While I live

CHAPTER 13

It took forever to get organised. We had to be so careful. On the one hand there was a sense of urgency, because every time I looked at the campsite I felt they were getting busier. In particular there was more and more movement around the yellow building where we assumed Homer and the Greene guy were held. I couldn’t work out what was going on, but I was getting bad vibes. As soldiers went in and out I imagined, or sensed, that they were acting cocky and aggressive. Kind of high-powered. Around the rest of the camp they seemed pretty lazy.

Then at about two o’clock a vehicle came in and parked quite close to the building. I had the feeling that it was going to be involved with Homer and Nick Greene in some way. My hunch was that it was going to take at least one of them away. I didn’t have any evidence for that. Just the way it was placed I guess, and the way the driver, when he got out, talked to a couple of soldiers, with a lot of gesturing at the demountable.

The ute was a funny little green four wheel drive, a Suzuki, with a tray back. For a moment I got the sick idea that maybe it was there to take away a couple of bodies but I shook my head fast to get rid of that one. I couldn’t let myself think in those terms.

The car’s arrival showed at least one thing though, that there must be a driveable track going out to the north-west. I didn’t know if that information would be any use to us but I filed it in the back of my mind.

We spent nearly two hours watching to see what they were doing in the way of sentries. Boy, did that bring back memories of the war. Already, in the months since it had finished, I’d more or less forgotten these long, boring but tense periods of time. They were boring because you couldn’t move, you just stayed hidden in your spot, watching and listening and getting thirsty and hungry, and they were tense because your life was on the line and at any moment there could be a disaster. I think only people who have been there can understand what it’s like. From a distance I suppose war can seem exciting, but for every five minutes of wild head-spinning, gut-churning, nerve-charging action there’s a hundred hours of hard slogging and tedious work.

Anyway, as far as I could tell there was no real system of sentries. Instead there seemed to be guys out in the bush wandering around with their rifles, each with his own area to cover. Some were dangerous and some were slack. For example, some came into the campsite to talk to their mates and have a smoke, until the guy in charge pointed them back into the bush. But there were times when a whole large area would be unpatrolled for more than twenty minutes, even half an hour. It wasn’t much of a window of opportunity. But it was all we had.

At last I signalled to Lee that we should sneak out. It was hard to move for the first few minutes — I was so sore and cramped from being in the one spot. But I knew we couldn’t leave Gavin any longer.

When we got to the creek bed I couldn’t see him for a minute but then he dropped from a branch right above my head. Gave me a hell of a shock. No matter how long I was caught up in this fighting stuff I seemed to have trouble remembering a few basic rules, one of which was that you need to look above the level of your own eyes. I wished I could remember it. My chances of staying alive would increase quite a bit if I did.

I explained to the boys what I had in mind. They looked doubtful but I guess neither of them had any better ideas, because they didn’t say anything.

It meant using Gavin, which I didn’t like as a matter of principle, but it’s funny how when you’re desperate and everything’s on the line principles can fade fast from your memory. Of course he was happy to be involved, even if he wasn’t confident about my plan. I think he was too lonely and even scared to be on his own for hours more. He figured that being in the attack had to be better than spending more time alone. I wasn’t so sure I agreed, but we were fresh out of choices.

We had to do two trips with the drums. We left the leaking one till last, to cut the smell factor down. They really were too heavy for Gavin, and the ground was getting steeper, so Lee and I took one each.

It was an excruciating little journey. The trouble was, we couldn’t just move on a hundred metres, have a look round, and move on again. We had to go from one hiding place to another. Gavin was quite useful, because we could send him ahead to check that the way was clear. It was his job to find each new hiding place. And in the bush, in daylight, there aren’t actually a lot of hiding places for three people and two drums of petrol.

He did a pretty good job though. A couple of times he had us in situations where we really didn’t have enough cover. One was a hollow in the ground where we were expected to lie down and somehow be out of sight, and the other was a hollow tree that barely had enough room for him, let alone us two as well. But I think we were able to convey to him that we didn’t appreciate being turned into easy targets, and he soon got the message.

A hundred metres from the point I wanted to reach we holed up between a couple of grass trees. They were a bit prickly, but it was a good spot to wait. From there Lee could begin his journey to the other side of the gully, taking the drums, while Gavin and I went back to the gully to get the other two.

I had to take a short rest back there. I seemed to have no energy left. I wanted to get to Homer as soon as possible but I’d had no food, no water, and we’d been on the go all day. Gavin beckoned me down the creek bed a bit further and showed me a pool the size of a table. The water seemed clear enough and I drank it like a dog, head down and bum up, lapping away till I could feel it washing against my insides.

If the first trip had been tough the second was a nightmare. I knew it would be of course. Maybe that’s why I felt so stuffed before we started. But even so. Again I got Gavin to range on ahead but this time I had to carry both the drums, with a rifle across my back that got heavier with each step. At least one of the drums felt only half full now. I wondered if Lee had taken both his drums together, like he’d planned, or whether he’d given up and done them one by one.

And then suddenly we were in trouble. I’d just joined Gavin between a couple of smallish boulders, neither of which offered much cover. I could see the problem though. There wasn’t anywhere else for quite a way. But just as I got to him I heard footsteps coming towards us, at a slightly higher level.

They sounded like they were about fifty metres away. I tapped Gavin on the shoulder and gestured to him to be quiet. He looked up at me, anxiously, but with an expression of… I don’t know what exactly, but he didn’t take his eyes off me for the next few minutes. The steps got slowly closer and closer. I was sweating, feeling like a trapped fox, about to gnaw my leg off so I could escape. I knew there was no-one to defend us here. International law didn’t stretch this far into the bush.

I shuffled around to get my rifle off my back. God, if I had to fire it here, there would be hell to pay. I’d probably be signing the death warrants of Homer and the Greene guy. And probably Lee’s as well. But what else could I do? If he found us, if we let him capture us, that’d probably result in death warrants all round.

I had to manoeuvre the rifle around Gavin’s head. There wasn’t much room. The steps were so close and somehow the sounds were getting magnified in my head. I shifted my position slightly. I couldn’t work the bolt on the rifle as it would make too much noise. Still, I’d have a moment. He’d be so shocked that he’d take a second or two to react, surely?

He was right at the rocks. He stopped. It was like he knew we were there, just a metre away now. He’d lean forward, turn his head slightly to the right and see us. That’d be the end. I could imagine it so clearly. I even knew what his face would look like. His shocked hard face, the face of a killer. I raised the rifle another few inches. What was he doing? Why the delay? Was he trying to torture us? I heard a funny noise. A gushing of water, quite a strong stream. A pungent smell drifted into the space between the rocks. At the same time a bubbling darkish pool started to spread towards Gavin’s feet.

Any other time I might have got the giggles. My eyes locked on to Gavin’s. Luckily we were both too scared to laugh. Then I started to feel revolted by the smell. Working on a farm, you see everything, you smell everything, you get used to anything, but somehow this really made me feel disgusted.

Maybe it wiped out the smell of the petrol for him though. Maybe he didn’t have much sense of smell. Who knows? They say kids have a stronger sense of smell than adults.

The gushing stopped. I distinctly heard his zipper go up. That’s how close he was. Then the footsteps started again and he went on his way.

Gavin, with a mixture of joke disgust and real disgust, showed me how the urine had reached his shoe and wet the side of it. I made a face then put my finger to my lips. We still weren’t safe from this guy, not by a big margin.

But he didn’t come back. After about fifteen minutes we crawled out, looking around like wombats sniffing the evening air, and set off again. I hoped Lee wasn’t getting too worried. We hadn’t worked out what to do if he got no signal from me. We should have. We already had enough problems.

It was another fifteen minutes before we got to the grass trees. And as we got the pair of drums into place, we started to lose control of the situation. It was like we’d triggered trouble. We hadn’t of course, it was just coincidence, but I’ve never been too sure about this coincidence thing. My friend Robyn used to have some joke about coincidence being God’s way of telling you to wake up. Except I don’t think Robyn saw it as a joke. She was pretty religious. Maybe it wasn’t a joke.

In this case though, it was more likely to be the devil telling us to wake up. Because suddenly it looked like they were going to do something with Homer and the other guy. The man in charge strode out of one hut, yelled a few orders, and the next minute half a dozen soldiers had lined up in a little squad in the middle of the clearing. They did it pretty efficiently too. I wasn’t wildly happy about that. I’d almost been forgetting that they were in some way members of a military force. I’d been trying to convince myself that they were slack but they didn’t look slack while this guy was in charge.

They had their rifles too. I was even less happy about that.

The way they kept looking at the hut where we thought Homer was held made me certain this activity was aimed at him: him, Nick Greene, or both. Then the boss started in on a speech, pointing at the yellow hut from time to time. The vibe was not good. Things were getting scary. I had a sour taste in my mouth, a sour smell in my nostrils.

At this point I decided we’d better go into action quick, even though I felt far from ready. I hoped the man in charge was making a long speech. I waved a quick goodbye to Gavin and started working my way around towards the back of Homer’s building. ‘This could get ugly,’ I thought as I went. ‘We’re relying too much on luck here.’

A couple of times I had no cover at all and had to dash across open ground: fifteen, twenty metres. In a way the group of soldiers on the other side, even if they’d forced me to move too early, were doing me a favour. It was like the parade ground had soaked up seven people. It had become the centre of gravity for this little area — all the energy was focused on it — and that somehow gave me more freedom to operate around the boundaries of the campsite.

I didn’t know how long this mob had been camped there but it was quite a while, because they’d cleaned out all the sticks and bark for a long distance around. That would have been for their cooking fires. I knew what it was like. The first week it’s so easy — you just grab kindling with one hand and firewood with the other and you hardly have to move from where you’re sitting. The second week you find yourself walking fifty metres to get it. A week or two later you’re scouring the bush at such a distance that by the time you get back the fire’s gone out.

So yes, these guys had been here months I’d say. That was great for us because it meant we could sneak around more easily, making very little noise. And at the back of the yellow demountable the ground was so bare — well, except for a few rocks — that it was like walking on the asphalt playground at school.

All the same, I was pretty happy to arrive at the twisted old gum tree behind the hut, which Lee and I had agreed was my target. I wished I could have leaned against it for a moment to get my breath back, slow my breathing, and thank my lucky stars. No hope of that though. I picked up a rock, ready to lob it through the one little window in the rear wall of the demountable. I signalled to Gavin, then to Lee, with a quick wave. The idea was that they would be watching for the signal. I just hoped with ginormously great fervour that they were doing exactly that.

Everything seemed to stop for the next minute. My heart included. I could hear the voice of the commanding officer guy still, but I didn’t see anyone. The breeze stopped, the leaves on the trees were still, the sun hung frozen in the cold sky. Then it began. I saw Gavin’s side first. A flash of fire through the bushes, then a second flash. I don’t know how he got them so close together. I grabbed a quick look at Lee’s side. Yes, same thing there.

I couldn’t stand around waiting for the full effect. I had to move, and now. I moved.

There was a whoosh from up on Gavin’s hill and the first yell from the other side of the building. I chucked the rock straight through the window. It made some noise but not enough to be heard over the noise from the petrol drums. I grabbed the windowsill, hauled myself up, feeling the broken glass splinter my hands, and called, ‘Homer, Homer, quick.’

It was a huge relief to hear his voice. ‘No good, Ellie, Nick’s too weak to get out the window.’

Oh shit. I’d never thought of that. Oh shit. Now what? I couldn’t believe it. I looked around, desperate. Nothing. But at the front of the building was that funny little Suzuki-type vehicle. Well, if I couldn’t use that in some way, we were sunk. We were dead. Half unconsciously I heard the roar of flames from the hillsides and even the ‘bong, bong’ noise of one of the drums as it bounced down to the bottom of the slope. I couldn’t have much time before they realised it was all just a big distraction from the main event. I was the main event and I didn’t want to be.

I ran to the car. Thank God the keys were in it. What was I to do? I yelled through the wall: ‘Stand back, Homer, I’m going to ram it.’ He shouted something but I couldn’t hear. I was already racing back to the car. I started it, swung it around, reversed a bit, then drove hard at the wall. It felt weird. I was only in first gear but I was going, I don’t know, between twenty and thirty maybe. The building gave a kind of lurch. The car bounced off the wall, and came to rest parallel to the hut.

I’d managed to open a split right down the wall. It didn’t look nearly enough for a person to get through. I jumped out and ran to it. I could see Homer’s dark skin through the gap. From the other side of the building the shooting started. If I’d been scared before I was petrified now. It reminded me too strongly of the shots I’d heard not long ago, the shots that killed my parents. I got the shakes. I glanced into the back of the Suzuki. Just the usual junk you’d find in any four wheel drive. A length of chain. Could I do something with that? My hands seemed like they wouldn’t pick up anything. I had two goes before I could grab it. I dragged it out. I dropped the big link at one end, over the towbar, and carried the rest of the chain to the split. I was trying to calm myself. I know that the more you rush the more mistakes you make, but sometimes it’s just too hard to stay steady. I yelled to Homer, ‘Can you put this over something?’ and shoved the other end of the chain at him.

He yelled back, ‘Yeah, the tap.’

‘The tap?’ I thought. ‘God, I don’t know whether that’ll be strong enough to hold it.’

But there was no time for a debate. However there had to be time to wait till he did it. It would be hopeless if I took off in the car and he hadn’t secured the chain.

That was the longest wait of my life. It had to be at least fifteen seconds. Maybe even twenty. Then I heard Homer: ‘Go! Go!’

I sprinted to the driver’s seat, threw myself in, turned the wheel hard, and tried to find the restraint to go forward slowly, not to take off at fifty k’s an hour. I compromised. Probably got up to twenty pretty quickly. In my mirror I could see the split widening, opening, but at the same time there was a sudden mangling and twisting of the pipe going up the outside wall and into the demountable. It twisted and writhed like a snake on an electric fence. Then a jet of water shot up. I assume it was gravity fed, but it must have come from a high position to get pressure like that. It was stronger than we got at home. It was stronger than the fountain at the Stratton Mall. Stronger than a squeezed pimple.

I stopped as the roof of the building started to fold inwards and upwards at the same time. Lucky these demountables were made from recycled aluminium drink cans. I jumped out of the driver’s seat then jumped straight back in when I saw a man staggering through the crack. I was hoping they’d only need me for driving. I glimpsed Homer’s face in the darkness behind him. I remembered the chain, and got out again. I raced around to the rear and yanked it off the towbar. Now Homer was scraping out through the wall too and suddenly both of them were hurrying towards the little four wheel drive. The other guy looked pretty weak and skinny though, and Homer had to help him. The Suzuki was a two door with just a front seat. Luckily it was a bench seat.

It was so hard to hold the car there as Nick Greene started getting in. All my instincts screamed at me: ‘Hit it! Take off! Get out of here.’ I felt the Suzuki creeping forward as though it had a mind of its own, even if my foot was on the accelerator. Nick was in now and crowding close to me. He smelt terrible. Absolutely terrible. Overpoweringly foully awful. I tried not to show how disgusted I felt. Homer was half in the car and that was enough for me. I took off.

‘Jesus,’ I heard Homer yell, but I didn’t care. He could look after himself. He was the one who’d been stupid enough to get caught in the first place.

I swung the little car round in a turn so tight that two wheels left the ground. I felt us rocking wildly. Nick clutched my arm, which didn’t help. We landed on the ground again and finished the tight skidding turn. Now I was heading more or less in the direction I wanted to go. The car was still rocking from the violence of the turn but I hit the accelerator anyway. Out of the corner of my eye I realised Homer was still not completely inside. Maybe I had been a bit hard on him. Then I stopped thinking about him as I heard a bang from the back and felt the little car go up and down. I glanced in the mirror and nearly let go of the wheel in horror. A soldier had just jumped on the tray. I’ll never forget that face in the mirror. I’ve never seen anything so ugly and frightening. I don’t know where he’d come from. I thought they were all around the other side, dealing with the rolling drums and the fires we’d started. This guy had a rifle and he was already raising it. He had amazing balance. His feet were well apart, but the way we were rocking wasn’t helping him.

We were sitting targets, literally. For the soldier, it’d be easier than shooting those little tin ducks at the Show.

I did the obvious thing and slammed on the brakes. What happened next was maybe the most amazing thing I’d seen since the war started. He fell forward, crash-landing on the tray, and shot himself. I didn’t realise for a few moments. I heard the rifle go off, and I shrunk down in the seat as though that would somehow protect me. Then I heard a wild, horrible scream from the back. I realised it was him. I pressed down hard on the accelerator. The Suzuki took off like a rabbit from a Rottweiler and aimed at the faint track I could see ahead. It wasn’t really a track, but I could just follow the wheel marks from where the Suzuki had driven in.

At the same time I wanted to see whatever was happening behind us, but it was difficult to do that and drive. In the wing mirror I did see the lines of fire burning quite strongly down one side of the gully. I couldn’t see the other side. I just had to hope Lee and Gavin had gotten out of there, but men were running up and down the hill with buckets of water. In the rear vision mirror I got a glimpse of at least three soldiers coming after us. It seemed like it had taken them that long to realise anything was happening on this side of the building. One of them had just fired — he was still on one knee and I saw him take his eye away to have a look at the result. I even saw the little puff of smoke drifting upwards. I hadn’t been aware of any shots. I also had a glimpse of the arm of the man on the back tray of the Suzuki. He was waving to his mates, a weak little salute. It struck me that in a way he was now on our side. They’d be reluctant to shoot if they thought they’d hit him. He was our accidental human shield.

It was time for some creative driving. There was so little room to zigzag but I had no choice. I ran the four wheel drive up the side of the gully to the left then swung it back to the right. There was a scream from the back. I hoped he wasn’t the kind of person who got seasick. I swerved around a huge log and went up the left-hand side again, but not as far. Everything depended on my being unpredictable. Nick was falling against me and I had to shove him off. The screaming from the back was louder than the car, louder than my heartbeat even. I actually saw a branch shot from a tree to my left, about a metre away. It wasn’t a big branch, but it was just above the height of the vehicle, and it was unnerving to see the explosion of splinters and dust as it started to fall. I swung the wheel hard to the right and down the hill we went again, almost straight down. Up the other side and we hit a rock that I hadn’t seen. We hit it so hard it jarred the steering wheel out of my hands.

I grabbed the wheel again and spun it round. I could see the end of the gully now. There was a clear track for fifty metres and I zigzagged along that. I was hoping for an intersection with the track Lee and I had followed on our motorbikes earlier. Trouble was, it had been a dying track. It had been fading quite some way back. But I saw a gap in the trees that could have led to it, so I raced straight for it, for the dark patch. We went flat out, maybe fifty, sixty k’s an hour, and then yes, onto a corrugated old logging road, and we were in the bush.

I felt good.

The good feelings lasted all of twenty seconds, till the road ran out again. We were suddenly facing a wall of new growth timber.

I hit the brakes. I said to Nick, ‘Can you walk for a bit?’

‘I think so,’ he said. He had a nice voice. I left him to think about that while I jumped out. It was good to get away from the smell.

I took a look at the guy in the tray. One look was enough. He was in serious trouble. Blood was smeared everywhere. It was bright red and it was literally smeared, like someone had taken a rough old paintbrush and pushed it around on the aluminium tray. His face was completely drained of colour. His eyes were closed. I thought he was dying, or already dead. I took his rifle and chucked it across to Homer.

‘Maybe we should try to stay with the vehicle,’ he said, ripping an ammunition pouch from the man’s belt.

I knew what he meant. If we could drive further we would have a better chance.

‘There’s a gap,’ he said, nodding at the trees up higher. ‘Might be a track.’

I hesitated. ‘All right,’ I said. Making a face I dropped the back of the tray and pulled the bloke out by his feet and let him fall to the ground. He made a kind of groaning noise as he fell, so he wasn’t dead, but I think he was pretty deeply unconscious. As he rolled a couple of metres down the track I caught a glimpse of some dark and light brown intestines or organs coming out through a hole in his stomach. I felt as though my own intestines were about to come out, through my mouth. My stomach rolled over like a heavy gym mat.

I threw myself into the driver’s seat again and drove up to the gap, through the grass. It seemed like a long trip, and a rough and wild one. There were all kinds of hazards in the grass: logs, rocks, holes. It was like driving over twenty speed bumps every hundred metres, and doing it way too fast. As I got close to the gap in the trees Homer yelled out. His voice was muffled for a moment because he was turned right around, looking through the window behind us, but then as he swung back in my direction I got the full force of his voice. ‘There they are, just down the hill. They’re firing already — shit!’

The engine had stopped dead. Just when the gap was getting so close. Another thirty metres and we’d have been in the cover of the bush. I’d never had an engine cut out like that before. I realised it had to be a bullet through the motor. Nothing could be done about that. I threw open the door and piled out, trusting that Homer and Nick Greene were doing the same on their side. Putting my head down I started the sprint for the trees but realised even as I took my first step that I couldn’t desert Nick, much as I was tempted to. I went round to him. Homer was already helping him, with an arm round his shoulders. He’s a big boy, Homer, but he can be gentle when he wants to, which is about once every three years.

The bullets were whining past, mostly to our left, I think. Nick was panting, trying to walk and not doing too well. I think it was fear as much as physical weakness. I grabbed him around the waist and we half carried him. We got fifteen excruciating metres, then twenty. You could hear the bullets moving in as the soldiers adjusted their aim. Then one twanged by me so close I actually felt the heat from it on my cheek. I put my spare hand up to my face, expecting to feel a burn. Nick twitched and half staggered forward and I was sure he’d been hit. We were into the shadow of the trees. A bullet thwacked a trunk ahead of me and the whole tree trembled. We dragged Nick those last couple of metres. We were in cover. Very temporary cover unfortunately. But we’d bought a minute or so. I turned at once to Nick. I grabbed him by the shoulders, almost shook him.

‘Are you OK?’

He nodded and gulped. His Adam’s apple was jumping like a lamb on a spring evening. I still wasn’t convinced. ‘You didn’t get hit?’

‘No, no.’

‘Well,’ I thought, ‘he ought to know.’

There was no time to carry out a medical examination. We had to turn our attention to other matters. Namely, how to outrun fit strong soldiers when we were half exhausted and one of us could barely walk. Homer did have the rifle I’d thrown at him. I’d left mine in the cabin of the Suzuki. We took a few steps forward but I knew we couldn’t outrun them. The only options were to hide or fight. I said to Homer, ‘Cover me,’ and started back towards the four wheel drive.

‘What?’ he said.

But I didn’t have time for a conversation. I was almost out of the protection of the trees already. I knew I had at least a few seconds free time before they’d react. The last thing they’d expect would be that one of us would come back. A glance downhill showed me I’d got that right. They were spread out across the slope, heads down, ploughing their way towards us. They hadn’t even seen me yet. I was actually at the car and grabbing the rifle before the inevitable shout told me I was in trouble.

Homer must have been waiting for it too because the first shot came from him. That sent them all diving into the grass. I flattened out, staying at about snake level as I slithered back. Later I realised that they wouldn’t have been able to see me when I got down low like that, because of the way the hill sloped. Wish I’d known that at the time. Instead I was shaking so hard I needed a straitjacket to hold me together. Apart from anything else I was worried about Homer shooting me by mistake.

We were on quite a well-defined track. It was fairly open bush, which was not good for us, but had undergrowth a metre high, which wasn’t bad. There was a lot of that thin sticky grass though, the stuff the old people call ‘wait-a-while’, because once you got caught in it you had to wait a while to get free again. That was more bad news. With no particular plan we ran along the track. I was looking for a place where we could either hide or make a stand. Nick was on his own and falling back so fast that after fifty metres he was twenty-five metres behind. So that was hopeless. We had only seconds left. And if we dived off the track looking for a place to hide, we would leave tracks so obvious that we might as well have driven a tractor through.

That’s when I heard a faint buzzing. It was coming from the other side, the opposite direction to the soldiers. For a moment I thought, ‘Sheez, we’re really in trouble now.’ Then I realised it could only be one thing. I called to Nick, ‘Quick, get round this bend.’

It gave him a bit of motivation I guess, to have a target that he could achieve. As we got to the curve I heard the shouts of the soldiers behind us. Hiding was no longer an option. We would have to stand and fight and hope that those buzzing noises were coming in our direction, and that Lee and Gavin were responsible for them. If not, we were all done for. Our lives hung by a line as thin as a single horsehair.

I pushed Nick towards a rock and told him, ‘Stay behind there.’

Homer and I went back a little way towards the bend. He took the right-hand side and I took the left. There were enough rocks for both of us to get some cover, but not much. I cocked one ear for the buzzing noise at the same time as I cocked the rifle. The noise seemed to be going away. I felt sick but I had to block out the fear and do whatever I could do. Whatever I was capable of doing. I lined up one of the first soldiers in my sights but hesitated, trying to get a good target. Again Homer fired first. He missed I think, but it sure had an effect on them. They went to ground. Bodies rolled in all directions and came up firing. I’d been underestimating these guys. They were real soldiers.

I cowered behind the rock. I think they were firing on automatic, because the bullets sprayed everywhere. But it didn’t make any difference: if the air’s full of bullets it’s full of bullets. They flew past me. It was like the twanging of lots of rubber bands, like when we fired letters to each other in class — or when the boys fired pellets. I saw clods of dirt exploding on the track as bullets hit them, chips in the rocks as bullets hit them and whined away. I hoped Nick had his head down.

I got off a few shots but I know I didn’t hit anyone. It was too difficult to take aim when they were keeping up such a barrage. Even worse was that they were advancing under cover of the fire. I listened desperately for the motorbikes. They didn’t seem to be getting closer but the good news was that they didn’t seem to be getting further away. Then suddenly the putt-putt of the engines came clear and undiluted from right behind us. I spun round, full of hope, but prepared to be disappointed. If it wasn’t Lee and Gavin we were dead. But there they were, in the distance, at the next corner. Lee was on the four-wheeler and Gavin on the Yamaha. Lee was on one side of the track and Gavin on the other. Gavin was standing astride the bike, which was really too big for him, and both of them were trying to suss out the situation, poised to turn and take off at a moment’s notice.

It was time for us to beat an orderly retreat, as General Finley would have said, or to get the hell out of there, as I would have said.

‘Ready to go?’ I yelled at Homer.

‘Oh yeah, might as well,’ he answered. ‘Nothing better to do.’

Typical.

We both fired a volley of shots then started wriggling back. When we thought it was safe we got up and ran. There was no danger here from direct shots but there was a danger from ricochets. We had to take that risk. As soon as they realised we were gone they’d be after us like foxes in a chook shed.

At the same time I waved urgently to Lee. He revved up the bike and charged forward. He couldn’t see what was ahead, so he had no idea of what he was getting into. But the only way we could get out of there was to put Nick on the four-wheeler.

We met at Nick’s rock. We were in an elbow of the track, just out of the line of fire, but we wouldn’t be safe for long. Nick picked himself up and Homer helped him out. Lee swung the bike around in a tight little turn that basically only involved the rear wheels. While he was doing that I went out wider, in a low crouch, then lay flat and kept firing down the track, pretty much anywhere, trying to hold them back a bit. Half a dozen times I saw soldiers in the scrub, heading my way, but not so as I could get a shot at them. They kept firing but like me, at random, as they worked towards us, trying for better positions.

Nick, looking pretty damn anxious, got on the bike. It took him three goes. When he was at last sitting behind Lee, Homer and I climbed onto the running boards. Two soldiers appeared, much closer, one on each side of the track. I realised they’d been more organised than I’d thought, those last couple of minutes. They’d been doing one of those military thingies where two of them go a few metres then crouch and call the next two through while they cover them. I yelled at Lee, ‘Get a move on.’ I tried to aim and fire and keep my balance all at the same time, but there was never much hope of that. ‘Zigzag,’ I yelled at Lee, and after that it was all I could do to stay on. Lee was a born zigzagger.

As we took the corner and reached Gavin he was already swinging the Yammy around. He followed us. Around the next bend we did a quick reorganisation. I took the bike off Gavin — although he wasn’t too keen to give it up — and put him on the back of the four-wheeler with Nick and Lee. It was quite a crowd but there was room for them all. I took Homer on the Yamaha and away we went.