Darkness Be My Friend (25 page)

I looked down at the bottom of the fence. Fi was right. It could be lifted quite easily. It was the sloppiest bit of fencing I'd ever seen. Dad would have had a fit if any of the fencing contractors—or me—had done a job as bad as that.

The soldiers went into the hut. It was now or never. I brought the barrow up and lifted out the bags.

"I'll go in and you push the sugar through to me," I
whispered to Fi. "Then you wait at the end of the lane." I pointed to the other end, the opposite end to where we'd left the four-wheel drive.

But Fi shook her head furiously. "No! I'm coming in with you. You're always taking the risks."

I was surprised, deeply surprised, but this was no time to argue. I was moved, too. Sometimes I thought that no one appreciated the risks I ran. It would have made more sense to leave someone on guard in the lane—I'm sure that's what Iain and Ursula would have done—but I desperately wanted company in the yard of the depot, so I was grateful to Fi.

We brought the bags even closer and Fi lifted the bottom of the fence. I squeezed under it without too much trouble. We were committed now. Fi lifted the first bag, with some difficulty, and slid it in. Again the sensible thing would have been to take it straight to the tank while Fi kept pushing other bags in, but now that Fi had made her offer, I suddenly felt incapable of going on my own. I really wanted her with me. So we got every bag into the depot, then Fi pushed the wheelbarrow back into the shadows. And in she came, under the fence.

I have to admit, she slipped through the gap more gracefully than I had.

We picked up a bag each. Fi staggered under the weight but got it on her shoulder. We needed both hands to hold and balance them. They were an awkward shape.

From somewhere not far away, maybe Nicholas Street, came a single shot, loud and terrifying. We waited a moment but there seemed to be no more, so we
had to assume it wasn't anything to do with us. Crouching as best we could, we made the little run across the grass to the tanks.

That first part wasn't too bad. Just like I'd remembered, there was lots of old junk lying around. So we were able to use those for cover. It was the next part where we'd have problems. Noisy gravel on the ground, crunchy gravel, and nothing but space between us and the big underground tank. The tank was even marked "Aviation," so Lee was right about that, too. Less than fifty metres from it was the glow of light from the little shed. "We're running a hell of a risk here," I thought grimly. But we'd gone too far to back out. Simple human bloody-mindedness, the feeling that you're pathetic if you give up. The marathon runner at the Olympics who risked death to finish the race when her whole body was in a state of collapse. The last wild sheep in Nellie's paddock that defied every attempt to muster it, but you kept chasing it anyway. The guy who climbed Everest even though he knew his toes were freezing off. I've seen a photo of his toes in a book, and they weren't pretty.

It's stupid, but there's a lot to admire in it, too. And there in the fuel depot, that's the stage I'd reached.

I looked at Fi, she looked at me. I made a face at her, shrugged, and wrinkled my nose. That was meant to say, "Can you believe we're doing something this mad?"

She grinned, so maybe she understood. We started across the gravel.

Crunch, crunch, crunch, I've never known anything as noisy as that gravel. It was like the noise your mouth makes when you're eating celery. We went slowly, but
that was the problem: we couldn't go too slowly, because there were two more of these trips to be taken yet. If we'd gone as slowly as I wanted we'd have been on our second trip when the sun came up.

I hardly looked at where we were going because all my attention was focused on the shed. It's a pity neither of us looked at the tank, because we might have saved ourselves some trouble. The first time I looked at the tank was when we were standing in front of it.

It was padlocked.

There was a dirty great padlock on it, about the size of my fist and made of hardened steel.

My skin burned. It was like on beach holidays: that first evening when you have sunburn and your skin prickles and burns all over. Then I felt angry, wildly angry. If Fi hadn't been there I think I would have smashed my head into the tank, or tried to rip the padlock apart with my bare hands. I knew right away there was nothing we could do. I looked at Fi again. It was almost funny. She was standing gazing at it with her mouth open, blinking like she'd just been asked a question in Cantonese or Bulgarian or Pitjantjatjara. When she realised I was looking at her she whispered frantically: "The wirecutters?"

I shook my head. "You'd be better using your teeth."

"But there must be something..."

"There's nothing. Let's go."

I thought it'd be better to take the sugar. I don't know why, partly the feeling that it'd be good if we could deny that we were saboteurs or guerillas. Partly because I still hoped we could come back and try again later. I thought
briefly of that sixteen-year-old in Western Australia, before the war. The one who'd set off to sail single-handedly around the world and had the guts to return after a week when his radio stopped working. I remembered seeing him on TV leaving for the second time.

Patience and persistence. The opposite of bloody-mindedness, and a lot smarter.

When I picked up my bag, Fi followed suit. We started to retreat.

We were just at the edge of the gravel when I felt it coming on. Again it came quickly, too quickly for me to drop the sugar and grab my nose. So the sneeze, only one this time, echoed across the quiet of the depot like a fart at a funeral.

A moment later the light in the hut went off.

That was the end of my attempts to save the sugar. The whole night had been a complete failure from start to finish. The only thing left to save now was our own lives.

Here dead we lie because we did not choose
To live and shame the land from which we sprung.
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;
But young men think it is, and we were young.

Millions, hundreds of millions of people, have died in wars. And some of them died in the stupidest ways. Another poem from World War One that the Dunedin teacher gave me was about a soldier who didn't want to use the same toilet as everyone else. He stepped aside to take a leak away from his mates and he was seen and shot dead by a sniper. The guy who wrote the poem said this was nothing to laugh about: the soldier paid his price to live with himself according to his own standards.

How is this matter for mirth?
Let each man be judged by his deeds.
I have paid my price to live with myself on the terms
that I willed.

Mind you, the teacher had to explain it to me. I didn't get it at the time.

Sometimes I think there's a poem for everything.

So, a lot of people had died in wars, and some of them over little things. Why should we be any different? If Fi and I were killed by a sneeze, or a couple of bags of sugar, would that be anything special? We'd just join the hundreds of millions of others.

We ran like hell. We'd already frozen like rabbits that night, and flattened ourselves like rabbits, now we ran the way rabbits do when they get a sniff of the warren and think maybe they can just make it. We put our ears back, kept close to the ground and went for it. We heard nothing behind us at first. That surprised me. I'd expected shouts, running feet. But then I thought, "They don't know who or what's out there. They won't
come rushing out into the dangerous darkness." I ran even harder.

The fence loomed up at me. I dived to go under it. Still like a rabbit. Beside me Fi did the same. As we went down, the first shot wailed above our heads. If I've timed one thing perfectly in my life, that was it.

As we wriggled under the fence the sharp ends of the wire scratched me painfully. I could feel the deep gouges in my back, but I didn't care a damn. For a moment there were no more shots: I think they were unsighted by our being down so low, and by all the junk in their way.

Then we were through the wire and still alive. Which way to go? Either way there was a long stretch of lane with no protection. Fi went to go right, I suddenly decided left was better. It meant going back the way we'd come, which seems crazy, but with the search closing in we only had one real hope now, and that was the four-wheel drive. I'd never thought when we casually dumped it that it might figure in our lives again, but we had to get out of this area fast. Things were getting very hot. I could see lights everywhere. Not just the white lights of spots or torches but house lights too. Seemed like we were waking up half of Wirrawee.

Fi followed my lead, although she must have thought it was madness. We belted down the lane, our feet clattering on the rough surface. The sound was amplified by the high fences on both sides. It was a race between us and the soldiers back in the fuel depot. We had to get to the end of the lane before they got to the fence. But what might be waiting for us? Funny sort of race where the guy at the finish line shoots you. Normally it's the starter who has the gun.

The end of the lane was fifty metres away, then forty, then thirty. I began to let myself think the impossible, that we might make it. It's always dangerous to think that. Only a second later the unmistakeable fast "brrr" of a bullet flashed past mv ear. "We're dead," I thought. "The end of this alley'll be the last thing I see in this world."

But not for the first time that night, instinct cut in. And for the final time that night it was rabbits who inspired me. I dropped to the ground and did a fast crawl towards the corner of the lane. I realised Fi, on my left, was doing the same. Suddenly we'd become a really difficult target. The final ten metres I zigzagged as well. Bullets were flying. The other soldiers looking for us would have no trouble now. The noise was terrible. It was like the air was full of insects; the most dangerous insects ever invented, fast, loud and deadly. They were hitting the cobbles of the lane, or the fences either side of us, or simply flying away into the distance. A sharp sting in my leg let me know one had hit me. Again I thought that I'd never reach the end of the alley.

Then suddenly we were there. Fi swerved to the left and I followed. I was content to let her lead now The lane seemed to disappear behind us as though it had never been. I heard a few more shots, then silence. About a hundred and fifty metres ahead I could see the dark shadow of the four-wheel drive. I was limping a bit and my leg hurt, but worse than the pain was my fear: the fear that at last I'd been shot and maybe I'd bleed to death. Fi was five metres in front of me now.

"The car!" I gasped, in case she didn't realise that's where I was heading. She just nodded without looking
round. I'd underestimated her again; I was always doing that.

But we didn't even get close to the car. The shooting from the fuel depot had done exactly what I'd feared. Attracted soldiers the way a dead lamb attracts crows. At the end of the street three or four soldiers suddenly appeared, spread out across the street and looking like they knew what they were doing. I turned fast, getting a sharp stab of pain in my leg as I did so. Down the street, in the other direction, was a line of soldiers running towards us, in single file. They were still a block away.

I had the same fear of Stratton Prison that Fi described in the tree outside Tozer's. I had the same nightmares. I could never go back to a place like that. I was desperately—desperately—determined to do whatever was necessary to get away. Not that we had many options by this stage. Without any need to discuss it we both turned left and ran straight through the open gate of the house next to us. I just hoped the soldiers hadn't seen us.

I don't know who lived there before the invasion. Someone rich, though. It was a big enough place, one storey but very classy: a deep verandah that ran the whole way around it with lots of plants hanging from its roof, and a fountain in the garden. As far as I could tell the house was all dark colours but nice, probably dating back to the 1800s. Everything solid and conservative. There'd be no plastic outdoor furniture or aluminium window frames here.

We ran straight up onto the verandah. Fi hesitated. I sure didn't. I grabbed the door handle and turned it and pushed. The door wasn't locked. It opened quietly and
smoothly. Now I did hesitate. We might be going into a trap. There might be no way out. But the soldiers were too close to give us any choice. I shrugged to myself and limped in, Fi following.

My senses were so alert that I seemed to notice everything. There were polished floors, an entrance hall, an umbrella stand, a coat stand, a tall cupboard, more pot plants. The hall was large, as big as our sitting room at home, and lit by a softly glowing lamp in the corner, probably only twenty-five watts. On the coat stand was a uniform tunic loaded with gold braid and shiny buttons. Someone rich had lived there before the war; someone important was living there now.

I'd looked around the room so quickly that I thought the black stick next to the umbrella stand was actually an umbrella. I'm sure glad I took a second look. When I did I realised it was a rifle. Near it, on a table that held a pot plant and an overflowing ashtray, was a small, black hand gun. I remembered Colonel Finley saying that officers got hand guns, as well as rifles. This house had been taken over by an officer. But I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about that. I took three quick steps to the table, picked up the gun, loaded a bullet into the chamber, flicked off the safety, and gave it to Fi. I grabbed the rifle for myself.

Fi's eyes were popping. "I ... I can't...," she started saying, then stopped.

Not because she'd run out of words but because, like me, she'd heard someone coming.

The door opened quite slowly and, as it did, I lifted the rifle. A man appeared. The whole thing reminded
me of those games at Timezone where you shoot hundreds of baddies but every so often a good guy appears, with his hands above his head. As someone pops up you wait a split second to see: goodie or baddie? Shoot, or hold your fire?