manoeuvred around that. No big deal really. The three boys hadn’t even taken their guns, so it wasn’t like they were going to shoot the riders while they were distracted by the flames. Then I realised and I cried out.
‘What?’ Jess asked, looking scared.
I stopped the ute and looked back down the hill. I wasn’t sure how good a view Jess had. Mine was pretty good. Of course Lee had volunteered to be the one who’d light the match. He was the only one who could do this. I couldn’t have done it.
Like a pack, the bikes came on. There were three, not two. I saw at least one pillion passanger. Maybe they’d paused when they did to pick up reinforcements. Now they probably had time to register that the car had stopped, up on the rise. They were in a bunch bunched together. Lee had chosen the spot well, considering he’d had so little time. The gradient on either side of the track meant they were forced together and the rocks caused them to slow down.
I wondered if they smelt the petrol and had time to think about it for a moment. They lit up slowly, or that’s what it seemed like. Of course it must have all happened in a second. When I replay it in my head it seems like slow motion. I didn’t see the match. The first thing I saw was a glow that was almost phosphorescent. It rose like a dancer who was getting to her feet to start the performance. Funny how something so terrible can be so beautiful. It spread across some grass and almost instantly came to the first motorbike. It paused there. Everything seemed to hang. This bike, and one of the others, had a rider and a passenger. The rider threw up his hands as though he suddenly didn’t care about the bike; he was just going to let it fall, let him and his passenger be thrown into the flames. Suddenly all three bikes, all five men, became blazing statues. Lee’s timing had been as perfect as his choice of location.
I turned away, sickened, unable to watch any more. Even above the engine of the ute I could hear screams. ‘Revenge for Shannon,’ I thought, trying to give it meaning, make it bearable. I put the car into reverse to get the three boys. I only had to back up about thirty metres before they arrived. This time they had the sense to use different doors, Jeremy and Homer on one side, Lee on the other. They reeked of petrol. I think the horror and enormity of what they’d done had sent them into supershock. But they had given us a chance to get out of here. I put my foot to the floor. We went on to the top of the rise. The track now took on a more definite direction again. In the distance I could see the highway again, with quite a few cars going along it. How strange, that normal life was going on over there, while behind us men were staggering around trying to put themselves out. Well, maybe sometimes we all had to be foxes and feel nothing for our victims. For some minutes my main concern was the petrol fumes in the car. It was terrible, even with the windows down and me driving as fast as I dared. I even used the word ‘terrible’ when I was yelling at Jeremy to wind down the window, which says something about me or about language or about both, because there was only one thing that was terrible during that time.
We got to the highway through a couple of gates. Jess got out and opened them. I thought it was a good sign when she did that but a bad sign when she started closing the first one again. God, what a waste of time, although maybe she thought she’d slow down anyone else who was following. I think we all screamed simultaneously at her. We’d be on the highway before any more chasers appeared. ‘Always leave gates as you find them,’ yes, and it went against the grain to leave these open, but what did we care about their stock? They’d probably stolen them from us anyway.
Getting away always seems lighter somehow. Of course it’s logical it would feel that way, but almost every time we’d had to escape during the war it worked out to be easier and quicker. Maybe the relief gave wings to our feet, a richer mixture to the fuel in our carburettors. When there were no cars in sight I slipped onto the highway — it wasn’t really a highway, just a busy main road — then took the first turn to the left. It was a long straight road, heading vaguely in the direction we wanted. I pulled over to the side, opened the door and got out, saying to them as I did so, ‘Well, have a nice ride home, people. I’m going back to find Gavin.’
CHAPTER 9
The thing I most don’t like about Jess is that she wants life to be a huge drama with her as the star and so she kind of organises people that way. Not to an extreme, like I’ve seen worse, but at the end of the day it’s always about her. Steve can be a bit like that too, which is one reason we broke up, but Jess is worse than Steve.
The reason I can say that about her is that sometimes I do it too, which may explain why there are times when Jess really irritates me.
I have to admit that the way I got out of the car that night was a good example. I knew I had to find Gavin, so it wasn’t a bullshit situation, but to do it that way, OK, yeah, I knew there would be a certain impact on the others. To be honest, it was more like a scene out of a movie than real life. I guess the others knew that. Lee covered his face with one hand and groaned, Jeremy said, ‘You must be joking,’ and Homer just looked straight at me and said, ‘Here’s a suggestion — why don’t you tell us what’s going on.’ To my surprise, Jess opened her door and came around to where I was standing. I’m not sure what she had in mind, I don’t think she was planning on coming with me, but she sure wasn’t running away.
I realised I hadn’t been fair to them. I made a bit of a face, and said, ‘Sorry.’ It took me a minute to think of how to explain it all. So much had happened that I could hardly remember Gavin, let alone what he had done. In forcing my mind to go back a few hours I felt like I was taking a thousand-kilometre journey. It was actually tiring, and I didn’t need it, on top of the exhaustion that was leaving me limp and feeble. But somehow I got back the full thousand kilometres and remembered, and said, ‘Before you went Gavin had already left. He hijacked a motorbike, waited somewhere down the paddock and followed you. I lost his tracks near the border. But he took a shotgun.’
‘You don’t think he went shooting rabbits or something?’ Jess asked.
I shook my head.
‘He could be home again,’ said Jeremy.
‘If you knew Gavin,’ Homer said to him, ‘well, put it this way, you remember that Japanese soldier they found in the jungle forty years after the Second World War? Still fighting on?’
I didn’t, but I got the general drift. Nobody said anything else for a few moments. But the trouble with the kind of situation we were in is that you can’t sit around having a group discussion. Finally I did something which I don’t remember doing too often. I said to Lee: What do you think I should do?’
He raised his eyebrows slightly, which for Lee was the equivalent of laughing hysterically. It was probably the first time I’d asked him directly for advice about something personal. And this felt personal to me.
‘I don’t see what you can do,’ he said. ‘He could be anywhere. I mean, we’re talking about an area of maybe a thousand square kilometres. It’s like looking for one particular grain of sand on the beach. Like Jeremy said, he could be back home. I think you’ll have to start again from there. If he’s still missing, we can try to get information through the Scarlet Pimple or Liberation.’
He was clever, Lee. He’d thought of a reason to get me back home. Two reasons even. Gavin could be there, and if he wasn’t, I might have a better chance of finding him from my place than by zigzagging aimlessly about the countryside.
I got back in the ute. Jess got in too.
Somehow, as we took off again, I felt quite fearless. Considering all we had been through, and the danger we were still in, that seems a bit ridiculous, but my mind was on Gavin, and that stopped me getting too scared. I think also that after surviving the Battle of the Coconut Tree I felt a bit invincible. By getting ourselves out of that almost impossible situation it seemed like God wouldn’t be so cruel as to have us caught by an off-duty gardener with a whipper-snipper.
We had a bit more to contend with than off-duty gardeners though. We’d been stupid to stop for so long and have a conversation. Well, I’d been stupid, but the others were nice enough not to point that out. To be honest, I was probably underestimating the opposition too. Just like those netball games when Robyn was captain. Wirrawee was quite a netball powerhouse, and it wasn’t unusual for us to win games by forty points. One season, when we were in Year 5, we won every game by a minimum twenty-five points. But by Years 6 and 7 we drifted into bad habits. In particular, in almost every game, we would lead by a big margin at half-time and either lose the second half or play really scratchily. It cost us a few games. It nearly cost Robyn her sanity. Oh, those half-time speeches! Oh, those full-time accusations!
