John Marsden - Incurable

The fence was not a great one, but it wasn’t too bad. I hate to think what might have happened if it had been freshly strung with hard lines of steel barbed wire. But this farmer knew his fence had a good few years in it yet and he wasn’t ready to update. So we thundered into it almost headfirst, as I hadn’t got far with turning the steering wheel, and we burst through into the paddock, dragging quantities of wire and droppers and a fence post or two.

We were bouncing hard in a fairly rough paddock. I snapped the headlights off but I’d seen that the paddock was quite open and seemed to go a long way. Now I had some room to manoeuvre, but if the paddock had the usual quota of cattle, logs, drink troughs, rabbit warrens and other hazards, I was fairly sure that I could find lots of ways yet to get into trouble. The helicopter’s light picked us up and I swerved violently to the left then back to the right. I flicked on the lights again, to get a glimpse of our future, but also to distract him. As I turned them off I thought I saw something. Well of course I saw something. Grass for example. But something else. I had a moment’s agony of indecision. I felt I couldn’t risk turning them on again. I had to trust my judgement and assume that I’d seen what I thought I saw.

A spatter of bullets cut across the car. In the dark I couldn’t see them properly but I heard them above all the noise. The car shuddered and there were a couple of bangs on the roof. I hunched up and accelerated again. Someone swore in the back seat and I heard Jeremy say anxiously, ‘Did they get you?’ and Homer said, ‘No, don’t know how they missed.’

I was still thinking about what I’d seen in the far distance in the headlights. Just that glimpse. The huge pylons they use for high-tension wires, the ones that march across the country like giant soldiers. If it hadn’t been an illusion, and if the pilot hadn’t seen them, if I could somehow guide him into them… well, put it this way, if I couldn’t, we had no hope.

I had to reverse our roles. I had to become the fox, making the chook do what I wanted. Somehow I had to get him turning, and watching me, so that he didn’t notice the wires. And that’s still assuming the wires were there. I had serious doubts about that. You can see anything at night, and maybe I’d been looking at a big gum tree. Or a giant kangaroo.

I couldn’t turn my headlights on again, because if the pylon was there, I would just illuminate it for him. Based on my glimpse, I figured it was about two hundred and fifty metres ahead, but since then we’d probably halved that distance. So we were getting pretty close.

The helicopter had banked sharply and was coming in from my right. I started to veer left, and at the same time called to Homer in the backseat: ‘When I stop, can you and Lee both jump out and run back the way we’ve been coming?’ I wanted to distract the pilot, give him lots to think about. I expected that he would still follow the car, but would keep an eye on the boys, wondering what was going on, trying to see where they were heading, and that would keep him glancing to the left.

I braked pretty hard. As the car doors opened the helicopter came throbbing overhead. It was so close and so loud and so menacing that I felt deafened. The car rocked in the down draught. I heard more firing, but I think he missed completely, probably because he wasn’t expecting me to stop.

I only gave the boys a second, and then took off again. I had to let him know that the car was still moving, that we hadn’t abandoned it, so we would be his first target. I started to do a big circle, hoping I hadn’t underestimated the distance. If the pylons were another hundred or more metres away, this wasn’t going to work. And I wouldn’t get another chance.

In fact, I’d done the opposite, and a pylon loomed up so suddenly that Jess and I both screamed. It looked like a huge robot, standing in the field. A visitor from another place, from out in the far distant universe. I had to pull the wheel back the other way to miss it, and at about that same moment the helicopter hit the wires. If we’d hit the pylon we might have been electrocuted.

And there in that dark lonely paddock, we had Guy Fawkes night, the Fourth of July, Commemoration Day, and the opening and closing of the Olympics, all in one. The helicopter turned into flowers of light, scorching my eyeballs. I saw at least half-a-dozen fireballs, going off quite slowly, each in different directions. So many sparks came out of the wires that it was like a Niagara Falls of fire. The helicopter lit up inside, and for a moment I could see everyone and everything. Three men, each sitting in their different positions, glowing bright with fire and electricity.

It dropped the short distance to the ground. We were about eighty metres away, and by then it was on my right again, because of the turn I’d done, so I saw it explode. And I heard it, and I felt the ground rock, and the car being buffeted by a huge wind and rockets of fire shooting at me, and the next thing, I’m getting picked up and tipped over like a giant hand has grabbed the car, and I’m suddenly looking down on Jeremy, feeling as though I’m at a great height above him.

Of course I wasn’t at a great height, just the usual distance, but you don’t expect to be in that position. Once again the good old safety belts helped. It took me a long moment to realise that the car had been turned on its side. I didn’t have much of a view any more, but there were still streaks of fire going past the ute, and I could see grass burning about twenty metres away.

I spared a thought for Homer and Lee. I had no idea that I was dropping them into an inferno, and I hoped they had survived. I wondered how anyone could. There were whooshing and zinging noises, which I realised were pieces of metal from the helicopter flying past us like rockets.

By the time the three of us crawled out of the ute, most of it was over. Four different grass fires were spreading, in different parts of the paddock, and the helicopter was burning brightly, with black smoke coming from it. I guess it had a lot of plastic and toxic parts. There was no use looking for survivors in that. They’d had no chance. And just as I was wondering about survivors, Homer and Lee came running towards us.

They were both a bit hysterical. They were kind of laughing and babbling, but not in a normal way. I wondered if I should slap them in the face, which is something I’ve often wanted to do, but even while they were in this condition I thought it might be a bit dangerous. I realised I was a bit hysterical myself, when I heard myself babbling back at them. Basically we were all trembling and terrified. All I wanted to do was get the hell out of that place before any rescue parties arrived.

I looked at the ute and wondered if we could get it back on its four wheels. I couldn’t see how, without ropes or chain. Homer started yelling, ‘Let’s go, let’s get out of here,’ so I guess he felt it wasn’t worth bothering with the ute any more. I assumed he knew what he was talking about, and that fuel had probably tipped out of the carburettor or something (that’s about the extent of my mechanical knowledge), and besides, all those bullet holes might have affected its performance by now. So I followed him, and the five of us ran towards the road, turned left and continued to run, in a line behind Homer, on the right-hand side, for what felt like fifty kilometres, but was probably only one.

When we couldn’t go any further, we gathered under a big gum tree. It was very dark now, and there was still no sign of traffic. The running was good in a way, because although it brought me to the end of my physical endurance, it calmed me down, and I think it had the same effect on the others.