Burning for Revenge (16 page)

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 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 mv 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.

I underestimated them there.

After a while the nice warm soothing water wasn't so nice and soothing. My clothes got soggier and heavier and more uncomfortable, until they started rubbing and chafing. My pack got waterlogged, and although it still floated I had to keep one arm under it. The water stopped feeling so warm, and in some places—in the long dark stretches overhung by trees—it got extremely cold. I swam vigorously at times, but I hit a couple of underwater obstacles and banged my bad knee hard on a log or rock that I hadn't seen.

Nevertheless, we kept going. It was the best option. Face it, it was the only option. We had travelled probably fifteen kilometres in an hour, maybe more than that, before I swam a bit closer to Homer, to have a chat. Or rather a conference.

Until then no one had said anything, except for my comment about the snakes and leeches. Our silence was partly for security, but more I think because we were so shell-shocked after the airfield. We needed time to gather our thoughts, to get used to the idea of what we'd achieved. To come to terms with the fact that our lives would be different after this. The most obvious difference, in the immediate future anyway, was that we'd be the most hunted people in the country. Public enemies numbers one, two, three, four, five. A bit tough on Kevin, who hadn't wanted anything to do with it.

But I thought it was time we started talking again. We couldn't swim forever. We had to plan and think. We had to do that all the time, if we wanted to live till the next day, and maybe even the day after that. So I paddled across to Homer.

"What do you reckon?" I asked him.

He turned lazily onto his side so he could see me better. I think Homer's naturally lazy, so this style of transport suited him.

"Just float on down here forever," he said with a grin. "Where does it go anyway?"

"Didn't you ever listen'to anything in school? It goes to Lake Murchison."

"Through Stratton?"

"Yes, exactly."

"Thought so. Thought I'd seen the name on the bridge at Stratton."

There was a pause, then he said: "How far from Stratton do you reckon we'd be?"

"I don't know. Probably forty k's."

"Yeah, you could be right. Although, I don't know, it depends on the river, doesn't it? If it takes a straighter line than the road it might only be thirty k's. If it winds around a bit it might be sixty."

"I think it's fairly straight," I said, trying to remember what it looked like on a map.

"You see," said Homer, "the trouble is, we have to go as far as we can. They'll have a net around this district that'll go for a bloody long way. And what I'm thinking is, if we go a long way, we'll be in Stratton. So do we get out of the water before Stratton or after it?"

"Or in it?" I added.

"Yeah, I hadn't thought of that. I suppose we could. Again, it's the last place they'd think of."

"We'd have to be ultra-careful," said Lee, who'd come over to join us. It was a funny way to have a war conference, floating down the river, but it took my mind off the cold and the aches and the chafing of my wet clothes.

"Yes," Homer said. "Stratton would be heavily guarded, with all the factories and stuff."

"I don't know how many of those are still operating," I said. "The Kiwis bombed the crap out of it for a while."

"Saved our lives," Homer agreed.

"Cost Robyn her life," I said, which wasn't the normal kind of comment we made to each other, and it caused an awkward silence for a bit.

"I'm hungry," Lee complained suddenly, breaking the silence.

"I know. I'm bloody starving," Homer said.

I realised I was the same, but there wasn't much anyone could do about it. But it helped explain why I felt cold and tired. I tried to remember when I'd last eaten, but couldn't.

"So what's the decision?" I asked. "How long do we keep going like this?"

"Along time," Homer said.

"Yes, I think we need to be another thirty or forty k's away," Lee said. "If it's possible. If we can stay in the water that long."

"That could take us to Stratton," I said.

"Oh don't let's go to Stratton," Fi said. She'd floated near us too. "I hate it there. It'd be too dangerous."

"My parents are meant to be somewhere near Stratton," Homer said.

"Oh," Fi said. "Yes. I'd forgotten that."

I didn't say anything because I didn't know what was best. But no one else seemed sure either, so we floated and swam in silence for a long time. In the end, like so many things in this war, the decision was made for us.

After another hour I was waterlogged. I thought I'd better get out, before I sank like a large rock. We'd had no more conversations, and it worried me that everyone was so quiet. We were getting too tired. I didn't think we should be screaming and laughing and partying exactly, but I thought there should be a bit more activity. I was really cold now. With no food in your belly, it's amazing, you lose so much energy, warmth, everything.

We passed a number of places that came right down to the river: holiday houses mainly. And I saw some walking tracks. But as we came around a long slow bend I realised that a ford was ahead. The river entered a wide shallow section. To prove it I found my knees scraping on gravel.

I stood and waded forward a little. I was incredibly soggy. Water poured from me. I'd thought before that this river had no waterfalls but it sure had one now. I was it. I must have weighed a hundred kilos. I couldn't wait any longer to get out of there, so I staggered up onto the bank. It was such a relief. I collapsed on the grass. Within a couple of minutes the others had joined me.

But no sooner had we sprawled along the bank, just next to the road, than we heard a vehicle noise, a light purring. It sounded horribly close. "Quick," Homer called, not that we needed to be told. We dived into whatever cover was available: mainly grass and sand along the bank. I found a fallen gum tree that stuck against another tree when it fell, so it wasn't quite lying on the ground. I got behind that, and thought I was fairly well hidden. Then I peered out, hoping to see nothing more ominous than a farm ute.

It was, unfortunately, a lot more ominous. It was another jeep, another of the big green insects that kept crawling into our lives. It held four soldiers, all men. And it stopped at the edge of the water.

I felt sick. I just couldn't take any more of this. I hoped against hope that they were stopping for a drink, but no. They made it obvious they were there for something special. Two took up positions on the other side of the river, the side they'd come from, and the other two drove the jeep slowly across the ford. Once they were over it they got out and found themselves good possies for watching the water.

From the way they peered so intently upstream it was obvious what they wanted. They had their rifles ready. Some genius had worked out our escape route. Right now they were probably rushing soldiers into strategic spots all the way down the river.

I gazed at them anxiously. I wanted so much to hate them. It's easy when you hate someone. You can persuade yourself that anything you do is OK then. Hassle them, pick at them, bully them: no problem, you hate them, it's fair enough, they deserve it. Sometimes at school Fi would say there was no one she hated. It always amazed me when she said that. Come and I, we could both hate, and Robyn too, even though she was so religious.

I wondered if Fi hated now, if she hated these soldiers. I looked at them again, trying to whip myself up into a frenzy of loathing. The two on my side had their backs to me but I could see the other two clearly enough. They could have been a father and son. One was about forty, a small man with a patient, calm face, who kept looking at the flowers as though he was more interested in them. The other was around fifteen. He seemed angry about something. He frowned a lot; well, glared really. I got the feeling he'd shoot a flower, given half a chance.

I couldn't even hate him though. He was in a bad mood, sure, but it was no worse than some of my moods. He looked like Steve, my ex-boyfriend, when he was fighting with with his mum. Or Chris, when the bell went for afternoon school just as he got to the head of the line at the canteen. He even looked like me when Dad blamed me for a fox getting in the chookyard.

It wasn't often we got a chance to look at the enemy soldiers at close range, for a good period of time. Only when we'd been caught and chucked in Stratton Prison. And the more I looked at these two now, the more they reminded me of people I knew.

After all, how can you hate someone you've never met? That's probably the silliest thing there is.

It was already quite late in the afternoon: about three hours before dark, I guessed. Three hours doesn't sound much, but I didn't know if we could stay in our uncomfortable little hiding holes for that long. We were all so wet and tired and cold. Sooner or later someone would sneeze or their leg would cramp up or they'd lose their nerve. It'd be utterly pathetic if we got caught by four ordinary little soldiers, after all we'd done, but it could easily happen.

I tried to put myself in their place. There didn't seem much point, but on the other hand, what else was there to do? It passed the time. If I was them, I'd be thinking, "Well, the chances of us finding them are about one in a hundred. They probably didn't go down the river at all or they probably didn't come this far or they're probably past this point by now or someone else has probably caught them already ... But the boss said stand here and watch, and I'm going to do that, because they're very dangerous and besides, I'll get in huge trouble if they do go past and we miss them."