The Ellie Chronicles (60 page)

Yes, Coke should do the trick. Fill each barrel and I reckon it would do them terminal damage. I opened a can, took a swig, then went to work.

MISSION COKE TOOK quite a while. I gave each weapon a couple of applications. It didn’t necessarily matter that I took a while, because I figured that the longer I stayed in the house the safer I’d be. The later it got the less chance there’d be of people wandering around the corridors. I was hoping the guy I’d seen had gone to bed and that there weren’t too many more after him.

But also I was a little afraid to open the door again. It sounds crazy, but for half an hour or so I felt quite secure. In that short time the room almost became my space. A little world where I could work away secretly, without interruption, and forget what was on the other side of the door, and even forget why I had come to the house in the first place.

Reality’s always waiting for you though. Even when you think you’re hiding from it really cleverly, it still ambushes you sooner or later. The time came when, with a sigh, I turned off the light, opened the curtains and went back to the door. ‘Here we go,’ I thought, except that there was no we, only one poor I. I took a breath, thought of all the people who were sustaining me right now, Bronte and Jeremy and Homer and Lee and Fi and even Jess and probably the spirit of Robyn and Corrie too, and slid out into the corridor again.

There was now a strip of light under a second door, the one next to the guy I’d seen earlier. I ignored that and turned to the door just down a little way and on my right. The thought of opening every door in the house disturbed me, but I couldn’t think of any other way to go about this. I squeezed the handle and nudged it, listening carefully. I decided on the spot that I’d try a new policy. I’d open each door and see if I got a Gavin vibe. If not I’d close it and continue. I just had to trust that when I opened the right door I’d know it.

This room was much darker than the previous one. There was no way I could tell what was in there but I thought that I could probably tell what wasn’t in there, and what wasn’t in this room was Gavin.

I went on up to the only other room at this end of the building. I hoped to God he was in here. I really didn’t want to be in this house much longer. I hoped we weren’t operating on Murphy’s Law, or whoever wrote the law that the last room you look in is the one where they’ve stored the hostage. But this room felt cold, like no-one had been in it for a long time.

Time to go to a different part of the house.

The other light had gone off again. I didn’t feel like exploring those rooms now that I knew at least two of them were occupied, and at least one of those by a non-Gavin. Would have been funny if the guy’s name was Gavin. Funny but irrelevant. I suppressed that thought and moved down the stairs. They seemed to creak more going down than they had going up, and that’s saying something. Again I tried to take big steps, and I waited a long time between each one in the hope that anyone listening might have gone back to sleep before I made another of these awful rusty-hinge noises.

At the intersection I looked down the corridor to the right. Nothing. I got to the three doors up the other steps without too much drama. Those stairs didn’t creak nearly as much. Of course Gavin could easily have been in either of the rooms where I’d seen lights. But I gambled that he wasn’t. I wouldn’t like to share a bedroom with Gavin, and I figured they might be feeling the same way.

That left the door straight in front of me. I put my ear to it for a few moments but could hear nothing. I knew I wouldn’t, but I was trying to delay the awful moment when I would have to open the door. I was much more nervous with this one than I had been with the ones behind me, because I knew the odds of someone being in here were much higher. If two out of three were occupied, it raised the chances for the third one.

My throat was now so dry that I could have driven a Landrover down it. It wasn’t just my throat though, suddenly it was my whole mouth area, from somewhere up in the nostrils, and it went right down into my chest. My tongue felt so huge and thick and heavy that if someone had spoken to me I don’t think I could have answered. I already had one hand on the doorknob, but now I took a firmer grip, turned it and, for the fourth time that evening, squeezed a door open.

Someone was in there. I knew that at once. Mostly it was the feel of the air, which was heavy and humid. The kind of atmosphere that only a human can create. As well, I thought I could hear breathing. But I’m not sure if that was just my sixth sense, which was working pretty hard by then.

Now my problem was even harder. I’d found out that someone was in the room, sure, but I realised that had been the easy part. The real problem was now beginning. Who was it?

I honestly didn’t think it was Gavin. If I was relying on my senses, well, I had to trust them. Somehow the room felt too heavy. A little kid like Gavin – something in me felt that the air, the atmosphere, would be lighter. But I still had to be sure. I didn’t want to have to come to this room a second time. The trouble was that I didn’t trust my instincts enough.

I had no hope of seeing much, as I was now in the stomach of the house, or to be more accurate the chest, and there were no lights anywhere. But it’s amazing how much you can pick up without even knowing you’re doing it. I was sure now I could hear a kind of breathing, and equally sure it was coming from my left. I started to inch over there, using my feet to suss out each bit of floor, at the same time raising an arm in front of my face in case there was a mobile, or some other unexpected obstacle, hanging from the ceiling. My left foot, probing carefully, came into contact with something soft, maybe some clothes, and I did a little detour until I was on clear carpet again.

My stomach was getting pretty queasy, with being in this room, so close to a complete stranger, and for all I knew pushing his underwear around with my toe. But I had to keep going. I felt something with my hand that was a regular shape, not like the soft stuff on the floor. I ran my hand to the left and then the right, and could tell by the different layers that it was a bed, with a mattress, and at least one blanket.

By now I had a little night vision, even in this very dark room, and could make out a shape under the blanket. It looked quite big, but Gavin was getting quite big too, and I started to think it could possibly be him. Now I had to let my fingers do the looking. Leaning forward a little, I forced myself to lift the blanket and wiggle my left hand in. I made it creep across the sheet, until it touched skin. My whole stomach flipped over at that point and I nearly threw up. I even made a retching noise and had to clamp my mouth shut to make sure nothing came out. I realised I was touching a hand, and had the dreadful idea that the man would suddenly grab me and haul me forwards. But it was a man. I was sure of that much. I could feel his thumbnail and knuckle, thumb or finger, I couldn’t be sure which, and they were definitely too big for Gavin.

I retreated the way I’d come, remembering to avoid the pile of soft stuff on the floor. Out in the corridor again, I closed the door behind me. I felt really weak now, and had to lean against the wall for a moment. Those awful minutes in the bedroom had drained me. I knew I couldn’t go through that again in every room of the house.

I was stuck for ideas, but I went along the corridor that seemed to lead into the next building. It was quite long, with no doors or windows, and I was sure that I was now in the house next door. At the T junction I turned left. There were two doors here, one of which looked like a very small room on the right, and another straight ahead, which could have been anything.

But something else was on the left. It was a little ladder. And looking at that, my Gavinometer suddenly started to register. I had the feeling that at last I was close.

I didn’t hesitate, but started up the ladder. I couldn’t see what was at the top, but once I got there I realised it was a funny little alcove, on a landing, and there was a door at an angle, and a smell of fresh sawdust. I found a handle and turned it, as certain as I could be that Gavin was on the other side. But I got no further. It was locked. Of course. It would be. A million curses ran through my head. Then I remembered the obvious, and groped around some more. I let out a sigh of relief as my fingers felt a yale key securely in its lock. I turned the key and turned the handle and pressed the door open.

It was pretty stinky. A wave of smell rolled past me, stinging my eyes. I blinked, then went in. The smell was familiar. Then, standing a metre inside the room, I heard breathing. The sound of people who are asleep must be as distinctive as their voices when they are awake, because I knew that breathing, and I knew that my long journey had resulted in success. Somehow, miraculously, I’d travelled all that way and found, in the attic of this old house, in a city I’d never visited before, in the middle of the night, my little brother.

THERE WAS SUCH a fierce joy when I held him. We stayed pressed together, holding each other tightly, rocking and swaying a little and, in my case at least, never wanting to let go of him again.

To be honest I felt like a mother bird who has grabbed her duckling back from the jaws of the fox. I was full of joy at having saved him, disbelief that I could have, and the desire never to see him in danger again.

It was funny, he’d woken the moment I touched him, and seemed to know almost immediately who it was and what was happening. I felt his body stiffen as though a charge of electricity poured through him, and a moment later he flung aside whatever sheets or blankets he had, and we were holding each other as tightly as couple of wrestlers when there’s ten seconds to go and the gold medal’s up for grabs. When Gavin hugs it does tend to be a bit like a wrestler going for the death grip.

The trouble was, we might be lucky to get ten seconds. With so much reluctance that I could hardly bear to do it I finally pushed him away a little. I grabbed his hand and traced on his palm the word ‘go’. I’d communicated with him that way before, and it was the only option I had in this darkness. But I didn’t need to use it for long. He separated himself completely from me, shuffled across towards the door, and a moment later we had full electric light. ‘Gavin!’ I mouthed at him in horror and terror. ‘Turn it off.’

He shrugged and grinned and waved his hands. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘They can’t see it.’

It was true there was no window in the attic, as I realised when I looked around, but I didn’t know how much light would seep under the door. It certainly seemed tight-fitting enough. And maybe Gavin had his light on at all hours of the day and night and they were used to it. I suppose it wouldn’t bother them if he had his light on or off.

I gave up looking around at the room and concentrated on him. He looked terrible. Among the many awful things those bastards had done, putting him in a room without windows probably wasn’t the worst, but it was a pretty foul thing to do. He seemed taller than I remembered, but maybe he was just growing without my noticing it. He was a lot thinner, but the biggest shock was the paleness of his face. It wasn’t like they’d held him prisoner for so long that he’d lost his suntan, but maybe the 24/7 stress of being with them had robbed him of colour, made him whiter. I noticed, too, a twitchiness, a tremor, that I’d never seen before. His lips quivered, his hands jerked a little, his fingers kept crisscrossing nervously. I wondered if they’d broken his spirit. By God, that would have taken some doing. If they’d done that, then they must be experts at their job. I would have put money on Gavin to go through a cyclone on a bicycle, to ride a tsunami wearing floaties, to escape the Titanic paddling in an esky and singing nursery rhymes. But now something about him worried me and I just hoped I could get him out of the building and out of the city without him falling apart.

‘What’s the best thing to do?’ I asked him. ‘What’s the best way to get out of here? Will we go now, like, straightaway?’

He stared back at me dumbly as if he hadn’t understood a word. But I knew that wasn’t the problem. I think he had been there so long that he just couldn’t contemplate taking action. I asked him again, ‘Will we go now?’ but he just trembled and shook his head. So I made the decision for both of us. ‘Let’s go,’ I said.

I switched the light off and eased open the door. It seemed amazing that nothing outside had changed, when inside the room there had been a kind of joyful revolution, but the corridor outside was as still and dark and quiet as it had been when I went up the ladder. I wasted no more time, but started on down. As I got to the bottom it occurred to me that Gavin might not follow, but just as I glanced up I felt the slight jarring caused by someone else starting a descent.

I took a few steps down the corridor, taking my gun out as I did so, then waiting for him to join me. He was there in a moment, but he still looked and felt insubstantial, like he was only a quarter of the person he had been before. I felt very disturbed by this, not only for the obvious reason, but also because if we had to fight our way out of the building I wanted to have someone solid and strong beside me.

Anyway, there was nothing I could do about that. I moved down to the intersection of the corridors, with Gavin following, and turned right, back the way I’d come. We tiptoed along. ‘’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature did stir, not even a mouse.’

We weren’t too close to Christmas, but the rest seemed to fit.

I blame myself totally for what happened next. I hadn’t paid nearly enough attention to Gavin’s condition. Knowing his toughness and stamina, I hadn’t realised how weak he had become, how desperate, how disorientated and even dizzy he was, how much help he needed. We got to the head of the stairs. I paused, peeping down the stairwell, trying to suss out the situation. Gavin had lagged a few metres back. Now he came up behind me, but caught his toe in a loose edge of carpet. I’d actually caught my own toe in it and stumbled slightly, but hadn’t bothered to guide him around it. He fell forwards, crashing into my back and bum. I fell forwards too, my finger jerking on the trigger of the gun. The world lit up and crashed in all at the same moment. The explosion from the gun made me as deaf as Gavin, but before I could think about that I hit the steps and started sliding down, desperately trying to keep my arms free so that the gun wouldn’t go off again, and at the same time trying to protect myself from getting a fractured skull.

I went down five or six steps, until I hit the landing, still waving my right arm, which held the gun. Although I felt shocked and bruised, and wanted to check to see how many broken bones I had, I knew there wasn’t time for that. I rolled over and staggered up. Above me, Gavin had stopped about halfway down the flight of steps. For a moment I hoped that the people of the house were still heavily asleep, dreaming fond dreams of serial murders, kidnappings and assassinations. But no hope of that. Lights came on above me, below me, and then on the staircase itself, so that we were suddenly as exposed as a spotlit rabbit on a bare hillside. I heard doors slamming, footsteps pounding, men yelling. I waved urgently at Gavin, to get him to follow me. Although he was now standing, he only responded tentatively, putting one foot down to the next step. I started up towards him. As I did two men appeared at the top of the staircase, looking pretty dazed themselves but both holding guns. I glanced down and saw more people at the bottom of the staircase. I wanted to gamble that the guns had been poisoned by Coke, but it was too big a gamble. Carefully I placed my gun on the carpet of the step I was on, and then gave all my energy to holding Gavin, trying to transmit some strength to him.

At first they seemed completely incredulous. Looking at me like I resembled a Tasmanian Tiger or the Tooth Fairy. Then one of them yelled my name, and I knew I was truly busted. In a moment they were all laughing and shouting and my name was getting worn out from being repeated so often. I guess they were just fantastically amused by the fact that I’d walked straight into their head office, so that they no longer had the bother of going all the way to Wirrawee to find me. Obviously it didn’t take much to amuse them. Show them a DVD of Austin Powers and they would have needed hospitalisation.

The laughter soon turned nasty though. One guy walked up, yelled something and slapped me. By then we were at the top of the staircase once more, a place I had hoped never to see again. Once this guy broke the ice, so to speak, by smacking me in the face, the others realised that it was swimming season. Someone kicked me from behind, not a killer kick, but hard enough, to the back of the knees. Then someone else hit me on the top of the head and the first guy got me again, on the other side of the face. I decided I had to make sure that I stayed on my feet; I had a horrible image of myself on the floor, curled up foetally with these guys putting the boots in big-time. I had the feeling that if I went down I mightn’t get up again.

Gavin stirred to life now and tried to stop them, but there wasn’t much fight in him and they had no problem holding him off. Still, his doing that did change the dynamic somehow, and although they kept kicking and smacking at me, they also started moving me along the corridor. One guy held my wrists behind me in a handcufftype grip. I relaxed my arms as much as I could, hoping he would relax too and I’d get a chance to throw him off. He didn’t lighten off for a moment though.

Now I was like a moving target, with three of them driving me along and the others getting in random hits at every chance. Coldly I decided that if I had the chance to kill them I wouldn’t hesitate. It was only the power of that thought which kept me going. I stumbled half-a-dozen times but managed to avoid going down.

It was pretty obvious where we were heading. Back to Gavin’s attic. I realised they were probably not going to kill me straightaway. The most likely scenario was that they’d lock me up for a while at least, in the same little room. I felt despair for myself but even more for Gavin. The time he had spent there already seemed to have affected him so badly. I didn’t like the prospects for either of us though. It wasn’t easy to think while I was being driven along the corridor, getting punched and kicked. But in some small, clear part of my brain I did wonder if we were very close to death. The only reason they had now to keep us alive was as hostages for capturing the Scarlet Pimple. But I thought it was more likely they would get rid of Gavin and me, and then go after the Scarlet Pimple with some new strategy. At least now I could help Gavin a little maybe, give him some strength for whatever lay ahead.

Nevertheless there was no point in staying at the bottom of the ladder getting beaten half to death. Gavin went up it first, followed by one of them, then me. The soldier pushed me into the room, and slammed the door behind me. I heard the key turn in the lock. I switched the light on and gazed glumly at Gavin. He was dry-eyed, but he looked even more frail and trembly. It was like he was fading away in front of my eyes.

I checked out my bruises. At this stage I had mostly red marks and grazes, but I knew I’d soon be an art gallery of red and purple and blue and brown. Lucky the room had no mirror. My body was sore, I was tired and frightened and depressed. I was starting to reach the bottom of my internal reservoir, down among the puddles and weeds, not much left to dredge up.

Somehow, though, I had to find enough to keep us both going.

I figured that Gavin would have searched this room a thousand times looking for ways to escape, but I still had to do it for myself as well, just in case. I ran my hands around the walls, feeling for weak spots. Gavin just shook his head, as if to say, ‘You’re wasting your time.’ I felt the door, jiggling it to see if it could be broken down. Pretty strong, I thought, but not impossible. Gavin on his own would have had no chance, but the two of us might be able to do it some damage.

The only furniture was a folding bed, a small table on wonky legs, and a green stool, quite a tall one. I got up on the stool and pushed at the ceiling, then moved to another spot and tried again. Knowing that Gavin was too short to have done this gave me hope that I might find something he hadn’t. I moved the stool a dozen times, probing different parts of the ceiling. Again, it seemed a long shot, but I thought it was at least possible that we might find a way to break through it.

I got down and said to Gavin, ‘What do they do each day? How often do they come up here?’ I knew the pattern they had followed with him mightn’t be the same as the pattern they would follow now, but knowledge is power and I was coming from a low knowledge base.

I felt sickened by his answers though. If I’d hated and feared these people before, these kidnappers and terrorists, I loathed them now. It seemed that most days Gavin was lucky to get two meals, and the meal deliveries were often the only visits he got. Four times he’d been taken out to the back yard to get some fresh air, but since he’d been delivered to this house that was all the exercise he’d had.

I can understand people killing each other in hot blood, like in a war, when you grab a gun and shoot someone because they’re the enemy or because they’re a threat to you or whatever. I can even understand how in peacetime people kill each other out of jealousy or rage. But I can’t understand how anyone can torture a kid in such a slow-running, day-by-day, drip-by-drip, coldbloodedly cruel way. I remember in a book, I forget its name, this girl who was about my age saying that some of her friends were killing their mothers by slow degrees. These people were killing Gavin, but it was death by a thousand cuts. Putting Gavin in these conditions was like putting a bear in a pen or a rabbit in a box or a cockatoo in a cage. Even Gavin’s cruelty to the cat at Mark’s place was easier for me to understand than the way these guys had abandoned him in the attic.

There was another question that I didn’t want to ask but I had to, and the answer was what I expected. Gavin pointed to a bucket in the corner. I’d already noticed the roll of toilet paper next to it. Apparently they emptied it when they felt like it, but usually when they brought the evening meal. At least at this stage it was empty, but it didn’t stay that way for long, as I was busting. Seemed like Gavin was too, as he followed straight after. To be honest it was embarrassing, even though Gavin and I had been together for so long. But it’s funny, you adjust so quickly to whatever circumstances you’re in. Out in the bush in the middle of a war, when you’re cold and starving, you think nothing of licking up the crumbs in the bottom of your carrier bag. But if you’re in an expensive restaurant I guess you complain if the chips aren’t hot enough. I guess. I’ve never been in an expensive restaurant, like, a really posh one.