The Third Day, The Frost (8 page)

‘They reckon Harvey’s setting himself up to be
Governor or something; that he’s going to turn himself into a
little dictator. It’s probably right. If you’d seen him with these
geezers – they were all like the greatest mates, best buddies. It
wasn’t a pretty sight.’

‘After we’ve finished at Cobbler’s Bay well go
and kill him,’ Lee said to me.

I’d given up getting angry with Lee when he
talked like that. He did it so often now, whenever he got upset
about some bad thing that had happened. He just suddenly said
things like he was a robot, programmed to kill, when I knew he
wasn’t, not at all.

Mind you, I’d gone the same way when I’d seen
Corrie in hospital.

Kevin didn’t have much to add to what he’d
told us. We sat around for another hour or more, talking endlessly
about the problems, trying to think of possible solutions. We were
depressed to know that Harvey was still on the loose, and Lee’s
direct approach got quite a bit of support. In the end I got sick
of it and went off and started getting lunch ready.

Chapter Nine

Cobbler’s Bay was like something out of a war
movie. OK, so I’m just a simple little rural who’s never been
anywhere beyond Stratton in her life. To me, seeing traffic lights
was a big thrill. Every time we went to Stratton I grabbed any
excuse to ride up and down the escalators, like a six-year-old. So
to look out over Cobbler’s and see an aircraft carrier, an oil
tanker, two small patrol vessels and three container ships was
unbelievable. Two long large jetties had been built and all the
ships, except the aircraft carrier and the patrol ships, were
moored to them. The others were parked at buoys out in the clear
water. Prefab sheds had been put up along the shore and huge
bitumen loading areas laid down. There were cars and trucks
everywhere, and people wandering about in all directions. Around
the perimeter was a high barbed-wire fence, very temporary looking,
and three tanks just sitting there. There were other things too,
like big gun barrels poking out of mounds of dirt: Kevin thought
they were the ground-to-air missiles he’d heard about.

One thing was certain though: that air raid
had been a ripper. We could see a long hull over near the rocks to
our left, a destroyer maybe, that was a complete wreck, jammed
upside down. Lee pointed to a shape we could see shimmering under
the water near the heads that looked like another large ship,
totally submerged. To the left of the prefabs was the wreckage of a
group of buildings; nothing but blackened rafters and a few sheets
of torn metal flapping in the wind. Over in the bush even further
to the left were two huge craters of torn earth and shattered trees
where they must have missed their aim. It looked like the
beginnings for a new woodchip industry.

The only entrance to the new port of Cobbler’s
Bay was a gate with a hut for sentries, and a barrier that they
raised and lowered by hand. I’m sure the US Marines would have done
the whole thing better, with electric fences and laser beams and
electronic security checks, but there was none of that stuff. It
looked like it had all been thrown together quickly for the least
amount of money possible. This was definitely not twenty-first
century technology.

Still, it was formidable enough. It scared the
hell out of me. When we were younger, and Dad wasn’t around, we
sometimes shot up a wasps’ nest for fun. You’d get what you hoped
was a safe distance away and then empty a .22 magazine or a couple
of shells into it. It got pretty wild at times. This place was
bigger and meaner than any wasps’ nest, and I wasn’t in such a
hurry to stir it up.

It did make me angry. Cobbler’s Bay was among
the most beautiful places on Earth. Well, seeing I’d never been
beyond Stratton, perhaps I couldn’t really go around saying that.
‘Yes, ladies and gentlemen, in my vast experience of international
travel, after exploring every corner of the globe, I can honestly
tell you that Cobbler’s Bay is one of the seven scenic wonders of
the world.’

But it was beautiful. It was one of those
places where the hills meet the sea, so you have the best of them
both. There was quite good cover down to the beach, because it was
heavily forested right to the road, and the road curved around the
bay. Once you cross the road you take half a dozen steps and you’re
on the sand: fine white sand that runs through your fingers and
tickles your toes. You can walk straight on and enter the water, or
you can turn left or right and follow the sand around to the rocks.
Either way you know you’re in a kind of heaven, because of the
secret green woods in the background and the rich blue sky above
and the dancing blue sea ahead.

The weather always seemed perfect at Cobbler’s
Bay.

I know it’s greedy of me to want it all to
myself but even in peacetime when we drove to Cobbler’s for a swim
and a picnic, I resented finding other people there. I’m sure they
resented us, too. So to come in wartime and find ugly growths all
over it and great monstrous ships sitting on its innocent water,
like big metal leeches, made me both angry and unhappy. I wanted to
do something about it but couldn’t even imagine how we might. For
once, this enemy fortress looked way beyond our capabilities. Those
ships and jetties and even the prefab buildings seemed solid and
settled and, after all, what were we? Just a bunch of kids, a bunch
of amateurs.

‘I’ve only got one idea so far,’ Homer said,
unexpectedly.

I was deeply impressed. While I sat there
thinking black depressed angry thoughts Homer was already figuring
out possibilities.

‘What?’

‘With the bush so close to their buildings we
could light a bushfire as a distraction. They’d have to put all
their energies into fighting it, because if the wind’s blowing in
the right direction it’d come roaring down the hill here and land
on top of them.’

‘That’s not a bad idea,’ Robyn said
thoughtfully. ‘It’s quite likely it’d end up as more than a
distraction. It could do most of our work for us. It could easily
wipe those buildings out. Once it jumped the road there’s nothing
to stop it.’

‘As long as we don’t burn ourselves up,’ Fi
said nervously.

‘What do we actually want to destroy?’ I
asked. ‘I mean, we’re not going to be able to do anything about
those ships, are we?’

‘Not the ones out there at anchor,’ Lee said.
‘But the ones at the jetties are possible.’

‘That’s an oil tanker, Ellie,’ Homer said.
‘You’re the petrol head, aren’t you?’

‘Mmm, love it. Just point me towards it and
give me a box of matches.’

I felt a fluttering in the stomach when I said
that though. I never felt comfortable with jokes about the things
we’d done.

We sat there looking at it all. The bushfire
idea was cute but I couldn’t see much beyond it. A bushfire
wouldn’t hurt the ships, unless we fluked a few lucky sparks
landing on the tanker. As a distraction, it might get us into the
place, but there was a good chance it wouldn’t. And then we had to
get away again afterwards. That was the most important thing, and
might well be the hardest.

‘Did Jock teach you about underwater bombs?’
Homer asked Kevin. ‘Like, depth charges?’

‘No, hey, it wasn’t a uni degree, just a few
quick lessons.’

I heard a rumbling noise and looked up. A
convoy was coming down the hill. There were two green Army trucks
in the lead but they were followed by a motley collection of
removal vans, tabletops, semitrailers and petrol tankers. A lot of
them had the names of local companies and even big national
companies on them. Another Army truck brought up the rear.

We watched anxiously, to see what the routines
were for getting through the gate. They pulled up at the entrance
and a group of soldiers, eight of them, spilled out of the nearest
hut and went trotting along the sides of the convoy. They checked
each truck that could have concealed people, ignoring only the
table-tops and tankers. It wasn’t an incredibly rigorous search,
but that wasn’t much consolation to us because we had no idea how
we could get ourselves aboard the trucks in the first place. There
was no need for them to search much if they knew that the convoy
hadn’t stopped anywhere.

When dusk moved in, we moved out. We went back
into the hills to find somewhere to stay. And the way we played it
that first night became a routine that we stuck to for the next six
days. We camped in a different place each night, for security, and
posted a sentry, but by day we spied on Cobbler’s Bay and talked
about tactics. I have to admit though that the main reason we
stayed, the secret reason, was nothing to do with attacking the
enemy. It was because Lee, without a word to anyone, went and broke
into a holiday shack and came back with an armful of fishing
gear.

Well, did that set us off. The little
collection of lines, hooks and sinkers gave us the best time we’d
had since the invasion. It was like we had ourselves a beach
holiday. We could hardly bear to wait for evening so we could start
our fishing trips. We fished the mouths of the rivers, soon
settling on one place that was both pretty and reliable – and safe.
And the fish practically ripped the lines out of our hands. For
bait we picked up worms, witchetty grubs and beetles during the
day, and with them we caught flathead, bream, mullet and a few
other varieties we didn’t recognise. I suppose with no one having
fished the area for so many months it was easy pickings.

The fishing itself was fun but the major thing
was that we suddenly had plenty of food again and it was a change
from the monotony that we’d put up with for so very long. Our food
supplies had been getting horribly low. We all ate a lot less these
days, and we were all nicely slim except Robyn, who was too slim,
but now she started to put on weight again. At around two or three
o’clock each morning we lit a little fire and either fried our
catch straight away or waited with mouths watering for the flames
to burn down to coals, so we could bake the fish in them. After
months of being starved for fresh meat it seemed that now we
couldn’t get enough. We never got sick of it. I’ll never forget
that juicy white fresh fish flesh, the way it fell away from the
bones, the way the hot moist flavour gave me new strength and
energy.

If you are what you eat, then after a few days
of that diet I could have swum the Pacific Ocean.

We always cooked extra, so we could have some
cold during the day.

We’d been living like this for four days
before we found the weakness in the Cobbler’s Bay security
arrangements. Homer always said that there’d be a weakness
somewhere; we just had to be patient. He was right, although it was
only by chance that we picked it up. We were looking for a new
fishing spot and at about ten o’clock at night we crossed the road
to the bay. Robyn went ahead to check that the road was clear.
Instead of calling us on, as we expected, she came slithering back,
looking alarmed. ‘There’s a truck at the corner,’ she hissed.

‘What doing?’

‘Nothing. And it’s got no lights. It’s just
sitting there.’

We all crept up to have a look. We could see
it easily, silhouetted against the moonlight. It was a van of some
kind, about a four-tonner. After being witnesses to a horrible
massacre when Harvey’s Heroes had been sucked into attacking an
abandoned tank, we weren’t about to go rushing up to this thing to
investigate. So we left it there and went to another river for our
fishing.

At dawn, though, Homer and I sneaked back to
check it again. It was still there, looking cold and lonely. We
decided to stay for a while and see what happened and sure enough,
at 9.30, we heard the grinding of gears as another vehicle climbed
the hill towards us. We shrank back into the bushes as this one
went past. It was a tow truck, with a couple of soldiers on the
back riding shotgun. We wriggled into a better position to watch as
the tow truck reached the van and began a three point turn that
ended up as a six-point turn in the narrow road.

When it was in position in front of the van
everybody got out: the two soldiers, and two men from the cab who
were dressed in oil-stained overalls and carried little bags. They
looked like mechanics always look: I think it’s the way mechanics
slouch that gives them their special look. The soldiers went for a
bit of a prowl, walking along the road one way, then the other,
while the mechanics started poking round in the engine of the
van.

But the interesting thing was that nobody
thought to look in the back section.

After half an hour, when the mechanics had
tried and failed many times to start the van, they hooked it up to
the tow truck. A soldier got in the driver’s seat to steer, and
away they went.

They still hadn’t looked in the back.

We couldn’t wait to get back to Fi and Kevin,
who were spying on the base, to find out what had happened when the
tow truck got to Cobbler’s Bay.

Chapter Ten

Yeah, they just went straight through,’ Kevin
said.

‘You sure?’ I asked.

‘No, I was asleep; what do you bloody think?’
Kevin lost his temper, as he did quite often these days. He’d been
through a lot, I kept reminding myself. So had we, but maybe what
he’d been through was worse than what we’d been through. Or maybe
he couldn’t cope with it as well as we did. That was no shame,
everyone’s different; it was just hard to imagine anyone coping
with it worse than me, because I don’t think I coped with it well
at all.

‘They went straight through,’ Fi said quietly.
‘When they got to the barrier they gave a wave to the bloke on duty
and he lifted it. They towed it to that big shed on the right; the
one with the petrol thingies outside. We think that’s a maintenance
shed for vehicles, and the one next to it’s a generator shed.’

‘So that’s a way we might be able to get in,’
Homer said thoughtfully.

‘We can’t wait six months for a truck to
conveniently break down,’ Lee said.

‘We could maybe make one break down,’ Robyn
said. ‘Couldn’t we?’

‘How?’

Three of us asked that question at once and no
one had an answer. A flat tyre wouldn’t be enough and it was hard
to think of any other possibility. Still, it was maybe a step
forward.

I took Kevin out to look for explosives. We
might have to make a proper bomb this time and, according to Jock,
we’d be able to find plenty of ingredients in sheds and farm
buildings. I hoped he was right and I hoped he was wrong. If he
were wrong, we might then have an excuse to call this crazy thing
off. It seemed to be building up so quickly into an enormous
operation. I’m sure heroes don’t go around thinking: Hope I can
find a good excuse to get out of this. I wanted to be a hero but
never seemed to quite get it right.

We wandered out into a different part of the
country. There weren’t so many colonists in this area yet; there
were still a number of empty houses. Only the best places were
occupied. It was easy to tell which were in use, and to give them a
wide berth. The good thing was that a lot of clearing had been
going on right through this district before the war, and that made
it a certainty that there’d been a lot of blasting. Cockies love
messing with explosives, and any big stubborn tree stump was a good
enough excuse. It’s amazing that there aren’t thousands of farmers
walking round with only half their fingers, but I never heard of
anyone blowing himself up. Dad had a few goes with gelignite when I
was younger but Mum talked him into giving it a miss. I wished now
that he’d taught me how to use it, and then, remembering that I was
meant to be looking for excuses, was glad he hadn’t.

We had a mixed morning. The first farm had
nothing, the second had a dozen bags of ammonium nitrate – nearly
half a tonne – and a couple of 44’s of diesel. We decided to leave
it all there while we checked other places. The third farm had been
thoroughly cleaned out. The fourth was a big place but old and run
down. We went straight to the sheds, as we had everywhere else. To
my disgust, we walked straight into a miniature battlefield. There
were three skeletons in the machinery shed, their clothes still
intact, except where ripped by bullets. There wasn’t much left of
the bodies, mainly bones.

There seemed to have been a full-scale
shooting war. We saw many empty shells on the floor and there was
damage all around the big dark shed: holes in the walls, shelves
shattered by bullets, even the steel plates on the old tractor and
header had holes in them. It was frightening to see how much damage
had been done. One person had been hiding behind the header, one
had been behind a heavy wooden workbench, but the other body was
out in the open.

I cried for a bit. I seemed to be doing more
of that these days. And there’s one thing about Kevin: when a
girl’s upset, really upset, you see Kevin at his best. He was
shaken by the sight of the bodies, of course, but when he saw me in
tears he managed to hold himself together and give me a bit of TLC.
We’d always looked after each other fairly well I suppose, even at
the worst times.

‘Come on, Ellie,’ he said, giving me a hug.
‘You’ve seen worse than this. You’ll be right.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ I said, sniffling. ‘But you
never get used to it. These poor people, just trying to look after
their land.’

‘Yeah, it’s a rotten business.’

‘And no one to bury them or have a funeral
service or anything.’

‘Well, when the war’s over maybe that sort of
thing’ll get done.’

I didn’t answer that, just sniffled for a bit
longer. Finally I disentangled myself and said, ‘Come on, let’s go.
There’s nothing we can do here and it’s giving me the willies.’

‘No, wait,’ Kevin said. ‘This is the perfect
sort of place for what we want. Let’s check it out.’

I was reluctant but he insisted. Occasionally
Kevin had these bursts of strength. We did a quick search of the
machinery shed but found nothing and with some relief went to the
other buildings. We went past some concrete runs that had been
built quite recently and fenced off for working dogs. We ignored
the skeletons of the poor desperate dogs who’d died in them and,
fifty metres further along, entered an old dark hut. And there we
found what Kevin had been looking for.

‘Wowee,’ he said. ‘Look at this!’ He had a
wooden box, about the same size as a box of shotgun cartridges, and
he was holding a small shiny aluminium tube, maybe three
centimetres long and five or six millimetres in diameter. It was
blocked at one end but open at the other.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Plain detonator. Told you we’d find some.
Look, there are dozens of them.’

I picked one up and handled it curiously. It
had DANGER and EXPLOSIVE written on its side, but it seemed
harmless enough.

‘Is this all we need?’ I asked.

‘Well, the ammonium nitrate and the diesel,
obviously. But they’re not a problem. And the fuse.’

‘We could make our own.’

‘That’s what you think. Anyway, they’re sure
to have some here. They should have everything stored in separate
sheds, but most farmers don’t bother. They’ll have safety fuse
somewhere, which’ll be better than anything we’d make. Look, here
we go.’

He pulled down a roll of grey-white cord,
about the size of the cord in my board shorts, but with black
tarry-looking stuff running through it.

‘Is that it?’

‘Yeah, I’d say so. It’s gunpowder wrapped in a
waterproof cover, more or less. We shove this in the detonator,
then we’ll get some pipe, to make our miniature bomb. There’ll be
some in that machinery shed. And a hacksaw, to cut it.’

By the time we left that farm of death we had
enough material, as far as I could tell, to avenge the people who’d
died there. Not only did we have the pipe and the detonators and
the fuse, we’d also found another six bags of ammonium nitrate.
That was three-quarters of a tonne altogether. If we could find a
way to blow the lot up in Cobbler’s Bay then, according to Kevin,
we would cause a tidal wave.

It still seemed a dream to me, though. I
couldn’t imagine any way we could actually do it. But excited by
everything we’d seen that day – even the bodies, in a sick sort of
way – Kevin and I talked flat out as we walked back to join the
others.

‘Look,’ I said finally, ‘suppose we got a
truck loaded with this stuff onto the jetty and set it off. How
would that be?’

‘I’m not sure. Obviously it’d be a huge bang,
probably enough to cause a lot of damage in ships that were close
enough to it, and wreck the jetty. But if you could get that truck
on board the ship, down in the bowels of the ship then, because it
was in an enclosed space, you’d blow the ship to smithereens.’

‘Seriously? The whole ship?’

‘Yeah! What do you think? This Texas Bay
thing, you don’t realise: that one ship blew up the whole harbour,
the town, and I think all the other ships that were in port with
it. This is bigger than a fart in a bathtub, you know.’

‘I’m starting to realise that.’

The makings of a plan were coming together,
but with a few vital flaws. I ran through the way I saw it so far,
to Kevin: ‘OK, a truck breaks down. It’s there all night and we
load it with three-quarters of a tonne of anfo. One or two of us
hide in it. That should be cool, because if it’s a big enough truck
they wouldn’t notice a bit of extra weight. Besides, mechanics
probably wouldn’t know if the truck’s meant to be empty or full.
They tow the truck into the harbour. A bush-fire starts. Thank God
it’s been dry again lately. The fire roars down the hill and
distracts everybody. We get the truck onto a ship, light the fuse
and get out. Bang! End of story, we’re legends, and we sell the
movie rights the moment the war is over.’

Kevin didn’t say anything. Maybe it was still
sounding like a daydream to him, too.

‘Did you spot the flaws?’ I asked him.

He laughed. ‘Just a few. How do we make the
truck break down? How do we get the truck onto the ship? How do we
escape afterwards? That’s three for starters.’

‘I think we can at least get away afterwards.
If Homer and I go in with the truck, well, we’re both good
swimmers. We could dive into Cobbler’s Bay and swim right to the
other side.’

Kevin brightened up a bit. I knew why, of
course: for the first time he’d had a glimpse of hope, the hope
that he wouldn’t be one of the people doing the dangerous stuff. I
wished I had the same hope, but I’m a very logical person. Swimming
was our best chance, and only two of us could swim big
distances.

When we got back to the others we found, to my
secret fear, that there might be a solution to the second problem,
too. Two convoys of container trucks had gone through during the
day and the containers had been loaded straight into the hold of a
big cargo ship that had come in that morning. It was now tied up at
a jetty, next to the oil tanker.

‘I’m sure there’ll be more convoys,’ Homer
said excitedly. ‘The ship swallowed up those two lots like an
elephant eating peanuts. And an oil tanker next to it. Oh Ellie,
doesn’t it make your mouth water?’

‘It makes me water all right,’ I said crudely.
‘But not from my mouth.’

‘But how the hell do we make a truck break
down?’ Lee worried aloud. He was pacing around, in and out of the
trees. We were in quite thick bush, where we could just see
splinters of Cobbler’s Bay. Robyn was lying on her back eating
stale jellybeans that she’d found in a holiday house, Fi was gazing
out at the port, Homer was sitting against a tree looking at Lee,
and Kevin and I were trying to concentrate on a game of racing
patience.

‘What can go wrong with a motor vehicle?’ Lee
asked a small friendly gum tree. ‘Flat tyre, radiator boiling, run
out of oil, fuel problems, battery, ignition, alternator, carbie,
brakes. Oh, it’s too frustrating. Why don’t the rest of you try to
think of something instead of leaving it all to me?’

This was so unfair no one even bothered to
answer.

Kevin played a two onto a four and gave a
quick furtive glance, to see if I’d noticed. I noticed all right.
That tiny little action made me furious. I threw my entire pack
into a blackberry bush, screamed a string of swear words at Kevin,
kicked his cards over and stormed away through the trees.

Guess we were all pretty brittle.