Ellie's Heroes
Chapter 11
by Technomad
We were speeding along a back road through the bush, and I couldn't believe the speed the Piranha could make. That road was rough as guts, and even on a trail bike, I didn't think I could have gone anything like as fast as we were going.
The others had noticed how well the Piranha handled even the roughest terrain, too. Homer turned to me, his teeth flashing white against his dark skin in a big smile, and said: "You know, Ellie, after this war's over, I want to buy one of these! It'd be dead useful 'round the station, wouldn't it?"
Fi rolled her eyes. "I hope you'd want to take the machine-guns off, and the gun turret, Homer!"
Homer winked at me. "But…why? They'd be real useful, too! Just think of all the rabbits I could exterminate with full-auto machine-guns, and the turret gun'd be a good way to deal with bigger wildlife. Not to mention annoying neighbours…"
"Like me, for one?" I knew Homer hadn't meant it that way, but I couldn't resist taking the chance to tease him. "Do I come under the heading 'annoying neighbour?'"
"Ellie! You shouldn't say such things!" Gentle Fi was shocked…then she saw our expressions. The interior of the Piranha was mostly dark, but the instruments were lit up, and gave enough ambient light that she could see. "You two! Honestly, it's like running a kindergarten here sometimes, with you two teasing each other so!"
Just then, Kevin, who'd been keeping watch behind us, stopped the badinage. "Looks like we've got trouble, people!"
His tone told me that he was very serious, and we all stopped teasing each other instantly. "What is it, Kev?" Lee was driving, and I could see his mouth tightening. So far, this op had gone swimmingly, but we weren't out of danger yet. I wouldn't really feel safe until we were back in Hell.
Kevin pointed behind us. "I can't be sure, but I think there's a helicopter back there, looking for us!" The boys all swore viciously, and I understood completely. Almost nothing on wheels could have caught up to us, but a helicopter could fly over terrain that would stop any surface vehicle. And after the amount of trouble we'd stirred up in Monmouth, I didn't doubt that the other side had mobilised all its resources to capture or kill us. I'd have done it in their boots.
Lee killed the dim "blackout" lights that we'd been using to see where we were going. Luckily, the road we were on was straight; visibility was poor, what with the remnants of the rainstorm we'd used for cover, and the clouds overhead cutting off moonlight. We didn't dare show any lights at all, with a helicopter on our trail.
"Stop the car!" Lee hit the brakes, and they squealed softly as the heavily-loaded armoured car glided to a stop. Before I could figure out what he had in mind, Kevin had popped open a hatch and was peering back toward Monmouth with a pair of binoculars we'd found in the car.
"Cut the engine, Lee!" When Lee turned off the engine at Kevin's command, I could hear the hot metal ticking slightly as it cooled, as well as the normal sounds of an Australian rural night…and, in the distance, a regular whop-whop-whop sound. Sure enough, there was a chopper in the air, and they were almost certainly on our trail. We didn't know if they had picked up on where we were, or were just quartering the countryside hoping to come across us. Either way, we knew that staying in the open was a death sentence.
"We need to get someplace where we aren't as visible from the air," Lee decided. We all looked about, and spotted a nearby patch of forest. Soon, the Piranha was going again, and we were heading into the forest. I felt like a rabbit who'd seen hawks flying about overhead, and wished I could make myself very small.
We pulled out maps and looked at them; the Piranha had interior lights that were very good, and with the vision slits all closed and Kevin outside to keep an eye on whether the other lot had spotted us, we consulted about where to go next.
I pointed at a road that led back in the general direction of Hell. "I like this one, people," I said. "I don't mind telling you, I'll not be easy in my mind till I'm back in my own safe little tent in our safe refuge."
"A lot depends on what the other side thinks happened," Fi mused. "I wish we had Nigel with us. We have radios here, and can probably pick up their broadcasts, but much good it does us, not being able to speak or understand a word of their language!"
"They may not even know it was Australians that did it," Lee said. "We were wearing our rain cloaks, and those look a lot like their issue. They might think some of their own lot have gone rogue, robbed a bank, and raised all sorts of merry Hell." He grinned nastily. "If they don't know it's people like us, they may be having to search everywhere! That'll take some of the pressure off us!"
"We have to assume that they do know it was Australians. Would mutineers have hit the Fairgrounds?" Homer cut through the glee I was beginning to feel. He had a very good point. With one small part of my mind, I thought that if Homer had applied his mind to his schoolwork as well as he was doing to warfare, he'd have been top of our class and our teachers would have loved him.
Fi and Lee were peering at the map. "What's this?" Fi asked, pointing.
Lee looked at it. "That's a power line, Fiona. The power station that feeds Monmouth is to the west of us here, and we'll have to cross under it to get back home."
Just then, Kevin pounded on the hatch. When we shut off the lights and opened it, he scrambled in, and his face was pale when we shone a torch on it. "I think they're coming this way, people! That noise is louder than it was! They may have seen our tracks in the mud of the road!"
"Damn! Damn and double-damn it!" I went on to swear sulfurously for a few minutes, grinning to myself at Fi's slightly-shocked expression. Homer and I had once had a swearing contest, and he had ruefully conceded, after nearly an hour of trying to one-up each other, that I could be just as foul-mouthed as any bloke. Coming from Homer, that meant a lot. He really had trouble with the idea that a girl could do as well as a guy in anything. Dad had said that Greek men were often rather like that and that it didn't mean he didn't like me.
Homer and Lee were looking at the map. "Near as I can tell, we're here," Lee said, pointing to the map. "About fifty k out of Monmouth."
"At least we're out of easy range of land forces," Kevin said. "They'd have to cover every inch of the ground between here and there, and they only have so many men. I'd bet that a lot of them are also putting out fires and trying to catch those poor people we let go free."
"But they'll be trying to catch us, real hard. Hence, the helicopter," Fi observed. She narrowed her eyes as she looked at the map. "You know, I have an idea…"
OOO
A couple of hours later, we were roaring along, and Kevin said that he could see the helicopter behind us. We were on a paved road heading back toward Wirrawee, and the clouds were breaking up, so we had enough moonlight not to need the headlights. Even so, the chopper started following us. It was flying low, and Kevin said that he didn't think it was armed.
"It looks like a two-man scout model," Kevin reported. "Not a real attack copter…not a Blackhawk or anything like that." We'd all been given training in recognising aircraft, both friendly and enemy, and I let out a small sigh of relief. I didn't think that a Blackhawk carried anything that could crack our trusty Piranha open, but I didn't fancy finding out that I was wrong the hard way.
"Even so, they've a radio aboard, sure as hell, and they'll be talking to their base," snarled Lee. He sped up, and the Piranha leaped forward, gobbling up the kilometers like a champion.
Homer got up and manned the turret gun. He swung it around and took aim, and fired on the helicopter. Even if they hadn't seen us before, the muzzle flash would alert them to our exact location, and the fact that we weren't friendlies. "Homer!" Fi screamed. "Are you mad?"
Homer grinned mirthlessly. "That was canister, Fiona. Kind of like a giant shotgun…it fires lots and lots of small bullets at once. I don't know if I can shoot them down, but at least I can persuade them that we're dangerous enough not to bother."
The helicopter's pilot, or whoever was in command, apparently didn't see it that way. He came down lower, and thuttered along behind us, as Homer fired again and again. Several times, I thought Homer had connected, but each time, the pilot skittered to one side just in time.
"Why are you wasting perfectly good ammunition?" I asked.
"To keep him focussed completely on us. And it looks like it might just work…" Homer turned from his work for a second to give me a grin. "We're coming up on that power line real soon now, and that lot don't know the country the way we do, now do they?"
Then I saw the power line's towers on either side of us, as we roared along underneath it. I watched behind us, horrorstricken and fascinated, as the helicopter flew smack into the high-tension wires. All of a sudden the night was lit up with hideously bright light, and I could see the helicopter's crew as thousands of volts of electricity coursed through their bodies, killing them instantly. Or so I hoped. I'd fallen foul of an electric fence once, and ever since, I'd had a healthy respect for electricity and what it could do.
After that, we didn't see any pursuit, and our spirits rose considerably. Fiona started softly singing a song we'd learnt in music class, and we all joined in as our faithful armoured car took us toward safety, home…and Hell.
Friends all tried to warn me
But I held my head up high
All the time they warned me
But I only passed them by
They all tried to tell me
But I guess I didn't care
I turned my back and
Left them standing there!
All the burning bridges that have fallen after me
All the lonely feelings and the burning memories
Everyone I left behind each time I closed the door
Burning bridges lost forevermore!
END Chapter 11
(Burning Bridges © Mike Curb Congregation; used without permission. No copyright violation is intended.)