John Marsden - Circle of fight

I got down and said to Gavin, ‘What do they do each day? How often do they come up here?’ I knew the pattern they had followed with him mightn’t be the same as the pattern they would follow now, but knowledge is power and I was coming from a low knowledge base.

I felt sickened by his answers though. If I’d hated and feared these people before, these kidnappers and terrorists, I loathed them now. It seemed that most days Gavin was lucky to get two meals, and the meal deliveries were often the only visits he got. Four times he’d been taken out to the back yard to get some fresh air, but since he’d been delivered to this house that was all the exercise he’d had.

I can understand people killing each other in hot blood, like in a war, when you grab a gun and shoot someone because they’re the enemy or because they’re a threat to you or whatever. I can even understand how in peacetime people kill each other out of jealousy or rage. But I can’t understand how anyone can torture a kid in such a slow-running, day-by-day, drip-by-drip, coldbloodedly cruel way. I remember in a book, I forget its name, this girl who was about my age saying that some of her friends were killing their mothers by slow degrees. These people were killing Gavin, but it was death by a thousand cuts. Putting Gavin in these conditions was like putting a bear in a pen or a rabbit in a box or a cockatoo in a cage. Even Gavin’s cruelty to the cat at Mark’s place was easier for me to understand than the way these guys had abandoned him in the attic.

There was another question that I didn’t want to ask but I had to, and the answer was what I expected. Gavin pointed to a bucket in the corner. I’d already noticed the roll of toilet paper next to it. Apparently they emptied it when they felt like it, but usually when they brought the evening meal. At least at this stage it was empty, but it didn’t stay that way for long, as I was busting. Seemed like Gavin was too, as he followed straight after. To be honest it was embarrassing, even though Gavin and I had been together for so long. But it’s funny, you adjust so quickly to whatever circumstances you’re in. Out in the bush in the middle of a war, when you’re cold and starving, you think nothing of licking up the crumbs in the bottom of your carrier bag. But if you’re in an expensive restaurant I guess you complain if the chips aren’t hot enough. I guess. I’ve never been in an expensive restaurant, like, a really posh one.

So, I got over the toilet thing pretty quickly, although it did help explain why the room was so stinky. Poor Gavin, I couldn’t blame him for that.

But there were more important things to think about. I had to decide whether to launch an all-out assault on the room or to hold off for a while. If I thought they were likely to kill us in the near future, like, that night, I’d be smart to go ahead and do the allout assault thing. There’d be nothing to lose. But if I thought they were likely to keep us alive for a while then it’d be better to wait a bit, spend time on reconnaissance, get energy back, let them start to relax, try to come up with a better plan than just bashing down the door.

I was in a situation where I had to make a guess that could mean life or death for both of us, yet I had way too little evidence to go on. I had to put myself in the minds of people I didn’t know, whose brain functioning was pretty much a mystery to me, and who had knowledge which I didn’t. It was like being given a 600 piece jigsaw with no picture on the box and 590 pieces missing. I sat on the bed in an agony, with Gavin beside me, leaning his head into my shoulder. I had my arm around him but I worried that his trust in me was going to blow up in his face if I made the wrong call. The world was going to blow up in both our faces if I made the wrong call. But perhaps I was making this harder than it needed to be. After all, what were these people going to do with us if not kill us? They couldn’t keep us forever. They couldn’t let us go. Although the ‘I’ll live forever’ part of me, the ‘I’m strong and fit and healthy and young so I couldn’t possibly be about to die’ part of my mind couldn’t face the idea that my life might be about to end, I had to recognise the Uluru of reality in front of me.

A grimness of spirit came over me. I slipped out of Gavin’s arm and got up again. If we were going to take action, I had to start right now and at least try to find a way to break out of this room. I grabbed the green stool and took it to the lowest part of the ceiling. With both arms above my head I hit at the ceiling as hard as I could. But I couldn’t get enough strength. The only power I had was from my arms, as I couldn’t use the weight of my body. Being tired, drained by all the physical and emotional energy I’d spent so recklessly over the previous few hours and days, didn’t help either.

I only had half-a-dozen goes before giving up in frustration. I eyed off the door, but thought I should save that for a last resort, as trying to break that down would make more noise than anything else. I had the horrible feeling it would echo all through the house.

Then Gavin surprised me by reaching under the bed and pulling out a broom. He handed it to me with a look that said, ‘I’m not giving you this so you can do a bit of housework.’ Although it wouldn’t have surprised me if he had. But he glanced from the broom to the ceiling and back to me, and I realised at once what he meant.

I took a big gulp, knowing that this was going to make some serious noise, and then, holding the broom with both hands, near its base, smashed the handle into the ceiling as hard as I could. It did make some serious noise. It echoed around the little room, but I couldn’t tell how far the sound would travel. One thing was obvious though. The ceiling was made from some pretty lightweight stuff. Just cheap masonite or something. I decided to block out any thoughts about noise and attack with all the strength I had. Boom, boom, boom. Then, on about the fifth shot, I was through. I pulled the handle out, leaving a nice round hole, big dents around it. Jumping down, I moved the stool less than a metre, then got up and started again. Four hits and I’d made another hole.

Now I was getting excited. A gleam was in Gavin’s eyes and some life had come into his face. I moved the stool again and started my next onslaught. Sweat was running down my face now and stinging my eyes. I was trying to do this and think ahead at the same time. If I could make a decent hole, then we had to be able to get up through it. And the ceiling had to support our weight. And then we had to get somewhere, to actually find an escape route. My hair was damp with the sweat, and my arms were dropping off. I’d made four holes, in a rough square, and now I could attack the space between two of them, hoping to start punching out the whole piece.

But my arms couldn’t take any more. I dropped them for a minute, and dropped my head, trying to get the strength to continue. If only Gavin were a bit taller and we could take it in turns. Then I heard a kind of scrabbling noise at the door. Gavin turned to it with a kind of wild look and a moment later it burst open. Two of the men came lumbering in, with at least one more behind them, and I realised with fear that our escape attempt was over already.

I got another bashing, and it seemed almost from the start that it was too much. I felt the will to fight flow out of me with every blow. I curled up on the floor in the foetal position I’d imagined earlier, covered my face, and tried to absorb the impacts. I don’t even know what they were hitting me with. I’m not sure where Gavin was but I think one of them was holding him out of the way.

At some stage they left again. It was a long time before I stirred or moved or tried to stand. Gavin was lying on top of me crying, so eventually I got up for his sake. I tried to think back to how this evening had started, with me so optimistic and positive and being the big hero, moving through the house and wrecking their guns and all that stuff. It hadn’t taken long to bring me down to this state. I thought about how the boys wanted me to join Liberation and I thought, ‘Well that’s not going to happen.’ If I survived this, which was looking pretty unlikely, I figured it was time to give up on all this fighting. If only other people would let me.