John Marsden - While I live

I said to Gavin, ‘Can you check the vehicles? See if they took any? I’ll try to ring someone who might know where they are.’

I believed Jeremy Finley to be the leader of Liberation, the Scarlet Pimpernel himself in fact. But I didn’t know how to contact him. Sure the phone system was working fairly well these days. But it wasn’t working very well. In particular, Directory Enquiries was putting in a shocker. I’d almost given up ringing them. They sounded like they were staffed by a bunch of semi-literate alcoholics who saw telephones as Satanic devices.

But this time I had no choice. I dialled the number, and waited. And waited. At least before the war you got recorded music. I’d never appreciated it enough.

Gavin came back. ‘The Yamaha and Homer’s Honda are gone,’ he said.

‘The Yamaha?’ I thought. ‘Well thanks, Lee, thanks for asking me. Just feel free to help yourself.’

‘Who are you ringing?’ Gavin asked.

‘Jeremy Finley.’

‘Who?’

‘You remember, he came here that Sunday night with Homer and two girls.’

‘Why would he know where they were going?’

We could have had a three-hour conversation but suddenly an operator came on line. I was so not expecting a human voice that it took me a moment to realise. ‘Uh, I’m wanting a number in Stratton.’

‘What name?’

‘Uh, Finley.’

‘What initial?’

‘Um, I don’t know.’ Damn. If Jeremy’s mum had remarried, or gone back to using her maiden name, I was sunk.

‘What address?’

‘Well, I’m not sure actually.’

‘I’ve got six Finleys in Stratton. I’d need more information.’

Click. The sound of a truck reversing. Beep, beep, beep.

I slammed the phone down.

I had a feeling Jess was involved in this too, like I’d said to Homer the night before, but there were two problems ringing her. One was that she had a common surname — Lewis — and it would mean another battle with Directory Enquiries, a battle I was most likely to lose.

The other was that I wasn’t sure enough that she was involved. I could cause more problems than I solved by calling her.

In the middle of that I had a sudden image of Homer or Lee lying dead. I clutched my stomach and turned away from the phone. Gavin, looking frightened, took a couple of steps towards me. I realised that I couldn’t give in to thoughts like that. Not yet anyway. I had to stay strong.

We’d missed the school bus. I briefly thought of going into school and finding Jess and sussing out what she knew, but it would take half the morning. Reluctantly I came to admit the obvious: that I would have to wait here and see what happened. I was in the role I hated most: helpless, ignorant, passive.

Furious with Homer, with Lee, with wars, with life, I went for a quick run round the cattle, to check on them and distribute a bit of hay. To be honest, if half the cattle had been down with bloat I don’t think I would have noticed. But while I was doing that I did at least decide on a timetable. I would wait till lunchtime. If they didn’t turn up I’d go into school and see if I could find out anything there. If that failed I’d have to go all the way to Stratton and track down Jeremy. At the very least Jess should be able to tell me how to get in touch with him. I was halfway certain that those two had something going between them.

Back at the house I literally walked around in circles. Well, in rectangles. I did laps around the house. After a while I thought there was a good chance Gavin and I would send each other crazy. I had to do something. But I couldn’t think of a single thing that would not cause awful complications for the two boys if I guessed wrong. All I could do was curse them for not being more open with me the night before.

It was just after ten when I heard a low buzzing sound like a very big and aggressive mosquito. It could have been a low-flying aircraft but I knew straight away it was a motorbike, our motorbike, the Yamaha. Except it was being ridden harder than I’d ever heard it ridden before. Dad would have chucked a fit.

I ran outside. Gavin bolted after me.

‘What?’ he said as we panted up the slope, where we’d get the first view of it. ‘What? What?’

‘The Yamaha.’

We saw it just a moment later. ‘Lee,’ Gavin said. He’s got astonishingly sharp eyes, Gavin. We hurried down to the track, where we could cut him off. I couldn’t tell whether he’d seen us or not, as he gave no sign, but at the last moment he hung out the back wheel and skidded to a halt.

The first thing I noticed was the rifle slung across his back. He switched off the ignition and sat there, slumped over the handlebars. It was as if switching off the ignition took all the energy he had. He glanced at me and I was shocked at how thin his face looked, at the way his eyes had become dark sockets. All in not much more than twelve hours. I was frightened to see him. It was as though he was about to tell me very bad news.

‘They’ve got Homer,’ he said quietly.

I was expecting the worst news, just from the look on his face, but I still wasn’t sure when he said ‘got’. What did ‘got’ mean? Dead? Was Homer dead? Or was it something else?

I couldn’t speak, just watched him fearfully, waiting.

‘They caught him. We were coming down opposite sides of a hill. They didn’t even know I was there. But he was a bit further down than me. I think he might have walked right into a sentry. The first I realised was when

I heard a lot of yelling and a minute later there were torches everywhere and I saw two guys marching him into their camp.’

‘Did they shoot him?’ I asked, trembling, holding my stomach.

‘Not while I was there. I couldn’t figure out what to do. I couldn’t attack the camp on my own. I waited quite a while, looking for a chance to get in, but the place was swarming. Then soldiers started coming out and searching the bush, to see if there were any more Homers I guess. At that point I thought the best I could do was come here and get help.’

I shook my head and ran my fingers through my hair. ‘You better tell me what the hell this is all about,’ I said. ‘In fact you better come back to the house and get something to eat.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘There isn’t time. We’ve got to get back there.’

‘If you pass out through hunger and exhaustion it’s going to get us nowhere at all,’ I said.

Gavin and I both jammed ourselves onto the back of the bike and got a lift to the house. In the kitchen I gave him my lunch, and then threw a couple more sandwiches together — the fastest, sloppiest sandwiches in the history of catering. I didn’t know if Lee would be too upset to eat, but he wolfed them down, at the same time trying to tell us the story.

‘It’s what you’d expect, one of these terrorist camps. The kind of place the people who killed your mum and dad would have come from. Homer and his Liberation are sure they’re holding a prisoner there, a man named Nick Greene, who got kidnapped a month or so ago.’

‘Who is he?’

‘I don’t know a can of beans about him.’

‘Go on.’

‘Well, we had some pretty good information. We had a map showing the hut where Nick Greene’s kept, supposedly. Liberation had worked out a plan. Very low-key. Pairs work best, according to them. They gave us stun-guns for the sentries. We were going to come in at 5 am, on either side of the hut, and try to get him out through one of the windows. But of course at the end of the day you’ve got to make your decisions according to what you find. Anyway, we didn’t get very far, and I left my stun-gun in the bush somewhere.’

‘So what are we going to do?’

‘I’m sure they put him in the same hut we thought Nick Greene was in.’ He shook his head. ‘We’ve got to get back there.’