Страница 23 из 55
‘Well?’ Homer asked.
‘No soldiers,’ I said, ‘but Flip’s out there, wandering around. They must have seen her from the helicopter.’
‘That might be enough to make them suspicious,’ Homer said. ‘They’d be trained to notice anything out of the ordinary.’ He swore. ‘We’ve got a lot to learn, assuming we even come out of this. How many soldiers in the chopper?’
He got various answers: ‘Hard to say’, ‘Maybe three’, ‘I didn’t see’, ‘Three or four, maybe more sitting up the back’.
‘If they do land they’ll probably spread out.’ Homer was thinking aloud. ‘A .22 won’t be much use. The Toyota’s still up at the shearing shed. I can’t believe we’ve been so stupid. It’d be no use trying for that. Go back to the same rooms, and see what they’re doing. And try to count the number of soldiers. But don’t give them the slightest chance to see you.’
I ran back to the sunroom but the helicopter was not in sight. Its ugly angry sound seemed to fill my head though, to fill the house. It was in every room. I hurried back to the office. ‘It’s on the west side,’ Kevin said. ‘Just hovering there, not landing.’
‘Look guys,’ Homer said. ‘If it lands I think we’ve only got two options. We can sneak out on the opposite side to where it’s landed, and use the trees to try to get away into the bush. The bikes are no use and the Toyota’s out of reach. So we’d be on foot and relying on our brains and our fitness. The second option would be to surrender.’
There was a grim and frightened silence. We had only one option really, as Homer knew.
‘I don’t want to be a dead hero,’ I said. ‘I think we’d have to take our chances and surrender.’
‘I agree,’ Homer said quickly, as though anxious to get in before someone disagreed.
The only one likely to disagree was Kevin. The four of us looked at him. He hesitated, then swallowed and nodded: ‘All right.’
‘Let’s go back to the sitting room,’ Homer said. ‘We’ll see if it’s still there.’
We ran down the corridor, then Kevin eased himself into the room and sidled to the window. ‘Still there,’ he reported. ‘Not doing anything, just watching. No, wait ... it’s on the move ... coming down a little ...’ Fi gave a cry. I glanced at her. She’d been very quiet all afternoon. She looked like she was about to pass out. I grabbed her hand, and she squeezed mine so hard I thought maybe I’d be the one to pass out Kevin kept up his commentary. ‘They’re staring right at me,’ he said. ‘But I can’t believe they could see me.’
‘Don’t move,’ Homer said. ‘It’s movement that’s the giveaway.’
‘I know,’ Kevin complained. ‘What do you think, I’m going to start tap dancing?’
For another two minutes we all stood like ma
‘It’s moving ... can’t tell ... sideways a little, up a bit, up some more. Maybe going over the house, to have a look at the other side.’
‘This’ll be the big move, one way or the other,’ Homer said. ‘They won’t hang round much longer.’ Fi gripped my hand even tighter, something I wouldn’t have thought possible. It was worse than carrying a lot of plastic shopping bags loaded with dog food. Kevin kept talking as though he hadn’t heard Homer. ‘Still going sideways ... up a bit more ... no, backing off a bit. Come on, back off beautiful. Yes, backing off now, and accelerating too. Oh yes. Make like a hockey player sweetheart; get the puck out of here. Yes! Yes! Fly away, fly away home.’ He turned to us with a casual shrug. ‘See! All I had to do was use my charm.’ Corrie picked up the nearest object and threw it at him, as the helicopter began to sound more like a distant chain saw. The object was a little statue of Mary, which luckily for Corrie, Kevin caught. Fi burst into tears. Homer gave a shaky smile, then swung into action again.
‘Let’s get cracking,’ he said. ‘We’ve been lucky. We can’t afford to make that many mistakes again. He herded us all into the sitting room and out the front door. ‘We’ll have this conference out here, where we can see the road,’ he said. ‘Now look, I’ll tell you what I think. If there’s any major holes in it, tell me. Otherwise, let’s just do it, OK? We haven’t got time for long debates.
‘All right. Starting with the dogs. Flip and the other one, at my place, whatsitsname.’
‘Millie,’ I offered.
‘Yes,’ said Homer. ‘Millie. Guys, we have to abandon them. Leave out all the dry dog food you want for them, but that’s all you can do. Second, the milkers. I’ve had a look at yours Corrie. She’s not only got mastitis, it’s gone gangrenous as well. We’re going to have to shoot her. It’d be too cruel to leave her here to suffer.’ I glanced at Corrie. She was absorbing this dry-eyed. Homer continued. ‘Third, the Toyota. We can’t take it now. They will have seen it from the air, so if it goes missing they might notice that. The three people packing the vehicles will have to take everything they can on bikes, and ride to Kev’s and pick up another four-wheel drive there, to go with the Landie.’ He glanced at Kevin, to check if that were possible.
Kevin nodded. ‘The Ford’s still there.’
‘Good. One thing I was hoping we could get from here is lots of vegetables from Corrie’s mum’s garden. But I don’t think there’ll be time, unless it’s done in darkness. For now, I think we should go bush till tonight. Take the bikes and anything else that’s absolutely vital, and get going, in case they send troops out from town. I’m sure they won’t come out after dark, but till then there’s a risk.
‘Finally, about tonight.’ He was talking very fast, but we weren’t missing a word. ‘I think Ellie and I should go into town. We need a driver to stay here, and Kevin and Ellie are our best drivers. And it wouldn’t be fair to have an all girls group and an all guys group. Then if you three aim to get to Ellie’s by dawn, we’ll meet you there. If we’re not there tomorrow, give us till midnight tomorrow night, then leave for Hell. Leave one car hidden at Ellie’s and hide the other one at the top somewhere, near Tailor’s Stitch, and go down to the campsite. We’ll find our own way there when we can.’
As he talked, Homer had been nervously sca
He picked up the rifle and glanced at Corrie, raising his thick brown eyebrows. She hesitated, then murmured ‘You do it’. She came with us as Homer went off alone, to the trees at the end of the house paddock, where the cow was standing restlessly. The shot came a few minutes later, as we jogged up to the shearers’ quarters. Corrie wiped her eyes with her left hand. The other one was holding Kevin’s hand. I patted her back, feeling inadequate. I knew how she felt. You do get attached to your milkers. I’d seen Dad shoot working dogs that were too old, kangaroos that were trapped in fences and too weak to get up, sheep that were a glut on the market. I knew Millie’s days were numbered. But we’d never shot a milker.
‘I hope Mum and Dad don’t mind us doing these things,’ Corrie sniffed.
‘They’d have minded if you’d broken that statue,’ I said, trying to cheer her up.
‘Lucky I play first base,’ Kevin said.
We got to the shearers’ quarters, where Homer joined us a couple of minutes later. He was just in time. It was maybe ninety seconds after that when a black jet, fast and lethal, came in low from the west. It sounded like every dentist’s drill I’d ever heard, magnified a thousand times. We watched from the little windows of a shearer’s bedroom, too fascinated and afraid to move. There was something sinister about it, something diabolical. It flew with a sense of purpose, deliberate and cold-blooded. As it crossed the road it seemed to pause a little, give a slight shudder. From under each wing flew two little darts, two horrible black things that grew as they approached us. They were coming terribly fast. Corrie gave a cry that I’ll never forget, like a wounded bird. One rocket hit the house, and one was all it took. The house came apart in slow motion. It seemed to hang there in the air, as though it were the kit of a house, a Lego set, about to be assembled. Then a huge orange flower began to bloom within the house. It grew very quickly, until there was no more room for it and it had to push the pieces of house out of the way, to give it room to flower. And suddenly everything exploded. Bricks, wood, galvanised iron, glass, furniture, the sharp orange petals of the flower, all erupting in every direction, till the house was spread all over the paddock, hanging from trees, clinging to fences, lying on the ground. Where the house had stood was now black: no flames, just smoke rising slowly from the foundations. The noise of it rolled across the paddocks like thunder, echoing away into the hills. Bits of debris rattled on the shearers’ roof like hail. I couldn’t believe how long they kept falling, and after that, after the rattling of the heavy fragments was starting to fade, how long the soft snowflakes took to float down: the pieces of paper, the bits of material, the fragments of fibro, gently and peacefully scattering across the countryside.