John Marsden - While I live

‘Jesus,’ I heard Homer yell, but I didn’t care. He could look after himself. He was the one who’d been stupid enough to get caught in the first place.

I swung the little car round in a turn so tight that two wheels left the ground. I felt us rocking wildly. Nick clutched my arm, which didn’t help. We landed on the ground again and finished the tight skidding turn. Now I was heading more or less in the direction I wanted to go. The car was still rocking from the violence of the turn but I hit the accelerator anyway. Out of the corner of my eye I realised Homer was still not completely inside. Maybe I had been a bit hard on him. Then I stopped thinking about him as I heard a bang from the back and felt the little car go up and down. I glanced in the mirror and nearly let go of the wheel in horror. A soldier had just jumped on the tray. I’ll never forget that face in the mirror. I’ve never seen anything so ugly and frightening. I don’t know where he’d come from. I thought they were all around the other side, dealing with the rolling drums and the fires we’d started. This guy had a rifle and he was already raising it. He had amazing balance. His feet were well apart, but the way we were rocking wasn’t helping him.

We were sitting targets, literally. For the soldier, it’d be easier than shooting those little tin ducks at the Show.

I did the obvious thing and slammed on the brakes. What happened next was maybe the most amazing thing I’d seen since the war started. He fell forward, crash-landing on the tray, and shot himself. I didn’t realise for a few moments. I heard the rifle go off, and I shrunk down in the seat as though that would somehow protect me. Then I heard a wild, horrible scream from the back. I realised it was him. I pressed down hard on the accelerator. The Suzuki took off like a rabbit from a Rottweiler and aimed at the faint track I could see ahead. It wasn’t really a track, but I could just follow the wheel marks from where the Suzuki had driven in.

At the same time I wanted to see whatever was happening behind us, but it was difficult to do that and drive. In the wing mirror I did see the lines of fire burning quite strongly down one side of the gully. I couldn’t see the other side. I just had to hope Lee and Gavin had gotten out of there, but men were running up and down the hill with buckets of water. In the rear vision mirror I got a glimpse of at least three soldiers coming after us. It seemed like it had taken them that long to realise anything was happening on this side of the building. One of them had just fired — he was still on one knee and I saw him take his eye away to have a look at the result. I even saw the little puff of smoke drifting upwards. I hadn’t been aware of any shots. I also had a glimpse of the arm of the man on the back tray of the Suzuki. He was waving to his mates, a weak little salute. It struck me that in a way he was now on our side. They’d be reluctant to shoot if they thought they’d hit him. He was our accidental human shield.

It was time for some creative driving. There was so little room to zigzag but I had no choice. I ran the four wheel drive up the side of the gully to the left then swung it back to the right. There was a scream from the back. I hoped he wasn’t the kind of person who got seasick. I swerved around a huge log and went up the left-hand side again, but not as far. Everything depended on my being unpredictable. Nick was falling against me and I had to shove him off. The screaming from the back was louder than the car, louder than my heartbeat even. I actually saw a branch shot from a tree to my left, about a metre away. It wasn’t a big branch, but it was just above the height of the vehicle, and it was unnerving to see the explosion of splinters and dust as it started to fall. I swung the wheel hard to the right and down the hill we went again, almost straight down. Up the other side and we hit a rock that I hadn’t seen. We hit it so hard it jarred the steering wheel out of my hands.

I grabbed the wheel again and spun it round. I could see the end of the gully now. There was a clear track for fifty metres and I zigzagged along that. I was hoping for an intersection with the track Lee and I had followed on our motorbikes earlier. Trouble was, it had been a dying track. It had been fading quite some way back. But I saw a gap in the trees that could have led to it, so I raced straight for it, for the dark patch. We went flat out, maybe fifty, sixty k’s an hour, and then yes, onto a corrugated old logging road, and we were in the bush.

I felt good.

The good feelings lasted all of twenty seconds, till the road ran out again. We were suddenly facing a wall of new growth timber.

I hit the brakes. I said to Nick, ‘Can you walk for a bit?’

‘I think so,’ he said. He had a nice voice. I left him to think about that while I jumped out. It was good to get away from the smell.

I took a look at the guy in the tray. One look was enough. He was in serious trouble. Blood was smeared everywhere. It was bright red and it was literally smeared, like someone had taken a rough old paintbrush and pushed it around on the aluminium tray. His face was completely drained of colour. His eyes were closed. I thought he was dying, or already dead. I took his rifle and chucked it across to Homer.

‘Maybe we should try to stay with the vehicle,’ he said, ripping an ammunition pouch from the man’s belt.

I knew what he meant. If we could drive further we would have a better chance.

‘There’s a gap,’ he said, nodding at the trees up higher. ‘Might be a track.’

I hesitated. ‘All right,’ I said. Making a face I dropped the back of the tray and pulled the bloke out by his feet and let him fall to the ground. He made a kind of groaning noise as he fell, so he wasn’t dead, but I think he was pretty deeply unconscious. As he rolled a couple of metres down the track I caught a glimpse of some dark and light brown intestines or organs coming out through a hole in his stomach. I felt as though my own intestines were about to come out, through my mouth. My stomach rolled over like a heavy gym mat.

I threw myself into the driver’s seat again and drove up to the gap, through the grass. It seemed like a long trip, and a rough and wild one. There were all kinds of hazards in the grass: logs, rocks, holes. It was like driving over twenty speed bumps every hundred metres, and doing it way too fast. As I got close to the gap in the trees Homer yelled out. His voice was muffled for a moment because he was turned right around, looking through the window behind us, but then as he swung back in my direction I got the full force of his voice. ‘There they are, just down the hill. They’re firing already — shit!’

The engine had stopped dead. Just when the gap was getting so close. Another thirty metres and we’d have been in the cover of the bush. I’d never had an engine cut out like that before. I realised it had to be a bullet through the motor. Nothing could be done about that. I threw open the door and piled out, trusting that Homer and Nick Greene were doing the same on their side. Putting my head down I started the sprint for the trees but realised even as I took my first step that I couldn’t desert Nick, much as I was tempted to. I went round to him. Homer was already helping him, with an arm round his shoulders. He’s a big boy, Homer, but he can be gentle when he wants to, which is about once every three years.

The bullets were whining past, mostly to our left, I think. Nick was panting, trying to walk and not doing too well. I think it was fear as much as physical weakness. I grabbed him around the waist and we half carried him. We got fifteen excruciating metres, then twenty. You could hear the bullets moving in as the soldiers adjusted their aim. Then one twanged by me so close I actually felt the heat from it on my cheek. I put my spare hand up to my face, expecting to feel a burn. Nick twitched and half staggered forward and I was sure he’d been hit. We were into the shadow of the trees. A bullet thwacked a trunk ahead of me and the whole tree trembled. We dragged Nick those last couple of metres. We were in cover. Very temporary cover unfortunately. But we’d bought a minute or so. I turned at once to Nick. I grabbed him by the shoulders, almost shook him.