John Marsden - Circle of fight

I explained all this to Gavin, using a combination of language and acting. He watched silently. He didn’t seem very happy. I didn’t blame him for that. At his age he was probably hoping for a bit more out of life than this. Hell, at my age I was hoping for a lot more out of life than this.

‘I guess the door,’ he said finally, looking like a guy who has to choose between the gas chamber and electric chair.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘The door it is then.’

‘Right now?’ he said, starting to look scared.

‘No,’ I said. ‘We’ll wait until we find out the time. We have to try to do it in the middle of the night.’

Just in case we did have to switch to the ceiling though, I gouged some rough holes into the chipboard, so we could use them as toeholds if we needed a ladder. Then I put the bed together, as quickly as I could.

Somehow the discovery of the irons had given us both a great surge of energy. It was a small thing, much too small to pin a lot of hope on, but it gave us the feeling that we were, however slightly, in charge of our own destinies again, or at least able to influence them. I turned the light off and we both got back on the bed, but I could feel Gavin quivering with life.

The funny thing was that the second thing happened only about forty minutes later. The timing was good. Mostly my timing is like, ‘Ready… set… go… oh hi Ellie, you wanna take your tracksuit off then try to catch the others?’ But this night I was on the button. Maybe by finding the bed irons I’d triggered some cosmic force.

No sooner had we both calmed down a bit than I just about lifted off the bed in shock. A wild concert of gunfire suddenly broke out all around us. First came only one shot, but right away a whole lot more started, as though the first one had been the signal, the spark. The time lapse between the first shot and the mad chaos of the rest was about two seconds. After the first one I flew off the bed and ran a complete demented circle. When the full shooting match started, the noise was so loud that even Gavin heard it. He leapt up after me and we threw the bed apart. I had the horrible thought that it might just be a fireworks display for the World Cup or Chinese New Year or something, but I had to take a gamble on that. And anyway, if it was fireworks, at least the people in the house might be distracted by them.

Like always when you’re rushing, you stuff it up. I don’t think I’ll ever learn that lesson properly. I dropped the end of the chipboard on my toe, then couldn’t get the iron out because I was pulling at it too hard. I tried to calm down, to settle, to concentrate. Then at last I had it. It felt heavier than before but I lifted it like it was a javelin and, holding it semi-balanced in one hand, charged straight at the door.

At the last moment I thought, ‘If this door is as hard as old ironbark I’m in big trouble.’ I’d already checked it earlier and it hadn’t seemed too solid. I aimed at the handle and lock area and missed it massively, smacking into a spot to the left that was half on the door frame and half on the wall. ‘Ow,’ I yelled, dropping the bed iron and shaking my hands. But Gavin was there in a moment, picking it up and trying to force it back into my grip. He was right and I was wrong. I didn’t have time to be worried about jarred arms. For us, time was the greatest luxury in the world.

I went to the other side of the room and lined it up again. More like a pole vaulter than a javelin thrower, I ran forward. I tried to focus on the lock area with total intensity. Dear God, I prayed, please don’t let anyone come. Please God, don’t let anyone hear the noise. This time I hit almost perfectly, about a centimetre to the right. The iron went right through, splintering the wood and warping the lock, turning it almost sideways. Gavin rushed in and tried to force the door open but it still wouldn’t go. I figured it needed one more hit. I dragged the bed iron out of the hole and backed up for what I hoped would be the last time. With all the strength I could find I charged at it. It would have been one of those great comedy moments if someone had opened the door just then. They’d have been bored through the stomach. But that didn’t happen. The ball at the end of the iron smashed into the wood, and the door burst open, so hard that it bounced against the wall and nearly slammed shut again. But lucky for us the lock was too wrecked to allow it to close properly. We had our chance. Our last chance.

Now the firing was louder. It was not as intense as that first storm, more sporadic, but quite a few shots flying around. I hardly had time to take that in, though, as I slid down the ladder, Gavin following fast. For two people who’d been starved and beaten and neglected we suddenly seemed to have a lot of energy.

I didn’t know what we were going to find at the bottom of the ladder. What we did find was nothing. For a moment anyway. I’d been expecting all kinds of surprises, so in a way nothing was the biggest surprise of all. But then a guy ran across the intersection of the corridors in front of us. He was carrying a rifle and reloading it as he ran. He didn’t see us. I wondered how many of the rifles in the house still worked. Seemed like some of them still did. What a shame. But I did know that having a gun that worked would be a big bonus for us. I formed the grim determination to get a rifle. The only rifle I’d seen was in the hands of the man who’d just run past, and I assumed it was working, so I decided I’d try to get that one.

I took off after him. It might seem crazy, but I didn’t see how we were going to get out of this house without a weapon. I glanced to the left and saw no-one, so I turned left and went along the corridor, Gavin following. Hanging on the wall was a fire extinguisher. I grabbed that and lifted it off, just as I got to an open door. Holding the extinguisher by the top I peeped into the room. The guy was there all right. He was at the side of the window, peering out, trying to get a sight on someone I guessed, by the way he held the rifle. I figured that not only did I want his gun, but I was happy to help out the people he was trying to shoot. Any enemies of these guys were friends of mine.

I walked calmly towards him, working the pin out of the extinguisher as I did so. I’d only handled a fire extinguisher once before, at a field day, when Rural Firefighting were putting on a display, but they were made for idiots to use, so I figured I should be OK. But the pin was actually quite stiff, and I started to wonder if they’d taken idiots like me into account when they designed them. Then out it came, with a rasping noise.

It was enough to get the guy’s attention. He turned, not yet alarmed I think, just curious. When he saw who it was he reacted pretty fast though. He started swinging around, pulling his rifle back out of the window as he did so. I didn’t wait any longer, just pulled up the lever and let her rip.

I’d forgotten how dramatic fire extinguishers are. Not only do you get an instant result, but you get a powerful one. The white stuff jets out with not much less force than a bullet. It’s a never-ending high-powered blast of chemical, which looks almost solid at the core but with a lot of white mist or gas smoking around it. I couldn’t see the effect on him, because he was instantly obliterated. I saw the rifle, waving wildly as he brought it up, then I saw Gavin, who’d darted around me, come in from the side and wrench it from the guy. The moment he got it he backed off, bringing the rifle up to a firing position, while I kept going with the extinguisher. The guy was coughing and spluttering and yelping, but I don’t think the white stuff was too toxic. I mean, they wouldn’t put stuff in fire extinguishers that was too dangerous, would they? I just think he was taken completely by surprise — having your face and nose and eyes and mouth filled by some white chemical would be totally shocking, for a few moments at least.