Incurable ec-2

by John Marsden

  I turned left and headed off on the dirt again. The landscape looked exactly the same. Sometimes it gets so boring, the way it just goes on and on. Sometimes it’s depressing. On TV ages ago they were talking about the Germans invading Russia during World War II, and how the landscape of Russia sent some of the soldiers crazy. It was to do with the way they woke up each morning and set out again and marched all day but nothing changed. Nothing ever changed! For day after day, month after month, they kept moving through a world where they felt like they weren’t moving at all. Walking and walking and walking and the horizon never moved and it all stayed the same.

  No, I remembered, I didn’t see it on TV, I heard it on the car radio, and Mum was driving, because I remember her looking out at the bush and saying, ‘Yes, God, yes!’ when she heard this.

  I didn’t agree with her — our landscape never had that effect on me — and I was worried by her saying it. For one thing I thought she was being disloyal. But still, I understood what she meant. At the same time if you knew the bit of bush you were in, or if you stopped and spent some time there, or if you opened your eyes and had a decent look around, you couldn’t see it as monotonous. It was only when we were driving that the endless miles got slightly depressing sometimes.

  I sort of knew Rawson Road when I came to it. I’m not sure what it was, but something gave me the vibe of ‘Yes, I think this is it.’ It must have been three years since I’d come along here, and that was in the car, with my parents.

  I turned left and rode fast on the gravel at the side, looking for another green and white sign. There wasn’t one, but after a couple of k’s I passed the entrance to a farm, and in paint on the front gate was the address, unaltered since before the war, 1274 Rawson Road.

  What a relief. I pressed on. My next problem was to find out whether I was going in the right direction. I figured I was now on the hypotenuse of the triangle. The other two sides were from my place to the start of Sutherland’s, and Sutherland’s itself. The hypotenuse didn’t really lead back to my place, but it came out about eight k’s away. Close enough.

  I knew that the square of the hypotenuse would be equal to the sum of the square of the other two sides. Thank you Wirrawee High for that piece of knowledge. But it didn’t seem much help right now. I needed something else. I needed the intuition and awareness of a fox. I remembered how foxes do this thing where they get a rooster to stick his head through the wire of the pen so the fox can bite it off. I didn’t know how they did it but I’d seen it a couple of times myself and the Yannoses had it happen to their chooks too. I don’t mean I actually saw it, but I saw the results. You go down to the chook pen in the morning and there’s a decapitated rooster lying inside the wire. How is it possible? We have quite a big pen and yet somehow the fox was able to get the rooster to come all the way to the wire and obligingly stick his head through so the fox could have it for supper.

  I needed to find the trick, to know how to do it. I suppose it’s like using the energy in the ball and deflecting it to win a point. I vaguely remembered Robyn explaining something like this to me once when we were playing tennis. She understood sport in a way I never could. She said you don’t try to hit the ball hard. You let the other player do that, and you just put your racquet in the way and let the ball go back with the speed the other player has already put on it.

  If a fox can make the rooster come to the wire and put its head out to be bitten off, the fox doesn’t have to do much work. I didn’t want to start a war here; all I wanted was to bounce Gavin back to the other side of the border.

  I kept going but I could see I was heading into a serious problem. Rawson Road was quickly turning into a suburb. There were houses ahead, and they were close together. Being in a rural environment had been fine by me, but there was no way I could ride through settled areas on a four-wheeler. It was one of those mid-moon nights, where you could see well enough, not like a full moon, as good as daylight, but light enough to put me in a dangerous situation.

  I snuck past the first group of houses, took the curve, saw another even longer row of houses and slipped past them too, but I was running out of nerves and I knew I’d soon be running out of luck. I didn’t want to wait until my last bit of luck actually fizzled out like foam on the sand. I pulled over onto a bit of broken ground and sat there trying desperately to think. I hated being in this position, where I had to make life and death decisions in a matter of seconds, with practically no information to go on. I like being in control. I was biting my bottom lip one minute and chewing on my knuckle the next. What to do? What to do? My mind threatened to break out and stampede, to knock down the fences and run wild, to go in a dozen directions at once.

  ‘All right,’ I told myself, ‘at least work out what you want most of all. What are you doing here?’ I knew the answer straight away. I was here with a mission and that was to find Gavin and keep him safe and get him home alive. It would be nice to help Homer and Lee and Jeremy and Jessica, and save innocent people from being attacked by a bunch of terrorists, and preferably to keep myself alive too, but this was a Gavin mission and it was as simple as that.

  OK, so how was I going to do it?

  No easy answer, just keep going and look everywhere and hope like hell or heaven I could find him.

  I had to leave the bike though. I rolled it behind a tree. It wouldn’t be safe for long but if this was the beginning of the suburbs I couldn’t ride any further. I slung the rifle onto my back and trotted down the side of the road, keeping to the shadows, looking for something, anything, a clue, a prop, a guide.

  Sometimes in life you do get what you want. In this case, though, I was quite a way past the sign before I recognised it.

  It was another road sign, this one from pre-war days, a sort of mustard colour with a green logo. A tourist sign I think. There was no name on it, just a picture of a palm tree and 800 metres.

  I was so busy looking for a car to steal, some sort of transport, that I got a hundred metres past the sign before I started thinking about palm trees. By now I was well and truly in the land of the flats and the low-cost houses and the tar and cement. A set of traffic lights was ahead. I was getting really wary. Things were quiet, but there were cars occasionally and I saw a kid on a skateboard and a couple of people going in and out of their homes. It was weird. This didn’t look like a war zone. I felt like I was the terrorist. I was the one with the rifle.

  Palm tree. Wait a minute. Palm tree. Jeremy’s voice. Ambush. ‘Under the coconut tree,’ that’s what he’d said. What did he mean? An ambush under the coconut tree?

  I started jogging. I had to take a long detour to get around the intersection. Luckily half the lights weren’t working, so it wasn’t as well lit as it would have been in the old days. The whole atmosphere was like that though, everything run-down, shabby. Potholes in the road, a drain blocked and water banked up in a big pond, a bus shelter with the roof missing. I ignored all that and hurried on. I covered maybe half a k and then saw the coconut tree. It was hard to work out what it was. On my left was an old house, like a historic place that was probably open to the public or something before the war, but on the right was a shopping centre. Out the front was a row of palm trees, all looking a bit old and trashed, and in the middle of the main entrance was a big neon palm with three-quarters of its lights out. Why on earth would anyone choose this as a place for an ambush? I could see an arcade or mall in the middle, a lot of individual shops, and a car park all around it. Down the far end was a supermarket, with big bins of fruit or vegetables out the front. Watermelons or potatoes or whatever. The lighting wasn’t too great here either and I couldn’t tell what half the shops were, let alone whether the bins held watermelons, or cans of dog food, or toothbrushes. Closest to me were a hairdresser’s and a clothes shop. There were shoppers everywhere. These people had a serious commitment to late-night shopping.

  The next thing that happened was that I saw Jeremy.

  It was a shock. I was scanning the
car park and everything was alien and unrecognisable and in the middle of it all was a face that was familiar and friendly and part of my life. I focused on him at the same time as a leap of wild excitement happened inside my chest. Although I had been looking for them for hours, I could hardly believe I was seeing him. He moved quickly from the far side of the car park and as I watched he went behind a row of dump bins that were at right angles to the supermarket. He’d been trying to walk naturally, like he belonged there, but he didn’t look too natural to me. For one thing he walked a bit fast. That’s what had attracted my attention I think.

  There was no sign of the others. I stayed where I was, behind a small tree, and tried to figure it out. They were probably behind the dump bins with him. Or maybe they were in different points around the car park waiting to ambush the terrorists? It still seemed a strange place for that.

  Another movement attracted my attention. This time it wasn’t someone walking too quickly. It was someone moving too slowly. I gazed with a slowly building sense of horror. A man was creeping around the far side of the car park towards the dump bins, and it wasn’t Homer or Lee. And a moment after I saw him — this is hard to describe — it was as though I now, almost immediately, plugged myself into a new network of seeing. Now I was no longer looking at the car park and the occasional shopper with a trolley and the family at the boot of their Daihatsu and the seagulls swooping around looking for scraps. Now I saw a different view: this man with an automatic weapon, and another man coming around from the other side, also armed, and three others following him, and at least three more advancing through the car park, dodging from car to car, and all of them holding their rifles and moving like professionals.

  I didn’t even have time to swear. I lost control of my legs for a moment, tried to move but just wobbled, then made myself set off across the road. ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’ I asked myself, in one of those stupid thoughts that come into my head in the worst and wildest situations. I didn’t have an answer. ‘To get eaten by the fox, I suppose.’ I had no plan. I got control of my legs, though, and was suddenly in full war mode again. Keeping my head down and grabbing the rifle so tight I hurt my hand, I raced down the right-hand side of the car park, using the shadow of an overgrown hedge for cover.

  With everyone’s attention focused on the dump bins, it wasn’t surprising that no-one noticed me but I wasn’t thinking about that. Just hoping that for once in my life I could be invisible. Just praying no-one would look my way. Arriving at the next tree panting like I’d run three thousand metres in an Olympics final.

  I had about four seconds to decide what to do. Go in behind the dump bins and join Jeremy and whoever else was there? Attack the hunters? Hardly. A fox wouldn’t do that. Beyond the car park a rough old track ran uphill. There was a building site, probably an extension to the shopping centre, but it looked like no-one had done any building for a long time. What was that joke? Why do they still call it a building after it’s finished? Why don’t they call it a built? Well, this was definitely a building not a built, because they hadn’t got far past the foundations. What to do? What to do? The question kept pounding at the walls of my brain. It was paralysing me. Go to the dump bins? No. I’d just be joining Jeremy and anyone else there so I could die with them.

  Attack? No, instant suicide.

  I had to create a diversion, draw those men with guns away. OK, run across the car park firing the rifle so they chased after me? That sounded horribly like suicide too. But lying here on the damp and cold ground wasn’t going to save anyone and it wasn’t going to get me any closer to finding Gavin. Remember the reason you’re here, Ellie? Remember what you said to yourself just a few minutes ago? You can’t leave it to future Ellie to deal with the situation. This is the situation.

  No, there was only one way and one place where a diversion might work. I took a deep breath but still felt as though not a skerrick of oxygen reached my lungs. Didn’t matter. I had to assume my body would take care of the breathing thing, like it had done fairly well up till now. I had to throw my life to the winds.

  CHAPTER 6

  Thank God I didn’t stop to think about it any longer. If I had, there is no way in the world I would have moved from behind that tree. But those dumb old legs and arms work quite fast sometimes, and this was one of those times. I checked the safety on the rifle again, took a rough aim at the hairdresser’s, and shot three rounds into its window, aiming high so I didn’t kill anyone.

  Then another two at the clothes shop.

  All the lights went out in the hairdresser’s straight away. Half-a-dozen people near the clothes shop scattered and went skidding away to the right and left. A bell started ringing, like the world’s biggest alarm clock. My insides were suddenly cold and twisted, like a doctor with hypothermia had grabbed hold of my large intestine. I ran forwards, bending at the waist, straight towards the mall. People started pouring out of a side exit like a million ants who’ve just heard there’s a jam spill at the factory up the road. Not very intelligent of them but who thinks clearly at times like these? I could see them pushing each other to try to get people to go faster. But for me the automatic doors at the front opened perfectly, inviting me in. There were people still moving normally at the far end, like it hadn’t yet registered on them. I kept running. My insides felt wet and mushy now, no longer cold and twisted. I had a sudden memory of the men in the barracks at the airfield, the men I’d shot, and how they’d looked like road kill. I definitely didn’t want to kill anyone here. These people had just popped in to pick up their Sorbent and their Sanitarium and their Napisan. I fired at the ceiling, four shots, as I ran straight ahead. Suddenly people were diving for cover. Bags of groceries lay all over the floor, in among the deserted trolleys. There were spilt coffee cups, dropped ice-creams, an overturned pram. I deliberately shot out the front glass in a chemist’s shop, on the left, and then the same to another clothing store, on the right. The panes of glass slid down like water over a waterfall. It was almost calming to see the smooth rush of glass.

  I was at the supermarket. Now I did have a plan. Not much of one, but a plan. I swung left and raced in there. I think they’d probably turned off the main lights but some kind of security lighting had cut in and everything was dull and dim but visible. I went straight through a checkout lane. No-one asked to inspect my bag. I could see movement all around. I wasn’t stopping to do a survey, but there was a glimpse of an old man to the left, a shop assistant to the right, and a young woman behind a rack of bread. She wasn’t too smart hiding behind bread. The dog food might have been better. The cans of fruit maybe. Boy, you’d get some dramatic ricochets if you started firing near the cans of fruit. I ran past the potato chips. Some foods in this place I didn’t recognise but potato chips must look pretty much the same in any language.

  A guy in a suit suddenly popped out at me as I passed a stack of bottled water. He’d been hiding behind it. He wanted to be a hero. He grabbed at me, at the same time turning his face away, like he didn’t want to be hit. His eyes were almost closed. His arms were strong, though, and he got quite a good grip. I got such a shock that I nearly dropped the rifle. But it was like he didn’t quite know what to do. If he did fight me he risked being killed. He was like a softball player who’s stolen a couple of bases but is too scared to run home on a hit. But just as I realised he wasn’t totally committed, he realised I was a girl. He’d stolen a look at me and his eyes widened and he got a stronger grip. He had me around the waist in a face-to-face hug and I knew I had to break his grip or I was done for.

  How funny that after everything I’d been through it could all end here, suddenly, in a moment, in this dingy supermarket, among the bottled water and the bags of rice, killed by a man with a forgettable face, a man in a suit and a boring blue-grey tie.

  He was trying to pull me over. We struggled wildly. I still had the rifle and the first thing I did was get a finger to the trigger and squeeze off a shot. I knew it was pointing upwards
, so it wasn’t going to kill anyone, but I also knew it’d give him a helluva fright and that might give me the advantage for a moment. I was used to the noise but he wasn’t and it really was loud, especially in this place with a low roof. When it went off the man gave a jerk so violent that for a moment I thought I really had hit him. He did loosen his grip on me, and I shoved hard and sharply, hoping to send him off balance. He went backwards, letting go of me, his arms flailing like a player in netball trying to stop you passing. I moved in fast and pushed him again, deliberately aiming him at a stand of cans of something, I don’t know what they were. Tomatoes maybe? He went into them with his back and his bum and the whole thing kind of exploded around him. I picked up a can as it rolled towards me, threw it at him, missed, grabbed another one and threw it hard into his head. I saw red stuff fly. It was like it was a can of tomatoes and it had burst open and the tomatoes were splattering everywhere. But the can hadn’t burst open. It was the other red stuff I was looking at. He put his hands to his face and turned sideways. I didn’t know if he was still conscious but I had to assume he wouldn’t be a threat for the next few minutes at least.

  I raced towards the back door, the one into the storage area. Glancing behind me I saw a few people putting their heads up from their hiding places. They looked undecided. Will we chase her or what? She’s only a girl. And there’s only one of her. But she’s got a gun.

  It was a double door, a heavy thing made of rubber and/or plastic or something. It was partly transparent. As soon as I burst through it I entered another world. No more fancy displays or canned music or ladies handing out little samples of tofu, like we get in Wirrawee. This was even darker than the dim supermarket; the floor was concrete, hundreds of boxes were in big stacks everywhere. It smelt different too, but nice, like biscuits at the very first moment when you open the pack.