Ellie's Heroes

Chapter Two

by Technomad

It was late at night, we were about ten miles out of Hell, and had just taken down a sheep to supplement our rations. While we had more than enough food to keep us for a good long while (we'd been supplied with enough for us and the lost Kiwis) we were always keen to get more. Besides, fresh meat was a nice thing to have in itself.

We were butchering the sheep to avoid having to lug the parts we didn't want back to Hell, when Kevin, our lookout, said he saw a car coming down a nearby road. We immediately took cover; after so long, that was second-nature. We weren't too worried about whoever was in the car; it was dark out and they wouldn't be too likely to be able to see us, thanks to their headlights ruining their night-vision. The moon was out, but there were clouds scudding across the sky and it was a new moon.

The car came closer and closer. I'd have expected the headlights to be blacked-out, but apparently that wasn't done any more, what with things like IR sensors. It came along the road, slowed…and came to a stop. I nudged Fi; we were both hiding behind the same bush, with the dead sheep behind us.

At least whoever was in the car didn't seem to know we were anywhere in the neighbourhood. They got out, talking back and forth in the invaders' unintelligible gibberish, and went to the boot, pulling out a fresh tyre. Apparently, their tyre had gone bad and they needed to fix it. I nodded to myself, feeling a little unwilling kinship with these foreigners. I'd had that happen myself; at least they didn't have to worry about my dad going berserk because they'd flattened the tyre going where he said they shouldn't take the ute.

"What's happened? Why are we stopped?" My blood ran ice-cold. That was English…Australian English, no less! I had heard, while in New Zealand, that there were foreign correspondents, including from English-speaking countries, among the invaders…a lot of what information we had on them came from their reports…but an Australian among them almost had to be either a prisoner or a traitor. I remembered Major Harvey, and shook with rage.

The others had heard…and we had a sniper rifle with us, with a night-vision scope. It was the only weapon we were carrying, other than pistols. I heard a flat crack, then another one. The rifle had a flash-hider, so I couldn't see where it was shooting from, but in the dim light from the moon and the headlights, I could see what had happened. One of the invaders had slumped, bonelessly, into the road, and the other had fallen backwards with half of the top of his head missing. The blood glistened black in the moonlight.

Oh, bugger, the fat's in the fire, I thought, as I ducked down and ran forward. I could hear someone beside me, and when I turned to look, it was Homer. Homer may be a larrikin and a reptile, but when trouble's really afoot, there's almost no-one I'd rather have by my side. He'd drawn his pistol, which reminded me to at least get mine out of its shoulder-holster and cock it before we got to the car.

When we got there, we found one invader still alive inside the car. Before he could do much beyond unstrapping himself, Homer had the drivers-side door open and his pistol against the man's head. "Hands up! Now!" The foreigner might not have understood Homer's words, but the pistol gave an unmistakable signal. His hands were in the air in a split-second.

Meanwhile, I was yanking the rear door open and shining a torch in. There was an Australian there, all right, but I was pretty sure he wasn't there of his own free will. At least, I don't think that they'd have chained someone who was with them voluntarily to a post welded to the floor. "Oh, thank God, you're Australian soldiers! Please, get me out of here!" He couldn't see me very well, but then he took another look. "You're…you're a girl!"

"Yes, I'm a girl. Sorry I haven't the time to bake a cake or play with dolls," I growled, looking at the fetters he was wearing. "Damn! Homer, could you look those buggers over and see if any of them have a key for this?"

"Here. Let me." Before I could stop him, that mad fool had stuck his pistol up against the chain and blown it in two. The man was still in handcuffs, but at least he could get out of the car. I shook my head. One of these days, I was going to have a long, long talk with Homer, about thinking before he acted. Oh, who was I kidding? Snakes would grow legs before Homer grew any common sense.

By this time, the rest of us had come running up. Fi helped the man out of the car. "Are you all right, mister?"

"Not too bad, I don't think. I can run, at least. They hadn't bashed me about too badly yet." He wriggled out of the car, leaning heavily on Fi for a few minutes before his legs would bear him. Fi never ceased to surprise me. She looked so delicate, so fragile, but under the frail looks she was as tough as any of us.

Lee was rapidly searching the driver, running his hands roughly through the man's pockets. I noticed that he had the sniper rifle slung over his shoulder, and made a mental note to include him in the talking-to I had planned for Homer. By all rights, we should have left these people to go their way. We had learnt the hard way that unnoticed was best for us, until we could strike with overwhelming force. This sort of thing was likely to attract attention.

Kevin was searching the corpses, and soon he was holding up a key-ring. Fi took the keys and began fiddling with them, and in a few minutes, she had the gyves off the stranger's wrists. He rubbed his wrists experimentally, than shyly kissed Fi on the cheek. She smiled. I glanced at Homer, and was amused to see him doing a slow burn. Homer is jeal-ous, I chanted silently to myself, Homer is jeal-ous!

Kevin was looking at the corpses, and I noticed that his expression was going grimmer and grimmer. Then he walked over to have a look at the driver, and I could see his mouth go tight.

"Remember me, you bastard?" he snarled. I was shocked. This wasn't like the Kevin I thought I knew. "Do you remember me?"

The driver peered at him. "Yes…you were the boy who they said died out on a work detail!"

"Right you are! And you're the bastard that wouldn't let the docs see to Corrie!" Kevin grabbed for his pistol, and Lee snatched it out of his hand before he could bring it to bear. "Lee! Did you hear what I said? That's the swine that gave the orders when I drove Corrie in to hospital, in Wirrawee!"

"What did he do?" Lee stared at the driver, and his black eyes were as cold as the grave. I shivered; I hoped he never looked at me that way. I could feel cold rage radiating off him, like heat off a radiator in winter.

"When we got in, at first the docs tried to help us. The soldiers put me under guard, but I wasn't harmed; I think they thought we were just some strays that they hadn't yet rounded up. Then someone told them that Corrie'd been shot. After that…things got bad. Very bad." Kevin looked away, shame all over his face. "They had this little game they liked to play with me…" He looked down. "Let's just say it's called 'Lawrence of Arabia and the Six Turks.'"

I gasped aloud, and Fiona looked like she was about to sick up. "You mean they raped you?" I felt dizzy for a second. Rape was worse for a man; Dad had told me about a mate of his who'd been raped when he was in gaol overnight. The poor bloke hanged himself a few days after he came home. Dad had said that it was a damn high price to pay for an evening's drinking. I'll never, never forget the look on his face.

Kevin's face twisted with shame and pain. "Yes! They did it all night long and into the next day, 'til an officer called them off!" He crumpled to his knees. "You've noticed I've not been the same since I got back, haven't you?" He began to sob. "I'm filthy, I'm foul, I'll never be clean…unclean, unclean…no woman will ever want me, nobody should touch me, you should have left me to die…"

Homer snarled with rage and slammed the driver against the car, hard. The driver's eyes filled with terror as Homer jammed his pistol into the man's face. "You scum, I ought to burn your brains!"

"There's no damn time for that! We've got to get out of here! Can you ride a dirt-bike, mister?" Fi was the voice of reason; me, I was silently cheering Homer on.

"What do we do with this filth?" Lee looked like he wanted to let Homer do his worst. "Ah! I have a wonderful idea! We can't just leave these bodies here, and this car's too conspicuous. There's a pond right over there…"

The idea was father to the deed. With all of us working on it, it wasn't hard to shove the car toward the edge of the pond; it was a nice, deep one and it'd take the invaders a long time to figure out where the car had gone. Inside, the former driver screamed when he saw what we were doing, begging and pleading. Too bad none of us understood his language; we could have used a laugh or two. We'd cuffed him to the same chain that their prisoner had been held by, and stuffed the bodies of his two mates into the front seats.

As the car sank, with the invader's voice being finally cut off by the water, I was thinking about Corrie. I missed her every day, and the thought of that swine keeping her from getting the care she needed infuriated me. Drowning was too good for him.

A few minutes later, we were on bikes, headed back toward Hell. Our new friend was packed on behind Homer, poor soul, while the rest of us were all carrying chunks of mutton. Hopefully, if the sheep was found, whoever found it would think that it had been wild dogs that killed it…we hadn't been any too careful about how we butchered it.

END Chapter 02

(Author's note: This version of Ellie, and of her friends, is smarter and more ruthless by far than the one in the books. Keep on reading…there's more to come!)