosions too. We did something great this morning. We took on something incredibly hard and brought it off. We’re heroes!’
I thought how strange it was that to destroy something, and to kill people, was a great achievement, and I thought how much easier it was to destroy than to build.
‘How’d you go, Fi?’ Lee asked.
‘Oh, I just burrowed away through the garden like a little rabbit,’ Fi said. ‘I took forever getting to the house. And when I was finally about a metre away from the back wall I realised the sentry was asleep. So I could have walked in whistling and she wouldn’t have woken up. I was a bit worried because it was ten to four, and I thought she’d miss the change of shift. But she had one of those watches with an alarm, so just when I thought I’d have to go over and wake her up, the alarm went off. The whistle was only a few minutes later. She staggered to her feet and marched away. I think she’d been drinking, because she had a bottle that she put in her pocket as she went. As soon as she’d gone round the corner I shot into the house. I did the gas stove in the kitchen and a heater in the breakfast room, but I was too scared to do any more. And I didn’t check the timer, just plugged it in and hoped it was all right and left it there.’
‘So did I,’ I confessed.
It turned out that Lee was the only one who’d checked his timer.
‘They would have been all right,’ Homer said. ‘We’d set them pretty carefully back at Ms Lim’s house, and everything ran according to the timetable. The houses did all explode so close together, so maybe one set the others off, or maybe there was an ammo store, like I said.’
In the middle of the afternoon a ground patrol came through the Mackenzies’ property. They were in two four-wheel drives, a Toyota and a Jackaroo. I recognised the Jackaroo. It belonged to Mr Kassar, my drama teacher at school. He’d been proud of that car. Although we felt safe enough for the moment, in the thick bush, our great fear was that they’d find some clue to show we’d been there, and then they’d call in back-up forces. We watched intently as they searched the area. The funny thing was that they were so nervous. They kept their rifles in their hands, they stuck close together in little groups, and they kept looking anxiously around them. ‘It’s only us,’ I wanted to call out. ‘We’re only kids. Don’t get too carried away.’ But of course they didn’t know that. For all they knew, we were professional soldiers, highly trained killers. For all I knew, we were. Maybe that’s what we’d become.
One thing was for sure, if they ever caught us, and could identify us as the ones who’d done all this stuff, we were gone. We were dead. I don’t mean that just as a saying. I mean that it would be the end of our being alive, of our breathing, of our seeing and thinking. We’d be dead.
The soldiers went on up to the shearing shed. They approached it just like in the movies, moving forward in little rushes, covering each other all the time, kicking the door open. It made me think how lucky we’d been to beat them so many times. We did seem so amateurish, compared to them. I don’t know though, that could have been an advantage. Perhaps we had more imagination, more flexibility of thinking, than them. And they were just employees, carrying out someone else’s orders. We were our own bosses, able to do what we liked. That probably helped a bit.
It reminded me of a daydream I’d had often when I was younger. It was the world-without-adults daydream. In my dream I’d never quite figured out where the adults went but we kids were free to roam, to help ourselves to anything we wanted. We’d pick up a Merc from a showroom when we needed wheels, and when it ran out of petrol we’d get another one. We’d change cars the way I change socks. We’d sleep in different mansions every night, going to new houses instead of putting new sheets on the beds. It’d be like the Mad Hatter’s tea party, where they kept moving along the table to the next place, rather than doing the washing-up. Life would be one long party.
