by John Marsden
‘What, then?’ Lee asked.
They were all looking at me again. I hated it when they did that. ‘We need a helicopter,’ I heard Fi say. That was no help. I racked my brains. I didn’t just rack them: I spread them out on a woolclassing table, combed through them with my fingers, and checked every knot. And, to my amazement, I did suddenly get an idea. Nothing to do with helicopters. But in a distant corner of my brain, hidden under a whole lot of useless trivia, I came across one tiny, vital piece of information.
Like I said, desperation can do a lot.
‘The river.’
That was all I needed to say. They looked at each other for a moment – at least Fi and Lee and Homer did, Kevin was standing like a robot, gazing at the ground – and the next moment we were on our way.
Fi led. Being so light gave her an advantage. Lee was next, then Kevin, who we’d deliberately put in the middle, then me, and Homer lumbering along in the rear.
We were dog-tired. But we carried next to nothing. Our packs didn’t have a lot left in them and the rifles were no good without ammunition. So at least we could move as freely as our exhausted bodies would let us.
The funny thing was – and I actually thought about this as I ran – we hadn’t done anything to make us physically exhausted. We hadn’t climbed mountains or swum oceans or played a grand final. We hadn’t done any triathalons. Scrabbling from the cab of the truck to the dumpster was the only physical exercise I’d had. But I was as wrecked as if I’d run a marathon. I guess the stresses we’d been through had taken everything: every gram of energy, every drop of strength, almost my life itself. That’s what it felt like, as though I’d lost the lot.
Yet my tired legs kept moving. The bush we were in – only a couple of kilometres from the edge of Wirrawee – was light scrub and very dry. The gum trees were mostly medium-growth, with those silvery-olive leaves they get as summer goes on. A fire had been through a couple of years earlier, and lots of the trunks were still black. There wasn’t much ground cover. It was poor soil, full of little stones, no rich dark chocolate earth. If you dug into it I knew what you’d find: the stones not much bigger than gravel and a reddish-coloured dirt that was gritty and dry. It made a hard surface, but quite a good one for us to run on.
Normally I would have expected helicopters to appear about now. They’d turned up so quickly when we were approaching Wirrawee to look for the Kiwis, not very long ago. But now, God knows what would happen. We couldn’t tell how much damage we’d done, but it had been awesome. Not a single aircraft had managed to get into the air, I was sure of that, and I didn’t know how many aircraft they’d have left. The only one that might still be up there was the jet we’d tried to head-on.
The last time we tackled the airfield there seemed to be some supersonic security system that let them detect people from an amazing distance. It must have convinced them the place was secure. In the sky, the RNZAF was getting beaten back across the Tasman. We didn’t see them any more. So the people at the airfield wouldn’t have expected much bother from above. And their ground system seemed so effective. It was only by the greatest fluke that we’d beaten it. I could just imagine the conversation at the entrance gate between the guards and the truck drivers returning from the rubbish tip.
‘Did you stop anywhere?’
‘No.’
‘Did you see anyone?’
‘No.’
‘Just straight out there and back?’
‘Yeah.’
‘OK, in you go then.’
And once we were in there, it was easy in a way. Maybe because they felt so secure they didn’t bother taking many precautions inside the base. That was a lesson to me. Never think you’ve got it covered, no matter how much work you’ve done. I should have learnt that from working on a farm. Dad and I spent ages running hoses along the gutters around the house and sheds, installing them as permanent fixtures, then connecting them to a brand new pump. It was for protection against bushfires. You block the downpipes then fill the gutters with water. Every six months we tested the system. No problems. Then along came a fire, we switched on the pump, and there was nothing. We found out later some wasps had got inside the housing of the pump and made a nest. All the clay they used stopped the pump from working.
So I could understand how those guards at the airfield had stuffed up so badly. I just hoped they wouldn’t get a note on their records about it. It’d be a shame for their careers to suffer.
Even as I thought about them I heard another explosion in the distance, from the direction of the airfield. I don’t know what that was about. We came over a small rise, where some sheets of galvanised iron and the ruins of a fence were all that remained of a stockyard. Away to our left was a huge grey cloud of smoke. It was a funny shape, lying across Wirrawee like a thick table, a sort of slab of smoke. But it stretched for miles. We grinned at each other. Still there were no vengeful helicopters, no furious jets buzzing around, no movement in the sky at all. We must have done terrible damage to their fleet of aircraft, if they couldn’t even get one off the ground to look for us.
Now our exhaustion started to get flooded by excitement. It seemed incredible what we had done. I found myself walking faster and faster, till I seemed to be going too fast. If I’d had an engine it would have been over-revving. Even Kevin picked up his pace. We could have been running on red cordial. Homer and I exchanged a few comments, only quietly, because we weren’t too deep in bush, but we had to express how fantastic and ginormous it seemed, how lucky we’d been.
I think that was the greatest source of emotion for me. We had survived! That was it. From being so sure for so long I would die, suddenly here I was still alive. Breathing! Smelling the dusty eucalyptus, feeling the hot burning of my own cheeks and the trickling sweat from my armpits, licking my cracked lips with my own dry swollen tongue. Life suddenly seemed wonderful. I wanted to keep experiencing these sensations for as long as I could. I really didn’t want to die. The miracle of daily moments. Being able to look at the sky, or smile at Kevin’s bum crack jogging along in front of me, or notice that the pimple on the soft part of my upper arm was getting better – these seemed such precious things. And even more special was the miracle of being able to make decisions, tackle problems, search for solutions. I had thought there was no hope. I had thought there was no solution. I thought death was the only option. Now I realised that by our own determination we’d made things happen. We’d found answers where there were none. I promised myself to remember this lesson forever.
And the time came soon enough when I had to remember it. We’d been running for maybe ten minutes when Homer suddenly clutched my arm from behind.
‘There’s someone coming,’ he whispered.
In a moment I heard it too. Not far back. They weren’t making much effort to be quiet. I guess they’d decided that speed was more important than caution. I guess they knew we’d be in a hurry, so they’d lose us if they didn’t get a move on. I cursed them though. In my heart and in my mind I cursed them. There was no point wasting breath doing it. But I had hoped we could get to the river without them knowing we’d taken that route. Somehow they’d worked it out. Maybe because it was just the more logical way for us to go – there hadn’t been much bush on the other side of the road from where we left the truck – or maybe they were smart enough to pick up our trail. I thought that was unlikely though, on this hard ground. We shouldn’t leave many footprints. Admittedly we might have helped them by following the natural lie of the land. We’d been too tired and anxious to do anything else.
I tried to think as I ran. It wasn’t easy. I can walk and chew gum at the same time but I have trouble running while I think. I wasn’t getting enough oxygen to do both. But at least I managed to figure out what we needed, and that was time. If we used the river we’d want a head start. Otherwise they’d be waiting for us a hundred metres downstream.
I sprinted a bit, passing the three in front and going to the lead. I fig
ured we had to make a detour, taking the gamble that we could stay ahead of them for a few more minutes. And I quickened the pace. This was going to be a race for life, a sprint, and second place wasn’t a good option.
Ahead of us, as we approached the river, the bush got thicker. There were more blackberries, and some dark patches of thick undergrowth. Beyond all that was a steep bank, almost a little cliff, and on the other side I thought we’d find the water.
If we kept going the way the land suggested, we’d turn left. That would point us back towards Wirrawee. There even seemed to be a faint track. Better still it seemed to lead away from the river again.
I didn’t know if it would buy us much of an advantage, but anything was better than nothing. Without hesitating I went straight ahead, through the weeds and into the dark undergrowth. The others followed. They didn’t have much choice. One for all and all for one, that was us again, as it always was really.
We had to tread lightly. If these people were tracking us they’d soon notice a whole lot of broken branches and torn plants. But we also had to be quick. In the end it was a compromise. We had about thirty seconds to make ourselves scarce. So into the dark hidey-holes we went.
I found myself crouched very low, in an awkward, uncomfortable position on a bit of rising ground. There was part of a broken tree stump hiding part of me, and some bracken covering the other part. I hoped I wouldn’t be there for long.
I didn’t dare look around. I had to trust that the others were settled OK, especially Kevin. God knows what he might be doing. Probably in a foetal position, like I was. I thought about him for a moment as I waited. The scary thing was that I didn’t know what was happening with him any more, and it was frightening to see someone I’d known so long crack up so completely. If that could happen to him, it could happen to any of us.
My thoughts were broken by the thudding of feet. I had some superstitious belief that if I looked at them they would be able to see me. But I couldn’t resist. I made myself peep out.
There were six of them. With their heavy uniforms and heavy rifles, I think they were slowing down a bit. Certainly their faces shone with sweat, and there were big wet patches on their shirts: under their arms and across their backs. They didn’t seem to be following our tracks though. Probably just following the lie of the land, like us. They got onto the path, sort of automatically, and ran along it.
As soon as the sound of their thumping boots faded, I was up again. I didn’t signal to the others, just left it to them to see what I was doing and follow. So I charged through the weeds and started up the little cliff.
It was harder than I’d expected. The first bit was easy but after that it got steeper and more crumbly. Again I worried about leaving a conspicuous trail, and I hoped the others were taking as much care as I was. Kevin was still my biggest worry though. I kept glancing round at him but he seemed to be climbing stolidly, and after a couple of minutes, to my utter amazement, he passed me. He didn’t even look at me, just kept going up like a big grizzly bear.
Despite that, the five of us reached the top more or less together. I was wildly relieved to scramble over the crest and hear, then see, what I hoped would be our lifeline: the big beautiful Heron River.
It was still early enough into summer for the river to be quite fast and deep. By the middle of January its level would drop a lot, but the Heron was a reliable old river, and it took a long dry spell to really slow it.
We were standing above a straight stretch of water. It was about twenty metres wide. With no recent rain it was pretty clear. There were meant to be a few platypuses in the Heron, although I hadn’t seen any since I was a kid, and I didn’t see any now.
You would have expected a river that flowed through Wirrawee to end up in Cobbler’s Bay, but through some freak of geography – the Blackman Hills, to be exact – it didn’t. Instead it made its way across to Stratton, then kept going down to Lake Murchison. So it’s quite an important river, because the water from Lake Murchison is used for the big power plants there.
But I didn’t think about that. As long as it got us out of the Wirrawee district in a hurry, I’d be happy. Speed and action were our priorities. All I said to the others was: ‘Stick together. If anyone gets in trouble, give a yell. And everyone keep an eye on Kevin.’
‘I’m all right,’ he muttered.
I was encouraged that he’d said anything at all.
But I’d only just heard it, because I was already on my way. I didn’t bother with a spectacular racing dive, mainly because I’m not very good at them. And besides, I wanted to stay close to the bank, for safety’s sake. So I waded in quickly, till I was up to my knees, floated my pack out in front of me, flopped forward and swam a couple of metres. Then I swung right and headed downstream.
It’s a weird feeling, swimming in clothes. I’d never done it before. In Cobbler’s Bay, Homer and I wore light T-shirts and shorts. Now I was wearing the full outfit. Water filled my boots, then my jeans. It came creeping up my legs. Everything got heavier and heavier. But at least it wasn’t too cold. Because I’d run so far and been through such fear I was hot and stressed and sticky, and the river felt good. It wasn’t only the coolness of the water, it was the way it washed the dirt and sweat off my body. It had been a long time since my last bath.
The Heron flowed strongly, without being too wild. There weren’t any white water rapids or waterfalls in the Heron. It wasn’t that kind of river. Funny really, nothing about Wirrawee was wild or dramatic or spectacular, before the war I mean. We were such a quiet part of the world. Most people in our district didn’t care what was going on anywhere else. They just wanted to be left alone, so they could live their lives. They wanted to be free to marry whoever they fell in love with, have their children, farm their land, be buried in the Wirrawee graveyard under the big dark pine trees, and have the possums run over their graves as the possums too searched for food, mated, and had babies.
That’s the way the middle-aged and old people were. It’s not the way I wanted to live. I wanted to travel to Asia and Africa and Europe, with Fi (it used to be Corrie), and come back and go to uni in the city, then get some interesting and glamorous job, and marry an interesting and glamorous guy – preferably rich. OK, maybe when I was forty or something I might return to Wirrawee and kick my parents off the farm and take that over. There was a lot to be said for living in Wirrawee. But I wasn’t in a hurry to do it.
But the Heron River was typical Wirrawee. It just flowed along steadily, not doing anything exciting or unpredictable, no crocodiles or alligators or ... Oh no! Snakes! Leeches! I put my head up and called softly to the others: ‘Watch out for snakes. And leeches.’
‘Thanks a lot, Ellie,’ Fi said.
It was the end of my feelings of peace and serenity. I started checking anxiously for leeches. I’d learnt my fear of leeches. When I was little they didn’t bother me. If I got one I’d come out of the water and burn it off with a match. Being a nasty and sadistic brat I got some pleasure from watching them twist and writhe and shrivel and drop off. I wonder who first realised that burning was the best way to get rid of them? Must have been someone really charming.
One time I’d got out of the dam and walked to the house and gone to my bedroom to dump my things, and when I came back down the corridor I saw a trail of blood along the carpet. I thought it must have been from a dog, maybe a bitch in season. ‘Mum,’ I yelled out, ‘has one of the dogs been down here?’ She came to have a look. ‘Oh dear,’ she said. Then she had a closer look. ‘What’s that on your leg?’ Sure enough it was a leech, only half on me, hanging by a tooth or something, and letting all this blood flow away down my leg. I hadn’t even noticed.
But Corrie taught me to be scared of them. Every time we got one she’d make such a fuss, screaming and running away, and after a while I started getting nervous of them myself, till I ended up worse than her. Crazy, but that’s what happened.
Then Mr Kassar, our Drama
teacher, told us this absolutely gross story about a friend of his in the Philippines. She had a little boy a year or two old, who always had trouble breathing and always had sinus trouble and colds. They took him to a few local doctors who couldn’t see anything wrong with him, so they finally took him to a specialist in the big city, who ordered an X-ray. They found that all that time a leech was living up his nose, like a permanent attachment, getting bigger and bigger as the months went on, with his own private drink machine. It was a disgusting story.
The funny thing was that on our Year 8 camp Mr Kassar got a leech. He’d been floating in a waterhole for a while, looking like a baby whale, and when he got out we saw this big dark red leech hanging off his back. We were dancing round yelling: ‘We’ll burn it off! Get the petrol! Stay still Mr Kassar, you can trust us!’
He wimped out though, and made us use salt. Very boring.
So as we travelled on down the river I kept checking myself anxiously, looking at the bits I could see and using my hands to check the rest, running a hand over the exposed back of my neck and even reaching down to my ankles. I started imagining how they could get inside my clothing, which freaked me out, because after that I thought I could feel them sliming up my jeans legs, or down my top.
It could have been quite a relaxing journey but because of my stupid imagination it wasn’t. I spoiled the trip for myself. The truth is, we were probably travelling too fast for leeches to catch us.
We did move at a good pace. We didn’t have to swim much, only in the quiet patches, where the river took a long turn or widened out. Most of the time the water carried us at a steady speed. Sometimes we touched the bottom, other times it got narrower and deeper, but we had no real problems when it did. Homer and I were the only two who could swim well but the other three were OK.
We were going faster than walking but much slower than a car. Not that it mattered. By using the river I felt we were getting a big advantage. It was a secret road taking us a long way from the airfield. It was quick and silent and with a bit of luck it would be some time before they thought of it. Maybe they’d never think of it.
