Authors: John Marsden
My problem was to stop thinking about stuff like that when I was walking through a town crawling with soldiers wanting to kill me. It amazed me that even in those situations I still found it hard to concentrate. I was OK for ten minutes or so, but then something would distract me and my mind would drift out in the rip again. Incredible but true. It was the same in this battlefield as it was in Geography classes at school. I was scared I'd dream myself to death one day.
From Honey Street we cut across a little park with no name, into Barrabool Avenue. We met, as agreed, in the front garden of Robyn's music teacher's house, and had a quick conference under the peppercorn tree.
"It's quiet," Homer said.
"Too quiet," Lee said, with a little smile. He'd watched a few war movies in his time, Lee.
"Maybe they've all left," Robyn said.
"We're a block and a half away," Homer said. "Let's keep going, just the way we' planned. Everybody happy?"
"Laughing hysterically," Chris said.
Robyn and Homer tiptoed away through the trees. A few moments later we heard the little thuds of their feet on the gravel as they jumped from the garden back on to the footpath.
"Can we go next?" Fi whispered.
"OK. Why?"
"I can't stand the waiting." She looked too thin in
the darkness, like a ghost. I touched her cold cheek and she gave a little sob. I hadn't realised how scared she was. All the time we'd spent holed up in Hell had preyed on her mind. But we had to be tough when we were out here in the streets. We needed Fi if we were going to check the Hospital thoroughly.
So all I said was, "Think brave, Fi."
"Yes, that's right."
She turned and followed Chris, as Lee took my hand again.
"I wish Fi and I were as good friends as we were before," I said to him. He didn't answer, just squeezed my hand.
We made our way back out to Barrabool Avenue, separating again to left and right. Now at last I had no trouble concentrating. Logically, the area around the Hospital shouldn't have been more dangerous than any other part of townâone of the points we'd been sure of was that the Hospital wouldn't be heavily guardedâbut because it was our target, our goal, I was now alert and watchful and nervous.
Wirrawee Hospital is on the left side of Barrabool, near the crest of the hill. It's a single-storey building that's been added to over the years, with lots of different wings, so that now it's like a letter H next to a letter T. Between us we'd had enough experience of the place to work out quite a good map. We had information from everyone. Lee had visited it when each of his little brothers had been born. Robyn had been admitted for a few days when she broke her ankle cross-country running; Fi's grandmother had been there for months
before she died; I'd had my shoulder X-raved, picked up tablets for Dad at the dispensary, visited friends when they were in there. Yes, we all knew the Hospital.
The trouble was that we didn't know how much things had changed since the invasion. The adult prisoners we'd talked to once had told us that our people were still being treated at the Hospital, but we had to expect that they wouldn't be in the best private rooms. In the car park, more likely. Before the invasion the entrance foyer was in the crossbar of the H, with Casualty and Outpatients and X-Ray and all that stuff on the right, and the wards on the left. In the crossbar of the T were the offices, and in the long row behind them were the wards for the old people.
See, our Hospital was as much an old people's home as it was a hospital: we didn't get a lot of open-heart surgery and kidney transplants in Wirrawee.
It was 1.35 am when we got there. The electricity was on in this part of town, as it had been every time we'd visited Wirrawee. There were no streetlights, but there was a big security light shining on the car park. The Hospital was lit, but mainly just the corridors and the foyer. There weren't many rooms with lights on.
At 1.45, as we'd agreed, Homer and Robyn made the first move. From a belt of trees across the road from the car park Lee and I saw the two dark figures moving towards the far end of the Outpatients section. Robyn was in the lead, Homer was peering around more as he followed. I was surprised at how small they looked. There was a door near that end of the building which we'd figured was the least conspicuous entry, and we were hoping it would be unlocked. But Robyn was only
at it a moment before she turned away and began checking the windows along the side nearest us, while Homer disappeared around the other side. A few minutes later Homer reappeared, Robyn rejoined him, and they moved quickly back to the trees. So that was one failed option.
Five minutes later, Fi and Chris came out of their hiding place, behind some sheds a little further up the hill. Their target was the T-shaped buildingâthe offices and old people's wing. It took them ten minutes, or close enough, but the result was the same: the place was tight as a Vacola. Chris looked in our direction and held out his arms, palms up. He couldn't see us, or so I hoped, but he knew approximately where we'd be. Then he and Fi retreated to safety, leaving the field to us. Lee looked at me and rolled his eyes; I grinned back, hoping I didn't look as frightened as I felt.
We waited the agreed five minutes. It was 2.09 am. I tapped Lee's arm, he nodded, and off we went. Across the crunchy gravel, up a small bank planted with straggly red wallflowers, and towards a side door in the main wing. We walked slowly, about three metres apart. I was breathing hard, as though I'd run a crossie, and I was sweating all over. The sweat felt so cold on my skin, like it was turning to ice. My throat had a lump so big I felt I'd swallowed a chicken bone. Basically, I felt sick. I was very scared. I'd almost forgotten the emotion that had brought us there: my love for Corrie and Key. I just wanted to do the job, find them or not find them, and then get out of there. That was all.
I reached the door, which was in shadows but had an illuminated green exit sign above it. I turned the handle
slowly and pushed, then pulled. The result was the same: the door was tightly locked.
As the others had done, we separated and began checking the windows. The ones on the corridor side were all closed, but on the other side quite a few were open. But they were up high, beyond our reach without a ladder. I was getting too close to the lights of the entrance foyer, so I went back, meeting up with Lee again near the locked exit door. It was too dangerous to talk there, so we went over to a shed about forty metres awayâa small locked wooden hutâand hid behind it.
"What do you think?" Lee asked.
"I don't know. Those open windows would be for wards. I don't see how we could just drop into a ward."
"Plus they're so high up."
"Yes."
There was a pause. I had no idea where to go from there.
"I wish the others were here. They might know what to do."
"It's only ten minutes before our pull-out time."
"Mmm."
Another minute passed. I sighed and started to stand. I couldn't see any point hanging around there, in such a dangerous place. But as I began to move, Lee grabbed my arm.
"Shh. Wait. There's something..."
I heard it too, at that moment. It was the sound of a door opening. I peeped around one corner of the shed; Lee looked around the other. It was the door that we'd
been hoping to find unlocked. A man in military uniform was coming out. We could see him easily, backlit by the dull light from the corridor. He didn't even look around, just walked along the bank, pulling things out of his pocket. Only when his hand went to his mouth did I realise what he was doing. It was a cigarette. He'd come outside for a smoke. Just like us, these people weren't allowed to smoke in hospitals. I got quite a shock. I'd been thinking of them as animals, monsters, but they had rules, codes of conduct, too. I guess it sounds naive, but it was the first time I felt any common ground with them. It was odd.
It was frustrating to crouch where we were and look at that open door. The yellow light from the corridor made it seem as if I was peering into a gold mine. I desperately searched my mind for some way to get in there. Then my thoughts were interrupted. From away to our left, in among the trees, came a cry, a groan, like a bunyip having a baby. My skin goose-bumped all over. I turned and grabbed Lee and looked at him in horror. I know my eyebrows were somewhere up above my hairline, and still rising. The cry came again, even worse, and more prolonged. The bunyip was going to need stitches.
Lee whispered in my ear, "It's Homer."
As soon as he said it, I realised everything. Homer was trying to get the soldier away, leaving us a wide open door to stroll through. Lee and I let go each other and turned back to our lookout points. We got a shock. Instead of rushing heroically into the trees the soldier was bolting towards the door. He got there and skidded
through it, pulling it shut behind him. Even at such a distance we could hear him deadlocking it, slamming a couple of bolts home for good measure.
"Bloody Homer," Lee said. "He thinks it's a game."
"Hope there's not a fire in the Hospital tonight," I said. "It'll take them half an hour to get out."
"I thought soldiers were meant to be tough, fully trained professionals."
"Remember what we heard? That they had professionals, but they also had a lot of draftees? Amateurs. Unwilling amateurs, too, by the look of it."
"We'd better get out."
We withdrew, meeting the others twenty minutes later at the music teacher's house. Homer looked a bit embarrassed, a bit defensive. He hadn't become totally mature and responsible overnight. There was still a bit of the wild and crazy guy lurking inside.
"OK, go on, everyone have a go at me," he said, before I could get out more than half a sentence. "It seemed like a good idea at the time, that's all. If he had come looking for us, Lee and Ellie could have gone straight in and you guys'd now be kissing me on both cheeks and buying me beers."
"We ought to be kicking you on both cheeks," Lee mumbled. "And you know which cheeks."
"It was pretty dumb," Chris said. "If he'd had a gun he could have shot you. If he didn't have a gun there was no way he was going to charge off into the bush in the middle of the night to investigate. Either way it was pretty dumb."
There didn't seem to be much to add. We were all tired, and at our worst. We nominated Homer for first
sentry duty and the rest of us bedded down on the first floor of the house. It was the safest house we knew, because there were so many exit points out of upstairs windows, along tree branches. And it gave such good views of the road. No one could approach without the sentry seeing them.
I got a real charge out of being in a bed, in a bedroom again. It was a beautiful, secure, comfortable luxury. I did sentry from six till eight, then slept again till lunchtime.
We spent the afternoon lounging around trying to think of brilliant ways to get into the Hospital. I was on the floor most of the time, wrapped in a tartan rug. I remember laughing at Chris, who was pretending to watch television. He was reacting to the flat grey screen as though there were game shows and sitcoms and action movies on it. It was strange how TV had been such a major part of our lives, and now, without electricity, the TV had become about the most useless thing in the house.
Most of all I felt pretty happy that day. It was because we were starting to get on well again. It only showed in little ways, but those little ways were my food, my drink, my air, my life. The others thought I was tough and independent, but I needed those five
people more than I'd ever needed anyone or anything in my entire existence.
For all that though, we still couldn't think of a way to get into the Hospital. Night started to fall, then it fell, till it was lying all over the ground. And we still hadn't thought of anything. But I'll take a lot of the credit for the inspiration we finally had. I'd been idly thinking about Homer's crazy distraction tactic. It seemed to me that there were possibilities in the idea. He just hadn't done it right. Something was nibbling at my brain, like there was a tiny mouse trapped in there. If I could find the key I could let him out.
"Lee," I said, when he was relieved by Fi from sentry duty.
'"Yes", my beautiful sexy caterpillar"
"Caterpillar?"
"That's what you look like, wrapped up in your rug."
"Thanks a lot. Listen, you remember that very quick conversation behind the shed, after Homer finished wailing?"
"And frightened a poor innocent soldier out of his wits? Yes."
"What did we say? There's something from that conversation that's bugging me."
"Caterpillars are always bugged. That's what makes them caterpillars."
"Very funny. But I'm serious."
"What did we say? I don't know. We were talking about how it was probably Homer who was making the noise."
"Yes. And then?"
"I can't remember. Just watching the guy running in and shutting the door. Locking it so tight."'
"Yes. Something about ... The way he was locking it."
"You said something..."
"Yes, I did."
I sat there, frustrated.
"Is this really important?" Lee said presently.
"I don't know. I'm probably being stupid. I just think there's something there, if I can remember it and let it out. It's like watching a heifer calving. I can see the head of the damn thing but I don't know what it's going to look like."
I got up and started walking around. We were in an upstairs sitting room, which Ms Lim must have used as a practice room. There was a beautiful black baby grand piano facing the window. Homer had written
Heavy Metal
across it in the dust with his fingers. But I had seen Lee with the lid raised, running his hands across the keys. His fingers were trembling and there was a look on his face even more passionate, more intense than when he looked at me. I'd been standing in the doorway watching. When he noticed me he lowered the lid quickly, almost guiltily, and said, "I ought to play the 1812. Get the soldiers to provide the cannons."
I didn't answer; just wondered why he tried to turn something that he felt so strongly about into a joke. There were times when I got sick of jokes.