The Dead of Night (22 page)

We saw our first colonists only two days later. More rain had blown in and we'd retreated to the shearers' quarters for protection, huddling there as the timber creaked and whined and muttered. The rain came in squalls, rattling on the galvanised iron as though we were being roof-rocked. We took it in turns on sentry duty, keeping a twenty-four hour watch, but the weather was so bad that the work parties didn't return. We went and inspected what they'd done: the house was clean and tidy and the beds made. It was all ready for strangers, aliens, to move in and take over. It scared and upset me, trying to imagine these people sleeping in the Holmes' beds, eating in their kitchen, walking their paddocks and sowing their seeds in the Holmes' earth. I supposed that our farm would go the same way soon.

After two days the rain had stopped, though the sky was still grey, the air cold, and the ground wet and muddy. We'd decided to walk to Chris's place again when we got a chance, in case he'd turned up there. So at dusk, and despite the cold rotten weather, we took our gear and marched off across the paddocks. Roads were too dangerous, so early in the evening, but we knew we could bypass Wirrawee and strike Meldon Marsh Road without much trouble, and that would put us close to the Langs.

It was a silent walk for a while. Being cooped up for two more days hadn't improved our tempers. But the open spaces were good: it was nice to be able to breathe again. I felt myself relaxing after the first couple of k's. I held Lee's hand for a while, but it was too hard to walk along in the dark like that; we needed both our hands for balance, after our frequent stumbles. I dropped back and left Lee on his own, and talked to Robyn about movies we'd seen: which ones we liked and which ones we didn't. I had a great longing to see a movie again; to be able to look up at a vast screen in the darkness and watch beautiful people, beautifully dressed, saving clever and romantic things to each other. I supposed that in other parts of the world people were still making these films and other people were still watching them, but it was a hard thing to comprehend.

We skirted around Wirrawee and got onto Meldon Marsh Road. It was now well after ten o'clock and we thought we were safe on the road. It was a relief to be able to walk on it, and we made much better time. But about two k's from Chris's we saw a house with lights on. It was a shock to us; it was the first we knew that power was being reconnected to rural houses. We stopped and looked in silence. It wasn't a welcome sight at all. In one way it should have been comforting: to see something that was so like old times. But life was different now. We were used to being feral animals, used to roaming the dark country at nights, used to running wild in the wild. If the colonists spread through the farmlands, reclaiming them with their lights and electricity and their own form of civilisation, we would be
forced further and further out to the edges, having to skulk in caves and burrows, among the rocks.

Still without a word being said, we moved towards the house. We'd become human moths. The house wasn't one I knew, but it was a comfortable looking place, solid brick, with big wide windows and at least three chimneys. Shade trees grew around it, and a neat garden with brick borders made a geometric pattern at the front. The borders nearly proved my downfall; I trod on one of the bricks and felt a spasm in my knee, which had been free of pain for several days now. But I recovered my balance, and when I tested my knee it felt OK. I caught up with the others, who had bunched behind a tree and were looking towards one of the lit windows. Bad strategy, I thought. A soldier with a gun could wipe them all out in less than a second. I whispered that to them when I got to the tree; they looked startled, but quickly spread out to the cover of other trees.

I went around the eastern side of the house and found a peppercorn tree with wooden slats nailed to it, leading up to a kids' cubby, a treehouse. I scaled the ladder and sat in the first fork. It gave me a dress circle view of the kitchen. I watched grimly. There were three women working in there. They looked quite at home. They were reorganising everything. They had all the jars and plates and saucepans and cans out of the cupboards and spread across the tables and benches. They were wiping things down and putting them away, stopping even now and then to take a closer look at something, or to draw the attention of the others to it. There was a gadget with orange plastic handles made for getting the
lids off jars, and that seemed to fascinate them. I guess they couldn't work out what it was for. They were putting their fingers through the hole in the middle and waving them around, then trying to screw each other's noses off with it. They were laughing a lot. I could just hear their voices through the wall, sounding thin and high-pitched, almost a little nasal. But they looked like they were having a lot of fun; they seemed happy and excited.

I felt such a mixture of feelings, watching them: jealousy, anger, fear, depression. I couldn't bear to see any more: I slipped down from the tree and went and found the others. Then we stole away through the garden and back to the road.

Comparing notes as we walked along, we worked out that there were at least eight adults in the house. I'd been assuming that they'd put one family on each farm, but perhaps they thought we were extravagant, having so much land between so few people. Perhaps they'd build houses all across the Wirrawee valley, till there was one family in each paddock, farming the land intensively. I didn't know how the earth would cope with that. But then, maybe we hadn't been making enough use of it.

We trudged on, each quiet with private thoughts and theories and dreams. It was after midnight when we got to Chris's place. There were no lights on, but we were being terribly careful, in case there were colonists asleep inside. But by then I was sick of tiptoeing. "Let's rock the roof," I suggested, thinking of the rain on the galvanised iron of the shearers' quarters back at Kevin's.
The others looked at me pityingly, but I was in a dangerous mood, fed up with hiding and running and skulking around. "No, let's," I insisted. "What's going to happen? If anyone's in there, they're not going to rush out into the darkness with guns blazing. They wouldn't be that stupid. There's plenty of cover around, so we can get away fast if we have to."

My powers of persuasion were better than I'd realised, because within thirty seconds I'd talked them into it. I wasn't sure that I'd wanted to talk them into it—I'd been half joking—but to turn back now was to lose too much face, I reflected ruefully, picking up all the stones I could carry. We agreed on a place to meet if we got chased, then surrounded the house. At the signal—a long, frighteningly loud "Coooeee" from Homer—I let fly. It was quite exciting. A squadron of possums wearing football boots and wheeling defective supermarket trolleys at high speed might have made as much noise, but they'd have had to work at it. I backed away fast, biting my bottom lip in amazement, and almost biting through it when I tripped over a garden seat. My shins and ankles certainly took a lot of punishment on these night-time excursions. One lone rock, an unexpected afterthought from someone, suddenly clattered across the roof, a full minute after all the others. There was still not a murmur from inside the house. It was impossible that there could be anyone there after that.

We gathered again near the front door and sent Homer to go and look through the kitchen window, after he admitted to throwing the extra rock. "It's too
dark to see much," he grumbled; then, after looking a bit longer, he said "I think it's the same as when we left that message for Chris. I don't think anyone's been here."

And that's the way it was. It was a disheartening discovery. We checked the old piggery where Chris had hidden immediately after the invasion, but there was no sign of life there either. So we gathered around the dusty table in the musty kitchen, feeling tired and unhappy. The rush of excitement from the roof-rocking had quickly gone. We were so upset about Chris, yet so helpless. The only guesses we could make about his whereabouts were depressing ones. I was annoyed with myself that I hadn't thought to ask Mrs Mackenzie and the man in the machinery shed if they knew anything about him. But I'd been too confused and nervous. My only consolation was Robyn's comment that if Chris had been caught and taken to the Showground, the two adults would have mentioned it.

"Well, no news is good news," Fi sighed.

"Honestly, Fi," I snapped, "that's a great help. That must be one of the most stupid expressions ever invented."

Fi looked hurt. It was after one o'clock and we were all tired. Getting cold too.

"There's just nothing more we can do," Homer said. "To tell you the truth, the most likely thing is that he's ... I hate to say this—that he's dead."

We all squawked at Homer in outraged voices. We'd all thought of the possibility, of course, but to talk about it was to commit an obscenity. It was too frightening and horrifying to hear anyone say it out loud.
Perhaps we were scared that our saving it might make it real, might make it happen. I'd already learnt a lot about the power of words.

"Well, what are we going to do?" Lee asked. "We can't stay here."

"Yes we can," Fi said.

"I don't think it's too safe round here," Homer said. "Those colonists are just up the road. We don't know how far they've spread, this side of town. They could be at the Langs' tomorrow."

"But it's so late," Fi said. "And I'm so tired. And cold. I'm so sick of everything." She put her head down on her arms as she sat at the table.

Lee patted her hair sympathetically, but the rest of us were too tired to do anything.

"We could stay here for a few hours," Homer offered. "But we'd have to go again before dawn. I'd rather have a good sleep later than have a lousy sleep now."

There was a silence as we all sat looking at Fi, hoping she'd give in gracefully.

"Oh all right," she said at last, crossly, shaking Lee's hand off and getting up. "Where are we going then?"

"Let's go into Wirrawee," Homer said quickly. "We haven't been there for ages, and we ought to have a look and see what's going on, see if there's anything we can do. If we leave now we'll make it by dawn."

We were too tired to argue. No one had any other ideas anyway. I was quite pleased to go to Wirrawee. I wanted to be as close to civilisation as possible. I didn't want to see Hell for quite a bit longer.

It started raining again ten minutes after we left Chris's. The smart thing to do would have been to
turn around and go back and find a dry shed, but no one even suggested it. I think that having started, we couldn't contemplate making another decision. So we plodded on in silence, getting wetter and wetter. It was very dark but we could stay on the road with no fears of getting caught, so we followed it easily enough. I don't think anyone spoke a word between our departure from Chris's and our arrival in Wirrawee.

We got to the music teacher's house at daybreak. But the grey wet light in the eastern sky was little different to the darkness of the night. Four of us stood shivering in the garden, hiding behind trees, wet and dripping, while Homer searched the house to make sure it was empty. I wondered where he got his energy. He seemed to have more than me, more than anyone. But at last he signalled us in. We squelched inside miserably, found towels and blankets and stripped off in the upstairs bathroom. Homer offered to do guard duty and no one gave him an argument. Robyn and Fi shared one bed and I took another, in the next bedroom. Lee disappeared down the corridor to the end room. I just hoped the house wouldn't get raided while we were all undressed, but there was no sign of anyone having been here since our last visit.

I lay there and as so often happened, having waited all night to get to a bed and get some sleep, now that I was in bed my eyes wouldn't close. I had never felt more awake. The coarse woollen blanket prickled my skin, but in a nice way. It felt rough and primitive. For a long time I couldn't get warm, and I pressed my legs together and huddled further under the blankets/trying to hot up. Eventually the blankets covered me completely. I crossed my arms and put my hands into my armpits. My skin tingled as the blood started to circulate again, until only my feet were still cold. I put the right one on top of the left, willing them to thaw out. At last the warmth, the snugness, the cosiness that I'd been needing for so long, spread through me, till I could relax all over. I lay there, feeling luxurious. Then I heard a whisper.

"Are you awake?"

I popped my head out in shock. I felt like a possum coming out of a tree trunk, and I know my eyes were staring and my hair was all mussed up from the blanket, so I probably looked like a possum too.

It was Lee.

"You look like a caterpillar again."

"Not a possum?"

"Yes, that too. Can I get in with you?"

He was standing there wrapped in a blanket, shivering with cold. His brown eyes looked at me pleadingly. I felt a slow warm burn of excitement, but tried not to show it.

"No!" I said. "I'm only wearing blankets."

"That's what I was hoping. It's all I'm wearing too."

"Lee!"

"Please?"

"No. Well, you can lie on the bed I suppose, but that's all. And don't think," I added as he started quickly hopping over to me, "that you're going to sweet-talk me into anything else."

"But my charm and personality..."

"Yeah, yeah, I know all about that."

He lay beside me with his head resting on his right
arm, looking at me thoughtfully. He had the trace of a smile.

"What are you thinking?" he asked presently.

"Oh." He'd caught me by surprise. It was too exciting having him this close. I was getting hot under the blankets. "I don't think I want to answer that."

"Go on."

"I'll answer part of it. I was wondering why you were smiling."

To my surprise he didn't say anything for quite a while. But the smile had left his face. He looked very serious, like he was in church or something.

"Couldn't you sleep?" I asked him.

"No. I don't sleep so well these days. Not since that night by the cliff."