by John Marsden
There wasn’t much left in the room, with both the stool and the broom gone. They even took the legs off the bed so that the base and mattress now rested on the floor. I tried twice to lift Gavin onto my shoulders and get him up there but he was too heavy and the pain was agonising.
When I could make my mind work again we played some stupid games, like I Spy, or animal, vegetable, mineral, but neither of us was too interested. Other games, like hide-and-seek or musical chairs, weren’t really an option. Then I hit on the brilliant idea of making a chess set. I used whatever bits and pieces were still in my pockets, along with other odds and ends from around the room, and torn-up pieces of sheet for the pawns. So the kings were two halves of a hairclip, the queens were rubber bands, and the knights were bits of toilet paper I twisted into the best shape I could. I did have a pen, and I used that to colour the black pieces, the ones that needed colouring. We just drew a board on the floor in the dust. Of course the lines didn’t last long but we could always redraw them.
I’d tried a few times before to get Gavin interested in chess, but without much success. Now, however, he took to it avidly. He beat me a few times while I was sore and tired and distracted, but as I started feeling better I began beating him regularly again, until gradually, after we had played about fifty games, the tide slowly turned. I had to fight really hard to save a couple of games, and then he won a couple again, and then I won a couple back, and then he started beating me eight times out of ten. I didn’t know whether to be annoyed or pleased.
How strange, I thought, to spend our last few days playing chess. But I suppose there were worse ways to finish your life.
When time stopped passing and suddenly became important again, I was to find out that we were in the middle of another night. Two things happened. The first was a moment of realisation. I couldn’t believe I had been too stupid to see it before. We were both on the bed, Gavin asleep, and me wishing I could go to sleep. Without talking about it we had somehow found our own spaces on the mattress, so that we could both be comfortable and yet still be comforted by each other’s warmth. But Gavin was having a bad dream, calling out and twisting around. Suddenly he threw out his right arm and hit me on the cheek, yelled ‘Look out for him!’, and did a kind of sideways somersault, landing on top of me.
As far as I could tell he was still asleep. I managed to extricate myself, then put an arm around him to try to calm him, to help him sleep with at least a slight sense of security. I lay there, drifting in and out of something that had a vague resemblance to sleep. I had a series of thoughts, of images, a kind of dream where the bed had fallen apart when Gavin landed on top of me. It was like an old silent movie playing in my head, where he and I and the bed were all in a heap on the floor. Then an electric shock ran through my brain. I sat upright, or at least as upright as Gavin’s head would let me. The bed! Of course! The bed!
I wriggled out from under Gavin and started pulling him and the mattress off. I wasn’t too worried about disturbing his slumbers now. Anyway, there was always plenty of time to sleep in our little prison cell. He mumbled and whinged and grunted as I slid him onto the floor, so I turned the light on to let him see what I was doing. Inside two minutes I had disassembled the frame of the bed base. Lying flat on the floor were the two ends, which were not much use to me. Then there was a big heavy panel of chipboard, which wasn’t much use either. But the bed irons, they were what I wanted. I had suddenly realised they were the best weapons we had. Apart from fingernails they were also the only weapons we had. They had real potential though. About two metres long, and probably a bit less than fifteen centimetres wide, solid heavy metal, with a ball at each end which fitted into the crosspiece. They would punch holes in the ceiling, no trouble at all. They would probably knock down the door. If these guys came in with guns to shoot us, we might even do a bit of damage to them before we died. That would be nice.
Gavin watched, sulkily at first, then with more interest, and finally with a bit of excitement when I picked up one of the irons and showed him how much force I could get behind it. Apart from beating me at chess, he hadn’t shown much excitement about anything since I’d been caught using the broomstick on the ceiling. I was relieved to see a bit of light back in his eyes.
‘When are we going to use it?’ he said. ‘You don’t want to get caught again.’
‘You got that right,’ I said. ‘I don’t know when the best time is. And I don’t know whether we should try to go through the ceiling or the door.’
I gazed at the ceiling, considering the options. I thought I could now smash a big hole in it in no time at all, say, thirty seconds. But we’d still have to get up there and through the hole. If we put the base on its end and used it as a ladder we could probably do it, even with one of its irons missing. Assuming we did it in the middle of the night, and assuming the noise woke them, we’d still have a couple of minutes before they came after us. When we got to another room we’d have to find a manhole cover or whatever they’re called, open it, and drop down into what could be a hive of armed terrorists. It could be a long drop too, if it was a high-ceilinged room. The whole thing wasn’t a great proposition. For example, it’s hard to run away when you’ve got four broken ankles between the two of you.
The only other option was to go through the door. I figured I could smash it down with half-a-dozen blows, especially if I backed up to the far side of the room and took a run at it. There would be noise, sure, but again the whole thing would be over pretty quickly. Then we’d have to tumble down the ladder and take our chances, making a run for it. The risk was bloodcurdling, but I’d feel more confident running along a corridor than scuttling through a roof.
I explained all this to Gavin, using a combination of language and acting. He watched silently. He didn’t seem very happy. I didn’t blame him for that. At his age he was probably hoping for a bit more out of life than this. Hell, at my age I was hoping for a lot more out of life than this.
‘I guess the door,’ he said finally, looking like a guy who has to choose between the gas chamber and electric chair.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘The door it is then.’
‘Right now?’ he said, starting to look scared.
‘No,’ I said. ‘We’ll wait until we find out the time. We have to try to do it in the middle of the night.’
Just in case we did have to switch to the ceiling though, I gouged some rough holes into the chipboard, so we could use them as toeholds if we needed a ladder. Then I put the bed together, as quickly as I could.
Somehow the discovery of the irons had given us both a great surge of energy. It was a small thing, much too small to pin a lot of hope on, but it gave us the feeling that we were, however slightly, in charge of our own destinies again, or at least able to influence them. I turned the light off and we both got back on the bed, but I could feel Gavin quivering with life.
The funny thing was that the second thing happened only about forty minutes later. The timing was good. Mostly my timing is like, ‘Ready . . . set . . . go . . . oh hi Ellie, you wanna take your tracksuit off then try to catch the others?’ But this night I was on the button. Maybe by finding the bed irons I’d triggered some cosmic force.
No sooner had we both calmed down a bit than I just about lifted off the bed in shock. A wild concert of gunfire suddenly broke out all around us. First came only one shot, but right away a whole lot more started, as though the first one had been the signal, the spark. The time lapse between the first shot and the mad chaos of the rest was about two seconds. After the first one I flew off the bed and ran a complete demented circle. When the full shooting match started, the noise was so loud that even Gavin heard it. He leapt up after me and we threw the bed apart. I had the horrible thought that it might just be a fireworks display for the World Cup or Chinese New Year or something, but I had to take a gamble on that. And anyway, if it was fireworks, at least the people in the house might be distracted by them.
Like always when you’re
rushing, you stuff it up. I don’t think I’ll ever learn that lesson properly. I dropped the end of the chipboard on my toe, then couldn’t get the iron out because I was pulling at it too hard. I tried to calm down, to settle, to concentrate. Then at last I had it. It felt heavier than before but I lifted it like it was a javelin and, holding it semi-balanced in one hand, charged straight at the door.
At the last moment I thought, ‘If this door is as hard as old ironbark I’m in big trouble.’ I’d already checked it earlier and it hadn’t seemed too solid. I aimed at the handle and lock area and missed it massively, smacking into a spot to the left that was half on the door frame and half on the wall. ‘Ow,’ I yelled, dropping the bed iron and shaking my hands. But Gavin was there in a moment, picking it up and trying to force it back into my grip. He was right and I was wrong. I didn’t have time to be worried about jarred arms. For us, time was the greatest luxury in the world.
I went to the other side of the room and lined it up again. More like a pole vaulter than a javelin thrower, I ran forward. I tried to focus on the lock area with total intensity. Dear God, I prayed, please don’t let anyone come. Please God, don’t let anyone hear the noise. This time I hit almost perfectly, about a centimetre to the right. The iron went right through, splintering the wood and warping the lock, turning it almost sideways. Gavin rushed in and tried to force the door open but it still wouldn’t go. I figured it needed one more hit. I dragged the bed iron out of the hole and backed up for what I hoped would be the last time. With all the strength I could find I charged at it. It would have been one of those great comedy moments if someone had opened the door just then. They’d have been bored through the stomach. But that didn’t happen. The ball at the end of the iron smashed into the wood, and the door burst open, so hard that it bounced against the wall and nearly slammed shut again. But lucky for us the lock was too wrecked to allow it to close properly. We had our chance. Our last chance.
Now the firing was louder. It was not as intense as that first storm, more sporadic, but quite a few shots flying around. I hardly had time to take that in, though, as I slid down the ladder, Gavin following fast. For two people who’d been starved and beaten and neglected we suddenly seemed to have a lot of energy.
I didn’t know what we were going to find at the bottom of the ladder. What we did find was nothing. For a moment anyway. I’d been expecting all kinds of surprises, so in a way nothing was the biggest surprise of all. But then a guy ran across the intersection of the corridors in front of us. He was carrying a rifle and reloading it as he ran. He didn’t see us. I wondered how many of the rifles in the house still worked. Seemed like some of them still did. What a shame. But I did know that having a gun that worked would be a big bonus for us. I formed the grim determination to get a rifle. The only rifle I’d seen was in the hands of the man who’d just run past, and I assumed it was working, so I decided I’d try to get that one.
I took off after him. It might seem crazy, but I didn’t see how we were going to get out of this house without a weapon. I glanced to the left and saw no-one, so I turned left and went along the corridor, Gavin following. Hanging on the wall was a fire extinguisher. I grabbed that and lifted it off, just as I got to an open door. Holding the extinguisher by the top I peeped into the room. The guy was there all right. He was at the side of the window, peering out, trying to get a sight on someone I guessed, by the way he held the rifle. I figured that not only did I want his gun, but I was happy to help out the people he was trying to shoot. Any enemies of these guys were friends of mine.
I walked calmly towards him, working the pin out of the extinguisher as I did so. I’d only handled a fire extinguisher once before, at a field day, when Rural Firefighting were putting on a display, but they were made for idiots to use, so I figured I should be OK. But the pin was actually quite stiff, and I started to wonder if they’d taken idiots like me into account when they designed them. Then out it came, with a rasping noise.
It was enough to get the guy’s attention. He turned, not yet alarmed I think, just curious. When he saw who it was he reacted pretty fast though. He started swinging around, pulling his rifle back out of the window as he did so. I didn’t wait any longer, just pulled up the lever and let her rip.
I’d forgotten how dramatic fire extinguishers are. Not only do you get an instant result, but you get a powerful one. The white stuff jets out with not much less force than a bullet. It’s a never-ending high-powered blast of chemical, which looks almost solid at the core but with a lot of white mist or gas smoking around it. I couldn’t see the effect on him, because he was instantly obliterated. I saw the rifle, waving wildly as he brought it up, then I saw Gavin, who’d darted around me, come in from the side and wrench it from the guy. The moment he got it he backed off, bringing the rifle up to a firing position, while I kept going with the extinguisher. The guy was coughing and spluttering and yelping, but I don’t think the white stuff was too toxic. I mean, they wouldn’t put stuff in fire extinguishers that was too dangerous, would they? I just think he was taken completely by surprise – having your face and nose and eyes and mouth filled by some white chemical would be totally shocking, for a few moments at least.
He staggered out to the side. I swung the extinguisher around to make sure I kept it on him, but it was getting pretty light and the flow was slowing down. I dropped it and grabbed the rifle from Gavin, checked that the safety was off and backed away, aiming at the guy as he emerged from the fog. He was wiping his eyes and coughing and not even looking up. While he staggered around I had a quick look behind me. Gavin was one jump ahead – he already had a wardrobe door open and was waving at me to put the man in there. I was so relieved to see Gavin showing all this life, considering what he’d been through. It gave me fresh energy. I yelled at the man and he looked up and then got the message that I wanted him to go in the cupboard. He went pretty feebly. We slammed the door and turned the key, but I wasn’t sure that it would hold him for long. I pulled a chair over and wedged it under the handle, then wedged the door as well, with a thin book from the mantelpiece. It wasn’t much but it would have to do. I couldn’t murder the guy in cold blood, although it wouldn’t have taken much for me to put a bullet in him. I thought these people were the worst scum I’d come across.
Anyway, we wouldn’t be in this house for too long, if all went the way I hoped. We still had no idea what was happening, and why there was a gunfight going on. But with Gavin on my heels I ran back down the corridor, holding the rifle in the ready position, so I could fire at a moment’s notice. It was a long way to the top of the staircase. Soon I could see it, though, and then there was this slow-motion moment when we were reaching towards it; I could smell the freedom, I could picture us running down the stairs, and then Gavin yelled something and a man floated into the picture, from beyond the top of the staircase, to my left. He had a gun, I had a gun, we were both ready to shoot without question, so one of us was about to die. I jerked my rifle up fast and pulled the trigger. He was bringing his rifle up a little higher too, and I could see his right hand starting to squeeze as he thought about applying pressure to the trigger. But I was half his age and maybe that made the difference. Kee-raackkk. Is that the sound a rifle makes? I’ve heard enough of them now and that’s the closest I can get to capturing it on paper. His whole body kind of humped, shivered, then he stepped back half a pace, hunched up his shoulders, started moving his hands towards his chest, then fell over sideways, really awkwardly, really clumsily. All in slow motion.
I grabbed his rifle as it fell with him, and gave it to Gavin, which no doubt was one of the bigger thrills of his life. I did think it was possibly the most dangerous thing I’d ever done. The chance of my being shot in the back had suddenly become much higher, but we needed to take many chances if we were going to get out of this place.
Now it was time for the staircase. I gasped a big breath and took the first steps down it. A man appeared at the bottom and I jerked the rifle up again fa
st and pointed it straight at him. Before I could do anything I heard a shot and he fell backwards, hitting his head on the bottom step with such a crack that if he hadn’t been dead already I think he would have been wiped out by the fall. Killed twice over. You know you’re having a bad night when that happens.
The shot had come from down below us. Someone ran into my field of vision, moving diagonally, like he was doing either a zig or a zag. He had an automatic weapon and he looked totally professional. It wasn’t just the automatic weapon, you could tell from the way he covered that small patch of ground. We were dealing with something new now. Could be good, could be bad, could be on our side, could be hostile. Both Gavin and I swung our rifles around fast and lined him up. Gavin was now down on my step, right beside me. I held my fire, waiting to see what we had. Gavin was not so cautious. He didn’t have the judgement. Before I could stop him he tensed up and pulled the trigger.
‘Gavin!’ I screamed. But there was nothing. Only a wet sort of squelchy noise. Gavin rattled the trigger but nothing happened. I figured this was a rifle that’d been Coked. It was never going to kill anyone. The guy who’d had it mustn’t have tried to fire it or he would have found out for himself. Well, I’d saved someone’s life. Just hoped it wasn’t going to cost us ours.
The soldier at the foot of the stairs was in cover and I couldn’t see him any more. But then I saw his arm waving someone else forward. Another person ran into view. It was Lee.
CHAPTER 16
GAVIN AND I both screamed ‘Lee!’ He looked up and gave us a big smile, then a quick wave. We started down the steps. Lee yelled something to his right then came running up towards us. The other person came out again and covered Lee, with his back to us. Suddenly, though, Lee’s expression changed. He’d seen something or someone behind us. I whirled around and started dragging Gavin down at the same time. Down to a crouching position I mean, not down the stairs. I figured that was as much as I could cope with, because with my rifle and Gavin’s rifle we had quite a tangled mess. I had to rely on Lee to deal with whatever was behind us, but I did start twisting around and trying to get my rifle into a position where I could use it.
