The Ellie Chronicles (62 page)

It was enough to get the guy’s attention. He turned, not yet alarmed I think, just curious. When he saw who it was he reacted pretty fast though. He started swinging around, pulling his rifle back out of the window as he did so. I didn’t wait any longer, just pulled up the lever and let her rip.

I’d forgotten how dramatic fire extinguishers are. Not only do you get an instant result, but you get a powerful one. The white stuff jets out with not much less force than a bullet. It’s a never-ending high-powered blast of chemical, which looks almost solid at the core but with a lot of white mist or gas smoking around it. I couldn’t see the effect on him, because he was instantly obliterated. I saw the rifle, waving wildly as he brought it up, then I saw Gavin, who’d darted around me, come in from the side and wrench it from the guy. The moment he got it he backed off, bringing the rifle up to a firing position, while I kept going with the extinguisher. The guy was coughing and spluttering and yelping, but I don’t think the white stuff was too toxic. I mean, they wouldn’t put stuff in fire extinguishers that was too dangerous, would they? I just think he was taken completely by surprise – having your face and nose and eyes and mouth filled by some white chemical would be totally shocking, for a few moments at least.

He staggered out to the side. I swung the extinguisher around to make sure I kept it on him, but it was getting pretty light and the flow was slowing down. I dropped it and grabbed the rifle from Gavin, checked that the safety was off and backed away, aiming at the guy as he emerged from the fog. He was wiping his eyes and coughing and not even looking up. While he staggered around I had a quick look behind me. Gavin was one jump ahead – he already had a wardrobe door open and was waving at me to put the man in there. I was so relieved to see Gavin showing all this life, considering what he’d been through. It gave me fresh energy. I yelled at the man and he looked up and then got the message that I wanted him to go in the cupboard. He went pretty feebly. We slammed the door and turned the key, but I wasn’t sure that it would hold him for long. I pulled a chair over and wedged it under the handle, then wedged the door as well, with a thin book from the mantelpiece. It wasn’t much but it would have to do. I couldn’t murder the guy in cold blood, although it wouldn’t have taken much for me to put a bullet in him. I thought these people were the worst scum I’d come across.

Anyway, we wouldn’t be in this house for too long, if all went the way I hoped. We still had no idea what was happening, and why there was a gunfight going on. But with Gavin on my heels I ran back down the corridor, holding the rifle in the ready position, so I could fire at a moment’s notice. It was a long way to the top of the staircase. Soon I could see it, though, and then there was this slow-motion moment when we were reaching towards it; I could smell the freedom, I could picture us running down the stairs, and then Gavin yelled something and a man floated into the picture, from beyond the top of the staircase, to my left. He had a gun, I had a gun, we were both ready to shoot without question, so one of us was about to die. I jerked my rifle up fast and pulled the trigger. He was bringing his rifle up a little higher too, and I could see his right hand starting to squeeze as he thought about applying pressure to the trigger. But I was half his age and maybe that made the difference.
Kee-raackkk
. Is that the sound a rifle makes? I’ve heard enough of them now and that’s the closest I can get to capturing it on paper. His whole body kind of humped, shivered, then he stepped back half a pace, hunched up his shoulders, started moving his hands towards his chest, then fell over sideways, really awkwardly, really clumsily. All in slow motion.

I grabbed his rifle as it fell with him, and gave it to Gavin, which no doubt was one of the bigger thrills of his life. I did think it was possibly the most dangerous thing I’d ever done. The chance of my being shot in the back had suddenly become much higher, but we needed to take many chances if we were going to get out of this place.

Now it was time for the staircase. I gasped a big breath and took the first steps down it. A man appeared at the bottom and I jerked the rifle up again fast and pointed it straight at him. Before I could do anything I heard a shot and he fell backwards, hitting his head on the bottom step with such a crack that if he hadn’t been dead already I think he would have been wiped out by the fall. Killed twice over. You know you’re having a bad night when that happens.

The shot had come from down below us. Someone ran into my field of vision, moving diagonally, like he was doing either a zig or a zag. He had an automatic weapon and he looked totally professional. It wasn’t just the automatic weapon, you could tell from the way he covered that small patch of ground. We were dealing with something new now. Could be good, could be bad, could be on our side, could be hostile. Both Gavin and I swung our rifles around fast and lined him up. Gavin was now down on my step, right beside me. I held my fire, waiting to see what we had. Gavin was not so cautious. He didn’t have the judgement. Before I could stop him he tensed up and pulled the trigger.

‘Gavin!’ I screamed. But there was nothing. Only a wet sort of squelchy noise. Gavin rattled the trigger but nothing happened. I figured this was a rifle that’d been Coked. It was never going to kill anyone. The guy who’d had it mustn’t have tried to fire it or he would have found out for himself. Well, I’d saved someone’s life. Just hoped it wasn’t going to cost us ours.

The soldier at the foot of the stairs was in cover and I couldn’t see him any more. But then I saw his arm waving someone else forward. Another person ran into view. It was Lee.

GAVIN AND I both screamed ‘Lee!’ He looked up and gave us a big smile, then a quick wave. We started down the steps. Lee yelled something to his right then came running up towards us. The other person came out again and covered Lee, with his back to us. Suddenly, though, Lee’s expression changed. He’d seen something or someone behind us. I whirled around and started dragging Gavin down at the same time. Down to a crouching position I mean, not down the stairs. I figured that was as much as I could cope with, because with my rifle and Gavin’s rifle we had quite a tangled mess. I had to rely on Lee to deal with whatever was behind us, but I did start twisting around and trying to get my rifle into a position where I could use it.

In a situation like a gunfight I think trust in Lee is probably quite a good idea. I just wish I could say the same about him when it came to stuff like relationships and other girls.

He dropped low too, but faster than Gavin and me, and at the same time he straightened up his rifle and fired.

You know you really trust someone when you let him point a rifle just above your head and pull the trigger, especially when he’s facing you at the time. Not that we had any choice. It’s one of many experiences I never want to have again. It wasn’t only the noise and the flash and the weird sensation of the air exploding around us, it was the psychological thing of looking down the barrel of a gun and knowing it’s about to be fired. Sometimes I wonder about people who are shot dead. What do they think when they look at the little hole in the barrel and realise it’s the last thing they’ll ever see, their final view of the world, the last image their eyes will convey to their brain. In the old days people believed that if you were murdered your eyes retained the image of your killer, so to solve the crime they only had to prise your eyes open and they’d see a little photograph of the person who’d done it. Mr Kassar, my old Drama teacher, told me that, so it must be true . . . on second thoughts, maybe I’d better check it.

If life were fair, the last view you’d have before you die would be fluffy white clouds, a crystal-clear stream, a lamb gambolling in a paddock, or some corny crap like that. But I guess for many people it’s the filthy walls of some derelict building where they’re doing drugs; or a muddy trench with rats running along it, in a battlefield; or the twisted metal and smashed windscreen of a car wreck.

The guy behind us, his last view of life was a staircase, Lee and Gavin and me, and the carpet. And his own blood perhaps. He probably saw some of that as he died. There was plenty of it. I got a look at him just as he fell. He came toppling towards me, trying to hold his throat together, and failing. His body covered half-a-dozen steps because he fell straight down, and I guess he was pretty tall anyway. Then he slid down another two steps and halfway over the top of me. He lay there, the heaviest weight I have ever felt. He wasn’t just heavy because he weighed seventy or eighty kilos. He was heavy because, I don’t know, he was life and death and the whole of humanity, and I felt I couldn’t bear that weight any longer. I think that was the moment when I made some critical decisions, not consciously, but I think inside me a large door closed and a new door began to quietly open.

Of course there was no time for that right then. The scene was one of total chaos. I had blood all over me, and it was still pumping out of the man’s throat as I got myself out from under him. My eyes and ears were still dazzled and shocked by the bullet that had come at me from out of the barrel of Lee’s rifle. Lee had leapt up the steps and was ushering Gavin down them. At the same time he was covering the top of the stairs, by walking down backwards and scanning constantly with his eyes and his rifle. The person at the foot of the stairs who was covering Lee had now moved out of sight again. I could hear heavy pounding from somewhere inside the building, to my left. There were still a few shots from outside in the street. Gradually smoke was drifting up the staircase, also from outside. Not a lot of smoke, not enough to make me think the building was on fire, in fact maybe just the smoke from the gun battle, but it added to my sense of fear and confusion.

The stairs were slippery with blood now, but I navigated that and followed Lee and Gavin as they ran down the passageway. At last I could see light at the end of the tunnel. It was the light from the street outside, not much light because it was apparently the middle of the night, but enough to make me feel that we had a real chance for freedom and fresh air again.

The table I had seen when I first entered the house was now knocked over, and I was pleased to see the automatic rifle lying on the ground. With a bit of luck one of the defenders had tried to use it and found that the magazine was missing. It may have been coincidence, but just past the table was a body, a very lightly built young soldier, lying on his side, his head resting on his outstretched arm as though he were asleep, and just a little blood seeping from underneath him.

As I reached the front door I checked behind me to make sure we were not being followed, but Lee was on the job anyway, kneeling just outside the front door with his rifle trained down the corridor past me, looking for problems. ‘God,’ I thought, ‘he really has turned into the ultimate fighting machine. There’s nothing he doesn’t think of, no options he doesn’t cover.’ He motioned to me to keep going, so I went on out into the street itself, cautiously though, looking left and right and straight ahead, rifle at the ready, not sure what to expect. Someone was ushering Gavin towards a vehicle, so I followed them. The vehicle was an old Volvo, dark green. I figured, well, if you can’t trust a Volvo driver, who can you trust? Then I realised it was Homer at the wheel. I immediately revised my opinion of Volvo drivers.

To my right was the person who had been covering us on the staircase. I realised now, with a shock, that it was a girl. She was standing with her back to me, but at a bit of an angle, so that I could see some of her profile. She was definitely female. A moment after I registered that fact, a guy ran across from the left, in front of me, yelling as he passed her, ‘The area’s secured, Pimple.’

Pimple! I nearly dropped my rifle. The Pimple was a girl? I’d never really seriously considered that possibility. It was funny, the effect on me, in among all that uproar, but it was like dry ice had been poured all through my system and I was suddenly frozen to the spot. Managing to overcome that, I swung right to get a good look at her. In a night of shocks, I then got the biggest one of all. It was Bronte.

‘WHO OWNS ALL the blood?’ Homer asked as I followed Gavin into the back seat. He was already accelerating as he threw the question back over his shoulder. With Homer’s smart remarks, you always have to translate, and this question, translated, meant, ‘Are you okay? Is it your blood? Because if so, I’ll do something about it.’

Underneath Homer’s big, tough, blokey exterior there is a heart. It’s like with the Earth, first you go through the Rocky Crust, then the Mohorovicic discontinuity, then the Outer Mantle, then the Inner Mantle, then the Gutenberg discontinuity, then you finally get to the hot part, the molten outer core and the inner core. See, I have done some work in Science. By then you’ve travelled over six thousand kilometres, but eventually you do get to the heart. So yeah, it’s a pretty good comparison with Homer.

‘You’re just paid to do the driving,’ I said. ‘So shut up and drive.’

He took me at my word and off we went. He drove straight up over the footpath and into the park, following a concrete path that I guess was designed for council vehicles. He accelerated as soon as we were on it, and within seconds we were flying through the park at a speed that would have been dangerous on a freeway. I glanced out the back window and saw people piling into two other vehicles back outside the house. One of them looked like Lee, but it was getting difficult to see. A moment later the first of the cars started following us. I assumed they were on our side, because Homer seemed quite relaxed, and the words ‘The area’s secured, Pimple,’ had been reassuring for me.

We got to the other side of the park without hitting any fountains, stray dogs or joggers, although joggers wouldn’t have been a big risk at this time of night. But Homer came blasting out of the other side of the park at such a speed that when we tried to take the jump from the footpath to the road, we bottomed out pretty badly. I think the Volvo was kind of low-slung. It didn’t put Homer off one little bit. He did a full racing turn, rocking the thing on its springs so much that I wondered if we might get seasick, but the car did stick to the road well, even if it left most of its rubber on the bitumen. He hit the accelerator again, and the turbo charger kicked in, and away we went, but something was badly wrong underneath, and a horrible clattering, banging, scraping noise had even Gavin looking at me with a puzzled face. I leant across in front of him to see out his window, as the noise seemed to be coming more from his side of the car, and was slightly alarmed to see sparks flying as we raced along at a hundred and something k’s an hour. ‘Homer!’ I yelled, ‘I think you’ve broken something.’

‘I think so too,’ he agreed. He hit the brakes with about as much force as he’d been using on the accelerator. Neither Gavin nor I were wearing safety belts, and we had to grab at the seats in front to avoid going through the windscreen. ‘Let’s abandon this one and hitch a ride,’ Homer suggested, opening his door. We didn’t need a second invitation, but piled out after him and ran back to the next car, which had also stopped. It was a dark blue Holden station wagon. Again Gavin and I got in the back seat, this time with Homer sliding in from the other side. Lee was in the front passenger seat, and who should be driving but my old friend Toddy. That was yet another shock, but only a little one, compared to the sudden appearances of Lee, Homer and, most importantly, Bronte.

‘Hi Ellie,’ Toddy said in a good-natured way, as though we were just passing in the street one Saturday morning as we did our shopping.

‘Hi Toddy,’ I replied, trying to keep the same tone.

Off we went again, and for once I felt more secure with Toddy than I had with Homer. He drove quickly and cleverly, but not outrageously or recklessly. I started to feel a little safer. It would be a long time before I could relax, but I did get the impression that Gavin and I were in pretty good hands. ‘So Bronte’s the Scarlet Pimpernel?’ I asked Homer and Lee.

‘Whatever gave you that idea?’ Homer asked, but Lee just laughed.

I was still in shock about it. ‘But she’s so quiet,’ I said, knowing even as I said it that it was a completely stupid remark.

Homer, who shows no mercy, and takes no prisoners, except when it’s Gavin and me locked in an attic, said, ‘Yes, of course you have to be loud and over the top to be a leader.’

‘How does she do it?’ I asked, which wasn’t much more intelligent than my previous comment.

‘She just wakes up in the morning and there she is,’ Homer said.

This was an old joke of ours that we’d been laughing about for ten years. It was from one of Dad’s books, and it went something like this: A lady asked the General ‘How do you find yourself these cold winter mornings?’

The General replied, ‘I just wake up in the mornings, throw back the sheets, and there I am.’

I know it’s not really all that funny, but for some reason Homer and I found it hilarious and we often dragged it into a conversation.

‘How did you find Gavin and me?’ I asked next, then, to pre-empt Homer, added, ‘I know, I know, you just threw back the sheets and there we were.’

‘Toddy and Bronte are old mates,’ Homer said.

Toddy turned for a moment and flashed a grin over his left shoulder. ‘My father always tells me I should marry Bronte,’ he said.

‘Thanks for finding us,’ I said to Toddy, realising that he must have been a key player in this whole thing.

He gave a little shrug. ‘I watch that house, and I watch and I watch, after you go in, and you never come out!’

I shook my head. Toddy had been so adamant that he wouldn’t have the slightest thing to do with me once I left him at the drop-off point, so many days ago.

We sped on through the city. I didn’t plague them with questions, because I knew that there were other things to worry about, and I really wanted Toddy to concentrate on his driving. Like, I really really wanted Toddy to concentrate on his driving.

On we went. Through the city, through the night. Homer handed me a plastic container. I opened it and found half-a-dozen California rolls. I resisted the temptation to say, ‘Oh no, not more rice’, thinking about the starving prisoners at the end of World War II who within forty-eight hours of getting their freedom were complaining that there was no tomato sauce or that they didn’t like cucumber in their salad sandwiches. Instead I thought how amazing it was that they had remembered a detail like a picnic box in the middle of all the other preparing that they must have done.

Gavin grabbed one greedily. To him, any food was good food, and I have to say I closed my mouth gratefully on one myself. I recognised the slight glugginess and asked Lee, ‘Did you make these?’ Lee was on a quest, in search of the perfect sushi. He wasn’t quite there yet, but I was always happy to sample his latest attempt. I kept telling him to use an electric rice cooker, but he was such a purist that he wouldn’t touch them, even though his parents had used them in the restaurant.

He just nodded in reply.

‘Thanks,’ I said gratefully.

‘Hey, you going to hog all those yourself?’ Homer asked.

‘How long is it since your last good meal?’ I asked him.

‘What are you saying? You been on a diet?’

‘Yeah. Figured it was time I shed a few kilos. Here, you wanna take food out of the mouths of starving babies? I hope you choke on it.’ I handed him a roll. He immediately started eating it, without the slightest sign of guilt.

The energy flowed back into my body as I progressed through the California roll. God, food is good. I should say grace more often. Food is one of God’s better inventions. But remind me to speak to Him about blowflies, mosquitoes and leeches. Not to mention cockroaches.

I looked out the window of the car. I couldn’t believe how secure I felt, when you consider that we were travelling at high speed through a hostile city, and could have been attacked at any moment. But although I hadn’t been taking a lot of notice, I had the feeling that Toddy had taken us on a pretty circuitous route. Right now we seemed to be in a boring street in a boring suburb, going over judder bars every fifty metres or so. I had the feeling that I was looking at my future. At least Toddy slowed down for the judder bars. He seemed like a more responsible, more mature Toddy, now that he was in a group. I know a lot of boys like that. They don’t have confidence when they’re on their own, but they draw it from the group.

We hit a main road about twenty minutes later. By then we were beyond the city limits, and the whiff of freedom was becoming a strong stench. Roll on freedom, I say. Better than food. But my sense of excitement was a bit premature. I don’t know if the roadblock was for the benefit of us or somebody else, or whether it was just a permanent fixture, but I doubt if it was permanent, because it gave Toddy a hell of a fright, and his local knowledge seemed pretty good.

Maybe they were checking people for .05.

Anyway, suddenly there it was, lighting up the night sky like one of those huge service stations and truck stops combined. That’s what I thought it was at first. But flashing blue and white lights are a bit of a giveaway, in most countries probably. I gripped the back of the seat in front of me and screeched, ‘Toddy!’

He was already slowing. I looked around anxiously, trying to figure out the best escape route, or, if there wasn’t one, the best plan of attack. As I did, Toddy continued to slow. I couldn’t work out why. Then two cars flashed up, one on either side of us. I tensed, thinking it was part of an attack. But one of the passengers was Bronte, and she was easing the barrel of a very large gun out of the window. She didn’t see me. I was amazed to see her in a role that was so different to making scones or sitting under the tree at school.

The two cars converged in front of us. Toddy accelerated again to keep up with them. The lights through our back window made me look around, to see another car behind us. Homer had seen it too, but I assumed from his calmness that this fourth car must be on our side as well. It was nice to be looked after for a change, both nice and unusual. These people seemed so professional. It was embarrassing to think of how clumsily we had operated during the war, compared to this. But we had done OK. Maybe there was still a place for the amateurs.

We were in a two, one, one formation. But suddenly, as though the four cars were dancers and they had a really good choreographer, the two leaders split, one to the left and one to the right; Toddy slowed again, faded left, and the vehicle behind came powering through, like an elephant at the Olympics. I didn’t know what it was but it was military, it was big, it was strong, and it probably should have been drug tested. We other three cars all fell into formation behind it, and I watched with awe as the military-type vehicle smashed everything.

Pieces of the roadblock, including pieces of two cars that were meant to be part of the roadblock, were still flying through the air as we raced through the gap. At high speed we crunched and bumped and lurched and thumped over the debris. I grabbed the car with one hand and Gavin with the other. On my left I saw two guys running away, and two others aiming and firing. I didn’t have time to look out the right-hand side.

Bullets hammered into our car. Some noises are ambiguous. A rifle shot in the distance can sound like a guy chopping wood. Bullets hammering into a car make a sound that can’t be forgotten. The car becomes a little echo chamber, and you feel as though a giant with a sledgehammer is bashing it. You can’t believe that a tiny bullet can do such a thing. The car filled with screams, some of which I have to admit were mine. But then I saw one of the guys who was firing get felled like a giant had just hammered him. I didn’t see what happened next, as already we were fleeing the roadblock at a speed that should have seen Toddy lose his licence for decades into the future.