John Marsden - While I live

I was as anxious as he was to get going. But at the same time it seemed like we were heading into a frightening situation, in broad daylight, with no plans at all. I was trying to stay calm but it was hard when I was torn between wanting to rush in to save Homer and the feeling that if we didn’t think it through we’d all get killed.

‘So they never knew you were there?’ I asked.

‘I’m sure they didn’t.’

‘That’s one thing we’ve got going for us then.’

He stuffed the last bit of sandwich in his mouth and stood up. ‘Come on, Ellie, we’ve got to go.’

‘Wait. Wait.’ I tried so hard to think. ‘What about the other members of Liberation? Would they help?’

‘I don’t think there’s time to get them. And I only know a couple of them. Homer’s the one who’s right into it. I’m not officially a member yet. This is the first time I’ve been on one of these raids.’

‘So who is the boss? Maybe we should at least contact him?’

‘Can you believe Homer wouldn’t tell me? I was a bit annoyed actually. Like he couldn’t trust me. But he said there was a good reason. I thought for a while that it might be him, like you said last night.’

‘It’s still possible I guess. How many people do you reckon are in the camp?’

‘Liberation thought it was around twenty.’

‘Could we get the four wheel drive close to the camp?’

Lee wiped a tired hand across his forehead. He was having trouble thinking.

‘Not really. No, no. It’s rough country, just over the border. Not all that far from here, a bit over an hour. Maybe I should have come back earlier.’

‘What about the four wheel motorbike? Could we take that?’

‘Yeah, probably be OK.’

‘All right.’

I’d thought of something. It wasn’t much of a plan; in fact it was barely half a plan, a quarter of a plan, but it might help a bit.

‘We’re going to have to take Gavin.’

‘What? Are you crazy?’

‘We’ll need him.’

I ran out to the machinery shed, Gavin so hot on my heels that he really was like a shadow. I filled four drums with petrol, spilling litres of the stuff in my rush, then loaded them on the Polaris and tied them down. Then I went back into the house and got our. 222, its sling, and the ammo.

We ran to the motorbikes. Gavin didn’t even ask if he was coming, just jumped on behind me. Lee shook his head at the sight. I didn’t blame him. But apart from the fact that we were going to need Gavin I couldn’t help thinking that there was a case for taking him anyway. How cruel would it have been to leave him behind? At the farm on his own, going utterly mad with fear, not knowing if he was ever going to see me or Homer or Lee again? After all, as far as I knew, he had no-one else in the world. It might almost be kinder to let him die with us than to leave him alive in a world of loneliness.

It was past ten thirty when we got away. God, how could a week start this badly? A few hours ago I’d been thinking about catching the bus, fattening the calves, why the pressure pump was coming on more often than it should, how much of the Legal Studies assignment I could get done at lunchtime, whether I was still in love with Lee, if we were going to run out of milk for breakfast… Now we raced across paddocks, past the lagoon, heading for the bush and on into the hills, towards the border, not knowing whether Homer was alive or dead, not knowing whether we’d still be alive at the end of the day.

Lee didn’t spare the horses. He seemed to remember the way pretty clearly. Good going, since the first time he’d come up here was at night. At least the trip home had been in daylight.

Once we got off my place we started climbing. I didn’t know this area nearly as well as I knew the Razor’s Edge, and Mount Wombegonoo, which were in the opposite direction. It just wasn’t as nice, wasn’t as interesting, so I hadn’t been here often. Scrub that was green with the winter rain, quite a few patches that had been logged, a mob of about twenty kangaroos thumping away at three-quarter speed, a fox pawing at something in the grass then bolting when he realised two motorbikes were upon him.

We were on an old logging track that I had a feeling would peter out eventually. The problem was that it hadn’t been maintained in a long time and there were fallen trees across it every few hundred metres.

For the two-wheeler this wasn’t so bad, as Lee could usually detour round them through the scrub, even if it meant walking the bike at times, half lifting it at other times. For the four-wheeler it was a different matter. To detour into the bush I had to get a clear path, and sometimes that meant long, difficult treks. The grass was so high in many places that I couldn’t tell whether it was clear or not. I’d charge through the undergrowth, hit another fallen tree (usually part of the one blocking the road) and have to reverse and try another route. One of the cans of fuel was leaking I think, so there were constant petrol fumes that gave me a bit of a headache.

We had three ways to get the four-wheeler past a fallen tree. One was to detour, one was to push the tree off the road, the other was to ride right over the top of it. The trunks were wet and slimy though, and they kept slipping out of our hands when we lifted them, and when I tried to ride over them the big fat wheels tended to slide all the way down the trunks and branches.

Before long my arms were aching. I was tiring fast, and we seemed to be taking forever to reach the border. Lee offered to swap but I didn’t think it was fair: he was the one who’d been up all night.

Then we got a good run of nearly a kilometre and suddenly we were there.

I’d never actually seen the border before. At this stage it was fairly rough. Apparently the highways and other roads were different — it was well marked, as you’d expect. But here it was pretty casual. Our track had almost faded away and was getting hard to follow. But a couple of strands of barbed wire, a splash of paint on trees either side of the path, and we were about to enter the occupied zone.

Apart from a trip to New Zealand during the war, this was the first time I’d left my own country. Except it was still hard for me to think of it as leaving my own country.

Gavin held up the bottom strand of wire and we rolled the bikes through. I had a quick whispered discussion with Lee.

‘How far from here?’

‘Not far at all. If we take the bikes another five minutes, then we better walk.’

‘It’ll be hard with the petrol.’

‘Well, the walk’s not much more than ten, fifteen minutes.’

‘Twenty with the drums,’ I thought.

We got going. Searching my mind, trying to find something that would help me feel better, trying to think of some advantage we might have, all I could come up with was that they mightn’t know of Lee’s existence. If they’d been searching the bush they should have given up by now. It wasn’t much to pin our hopes on, but it would have to do.

The track became little more than a walking path, covered by thick green grass. It sure wasn’t used very much. Time and time again the four-wheeler barely squeezed between the saplings. I had to keep ducking to avoid low branches, and I could feel Gavin behind me doing some fast swerving as several branches nearly wiped him out.

Lee glided to a halt under a big old gum tree and got off the Yamaha. He walked it into the bush and hid it. I got the drums off the back of the Polaris, then took it down the track another thirty metres and pushed it behind a tree. Without being told, Gavin covered it with bracken and branches.

We slung the rifles over our backs. Lee picked up two drums and Gavin and I got one each. I didn’t know how long Gavin would last with his but every bit helped. I glanced at him as we set off. He looked calm but how could any of us be calm, walking into a gully full of killers? I’d rather be getting a family of snakes out of the woodheap.