Tomorrow When The War Began (9 page)

‘God you’re hopeless Homer.’ Kevin yawned.
‘Get on with it.’

‘Well, I won’t go into the depressing details,
like we told you back at Robyn’s there was no one home. But
everything was in good nick. I’m sure they’re OK, that everyone’s
folks are going to be OK It sounds like they’re all bailed up at
the Showground, and once these people have got themselves organised
they might start letting them out again. Plenty of food there,
anyway. They’ve got my mum’s decorated cake for a start, and that
was a prize-winner if ever I saw one.’

There was a bit of a pause, then Corrie asked,
‘Did you have any trouble on the trip back to Robyn’s?’

Homer became serious, and his voice softened
‘Do you know the Andersens?’

‘Is that Mr Andersen who coaches the footy
team?’

‘Yes. You know their house? Well, we came back
a different way, to avoid the shopping centre, and we passed the
Andersens’ place. Or what’s left of it. My mum always says my room
looks like a bomb hit it. I know what she means now. I think a bomb
did hit the Andersens’ place. And two more houses between there and
the railway. There’s been a bit of damage done round that part of
town.’ He sat gazing at the table, as though he could still see the
wrecked houses. Then he lifted his head and shoulders and kept
talking. ‘That’s about it really. We got back to Robyn’s about a
quarter to three. We’d been hoping we might see Lee and Robyn on
the way, but there was no sign of them. That wait at Robyn’s sure
seemed a long time. We were terrified that none of you would turn
up, that you’d all been caught. Then we heard the shots from the
Showground. Scared the buttons off my shirt. Then more shooting,
and finally this explosion, in

Racecourse
Road

. My God, it was like fire and brimstone
shooting up in the sky. Would have cracked a five on the Richter
scale. It was dramatic. You guys sure know how to put on a
fireworks show. But of course, standing there and watching it, but
not knowing, that wasn’t so good. I wouldn’t like to do that
again.’

He yawned too. ‘I think we should have a
sleep. It’s no use sitting here trying to guess what’s happened to
Lee and Robyn. We’ll only depress the hell out of ourselves. And we
can work out our tactics later. What we need is to keep our energy
levels high. If we take it in turns to be on watch, we should be OK
here for today. I don’t think these people would have the manpower
to search the whole district in a day.’

‘That’s fair enough,’ I said. ‘But we should
have an escape route, in case they do come. What you realised when
you and Fi were in the cleaner’s cupboard applies here too.’

‘Those little yellow balls,’ Fi said,
wrinkling her nose. ‘There must have been a thousand of them in
there. Why do boys’ toilets always have those little yellow
balls?’

‘How do you know what boys’ toilets always
have?’ Homer asked.

Corrie said, ‘Suppose we sleep in the
shearers’ quarters? Whoever’s keeping watch can sit up in the
treehouse. If we have a vehicle behind the shearers’ quarters we
could be away and across the paddock into the bush before anyone
gets too close.’

‘Would they see or hear the vehicle?’ Homer
asked.

Corrie considered. ‘They might. They
shouldn’t, if the sentry picks them up early enough, and if
everyone moves fast.’

‘Well let’s take the bikes up there too, so
we’ve got the silent option if we need it. And let’s clean up this
kitchen, so there’s no sign that we’ve been here.’

Homer was becoming more surprising with every
passing hour. It was getting hard to remember that this
fast-thinking guy, who’d just spent fifteen minutes getting us
laughing and talking and feeling good again, wasn’t even trusted to
hand out the books at school.

Chapter Nine

Fi woke me at around eleven o’clock. That’s
what we’d agreed, but it was a lot easier to make the agreement
than to keep it. I felt heavy and stupid and slow. Climbing the
tree was an ordeal. I stood at the trunk and looked up at it for
five minutes before I could find the energy.

Some people wake up fast and some people wake
up slow. I wake up dead. But I know from experience that if I sit
it out for half an hour the energy gradually comes. So I sat
lethargically in the treehouse, watching the distant road, waiting
patiently for my body to begin to function again.

Once I got used to it, sitting there was OK
though. I realised to my disbelief that it had been only about
twenty hours since we’d emerged from the bush into this new world.
Lives can be changed that quickly. In some ways we should have been
used to change. We’d seen a bit of it ourselves. This treehouse,
for instance. Corrie and I had spent many hours under its shady
roof, holding tea parties, organising our dolls’ social lives,
playing school, spying on the shearers, pretending we were
prisoners trapped there. All our games were imitations of adult
rituals and adult lives, although we didn’t realise it then of
course. Then the day came when we stopped playing. We’d gone a
couple of months without our usual games, but a few days into the
school holidays I got my dolls out and tried to start up again. And
it had all gone. The magic didn’t work any more. I could barely
even remember how we’d done it, but I tried to recapture the mood,
the storylines, the way the dolls had moved and thought and spoken.
But now it was like reading a meaningless book. I was shocked that
it could have all gone so quickly, sad at how much I’d lost, and a
little frightened about what had happened to me and how I’d fill
the future hours.

There was a sudden sound from below, and
looking down I saw Corrie’s red head as she started to climb the
tree. I moved to the left to make room for her, and she swung up
beside me a moment later.

‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she explained. ‘Too much
to think about.’

‘I slept, but I don’t know how.’

‘Did you have awful dreams?’

‘I don’t know. I never remember my
dreams.’

‘Not like that Theo what’s-his-name at school.
Every morning in Home Group he’d tell us his full dreams from the
night before, in detail. It was so boring.’

‘He’s just boring full stop.’

‘I wonder where they all are now,’ Corrie
said. ‘I hope they are at the Showground. I hope they’re OK. It’s
all I can think about. I keep remembering all the stories we read
in History about World War Two and Kampuchea and stuff like that,
and my brain just overloads on terror. And then I think about the
way those soldiers were shooting at us, and the way they screamed
when the mower blew up.’

She picked unhappily at a piece of bark.
‘Ellie, I just can’t believe this is happening. Invasions only
happen in other countries, and on TV. Even if we survive this I
know I’ll never feel safe again.’

‘I was thinking about the games we used to
play here.’

‘Yes. Yes. The tea parties. And dressing the
dolls up. Remember when we put lipstick on them all?’

‘Then we lost interest.’

‘Mmm, it just faded away, didn’t it? We grew
up, I guess. Other things came along, like boys.’

‘They seemed such innocent days. You know,
when we got to high school and stuff, I used to look back and smile
and think “God, was I ever innocent!” Santa Claus and tooth fairies
and thinking that Mum stuck your paintings on the fridge because
they were masterpieces. But I’ve learnt something now. Corrie, we
were still innocent. Right up to yesterday. We didn’t believe in
Santa Claus but we believed in other fantasies. You said it. You
said the big one. We believed we were safe. That was the big
fantasy. Now we know we’re not, and like you said, we’ll never feel
safe again, and so it’s bye-bye innocence. It’s been nice knowing
you, but you’re gone now.’

We sat there, looking out across the paddocks
to the dark fragment of road in the distance, lying across the
countryside like a thin black snake. That’s where people would
appear, if they came in search of us. But there was no movement,
just the birds going about their unchanging routines.

‘Do you think they’ll come?’ Corrie asked
presently.

‘Who? The soldiers? I don’t know, but there’s
something Homer said ... about them not having the manpower to
search the whole district. There’s a lot of truth in that, I think.
See, my theory is that they’re using this valley as a corridor to
the big towns and the cities. I reckon they’ve landed at Cobbler’s
Bay, and their main interest in Wirrawee is to keep it quiet so
they can get free access to the rest of the country. Cobbler’s Bay
is such a great harbour, and remember, we couldn’t see it when we
came out of Hell, because of the cloud cover. I bet it’s full of
ships and there’s traffic pouring down the highway right now. But
it’s not as though Wirrawee’s going to be a major target for
anyone. We don’t have any secret missile bases or nuclear power
plants. Or at least we didn’t, the last time I looked.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Corrie doubtfully. ‘You
never know what Mrs Norris was getting up to in the Science Lab at
school.’

‘You children come down from that tree right
now!’ said a voice from below. We didn’t need to look to know who
it was. ‘Great bloody sentries you are,’ Homer said, climbing to
join us. ‘And I heard what you said about Mrs Norris, my favourite
teacher. I’m going to tell her when we go back to school.’

‘Yeah, in twenty years.’

‘Wasn’t it Mrs Norris’s class when you went
out the window and down the drainpipe?’ I asked.

‘It could have been,’ Homer admitted.

‘What?’ said Corrie, laughing.

‘Well it got a bit boring,’ Homer explained.
‘Even more boring than usual. So I thought I’d leave. The window
was closer than the door, so when she turned to write on the
whiteboard I went over the windowsill and down the drainpipe.’

‘And then Ms Maxwell came along,’ I chipped
in.

‘And said, “What are you doing?”.’

‘Quite a fair question really,’ I said.

‘So I told her I was inspecting the plumbing,’
Homer finished, hanging his head as if he remembered the storm that
followed. We were laughing so much we had trouble keeping our grip
on the branches.

‘I’ve heard of people being out of their
trees,’ Corrie said, ‘and you nearly are.’

A familiar sound interrupted us. We stopped
talking and craned our necks, searching the sky. ‘There it is,’
said Corrie, pointing. A jet screamed across the hills, so low that
we could see the markings. ‘One of ours!’ Homer yelled excitedly.
‘We’re still in business!’ The jet lifted a little to clear the
range and turned to the left, belting away into the distance
towards Stratton. ‘Look!’ Corrie called. Three more jets, dark and
ominous, were in hot pursuit. They were flying a little higher but
following the same course. The noise was piercing, splitting the
peaceful sky and land, like a long Velcro tear. Homer sank back to
his position in the bole of the tree. ‘Three against one,’ he said.
‘I hope he makes it.’

‘He or she,’ I muttered, absent-mindedly.

The long day wore on. When everyone was awake
we had a late lunch and talked endlessly of Lee and Robyn, of where
they might be, of what could have happened. After a while we
realised we were going round in tired circles. Homer had been
silent for ten minutes or so, and as our voices trailed off we
found ourselves looking at him. Maybe that always happens when
someone’s been quiet for a while. Maybe it happened because we were
starting to recognise Homer’s leadership. He didn’t seem to notice,
just began talking naturally, as though he had it all worked
out.

‘How about this?’ he said. ‘You know how I
feel about everyone sticking together. It might be nice for our
feelings but it’s ultimately stupid. We’ve got to toughen up, and
fast. Just because we like being together, that’s not important any
more. You know what I’m saying? So, what I suggest is two of us go
into Wirrawee to look for Lee and Robyn. If no one’s turned up by
midnight say, they make their way to Lee’s place, and see if
they’re holed up there, injured maybe.’

‘I thought you didn’t believe in friendship
any more,’ Kevin said. ‘Seems a hell of a risk to go to Lee’s, if
we’re so worried about saving ourselves.’

Homer looked at him coldly and even Corrie
rolled her eyes.

‘I’m not doing it just for friendship,’ Homer
said. ‘It’s a calculated risk. Seven people are better than five,
so we take a risk to try to build up our numbers to seven
again.’

‘And we could end up with three.’

‘We could end up with none. Everything’s a
risk from now on Kev. We’re not going to be safe anywhere, any
time, until this thing is over. All we can do is to keep
calculating the odds. And if it goes on long enough we’ll be
caught. But if we do nothing we’ll get caught even sooner. The
biggest risk is to take no risk. Or to take crazy risks. We’ve got
to be somewhere between one and the other. Obviously whoever goes
looking for Lee and Robyn has to be incredibly careful. But I’m
sure they can work that out for themselves.’

‘So what do the other three do?’ Kevin asked.
‘Sit back here and eat and sleep? Shame there’s nothing on TV.’

‘No,’ said Homer. He leaned forward. ‘Here’s
what I suggest. They load Corrie’s Toyota with everything useful
they can find. Then they go to Kevin’s and do the same. And to my
place and Ellie’s if there’s time. They pick up the Landrover at my
place and fill it too. I’m talking food, clothes, petrol, rifles,
tools, everything. By dawn we want to have two vehicles fuelled up,
packed to their roofs, and ready to go.’

‘To go where?’ Kevin asked.

‘To Hell,’ Homer answered.

That was Homer’s genius. He combined action
with thought, and he planned ahead. He sensed, I think, that
inaction was our enemy. Anyone seeing us at that moment wouldn’t
have thought that we were in the most desperate positions of our
lives. We were all sitting up excitedly, faces flushed and eyes
gleaming. We had things to do, positive definite things. It
suddenly seemed so obvious that if we had a future, it would be in
Hell. And we began to realise that there might still be a life for
us.

‘We’ll make lists,’ Fi said. ‘We need pens and
paper, Corrie.’

Our lists took nearly an hour to compile. They
included all kinds of things, such as where the keys to petrol
tanks were kept, how to find a foot pump for car tyres, what grade
oil to put in the Landrover, and which of my teddies I wanted to
have – Alvin. For food we went mainly for rice, noodles, cans, plus
tea, coffee, jams, Vegemite, biscuits and cheese. Kevin looked a
bit depressed when he realised what a vegetarian he was about to
become. But there were sure to be heaps of eggs, in kitchens and
chook sheds. Clothing was just all the obvious stuff, but with an
emphasis on warmth, in case the weather broke or we were in the
bush for a long time – and with an emphasis on dull colours, too,
that would camouflage successfully. But it was the extras that took
the time. A lot of the stuff was still in the Landrover from our
five days in Hell, but it would need to be checked. And we kept
thinking of new things, or things that needed topping up. Soap,
dishwashing brushes and liquid, shampoo, toothpaste and
toothbrushes, firestarters, pens, paper, maps of the district,
compasses, books to read, transistor radio – in case a station came
back on the air – and batteries, torches, insect repellent,
first-aid kits, razors, tampons, packs of cards, chess set,
matches, candles, sun cream, binoculars, Kevin’s guitar, toilet
paper, alarm clock, cameras and film, family photos. Homer didn’t
comment on the family photos but when that encouraged other family
treasures being added to the list he spoke up.

‘We can’t take things like that,’ he said,
when Corrie nominated her mother’s diaries.

‘Why not? They’re so important to her. She’s
always said that if the house was burning they’d be the first
things she’d save.’

‘Corrie, this isn’t a picnic we’re going on.
We’ve got to start thinking of ourselves as guerillas. We’re
already taking teddy bears and guitars. I think that’s enough.’

‘If we can take family photos we can take my
mother’s diaries,’ Corrie said obstinately.

‘That’s exactly what’ll end up happening,’
Homer said. ‘You’ll say, “Well if the photos can go, the diaries
can”, and then someone else’ll say, “Well if her diaries can go
then my father’s football trophies can go”, and before we know it
we’ll need a couple of trailers.’

It was just one of many arguments we seemed to
have that afternoon. We were tired and nervous and scared for Lee
and Robyn and our families. That particular fight was resolved by
Fi, who made one of those suggestions that immediately seem so
obvious you wonder why it took so long for anyone to think of
it.

‘Why don’t you pack up all the valuables in
the house,’ she said to Corrie. ‘Your mother’s jewellery and
everything. Then hide them somewhere. Bury them in the vegetable
garden.’

It was such a good idea that I hoped there
would be time later for me to do the same thing.

Meanwhile Kevin kept trying to sneak extra
things onto the list, the most important of which seemed to be
condoms. As fast as he wrote them down Corrie crossed them off,
till the paper had as many erasures as items. But when we came to
firearms he got serious. ‘We’ve got a couple of rifles and a
shotgun. One rifle’s only a .22 but the other’s a .222. The
shotgun’s a beauty, a twelve-gauge. Plenty of ammo for the rifles,
not so much for the shotgun. Unless Dad got some more while we were
away, which I doubt. He was talking about it, but I don’t think he
was going into town except for Commem Day, when the sports store’d
be shut.’