While I live

C HAPTER 12

It was past ten thirty when we got away. God, how could a week start this badly? A few hours ago I’d been thinking about catching the bus, fattening the calves, why the pressure pump was coming on more often than it should, how much of the Legal Studies assignment I could get done at lunchtime, whether I was still in love with Lee, if we were going to run out of milk for breakfast… Now we raced across paddocks, past the lagoon, heading for the bush and on into the hills, towards the border, not knowing whether Homer was alive or dead, not knowing whether we’d still be alive at the end of the day.

Lee didn’t spare the horses. He seemed to remember the way pretty clearly. Good going, since the first time he’d come up here was at night. At least the trip home had been in daylight.

Once we got off my place we started climbing. I didn’t know this area nearly as well as I knew the Razor’s Edge, and Mount Wombegonoo, which were in the opposite direction. It just wasn’t as nice, wasn’t as interesting, so I hadn’t been here often. Scrub that was green with the winter rain, quite a few patches that had been logged, a mob of about twenty kangaroos thumping away at three-quarter speed, a fox pawing at something in the grass then bolting when he realised two motorbikes were upon him.

We were on an old logging track that I had a feeling would peter out eventually. The problem was that it hadn’t been maintained in a long time and there were fallen trees across it every few hundred metres.

For the two-wheeler this wasn’t so bad, as Lee could usually detour round them through the scrub, even if it meant walking the bike at times, half lifting it at other times. For the four-wheeler it was a different matter. To detour into the bush I had to get a clear path, and sometimes that meant long, difficult treks. The grass was so high in many places that I couldn’t tell whether it was clear or not. I’d charge through the undergrowth, hit another fallen tree (usually part of the one blocking the road) and have to reverse and try another route. One of the cans of fuel was leaking I think, so there were constant petrol fumes that gave me a bit of a headache.

We had three ways to get the four-wheeler past a fallen tree. One was to detour, one was to push the tree off the road, the other was to ride right over the top of it. The trunks were wet and slimy though, and they kept slipping out of our hands when we lifted them, and when I tried to ride over them the big fat wheels tended to slide all the way down the trunks and branches.

Before long my arms were aching. I was tiring fast, and we seemed to be taking forever to reach the border. Lee offered to swap but I didn’t think it was fair: he was the one who’d been up all night.

Then we got a good run of nearly a kilometre and suddenly we were there.

I’d never actually seen the border before. At this stage it was fairly rough. Apparently the highways and other roads were different — it was well marked, as you’d expect. But here it was pretty casual. Our track had almost faded away and was getting hard to follow. But a couple of strands of barbed wire, a splash of paint on trees either side of the path, and we were about to enter the occupied zone.

Apart from a trip to New Zealand during the war, this was the first time I’d left my own country. Except it was still hard for me to think of it as leaving my own country.

Gavin held up the bottom strand of wire and we rolled the bikes through. I had a quick whispered discussion with Lee.

‘How far from here?’

‘Not far at all. If we take the bikes another five minutes, then we better walk.’

‘It’ll be hard with the petrol.’

‘Well, the walk’s not much more than ten, fifteen minutes.’

‘Twenty with the drums,’ I thought.

We got going. Searching my mind, trying to find something that would help me feel better, trying to think of some advantage we might have, all I could come up with was that they mightn’t know of Lee’s existence. If they’d been searching the bush they should have given up by now. It wasn’t much to pin our hopes on, but it would have to do.

The track became little more than a walking path, covered by thick green grass. It sure wasn’t used very much. Time and time again the four-wheeler barely squeezed between the saplings. I had to keep ducking to avoid low branches, and I could feel Gavin behind me doing some fast swerving as several branches nearly wiped him out.

Lee glided to a halt under a big old gum tree and got off the Yamaha. He walked it into the bush and hid it. I got the drums off the back of the Polaris, then took it down the track another thirty metres and pushed it behind a tree. Without being told, Gavin covered it with bracken and branches.

We slung the rifles over our backs. Lee picked up two drums and Gavin and I got one each. I didn’t know how long Gavin would last with his but every bit helped. I glanced at him as we set off. He looked calm but how could any of us be calm, walking into a gully full of killers? I’d rather be getting a family of snakes out of the woodheap.

For the first few minutes we took no great care but then Lee signalled with a finger to his lips that we needed to get quiet. Gavin was falling behind but when I tried to take his drum he snarled at me and I snatched my hand back. I counted my fingers quickly, and he smiled. I felt proud of that — getting a smile out of Gavin was hard work sometimes.

We side-slid down a gully into the bed of an old creek. A little water was running along it. That was good as it helped wash away any noise we made. My arms felt like they were going to drop off. I couldn’t imagine how Gavin was still carrying his drum. Lee, in front, looked as steady and calm as ever. I think he had the leaking can though, as the smell of petrol kept wafting back over me.

The further we went, the slower Lee went. Soon he was stopping every five or ten metres to take a good look ahead. I realised in the middle of this just how quickly and easily I had slipped back into my wartime role. It was like the worries of my parents’ deaths and the financial hassles with the farm, even the really important things like the Legal Studies assignment I was planning to do this same lunchtime, all of it had dropped away. I was back with Lee, on our way to meet Homer, we were out there in the bush against a dangerous enemy, and in a weird sort of way it was comfortable. All my senses were functioning at maximum revs. I was wide awake. Somewhere along the way, during the last year or so, I’d become good at this stuff. Maybe I should join the Army.

While I was congratulating myself on my brilliant military skills I nearly ran into Lee’s back. He was behind a tree and he looked around and frowned when I bumped his petrol can. ‘How about we leave the fuel here and see if we can get a look at the set-up?’ he whispered.

‘OK.’

I pointed to the drums, made a ‘stop’ gesture at Gavin, and mouthed, ‘You stay here, look after the petrol,’ and he nodded calmly. ‘What does he do with his fear?’ I asked myself. Occasionally it showed, but not often.

I knew he would be safe. He mucked around all the time when there was no pressure on, but he wouldn’t do anything stupid in a situation like this. And he’d be happy now that he had something important to do.

Lee and I left the creek and, unslinging our rifles, went a bit higher. I could see that the gully was opening out ahead. We moved carefully through the bush. Lee led me about three-quarters of the way up the ridge. It was steep country but quite bare. I was trying to stay calm and focused but I couldn’t help thinking that it was rare for us to be doing anything like this in broad daylight. Pretty dangerous.

We stopped about a thousand times. If sentries had caught Homer, we had to assume they would be out here somewhere. And probably more of them than before, now that they’d been spooked by Homer’s arrival. On the other hand he could have just walked into a couple of blokes coming back from a party in the nearest town. We didn’t know, but we always had to assume the worst.

At last I caught a glimpse of movement. I grabbed Lee from behind. He just nodded, to show he’d seen it too. We crouched slowly and shuffled into the rocks a bit further. I got up higher and found a friendly boulder, and from behind it realised I was looking down on the whole camp.

It was quite a set-up. There were four buildings that I could see, prefab places that looked like the demountable classrooms we had at school. They hadn’t made much effort to camouflage them. I could see only six soldiers, who were in a mixture of uniforms and T-shirts and jeans. But two of the soldiers were definitely on guard, outside a yellow building. Of the others, one was crouched in front of another building, having a smoke, two, both carrying rifles, were talking to each other at the side of the clearing, and the last was walking away into the bush. Luckily on the other side of the clearing. He too carried his rifle.

I pointed to the building that was guarded and Lee nodded. So that was where Homer and possibly Nick Greene were held. I assumed one of them at least was still alive, or there wouldn’t be any need for guards. So that was the good news.

Now that we were here, looking at the reality of it, my confidence started fading. We couldn’t just shoot these people out of hand. That’d be murder, wouldn’t it? Officially we weren’t at war with them anymore. And anyway, if we did start shooting we’d probably get killed. If there were twenty of them we were way outnumbered.

I slithered back a little and Lee joined me. ‘What do you think?’ I asked him.

‘It’s hard to say. Half of them could be out in the bush. But they’re not very organised. They looked like a mess this morning. Torches rushing around everywhere. Half a dozen guys with rifles could have picked them off easily.’ He looked at me then added, ‘Where do you want to set off the petrol?’

‘Over that way.’ I nodded to the other end, away from where Gavin was waiting. ‘Unless…’

‘Unless what?’

I’d been planning to detonate the petrol some distance off, to start a diversion. But now, looking at the landscape, I had a different idea.

It would be wild and it would be risky, but if it came off it could just reduce the odds a bit.