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I shook my head, but truth to tell I was feeling more confident and relaxed. I always prefer action; I’m happier when I’m doing things. I’ve always found TV boring for instance; I prefer stock work or cooking, or even fencing.
At the top of the hill nothing had changed. The view over Wirrawee was the same, the lights were still on at the Showground, and in a few other places. One of those places, as Homer pointed out, was the Hospital. It looked like they had it functioning. But there was no sign of Robyn or Lee. We waited about twenty minutes; then, as we were both yawning and getting cold, we decided to try Plan B, the house.
We stood, and started down the hill. We were fifty metres from the house when Homer grabbed my arm. ‘There’s someone in there,’ he said.
‘How do you know?’
‘I saw a movement in one of the windows.’
We kept watching for quite a time, but saw nothing.
‘Could have been a cat?’ I suggested.
‘Could have been a platypus but I don’t think so.’
I began to inch forward, not for any particular reason, just because I felt we couldn’t stand there forever. Homer followed. I didn’t stop till I was almost at the back door, so close I could have reached out and touched it. I still wasn’t sure why we were doing this. My biggest fear was that we were about to be ambushed. But there was a chance Robyn and Lee were in the house, and we could hardly walk away while there was that possibility. I wanted to open the door, but couldn’t figure out how to do it without making a sound. I tried to recall some scenes in movies where the heroes had been in this situation, but couldn’t think of any. In the movies they always seemed to kick the door down and burst through with guns drawn. There were at least two reasons we couldn’t do that. One, it was noisy; two, we didn’t have guns.
I sidled closer to the door and stood in an awkward position, pressed backwards against the wall and trying to open the door with my left hand. I couldn’t get enough leverage however, so instead turned and crouched, reaching up with my right hand to grip the knob. It turned silently and smoothly but my nerve failed me for a moment and I paused, holding the knob in that cocked position. Then I pulled it towards me, a little too hard, because I had half expected it to be locked. It came about thirty centimetres, with the screech of a tortured soul. Homer was behind me, so I could no longer see him, but I heard, and could feel, his breath hang in the air and his body rise a little. How I wished for an oilcan. I waited, then decided there was no point in waiting, so pulled the door open another metre. It rasped every centimetre of the way. I was feeling sick but I stood and took three slow careful steps into the darkness. I waited there, hoping my eyes would adjust and I’d be able to make some sense of the dull shapes I could see in front of me. There was a movement of air behind me as Homer came in too: at least, I hoped it was Homer. At the thought that it might be anyone else I felt such a violent moment of panic that I had to give myself a serious talk about self-control. But my nerves sent me forward another couple of steps, till my knee bumped into some kind of soft chair. At that moment I heard a scrape from the next room, as though someone had pushed back a wooden chair on a wooden floor. I tried desperately to think what was in the next room and what it looked like, but my mind was too tired for that kind of work. So instead I tried to tell myself that it hadn’t been the scrape of a chair, that no one was there, that I was imagining things. But then came the dreadful confirmation, the sound of a creaking board and the soft tread of a foot.
I instinctively went for the floor, quietly slipping down to the right, then wriggling around the soft chair that I’d just been touching. Behind me I felt Homer doing the same. I lay on the carpet. It smelt like straw, clean dry straw. I could hear Homer shuffling around, sounding like an old dog trying to get comfortable. I was shocked at how much noise he was making. Didn’t he realise? But in front of me came another noise: the unmistakable sound of a bolt being drawn back in a breech, then slid forward to cock the rifle.
‘Robyn!’ I screamed.
Afterwards Homer said I was mad. And even when I explained, he said it wasn’t possible I could have worked all that out in a split second. But I could and I did. I knew that the soldiers who’d chased us had modern automatic weapons. And the weapon I’d heard being cocked was just a typical single-shot rifle. Also, I remembered that Mr Mathers had gone hunting with Dad quite often, and he did have his own rifle, a .243. So I knew it had to be Robyn or Lee, and I thought I’d better say something before the bullets started flying.
Later I realised it could have been someone else entirely, a looter, deserter or squatter, or someone on the run from the soldiers. Luckily it wasn’t, but I don’t know what I would have done if I’d thought of that at the time.
‘Ellie,’ Robyn said, and fainted. She’d always been a bit prone to fainting. I remember when the School Medical Service came around and in Home Room Mr Kassar had a
Homer had a torch and we got some water from the bathroom and splashed it in her face till she came around. We seemed to be giving a few facewashes that day. I was interested to see that the town water supply was still working. There was no electricity at Robyn’s, even though we’d seen the power on in other parts of Wirrawee.
I was still pretty calm through all this but one of our worst moments was about to come. When Robyn sat up, the first thing I asked her was ‘Where’s Lee?’
‘He’s been shot,’ she said, and I felt as though I’d been shot and everything in the world had died.
Homer gave a terrible deep groan; in the torchlight I saw his face distort, and he suddenly looked old and awful. He grabbed Robyn; at first I thought it was to get more information from her, but I think it was just that he needed to hold on to someone. He was desperate.
‘He’s not dead,’ Robyn said. ‘It’s a clean wound, but it was quite big. In the calf.’
Robyn looked ghastly too; the torchlight didn’t help, but her face was more like a skull than a face, high cheekbones and gaunt cheeks and sunken eyes. And we all smelt so bad. It seemed a long time since our swim in the river, and we’d sweated a lot in the meantime.
‘How do we find him?’ Homer asked urgently. ‘Is he free? Where is he?’
‘Take it easy,’ Robyn said. ‘He’s in the restaurant. But it’s too early to go back there. Barker Street’s like rush hour in the city. I took the worst risks to get here.’
She told us what had happened. They’d had trouble at every street corner, nearly ru
As they waited, hiding in the staircase of City and Country Insurance, they’d heard a noise at the top of the stairs. They’d turned around and found themselves looking at Mr Clement, the dentist, crouching there furtively, peering down at them.
Lee and Robyn had been wildly excited to see him, just as Homer and I were to hear about it. But he hadn’t been so excited to see them. It turned out that he’d been there the whole time, watching them without saying anything. It was only when he got a cramp that he made a noise. When they asked why, he just said something about least said, soonest mended’.