‘For example – you mightn’t like this, so say so if you don’t – suppose we sent two or three people into Wirrawee for forty-eight hours. Their job would be to get information, nothing more. If they’re really careful they honestly shouldn’t get seen. They’ve just got to become totally nocturnal and triple-check every move they make. The rest of us can start organising things more efficiently here. We’ll never get a better base camp, but we should get more supplies in and make it a proper headquarters. It’s frightening how quickly we’re going through the food. We should start organising rations. And I’d like to set up other little hideaways through the mountains. Stock them with food and stuff, in case we get cut off from this place. Like I said, we’ve got to get more mobile.
‘And living off the land, we’ve got to get serious about that. So the people back here should figure out some possibilities. Where are all the springs in these mountains? Can we trap rabbits or roos, or even possums? Ellie and I, our families have always killed our own meat, so we can do a bit of rough butchering.’
‘Same for me,’ Kevin said.
‘I can do a nice sweet and sour possum,’ Lee said. ‘Or catch me a feral cat and I’ll make dim sims.’
There was a groan of disgust. Lee leaned back and grinned at me.
‘We could bring animals in here,’ Corrie said. ‘Chooks, a few lambs maybe. Goats.’
‘Good,’ said Homer. ‘That’s the kind of thing we need to look at, and think about.’
Kevin looked gloomy at the mention of goats. I knew what he was thinking. We’d been brought up as sheep cockies, and the first thing we learned was to despise goats. Sheep good, goats bad. It didn’t mean anything, just went with the territory. But we’d have to unlearn a lot of the old ways.
‘You’re thinking in the long term,’ I said to Homer.
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘The really long term.’
We talked on for a couple of hours. Corrie’s radio had had the last laugh. It spurred us out of our shock, our misery. By the time we stopped, exhausted, we’d come to a few decisions. Two pairs would go into town the next evening, Robyn and Chris, and Kevin and Corrie. They would operate independently, but stay in close contact. They’d stay there the next full night, most of the night after, and return by dawn the following day. So they’d be away about sixty hours. Kevin and Corrie would concentrate on the Showground. Robyn and Chris would cruise around town, looking for people in hiding, for useful information, for equipment even. ‘We’ll start to reclaim Wirrawee,’ as Robyn put it. We worked out a lot of complicated details, like where they’d have their base (Robyn’s music teacher’s house), where they’d leave notes for each other (under the dog kennel), how long they’d wait on Wednesday morning if the other pair was missing (no time), and their cover story to protect us and Hell if they got caught (‘Since the invasion we’ve been hiding under the Masonic Lodge and only coming out at nights’). We figured that was a place that wouldn’t incriminate anyone else, and a place that the patrols wouldn’t have checked. Robyn and Chris agreed to set up a fake camp in there, to give the cover story credibility.
The rest of us, back in Hell, would do pretty much what Homer had suggested – smuggle in more supplies, establish Hell as a proper base, organise food rationing, and suss out new hiding places.
Strangely enough I was quite elated at the thought of the next couple of days. It was partly that I was scared of going back into town, so it was a relief to get a reprieve from that. It was partly too that Kevin would be away for a few days, as he was getting on my nerves a bit. But mainly it was the interesting combinations that were possible among the people who were left. There were Homer and Lee, both of whom I had strong and strange feelings for, but made more complicated by Homer’s obvious attraction to Fi. It was an attraction he still seemed too shy to do much about, although he was more confident with her now. There was Fi, who lately had lost her cool and become nervous and tongue-tied when she was near Homer, despite the fact that it was still hard to believe she could like him – well, like him in that kind of way. There was Lee, who kept looking at me with his possum eyes, as though his wounded leg was the only thing stopping him from leaping up and grabbing me. I was a little afraid of the depth of feeling in those beautiful eyes.
I felt guilty even thinking about love while our world was in such chaos, and especially when my parents were going through this terrible thing. It was the steers at the abattoirs all over again. But my heart was making its own rules and refusing to be controlled by my conscience. I let it run wild, thinking of all the fascinating possibilities.
Chapter Fourteen
Monday morning a dark river of aircraft flowed overhead for an hour or more. Not ours unfortunately. I’d never seen so many aircraft. They looked like big fat transport planes and they weren’t being molested by anyone, though a half-hour later six of our Air Force jets whistled past on the same route. We waved to them, optimistically.
We’d been back to my place, very early, and brought up another load: more food, tools, clothing, toiletries, bedding, and a few odds and ends that we’d forgotten before, like barbecue tools, Tupperware, a clock and, I’m embarrassed to say, hot-water bottles. Robyn had asked for a Bible. I knew we had one somewhere and I found it eventually, dusted it off and added it to the collection.
It was tricky, because we couldn’t take so much stuff that it would be obvious to patrols that someone was on the loose. So we went on to the Grubers, about a k away, and helped ourselves to a lot more food. I also picked up a collection of seeds and seedlings from Mr Gruber’s potting shed. I was starting to think like Homer and plan for the long term.
The last things we got were half a dozen chooks – our best layers – some pellets, fencing wire and star pickets. As dawn broke we rattled on up the track, the chooks murmuring curiously to each other in the back. I’d let Homer drive this time, figuring he needed the practice. To amuse Fi I closed my eyes, picked up the Bible, opened it at random, pointed to a spot, opened my eyes and read the verse, saying at the same time, ‘Through my psychic finger I will find a sentence that applies to us’. The one I’d picked was this: ‘I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies.’
‘Golly,’ said Fi. ‘I thought the Bible was meant to be full of love and forgiveness and all that stuff.’
I kept reading. ‘“Deliver me, O Lord, from evil men; preserve me from violent men, who plan evil things in their heart, and stir up wars continually”.’
The others were really impressed. So was I, but I wasn’t going to let on to them. ‘See, I told you,’ I said. ‘I do have a psychic finger.’
‘Try another one,’ Homer said. But I wasn’t going to throw my reputation away that easily.
‘No, you’ve heard the words of wisdom,’ I said. ‘That’s all for today.’
Fi grabbed the Bible and tried the same ritual. The first time she got a blank section of page at the end of one of the chapters. The second time she read, ‘“Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the province of Babylon”.’
‘It’s no good,’ I said. ‘You’ve got to have the psychic finger.’
‘Maybe the one you read would make Robyn feel better about gunning soldiers down,’ Homer said to me.
‘Mmm, I’ve marked the page. I’ll show her when they get back.’ No one mentioned the possibility that they might not get back. That’s the way people always are I think. They figure if they say something bad they might magically make it happen. I don’t think words are that powerful.