The Third Day, The Frost (11 page)

We lifted, and I did give a small yelp. It
felt so strange, to be floating in air, swinging around slightly as
we rose. The container was tipping and tilting; I gazed at Homer. I
saw the gleam of his teeth as he smiled at me but even in the
little light we had I could see that his smile was forced, probably
to stop his teeth chattering. I smiled back, an equally fake grin.
With the rocking of the box, coming after the twisting drive down
from the hills and the long hot wait on the wharf, I was scared I’d
be sick. We could have been one metre off the ground or one hundred
metres; there was no way of telling. I couldn’t even figure out
whether we were going up or coming down.

And all at once we seemed to drop out of the
bright hard light into a great blackness. It was cold and dark; for
a stupid moment I thought we were dropping into Hell.

Chapter
Fourteen

This time I grabbed Homer. There was a silence
outside and that, with the sudden cold, made me feel we were not in
Hell but in a freezer store. A few moments later the container came
to rest, landing firmly on its base again. Something loud and heavy
scraped across the roof and was gone. I was still holding Homer but
he let me go and stepped away to peer through a thin crack in the
side of the box. We’d tried peeping through these holes before but
all we’d learned was how bright the sun was. The holes were just
too small. Now Homer stayed riveted to this one for some time but I
don’t think he could see anything. There was nothing to tell us
what was happening; nothing but the silence of our tomb.

We stayed in there for another hour and a
half. We quickly got cold and were soon shivering uncontrollably. I
had spasms of intense violent shivering, then I’d go back to normal
shivers, but I never stopped altogether. It was just the usual
things, of course: fear and cold. I should have been used to both
of them.

In all that hour and a half there had not been
a sound around us, and I reached a stage where I thought we had to
do something or we’d be unable to move. The cold hadn’t reduced my
thirst much but I thought some exercise might at least take my mind
off that, although I knew there’d be no bottle of ice-cold Pepsi
waiting at the end of it. I moved over to Homer and touched his
elbow, then whispered, ‘I’m going to have a look.’ He didn’t
answer, so I took that for agreement and started clambering over
the fertiliser bags. I got to the door and, with numb fingers,
fumbled with the handle. It squeaked as I turned it and I waited,
heart thudding. Nothing happened, so I finished its turn until it
felt loose in my hands. Then I started nudging it down. Inch by
slow grinding inch. Without looking round I could feel Homer’s
tension behind me. At last, with a final rasping stutter, the bolt
came free. I leant against it with my head on the cold metal, my
eyes closed, holding the pole with both hands so that the doors
wouldn’t suddenly swing open. We were about to step out into a
complete unknown. We could have been in the final moments of our
lives.

‘Not yet,’ Homer murmured into my ear and I
waited another three or four minutes before creaking the tall door
open.

Squeezing through the smallest possible gap I
found myself in a vast dark space filled with containers identical
to ours. The slight rocking under my feet, unnoticeable in the
container, told me that we were indeed in a ship. I could hear
creaks and moans from the steel of the hull. I looked around in
wonder. We were seeking to destroy all this. If we achieved what we
wanted we would turn our innocent box into a mighty bomb and, in a
few hours, all of this would be at the bottom of the sea.

I took a deep breath and stepped forward. The
place smelt like fresh air had never reached it. Diesel fumes were
mixed with salt and rope and paint and disinfectant. It wasn’t
pleasant but it was the way I’d imagined a ship would smell. It
made a change from the ammonium smell in the container.

There was no one there; that was obvious. The
hatch above was closed and we could hear no human noises, nor sense
any human presence. I turned to Homer, able at last to see him more
clearly.

‘What do you think?’ I asked.

‘Let’s get ready. Let’s set it up so all we
have to do is light the fuse, then as soon as it’s night-time well
light it and go over the side.’

‘OK. God, I could use some water.’

‘I know. I can’t believe we didn’t bring
any.’

We went back into our container, closing the
doors loosely behind us, and set to work, coolly preparing the
biggest weapon any of us had ever dreamed of. But it was strange: I
did it without thinking about bombs. I could just as easily have
been getting feed ready for the poddy lambs at home. We didn’t have
to do a lot. We cut the bags open and tipped the stuff out so the
diesel would soak through it all, then moved the drums of fuel.
Then we poured the diesel out. Kevin had worked out the ratio for
us: six per cent by weight. We stirred it through the fertiliser.
It was like making a tossed salad. I shoved my hand down into the
pile and brought out a handful. The little yellow grains were
greasy without being wet. It felt right.

The smell of diesel was getting really
unpleasant. I tried to ignore it and, with Homer watching, I began
to prepare the fuse and detonator. What I had to do was make a
small bomb that would set off the big bomb. I used the length of
pipe we’d found at the farm and filled it with anfo and the
detonator. I had to crimp the end shut, which was pretty dangerous.
We hadn’t been able to find special crimping pliers which,
according to Kevin, is what we should have used, so we had to go
with the normal metal ones. The trouble was that one spark would
set it off. I just had to be damn careful. I moved the pliers very
gently, drying my hands every ten seconds to wipe away the sweat
that was making them so slippery. It was a matter of not letting
the pliers bang against the pipe. It would have been simple if I’d
been doing it with an empty pipe.

At last I finished. We couldn’t find anything
else to do then. So we shut the container doors, found a corner of
the hold, and just lay down and waited. I was leaning against
Homer, and he had his arm around me. Neither of us spoke. I enjoyed
the feel of cuddling into his strong body and I actually went to
sleep for a while. At some stage he produced our food supply, a
packet of Morning Coffee biscuits that were broken, stale and soft,
and two packets of jelly crystals, one lime and one pineapple.

I got to choose and I chose the pineapple.

The trouble with this lunch was that it
increased my thirst to a desperate stage. I couldn’t think about
anything else and the more I thought, the worse it got. I wondered
about drinking diesel, and was sorry we hadn’t saved a bit from the
bomb. My mouth was hot and dry and my tongue felt large and thick.
It was too hard even to talk, and anyway there was nothing left to
talk about. I lay back against Homer’s ribs again, feeling them
rising and falling with each panting breath, and tried to will
myself to sleep. But all I could do was long for evening.

Gradually, with sickening slowness, the time
moved on. At about half past five, by Homer’s unreliable old
wind-up watch, we started to get restless. As the air cooled even
further we figured it must be close to dark outside. We estimated
that the fuse would burn between twenty and twenty-five minutes, so
there wasn’t much margin for error. We found the exit from the
hold: a steel ladder that climbed through the darkness to a metal
trapdoor. This was not the main hatch cover of course, but a little
one for people. I suppose the sailors used it when they were at sea
and wanted to check the cargo. Homer went up the ladder, gingerly,
and gave the trapdoor a nudge. It lifted. So it seemed that getting
out wouldn’t be a problem. What we found when we got out: now that
might be a problem.

Homer’s watch said seven o’clock. ‘Time for
the ABC News,’ I thought. That had been one of the rituals in our
house. Dad always had to watch the ABC News. Now there was no more
ABC News and it was time for us to blow up a ship in Cobbler’s Bay.
Life had changed quite a bit.

‘What do you think?’ I asked Homer, through
dry peeling lips, with my swollen tongue. He looked equally
terrible.

‘I can’t stand this any longer,’ he said.
‘Let’s do it.’

It was much earlier than the time we’d
planned, but I was in total agreement with Homer, and that made it
unanimous.

We went back to the container. I felt strange,
weightless, walking on air.

‘Ready?’ Homer asked.

I nodded. ‘Be funny if we’d forgotten the
matches,’ I whispered. Homer didn’t laugh. He stood by the
container door as I rolled the fuse out to its limit. ‘There’s no
point both of us waiting here,’ I said. ‘You go up the ladder and
have the hatch ready.’

He went off obediently and I got out the box
and chose a match. It took a few strikes to light it, then it
flared up, hurting my eyes. ‘Well, here goes,’ I said out loud, but
I waited for it to burn down a little before applying it to the
fuse. The flame was at my fingers, scorching them slightly before
the fuse caught alight. I shook the match out quickly, and stood
watching to make sure the fuse was burning. It was. I ran for the
ladder.

It had been cool in the hold but when Homer
raised the trapdoor a fraction the night air felt really freezing.
With our light clothing – shorts and T-shirts, nothing else – we
had no protection against the chill. ‘Ready?’ Homer asked, lowering
the door on our heads again. We were jammed in together on the top
of the ladder, our feet on the same rung. I nodded. He couldn’t
have seen my nod but he must have assumed it. ‘Straight to the
left-hand rail and over it,’ he whispered.

‘Port,’ I said, but I don’t think Homer heard.
He lifted the hatch again and I shivered once more at the cold
unfriendly air that blew in so quickly. I could see the dark sky;
not a star in sight. Homer’s head was now almost clear of the
opening, looking around cautiously. All I could do was huddle in
behind him and wait. I hated being so helpless, so dependent on
someone else. I was nervous about how long we were taking, hanging
around in this massive ticking time bomb. But suddenly Homer took
off. He went so fast I almost thought he’d been lifted out of the
hole by a hand grabbing his collar. But no, he was self-propelled.
When I followed him I could see that. He ran across the deck and
took cover behind a steel mast. I closed the hatch, as carefully as
I could, hating him for leaving me with that job, then joined him,
trying to orientate myself. Which was the front of the ship and
which was the back? Or the bow and stern, or whatever they call
them. I looked to the right – starboard – and saw the long wide
deck tapering as it disappeared in the darkness. So at least I knew
where I was. But there was still a fair way to go to get to the
side. Homer started out, and I followed straight away, but running
at an angle, aiming for a different part of the rail.

We got halfway there, and that’s where things
started to go wrong.

With a horrible lurch of my stomach I saw a
sentry, with a rifle slung across his back, appear suddenly from
the left. He was walking quickly along by the rail. I nearly called
out but realised I couldn’t. Homer saw the sentry a fraction of a
second later, but by then the soldier had seen him. The man moved
with amazing speed. Swivelling, so that his back was to the rail,
he began to unsling his rifle. Although his eyes were on Homer I
was actually closer to him. I ran straight at him. He was bringing
the rifle up so quickly I thought he would be able to fire it into
my stomach at point-blank range. I covered the last three metres in
a frantic dive, not having any idea of what I was going to do, just
desperate to stop him pulling the trigger. What I did was to hit
him somewhere between his chest and stomach with my head. I felt a
hard impact, hurting my head and jarring my neck, but above that I
felt relief as he fell backwards. He hadn’t been able to fire. I
was all over him as he fell but, to my horror, we kept falling. I
realised that we’d both gone over the rail. I was beating my arms
in panic, trying to get away from him. We fell and fell. I just
couldn’t believe how far we fell. How high was this ship? I thought
maybe we were in dry dock and I was about to land on steel and
concrete.

I heard a choking scream and realised it was
the soldier, then there was a volley of shots right next to my
head. His rifle was firing; I guess by accident. The sound
completely deafened me. Then we hit the water. It felt like
concrete: I hit it with my shoulder, and thought I’d broken my
collarbone with the impact. I was about a metre from the sentry and
I twisted by instinct and wriggled away under water to get a few
more metres away. As I surfaced, I saw Homer enter the water in a
perfect racing dive, about fifteen metres away. ‘Bastard,’ I
thought, jealous of him for having such an easy passage. I swam
awkwardly towards him, looking all the time for the soldier but
seeing no sign of him. Maybe he’d sunk straight away. Maybe he’d
accidentally shot himself. Maybe he’d swum under water and was
about to come up right in front of me.

The shock to my shoulder was starting to wear
off, although my neck was still hurting. As I got to within two
metres of Homer there was a sudden spitting and foaming or water in
a long line to my left. I thought of sharks. ‘What is it?’ I yelled
at Homer. He looked equally shocked and confused. Then he took a
funny sort of backward stroke, as if I’d slapped him in the face.
‘Bullets!’ he screamed. His voice sounded thick and muffled through
my deafened ears. I looked around in panic. Had the soldier
resurfaced? Was he now firing at us? Impossible, surely. ‘Go
under!’ Homer yelled, and disappeared. I gasped at some air and
turned turtle, swimming down deep deep deep, till my ears started
to hurt. As I did so I realised the obvious: that the bullets must
be coming from the ship or the wharf. I swam as far and as hard as
I could, ignoring my sore neck but not able to go very smoothly or
quickly. My lungs were empty, my chest was contracting, my stomach
cramping. I had to go up. I did so, popping out of the water into
the cold night air and taking an immediate swift look around, even
as I wheezed for air. I couldn’t see anyone: the soldier or Homer.
I couldn’t hear anything. Then a strong light caught my eye. It was
lifting into the sky. It was a helicopter leaving the wharf and
heading my way. They sure weren’t wasting time. At the same time,
another row of splashes in the water ten metres to my right proved
that bullets were still flying, even if I couldn’t hear them. I
could hear the chopper though, and could see the white searchlight
from its belly turning towards me. I cursed and dived again. There
was no time to look for Homer; I had to get going. The ship was due
to blow up in fifteen minutes and it was going to be bloody
dangerous to be anywhere near it. I again swam as fast and far as
possible, only coming up when my body was leeched of every molecule
of air. I knew I’d breathe water if I stayed under a second
longer.