Fighting Back

In the 7th book of the Tomorrow series by John Marsden, The Other Side of Dawn, there is a section in which the five main characters, Ellie, Homer, Fiona, Lee and Kevin, are attacking enemy patrols. They hide in a house and piece together a plan of action during the day, and at night they take down the soldiers. This fan fiction is another one of these attacks, told in the voice of Ellie, as is consistent with the other novels in the Tomorrow series.

BTW = Before the war

As usual, it was Homer who came up with the idea. I don't know when he thought of it, probably back with his mates before the war when we could think these plans in the school yard under the old gum tree and never even consider following them through. But staring at Homer's face with the only light the torch that was already low on batteries, I knew he was deadly serious.

Fi, subconsciously I think, leant towards him, rapt in his every word. It unnerved me to see sweet, gentle Fi, the girl who children could trust, the girl who never swore, discussing a plan to murder human beings.

Still, I shouldn't have been surprised, seeing as she had been so passionately in love with Homer BTW. Her desire for him had lessened, but had never been completely destroyed. We just didn't have time for luxuries such as relationships now. The war seemed to take our love for each other, stretch it over the bush so even when I wanted it back, so desperately needed it, it was impossible to find. Even Lee's and my love was strained somehow, as though it was a thin sheet, just waiting for the inevitable prick that would ruin its perfect appearance.

Kevin sat by himself, a frown covering his face as he absorbed Homer's words. He reminded me of Dad whenever there was something he didn't like but knew he could do nothing about, like when a cow calved to twins but one was dead before it even had a chance of life. He spoke only once when Homer said that one of us should stay here to look after Gavin, or rather to make sure Gavin didn't follow us. The little bugger was probably outside this door now, not that it would do him much good. There were some unforeseen advantages on our side because of Gavin's deafness. Anyway, unsurprisingly for me, Kevin volunteered to stay. I was angry at him. Why did he get to babysit while we risked out lives trying to make a difference in the war? My mind flashed back to when we blew up Wirrawee Air Centre. His pale, unresponsive face as he lay down in the back of the truck simply made me furious. Basically, I didn't know if he would be fine guarding Gavin. I imagined him lying down on the couch, while Gavin crept past him and got himself killed. I don't think I would ever forgive him if that happened.

Sitting beside me, stroking my hand, was Lee. He was the opposite of Kevin. Like Fi, he listened carefully to what Homer was saying but I could practically hear the cogs of his brilliant brain working out a master plan from Homer's, an improved version. He gave inputs into the conversation every now and then but I think he preferred to let Homer speak then make up different responses in his head. He was a stickler for details, Lee, with his perfectionist tendencies. That's what made him so good at music, I think, the ability to not be happy with a general 'hope for the best' outcome that I could so easily accept. I smiled ruefully, well, more of a grimace really. I didn't smile much these days.

And Homer, well, he was just excited to move again, get out of the house. We all were, but he was especially. Homer always loved being in the midst of action, even when there was danger involved, like when in 10th Grade he climbed on top of the flagpole to graffiti a smiley face in the middle of the Southern Cross. He copped hell for that but for him, it was worth it.

'Ok, so listen. We already have everything we need. We can get the oil again, that's easy. Kevin, you sure you saw that bucket of nails in the tool shed?'

Kevin, our green thumb, gave the slightest nod of his head to Homer, then went down again to picking at the dirty old rug we all lay on. Quite disgusting really, but it was better than the floor. Homer continued,

'Well, you all heard Kevin. You each take a litre of the oil, along with 20 nails and lay them on the road. 20 should be enough to stop the wheels of those bikes. They're only John Deere 8300. While their engines are ok, their tires are pretty thin and you can't change direction really quickly otherwise you skid.'

I shuddered. I'd been on one of those bikes, my ex-boyfriend used to own one. Nasty experience. If that was all the enemy could afford, than the Kiwis were doing better than I'd originally thought.

'I think we'd best be 100 metres apart, you know, to avoid suspicion. Let's cross over into the next street, Laven Avenue, I think. Lee, you go down the road, Ellie, you stay opposite the house, and Fi, you can bring your stuff up the road. I'll be the distraction.'

I ground my teeth together in frustration. I hated it, hated it so much, when Homer told us what to do. Struggling to keep my emotions in check, I reminded myself that it actually was a good plan. If we cleared up the scene of crime well enough, there would be no evidence that there were guerillas in Stratton, which was exactly what we wanted. And as always, logic overruled petty emotions.

Well, after Homer said that, we sort of fell into an awkward silence. I mean, it wasn't total silence, like the one you hear in the night air when everyone is asleep and you're hanging somewhere between the edges of reality and dreamland. No, there was still the pick-pick that Kevin's fingers made on the carpet as he pulled it apart and all of our breathing, laced into one, as we sat in my grandmother's living room.

Eventually, Kevin looked up from his task of destroying the rug and said to us,

'I think you guys should go now. I mean, we don't know when there's going to be another patrol or, you know…' he lapsed into silence again.

Well, that got us going. It was like we suddenly shot out of a trance, mumbling and moving into action again. But as we progressed in our preparation for tonight's escapade, I got more and more excited, just like the snowball effect. By the time Lee and I snuck out through the back door and quietly crept along the garden path to the tool shed, I was practically buzzing for action. I was beginning to get seriously worried about my addiction to adrenalin. Maybe I really was an action junkie.

We entered the shed together but then we separated to different sides of the shack, searching for the nails that Kevin had found yesterday. He may have found them easily, I grumbled to myself, but I bet he hadn't looked at night.

At least Lee found his nails easily enough. I heard his grunt of victory before he deserted his bucket of nails on the wood-shaving floor and came over to my side. Reaching above me to a shelf that I could not see, he pressed his lean body up against mine. I could've sworn the air just rose in temperature as he tugged the nails off the shelf. Bringing his arms down, he placed the bucket on the floor then wrapped his arms around my waist. Spinning me around, he pushed his lips on to mine. Moaning, I responded.

There was no hesitancy in this kiss. I can still remember at the beginning of the war, bless us, where our kisses were unsure, uncertain. Our bodies were strangers that had never met before. We had traced lines and mapped contours of each other, committing every detail to memory. That was long gone now. The familiarity of his lips against mine drove me crazy and I gripped his hair as I mashed my mouth against his. There was a sort of harmony in the way Lee and I kissed, almost as though we were one creature, sharing bodies and minds. My relationship with Lee was more powerful than merely physical. We could understand each other at times like these. It was beautiful.

Too soon, I pulled away, my mind dizzy and bewildered by our kiss. Leaning my forehead against Lee's, I breathed heavily, 'You know, we really should get back to the others.'

Lee smiled, 'We'll tell them that we took forever to find the nails. We'll tell them that when we did find them they were so high that we had to get a ladder to reach them. We'll lie.'

I smiled and started kissing him back, enjoying his playful mood. He wasn't often like this in the war. Good reason too, I suppose. This war had taken so much from everyone; Lee's parents, Fi's house, our childhood. It would never give it back.

We both jumped when we heard a knock on the door and Homer's voice laced with humor.

'Guys, I know you've found the nails since if Kevin could find them easily you can. It's kind of obvious what you're doing.' I could practically hear the smirk in his voice. Blushing, even though no one could see my cheeks, I moved away from Lee, grabbed my bucket of nails and rushed out the door. I almost ran down Homer's laughing figure as I stumbled past him. Good, he deserved something like that, interrupting Lee and I. Surely he understood how hard it was to be alone with Lee, with the patrols becoming more and more persistent each day. Grumbling but silently moving across the yard, I carefully pulled back the screen door and slipped into the house. I could hear Lee and Homer bickering behind me, Lee's voice filled with annoyance and Homer's more filled with smugness. Stupid Homer.

Fi and Kevin were still out filling our tanks with the oil from the depot we used last night so the only sound was Gavin making small noises every now and then. It was quite eerie until the silence was shattered by the fly screen flinging back again as Lee and Homer entered the house, their argument ceased for now. There was no point to fighting within ourselves anyway, not when there was an enemy out there that we were battling in full force.

So all three, well, four if you counted Gavin, waited in the living room, becoming more and more anxious each minute Kevin and Fi did not return. We all showed it in different ways. I kept to myself, just thinking about everything we were about to do. Homer began to murmur softly under his breath, probably repeating the plan to himself. Lee was more obvious, rising from his position on the couch to pace around the room and Gavin even went to watch by the windows. I didn't have the heart to tell him to back away from the windows in case of passing soldiers. Besides, he could take care of himself.

When Gavin gave us the thumbs up and backed away from the window, we all breathed a sigh of relief. I heard the telltale signs of people moving past the bushes at the side of the house to enter through the back door, an arrangement we stuck to when entering the house from the front. Seconds later Kevin and Fi entered the house, arms laden with petrol cans filled with oil. We grinned at each other as they placed the oil near Lee's and my nails and then stepped back to admire our collection. We had actually quite an arsenal of dangerous objects, even if they were stolen or found in garden sheds. With a shudder, I realized just how irritating and aggravating the enemy perceived us; like flies that needed to be swatted.

Well, after that we all followed the parts of the plan dedicated for us. Kevin and Gavin went to the kitchen, presumably to try and eat while calming down Gavin, who was throwing a fit about not being able to come with us. Homer ducked outside to check for patrols then came back with a grin, the coast clear. Fi, Lee and I took our can of oil and 20 nails and together we crept out of the house and across the yard. This was the dangerous part now, getting into position. Homer put his finger to his lips then swung open the gate that my grandmother had on the fence over to the next property. As a kid, I could never understand why she would have a gate leading into our neighbor's yard. I can't remember the exact reason now but whatever the reason was, I'm glad it was there. Homer didn't have to waste time finding the weak point n the fence, kicking it down and causing a lot of noise. We followed him through the gate and into the next yard, the Lansdown's garden, if I can remember correctly to those summer holidays BTW. Just like every other house in the street, it was deserted. Still, paranoid as ever, we were silent as we walked down the driveway to the road.

We took our places on the road; Homer and I stayed in front of the Landown's property, Fi went further up the road and Lee went down. Quickly, I grabbed my oil can, walked into the middle of the road and upended it onto the bitumen. Somewhere in my mind, I heard Lee and Fi on either side of me doing the same. In the same moment, I grabbed the nails that I had stuffed in my pocket and crouched down in the middle of the road. I don't think I had ever felt so vulnerable. If a patrol came now….I didn't even want to think about it.

Placing the nails on the road was surprisingly hard work. Ok, reading back, that sounds pathetic. But it was. I had to make sure the nails were head-down so they punctured the tires of the bikes. Also, they had to be spread out enough to cause damage to all of the wheel's area, not just a small amount of the rubber. When the road was on a slight hill, it made my work incredibly tedious and frustrating. Suddenly, I heard the ferocious roar of the patrol. Startled, I looked up to find Lee, Fi and Homer already in the safety of the bushes, anxiously beckoning to me to join them. Deciding that my nails did not have to be perfect and that they were dangerous enough as they were, I stood up from my crouch and ran to my place not a second too soon.

Roaring over the crest in the road came six patrol bikes. Deadly looking and menacing, I almost backed out of my plan. There were just too many of them for our booby traps to work. They needed to be separated. I could make out a female amidst the group of males and that only added to my uneasiness. Then I heard Homer's 'distraction' I almost laughed.

He let out the loudest cooee that he could muster, louder than anything I could do, and then shrank back into the bushes. Well, that got their attention. Six heads instantly whipped in his direction and I could've sworn they saw me. But of course, it was my overactive imagination again, playing tricks on my poor mind. The soldiers conversed among themselves for a while and I bit my nails nervously, a habit I was trying to kick. Then they separated in half, three going back the way they came and three edging slowly towards us, as if they were expecting to be attacked by a giant animal or something. I let out a sigh of relief. We could deal with three.

It was convenient, really, that just as the other three disappeared over the crest, the three bikers came to Fi's booby trap. Then all hell broke loose.

I didn't really know what to expect when the bikes hit the nails. I mean, it's not like every weekend BTW I would lay nails and oil on the road and try to maim and kill other people. But whatever I was expecting, this was not it.

The female soldier's bike had skidded off into the bushes as soon as she had hit the oil. She didn't even touch the nails. I heard the dull thunk her bike made when it hit a tree, followed by a flopping sound which I guess was her body hitting ground. She must have gotten the short end of the straw concerning the qualities of the bikes seeing as hers couldn't even withstand oil. I hated to think how the soldier would have managed at our farm, with cow manure and oil all over the place.

The second soldier's bike, the one further down the road that had avoided Fi's supply of oil and nails by a stroke of luck, hit my nails. He had become a mini bonfire. The oil didn't really do much in making him skid, seeing as he had already slowed down to see what had made the sound, but he really didn't stand a chance with the nails. I can still hear the first hiss the air made as it escaped the tire, followed by what I knew to be 19 other identical sounds but what sounded as one. His bike made a horrible squeaking noise then the wheels started to smoke. Just subtle at first, like we would have missed it if we hadn't been watching so closely, but soon it became a large cloud that seemed to consume the soldier. After riding on for another 100m since he hit my nails, his bike finally fell over right in front of me. Then it exploded.

OK, that sounds dramatic. It was nowhere near as big as our explosions but when you're 10m away from the thing that's exploding, the actual blast will always seem massive. Well, I reckon it will be for me anyway. I didn't get thrown back by the shock wave like I did last time I got personal with an exploding object, but I could definitely feel the heat on my face. The fire seemed to flare upwards, as if it were escaping from the bike. The biker didn't stand a chance, really, not having been knocked unconscious by the fall of his bike. He lay under the wheels of his bike, the fire about to engulf his still form. An unforseen side effect of having the oil on the road made the wheels more flammable, I realised. The fire spread down the wheels and onto the jacket of the rider, destroying any chances of his survival. Suddenly I was very glad that he was still unconscious.

The third patrolman suffered quite a different fate to his friends. He was the perfect result of our plan, the stereotypical outcome that we had imagined when Homer thought that we should use nails and oil. The soldier saw the oil on the road, causing him to slow down so he wouldn't skid. But because he was concentrating on not losing control of his bike and falling over, he didn't see the nails, just as Homer said he wouldn't. I had to give it to Homer, he did think out these plans very well, every detail adding together.

For the second time that night, I heard the air leaving the tires of those bikes. The rider's panicked expression caught my eye for a second before he too was enveloped in a veil of smoke. I couldn't see what happened to him exactly but later Fi told me that I didn't want to. Apparently it had something to do with burning skin and screams. There were a lot of screams, I could hear them. That soldier didn't have the blessing of being unconscious.

It was all over in a minute.

After those screams had died into the night, leaving only an endless echo in my mind, I couldn't help but feel victorious. An elated feeling ripped through my body as I realised that we had succeeded. Homer's diversion had been perfect, separating the patrol. Each of our booby traps had worked, albeit in different, unexpected ways. But still, they worked, for which I was thankful for. We had made a difference in this war.

Still running on the high of the feeling of success, I ran across the road silently, picking up my nails. But after I crossed the road, I could see what I could not see from my position on the on the other side.

I mean, I wasn't naïve. I knew that we killed those three soldiers tonight, one after the other, just like the executioners that we were. But when you kill someone in a war, you aren't thinking about how they felt, you aren't thinking about their families or their pain. You are only thinking about your family, the fact they intruded on your life. Your only emotion is your anger which you use as your weapon to lash out at the enemy. Anger is a good emotion if you don't want to feel anything else.

But when I saw the burnt out face of the female soldier, her skin rubbed off by the skid her bike made when it hit our nails, I wasn't thinking about myself at all.

You would think that if you've seen enough of one thing, you get used to it. Like the feeling you got when you first looked at it would just not be there anymore. But every single time I see death, I'm always surprised by the coldness I feel.

I suppose growing up in little old Wirrawee is sort of to blame for that. The only death I would see is when a cow would get caught in the marsh and freeze or the trail of blood a fox leaves when it steals a lamb. But staring into the soldier's glassy eyes, eyes that had held life no more than a minute ago, I knew that I could not blame Wirrawee for my feelings. Nothing could have prepared me as I stared back at the still, pale body as she lay on the road.

'Come on, Ellie, we need to get out of here!'

Fi's pretty, untainted voice sounded out of place in this battle field. Still, I pulled myself out of my reverie and retreated into the bushes. Now that I wasn't distracted by death, I could hear the deadly roar of the other motorbikes as they rounded the corner to see what was keeping their fallen comrades. I jumped over the fence and ran to join Lee and Fi, just disappearing before the patrol could discover my hiding place. Keeping low, we ran across the lawn and back to my grandmother's house. Just as we were rushing through the gate, I heard their cries of alarm and pain. I squeezed my eyes shut, opened them and ran to keep up with my friends, hoping that the next radio check would announce D-Day.

I needed to get out of this town.