Circle of fight

CHAPTER 12

Although my feelings about Toddy were now pretty mixed I clung to him as I rode on the back of his motorbike. He might be the last human I ever clung to. The only comment he made when he came back with the bike was, ‘You shouldn’t have said about the money,’ but I didn’t care. Maybe it was a mistake but it had changed the atmosphere in that room and somehow it had made things happen. I think Toddy just liked being in control of the situation, didn’t like that I’d ignored his instructions. Now I didn’t compare him much to Homer at all. Homer had more, I don’t know, well, not more, less… Less vanity, less fear, less ‘I’m in charge here.’

We rode through the sweet cool night air, which made it hard to understand why sweat kept dripping down the back of my neck. Why my face felt so hot. On the edge of town Toddy stopped to show me a hiding place where he said he’d look for me the next day. Me and Gavin, I reminded him, and he was, ‘Oh yeah, that’s right, of course,’ and I realised he was sure he’d never see me again, let alone have the pleasure of meeting Gavin. It made me determined to succeed, if only for the completely stupid reason that I wanted to prove to Toddy that I wasn’t helpless and hopeless.

The hiding place was on the edge of an old cemetery, which seemed appropriate. One way or another it seemed likely I’d end up in a cemetery by the next day. I took a quick look around and then got back on the bike. Away we went, towards an unknown and probably impossible destination. To my surprise we headed back into town. I’d always had a picture of these guys holed up in the countryside somewhere, a remote place where I’d have to sneak across paddocks and in and out of trees to reach them. That was the way we’d operated a lot of the time in the war. But now we rode right towards the CBD, Toddy occasionally pointing out something that would help me navigate back to the cemetery.

Twenty minutes later we were in what must have been one of the oldest parts of Havelock. It was the kind of respectable suburb where prices are high, where dentists and architects live. We rode slowly down a wide street that had a lot of speed bumps and was closed at the far end so nasty noisy old trucks and buses couldn’t disturb the sleep of the dentists. Toddy kept peering at the numbers. Three blocks from the far end he stopped and turned off the motor. ‘Down there,’ he whispered.

‘OK.’

‘Number 503.’

‘OK.’

‘Good luck.’

I didn’t bother answering, just got off the bike. I think he was feeling a bit embarrassed at dumping me like this. Or maybe he’d always planned to do this. Whatever, he reached into the pannier of the bike and pulled out a leather pouch, unwrapped it and showed me a handgun. Like everything about Toddy it was a little larger than life, with a silver handle and a long barrel.

‘Do you know how to use these?’

I took it from him, slipped the safety off, and checked the breech and then the magazine. It was fully loaded. It was a nice weapon too, a little heavy but beautifully balanced. I was aware that my confidence with it was impressing Toddy and I admit I played up to that a bit. I just wished I could have twirled it around my finger and shot a sparrow a hundred metres away to impress him a bit more, but it didn’t seem like a good idea.

‘Thanks,’ I said gratefully. He hesitated. I think he’d been hoping I’d say I didn’t know how to handle guns or I didn’t want it or something, but now he was committed to giving it to me. He swallowed and said, ‘No problem.’ At least I hadn’t taken his motorbike. Not yet anyway.

‘I’ll bring it back,’ I promised.

Liberation had told me not to bring any weapons because the consequences would be too serious if I were caught. They’d said the people in Havelock would be able to get me something, and now it seemed that they had, at the last minute.

I walked away then, without any sentimental goodbyes. I wasn’t in the mood. I did appreciate Toddy’s help but I had to concentrate on what was coming, and dealing with Toddy seemed to take a lot of energy. I heard the bike start up behind me and I could tell he was wheeling it around and then came the quiet fade-out as he rode away down the street. I wondered if I’d ever see him again.

From 493 on came a row of terrace houses, pretty much like terrace houses everywhere, two or three storeys, with bits added on top of some of them. Each one had its wrought-iron fence and garden about A4 size. Some gardens were neat, some scruffy, and one was a spectacular crop of weeds that would have supported a couple of steers for a week. I guessed that would be Number 503, but of course I was wrong; my houseful of suspected terrorists had the prettiest garden in the block. I walked past. I was still wearing the black wig but not the face mask of course. It wasn’t much of a disguise but at least anyone looking down from a window probably wouldn’t be too alarmed.

I felt dismayed at what I saw on my brief inspection. The way terrace houses are all stuck together means you can’t go sneaking up the side to have a look or to get in a window or to try a side door. I kept on going and went all the way to the corner. At this hour of the night things were really quiet. That was the good news. The only good news. I turned right and went down the road a bit until I came to the lane that ran behind the houses. They had them in Stratton too, these narrow cobbled access lanes that in the old days were used by the nightcart men, the guys who came into your back yard to pick up the bucket of poo and pee from your dunny and take it out to the truck. That would have been a nice job. Especially when you tripped with a full bucket on your shoulder and went sprawling onto the cobblestones. Your social life could be affected for a while every time that happened.

I walked quietly up the lane past the high fences and back gates. You couldn’t see into any of the places but I could tell which one was 503 because 501 had its number painted on the fence in a sloppy mess of yellow. Again I walked past. If they had sentries front and back they’d be starting to wonder about me by now. It was all very peaceful though. I wondered if I’d come to the right house, if those guys had told us the truth, or if Toddy had just mixed the details up. He hadn’t written anything down when the young guy talked to him.

I went up to the next intersection and turned right, then crossed over at the next one into a small park. Christ this was difficult. I didn’t know what to do. Toddy had been adamant that this was my only chance: it was tonight or never. Well, I had to go with that. There was no other advice floating around. No second opinions. Somehow I had to take a crack at that house, and if I failed in the attempt… well, I didn’t need to scare myself with the consequences.

At least it kind of focuses your mind when there’s only one alternative. I sat there, not thinking any more about whether I should do this or whether I should lie low until tomorrow night and try again then. All I had to think about was how to get into a terrace house. And it had to be through the front or the back. Or the roof I suppose, or from underneath, but they didn’t seem viable options. The first thing I thought of was just to walk up and try the front door. There must have been a chance that they didn’t lock it. People do stupid and careless things so easily. If that failed and there was no sentry, then no problem. If there was a sentry, then I might have a very big problem.

I moved to a different position in the park, where I could see 503 more clearly. Maybe someone would go in or out and I’d get a better idea of what was going on. Surveillance, like the cops do.

Another option was to go round the back. I’d have to climb the back fence and I didn’t know what I’d find when I dropped into the courtyard. Could be a nice party of armed guys enjoying a quiet beer. But I could peep through a hole in the fence first. If I did get in there, the back door might be unlocked.

I could walk up to the front door and knock on it and pretend I was collecting for the Red Cross or I was a Jehovah’s Witness… but it was a little late at night. Plus, when you’re the alien you can’t do stuff like that. I shook my head and tried to get back on track.

The front of the house matched the others in the row in lots of ways, like I said. That included having all kinds of bits and pieces stuck on the front of it. Someone had covered in the upstairs veranda for example, and one of the ground-floor windows had been converted with a sort of box arrangement. Plus there was a lot of ivy. As I crouched there I imagined I could see a route going up the front of the building that someone reasonably fit and athletic could climb. And I was the girl who’d got Gavin off the cliff on Tailor’s Stitch, not so long ago. Compared to Tailor’s Stitch this didn’t look too hard. The biggest difference was that on Tailor’s Stitch there were no windows, and so not much chance that someone would lean out a window and calmly shoot me.

I didn’t know what laws were operating in this town. Would they be allowed to shoot me in cold blood if they caught me climbing into their house? Probably. And if not, I guessed they wouldn’t have too much of a problem taking me somewhere quiet out of town and doing the job there.

Occasionally cars went down the street but I hadn’t seen a pedestrian the whole time I’d been there. That meant I should be safe from being caught by a passer-by. The cars were a problem though. They tended to go slowly, because of the speed bumps, and being a deadend street they were people going home, not racing past at a hundred k’s. If they saw me stuck on the front of the house like Spiderman I couldn’t expect much mercy.

By now it was 1.30 am. I thought it was time to do something. If I waited too long I wouldn’t have the strength or energy I was going to need. And if by some crazy fluke I was successful, I needed time to get both Gavin and myself out of town to that cemetery. It had to be an hour’s walk. God knows how we’d do that. I’d have to wait and see.

I left the park and slowly crossed the road, quite a way up the street from the house. I didn’t want some wideawake sentry seeing me heading purposefully towards the place. I wondered again if I had the right house. If I didn’t this could be one of the most embarrassing experiences of my life. Not to mention the fact that I’d be back where I started, with even less hope of rescuing Gavin.

It was about 1.40 when I reached number 503 again. Now I didn’t pretend to be an innocent passer-by. There was no point. It was better to try not to be seen at all. From two houses away I sidled along the fence as quietly as I could. Being quiet wasn’t difficult; I was on a bitumen footpath and there were no dried leaves or twigs or bark, the stuff that makes it so difficult when you’re out in the bush.

At the house I paused for a moment only. It all seemed innocent. I slipped down to the gate and eased it open. Bloody thing, hadn’t they ever heard of lubricating oil? It squeaked like a wounded rabbit. Trying not to breathe I snuck into the pretty little garden. What were my instincts telling me? My basic instincts? Was anyone watching? Was I about to get clobbered? And you know, something funny happened. I didn’t know if I was being watched or not, although I was terrified. I didn’t know if someone was about to jump me. But I suddenly knew with absolute certainty that Gavin was very close. It sent my whole spine tingling, all the way down to my tail bone. This nice suburban house in the middle of Havelock with its daffodils and early rosebuds and a big hydrangea was holding my favourite person in the world. I knew it.

It motivated me. I actually muttered something corny like, ‘OK Gavin kiddo, I’m coming to get you.’ I went to the right-hand corner and took a hold of the wall and searched upwards to see what I would find. My fingers gripped the corner of the top of the window and I got up on the sill. I was going to try to avoid the windows but at least this one had a curtain across it.

From there the climb immediately started getting difficult. I had to rely on the ivy, which I wasn’t too happy about as it didn’t have that great a grip on the wall. It was thick enough and strong enough, cos it had obviously been growing there a long time, but from the start it kept pulling away when I put weight on it. I got above the ground-floor window quite easily, which I was pleased about as it meant I was now up a good way. But I didn’t feel at all safe. I thought my best chance was to get over to that box-window arrangement and from the roof of that use a drainpipe to get to the closed-in veranda.

I started to reach across to the left and at that very moment a car came slowly along the street. I cursed it. Talk about timing. These people were making no effort to help me at all. I waited there, suspended, knowing that if you don’t make a movement you can be amazingly invisible. On the other hand a faint tremor of your eyelashes and you can be spotted a k away. That’s how it worked in the bush anyway, and I had to assume it’d be the same here.

Then the ivy pulled out by the roots and I fell backwards into the garden.

I landed on the hydrangea. I don’t mind hydrangeas normally but now I realised just how strong and hard those branches are. Spiky even. The ivy was on top of me and I lay there for a moment too shocked to move. The fall had knocked the wind out of me. I was wondering who’d catch me first, the people in the car or the people in the house. I started to struggle. Humans are so stupid at times like that, well at least I am. Caught between the minor pain of being spiked by the hydrangeas, and the major pain of being splattered into pieces by high-velocity bullets, I was pretty much six of one and half-a-dozen of the other. Cursing the hydrangeas and feeling some really sharp, horrible pain in different places, struggling to get out of the bush, and at the same time listening for an opening door, running footsteps, shouts of alarm, rifles rattling as they were lifted into position… with one eye I was looking at my left arm to see if it was bleeding, with the other I was looking at the house to see if lights were coming on.

The amazing thing was that no-one appeared from any direction, running or walking, questioning or shouting, no-one with guns and no-one without them. The silence of the district continued unbroken. I heard the car going on down the street and a truck changing gears in the distance, and I heard all the little creaks and rustles that hydrangeas probably always make when someone’s fallen into them and is getting out again, but that was it.

It seemed incredible, but I wasted no more time thinking about it and took full advantage of the second chance I’d been given. Trying to ignore the sore bits all over my body I limped to the darkest corner of the little garden and stood there for a moment trying to work out a new plan.

Despite my certainty about Gavin being close, I still did wonder if I’d come to the right house. Where were the sentries? The place seemed so normal, so quiet, so suburban. But one thing I’d learned in the war, if I hadn’t known it already, was that ultimately people always slip up. I’d done it myself often enough. It doesn’t matter how organised you are or how important the situation is. It didn’t matter that my dad had all the joined ewes so neatly separated from the unjoined ones, and that for year after year nothing had ever gone wrong. Sooner or later some idiot slipped up and left a gate open and you had a big problem. I knew that idiot all too well.

Sooner or later a guard goes to sleep or nicks off to have a cigarette or to visit the toilet. Or you forget to have someone on sentry that night. Or you’ve rented a great DVD and everyone wants to watch it and you agree you’ll go back on guard straight afterwards. Or you’re on the phone or you’re with your girlfriend. Or you’re drunk.

They’d had Gavin for a while now and maybe they were getting casual. No human in the history of the planet has stayed alert and focused 24/7, more like, well, I’d guess, about 3/7.

That didn’t help me formulate a plan though. I couldn’t see any way into the house. It was only out of desperation, and a sort of Monty Python sense that anything lunatic is possible, that I did what I’d thought briefly about before. I snuck over to the front door and turned the handle.

It turned smoothly and easily. That still didn’t prove anything. I turned it to its fullest extent and pushed slightly. The seal that a closed door makes with the doorframe pops like a whisper. I heard it and I felt it and in the dim light I even saw it. I still could hardly believe it. Maybe the door was held by a loose kind of lock that would make itself known in the next few centimetres. I pushed a little, to see. Nothing. No resistance at all.

The aches from simultaneous multiple hydrangea pokes dropped away suddenly. My skin felt so hot I thought it might blister. I hoped the door was as smooth as it felt so far, that it wasn’t going to creak and groan as I squeezed it open. I hoped the person in charge of oiling the front gate wasn’t also in charge of this door. I hoped someone oiled this one frequently, like daily. Most of all I hoped there was no-one waiting for me on the other side. I stopped breathing. The door had become my heart. All my energy was now out of me and in it. I pushed it open.

It did go pretty quietly, that was the good news. I got it open to about sixty degrees, and stared down the corridor. It was long, a sort of pale orange with a square wooden table halfway down, and a dim light showing at the far end. Not very attractive I gotta say. The light was coming from somewhere round the corner; the corridor light itself was off. I could see at least two doors, but there might have been a third one. At the end of the corridor you could either turn right or go up a staircase. The good news was that there were no soldiers standing there. There was no-one at all.

I did the only thing I could and went in, closing the door behind me. Jesus, sometimes as I write this stuff the hair on the back of my head stands up like I just had a crewcut. I won’t go on about it but it was not easy for me to go into that house. The hardest thing though was when I closed the door. I had to do it so no-one in the house would feel a draught blowing through the place and get suspicious, but there was a finality about doing it that had me wondering if I were coming to the end of my journey.

The journey of my life that is.

As I went through the door I pulled out the thing that had been a heavy weight in my pocket since I got it from Toddy. I don’t care what anyone says, there are times when a gun is very comforting to have. There is something cold and sinister and cruel about hand guns, but I didn’t want to go through that house without one.

I was half-a-dozen steps down the corridor before I realised something was leaning against the back of the square wooden table. In a way it was a good thing to see, in another way it was the most horrible of sights. There may have been families who liked to have a couple of firearms lying around in their front corridor for the kiddies to play with, but I didn’t think it was very likely. Not a high-powered automatic rifle, so new it looked like it had just been unpacked.

For a moment I debated whether it was best to leave it there or do something with it. Every second that I wasted in the corridor increased the chances of someone finding me. On the other hand, if this thing was loaded and ready for action, it might be in my best interests in the long term to do something about it. So I crouched, put my own gun on the floor and, with the stealthiest movements I could make, eased out the magazine. From the weight of it I’d say it was jampacked. There was nowhere to hide it, so I shoved it down the front of my jeans.

Picking up Toddy’s handgun I went on my merry way. The doors were closed and there was no light underneath them. It was possible Gavin was in one of these rooms, but for some reason I assumed he was upstairs. For the sake of security, surely that would be where you kept a prisoner.

I reached the end of the corridor still not able to see the source of the light coming from the right-hand side. I assumed there would be a kitchen and probably a dining room out there. But I heard the murmur of voices, and the scrape of a chair, so it seemed like people were awake, even at this hour of the night. I had to take the staircase, even though I was scared to do so. I don’t know what it is about staircases, but they always creak, and I knew it would be impossible for me to get to the top without making some noise. But it seemed better than the alternative, of bursting in on a couple of terrorists as they enjoyed their late-night coffee.

So I started up the stairs. I did it really heavily and slowly, putting all my weight on each step, trying to suffocate any noise the steps were tempted to make. That seemed to work OK. There were creaks, but they were reasonably minimal, and I didn’t think they would bring anyone from the kitchen or the back of the house.

It took me about ten minutes to get up that staircase, or that’s what it seemed like. I knew it was important to go slowly, for the sake of silence, but my problem was to make myself move at all. The higher I got, the slower I went, because it became a mental battle to get up to the next step. I’ve never climbed Everest, and don’t have any immediate plans to, but those stories of people battling their way to the summit, metre by weary metre, as blizzards smack their bodies with snow and hail and ice probably go pretty close to what I was feeling. But with me it was all in the mind. There was no blizzard, just the one in my head, bombarding me with fearful advice. Reaching the summit brought no feelings of pride or delight, just made the fear worse, so that I stood on the top step diseased with it. There were no lights up here, but there were too many choices. Another staircase ahead of me led to the next floor, and a staircase behind seemed to go to a couple of rooms at about the same level. But there was also a corridor to the right, which I thought probably went to the next house, as though they were joined. My instinct was to go further up, as far away from the voices below as I could. Trying to put myself into the minds of these guys, and wondering where they would store an abducted kid, I decided going up further was probably the smart thing to do.

It seemed like the staircase behind me was the less important, the less impressive. It was like it went up to a little out-of-the-way corner. Knowing Gavin I figured that they would want him as out of the way as possible, so I took that staircase.

This one was narrower and it creaked badly. The first step screeched and groaned as though it were playing a song from the flames of hell. I nearly bit my lip with the anxiety of trying to stand on it without any sound. I waited a full minute and then tried the second step. It was even worse. My throat was as dry as Antarctica. I couldn’t believe no-one had burst out of the room brandishing a gun and looking for the intruder. I decided to go for the big one and, stretching my right leg as far as I could, which isn’t very far, managed to skip the next two steps and go straight up to the fifth. Landing on it like that made even more noise, but I hoped one huge noise was not as bad as three big ones. I brought my left leg up as well, and stood there trembling, with sweat pouring off me. If only I could have sweated as much on the inside, then my throat might not have felt so parched, and my tongue might not have been sticking to the roof of my mouth.

Still no-one came, and I took the last two steps in another single movement. Well, a double movement by the time I got my left leg up there as well.

The darkness was pretty severe. There was a shape on my right that felt like a large photocopier, which surprised me a bit. I suppose terrorists have to photocopy stuff. On the other hand, maybe it wasn’t a photocopier but a nuclear reactor or a superweapon. I’ve never seen a nuclear reactor, so I wouldn’t know.

On my immediate left was a door, and I thought there were two doors ahead of me, one further up on the left, and one straight in front. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I became more confident about what I was seeing. It was definitely a photocopier.

The difficult part was knowing what to do next. I chose the stupidest way of all, and did ‘eeny meeny, miney mo’. The winner was the door straight in front. So, on tiptoes this time, I went towards it.

I was almost touching the handle when I heard someone coming up the steps. This was another entry on the list of sounds you don’t want to hear. I broke out in a sweat that made my previous efforts seem like a faint mist compared to a torrential downpour. The footsteps were heavy and confident, as though the person had climbed these steps many times and felt right at home. I got down low to my left and squeezed in between the end of the photocopier and the wall, hoping that the person was not planning on running off a few copies of his favourite poem in the middle of the night.

He reached the landing below the one I was on, and paused. I shifted a little, to make myself more comfortable, although that’s a pretty silly word to use, as comfort wasn’t really a factor in my situation. I did want to avoid cramping though.

He turned up the other flight of steps, and as his footsteps started moving away from me, and I realised that I was safe for a few more moments, I peeked out. He opened what was the furthest door from me, although I could not see that until he turned on the light inside the room. From the glimpse I got it looked like a regular bedroom, but with a lot of stuff — just clothes — strewn on the floor. Then he shut the door, and the only light left was the thin ribbon down at carpet level.

I eased myself quietly out from the photocopier and went back to the door behind me. With all the stealth of a burglar I turned the handle, then gently squeezed the door open an inch. Nothing happened, so I pushed it open a little further. The air felt cold and dry. Somehow, although I had never noticed it before or thought about it, the air in a room where someone is sleeping or living or just being is moister. I opened the door further and slipped inside.

Again, the silence and emptiness told me no-one was there. I closed the door behind me, scrabbled for the light switch, turned it on for an instant, then off again. It wasn’t a bedroom at all, but a storage room.

Most storerooms hold, I don’t know, old towels, suitcases, preserved fruit. Piles of paper, your parents’ old tax returns. This one didn’t. What it held got my skin crawling and prickling again. This one held guns, more guns than I’d ever seen in one place. More guns than they’d use in a Hollywood movie even. Most of them in pretty good condition too, I thought, from the quick look I’d allowed myself.

Well, there was no getting away from it now. I’d found the right house. I didn’t know for sure whether Gavin was here, but this was the kind of house where I could expect him to be, and these were the people I needed to interview about him.

At least the knowledge gave me confidence. I went back to the door, eased it open again, and peered down the corridor. Dark and deserted as before. The thin strip of light at the base of the door opposite was no longer there. Either the guy had left the room again or, more likely, he’d gone to bed.

I groped my way to the window and drew the curtains. Then I took off my jacket and laid it along the floor, to block any light going through. Only then did I think it was safe to turn the light back on. There sure were a lot of guns, but I’d been a bit over the top in my first guesses. There were probably forty altogether. More than enough to blow holes in Ellie, Gavin and quite a few others. I wanted to sabotage them in some way but couldn’t think of how to do it. I opened a few cupboards. Ammunition, heaps of that too. It reminded me and I took out the magazine from my jeans and shoved it behind some of the boxes. Then other things, more like you’d expect in a storeroom. Boxes of tinned food. It made me feel very hungry. Slabs of Coke. Coke. A memory came back to me, of putting a tooth in a glass of Coke, years ago, to see if it would rot away like everyone said it would. Then Dad came along and drank the Coke, tooth and all, before I could stop him, so I never found out the result of my experiment. Instead I found myself in a different experiment: observing the effect on your father when you tell him he’s just swallowed one of your baby teeth.

Yes, Coke should do the trick. Fill each barrel and I reckon it would do them terminal damage. I opened a can, took a swig, then went to work.