Tomorrow 7 - The Other Side Of Dawn (3 page)

Homer said: ‘I think we should go on into Hell. Once we’re there we’re safe. That’s our base, it’s where everything is, it’s where we can organise ourselves for the job you want us to do. And it won’t be hard to get in safely.’

Ryan seemed about to disagree, but he looked around the group, at our faces, and whatever he saw seemed to persuade him. So in the end he just shrugged and said: ‘We’re going to have to be bloody careful.’

I thought that was one of the dumber comments of the whole war, but occasionally in my life I’ve been smart enough to hold my tongue, and this was one of those times.

As we set off again I was thinking of all the possible answers I could have given. ‘No, I’ve got a better idea: let’s form a conga line and dance our way to the top.’ ‘Hey, Ryan, have I told you about my diploma in yodelling?’ ‘By the way, guys, isn’t it time for our morning haka?’

We did a bush-bash to the crest, stopping fifty metres short and sending Homer and Kevin to check it out. We could hardly hold Kevin back. I wondered if Ryan’s presence made the difference. Maybe Kevin was so keen to make a good impression on a professional soldier that he didn’t mind sticking his neck out.

They were away half an hour. The first I saw of them coming back was a glimpse of Homer in among the rocks at the top of the track.
Just a glimpse of his black hair, before he bobbed down again.
My stomach did a slow roll, a full 360 degrees,
then
fell apart. I knew this was bad news. If he was staying in deep cover it must be for a reason. I glanced round at the others. At least they were awake, and watching. I waved them down, like ‘Get out of sight’. A second later they’d all disappeared.

Ten minutes later I saw Homer much closer, then almost at the same time I saw Kevin coming down the hill on the other side. They were moving like daddy-long-legs, so delicately and carefully. I sneaked up the hill and met Homer behind a boulder. When I put my hand on his forearm I felt he had a thousand volts running through him. If we’d wired him up to the
Wirrawee
electricity grid they could have turned on the streetlights and still had enough left over to heat the pool.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘They’re spread out along Tailor’s Stitch,’ he said.
‘Just looking down into Hell.
I don’t know what they’re doing. They’re bloody suspicious though.’

‘Maybe they’ve seen something from the air,’ I said.

‘Yeah, maybe.’
He was panting,
then
he added: ‘God, I can’t take much more of this.’

There was a rattle of stones behind me and I turned around. It was Ryan.

‘What’s happening?’ he asked.

Homer repeated his news. We both looked at Ryan, waiting for him to say something brilliant. Instead he seemed a bit embarrassed. He said, ‘I haven’t actually had a lot of experience in this kind of situation. What do you guys think?’

I felt my eyebrows go up, but got them under control again.

‘We can’t afford to let them start climbing down into Hell,’ I said. ‘Not with
Fi
and the
ferals
there.’

‘We’re light on for weapons,’ Homer said.

‘There’s plenty of firepower in those crates,’ Ryan said.

‘They’re too far away now,’ I said. ‘How much ammo have you got for that thing?’ I nodded at the rifle Ryan carried.

‘Eighty rounds.’

We all had automatic rifles, knocked off from the enemy, but with only thirty rounds between the four of us. It sounded a lot, but I knew the patrol up on Tailor’s Stitch would have a couple of thousand.

‘Are there only five of them?’ I asked Homer.

‘I think so.’

Kevin arrived, then Lee, from his position out on the flank. We told Lee the news.

‘Let’s get up closer and see what we can do,’ I said.

Ryan cleared his throat, nervously.

‘
Er
... I don’t quite know how to tell you this,’ he said.

We waited. I had no idea what he was about to say, but it was obviously important.

‘I’m under strict orders,’ he said, getting redder with every word. ‘I’m not allowed to get involved in a combat situation. Not under any circumstances.
Unless I’m being attacked, obviously.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘Well, OK,’ Homer said.

‘Unbelievable,’ Kevin said, which I thought was a bit rich, considering some of the performances he’d put on during this war.

Lee just gazed into the distance, up at the ridge, without saying anything.

‘Well,’ I said, echoing Homer. ‘OK. At least we know. Better to find out now I guess.’

With a big mental effort I made myself concentrate, not get distracted by negative feelings.

‘You wait here,’ I said to Ryan. ‘We’ll come and get you after we’ve checked things out. Can we have your ammo?
If we leave you with, say, a dozen rounds?’

‘Sure,’ he said in his gruff voice. ‘Look, I’m really sorry about this, but they seem to think I’m needed for a few more jobs yet ...’

‘It’s fine,’ I said. I just wanted to get moving. I was very conscious of the patrol sniffing around at the edge of Hell, and in my overactive imagination I could see them already halfway down the sides of the crater, closing in on
Fi
and the kids.

We did the business with the rifles and started the long slow sneak up to the ridge. As I left Ryan he slammed his fist into a tree and muttered, ‘Mother of God, this is so unfair’.

I suppose he meant it; I wasn’t altogether sure.

The last thing I wanted was to go slowly but we simply had to be ultra careful. By the time we got to the top and set out for
Wombegonoo
the first heat of the day was starting to settle on us. The clear daylight scared me. We didn’t normally fight in these conditions. We were nocturnal killers.

Five against four weren’t good odds either.

We didn’t see the first soldier until we were halfway to
Wombegonoo
. Homer, beside me, was really fretting. Anything to do with
Fi
had him on edge. ‘They were much closer than this,’ he muttered to me, meaning that the soldiers had moved further along the ridge since he saw them. Either that or they’d already gone over the side and into Hell.

Then I saw one. He was standing on top of Satan’s Steps, looking down the cliffs. He was holding something, but I couldn’t work out what. Homer and I scanned the length of Tailor’s Stitch, looking for the others. I could see Lee and Kevin, to my right, doing the same. When I glanced back at Satan’s Steps, the guy had disappeared. For a moment I thought he must have fallen over. But Lee, who was working his way along the side of the ridge quite quickly, waved Homer and me forward, and as I ran, crouched, to the safety of a tree, I got a glimpse of a rope trailing from a large eucalypt.

I realised then what was happening. They were abseiling over the edge.

After that things happened at a speed that allowed for no thought, no feeling, just the mad adrenalin rush to make the correct decisions, call the right shots, and stay alive. There was a commotion to my right, not a noise, just a sense of the air being disturbed. I snapped around to see what was happening. Lee and Kevin were doing something, under another tree. They had a body between them. I left Homer and sprinted over, rifle at the ready. But they didn’t need me. They’d taken a prisoner. A young woman, in military uniform, was kneeling on the ground, her arms behind her head. Kevin had his rifle pointed at her face, from just three or four metres away. I was impressed, but then the problems hit me. Having a prisoner was a huge complication. But, like I said, no time for thought, we were in the middle of it now. Whatever happened in the next few minutes, we had to come out on top, we had to win. Second prizes in this war were handed out in the morgue.

The woman had been supervising the unwinding of the rope. She didn’t have to do much I’d say, just stand there and keep an eye on it. It ran around the trunk, with a leather strap to stop any fraying. Lee pulled out his knife, and looking at me, made a gesture of ‘I’ll cut it’.

I shook my head at him and tried to think. God it was hard. I was too tired, not just from the events of the last day and two nights, but from the whole long exhausting war. Homer arrived. I was so glad to see him. Somehow his just being there helped me to focus my mind, clarify my thinking. ‘Look,’ I said, keeping my voice low, ‘leave the rope for now.’ I couldn’t put it in words, but I knew in my mind I was right. If we cut the rope, anyone who wasn’t on it would know right away there was a problem. They would melt into the bush in Hell and we’d never find them.

‘Homer and I’ll go down the track,’ I added, ‘and try to surprise them at the bottom of the cliff.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Lee said at once. ‘Kevin can look after her.’

I didn’t argue. I was too grateful for his company. I was wearing Lee’s watch, so I hit the start button and said to Kevin: ‘Cut the rope in eight minutes.’

I figured that if we moved fast enough we could get to the bottom of the cliffs in eight.

We went down that path like we had no fear. I guess the three of us were picturing
Fi
and the kids, those helpless kids who thought they were so tough. We ran silently, but we ran swiftly. Somehow I found myself in front. I
hurdled
logs, slipped on rocks, skidded round bends in the track, ducked under branches. I only looked behind me once. The boys were right there. That was all I needed to know.

Every time I hit another tree, or sharp edge of rock, I knew I’d collected another graze, or cut, or bruise. The sweat poured off me. It mingled with my blood. I ignored both the blood and the sweat, concentrating on the two important things, which were speed and silence. Nothing mattered beside them.

When I wasn’t looking at the path, trying to dodge the ruts and bumps and huge mounds of wet leaves, I was checking the watch. In two minutes and forty-five seconds we reached the first bridge that the old Hermit had built. We made contact with Satan’s Steps for the first time at three minutes fifty, again at four minutes forty, and again at five minutes twenty. We were cutting it awfully fine.
Through the gap between the cliffs exactly one minute later.
I guessed we’d need another minute and a half, which was horribly close to the deadline of eight minutes. We couldn’t afford to be late. Surprise was worth lives in this race.

I heard Homer behind me cocking his rifle as he ran. I did the same. Kind of dangerous, running through bush at full speed with rifles cocked and loaded. I decided if I ever saw my dad again I wouldn’t tell him about this. But it was good Homer did it. It made me remember that this wasn’t just a race against the clock, a race against the bad guys, it was a battle, and I had to be in full combat mode, right now. No time for warm-ups or stretches or motivational speeches. I had to be ready to fire.
To shoot.
To kill.

The last glance at the watch showed seven and a half minutes gone. I reckon it probably was thirty seconds later that we reached the bottom of the cliffs, where I knew they’d be. It was only in the last twenty metres that we slowed down. Only for that little bit did I drop to a walk, then a fast creep forwards. I was so intent that I had no room to feel nervous. Talk about focused. All my energy, physical and mental and emotional, was on the job we had to do.

I saw them at the same time they saw me. The difference was that I was expecting to see them and they weren’t expecting to see me. That gave me a moment. But a moment wasn’t going to be enough, as I realised at once, with a kind of sick terror. There were six of them and three of us. Homer had been wrong about the numbers. Our little time advantage wasn’t worth much when it was six to three. No way could we wipe out six of them in a face-to-face battle.

Despite that a reflex was bringing my rifle up and making my finger curl around the trigger. I started feeling very weird, like all the air had left my lungs, left my body. It wasn’t a desperate feeling exactly, just the sensation that I’d been emptied of air. I didn’t think about it particularly; it was just a very strange aspect to the whole thing.

Six against three.
In fact that wasn’t quite right. It was seven against four, only I didn’t know it.
Seven of them, four of us.
The fourth for us was Kevin. The seventh for them was a woman soldier abseiling down the rock face, swinging out over the steepest cliff in Satan’s Steps.
As Kevin cut the rope.

I wonder how much warning she got. She must have known something was wrong, something was terribly wrong, as the rope began to ripple and shudder. The first I knew was the scream as she fell. God,
that scream
. Her voice filled Hell. It was a wail, it was a shriek,
it
was pure agony. Every time I think about it the skin on the back of my neck goes cold, like someone’s put an ice block there. Time freezes over and I forget what I’m doing, I go a bit catatonic, reliving that scream.

Funny, that’s what happens now when I think about it. At the time my mind worked a little better than that. Somewhere in my most primitive being I knew that the scream of the falling woman, a scream that would curdle milk and curdle blood, a scream that seemed to last half a minute, a scream that came from the deepest pit of hell itself, gave us our only chance.

While the enemy soldiers stood transfixed, as though a funnel-web spider had injected them with
a paralysing
venom, I squeezed the trigger with my right index finger.

The bang-bang-bang-bang of the automatic weapon, with the background of screams as the woman fell and fell, made the most horrible music I’ve ever heard.

It only lasted for a moment. The thump of the woman hitting the ground put an end to it. I hardly noticed that. Already other bodies were falling. They didn’t have so far to go, but their destination was the same. Another noise joined in, as Homer and Lee began firing. I don’t think they were more than a second behind me, but a lot of living and dying can happen in a second.

We kept firing for a bit longer but there was no need. Where a moment before there had been half-a-dozen soldiers alive and alert, now there were bodies torn apart by the force of bullets. Blood and pieces of flesh and scraps of uniform were everywhere, and my beautiful Hell had been destroyed forever. There was nothing but death in front of us. It truly was hell now.