by John Marsden
We should have prepared for this like you would a bushfire, but we’d never dreamt it would be so huge.
I realised we must make great targets, silhouetted against the flames. All I could see beyond the truck was the grass expanse and bitumen runways of the airfield. To my left, where the administration buildings stood, I thought I got a glimpse of people running, but there was so much smoke and garbage floating around that I might have been wrong. I thought I could hear sirens wailing, but again, over the roar of flames, I couldn’t be sure of anything. Our attack had happened so fast that they’d still be reacting. I guess the first thought of anyone remotely near the explosions would be to save themselves. Only then would they regroup, reorganise.
Homer swung himself into the cab of the truck. He grabbed his rifle and handed it to me. Then he jumped down again and helped Fi and Kevin up. As he was doing that I ran around to the other side. On the way I passed Lee. I’ll never forget the way he looked. Unbelievable. Talk about Rambo. He stood there cradling that gun, legs apart, rock solid, his face expressionless, only his head moving as he scanned the airfield. I thought at that moment I could trust my life to Lee any time and he would never let me down. I continued on round to the passenger door and swung myself up into the cab. As I did, I noticed something funny. A row of holes suddenly appeared in the tray of the truck. A neat little row, like they’d been carefully lined up. Direct drilling. It took me a moment to realise what they were. Then I screamed at Homer, who’d just leapt into the other side again, ‘We’re being fired at!’
‘Took them long enough,’ he said calmly.
He shoved the truck into gear and the old thing leapt forward.
‘What about Lee?’ I gasped.
Homer shrugged.
‘He can walk.’
Only Homer could make a joke at a time like this. I glanced in the side mirror, and sure enough there was Lee, in the dump section, with the rifle at his shoulder now, in a firing position. I didn’t wait to see if he fired. Instead I got busy doing the same thing: trying to save our skins. I brought Homer’s rifle up to my shoulder too and searched the airfield, looking for the trouble I knew was out there.
Homer cut loose on the accelerator. It was insane. If I hadn’t been shaken up already, I sure got shaken up now. One second I was thrown against Fi, the next against the window. He was doing the right thing though, zig-zagging wildly. The tyres on the truck were tested like never before. At any moment I was expecting at least one of them to blow. We lurched down hard on one side, then suddenly lurched down harder on the other.
Of course it was made a lot worse by the rough ground. We were racing at maximum speed across the grass of the airfield. Then there was another wild lurch, to the left this time, and to my astonishment we were suddenly on a smooth beautiful surface.
It took me a second to work it out. Then I realised. A runway. Unbelievable. I didn’t know if this was a good idea. It meant we were getting away from the hottest part of the fires very quickly, and maybe getting out of range of some of their guns, but on the other hand we would be an easier target, going in a straight line.
Then Fi grabbed my shoulder, digging her fingers in like talons. She pointed, but she didn’t need to, because I’d just seen it as well. I felt sick: my insides seemed to collapse.
It was a jet coming in to land.
I’d say it was about twenty metres above the end of the runway. Its wheels and flaps came down together, like a duck spreading its wings as it landed. It was a beautifully symmetrical thing, beautifully balanced, perfectly shaped. But there was still something vicious about it: it was more like a wasp than a bird. It seemed weird to me that it would come into an airport where almost every building was a raging inferno, but maybe it was out of fuel and had no choice. Anyway, it sure as hell was going to land.
And Homer kept right on driving.
At first I thought he hadn’t seen it. But with us all screaming at him, that didn’t seem likely. It only took one look at his face to realise he’d seen it. He was pale and sweaty and his eyes were fixed on the plane like he was hypnotised. ‘He’s going to bluff it,’ I thought. This was like those awful games of chicken in American movies, where cars go straight towards each other at top speed. I can never bear to watch them in movies, but here, on the runway, in real life, it was infinitely worse.
With a little puff of white smoke from its wheels the jet touched down. It gave a slight skid, but that was its only hesitation. Suddenly it was screaming down the runway, right at us. It seemed to have a mind of its own. And I didn’t know if that mind was going to change in time to stop us getting smashed to pieces. What speed would the plane be doing when it hit us? Two hundred k’s? Three hundred?
We just kept coming. We would have been doing close on a hundred k’s ourselves, every revolution that could be squeezed out of the old diesel. I put my hand on the door handle and glanced out the window. I didn’t like the thought of throwing myself out of a truck going at a hundred k’s, throwing myself onto bitumen. But I didn’t like the thought of hitting this jet full on. If it came to the point would I be able to jump? I didn’t know if I had that much courage.
Fi was screaming at Homer. She was actually screaming: ‘Stop! Stop!’, which wasn’t good advice, because if we stopped we still would have been wiped out. I think Kevin fainted. His eyes were shut and his face looked clammy, little drops of sweat all over him. He was leaning against Fi’s shoulder like he had no control, like if she wasn’t there he’d fall straight to the floor.
And Homer, good old Homer, he seemed set to kill us all. His eyes looked like someone on drugs. He gripped the steering wheel as if he wanted to squeeze juice out of it. He was backing himself to the maximum, using our lives as the stake. The truck didn’t move one centimetre to the side, either way.
The plane came so fast. One minute it had been in the air above the airfield, the next it was racing straight at us. It got bigger and bigger. It stopped looking beautiful and symmetrical, and just looked plain frightening. Its windscreens were like bug eyes. They seemed to be staring at me personally. It was hard to imagine there were humans behind them. I know their brakes were on, because smoke was steaming from the tyres. I wondered if they noticed there was no smoke from our tyres. I grabbed the door handle again and actually began to open the door, to be ready. I was mentally begging Homer to spin the steering wheel, to swerve off the runway. Fi wasn’t mentally begging him to; she was screaming at him. I had too much pride for that: even if it killed me I wasn’t going to scream. I wondered if Lee in the back might already have jumped. I wouldn’t blame him. The jet seemed so much bigger than us now. From a distance it had looked quite small. For the first time I realised Homer might deliberately smash into it. This might be a suicide mission. He might have figured we had no chance of surviving anyway, and our lives were a fair exchange for this valuable and deadly plane.
The gap seemed like nothing. There was no way we could miss it. The bluffs had been called. It was about to smash us apart.
And, at that moment, it lifted a little. Fi, who had been leaning across trying to snatch at the steering wheel, gave a loud cry. I started praying. I suppose a good soldier mightn’t pray for an enemy jet to be saved, but that’s what I prayed for. I just wanted that thing off the ground and in the air. But I didn’t think it would get up. They’d left it too late.
I watched with all the intensity in me. I saw the nose quiver. It started to rise. I saw the tip go up a little and even saw daylight behind it.
But it was too late. I knew it was too late. I scrunched up my eyes, my face, my whole body, and waited for the impact.
It missed us by a centimetre, I’d say. They must have given it every last bit of throttle they could find. I don’t know whether those things are turbo-charged or what, but this baby sure found something. The noise as it screamed over our heads was deafening – like a thousand dying pigs in perfect unison. It caused a terrible physical pain to my ears. And th
e slipstream! Unbelievable! The power of those planes was so great that I almost felt sorry we’d destroyed heaps of them. They were brilliantly made, perfectly put together. It seemed somehow wrong that a bunch of teenage hooligans could come along and destroy dozens of them as easily as you’d destroy a nest of European wasps.
The slipstream could have been fatal for us. We got blown along the runway with the engine racing, like a giant had exhaled behind us. In any lighter vehicle we would have been tipped head over heels, no risk. But the dump truck was so solid that it stayed on all four wheels. It even stayed on the runway.
And suddenly, there we were. Out on our own in the middle of the airfield, about a kilometre from the nearest fence, about a kilometre from the burning buildings and burning aircraft, about a kilometre and a half from the still-intact control tower. It felt very lonely. We were awfully conspicuous out there. And it didn’t take a genius to know that our problems were just beginning.
Chapter Nine
When we stopped being buffeted by the slipstream of the jet Homer swung the steering wheel. It seemed like we were going back into four-wheel-drive country. Sure enough, a moment later we were off the bitumen and bumping at maximum speed across the grass.
It was another teeth-snapping ride. The ground was very uneven, full of rabbit holes and ditches that we couldn’t see in the long grass. There were no safety belts for anyone except Homer, and he wasn’t wearing his. Maybe he wanted to show he was on our side, something I’d been seriously doubting the last few minutes. We grabbed onto anything we could, and I think both Fi and I were trying not to yell at Homer. We didn’t want to put him off. We needed him to concentrate. It wasn’t an easy piece of driving.
Kevin had slipped to the floor and was lying tangled around my feet. I don’t know if he was conscious and I didn’t care much, but he was probably having the best ride of anyone. He wasn’t getting shaken around like me. But I pitied Lee, if he was still in the back. It wasn’t the first time in this war that he’d had a painful and unusual ride. The time I’d scooped him up in the shovel of a truck, back in Wirrawee, when he was shot in the leg: that was rough.
At that moment Lee proved he was still with us. There was a sudden thump on the rear window, so loud and close to my ear that I thought the window was being smashed in. I spun around. Lee must have thrown something at the window, to get our attention. Now he was hanging over the edge of the dumpster, gesturing madly in the direction of the runway. For a second I thought he was telling Homer to go on the bitumen again. But that didn’t make sense. Lee knew Homer well enough, and trusted him to make his own decisions. There must be something else going on. Something we hadn’t seen. So I looked to where he was pointing.
And I saw that the chase was on in earnest. Three jeeps were racing down the runway. At any moment they’d be level with us, and then they’d turn and come straight across the grass. They’d handle the four-wheel-drive stuff better than the dump truck. They’d catch up with us at a rate of knots.
I wanted to do something about them. I had to. The trouble was I could only see them by looking across through Homer’s window. They were on the wrong side for me to get off a shot. The only reason I could see them at all was that we were going at a slight angle to the runway. Obviously Lee couldn’t hold them off on his own, with just one rifle. But how could I do anything, from my side?
I heard a shot from the back. We couldn’t afford to waste ammunition now, but Lee must have had a target for a moment. I couldn’t see if he’d done any damage. The jeeps were starting to come off the runway and close in on us. They were like dogs rounding up a renegade steer.
Desperate times, desperate action. I still felt sure we were going to die so there was no point being a wimp. Might as well go out in style. And the window beside me was already open.
I became a stunt woman. It wasn’t as spectacular as staggering along the roof of a fast-moving train, or getting out on the wing of a plane, but for me it wasn’t bad. I said to Fi, ‘Give me the rifle when I’m out there,’ and I started squeezing through the window. That part wasn’t too hard. The problems started when I got my centre of gravity – my bum – out. I suddenly felt very vulnerable, very unprotected – I was sitting on the window frame, facing back over the roof of the cab – so I reached across the gap between the cab and the truck. The gap was quite big and I realised I’d have to do a Tarzan and trust that I could grab the side of the dumpster. Fi was watching anxiously through the window and I think she said something to Homer, because just as I held my breath and made the swing, the truck slowed down.
‘I’ll kill him,’ I thought. ‘If we ever survive this, I’ll kill him.’ He’d thrown my rhythm completely out. Only the fingernails of my right hand caught the steel edge. My fingernails and the tips of my fingers. The ground was rushing past at frightening speed and if I fell I was dead. I’d be caught between the wheels of the truck, which wouldn’t be pretty. It’d be quick, but not pretty. I dared not look down. I knew I’d only get one go at this. I tried to summon up all my courage, all my strength, all my energy. I’ve never done martial arts, but I know those guys break bricks by concentrating everything in their hand. I tried to concentrate everything into my swing. I knew if I waited too long the energy would drain away, so somehow, through all my terror, I had to make myself go for it.
One of the hardest things was keeping my eyes open. I was so terrified I wanted to close them. But that was a luxury I couldn’t afford. With my eyes open, staring, I made the big leap.
I nearly got it OK. The height was less of a problem than I’d expected and I might even have relaxed a split second too soon, thinking I was going to make it comfortably. But I didn’t quite get to the top. And the problem then was to get a grip. My fingers started slipping straight away. I could feel the muscles on my right arm start to bulge and swell, with the strain of holding all that weight. I mean, sure, I didn’t weigh much these days, but it was too much to hold by my fingertips for very long.
My hands were kind of operating separately, as though they were robotic. That Terminator feeling again. The right hand was told to grip, and it gripped, but it was also starting to slip, millimetre by millimetre. The other hand was scanning the surface of the truck as it slowly slid down, trying to feel by touch whether there was anything it could hold on to. It was weird. It seemed to me I was there for a long time, like I had all the time in the world to keep hanging and keep scanning. I felt quite cool, quite calm, quite detached – the only time during the whole morning that I’d felt that way.
It only lasted a few seconds. Suddenly I was back in the reality of it. The loud throbbing of the truck engine, so close to me; the thumping of the huge wheels over the grass; another massive explosion from the fires: my ears roared with these sounds again. I felt again the intense heat of the engine, which was working overtime. We hit a big bump and I nearly got thrown off right there: Homer wasn’t slowing down now. We were shifting at a speed I wouldn’t have believed possible. I think we were doing a big circle to get near the main gate. Homer probably figured he might have a chance to get through the gate somehow, with all the disruption the explosions had caused.
The tips of my fingers on my right hand had gone through pain and beyond, into some kind of extreme. I couldn’t feel them properly any more. I knew they were still digging in, but I knew they couldn’t dig in any longer.
And my left hand kept scanning. And at last connected with something. Not much. By God it wasn’t much. I think, some sort of metal pin. All I could tell for sure was that it was metal and it wasn’t a regular shape. There was a hard solid bit and then a bit of wire or something.
It wasn’t much to stake my life on. But there was nothing else. There wasn’t enough to hold, or to get my hand around. All I could do was use it as a springboard. Something to push against, to give me the resistance for one last leap at the top, one last leap at life. It would have to be enough, because there wasn’t going to be any other chance.
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My left fingertips were pressing into the little pin. My fingertips were all I could get on it. As my right fingers finally gave way, suddenly, with a horrifying irreversible quick slip, I pressed into the pin even harder and went for it. I was higher up than last time, but I was pushing against something so slight that I wasn’t getting much lift.
With a feeling of wild and complete elation, I felt my hand get over the top. Funny how at times like that you concentrate on what’s happening at the moment. Any second now we were going to get shot or blown up, but I was happy because I thought I’d saved my life. It figures: you have to be able to concentrate or you don’t last long. I sure as hell had concentrated this last minute or so, but my problems weren’t exactly over.
With my left hand gripping strongly, and because I was a bit higher this time, I got my right hand up quite easily. Then I arched my back and planted my feet on the side of the dumpster. I rested like that for a second, then dropped my feet, did another big leap, and got on top of the truck-side. With a wriggle I worked myself up until I was hanging over the top. The hard metal cut into my stomach. I panted and gasped, but got right over, doing a sort of slow forward roll till I landed on my feet.
There was one thing that was so urgent, I had to worry about it before anything else. I turned straight away and leant back over the side, reaching out to the cab. Fi didn’t fail me. I knew she wouldn’t. She was already half out of the cab, holding the rifle towards me. She had the butt and I grabbed the tip of the barrel. Fi had worked out that I was stronger than her: if she tried to hold the rifle by the barrel I think the weight would have been too much and she’d have dropped it. That was a calamity we couldn’t afford.
