Incurable

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!

We could have done with Robyn in the car that night. We could have done with Robyn any time. But in particular that night, because it would have helped to be reminded of the netball games and the importance of not getting too casual, of maintaining the intensity.

About a kilometre down the road we started to climb a bit and Homer, looking back, said, ‘You know, it’s really buzzing over there.’

‘My God,’ said Jeremy, ‘you’re not wrong.’

‘What’s happening?’ I asked, thinking that I had better keep my eyes on the road.

‘Helicopters,’ Homer said.

I had been driving with headlights on, thinking that we would look like any other car on the road, but now Lee said, ‘I think you better turn the lights off.’ I did so, straight away, and almost straight away Homer said quietly, ‘That might have been a mistake.’

I didn’t trust Homer when he spoke so quietly. I was slowing down as fast as I could without using the brakes, because I knew how bright brake lights are. I’d been pulling over to the left, but I jumped when he said that, and applied a bit of handbrake and got even further left, looking for shelter in the few straggly trees that lined the road. Suddenly Homer yelled from the back seat, so loudly that I jumped like a firecracker had gone off in my ass. ‘Get going!’

I hit the accelerator. We took off with gravel and dust flying and the tail of the ute swinging madly from side to side. During the war I’d quite often had to drive at night without headlights, in fact without any lights. It was terrifying, but luckily I’d often had good moon. The moon had been medium strength this night, but now it was pretty much obliterated by cloud, and of course I’d had no time to let my eyes adjust. If you’ve got plenty of time to get used to it, there’s a chance you can do it and not kill yourself in the first hundred metres. But here I was in severe darkness, with my eyes still thinking ‘headlights’, not even knowing what I was escaping from, but with the dreaded word ‘helicopter’ echoing in my ears.

Jess started to scream, thought better of it, gurgled instead, and said, ‘Oh my God.’ Then she did scream.

With a rush and a roar the helicopter was on us.

There’s nothing more savage than a helicopter on the hunt. This seemed like a small one but that just made it more agile. It swooped low over us like a magpie and more dust swirled and more gravel flew. I was on the bitumen but with no idea of where the bitumen went, and the lights of the helicopter blinded me all over again. Then he switched on a spotlight, which for a moment lit the road ahead, and I saw we were heading for the trees. The road seemed to go left, and it looked like a long curve. I spun the wheel and we angled left, but almost too late, we were on gravel again and a low branch whipped the windscreen. The spotlight came onto us and settled on us for a moment. As far as my seeing where I was going, I didn’t know whether it was a good thing or a bad thing, because although it gave me some light it was way too blinding. As far as our safety went it was definitely a bad thing.

A voice yelled at us through some kind of speaker from the helicopter.

‘Oh my God it’s God,’ Homer yelled from the back seat. He actually sounded quite cheerful but I don’t think even Homer’s that stupid.

‘How come he doesn’t speak English?’ Jeremy asked.

They were doing a comedy routine! If they thought they were helping they were wrong but there wasn’t time to tell them that. The spotlight was bobbing and weaving because whoever was holding it had to match up with both the pilot and me, so there were times when I had a glimpse of the road ahead and times when I didn’t. When it shone right on us it was like a physical creature, not just a light but something real, a blinding white dragon that attacked from out of the dark. I was driving fast when I could see a straight patch of road and then clamping on the brakes when I got to the end of the bit that I’d seen — or where I thought the end was. It was a rough ride for the passengers. Lucky Marmie wasn’t on the tray, like she would be if we were going around the paddocks at home. She’d have been thrown off in the first fifty metres.

The voice was shouting a whole string of stuff but we didn’t understand a word of it except ‘Stop’, which the person repeated about six times as we were taking a sharp bend. Then the spotlight went out. My God that was a moment. My stomach lurched so hard I nearly threw up. I had to hit the brakes: there was nothing else to do. I hit them pretty hard too because I had no idea of where we were in relation to the road. If we’d had time to take a vote I think the seatbelts would have come in for a unanimous big thankyou. I flicked on our headlights. We were facing a solid row of gum trees. I reversed, spun the wheel and got a look at the road. It was tricky, looked like more curves ahead, but maybe those and the trees were forcing the chopper up away from us a bit. I wondered why they’d turned off the spotlight. Had they figured it was helping us too much?

We raced up through the next two corners, me driving pretty much solely from memory, Jess giving a sharp cry as a branch hit her side of the car with a hard bang. I turned the lights back on. A straight stretch. Good. Put the foot down. Racing insanely along in darkness, the wind rushing through the car, a sense of complete madness as though we were driving straight at the edge of a cliff at a hundred k’s an hour. Not that we were really doing a hundred. Maybe eighty. Maybe even ninety.

I’ve seen a rabbit bolting across a flat, bare bit of land when it realises a hawk is after it. It comes down to a simple contest of speed. Can the rabbit get to the edge of the bush before the hawk reaches it? The rabbit flat to the ground, ears pinned back, the hawk pouring on the power as it drives hard across the open paddock. It’s a right-angled triangle and the hawk follows the hypotenuse.

A helicopter has an advantage though. It doesn’t need to reach you and grab you in its sharp, cruel beak. It has bullets that fly through the space between you. As it roared in behind us it started to fire almost straight away. I saw its lights in my mirrors, not the spotlight, just its navigation lights, and I saw the spit of light and colour and flame. ‘They’re shooting,’ I yelled. Not that anyone could do anything about it.

I held my line. I knew from the war, if not from shooting rabbits, that we were safe enough for the first moments. It is too hard to hit a target like us from a helicopter that’s rocking and rolling and trying to find its target. But maybe this guy had new equipment or maybe he was a brilliant shot or maybe he was just plain lucky. Bullet holes tore through the ute like a huge metal-punch was suddenly and roughly slamming a simultaneous line of them from our rear to our front. The ironic thing was the guy was such a perfect shot that he missed everyone. The line was straight down the middle, and Lee and Jess were squashed together on one side, Jess trying to support Lee’s rifle so he could get a few shots in, and Homer hanging out the other side hoping to get a shot away himself. The holes were like a row of stitches. If he’d been off his line by about half a metre he would have scored at least two hits. How unlucky is that? For him I mean. We were lucky twice over because not only did he miss us all but he must have missed everything vital in the engine. It didn’t even hiccup.

For a moment I thought he’d somehow even managed to miss the windscreens but then the back one caved in with a terrible crack and a second later the front one went in sympathy. It was way different to the window in the Landcruiser. I’m sure the front one hadn’t been hit; it might have been something to do with the different air pressure in the cab when the back one went out. Windscreens O’Brien would have loved me if they had a branch on this side of the border. I’d promised myself I wasn’t going to let anyone shoot my car windows out again. That promise hadn’t lasted long.

Maybe the only good thing about the war is that it taught us not to panic if we can possibly help it, but I gotta admit this was testing the limits. I’m not sure about that theory anyway, because Jeremy and Jess had a fairly comfortable time during the war and they weren’t panicking now, no more than the rest of us. All I could think was, ‘I’ll panic later, but for now we need to get out of here.’ I yelled back over my left shoulder, ‘OK if I hit the brakes, you guys roll out, you might get a shot at him as he goes over.’

‘OK,’ I thought I heard Homer answer, although a second later I realised it could have been, ‘No way.’ There was so much noise that my hearing was suffering. I had to hope it was ‘OK’ so I yelled ‘Hang on,’ and slammed the brakes with everything, and I mean everything. Not only the foot brake, but the hand brake as well, and then for good measure dropped the gearstick down to low. The ute practically stood on its nose. ‘Hhmm, nice brakes,’ I thought, ‘must remember to write to Toyota.’ I wouldn’t have been surprised if we’d done a forward roll. I think the boys already had their doors open but we stopped so hard that they fell out instead of doing a graceful exit. Lucky their rifles didn’t go off in the process.

In one way it worked beautifully, because a few moments later the helicopter went right over the top of us at about zero altitude. If we’d had the radio on I reckon he’d have taken out the aerial. OK, slight exaggeration, but he was extremely low. If I hadn’t stopped when I did, I think we would have been dead meat, so that was the way it worked beautifully. In another way it didn’t work at all, because although I think Homer and Lee both managed to fire a few rounds they were too off balance and it had no effect on the chopper.

They piled back into the car and I accelerated gently away. The helicopter was now throwing enough light again for me to see the next bit of road. It was fairly straight, bit of a curve to the right a few hundred metres ahead. The helicopter was doing a tight circle so he could come back for the next round. I’d bought us a bit of time, if nothing else. I tried to go faster but we were driving in crazy swerving patterns, half the time because I didn’t know where the road went and half the time because I knew where it went but I didn’t want us to be shot.

‘Where is he?’ I yelled back over my shoulder at Homer.

‘Starting another run at us. Straight behind.’

‘Got any ideas?’

‘Not right off the top of my head, no.’

This all sounds like a calm intelligent conversation but it was done in jerks and bits and pieces as I slowed and accelerated and swerved and nearly stopped and zigzagged. I don’t know why we weren’t all carsick.

‘Here he comes,’ Jess yelled. ‘God this is exciting isn’t it?’

I looked at her in disbelief. Well, I didn’t actually look at her but in my head I did. I was running out of strategies. I didn’t plan to do this but at the last second my foot did it for me; I must have instinctively felt that it was a good idea. My foot went down on the accelerator, the ute hesitated for a long second, then took off. I guess twin-cabs don’t exactly have the power lift-off of a Porsche but this thing did get going at quite a rate. And that meant we were suddenly going flat out at a wall of darkness. It took me a second to remember I had headlights, another second to decide whether it was wise to use them, and another second to find the switch. I suppose it then took another quarter of a second for them to come on.

If I’m going to be strictly mathematical about this I’d have to add a few more units of time to register the fence coming up and then some more for my reflexes to start operating. When you panic, the reflexes are not as quick because they’re paralysed. By this time we were well and truly off the road, off the ground too I suspect, and although I finally got around to turning the wheel it was way too late. Jess let out a scream like Courtney when she got her first period. So much for her finding it all exciting. We hit the fence. ‘We don’t need the helicopter to kill us,’ I thought, ‘I’ll take care of the job all by myself An image of Chris appeared strongly in my mind.

The fence was not a great one, but it wasn’t too bad. I hate to think what might have happened if it had been freshly strung with hard lines of steel barbed wire. But this farmer knew his fence had a good few years in it yet and he wasn’t ready to update. So we thundered into it almost headfirst, as I hadn’t got far with turning the steering wheel, and we burst through into the paddock, dragging quantities of wire and droppers and a fence post or two.

We were bouncing hard in a fairly rough paddock. I snapped the headlights off but I’d seen that the paddock was quite open and seemed to go a long way. Now I had some room to manoeuvre, but if the paddock had the usual quota of cattle, logs, drink troughs, rabbit warrens and other hazards, I was fairly sure that I could find lots of ways yet to get into trouble. The helicopter’s light picked us up and I swerved violently to the left then back to the right. I flicked on the lights again, to get a glimpse of our future, but also to distract him. As I turned them off I thought I saw something. Well of course I saw something. Grass for example. But something else. I had a moment’s agony of indecision. I felt I couldn’t risk turning them on again. I had to trust my judgement and assume that I’d seen what I thought I saw.