Tomorrow 7 - The Other Side Of Dawn (6 page)

I walked slowly back. I’ve never been a big fan of practical jokes – they always seem kind of boy-y to me – and I sure wasn’t a big fan of this one. We’d seen enough real explosions in this war – a lot more than Ryan had, I’d guarantee that – and I for one didn’t need any fake ones. We had been through a terrible morning while Ryan sat under a tree getting a sun-tan. We were exhausted, stressed about the past and terrified about the future. I decided then that I didn’t like Ryan much after all.

He wasn’t too bothered though. He didn’t apologise, just proceeded to scare the life out of me again by bashing the orangey-yellow explosive with his fist.

Again nothing happened. Ryan grinned at
Fi
. ‘Does that answer your question?’ he asked.

Fi
shrugged. ‘You could have just told me,’ she said. ‘I’d have believed you.’

‘Oh well,’ Ryan said.
‘Nothing like seeing it with your own eyes.
It gets hot quickly is
all.
’

‘So does anything make it go off?’ Kevin asked.

Of all of us Kevin was the one most into scientific stuff, and he was getting interested in Ryan’s demonstration.

‘Of course something makes it go off,’ Homer said. ‘It’s a bomb, isn’t it?’

Ryan dived into the pack again and pulled out something I did recognise. It was a roll of fuse wire, fifty metres long at least, and with it came a box of what could have been fifty silver .303 shells, but weren’t.

Plain detonators look a lot like .303 shells. I’d last seen plain detonators when Homer and I left some behind in the ship we destroyed in Cobbler’s Bay.

Ryan also had new watches for all of us, and cigarette lighters that were like those trick candles for birthday cakes: the ones that don’t blow out,
no
matter what you do. These lighters kept their flame even when we blew hard on them. We had a bit of fun playing with them and the watches.

His last little treasure was something I hadn’t seen before, but as soon as I picked it up I knew what it was: a pair of special pliers for handling explosives. Metal on one side of the jaws and plastic on the other, so you couldn’t accidentally strike a spark by having metal against metal.

They would have come in handy for our attack on Cobbler’s Bay.

Those pliers reminded me again that even plastic explosive was still explosive. Maybe you could safely bash the daylights out of it with a baseball bat. But at the end of the day it was designed to blow big targets into shreds that looked like tissues after they’d been through a washing machine.

For the next hour Ryan gave us an intensive course in
guerilla
fighting. I have to admit, he knew his stuff. It wasn’t just technical information about how to use plastic explosives and grenades. It was more general: tactics and camouflage, and overall cunning. He went on and on about something called the
Pimlott
Principles. The only problem with the
Pimlott
Principles was that the guy who invented them had been killed by a hand grenade he was playing around with in his own home, in 1997. I wish Ryan hadn’t told us that.

Anyway, the
Pimlott
Principles are that first you achieve surprise, then you build momentum and keep the enemy off-balance, and you always go for objectives that can be achieved. You have to concentrate on the enemy’s centre of gravity.

‘What is their centre of gravity?’
Fi
wanted to know.

‘Cavendish.’

‘Cavendish?’

‘
Yes,
and the transport system around Cavendish. It’s the hub of a rail and road network, as well as being the biggest industrial centre in the state. We’ve bombed it but without a lot of success. Their air cover’s too strong. We lose too many aircraft.’

‘I’ve never been to Cavendish,’ I said.

It turned out none of us had.

‘Well, I believe it’s a nice place,’ Ryan said. ‘I recommend you pay it a visit.’

After the hours of instruction Ryan finally got around to asking the big question. I suppose by then it had been established that we’d do it. We were all taking it for granted. So I got up as soon as he popped the question. I couldn’t be bothered getting into that discussion. ‘I’m going to check on the kids,’ I said. ‘They’ve been there a long time. If you’re taking a vote you can put me down as a “Yes”.’

As I walked away I could hear them start up. ‘How long do you think we’d have to do it for?’
Fi
asked. ‘Would you come and get us if we got hurt?’ Kevin asked.

That was all I heard. I was pretty impressed by Kevin’s question though, and wondered what the answer had been. Then I realised that if Ryan said ‘Yes’, it still wouldn’t mean anything. How could we trust them to come and get us in an emergency? They might be dealing with other, bigger emergencies of their own. They mightn’t have any aircraft available. They mightn’t think we were worth the trouble.
Again.

All the same, I was curious to know his answer.

The kids were bored and restless and keen to come back. I gave them a bag of Jelly Bellies I’d brought from Ryan’s supplies, admired their stories and drawings, and convinced them to stay a little longer.

I didn’t hang around for long talking to them though, because I suddenly realised I had to change my vote.

‘I’m voting “No” after all,’ I said.

‘What?’ Ryan said, staring at me angrily. ‘What the hell are you on about?’

‘I can make it “Yes” again,’ I said. ‘No worries. There’s just one little condition.’

‘What?’ he said.

The others were listening with interest.

‘You’ll have to take the
ferals
with you.’

‘The
ferals
?’ he asked.

‘The kids.
Gavin and the other three.’

‘No way,’ he said, looking horrified. ‘I can’t do that.’

‘Well, we can’t go out and harass the enemy if we’re
baby-sitting
a bunch of children,’ I said, glad that the kids weren’t close enough to hear me describe them like that. ‘And we can’t leave them behind.’

‘There must be something else you can do,’ he said. ‘Take them to a safe place somewhere.’

‘You don’t know this area too well, do you?’ I said. ‘There’s nowhere safe any more. This morning proved that.’

He sat there thinking. ‘I agree they’re too young to leave alone,’ he said after a while. ‘But I can’t possibly take them back.’

‘Why not?’

He didn’t answer that, just sat there a bit longer. Suddenly he said: ‘Look, you’re not going to like this, but how would it be if they surrendered to the authorities? If they waited a day or two until I was well gone and you were safely out of the area? I don’t think it’d do any harm. They probably wouldn’t get asked too many questions. People would assume they’re just kids who’ve been living rough. And they won’t be prisoners for very long, because the peace
settlement’ll
come before they know it.’

I couldn’t believe my ears. Ask Gavin to surrender? I could just picture his face when we told him.

I searched for the words to explain to Ryan why they couldn’t surrender. Not after all they’d been through. And they wouldn’t obey us if we told them to anyway.

But I couldn’t find the words, so in the end I just said: ‘Look, you take them in the chopper, or there are no deals. It’s as simple as that.’

Before he could say anything else I added: ‘It’ll be hard enough for us to get them into the helicopter, believe me. It’ll take all the influence we’ve got, just to achieve that.’

‘That’s exactly right,’ Homer said.

I was relieved when Homer spoke, because no-one else had said anything and I didn’t know if they were going to support me.

Ryan just shook his head again. ‘There’s got to be another solution,’ he said. ‘Taking them in the chopper is simply not on.’

After a long silence from us he added: ‘Let’s leave it for a while. We’ll come back to it later.’

‘It’s impossible for us to help you in any way unless you take them,’ I said firmly.

‘I can’t!’ he said. He almost wailed it.
‘Sweet Mary!
You don’t know what you’re asking.’

I pressed my lips together, folded my arms, and refused to say any more.

He tried reason then.

‘The helicopter takes me straight from here to a base behind enemy lines,’ he said. ‘I’m there fifteen hours and then off again, to meet another group like yours. Put yourself in my position. How can I do anything with a bunch of kids?’

‘There must be people going backwards and forwards to New Zealand all the time,’ I guessed. ‘You can send them on one of those flights.’

‘Those flights are always packed to the gunwales.’

‘They’re only little kids. They don’t take up much space.’

Ryan’s shoulders slumped and he said: ‘Colonel Finley’s going to kill me.’

Now no-one said anything, and I guess Ryan realised he was on his own. As a matter of fact I didn’t envy him a trip in a helicopter with that bunch of monkeys. They’d probably hijack it and make him fly to Disneyland.

The meeting seemed to be over so I went back to get the kids. When I saw them sitting there with their drawing and colouring in, what I’d done suddenly hit me. I’d just arranged to send away these little ankle-biters, and what shocked me was that I’d gotten so fond of them I didn’t know how I was going to survive without them. I stood staring at Jack and Gavin in amazement, till Casey looked up and said: ‘
What’s
wrong, Ellie?’

‘Nothing,’ I mumbled.

‘Has that man finished yet?’

‘Yes. Yes, you go back there. I’ll be along in a minute. I’m just going to the toilet. Don’t pig out on all the chocolate, OK?’

Before they went though they made me admire their artwork.
Even the promise of chocolate wasn’t enough to stop them wanting praise and attention. To make matters worse Casey kissed me and put her arm around my neck before running off to catch up with the others.

After she’d gone I sat there feeling like I’d been rammed in the guts by a boar with a blowtorch up his backside. How had this happened? How had I become so caught up in the lives of these little tackers? One minute they’d been a hopeless nuisance, marching off on their own, getting lost, causing
Darina’s
death; the next they had wound fifty metres of baling twine around my heart and pulled it so tight that I wasn’t sure I could survive the pain of losing them. I had an intense desire to rush back to Ryan and say, ‘Look, I’ve changed my mind again, sorry, but the
kids’ll
have to stay, and we’ll make other arrangements’.

I knew I couldn’t do that though. A little bit of it was my pride, but most of it was knowing that the kids would be better off safe in New Zealand – safe for the first time in over a year. I knew for the sake of the war I had to do this.

Another bloody sacrifice.
Sacrifices suck. But you don’t achieve anything without a sacrifice. Nothing’s gained unless you give something up. According to Ryan we were on the brink of bringing this horrible war to an end. If that meant letting go of the kids for a while, then I had to bite back my feelings and say goodbye.

And the cold harsh reality was that with Hell lost to us there was nowhere safe we could hide them.

I looked at the scrub without seeing it. My mind was a mess. If I’d sat in the middle of a room with speakers all around, one playing Power Without Glory, one playing Beethoven, one Slim Dusty, and one the Stratton Municipal Brass Band performing ‘Advance Australia Fair’, then I couldn’t have been more confused.

Sometimes looking at the bush, sensing its strength, knowing how little it cared about the stupid squabbles we humans got caught in, helped me cope with the chaos of this war. Not this time though. The speakers in my head were going at maximum decibels. They were playing the howl of the falling woman, the voices of the feral kids, the explosion that killed Robyn, the last words my parents said to me, Corrie’s cry when she saw her house destroyed, the sounds of the gunshots when I pulled the trigger in the barracks at the airfield, the cellophane-crackling of the flames in the barn the night when Lee betrayed me. I couldn’t sit still, couldn’t get my mind to be peaceful. An enemy patrol could have marched past with guns ready, and I might have nodded ‘G’day’, but I don’t think I would have noticed them.

It was all very well for Ryan to drop in on us for twenty-four hours and announce that we had to become full-time
guerillas
. It was easy for him. He’d get plucked out of here again early tomorrow morning. If the war did end in a matter of weeks you could be sure he’d be all right. He’d be safe. But us: we had every chance of being cold corpses in our graves by the time the last shot was fired. What Colonel Finley and Ryan were asking us to do was incredibly bloody dangerous.

If the war did end,
Ryan’d
be somewhere close to a fridge, and you could guarantee the fridge would be full of champagne. And Ryan would have a corkscrew. He might drink a toast to us, as our bodies rotted away somewhere in Cavendish, but that was about all we could expect.

Then I remembered you don’t need corkscrews to open champagne. I gave up then.
Seemed like my brain was rotting away already.

Nothing in the war amazed me more than the reaction of our four
ferals
when we told them they had to go with Ryan. Basically they went off their heads. Natalie sobbed and sobbed, and clung to
Fi
so hard I think she left bruises. Casey lost all her colour and turned away. She walked across to a tree trunk and leaned against it, facing into it. Her good arm went around her back as though she were hugging herself. Jack sank into a little heap on the ground. He rocked backwards and forwards, whimpering like a baby.

Gavin, he was the biggest surprise. He exploded. He ran around the clearing then grabbed a branch that was twice his size and ran straight at Homer like he wanted to kill him, using the branch as a battering ram. If Homer had stood still I think the branch would have gone right through him. Homer at least had the sense to jump aside, but Gavin just gave a little cry of frustration and tried to turn around and have another go. It didn’t work, because the branch stuck between two trees and he couldn’t get it out without stopping and doing it patiently. He wasn’t in the mood for that. He let it go and headed for the edge of the clearing, where we had piles of stuff sitting: Ryan’s pack, and more food, weapons, and bits of clothing. Before we realised what he was up to he started kicking all this stuff around like he’d gone mad. I was upset about our stuff, and then suddenly terrified about the plastic explosive. Sure the explosive was tough and all, but that tough? I rushed towards Gavin but Ryan beat me to it, grabbing him and swinging him off his feet before I’d got halfway.