John Marsden - While I live

At last I signalled to Lee that we should sneak out. It was hard to move for the first few minutes — I was so sore and cramped from being in the one spot. But I knew we couldn’t leave Gavin any longer.

When we got to the creek bed I couldn’t see him for a minute but then he dropped from a branch right above my head. Gave me a hell of a shock. No matter how long I was caught up in this fighting stuff I seemed to have trouble remembering a few basic rules, one of which was that you need to look above the level of your own eyes. I wished I could remember it. My chances of staying alive would increase quite a bit if I did.

I explained to the boys what I had in mind. They looked doubtful but I guess neither of them had any better ideas, because they didn’t say anything.

It meant using Gavin, which I didn’t like as a matter of principle, but it’s funny how when you’re desperate and everything’s on the line principles can fade fast from your memory. Of course he was happy to be involved, even if he wasn’t confident about my plan. I think he was too lonely and even scared to be on his own for hours more. He figured that being in the attack had to be better than spending more time alone. I wasn’t so sure I agreed, but we were fresh out of choices.

We had to do two trips with the drums. We left the leaking one till last, to cut the smell factor down. They really were too heavy for Gavin, and the ground was getting steeper, so Lee and I took one each.

It was an excruciating little journey. The trouble was, we couldn’t just move on a hundred metres, have a look round, and move on again. We had to go from one hiding place to another. Gavin was quite useful, because we could send him ahead to check that the way was clear. It was his job to find each new hiding place. And in the bush, in daylight, there aren’t actually a lot of hiding places for three people and two drums of petrol.

He did a pretty good job though. A couple of times he had us in situations where we really didn’t have enough cover. One was a hollow in the ground where we were expected to lie down and somehow be out of sight, and the other was a hollow tree that barely had enough room for him, let alone us two as well. But I think we were able to convey to him that we didn’t appreciate being turned into easy targets, and he soon got the message.

A hundred metres from the point I wanted to reach we holed up between a couple of grass trees. They were a bit prickly, but it was a good spot to wait. From there Lee could begin his journey to the other side of the gully, taking the drums, while Gavin and I went back to the gully to get the other two.

I had to take a short rest back there. I seemed to have no energy left. I wanted to get to Homer as soon as possible but I’d had no food, no water, and we’d been on the go all day. Gavin beckoned me down the creek bed a bit further and showed me a pool the size of a table. The water seemed clear enough and I drank it like a dog, head down and bum up, lapping away till I could feel it washing against my insides.

If the first trip had been tough the second was a nightmare. I knew it would be of course. Maybe that’s why I felt so stuffed before we started. But even so. Again I got Gavin to range on ahead but this time I had to carry both the drums, with a rifle across my back that got heavier with each step. At least one of the drums felt only half full now. I wondered if Lee had taken both his drums together, like he’d planned, or whether he’d given up and done them one by one.

And then suddenly we were in trouble. I’d just joined Gavin between a couple of smallish boulders, neither of which offered much cover. I could see the problem though. There wasn’t anywhere else for quite a way. But just as I got to him I heard footsteps coming towards us, at a slightly higher level.

They sounded like they were about fifty metres away. I tapped Gavin on the shoulder and gestured to him to be quiet. He looked up at me, anxiously, but with an expression of… I don’t know what exactly, but he didn’t take his eyes off me for the next few minutes. The steps got slowly closer and closer. I was sweating, feeling like a trapped fox, about to gnaw my leg off so I could escape. I knew there was no-one to defend us here. International law didn’t stretch this far into the bush.

I shuffled around to get my rifle off my back. God, if I had to fire it here, there would be hell to pay. I’d probably be signing the death warrants of Homer and the Greene guy. And probably Lee’s as well. But what else could I do? If he found us, if we let him capture us, that’d probably result in death warrants all round.

I had to manoeuvre the rifle around Gavin’s head. There wasn’t much room. The steps were so close and somehow the sounds were getting magnified in my head. I shifted my position slightly. I couldn’t work the bolt on the rifle as it would make too much noise. Still, I’d have a moment. He’d be so shocked that he’d take a second or two to react, surely?

He was right at the rocks. He stopped. It was like he knew we were there, just a metre away now. He’d lean forward, turn his head slightly to the right and see us. That’d be the end. I could imagine it so clearly. I even knew what his face would look like. His shocked hard face, the face of a killer. I raised the rifle another few inches. What was he doing? Why the delay? Was he trying to torture us? I heard a funny noise. A gushing of water, quite a strong stream. A pungent smell drifted into the space between the rocks. At the same time a bubbling darkish pool started to spread towards Gavin’s feet.

Any other time I might have got the giggles. My eyes locked on to Gavin’s. Luckily we were both too scared to laugh. Then I started to feel revolted by the smell. Working on a farm, you see everything, you smell everything, you get used to anything, but somehow this really made me feel disgusted.

Maybe it wiped out the smell of the petrol for him though. Maybe he didn’t have much sense of smell. Who knows? They say kids have a stronger sense of smell than adults.

The gushing stopped. I distinctly heard his zipper go up. That’s how close he was. Then the footsteps started again and he went on his way.

Gavin, with a mixture of joke disgust and real disgust, showed me how the urine had reached his shoe and wet the side of it. I made a face then put my finger to my lips. We still weren’t safe from this guy, not by a big margin.

But he didn’t come back. After about fifteen minutes we crawled out, looking around like wombats sniffing the evening air, and set off again. I hoped Lee wasn’t getting too worried. We hadn’t worked out what to do if he got no signal from me. We should have. We already had enough problems.

It was another fifteen minutes before we got to the grass trees. And as we got the pair of drums into place, we started to lose control of the situation. It was like we’d triggered trouble. We hadn’t of course, it was just coincidence, but I’ve never been too sure about this coincidence thing. My friend Robyn used to have some joke about coincidence being God’s way of telling you to wake up. Except I don’t think Robyn saw it as a joke. She was pretty religious. Maybe it wasn’t a joke.

In this case though, it was more likely to be the devil telling us to wake up. Because suddenly it looked like they were going to do something with Homer and the other guy. The man in charge strode out of one hut, yelled a few orders, and the next minute half a dozen soldiers had lined up in a little squad in the middle of the clearing. They did it pretty efficiently too. I wasn’t wildly happy about that. I’d almost been forgetting that they were in some way members of a military force. I’d been trying to convince myself that they were slack but they didn’t look slack while this guy was in charge.