The Third Day, The Frost (12 page)

I could see the white of the searchlight
through the water and I avoided that, but the helicopter was coming
right in over my head and very low, buffeting the water violently.
It was churning up waves and making me even colder. I gasped for
air, shivering with terror, took a deep breath and went under
again. I’d got some second wind and was able to make better
progress, but it wasn’t like swimming in the Wirrawee pool; I
seemed to be getting waterlogged, and not going nearly as fast as
I’d have liked. My energy was going in all directions: I was
worrying about the explosion, worrying about Homer, terrified of
the bullets and the chopper, and trying to swim, all at the same
time. What a mess. Maybe if we’d eaten and drunk more I’d have had
some energy.

Surfacing again, away from the helicopter
light, I looked back at the ship. There were soldiers lined along
the rails with weapons trained at the water. One of them actually
saw me and shouted and pointed: I was shocked, as I’d thought I’d
be invisible in the darkness. But there was a lot of reflected
light from the spotlight. His gun turned towards me and I
duck-dived fast and deep. I thought they’d expect me to swim away
from them so I went back towards the ship, hoping that the
explosion was a long way off. The helicopter light swept through
the water and past me; it was almost vertical, so I knew the
chopper was very close. I turned again and headed for the ship’s
stern, then, taking one quick breath, set out across the bay, fast,
hoping I’d thrown them off. ‘Flat out, Ellie,’ I begged myself, ‘go
harder, never mind how much it hurts.’ I knew there was no more
time for strategy: that backtracking had been the last throw of my
dice. If they saw me now, they saw me. I just had to get well away
from that ship before it blew.

I ploughed on grimly. I’d gone maybe eighty
metres when I nearly lost my head. I was coming up with bursting
lungs, not a wisp of air left in my body, when a huge grey churning
shape screamed through the water just metres in front of me. Again,
stupidly, I thought it was a shark but it would have broken world
records if it was. I realised then that it was the hull of a boat,
some kind of gun boat, probably. If it had been a bit closer I
really would have lost my head. The wake hit me and threw me
backwards. I grabbed a breath as I went, but half of it was water.
I had a glimpse of more spotlights as I twisted and went under
again. I couldn’t see any clear path to the other side of Cobbler’s
Bay but I knew I had to keep going in that direction, no matter
what. If Kevin was right about the explosive power of anfo I’d need
to be out of the water and well into the bush when it blew up.
There didn’t seem to be much chance now that I’d get that far – I’d
lost too much time already – but I just had to get as far as
possible. In my mind was the image of that container filling and
filling with oxygen; the fuse steadily snaking its glowing way
towards it; the massive blast that now might be only moments
away.

I was helped and hindered then by something
else I hadn’t counted on. Some force, like a silent invisible
underwater wave, hit me and threw me forward. I couldn’t swim with
it or against it; it was too powerful. My first thought was that
the ship had blown up and this was the shock wave. I went tumbling
through the water like a plastic bag in a windstorm. My arms and
legs were thrashing around trying to get some control, but failing.
I forgot about breathing but at least had the sense to try to get
to the surface. Without knowing how I suddenly realised I had
broken through into air and was lying on the surface gasping and
sobbing. My head felt funny, all numb and stupid. As the wild waves
rocked me I got a glimpse of the ship, as large and secure as ever.
It didn’t look like it had just blown up.

White water sprayed up around me. Bullets
again, only metres away. The sharp cold wind they made brought me
to my senses. I took a roll and went under, having no energy to go
deep, but at least striking out in the right direction, towards the
wooded shore. I felt a thud on my back, like someone had hit me
with a stick, or a stone, but I kept going.

The grey hull raced past again, to my right, a
bit further away than last time. I thought they must be throwing
bombs or hand grenades or something in the water. Depth charges
maybe. When I came up for air this time I risked everything on
taking a quick look. There seemed to be only one patrol boat
looking for us and that had its back to me. The helicopter was
screaming angrily across a patch of water a hundred metres to my
right; its searchlight showing every white fleck, every grey-green
ripple. I hoped they hadn’t found Homer over there somewhere. I
glanced back at the container ship and checked again that it showed
no signs of an explosion. It looked very comfortable. But for the
first time I felt that I was making progress. Although the shore
seemed no closer, the ship was now quite a long way away. I was
just sorry to see it was on its own; the oil tanker must have left
harbour. At least the quick sighting gave me the encouragement I
needed to keep my effort going. I freestyled a fast twenty metres
before diving again, breaststroking down deep. There was a dull
ache in my back but that wasn’t slowing me; my neck, where I’d
collided with the sentry’s chest on the ship, was the biggest
problem.

The main fear I felt now was of sharks. If I
were bleeding anywhere, which seemed quite likely, I would attract
sharks like shit attracts flies. The ironic thing was that the
helicopter and the gunboat, in hunting me, were my best chances of
keeping the sharks away. They were so loud and big and alien that
they must surely frighten sharks as much as they frightened me. I
kept that grim hope firmly in my head as I ploughed on through the
choppy water.

I was alternating freestyle with under water.
I was too tired to go under water all the time. As I felt the boat
roar up behind me again, I dived and went as deep as I could. The
wash this time wasn’t quite as violent: the boat must have turned a
bit further away.

I surfaced, trembling with cold and exhaustion
and fear. Rolling onto my back I looked for the container ship
again, hoping it would now be so far away that I would feel good,
be encouraged to battle on for the shore. For a moment I couldn’t
see it, because the swell was above me. Then the swell lifted me
and I had a grandstand view. There was the ship and there was the
helicopter, wheeling to the left above the stern, obviously about
to charge back across the water and sweep another stretch.

At that moment the ship simply lifted out of
the ocean. One millisecond it was there; the next it was up there.
It actually seemed to hang in the air for a moment and I saw its
back start to break. And then came a light: a huge bright light,
like a phosphorescent flower, so white and blinding that it hurt my
eyes. Briefly, night became brightest, sharpest day. I was hit by a
tremendous noise, a crack, like the biggest stockwhip in the
universe. It seemed to break the sky apart. It felt like it was
vibrating through me. It was like a concert I’d gone to at Wirrawee
Showground, when I’d been right near the speakers, and I’d felt my
body was resonating with the music.

A million shooting stars, some of them huge,
were flying in all directions. I couldn’t believe how far they
travelled. Quite a few whooshed loudly over my head then fell and
sizzled in the ocean behind me. Others went way way up in the
air.

There was an awful rumbling, like the sea was
about to vomit its darkest secrets. Then a crash that went on
forever. The trees, the shoreline, the water – all seemed to rock,
as though they were being reorganised. My mouth opened in fright.
Something caught my eye, something up high, almost out of view. I
looked up. It was the helicopter, tumbling out of the sky. It
looked like a huge wasp that had been hit by a spray of Mortein.
With the scream of a tortured soul it fell and fell. The sound was
so high-pitched that I could hear it even above the booming of the
explosion. The chopper hadn’t seemed to be up very high but it must
have been, because it took forever to fall. It went end over end,
three times I think, till it was obvious that it couldn’t recover,
could never pull out. Then it hit, in an instant volcano of white
water. I couldn’t see what was happening in the middle of the
volcano. The water went up so high, then fell back in slow motion.
When I could see through the spray again there was nothing, just a
great wild boiling of white water. The rumbling of the exploded
ship was as loud as ever, rolling around and around Cobbler’s Bay.
I glanced to my right in terror, expecting to see the hills
collapsing in on the bay, the whole world blown up. But the dark
hills did not seem to have moved. They were the only things that
hadn’t.

Then came the most frightening sight of all.
When I looked back to where the ship had been, once again there was
nothing to see. It was like a giant grey paintbrush had suddenly
painted everything out. It took me a split second to realise what
it was. I wish I hadn’t taken that second; I’d needed it to get
ready, to take some evading action, to defend myself. There was a
wave bearing down on me, a wave so vast that I cowered in terror,
waiting to be crushed. It was sucking the water from under me,
building itself into a gigantic wall. As it towered above me it
blocked out the very sky. I know that I screamed: I felt my mouth
open and my throat tighten with the effort of making a great noise,
but I didn’t hear a trace of it. I was picked up like a bit of old
seaweed, like a scrap of driftwood, and hurtled so fast that I
could have been travelling in a car. I was sure I’d be broken into
splinters of bone and shreds of flesh by the wild force of it. It
was like being in a washing machine gone mad; an out-of-control
washing machine about to shake itself apart. It was like being in
the world’s fiercest dumper, every bad wave I’d ever caught
multiplied a thousand times. I don’t know what I did for breath; I
don’t think I had any in my lungs, but the pain from there went
unnoticed as my body got tossed and tumbled in this wet tornado.
Amazingly, I did have time for one clear thought and even more
amazingly it was a joke, sort of. I thought, ‘Well, at least the
sharks won’t find me in this.’ I didn’t get around to laughing,
though.

Then the wave smashed itself against the
shore. The land held; the wave didn’t. It flung itself to pieces on
the rocks, the trees, the ground. I felt myself touch bottom with
my hip, then bounce, hit again, get turned over and over, hit
again,this time with the back of my head, get scraped along dirt or
gravel or something, hit something else with my bad knee and then
get rolled along, bashing everything I could find. I was deaf and
blind and concussed; I could hear the thundering noise continuing
to crash and vibrate around me, but I didn’t know if it was in my
head or if it was really happening. I lay there thinking I was
probably dead.

Chapter
Fifteen

I felt like I’d been beaten with truncheons on
every inch of my body. I had so many aches and pains that I didn’t
know which part of myself to feel sorry for first. When I realised
I was alive I hauled myself up onto all fours, then used a small
tree trunk to get on my feet. I hung on to the tree, willing myself
to find some energy. Behind me, wave after wave was crashing onto
the shore. It was a long time before they started to quieten down.
By then I was back on all fours, unable to stand without feeling
sick and dizzy. I didn’t give a moment’s thought to what we’d done.
It seemed unreal, and irrelevant. All I could do was survive the
next moment, the next minute. It was impossible to tell where I
was: just somewhere on the shore of Cobbler’s Bay, and probably a
few k’s from Baloney Creek where Homer and I had arranged to meet
the others. I didn’t think about Homer though; he could have been
alive or he could have been dead, or he could have been somewhere
in between, but there was nothing I could do for him.

My mind just wouldn’t work: nothing would
connect. All I knew was that I had a terrible craving for fresh
water and that I was terribly cold and that I couldn’t cope with
the pain. I heard a gurgle of water near me, striking quite a
different note to the roar of the waves behind, so I crawled to
that. But when I found the little stream and sank my face into it
all I could taste was salt. It had probably been flooded by the
tidal wave that Homer and I had created.

I had another go at getting upright and this
time was more successful. I started to wonder about the chances of
soldiers finding me, but thought they would probably be too busy
back at the wharf – if any of the wharf was left, which was
unlikely. My thirst forced me forwards. I took a couple of hesitant
steps, trying to work out which leg was the better. There wasn’t
much in it, but the left one seemed to at least have a functioning
knee. I put more weight on that and hobbled uphill into the
bush.

I don’t know where I wandered that night. I
found some fresh water eventually and lay with my face soaking in
it for ages, cold though it was. I drank like a dog, lapping
noisily and greedily, coughing when I swallowed too much, but
gulping down more even while I was recovering from the coughing
fit. After that I staggered on for a while, holding my head in both
hands and wishing it would stop hurting. I had enough sense to know
that I shouldn’t stop and lie down when I was so wet, so I kept
walking till my clothes were just damp, then lowered myself
carefully between two logs and lay there shaking. I couldn’t sleep,
but spent most of the time trying painfully to get into more
comfortable positions. My hips got really sore on the hard ground.
I think I probably did have a couple of short uneasy dozes, but I
really don’t know.

I felt my back as best as I could. It was sore
and tender, but the skin wasn’t broken. It didn’t seem like a
bullet had hit me, so that was one less worry.

Some time before dawn I started out again. I
hadn’t given any thought to where I should aim; my only ambition
was to put as much distance between me and Cobbler’s Bay as
possible. That was sensible considering the uproar that would be
raging back there. I crossed a road at one stage but it never
occurred to me that I could use it to navigate to our meeting
point. I was just so scared to be on it that I stumbled quickly
across and ran into the thicker bush on the other side.

My headache was better after the brief rest
I’d had, but now I had another urgent need. I was desperately
hungry, so hungry that I felt dizzy for need of food. I couldn’t
find any energy without food to charge me up. As the light grew
better I started looking for something, anything, to eat. I found a
few late blackberries, sad wizened little fruit, but I ate them. I
was trying to remember the occasional TV shows I’d seen about bush
tucker but the memories had all gone and nothing I saw looked
edible.

Then came a big distraction, a sound I’d
become familiar with over the months. It was a throbbing roar like
a giant lawn mower or food processor. It was the clatter of another
helicopter, another ugly bird of prey searching for a meal. I was
like a rabbit beneath its vicious rotor and if it caught me I would
die like a rabbit. I was in quite open country when I heard it and
I ran crazily for a tree, pounding along on my bruised knee, my
sore ankle, my aching feet. I dived under the tree at the exact
second that the huge chopper appeared above the clearing. Its glass
front seemed like a giant eye; the whole machine seemed like an
eye, peering in every direction, seeing everything. I lay among the
leaves and mud, begging it to go away, praying that it wouldn’t see
me. I remembered how they’d hung around Corrie’s house and how
they’d later destroyed it with a single missile. I realised how
easily they could kill me, just by dropping a bomb in the clearing.
I closed my eyes and clenched every muscle in my body, gripping two
tufts of grass with my fists, my heart thumping like unbalanced
windmill sails. A blizzard of leaves and dust from the downdraft
stung my bare legs and arms as it blew over me. I was more helpless
than I’d ever been. If I moved I was dead; if I didn’t move I might
be shot from the air without even putting up a fight. I was
especially disgusted by the thought of dying like that.

I was hoping that the leaves blowing across
the clearing would cover me, hide me from the great goggle eye. I
heard the thing move a little, then it abruptly shifted sideways,
across a line of trees to my left. The trees changed the sound of
the engine, making it less loud, less threatening. But the engine
note kept on changing. I lay there trying to work out what was
happening, trying to second guess the flying monster. The rough
rasping noise was quietening now, but I still didn’t know what it
meant till another gale of leaves came blowing dustily through the
trees. The helicopter was landing; that’s what was happening! Only
a thin row of trees separated me from it, a row of trees and maybe
fifty metres.

I had to assume that they’d seen me and that’s
why they were landing. Maybe they thought I was a dead body, lying
there face down. The time had come to stop planning every move;
instead I ran. I kept low but I went fast. I was aiming for a patch
of scrub that wasn’t far away, thirty metres, but it seemed a
kilometre. Even when I had just one step to go I still never
believed I’d reach it. I crashed through, tripped over a log,
rolled sideways down a long slope and twisted into another patch of
scrub, thinking now that I had a chance. I knew they couldn’t see
me here; I also knew I was more at home in this environment than
they’d ever be.

Behind me I heard a shout and some running
feet, but no shots. I swerved again and jumped a small creek,
starting to feel renewed pains and aches in my body. There was a
short slope ahead; I pounded up that, feeling very exposed again,
struggling for a good clean lungful of air. As I reached the top
they had a good view of me for a moment. I knew they would, but
there was nothing I could do about it. Speed seemed more important
than anything. I had a stupid faith in my sore legs, my wrecked
body, to get me away from this. I crouched as I went over the
little hill, hearing more shouts, but looking at the same time for
a good route to follow. The best way seemed to be between some
trees to my right, so I swung to the left, figuring again that I
had to do the unexpected. There were rocks and rabbit holes;
somehow I managed to miss them. Across another ridge and I came to
an old fence, rickety and rusty but all barbed wire. Sobbing and
gasping I tried to get over it but the fence posts were too old and
wouldn’t stay still. My right hand tore on a barb; finally I
decided I had to get over no matter what it cost me, so I did a
sort of roll across the top strand. I landed awkwardly on the other
side. My shirt caught in the wire. I ripped at it madly and it came
away with a sound like a velcro fastener.

As I got up I saw for the first time the
soldiers chasing me. A woman appeared on the skyline. She was in
uniform, carrying an automatic rifle of some kind and looking
around anxiously. Even from my distance I could see the sweat on
her. Another soldier came up behind her – man or woman, I couldn’t
be sure – and at that moment they both saw me. They called behind
them as I took off again. I hoped the fence would hold them up and
I bolted down an eroded gully, praying I wouldn’t trip in one of
the holes. It was the end of me if I did. There was a small dam
blocking the gully. I skirted round that and went through a thick
stand of eucalyptus, thinking that might give me a bit of cover.
Beyond it was a patch of long grass. I was only a few metres into
it when I nearly died of shock. Wherever I looked I saw large
figures rising from the grass, jumping to their feet. Tall grey
figures starting up in panic. I thought, ‘It finishes here.’ Then I
realised they were kangaroos who’d been having a morning nap. Now,
as startled by me as I had been by them, they were splitting in all
directions, bounding away into the trees, leaving behind the
flattened grass where they’d been sleeping. I almost laughed; it
was such a relief.

It gave me more energy somehow. I ran on
faster. I had a bit of a breeze behind and that helped too. I was
thinking of the cross-countries at school, and how I’d never done
very well in them. If they were holding one now, I would have won
it. I got to another fence and took the wimp’s way, going under it.
I heard a few more human cries behind me, which probably meant that
they’d seen the roos, then I went through another stand of trees.
To my surprise I then saw a hut, a half-built cabin that was open
to the weather, with a galvanised-iron roof. Next to it was a
caravan, old and patched, badly needing a coat of paint. I ignored
that and rushed on, looking for a way out, a safe route that would
get me away from the human dog pack. I just couldn’t see any
possibilities. A track led away from the hut to a gate. I ran along
it but I knew I couldn’t stay on it for long; it was a death trap.
At least the gate was new and strong and I could climb over it
easily. I did that, hesitated, then, hearing the soldiers again,
chose to go to the right. They sounded close, probably at the hut
already. I heard another aircraft, very low, and started sweating
even more heavily, feeling that a net was closing in fast. Seemed
like they were sparing no effort to get me. As I ran, the noise of
the plane grew louder and louder: it sounded like it was coming
straight at me. Sure enough it suddenly did appear right in front,
a silver-grey jet flying very low. I swore and almost ran off to
the side to get away from it, but realised at the same moment that
I was being stupid, that they wouldn’t have time to shoot at me
when they were travelling at that speed. The plane, ignoring me,
swept straight over my head with a scream. As it passed, I glanced
up and saw an unmistakeable red kiwi on a white background, with a
blue circle around it. I almost shouted out loud with joy. There
was still hope! Friends were out there! We hadn’t lost! We hadn’t
lost yet!

Just a moment later I heard a tremendously
loud whoosh, then a dull thud. I took a moment to glance crazily
over my shoulder, having no idea what I would see. Somewhere, way
back in the bush, something was burning. A huge cloud of black
smoke, bending a little towards me because of the breeze, was
rising quickly in the sky. The plane was behind it, banking sharply
and climbing, looking perfectly intact. With a bound of excitement
I realised what had happened. The plane had caught the helicopter
on the ground, a true sitting duck. The chopper wouldn’t have had a
chance. It was a wonderful unexpected score.

I ran and ran as the plane banked away and
disappeared into the distance. I ran for another ten minutes. In
all that time I heard no more human sounds. I thought I was safe,
that the attack on the helicopter had stopped my pursuers. Finally
the point came where I had to stop, no matter who might be
following. My lungs had taken on their own life and were rasping
and groaning, desperate for air. My legs were cramping up and my
knee felt like it was full of fragments of bone. Looking down I was
shocked to see how swollen it was. I slowed to a walk, staggered
over to a tree and fell on the ground behind it, hoping it would
hide me. I lay there grunting. My stomach was cramping up again and
I couldn’t get enough breath. I really thought this time I was
going to die, and die in agony.

But as the minutes passed and no soldiers came
I started to recover a little. It was a sweet feeling. I had
survived. I had no food or drink, my body was wrecked, I’d lost my
friends but, for the moment, I had survived.