The Dead of Night (18 page)

He ignored the last part of what I said, and answered my question instead.

"I got him from your tent."

"What? How could you?"

"I was just sneaking in the back of it, to wait for you. You were the only person I felt like talking to, after
what happened on the road. Then the shooting started. Alvin was on the ground, at my feet, so I grabbed him and got out of there."

"Where'd you go?"

"Along the ground. Then I found some cover."

"How? Where?"

"Behind some bodies."

"Behind some bodies?"

"There were four people who'd been sitting together in the eating area. They'd fallen in a row when they were shot, each one leaning on the next one. I hid behind them."

"Oh God."

"I stayed there till the soldiers started coming through the camp. They had a few prisoners. Everyone else was dead. I saw what they were doing to the bodies and I saw what they were doing to the prisoners. So I ran."

"Did they see you?"

Robyn had returned and although we should have been going up the tree we were all too hypnotised by Lee's story.

"Yes, but they couldn't shoot because they would have hit their own soldiers. They weren't very organised. They fired a few dozen rounds in the bush after I was out of the camp area, but I was expecting that and I was dodging round and keeping flat, and using the trees. Last I saw of them they'd started burning tents. They didn't follow me."

"They followed me," Fi said in a small voice.

"Yes, but you're a girl," Lee said grimly. "I saw how they were treating the women they'd caught."

Homer started climbing the tree.

"What happened next?" I asked urgently.

"I just ran and ran. By the time I'd calmed down a bit I didn't know where I was. Eventually I figured out that you might be here, if you'd survived, but then I had to figure out how to get here."

Robyn began to follow Homer up the tree and Fi moved into position to do the same.

"What happened to you back at the firebreak?" I asked.

"Well, I ran like mad when they started shooting at us. When I realised I'd lost you guys I thought I might as well go straight to the camp."

"Thank you for my bear," I said. I gazed at the cliff for a few moments, thinking all kinds of thoughts, wondering how long this wall of rock would stand here and what else it would see and hear. I wished I could write its story, do something lasting, something good. I turned to Fi. "Come on, Fi from Wirrawee. Make like a koala. Make like Alvin."

I slung the dead soldier's rifle across my back and watched the three of them. Homer was now at the top, which was the thick base of the old white tree, because of course it had toppled from the top. Robyn was right behind him. Fi started slowly edging up towards them.

"I told you we should have got some rope," Homer called down.

"Remember that Outward Bound stuff?" Robyn said. "You've got to dig your toes in and use your fingertips."

That was the extent of our knowledge about rock-climbing.

Homer abandoned the safety of the tree and began working his way up the last stretch of cliff. Even from
the bottom I could see the tension in his arms and legs as he searched for holds. His head was sideways and he looked like a gigantic insect crawling up the vertical rockface. We watched nervously, knowing that we would soon have to follow him. It was only a few metres but the cost of failure was pretty high. But then he flung an arm over the top and with a last gigantic effort pulled himself up, rolling out of our sight for a moment before reappearing, standing, at the top, looking down and smiling.

"Piece of cake," he said.

Robyn followed, doing it very quickly, going up in one continuous burst till she too rolled over the top. By then Fi was at the top of the tree and looking up anxiously.

"Come on Fi," I called from the bottom.

Lee started up the tree as Fi began tentatively to reach out and feel for a handhold. Homer and Robyn were like stereo speakers, urging her on. She went very slowly, using the sides of her shoes instead of her toes, and halfway up she froze. I could see her legs shaking. "Come on Fi," we were all calling. "I can't," she cried. "Come on Fi," Robyn said urgently. "The soldiers are coming." They weren't, but it worked. Fi gained another metre with a little scrambling movement, then flung her arm up and grabbed at Robyn's. Luckily she caught it. I hate to think what would nave happened if she hadn't. Even so Robyn had to haul and haul before Fi, hanging like a dead weight, was dragged over the top.

Fi had been brave so many times, shown such
strength, but it seemed like she'd been wiped out by the last twelve hours.

Lee got up quite easily. It was a definite advantage being tall. I was at the last branch by then and watching him. I worked out my route, a bit further to the right than Lee's, and with a big gulp of pure fear I left the security of the tree and started out. The main thing was not to panic. Every time I started getting the wild feelings that I would fall, must certainly fall, I told myself to think brave, to get control of my mind, to be strong. But I found myself getting physically tired. I was hungry, my knee was hurting, and I was taking too long to make the climb, using up my energy. I accelerated a bit, glanced up, and saw Homer's hand outstretched towards me, just within reach.

"I don't need any help," I said crossly.

At that moment I fell. It was so quick, without warning. My fingers all lost their grip simultaneously. I knew I was too far across to catch the tree and I knew quite clearly that I had two choices: to use my hands to brake myself, and rip up my hands doing it, or to go into free fall and break my legs. I used my hands. I was so close to the cliff face that I could deliberately press into it, grabbing at it, scraping against it, using any point of contact possible, knees, toes, chest a few times, and hands, all the way down. I landed at the bottom without ever having reached out-of-control speeds, but I hit heavily, jarred my knee again, and rolled across the ground till I fetched up against a rock. I lay there grimly, hating everything. I didn't dare look at my fingers, I got up and shook the dirt off my clothes, then
walked back to the tree. Angrily I started climbing it again, ignoring the stinging in my hands, the dull pain in my knee, the ache in my back. There were cries of distress above me, the other four leaning over and calling out, like lonely cockatoos. "I'm OK," I muttered, knowing that they couldn't hear me. I got to the top of the dead, white trunk again and paused there for a minute, hugging it, shaking a bit.

"Chuck up the rifle," Homer called. I realised the automatic weapon I had slung across my back was still there. That was the ache in my back. I was lucky the rifle hadn't started firing. I clumsily slipped it off and held it balanced in my hands for a moment, then flung it hard and high up over the top. It only just got there, but Robyn grabbed its butt as it started to fall again, and hauled it up. A minute later she reappeared over to my left.

"Come this way Ellie," she called.

There was an easy ledge over there but it didn't lead anywhere, so none of us had used it. But I saw what they were trying to do. They'd formed a human chain. Lee was holding Robyn and she was dangling over the cliff holding the rifle. I couldn't see who was holding Lee. I edged my way over there and reached up. I could just grab the barrel of the gun.

"Oh Ellie, your poor hands," Robyn said.

"I hope you've unloaded this thing," I said.

"Yes, we have actually. Can you hold on?"

"Yes, go on."

"You're sure?"

"Just do it."

She began to shuffle back, as we both held on grimly.
For a moment she had all my weight but then I was able to use my feet to help her, walking up the last wall of rock. Then Homer and Fi were grabbing me under the armpits, hauling me over the top. I landed on top of Robyn, then crawled off and collapsed by myself, utterly done.

Fi took my right hand and fussed over it. I lifted my head and looked curiously. The hand was shredded and bloody. The fingertips were red raw, all the pads gone, except on the thumb. The left hand looked almost as bad. The more I looked at them, the more they stung.

There was nothing any of us could do, except cry, and so we did that. "Nothing like a good cry," I remember my grandmother saying. We were cold, we were ravenously hungry, we all had aches and bruises and cuts, and above ail we were shocked and desperately unhappy. It was probably only about seven-thirty and' the sun was not vet strong enough to lighten or warm the terrible darkness that had filled us during the night. So we sat there, in under the trees—we were still security conscious—and bawled like little kids. My eyes ran, my nose ran, and when I tried to wipe all the drips away, my hands hurt too much to use them. Fi lay with her head in my lap and cried until my jeans got damp.

Eventually I dried up a bit. I lifted my head and looked around. We were a miserable sight. Robyn had dried blood all over her face, Lee had a swollen eye that was starting to darken. We smelt like we hadn't washed in months. Our clothes were torn and dirty. We'd all lost weight since the invasion, which made our clothes loose and shabby. I looked at Lee. He stood there with
the bush behind him, gazing calmly back at me. Like a lot of tall people he usually stood with his head down a bit, so you could see the back of his neck, the way it arched. He wore a grey T-shirt with a lightning flash across it, and the words "Born to Rule Tour." I knew what was on the back, the name of his favourite band, Impunity. His jeans were gone at the knee and one boot had a lace which had been broken and retied so many times that it was hard to tell which was the bow. As always he wore the T-shirt out, not tucked in. It was torn off the right shoulder, torn again at the heart, and had a hole burnt in it under the word "Rule." The bottom of it was like ribbons, it was so wrecked.

Despite all that, he was so graceful, so dignified, that I fell in love with him completely at that moment, in a way I never had before. I gave him a little weak grin and lifted Fi off my lap.

"Come on guys," I said. "Let's get out of here."

"Did you know that's the most commonly used line in movies?" Lee said. He had his head on one side as he looked at me. I had the uncanny feeling that he knew exactly what I was thinking.

But all I said was "What?"

Lee just shrugged. "That's the most commonly used line in movies. It's used in sixty per cent of movies, or something like that."

He came over and lifted me as the others stirred into action. We limped over to the creek to start the trip I was dreading: the long uncomfortable struggle back upstream, hunched over, with the cold water constantly tugging at our legs. The only good thing—and bad thing—was that we no longer had packs to weigh us
down. I spent quite a lot of the trip taking inventory of the things I'd lost. It was depressing. We'd had so much taken away already; it seemed unfair to keep losing more all the time. Maybe we'd lose everything eventually. Our happiness, our futures, our lives. Maybe we'd lost two out of three of those already. I cried a bit more as we battled our way up the creek into Hell.

The funny thing was that it was still only mid-morning when we straggled into the campsite. It felt like lunchtime at least. Before the invasion our days had hardly started at 9 am. We'd be sitting in a classroom, our hair rumpled, rubbing our eyes and yawning. Now we had been through more—had suffered more—before breakfast than we had a right to expect in a lifetime.

And that was another thing I had to learn, that expectations meant nothing any more. We didn't have a right to expectations. Even the things we took for granted—we couldn't take them for granted because those were expectations too. For one thing it had never crossed my mind that Chris wouldn't be there. That never crossed my mind. But he wasn't there.

At first we didn't get too excited, just tore at food held in both hands while we called out for him. At least, that's what the others did; I felt too sick and my hands hurt too much. I'd thought I was hungry but suddenly I couldn't eat. I sat on a log watching Robyn wolf down baked beans and cheese, Lee get into biscuits and jam, Fi eating an apple and dried fruit, and Homer attacking the muesli. With her mouth still full Robyn went and got the first-aid kit and brought it over to me.

"How are your hands?" she asked.

"All right. I think my knee hurts more."

I'd let my hands trail in the water quite a few times as we'd laboured up the creek, so the gravel and dirt were washed out. Now the skin around my fingertips looked soft and tender, but the pads on the fingers were the dark strawberry red of blood, and little shreds of skin hung off them. Basically I'd sandpapered the pads off. I had gravel rash on both palms, which stung too but didn't look as bad as the fingertips. Robyn smeared cream over all the bloodied bits, then carefully bound each fingertip in gauze and bandages. At the same time she fed me, like a mummy bird with her chick. Although I must have looked pretty silly by the time she finished, sitting there with my eight fingers sticking up in the air, each wrapped neatly in its own little white beanie, I did feel better, especially with some dates and sweet biscuits in me.

"Where do you think Chris might be?" I asked her as she finished wrapping my last finger.

"I haven't got a clue. We've been gone quite a while. I hope he's all right."

"It must have been lonely here alone."

"Yes, but I don't know whether that would worry Chris."

"Mmm, he's a funny guy."

After our meal we started looking for him in earnest. There wasn't far to look, in Hell. We knew he wasn't in the Hermit's Hut because we'd passed that on our way back to the clearing. Homer and Fi checked the path all the way back to Wombegonoo, while the rest of us started searching the bush, in case he'd had an accident. I walked around holding my hands in the air,
feeling useless. But there was no sign of him in the bush. When Homer and Fi got back with the same report from Wombegonoo our fear and tension levels started rising again.

It seemed so cruel, after what we'd been through. But cruel didn't mean anything either; I'd learnt that ages ago.