The Ellie Chronicles (33 page)

D represented a possibility, a hope, a faint chance.

And just maybe, C was the length of chain back at the roller door.

As a bonus, the Toyota had a tow bar.

You have to understand that in this situation there was simply nothing else, and once I put the three objects together they burnt so brightly in my mind that I couldn’t think of anything else. We were completely cut off on the right, the mall was behind us and probably now full of enemy troops, and we would never get across the vast desert of the car park to the left without being cut off and killed. So in that situation, the Toyota, the dump bin and the chain were like a dying guy in the outback seeing a drink machine, a power point and a pile of dollar coins. The combination the three objects made in my mind was suddenly irresistible.

If everything goes in threes, I also knew that there were at least three major problems. And they were major major major. On the Richter scale they would have rated a nine. I knew from talking to the bloke who emptied our dump bin at home that they weigh six hundred kilos. Of course I had no idea what else was in the dump bin. It could have been full of concrete blocks that some bloke had chucked out from the building site. So, first problem, the bin might be too heavy.

On the other hand, Toyota claimed that these vehicles could pull anything. Elephants up Everest.

I also knew that bullets might penetrate the steel wall, in which case the people inside would be dead, dead, a thousand times over. And the third thing: I knew that the person stupid enough to do the driving was extremely vulnerable.

On another hand, one person in the car was a much better risk than five people in the car. I didn’t know what was in those boxes, the ones that filled the Toyota. If they contained inflated balloons for a party, they were not going to be much help. But if they had pillows or china plates or TVs they might just act as bullet-resistant barriers. The best thing of all would be books. Oh how I hoped they were books. I’ve always liked reading, but at this moment I felt an attraction for books more powerful than ever before. I hoped that whoever owned the four-wheel drive was equally keen on them.

At the same time, my sitting at the wheel of the Toyota was going to leave me highly exposed. I wouldn’t be much of a challenge to a marksman. Or a markswoman. Or a markschild. Even a marksbaby.

D, in my equation, represented what? Beyond a faint chance, beyond hope, it represented escape, safety, getting out of here. D would need a lot more than A, B and C. It would also need roads we could use, roads free of traps and ambushes and flying bullets. But that would have to wait. This was all about short-term solutions. This was about the here and now. I’ve never been any good at games like chess, where people can think five or ten moves ahead. On yet another hand, in farming, you do that all the time, so maybe I’m selling myself short. Anyway, there was nothing I could do about the long-term while I was in the car park at that mall. I yelled at Jeremy, ‘Cover Homer, I’ll be back,’ and took off for the roller door.

Chain is terrible stuff to carry. This one was heavy. These weren’t the roller doors they put in suburban garages; this one was serious. But it wasn’t only the weight of the chain that caused me problems. Chain is like picking up a boa constrictor. It slithers and slides and gets away from you and tries to escape, and just when you get a grip on one section another part manages to run off.

I grabbed armfuls, as much as I could manage, and set about dragging it all backwards, to the dump bin. I was sweating like a very anxious pig. In twenty or thirty seconds I was almost clear of the roller door, having made an excellent five metres of progress. Great! I should be back at the Toyota by Christmas.

Feeling desperate, I looked up and nearly dropped the chain again. Three soldiers had simultaneously appeared on the loading dock. They were in a line across the dock. Weirdly, they were like dancers in a theatre. Their movements seemed to be so synchronised. And these guys wore uniforms. Somehow Homer and Lee and Jeremy and Jess had stumbled into half an army.

At that moment I was dead. At the next moment a series of shots roared behind me, bullets no doubt whistled past me, but I was too deafened from the explosions to hear them. One of the soldiers went flying backwards into the storeroom as though he had been king-hit by the heavyweight champion of the world. The other two bolted back into the darkness.

I turned around. Lee. He was kneeling. He had evidently dropped to one knee as he had fired. Before he could get up again I said, ‘That’s the way I like to see you.’

He got up quickly when I said that, although I doubt if he heard me – I couldn’t hear myself after the noise of those bullets. He grabbed half of the chain I was trying to hold, without even asking why I needed it. Trust Lee. In fact, Lee was all about trust, except when he was with girls. With two people the boa constrictor gave up its fight, and we were back at the dump bin in seconds.

At least everyone was there. Everyone bar Gavin. Jeremy, Jess, Homer. That was an improvement in the situation. They were all pale. We tried to smile at each other. But it was pretty much impossible. I’d noticed before how when things get really frightening and dangerous I lose the ability to smile. It’s because of the tension in my face. The whole face locks up, and I have the feeling that if I look into a mirror I’ll see shiny pink skin, like someone who is recovering from burns. It gets too stretched for smiles. The others seemed to be the same. The smiles were in the eyes.

Nothing else improved. In fact it got significantly worse. The car park to the left was now full of visible danger again. I could see four guys with rifles, all advancing, running from car to car. They had spread out too, so that they were almost impossible targets. I didn’t even bother to look to the right, because I knew what I would see. I left the others to do the shooting, and instead carried an end of chain to the loophole at the base of the dump bin.

There was only one hole, at the left-hand end. As I fed the chain through it, I nodded to Lee and then to the tow bar of the Toyota. He got the idea straight away and started wrapping the chain around it. I figured the shorter the chain the better, up to a point, as that would reduce sway. Whatever, the people in the dump bin were in for a bad time.

I wasn’t sure if Lee had worked out exactly what I was suggesting. He sure hesitated when I yelled at them, ‘Get in! Get in!’

Certainly Homer and Jess and Jeremy looked at me like I was mad. ‘Bullets won’t go through it!’ I screamed at them, running around to the driver’s door. It was a big statement to make, but if I was wrong, I would never have to see their accusing faces or hear their accusing voices, for the rest of my life, although I would see them and hear them in my nightmares sure enough.

I realised I had forgotten my rifle, and hesitated, wondering whether to get it, and wondering whether they needed more incentive to get in the dump bin. Then I saw Lee pick up my rifle. At the same time I saw Homer scrambling up the side of the bin. It was going to be fun getting in there. But that was their problem.

I jumped in the cab. When I saw the keys I realised that there had been at least one factor I’d forgotten in my equation. I should have had another letter, E, to represent the keys of the Landcruiser. If the driver had taken the keys with him, we would have been totally rooted. I can’t hot-wire a car, and I don’t think any of the others could either. One of those little jewels of knowledge they didn’t teach at Wirrawee High School.

I started the engine. Looking back, I could only see Jeremy and Lee. This was good news, as it suggested that Homer and Jess were already inside. Normally I wouldn’t have been too keen on the idea of Jess being in a confined, darkish space with either Homer or Lee, but I was guessing that whatever was in the dump bin, if it wasn’t concrete blocks, was likely to be rotting fruit and vegetables, or the contents of the mall’s rubbish bins, or the out-of-date sausages from the butcher in the supermarket.

Anyway, they would have other things on their minds. As did I. I saw Jeremy sliding over the top into the dump bin. It looked like he went in headfirst. Then Homer’s head and shoulders popped up. He must have found something to stand on, possibly Jess, and he dragged Lee, as Lee’s feet scrabbled at the sides, trying to find a foothold.

Well, now to test C in the equation. Would the Landcruiser tow the dump bin?

Elements A and B were also about to be tested, and tested to their absolute limits. Algebra doesn’t allow any room for doubt or ambiguities. Either X represents 1.7852801, or it doesn’t. It was the same here in the car park. Either the dump bin resisted bullets, or the people inside it were dead. Either the driver of the Landcruiser would escape getting shot, or else everyone was dead. Either the Landcruiser would tow the dump bin, or else we were all dead.

Not much doubt or ambiguity there.

I shoved it into four-wheel drive, low range, low gear, low everything. If there’d been an ‘activate bullock train’ button, I would have pressed that. It was an automatic, so there wasn’t much more I could do except to go easy on the take-off. I started easing down the accelerator with my right foot.

I STILL COULDN’T hear too much, but I felt the pressure as the chain tightened. I could picture it, stretching and straining, starting to quiver, either unravelling at the tow bar, or at the dump bin, or tearing off the side of the dump bin. Or snapping. My mind started to race ahead, trying to work out other possibilities if the chain didn’t hold. I couldn’t think of a single thing.

There was a sort of shift, almost a grunt, from the dump bin. I heard that all right. I had a feeling that I was going to move it a few centimetres at least. If I could only get some momentum up! Tugs can tow ocean liners, can’t they? Those little tractors at the airport that pull the jumbo jets around, they had to be good role models for the Landcruiser, didn’t they? Oh God, why did you invent wheels and not put them on every dump bin?

We were inching forwards. Lucky we were, because a bullet hit the right rear window of the Landcruiser. I decided I never again wanted to be in a car where a window is shattered by a bullet. It’s terrifying. You feel like there’s been an explosion in the car, as though someone’s tossed in a bomb. There was enough space between the boxes and the window for the noise to expand. Whatever was in the boxes must have slowed it down though, because it didn’t hit the other window. I found that mildly comforting. But really, my focus was on the dump bin, and whether I could shift it. Gradually it started to move, and there was that magic moment when you’re towing anything successfully and you realise you have momentum, you have lift-off.

However, it wasn’t that easy. I soon realised there was going to be no such thing as momentum. I could hear the car engine really grunting, and wondered again what else was in the bin. Say the car was packed with books and the dump bin with concrete blocks. We’d run out of fuel before we got to the end of the car park. But I started to realise that it wasn’t just the weight of the thing, it was the bitumen as well. If this was the middle of a hot day I’d have had no chance. We’d have been in bitumen soup. I had the horrible feeling that the dump bin was actually lifting and pushing the bitumen, like when you’re chiselling a long curly shaving from a block of wood. I could picture the bitumen piling up, getting bigger and gluggier, until it brought us to a halt.

All of these thoughts were going through my head in the space of seconds, and at the same time the bullets were storming against the car. It was
thang thang thang,
like hail on a galvanised-iron roof, but about twenty times louder. Like popcorn popping against the lid of a saucepan, but a thousand times louder. We were getting up a little bit of speed, but I wondered how long the clutch would last. Grunt, strain, squeeze,
thang thang thang,
push, groan,
thang thang,
lurch. Every fibre in my body seemed to be strained like piano wire. If someone had strummed me I would have given off quite a note.

Yet one thing was changing. There weren’t so many bullets hitting the car. I had time to wonder why. Maybe Homer and the others were taking pot shots at them, sticking their heads up in the dump bin. I hoped not, but I also knew they might have to do that for us to survive. The trouble was that I couldn’t see in the rear-vision mirror, because of the boxes in the vehicle, and I couldn’t see the dump bin in the wing mirrors. For all I knew the dump bin was now riddled with bullets and my friends were all dead.

Perhaps we should have surrendered. Funny, that thought had never entered my head.

But perhaps the soldiers were just running out of ammunition. They must have used thousands of rounds. God knows, we couldn’t have many left either. Up till now I’d been gazing at the steering wheel, the gear stick, the accelerator and brake. I guess I thought it might work a kind of magic and make the vehicle do what I wanted. Now I looked out and around, as much as I could. Amazingly, we were going faster than a man could run, although the creaking and banging and rattling of the chain and the dump bin suggested we wouldn’t get much further. I could see soldiers in the distance, but only to the left, and I think we had put a little space between the others and us.

There was only one place I could aim for and that was the dirt track I had seen before, the one that led up to the building site. I had no idea where the boys’ motorbikes were, but the dirt road looked like it might lead to wildness of some kind. The official roads offered nothing but a suburban death, a journey that sooner or later would be halted by a roadblock or an army vehicle or a sniper. I had to go dirt.

By now I’d actually got up to a speed of between forty and fifty. We were humming along.

Wisps of white smoke drifting out of the engine put a stop to my optimism. I’ve always been one of those people who prefer not to look at something bad in case it turns out to be bad. My father always preferred to look because, he said, ‘It’s better to know! If you look and it’s good, you can stop worrying. If you look and it’s bad, you can figure out what to do about it.’

Well, I wasn’t about to stop, get out and look under the bonnet. The way I see it, smoke is always bad. But I did force myself to look at the gauges, and immediately wished I hadn’t. I’ve never seen a temperature gauge in the red before. I’d certainly never seen one at the max, with the needle practically bowed, like it was about to release an arrow. For all the terrible things I’d done to our vehicles at home over the years, I’d never cooked an engine. My mother did once, but I never had.

The wisps of smoke were strong now, getting more like a solid column. I hoped the owner of the car had insurance. The engine started coughing and heaving, like it was going to vomit. That’s how I felt too. I was pressing down harder on the accelerator but we were losing speed. It was exactly like that movie with the guy being chased by the truck and he’s trying to get up the hill but his engine’s giving him nothing any more. The only difference was that in the movie it took about ten minutes. In the car park it took about forty-five seconds. Suddenly the car was panting and dying.

Still, we were nearly at the edge of the car park. But at that point I gave up. It was a question of whether we would get a few more metres with the Toyota or whether we would be better off on foot again. Assuming there was anyone else left alive to be on foot. I think that was one of the reasons I stopped where I did. I couldn’t stand the not knowing any longer. I had to see whether they were still alive. I had to see whether my idea and my decision had killed them or saved them or somewhere in between. This was one situation where it was better to look.

Here’s a bit of historical trivia. When the United States Army invaded and won the Japanese island of Okinawa in World War II, they suffered nearly forty thousand casualties. But they also had more than twenty-six thousand men evacuated because of mental breakdowns. When General Finley told me that, in New Zealand during the war, it really shocked me. But as the war went on, it didn’t shock me much any more.

When Homer and Lee and Jeremy and Jess came crawling out of the dump bin I thought, ‘My God, what have I done to them?’

Their hair was frazzled like they’d had electric shocks, their faces were tight, but it was their eyes I noticed. I wondered how much longer they’d be members of Liberation. Would they be any good to the Scarlet Pimple after this? Their eyes reminded me of the cow I’d pulled from the dam. She was stuck so fast and was so worn out by her struggles that I’d given her a handful of illegal pills to get her moving. By the time she got onto the bank, her pupils were as big as frisbees.

Even more disturbing was that I couldn’t work out whether these four looked like the traumatised cow before I gave her the ecstasy, or the
crazed
cow tripping after I shoved the pills down her throat.

I shouldn’t try to be funny about it because there was nothing amusing in it for them, and I’m sure I would have looked worse if I’d shared the ride with them. But I saw at a glance that the sides of the dump bin were intact. Dented and marked, almost every flake of paint gone, but no holes. I felt a little surge of jubilation in my chest.

At least they hit the ground running. Homer looked around briefly to orientate himself. ‘Quick, go!’ he gasped. He started stumbling towards the dirt track.

‘Where are we going?’ I screamed at him as we took off

He looked around at me with a surprised expression. ‘I thought Jeremy must have told you.’

‘So I was heading the right way?’ I asked, pleased again.

He didn’t bother to answer.

At least I was reunited with my rifle. For a few moments the position of the Toyota and the dump bin had protected us from the firing. But as we got free from that cover, it started again. I’d already been pulling out any last rounds I could find in my pockets and cramming them into the magazine. The trouble is that when you do it too quickly you get in a mess and the rounds jam up with each other. ‘Patience in small things,’ my father used to say. I hardly had any bullets left anyway. It’s a feeling of lightness and relief when you take the last of them out of your pockets, because they weigh so much. It’s also a horrible feeling of panic, because once they’re used, you’re truly on your own.