Ellie's Heroes

Chapter 06

by Technomad

To this day, I don't remember the trip back to Hell very clearly. I have flashes of memory in my mind…riding along behind Homer, our blackout-equipped headlamps barely illuminating the road ahead enough to tell us where we needed to turn, stashing the bikes in an abandoned paddock a mile or so from Tailor's Sitch, and scrambling down the path into Hell, the dim light of dawn giving us just enough light to see what we were doing.

My attention was taken up almost completely by a huge bubble of pain that had settled in my mind and seemed to grow bigger with every mile we travelled. All I could seem to think about was Corrie… Corrie, my best mate, my most intimate friend, the girl I'd planned to do so many things with. We'd planned to go off to uni together, to travel the world, to see everywhere before coming back to Wirrawee. We'd giggled together over guys, comparing the attractions of whichever blokes we thought were totally hot that week, and shared our fantasies of how it would be when we were older and able to do something about that. We'd discussed careers we might want to pursue…nursing, running a station, science, being stewardesses. We'd shared our most intimate secrets. If anybody at all knew my innermost soul, Corrie Mackenzie did. We were mates in all the ways that two straight girls could be. I knew that mens' friendships, while they were close, were generally not nearly as close as what two women could have.

And now my best pal, my partner in mischief, the one person who knew all my secrets, the person I'd expected to have at my side all my life long, the girl I'd planned to be maid-of-honour for and have as my maid-of-honour when we got married, was lying in a pauper's grave in Wirrawee. All our plans, all our hopes, all our dreams, smashed by a bullet casually fired by a soldier who had no business even being in our country. And I'd not even told her goodbye when I saw her last, lying in the Wirrawee hospital. I felt like part of me…and one of the best parts, at that…was gone and would never return.

We stumbled into camp as dawn broke, weary unto death. We'd only been away for one night, but it had been an exciting night. Kevin came up to us as we entered the tent, barely even bothering to slip out of our rain cloaks. The rain had finally stopped, but the ground outside was wet and muddy, not inviting to sit on. The weather matched my mood perfectly.

"Good to have you two back. I've been monitoring the enemy broadcasts, and I heard the word 'Wirrawee' a couple of times. I hope you didn't run into any trouble?" He looked at us. "Or did you?"

"We may have been rumbled, but we got out of the Wirrawee area with no problem," Homer answered, his voice hoarse and harsh with fatigue. "We didn't get into any firefights."

"Then what's wrong?" That was Fi; she had come in when she saw we were back, and was crouching behind Homer, rubbing his shoulders. Homer sighed and leaned back into her, letting her massage him. "You both look like you've seen a ghost."

"Fi…Corrie's dead!" At this, Fi, Kevin and Lee (who'd been asleep in the tent when we came in) all gasped in horror.

"No! How do you know? What happened?" Fi stared at us, her eyes filling with tears. Kevin looked stricken, and I remembered too late that he had been Corrie's boyfriend; that was why he'd been along on our camping trip in the first place. "Did someone tell you she was dead?"

"No." Homer took up the story, his eyes closing with weariness and pain. Corrie'd been his friend, too, although he wasn't nearly as close to her as I'd been. "We were hiding out in the cemetery after raiding the library and the chemist's shop, and we found her grave there." He opened his eyes, and the pain in his voice mirrored the anguish in my own soul. "The date of birth matches…I remembered Corrie's birthday because it's a couple of weeks ahead of mine. She died while we were in New Zealand."

"So while we were having fun and enjoying New Zealand, our friend was lying in that damned hospital, dying without even the comfort of a friend by her side…" Kevin's voice cracked, and he let out a sob. He ran out of the tent, and I could hear him crying. I wanted to go to him, but I knew that he'd not likely welcome it. Boys are funny about that sort of thing.

Remembering New Zealand, and how Corrie had hardly even entered my thoughts while I was there, save when I'd see or do something she'd have liked, I felt my grief being joined by guilt. Right at that moment, I thought I was the lowest crawling life-form in Australia, if not the world, and that a bullet would be too good for me. On one level, I knew that there had been nothing at all I could do for her, but most of me was convinced that somehow or other, I'd failed her; I was bad, I was evil, I was a worthless person, a bad friend, and should be taken out and left somewhere decent people wouldn't have to look at me.

I went out of the tent and sat on a log, staring out over the grey-clouded landscape, hugging my knees. I don't know how long I sat there, alone with my loss and pain, before I felt an arm around my shoulders. I turned, to find myself staring into Fi's eyes. She looked like she'd been crying.

"Ellie…Ellie…don't beat yourself up over this. I don't think Corrie would like it." She held me close. "What if it had gone the other way? What if it had been you, there in that hospital? Would you want Corrie to be tearing herself up inside because she couldn't help you?"

"No…"

"Even if you'd died, would you want Corrie blaming herself when it wasn't her fault?"

"No! Absolutely not!" I was shocked at the mere suggestion. "If Corrie tried blaming herself, I'd put her head right, quick-smart!"

"That's just what she'd do for you right now, if she could," Fi whispered in my ear. "She'd be horribly unhappy to see you like this. You didn't shoot her, you didn't make the decision to neglect her till she died…did you?"

"NO!"

"Then grieve for her…we all will. But don't go blaming yourself for things you didn't do. Corrie wasn't your slave and did what she did of her own free will, just like the rest of us. She loved you and one day you'll be together again. But she'd want you to live a long happy life first, and have lots of adventures to tell her about when you finally get to catch up with each other."

I turned and took Fiona in my arms, and the bubble of horrible dry grief I'd felt finally found release in tears. Fi cried and held me, and we rocked back and forth, letting the pain out of ourselves and remembering our dear friend.

When we'd finally cried ourselves out, I stumbled back on into my tent and went straight out to sleep. I didn't awaken until that evening, and although Corrie's loss was still like a part of me was gone, the pain had lessened into something I could handle, and the guilt was almost all gone.

Where the guilt had been, I felt hatred. I pictured myself soaking enemy soldiers in petrol and lighting them on fire, then laughing at the noises they made. I had beautiful visions of burning whole towns of them, and machine-gunning them as they ran through the streets. Right then, I could have killed the whole nation of them and smiled like a wolf to watch them die.

In lieu of that, the raid we'd been mulling on Monmouth sounded like an excellent substitute. Monmouth was far enough into the invaders' occupied zone that it hadn't seen much action, and since most if not all Australians had been rounded up, the invaders thought the place was safe. Little did they know.

We spread the maps out on the floor of the tent and studied them carefully. There were several routes in and out of town, one fairly direct between Monmouth and Wirrawee, others in other directions. We decided not to take the obvious route; there were a couple of places where the road could be easily blocked, and trying to get out of town that way could end up with us mousetrapped. We also didn't want to point a finger straight at Wirrawee and the Cobbler's Bay area. If the other side thought there were other freedom fighters, or Aussie or Kiwi SAS operating, that was also just fine with us. We were modest souls; getting full credit for all our exploits from the enemy would have embarrassed us. Fatally.

We also read the guidebooks with obsessive care, trying to figure out what the best plan of attack would be. We knew where the gold was, but getting it out of town would be a real problem. However, as far as we knew, the stuff hadn't been moved, and the building where it was kept was no fortress; it was a bank, but the sort of bank that depended heavily on police being nearby to keep it from being robbed.

With the dirt bikes, we were able to go scouting around the Monmouth area, as long as we were careful to avoid being seen. By this time, we were well used to bush life, so camping out, even outside of Hell and away from our tents, was no hardship.

The enemy hadn't really begun settling outside the city of Monmouth itself, so we could move around easily. There were lots of empty barns and places like that to hole up in by day, as long as we kept a good watch out. Once or twice, we saw enemy patrols, but they never came close or suspected we were anywhere nearby.

The enemy was slack and overconfident, which suited us perfectly. We found one thing in particular that absolutely delighted us with its possibilities. Just outside Monmouth itself, there was a large motor pool, filled with all sorts of vehicles from motorbikes on up to a few tanks. We could see that many of them had been nicked from the Australian Army; the Australian emblems on their sides had been hastily painted over. Others were less familiar, but we recognised many from our briefings in New Zealand.

Looking over that delectable assortment of vehicles, we began to put together our plan. It had the advantage of simplicity, and didn't include any elements that were beyond our capabilities. All we needed was a few days of rain, for cover.

END Chapter 06