Ellie's Heroes

by Technomad

Summary:

AU for Darkness Be My Friend. What if Ellie and her friends had only gone back to Australia on condition that they get trained, armed and uniformed?

Chapter 1

Chapter One: Return to Hell.

I didn’t want to go back.

It wasn’t like other things, where you may decide that giving a party the flick, or not seeing a movie, is what you feel like doing at that particular time. “Not wanting to go back” was like something huge, almost outside myself. And I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

When the New Zealanders broached the idea of us returning, so soon after we’d been plucked from what would have been certain death, I saw how my friends reacted. We all looked like we might have if we’d seen a lorry barreling down on us at 100 KPH with noplace to get away.

At first, we didn’t know what to say. On the one hand, we’d already done enough. Some would say we’d done more than enough…that we’d earned a rest if anybody had. The attack on the shipping in Cobbler’s Bay alone would have earned us medals, if we’d been in the regular military.

On the other hand, our families were still being held captive, and our country was in dreadful need. Most of it, save only a small corner of the far southeast, was under the heel of the invaders. And, whether we liked it or not, we could feel our country calling to us. New Zealand was nice, but it wasn’t home. There were times I’d have given anything I owned, or anything I could have had, just to see the sun rising over the paddocks of my home station, or walk down the main street of Wirrawee again. It was like an aching hole in my heart.

I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. I’d found Fi crying more than once, and she’d told me that she just wanted to be home. The boys were also homesick, even though the big tossers were too proud, and too male, to cry openly.

When Colonel Finley came to talk to us, I suddenly had an epiphany. “All right, I’ll go back,” I told him, “but on conditions.” The others all chimed in, supporting me. I felt very proud of my friends. We have our differences, and there are times when I feel that they’ll all drive me stark staring mad, but at bottom, we’re a team. We’re mates.

He was startled; he’d apparently expected us to be so devotedly sheeplike that we’d just follow his adult wisdom, without even presuming to question him or think for ourselves. Unfortunately for that idea, Major Harvey had destroyed any faith we’d ever had in adult wisdom or competence, all by himself. And Fi, clever Fi, had done some very interesting reading, and had shared the good parts with us.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Well…for starters, we want uniforms. Australian, New Zealand, we don’t care. Much as I hate to admit it, those bastards at Stratton had every legal right to imprison or execute us. We were waging war, out of uniform.” That was Fi’s contribution. “Just give us some clothes that say that we’re legitimate combatants. If I’m caught again, I want to be able to claim prisoner-of-war status, instead of being stood up against a wall and shot out of hand.”

“But even a uniform isn’t a guarantee,” Colonel Finley pointed out.

“Yes…but I’d rather have that chance than none at all.” Colonel Finley nodded, reluctantly granting Fi’s point.

“While we’re on that subject,” Lee spoke up, “I’d quite like some false ID. Our names are in their records, and we’re all under sentence of imprisonment or death already. If we’re nabbed, I’d far rather go into the bag as ‘Joe Wang’ or something like that; it’d be safer. If we had ID saying we were Kiwi or Australian military, giving false names and addresses, they also couldn’t retaliate against our families.” He looked troubled for a second; he was clearly remembering his little brothers and sisters, and wondering how they were doing. I longed to comfort him, but this wasn’t the time or the place. I also wondered how my parents were getting along.

“Very well. We can arrange uniforms easily enough, and we can run you up some very convincing identification papers saying you’re New Zealand Army. Anything else you want?” By now, Colonel Finley was looking like he was wishing he’d left us well alone. That made at least two of us.

“Guns.” Homer said it a second before I could. Homer may be an arrogant, chauvinist jerk, but nobody ever said he was stupid. “I’m bleeding-well tired of having to depend on whatever we can scrounge up. I want some serious firepower and training in how to use it to best effect.”

“But we’ll be sending you in with commandoes from the New Zealand SAS…” Colonel Finley protested.

“Don’t you know ‘the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley?’ We had to learn that poem in school,” Fi said, her innocent air concealing the mischief I could see in her eyes. “We’ve learned, the hard way, not to trust anybody outside our own little group too much.” A shadow passed over her face, and I knew she was remembering poor Chris. Chris, who died because we didn’t love him enough. That was one load of guilt I’d carry until the day I died…which didn’t look all that far off, at all.

If I’d known just what I was letting myself in for, I think I’d have begged off somehow. Maybe said I was sick, or even preggers. Lee would have been happy to help with that, as would that utter tosser Adam. Of course, then I’d have had to deal with the consequences of that. Sometimes, all choices are more-or-less bad.

Whether I should have or not, I went along with the group on this. The Kiwis came through for us in real style, I’ll give them that. A few days later, we were admiring how we looked, togged-out in real Australian Army uniforms. We were all privates, but none of us really felt like putting him- or herself forward for higher rank. Homer might have, but he knew we’d have laughed him to scorn. Among ourselves, we were pretty much equal. Whoever had the best ideas would lead, until someone else came up with a better idea.

We all had new names, and they let us pick them out ourselves. Homer, that big tosser, wanted something long and jaw-breaking, but finally went with “Homer Pappas,” since he was so unmistakably Greek. Lee chose “Lee Wong,” so as to not be seen not reacting to his “own name” if he were caught. Kevin fancied “Kevin Watson,” since he’d been teased about having the same last name as the Great Detective, and thought he was more the sidekick type.

Fi and I giggled endlessly about it between ourselves. Like most girls, we’d played with our names over the years, but this was for real. Fi finally chose “Fifi Labelle,” which I thought was hilarious, and I took “Amber Spaulding,” for no real reason.

Then came the guns…and the training. Oh, dear God, the training! I’d always fancied I knew my way around with guns, but after the first few days, I knew just how stupid I’d been to think anything of the sort. Our instructors were patient, but absolutely merciless. They had us out on the range, or disassembling and re-assembling the guns, for hours every day. We learned several different sorts of rifles, including ones used by the Australian and Kiwi military, the Yanks, and the invaders. They also made sure we were all checked out thoroughly with pistols, submachine guns, and shotguns. However, I was pleased to note that we were all becoming much better shots than we’d ever been before.

That wasn’t all we learned, by any means. We were taught how to use night-vision devices, how to use quite a variety of radios, how to disable armoured vehicles, how to set explosive charges, and how to aim and fire rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. By the time they were done, a month from when we’d started, we could hardly recognise ourselves. We’d gone in thinking we were tough, and we were…but we came out intelligently tough. We were as ready as we would ever be.

When they dropped us back in Australia, we were supposed to be nothing but support for the Kiwi SAS team tasked with destroying Wirrawee Airport. The Kiwis were nice to us, but treated us as the children we’d been not too long before. They went in without us…and didn’t come back.

I was surprised, but not too surprised. This was part-and-parcel of what had happened to us again and again since the accursed day of the invasion. Every time we’d been told we could depend on others, they’d turned out to be disappointments. At least this time we were very well-found for armaments and supplies, and in Hell, we could hole up and plan our next move without too much chance of being caught. All we had to do was make sure that nothing was visible from the air; sometimes the other side did send a helicopter flying over, but I think they were short of aircraft.

We did go out sometimes, if only to keep track of what was going on. Radio reception in Hell was all but nonexistent. And on one of our expeditions, we ran across something…no, someone…who turned out to be very interesting, indeed.

(Author’s note: I was really not very happy with the way the Kiwis treated Ellie and her friends. Would it have been that much trouble to give them uniforms, false identification papers, some training, and weapons, before sending them back there?

Hence, this story. I’m going to see where it takes me. I hope you all like it.)

Chapter 2: Chapter Two

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.

(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!)

Chapter 3

By the time we got back safely down into Hell, it was breaking day. We hung the meat from a tree branch, to keep it safe from animals, and headed for bed. Our new friend…we’d found out that his name was Nigel Price…bunked on in with Homer. I pitied him. Homer’s snoring could have been forbidden by the laws of land warfare. Not that we normally gave a hoot about those.

As had become our custom, we slept through the day. It was much safer that way; we couldn’t be seen if we weren’t out and about. Our trainers in New Zealand had approved of that idea, saying that it would also keep our night vision sharp. Oh, if there was some reason to be up, we were up, but we just found it more convenient to sleep by day…and prowl by night. We had become children of the night. When I told the others that thought, Homer thought it was hilarious, the big clown; he put on this utterly stupid Dracula accent and began riffing on it until the rest of us had to ask him to stop. We were laughing so hard I was afraid I’d get a stitch.

We put a meal together, and as we ate, we began asking Mr. Price some questions. He told us right off that he was a loyal Australian, which we’d already figured out for ourselves. When we’d seen Major Harvey among the invaders, he hadn’t been chained in the back of a car. He told us again and again how pleased he was to have been rescued.

“So, what did you do to attract their attention?” asked Fiona.

“I was…I am, I suppose…a scientist. They wanted me to work for them, developing new weapons. They’ve got big plans. ‘Today Australia is ours, tomorrow, the whole world!’” This last sounded a lot like a quote.

“You speak their language?” This was Homer.

“Yes, I do. I studied in some of their universities, a few years before the war.”

Homer looked very thoughtful. “We’ve got radios. Tomorrow evening, could you come on up to the top of Tailor’s Sitch…that’s the path we took down here…and listen in on what the enemy’s broadcasting?”

“I could do that!” Mr. Price brightened visibly.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

For the next few days, we took Mr. Price up every evening, and left him there with a radio and a notebook. He’d come down just after dawn, when he could see to navigate the trail, and we’d all look over the notes he’d taken. The enemy often broadcast “in clear” (I learned that phrase in New Zealand) because they apparently thought that nobody in Australia but them spoke their language.

We learned quite a few interesting things. From what we could gather, Major Harvey had been in their pay for a long time before the invasion. Several times, they lamented his loss and regretted the lack of his services to lead gullible Australians to their doom. That made me feel much better about the horrors of Stratton Prison. We’d been through hell there, and had lost Robyn, but at least she’d died making sure that filthy traitor never gulled another of his former countrymen!

Meanwhile, we had another situation to deal with. Ever since Kevin had confessed just what had happened to him while a prisoner, he’d had long bouts of thinking he was worthless and didn’t deserve to breathe air. We all had to keep an eye on him, and he wasn’t trustable around anything lethal.

Much to my surprise, one of the best people we had for Kevin-wrangling was none other than Homer. Homer Yannos, poster boy for Insensitive Men. He tented with Kevin, and watched him like a hawk. Several times, I saw him grabbing a knife out of Kevin’s hands before Kevin could use it to try to cut himself. Kevin literally couldn't go ten feet without Homer behind him, faithful as his own shadow.

One night, I noticed that Fiona, Mr. Price and I were the only ones around the camp. Mr. Price was sleepy; he’d been up on top of Tailor’s Stitch all day, monitoring radio broadcasts, and after he drank off the last dregs of his cup of tea, he got up and headed for his bed. Fiona and I looked at each other.

“I wonder what the boys are doing?” asked Fiona. I shrugged my shoulders. “Shall we go find them?”

I was in favour of that idea. I liked having the boys around. I was completely in favour of the male sex…and not just for that. Not that I had anything against sex, but with condoms so hard to come by, it wasn’t something I could indulge in often. Not only would it be difficult enough to explain what I’d been doing to my parents without having a baby in my arms, but pregnancy and childcare would be impossible to deal with in the bush, and would slow me down too much.

I just liked having guys around. I liked their deep voices, the way they smelled, their rough exteriors concealing an inner gentleness that often surprised me when I saw it showing, the different way they saw the world. I missed my Dad…I missed him terribly. Sometimes, when I was asleep, I dreamed of him, and always woke up with my cheeks wet with tears. Oh, I loved Mum too, but I was Dad’s girl. I’d never forgotten how he’d told that bloke who criticised him for letting me do stock-work “I don’t know what I’d do without her.” I treasured that all the more because I knew he had a hard time showing affection.

Fiona and I got up and went out into the darkness of Hell, looking for our men. Our eyes were adapted to the darkness by this time, and there was enough moonlight that we could see pretty easily. We found the boys pretty quickly; they weren’t far away.

Lee and Homer were crouching with Kevin, talking to him in low, intense voices. To my horror, I saw a rope around Kevin’s neck…he’d apparently been about to hang himself when the boys caught up to him. I had known he was badly upset, but I hadn’t known things had gone that far.

“Listen to me, Kevin,” said Homer, staring into his eyes, “what happened was not your fault. You are in no way, shape or form to blame for it! Blaming yourself, and thinking you’re somehow dirtied, is letting those bastards win! This is just what they wanted to do to you!”

“They could see that you were brave, so they knew they couldn’t break you from the outside,” Lee chimed in. “So they did this awful thing to you, to break you from inside…to have you break yourself where they couldn’t!” Lee reached out and took Kevin by the shoulders. “Damn it, Kevin! You’re not the guilty party here! You’re the victim! Even if you found yourself enjoying it, that’s an involuntary reaction! You wouldn’t blame yourself for sneezing if you were caught in a dust-cloud, would you?”

Kevin finally spoke up. “No. I wouldn’t. And it wasn’t like I invited it! If they’d treated me decently…” He broke down, bawling heartbrokenly. “Damn them! Damn them to hell!” He crumpled, sobbing his heart out.

What I saw next…I’d never have believed it before the war, not in a million years. Homer took Kevin in his arms, rocking him back and forth and crooning soothingly to him. Lee patted him on the back, using the other hand to wipe tears off his face.

I signalled Fi that we should head back to camp. Once we were there, we sat side-by-side in silence for a few minutes. We were both trying to digest what we had seen.

Fi finally broke the silence. In a voice thick with unshed tears, she said: “There are times I’d cheerfully strangle Homer…but every time, he goes and does something to show how wonderful he is!”

I agreed completely. I’d thought before that Homer had always hung a big sign around his neck, and I’d been the fool who took it at face value. Right about then, I’d not have dared compare my brainpower with a chook; I thought the chook would have beaten me by a kilometer, easily.

In a soft voice, Fi went on: “When we get some more condoms, and some privacy…I’m going to give Homer a wonderful present. One that’ll have a smile on his face for weeks! How ‘bout you and Lee, Ellie?”

I agreed. I did have a few condoms left. Right then, we didn’t have much privacy, but when we did…Lee was going to have the time of his life, if I had anything to say about it. I knew I couldn’t ever say anything to him or Homer about what I’d heard; I knew there were some things that were “guys’ business,” and this was in that category if anything was. Even so, I’d seldom if ever been more touched. Matter of fact, if Homer had propositioned me, I’d have given him a memorable roll in the hay, too.

“The nice thing about that is that it’s a gift I can keep on giving…and I never run out!” Fi began to giggle, and I joined her. Her joke wasn’t the best I’d ever heard, but it did do a good job of breaking the tension. When the boys finally did join us, they didn’t act like there was anything unusual, and I knew that if they’d known about us eavesdropping, they’d have been angry with us.

After that night, Kevin was better. Still not really well…but better. He smiled again, and we could trust him with a knife to cut up dinner with, without wondering when or how he’d take it to his wrists. I was surprised that his counselor in New Zealand hadn’t tried to deal with his experiences, but we weren’t there for long, and Kevin wasn’t a guy who opened up easily. Neither was Lee…or Homer, for that matter. I love my countrymen, but I do admit that they have their little faults.

We’d been lying low after the Car-in-Pond Incident, waiting for a response from the enemy. Night after night went by, and not a sign of them did we see; Mr. Price said that the radio didn’t mention anything too unusual, and our watch on the countryside showed no signs of activity. If they’d found the car, they probably accepted the scenario of it getting into the pond accidentally; I’d noticed that many of the invaders were bad drivers…even by my standards, which I will admit are not too high.

Since things were quiet, we began to try to think out our next move. Topping Cobbler’s Bay would be difficult, but we weren’t aiming anything like that high. Matter of fact, we planned to stay well away from Cobbler’s Bay for the foreseeable future; we knew that whole area would be hotter than the bloke that lifted the crown jewels.

By this time, Mr. Price was enough of a fixture with us to be included in our plans. One evening, he was listening to us discuss various schemes, then asked us a simple question:

“What would you say,” he asked, staring reflectively off into space, “if I told you that the enemy has a large gold hoard in Monmouth? And that it isn’t particularly well-guarded?”

I stared at him, goggle-eyed, and the others all did the same. He obviously relished our surprise.

Fi finally broke the silence. “What is it? And how did the enemy come by it?” She frowned. “Did the bastards take our country’s gold reserves?”

Mr. Price shook his head. “No…the authorities took good care to get that out of the country at the first signs the invasion was real.” They would, I thought bitterly. “The gold, and they, are all safe and sound in the States. However, there were private stocks of the stuff, some of them quite large.” He grinned at us. “Did you lot all forget about the gold rush?”

I was glad of the darkness. Yes, I’d forgotten all about the gold rush. History classes at school seemed like they were a million years ago, and history had never been my strongest subject. If I’d known that I was going to be living through, and making, history, I’d have paid better attention.

“Well,” Mr. Price went on, “the invaders found some very large stocks of gold in private hands, and confiscated every scrap of it they could. They’ve been grabbing women’s wedding rings off their hands in their prison camps. They plan to use the gold to buy themselves more arms on the international market. They’re meant to be under international sanction, but there’s dealers and countries who’ll ignore that for enough payment in gold.”

“How much are we talking about?” asked Lee.

“Oh…I’d say, from things I overheard while I was in their hands, about fifty million dollars’ worth…Australian dollars, pre-invasion.” Having dropped his bombshell, Mr. Price sat back to see what would happen.

For a few minutes, we sat there, gobsmacked. I looked at my friends, and they at me. I had never seen so many beady eyes in my life.

Chapter 4

A few nights later, we figured it was time to call New Zealand. We’d reported the disappearance of their SAS commandoes, and been, so to speak, patted on the head and told that we were good kids. After that, we’d gone clean off the idea of talking to those people. After Cobbler’s Bay, I’d think the last thing they’d want to do is underestimate us, but no matter what, there were people in the world who would see us as “just a bunch of kids” until we hit the Magic Age of 18.

We hiked up to the top of Tailor’s Sitch, and then up a nearby hill, for the best chance of actually getting through to Kiwiland. Homer and Lee clambered up a gum tree to string up the radio aerial, and once that was done, we fired up the radio and began transmitting the code phrase we’d been assigned for these occasions.

“Wolverine to Xavier, come in, Wolverine to Xavier, over.”

After a few repetitions, we got an answer. “Xavier here. What have you to report, Wolverine?” I recognised that Oxbridge accent; it was our old acquaintance…can’t call him a friend, now can I?…Colonel Finley. He was apparently in charge of us. I wasn’t sure whether I liked that idea, but it wasn’t for me to say.

Lee took the mic and told him what we’d been up to since our last report in. At the mention of the name “Nigel Price,” Colonel Finley became very excited.

“Nigel Price? The Nigel Price? The professor of nuclear physics from Queensland University?” He nearly lost control of himself. “Can you put him on, please?”

We did, and he introduced himself. “G’day, Colonel. Nigel Price here. Had a spot of bother, but these clever young people pulled me out of it. I’m doing well, and I’m glad to hear that you lot were thinking of me.”

“We certainly were! Can you make it to---“ and Colonel Finley named a large open area not too far from where we were---“in two nights’ time? We need to pull you out of there!”

“What about my hosts?” I was glad to hear that Mr. Price…or should I call him Dr. Price or Professor Price?…hadn’t forgotten us.

“We can’t extract them at this time; we’re stretched nearly to our limit here. The enemy’s been bombing New Zealand, and we’ve lost several ships; our air force is mainly occupied with keeping New Zealand airspace safe. I wish them all the best, but for now, they’ll have to stay put. I’d bet on them surviving anything the enemy could throw at them.”

I was glad to hear that Colonel Finley thought so well of our skills, but even so, I’d not have been sorry to be told that we were to be extracted, too. I sighed inwardly. A bowlful of ice cream would have gone down a right treat just about then.

We did have a couple of days before they could come for Mr. Price (he told us to forget about calling him by fancy titles; he was as plain as people came and liked to be treated that way. He was a real dinkum Aussie) and we used it to prepare. I’d never been to Monmouth, but knew it was a medium-sized city, some ways distant from Stratton, and on the other side of Stratton from Wirrawee and Cobbler’s Bay. That suited me fine. Up there, we hadn’t ever been active, and had no grief to inherit; the local invaders wouldn’t be as on the watch for us as they were around our usual operating area.

Lee and Fi came up with the idea of hitting the Wirrawee Public Library for guidebooks and maps. The times we’d been in Wirrawee since the invasion, it looked as though the invaders had left the building strictly alone. Made sense…they had their own language, and English-language books wouldn’t have appealed to them. Not to mention, the selection there wasn’t exactly up to much…the times I’d been in there, it leaned heavily toward romances and fluff, mainly appealing to older women. The nonfiction, unsurprisingly, was weighted toward practical books about farming problems. However, I did distinctly remember some guidebooks, including one about Monmouth and its environs.

The night we were expecting the helicopter from New Zealand, we made our way to the arranged landing-point. Among the other interesting gadgets we’d been equipped with were some lights that showed up on IR scopes but not to the unaided eye; we set them around the landing field so that the chopper pilot would know where to land.

The night was cloudy, and it was hard to see; by now, we were used to having moonlight or starlight be our main light, but without that, we were nearly as night-blind as we’d been before the invasion. We’d used our night-vision goggles to help us find our way. At the appointed hour, we were hidden in bushes near the landing field, waiting for the Kiwis.

The New Zealanders’ copter was stealthed somehow; I shall have to find out just how they did that. I’d always thought that helicopters were noisy by their nature, but this one drifted down from the clouds almost as silently as a leaf. It was a small one, only a two-seater, and the second it was on the ground, Mr. Price ran forward and jumped in, it rose into the night and was gone. He’d given us his farewells before the Kiwis came; Fi and I had both collected a kiss, and I rubbed my cheek reflectively, thinking about that. Lee and Homer had both scowled, until he shook their hands, and Kevin’s, thanking them most sincerely for rescuing him. He did know how to deal with people, which wasn’t something I’d have expected from a high-powered academic. Guess all that stuff I’d always discounted about common-room politics has something in it after all.

Once our guest was gone, we turned all our attention to Monmouth. For some reason, Homer and I got tapped to go into Wirrawee and see if the library was still intact. I don’t know quite how that happened, but that was how it was set up.

It could have been worse. Wirrawee, at least, was a town I knew well. And Homer…I’ve said before that there’s few people, if any, that I’d rather have by my side in a tight situation. Even so, the trip would by no means be easy. The town was emptied of our people, and just being seen on the streets might set off a full-scale man- (and woman-) hunt, something we did not need. What was worse, some of the invaders there knew who we really were. The false papers we carried would do no good if they had another Australian traitor who was willing to positively identify us, and both Homer and I were still, as far as we knew, under sentence of death.

Aye, well…I figured I’d seen the view down the enemy’s rifle-barrels many a time, and if we were caught, it’d just mean that that was the last thing I ever saw. Homer, the big tosser, acted like it was just another trip into town before the invasion. The mad bugger actually asked Fi for a list of things she wanted, if we got the chance to lift them.

“That’s a good idea!” said Lee. “If they do twig that we’ve been in town, I’d rather they thought we were just raiding for supplies, instead of figuring out that we were after the library.” Put that way, I could see his point. And we always did have some little thing or other we wanted; it wasn’t like the days before the war, when such things were no farther away than Wirrawee, or, if not in Wirrawee, no farther away than a mail-order catalogue.

We made up a list of stuff we could use. Canned food, of course, topped it off; while we had plenty of supplies courtesy of our “friends” in Kiwiland, and could always get our hands on bush tucker, there were things we missed, and stretching out our food supplies was always top-priority. In books I’d read about war, before the invasion, for some reason they didn’t talk much about food and getting it, but that was always a prime topic of conversation in our camp in Hell. If I ever got out of this, I planned to look up some real soldiers, and ask them if they ever obsessed about food the way we did.

We also wanted some medical supplies. Fi and I insisted that tampons be on the list, no matter how much the guys blushed. I know that subject squicks men of all ages out, but we really did need to top up our stores. When Homer mentioned condoms, that went on the shopping list without anybody objecting; I could see Fiona blushing and knew that I had a secret little smile on my face. First-aid gear…bandages, aspirin and iodine and the like…also made the cut. We did know those things might be guarded, so they weren’t absolutely “must-have-at-all-costs” things. At least, if I were guarding against a group of sneaky guerrillas, I’d want to make sure they couldn’t just capture medical supplies.

The night we’d picked for our trip to Wirrawee was cloudy, with a fine, misty rain coming down. That suited us just fine. As it happened, our Australian-issue rain cloaks were almost exactly the same colour and pattern that the enemy used, so Homer and I planned to walk the streets openly, merely avoiding close encounters with the enemy. At a distance, and in the dark and mist, we could easily pass as ordinary enemy soldiers, doing what they were supposed to be doing.

We rode off toward Wirrawee on our dirt bikes, slipping and sliding in the mud until we made it to the highway. Luck was with us, and we didn’t see anybody on the road. As Wirrawee grew larger before us, I felt butterflies in my stomach. Little did I realize what I would find in that town…but it would change my life forever, in ways I’d never expected.

Chapter 5

Homer and I rode toward Wirrawee on our dirt bikes, as it got darker. The rain that was falling suited us perfectly; we had a good excuse to wear our rain cloaks, which disguised us very well. As long as we kept our hoods up and our heads down, we looked enough like enemy soldiers to pass, at least at first glance. And we weren’t wearing enemy uniforms; that’s a one-way ticket to a firing squad. Not that we didn’t already have those, but with our false I.D.s, we at least had a chance of being taken as normal POWs upon capture. Under our cloaks, we had shoulder bags that let us carry cargo without interfering with our riding or, if necessary, shooting.

We knew Wirrawee more than well enough to know where a good place to stash the bikes was, and we left them there, in a clump of trees near the cemetery. By this time, it was nearly full dark and the rain was coming down hard. The streets were nearly deserted, and fairly dark; the RNZAF had hit the power station that fed Wirrawee a few times, and the street lights were either off, or dim.

Instead of sneaking around like a couple of gunpowder plotters, we walked down the sidewalk as though we had every right to be there. A couple of times, we were seen…but the patrols paid us no mind whatsoever. They were expecting to see their own soldiers, so when they saw us, in cloaks almost exactly like what their lot wore, they wrote us off as their own. That suited me just fine. We had pistols, and I had a compact, suppressed submachinegun, but I was not at all keen on a firefight. Homer might have been…the mad fool…but for this little trip, I’d very firmly kept the submachinegun in my own possession. Homer was a great guy, but giving him a loaded submachinegun struck me as just begging for disasters.

Our first stop was the Wirrawee Library. As I’d thought, nobody had bothered it; it was closed and locked, but that was no problem. The building was by no means a burglar-proof masterpiece, and once we were sure we were unobserved, Homer opened the door with one quick application of his size-12 lockpick…the one at the end of his leg. One thing I like about men is their muscle; life would be much harder for us women without having guys around to take on the heavier chores.

Once inside, we were able to use our pocket torches; the curtains were drawn. It was dusty and musty, since no-one had been inside since just before the invasion, and the roof had leaked here and there. I knew my way about better than Homer (no big surprise there; the big tosser only ever read a book when he was sure there were smutty bits in it) so I knew where to go.

Sure enough, I found a couple of books about the city of Monmouth and the surrounding area. That gave me an idea, and I went and looked in the maps. To my delight, I found a couple of large-scale, detailed maps of the City of Monmouth, which I promptly put into my carry bag, along with the books.

Meanwhile, Homer was keeping a watch on the outside, through a small gap in the curtains. At one point, he murmured: “Torches off, Ellie,” and I flicked mine off, just as I heard a sound that chilled my blood. Outside, the rhythmic crunch of enemy soldiers’ boots in the gravel sounded very loud indeed. Nearly as loud as my heart beating. Homer and I looked at each other, eyes wide, as the soldiers went on past. If they’d looked closely at the building, we’d have been busted; the door showed signs of our forced entry. However, either they weren’t too observant, thanks to that blessed rain and darkness, or they wrote off the damage we’d done as having been done by their own lot.

When they were gone, I let go of the breath I hadn’t been consciously holding, and took my hand off the butt of that submachinegun. If they’d come in, the only thing for us to have done would have been to fight, and fight hard. They’d have been silhouetted against the slightly-brighter light outside, which would give us something to aim for. Of course, although the submachinegun was equipped with a sound-suppressor, our pistols weren’t…and the sounds of shooting would have probably attracted more attention of the sort we did not want.

We crept on out, leaving the door closed behind us. Even though the poor library had been neglected, I hoped that someone’d be along to repair things. I just hate to see things go to waste. When I see waste, it’s like I have my Dad beside me, telling me about how much money’s down the drain, how much work went into whatever’s been thrown away, and on and on. At the time I got those lectures, I rolled my eyes in impatience…but by that time, I’d have given anything (yes, even that) to have Dad there to lecture me again. I wondered, sometimes, what he’d think of all I’d done since the invasion. Part of him would be horrified…but I knew that part of him would be absolutely puffed-up with pride.

Back on the streets, the rain was coming down, hard and steady. With the street lights in such bad shape, finding a place to confer out of the light was no problem at all. Homer and I stopped in an overgrown front garden for a few minutes, to plan out what to do next.

“Let’s see what’s up at the chemist’s,” I suggested. “We need things from there.” Homer nodded. No doubt he was thinking about condoms…but so was I. It had been a while since Lee and I had last made love, and I was thinking that would be a very nice thing to do. I didn’t expect to find real important drugs at the chemist’s shop…if for no other reason, the invaders would have sequestered those to keep their own soldiers’ sticky fingers off of them…but condoms, aspirins, and other over-the-counter remedies might well still be there.

The walk to the chemist’s took about twenty minutes, and for a while, I could almost forget about the invasion. Homer, miraculously, wasn’t clowning around at all, and we walked in companionable silence. I would never want to be Homer’s girlfriend…Fi is more than welcome to him; I know him all too well…but it was nice just being out for a walk with a strong, attractive guy. Even the rain couldn’t dampen my good mood. I welcomed it, if only because it made encounters with enemy soldiers less likely.

Homer liked it too. “This lot’ll do the crops a lot of good,” he commented at one point. He looked at me, and I wondered if the wet on his face was all from the rain. “I guess I’m a real rural, aren’t I? When we were in Kiwiland, I kept thinking about how nice their farms and stations looked, and thinking about how I might run them if I were given one.”

Homer opening up this way, particularly to a girl, was something I’d never thought I’d see. Not wanting to spoil the moment, I just said: “Yeah, I know what you mean. The terrain was different. I’m not sure whether our methods would work well there, but I’d love to spend some time there and really compare things. They might have a few tricks we could use.” I giggled. “Remember that one cockie we met…the one with the crazy black-and-white dog? What was his name…oh, yeah, Wal!”

“Yeah, that was it! His best mate was a character, too! I never thought I’d see a cockie hippie, but Mr. Windgrass managed to be one!” Homer chuckled low in his throat. “I did like what he did with those Clydesdales. Not that I’d ever give up my tractor…but the horses do tear up the ground less.”

We’d become so interested in talking shop that we almost missed an enemy patrol. Luckily, the other side had no idea we were even in the vicinity, and were huddled on someone’s front porch, passing a cigarette around. We heard them talking to each other just in time, and shut up quickly, walking on past as though we were in friendly territory. The others didn’t say much to us; I think they were just glad that we weren’t their sergeant. It was a good job for them that I wasn’t their sergeant; I’d have had them up on a fizzer for bludging the way they were. As it was, I was glad to see them being a bunch of idle scroungers.

At the chemist’s shop, we had to be careful. It was in the high street area, and the street lights were on there more than in the residential areas. More than once, we had to casually wander down an alley as an enemy patrol drove past. I took note of the vehicles they used; they’d lifted whatever they could find, which told me that the enemy’s logistics weren’t all they could be. We’d heard, while in New Zealand, that our little expedition to Cobbler’s Bay had ended up rendering the harbour facilities all but unusable.

Finally, we saw our chance. Somebody had already been at the back door of the chemist’s, and whoever had been tasked to repair it had done a crap job. My dad would have had an eppy if he’d seen such poor work done on our station, and whatever jackaroo did it would have been out of a job. Me, I was delighted. We fiddled the cheap lock they’d put on, and were in.

Sure enough, the real important drugs were all gone. There were still bottles of aspirin and the like, though, and we loaded up on those, as well as band-aids, tampons, basic first-aid supplies, mercurochrome, and other things we needed. We had supplies already, but could always use more. Depriving the enemy of anything they could use was also a good idea, particularly if they weren’t well-found for such things.

Homer found the condom display, and looted it very efficiently, stuffing them into his bag as fast as he could. I smiled to myself. Even in the middle of a war, teenage guys were teenage guys. When he was done there, he took the stuff I couldn’t fit into my own bag, and we managed to strip that chemist’s shop of anything useful.

Once we were done (we’d had to stop and freeze once, as an enemy patrol went by outside; luckily, the street lights from outside gave us enough light to see by, so we hadn’t been using our torches) we waited our opportunity and slipped out the back. I wondered what Dad and Mum would have said, to see their little girl acting like an experienced burglar and thief.

Carefully keeping to shadowy areas without looking like we were sneaking about, we headed on out of town. I did not want to get into a gunfight. Ideally, I wanted the other side to have no notion that we were within miles of Wirrawee. For once, Homer agreed with me on that subject. Although I wanted desperately to run and run until we got to where our bikes were stashed, I forced myself to walk along sedately, acting as much as possible like a normal person out for an evening’s walk.

At one point, we were lit up by a vehicle’s headlights, and froze; I grabbed for my submachinegun instinctively, before I realized that it was just a passing truck, and they were paying no attention to us. From the back, I heard snatches of drunken song, and figured that they were out on leave and partying it up. I had a pang for a second, thinking about poor Chris.

Finally, we got to the cemetery. Just as we passed in under the trees, we heard a siren going off in the town, and could see lights going on and trucks roaring up and down the streets. “Oh, bugger, the fat’s in the fire,” Homer muttered. “We’d best lay low here in the graveyard until things quiet down.”

I had to agree with him. The dirt bikes weren’t the quietest form of transportation ever invented, and if the alarm had gone up about us, they’d likely spot us speeding out of town. The invaders seemed to be a bit superstitous about cemeteries, though, so hiding in this one would be about as good a plan as any until they calmed down.

We moved on in deep, under the sheltering yew trees. It was actually pretty peaceful there, I thought. My family had been buried here since we came to Australia, and I felt close to my departed kin when I came to that place. It was like they were around me, protecting me.

Just as I was relaxing, I heard Homer gasp. “Oh, Ellie…I wish we hadn’t come here!” That startled me; Homer was always up for anything, particularly devilment. So far that evening, he had struck me as having a fine time. I went over to see what was upsetting him so.

He pointed to a metal grave marker. It was the sort of cheap thing that the funeral homes use before someone gets a real stone. I’d seen those before, and this was on a fairly fresh grave. That was par for the course. I leaned closer to see what was on the marker.

CORRIE MACKENZIE

All of a sudden I felt sick and shaky. My best friend, my best mate in all the world…and there she lay, dead. I’d never get to talk with her, never carry out all the plans we’d had together, never let her be an aunt to my kids or be an aunt to hers. I hadn’t even told her goodbye when I saw her last, at the hospital. I felt a gigantic bubble of grief building up inside of me, and I drew in my breath for a howl of anguish.

Homer saved me. He clapped his hand over my mouth and held it until I had calmed down at least enough to stay quiet. I felt my legs giving way under me, and I started weeping passionately, and Homer…Homer Yannos, the poster boy for Insensitive Men…not only didn’t make even a little fun of me, but held me and murmured soothingly, telling me that it was all right to cry, that it was okay, that he was sad too.

When I finally stopped crying, I stumbled over to a nearby bench and sat down, feeling like a puppet whose strings had been cut. As I sat there, I felt my grief being replaced. Instead of grief, I felt such hatred as I’d never have been able to imagine, before the war.

Chapter 6

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.

Chapter 7: Chapter Seven

Ellie’s Heroes

Chapter 07

by Technomad

 

One thing our trainers had hammered into us was patience. “Planning and patience prevent piss-poor performance,” they had emphasised, and we had found that they were exactly right. Another thing they had harped on was “K.I.S.S. -- keep it simple, stupid,” and that also served us well. As we worked out our plan, I often found myself remembering our instructors, and blessing them for the time and effort they’d spent on us.

The weather was uninviting, which suited us just fine. Since our rain cloaks resembled those used by the enemy, we could move about the countryside by day, and appear to be nothing but a normal enemy patrol. Of course, we did take precautions against being seen, but the chances were that anybody seeing us would write us off as normal. We also scouted by night frequently, but there were things we had to see by daylight to figure out correctly.

There were plenty of abandoned stations and houses to hole up in, and we never stayed in one place for too long. We moved some of our food supplies up from Hell and stored them here and there, so that we wouldn’t be short of tucker. The canned rations weren’t too inviting, but they beat starving by a mile.

As we compared our maps with what we found on the ground, our plans began to assume firmer shape. Once or twice, we even ventured into Monmouth itself, on nights when the rain was particularly fierce. Like most towns, the street lights weren’t in too good shape, thanks to the power generation stations being favorite targets of the RNZAF’s raiders, so we had plenty of shadows to use without being obvious that that was what we were trying to do.

Unlike poor Wirrawee, Monmouth had begun the process of re-settlement by the invaders. Signs in their incomprehensible gibberish were up, announcing that stores and businesses were under new management. So far, the goods I saw on sale were all familiar, but I knew that they’d be bringing in or making their own stuff as soon as they could. Seeing those signs, and the foreign faces behind the counters, made me grind my teeth with fury. I couldn’t see one of them without remembering Corrie, and wanting to avenge her a thousandfold.

One of the reasons that the enemy wanted Monmouth was because of its main industry. Monmouth had one of the largest petroleum refineries in Australia, and the invaders were short of petrol, lubricants and other such things. They had the refinery up and running full blast, and the oil fields outside of town were also going.

When Homer and Lee saw that, their eyes lit up. “Imagine what a huge fire we could make,” murmured Lee. Whispering carried farther and sounded more like something was wrong than murmuring, so we’d been trained out of it in New Zealand.

Homer looked like a starving man staring at a huge feast. “Oh, wouldn’t that be an ANZAC Day to remember?” I had to think about it, but then I nodded. It was close to ANZAC Day, and we had forgotten! This would be the best one we’d ever had in our lives.

I was thinking about Corrie again. I was also thinking about my mum, and my dad. We’d heard that a lot of Wirrawee people had been put to labour, working for the invaders in various capacities. For my proud dad, having to slave for invaders would be like battery acid eating up his soul. And I didn’t like thinking about what might be happening to my gentle mum. Kevin’s story about the game the invaders had played with him had given me some very nasty images about what might happen to an unprotected woman in the hands of the invading forces. There were reasons I kept a small pistol on me at all times. If necessary, the last bullet would be for me, but I’d not be taken alive. Not ever again.

On one of our scouting expeditions, we ran across something we hadn’t expected to see. In retrospect, that was stupid of us; the people in Monmouth had had to go somewhere, after all, and they’d been celebrating Commem Day when they were hit, too.

It was a fairground-turned-concentration-camp, just like the one outside Wirrawee, but much larger. From a vantage point on a nearby hill, we crouched under bushes, scoping the place out with binoculars. It was a grey, miserable day, but at least it wasn’t raining just then. If it had been sunny, we’d have had to be much more cautious; an enemy soldier seeing the sun reflecting off our binocs’ lenses would have meant that the hunt would be up for us, with a vengeance. We were well-camouflaged, but it had been pounded into us that one little mistake could be the death of us all.

“I make it about 80 hectares,” Lee said, and Fi wrote that down in a notebook. We knew that the population of Monmouth was roughly about 150,000 people, and from what we could see, they were all crammed in behind the razor-wire tangles that surrounded their fairground. It was crowded enough to make my skin crawl when I took my turn scanning with the binoculars.

The fairgrounds’ buildings had apparently all been converted into makeshift living quarters, and someone or other had rigged tents out of canvas, but it looked hellishly uncomfortable. I felt a little bit guilty about my nice, roomy tent in Hell, which I only had to share with one person. Seeing the way they were piled in on top of each other made me shudder. I’m a rural…I’m not used to having so many people about, particularly so close. Having to deal with that, in a place where I couldn’t get away from people and be alone, would drive me mad in short order. The thought alone made me shudder.

We settled in to watch the fairgrounds/camp, and noticed that while some people were let out in groups to work, as Kevin had been in Wirrawee, most of them just stayed in the camp. They mooched about, not seeming to do much; from their body language, I got the impression that a lot of them had despaired.

Of course, that could have been because they were on very short commons. We talked with Kevin at length, gently eliciting every bit of memory he had of the conditions at the Wirrawee Fairgrounds, to try to figure out just what we were dealing with.

Once we got him talking, Kevin was able to tell us a great deal. “Yeah, food’s short, and what you generally get is nasty,” he said, shuddering at the memory. “A lot of what we got was converted from animal feed, or so people said. I never was able to confirm it myself, but I know people were getting sick. You had people with the runs who’d be in the dunny all day. Those generally didn’t last too long, since we didn’t get more than a minimum of water. The medics we had in with us said that they dehydrated themselves. It was hot in there, and we didn’t have too much shelter, which didn’t help that situation any.”

Kevin stared into nothingness, lost in his terrible memories. We were holed up in one of our hidey-holes, on an abandoned station some miles from Monmouth; we didn’t fancy being interrupted. It was a bright, sunshiny day, which meant that we had to stay hidden. Once or twice we’d seen helicopters flying by in the distance, and we knew that from a chopper, we could easily be seen. While we might look, at first glance, like enemy soldiers, there were probably signals they used among themselves that we didn’t know, and not displaying those when scrutinized would mean that the jig was up.

We were in a barn, where we could see outside fairly easily without being seen ourselves. The main house had been burnt, and was of no use to us. Homer was on guard, and was sweeping the horizons for possible trouble. The rest of us were gathered on the main floor, talking and tucking into some of the canned food we’d brought from Hell.

“Did they make you work?” asked Lee. He sipped carefully at a canteen of water. At least the well here still worked, and there was a hand pump we could use to pull up clean fresh water. That was one of the reasons we favored this place.

“Not really. We were supposed to keep the place clean, but they weren’t any too fussy about that. After all, we were just prisoners,” Kevin said bitterly. “If we got sick, if we died, who really cared? It’d save them work when they brought in their own lot to settle this country.”

Fi put her arm around Kevin’s shoulders, offering him what comfort she could. I wished I’d thought of that myself. I hated the enemy even more, the more I heard from Kevin.

“After a while, they started asking for volunteers to go out on work details,” Kevin took up his tale, his voice a monotone. “Like a lot of other damned fools, I volunteered; they said that the work details would get more food. They hadn’t lied. They just didn’t tell us exactly how much more food we’d get, or how hard and long the work would be. The extra food wasn’t really enough to balance out the energy we spent slaving away for those bastards. And God help you if you tried to run!”

He paused for a minute, visibly gathering his strength to go on. “I saw what they did to one poor bloke who tried to get away. They tracked him down right quick, and decided to have some fun. They first shot at his feet, making him dance like in a Western movie. Then when they got bored with that, they shot him in the legs, and finished him off with their bayonets…taking their time and really enjoying themselves.” He gave us a haunted look. “The idea was to make it clear that running off was a bad idea. If you lot hadn’t turned up when and where you did, I was planning to off myself as soon as I could figure out a way to do it that they couldn’t stop in time. Trying to off yourself was another really bad idea."

“Those people are monsters!” Lee growled.

“No, a lot of them are just blokes doing a job,” Kevin answered, to my surprise. “The ones who volunteered for work-detail duty were bad, but quite a few of them struck me as not too different from anybody else. And after what I saw in the camp…” He gave us a haunted grin…”nobody can ever tell me that Australians aren’t just as bad as anybody else!”

“What do you mean?”

“Being in that place did a lot of things to people, and a lot of them weren’t nice,” Kevin explained. “Some of them went in for dobbing. They’d dob you in to the guards for anything at all, even if they didn’t get anything out of it, just for the pleasure of getting someone else in trouble. Others would steal anything they could, no matter who owned it. They’d have stolen the shit from under a squatting dog.”

“Were they all like that?” I gasped in horror. I tried to imagine my dad and mum being such mongrels, and couldn’t picture it. My dad hated theft, and had no time for people who’d dob each other in to the police. Oh, he’d have reported a real criminal, no question about that…but running tattling to the constables about minor stuff disgusted him. And my gentle, loving mum would sooner have died than steal anything.

“Oh no,” Kevin shook his head hard. “There were people who tried to hold things together, but they had a real uphill fight. A lot of the people in there had just more-or-less given up. They withdrew into themselves, and just sat there, day after day. If their rellies or friends didn’t see that they ate, they wouldn’t eat and just wasted away.” He clearly didn’t want to talk any more about it, and we respected his wishes.

That evening, we decided to alter our plans. Along with getting that lovely gold, we’d do our best to crack open that camp and at least give our people in there a fighting chance of heading for the bush.

END Chapter 07

Chapter 8: Chapter Eight

Ellie’s Heroes

Chapter Eight

by Technomad

 

We pored over our maps, figuring out the best routes to take in and out. We wanted to do the most damage in the least time we possibly could. Of course, there were always places where things could go sour, but that was one of the conditions of life we’d accepted when we chose to stay in the bush and fight, and, again, when we came back from Kiwiland.

Thinking of Kiwiland made me remember Colonel Finley. We hadn’t talked with him about this little plan. For one thing, he was a long way away and couldn’t help us. For two things, what we didn’t say on the air, the other side couldn’t intercept. So far, as far as we knew, our communications were secure, but there was always the chance that the enemy had figured out what frequencies we used, and had someone always listening, on the chance that we might say something that would help them pinpoint our location and send in troops before we could get away. That was something that our instructors had hammered into us in New Zealand.

Every day, I found reasons to bless the men and women who’d so patiently instructed us in the skills we needed to become really effective. If they’d had the chance to teach us before the invasion, I thought that Corrie, Chris and Robyn might have had a better chance to live.

The third reason we didn’t call New Zealand was one we didn’t speak of out loud, but that we all knew. If we managed to lay our hands on the gold stash, and get it safely out of Monmouth, as far as we were concerned, that gold was ours, and ours alone. We didn’t fancy being told we had to give it back, no matter who had lost it. We’d picked up on the phrase “spoils of war,” and “make war feed war.” I, for one, could think of all sorts of things I could do with ten million or so dollars.

When I was on guard, I’d sit and look out over the landscape, keeping my eyes peeled for any sign of enemy activity, or any sign that they’d twigged to where we were…while part of my mind was figuring out just what to do with all that lovely money. I could finish paying off the loans my Dad had on the station; he was always worrying about that sort of thing, and being able to step in and make sure that our operation was debt-free would do a lot to take that burden off his back. A lot of his temper, I thought, was from worrying about debts.

I could travel, as well. I’d always wanted to see the world, and even without Corrie by my side, as I’d always planned it…and her loss was still an aching hole in my life...I could go, and see it for both of us. And I could go to uni, and study what I wanted, and make myself anything I wanted to be.

We mostly didn’t speak of such things, even among ourselves. However, Fi and I did have a few talks about it, in the long watches of the night when the guys were elsewhere.

“Travel sounds wonderful, Ellie,” Fi said, smiling at me in the dim light that was all we allowed ourselves at night; the dimmer the light, the less trouble we had adjusting to night. Light that was too bright ruined our night vision, and was a lot likelier to be spotted at a distance. “I’ve always wanted to see Europe, and America.”

I smiled at her. I could just see her in Paris, London or New York. She’d love visiting places with so much history and culture. While we both loved Australia, there were things it lacked.

But then Fi went on: “I’d want to use a lot of my share of the money helping people who’ve been hurt by the war. We may have had it tough, but I bet there’s people who’ve lost everything. I’d not feel right if I just lolled around being rich while they suffered.”

I was glad of the dim light. I was blushing with shame. When she put it that way, keeping all the loot for myself did sound horribly selfish. I felt like a real swine. Yes, I’d suffered…Stratton Prison, and endless months out in the bush…but as far as I knew, my father and mother were alive. Compared with many people, I was very fortunate.

“Maybe we should use some of the money to set up a fund for people who need help because of the war, Fi,” I said. “We could name it after our friends who’ve not made it. That way, people would remember them.” I thought of Corrie, and felt a stab of pain in my soul again. “And I don’t want them ever to be forgotten.”

“That’s a wonderful idea, Ellie!” Fi reached over and hugged me. “People should know their stories!” When the boys came in, we told them about our idea, and they liked it, too.

We had finally come up with a plan that looked workable. All we needed was a nice stormy night, so that as few of the enemy would be inclined to be out and about. Unfortunately, from what we could tell, the weather was going to be clear for a week or so.

Since we didn’t want to strike without weather covering us, we decided to improve the shining hour in other ways. We headed back to Hell on dirt bikes one night, to cut down on the chance that the enemy might pick up on clues that we were in the Monmouth area. Hiding the bikes at the top of Tailor’s Stitch, we took our familiar path down into Hell, and soon we were relaxing in our dear familiar tents. Hell had become our home, as much as we could be said to have homes any more.

The Kiwis had left good supplies of explosives and tools, and we stocked up heavily, dragging the stuff to the top of the path in several loads. Our plans required us to have a good supply of explosives, and there were several other things we needed to give Monmouth the surprises we’d worked out.

As we looked over the explosives, I saw a dangerous gleam in Homer’s eye, and shuddered to myself. Only a national emergency on the level of an invasion would make me trust Homer Yannos, of all people, with high explosives!

The sight of the automatic mortar and shells gave Lee a wonderful idea for how we could cover our activities, over-and-above depending on rain. “Mortars are easy to use,” he reminded us, “and this one can be set to fire automatically at a pre-set time, which’ll be very useful!”

We used up a dozen shells of the fifty we had, sighting the thing in so that we knew what range it would shoot to at any given setting, as well as making sure that the automatic settings were working. For that, we went down into Hell; lugging those heavy explosive shells down there was a pain and a half, but we didn’t dare do it out in the open anywhere else, for fear of being spotted and reported. Hell’s walls would absorb the report of the shells, and nobody else but us was down there.

Once we had the mortar figured out (it wasn’t terribly different from the ones we’d trained on in Kiwiland, but familiarisation is always a good thing with new weapons) all that was left was to wait. Wouldn’t you just bloody know it, the sun picked that particular time to come…instead of rains, we had day after day of clear weather.

Holed up in our hidey-holes, the tension began wearing on us. All of us got more and more snappish and bad-tempered, and we picked at each other in nasty ways, just for something to do. At one point, we were so quarrelsome that nobody was speaking to anybody else.

It was at times like that that I really, really missed Robyn. Robyn was always able to smooth things over, to make people who were quarrelling realise just how much their friendship really meant, to show them how silly they were being.

After a long session of “I-miss-Robyn,” I just squared my shoulders and went into action. Asking myself “How would Robyn handle this situation?” I set to work, smoothing everybody’s ruffled feathers and trying to patch up all of our silly quarrels. In the process, I apologised to Lee and Homer separately, Lee for my snapping at him when he worried out loud about his younger siblings once too often, and Homer, for calling him a chauvinistic jerk and all-‘round creep. To my surprise, they both apologised to me. Lee said he had been jittery about his little brothers and sisters, but that wasn’t an excuse for taking it out on the rest of us, and Homer…well, Homer just said that he might have to re-think some of the Greek attitudes he’d picked up from his father. When Fi heard that, she gave Homer a look that told me that when they had some privacy, he was in for a wonderful surprise.

Finally, we got the weather we’d been wanting. The sky had been cloudy all day, and rain clouds rolled in toward the evening. By the time it was full dark, the rain was pouring down, so we decided that it was “go” time. On foot, we headed out toward Monmouth.

END Chapter 08

Chapter 9

Ellie’s Heroes

Chapter 9

by Technomad

 

As we had thought it would, the driving rain had driven most sensible people indoors. Good job we weren’t sensible. We got in where we wanted to with no problem.

Our first target was the enemy motor pool a little ways outside of Monmouth. There was an attempt at a fence around it, but we had scouted it thoroughly, and knew where there were weak spots. Since the guards were bludging…huddling in their shack at the gate, instead of walking the perimeter…we were in no danger.

The motor pool contained all sorts of vehicles, from tanks on down to little motor-driven peddlers’ carts. Some of them were obviously of foreign make, while others had been stolen locally. We spread out among them, and went to work, like Santa’s little helpers at Christmas. However, instead of leaving pressies, we were rigging up plastic explosive charges. When anybody tried driving many of these vehicles, they were going to get surprises…some of them would go boom when the engines started, while others would go for a little while before the big bang happened.

The tanks, surprisingly enough, were the least troublesome. We just rigged charges so that the treads would be blown off. A tank without its treads is helpless…at best, it’s a pillbox, and that’s only if it’s immobilised where it can be useful. And the way we’d set the charges, the bogie-wheels would also be damaged, which would make the tanks that much more difficult to repair.

“Maximum returns for minimum effort,” Homer murmured to me, his eyes bright against the black soot he’d smeared, as all of us had, on his face. “Well, that was easy. Now, for the guards.”

As I’ve mentioned, the guards were sloppy…they weren’t expecting trouble, since we’d not operated anywhere near Monmouth before that night. They were huddled up in their guardshack, most of them sound asleep. The rain poured down outside hard enough to mask any noises we made approaching. The one guard who was awake was leaning back in his chair, looking at a girlie magazine from his homeland. He started when we opened the door, and the expression of pure terror on his face was comical, even before we started shooting.

The front gate was electrical, and opened at the touch of a button. Once it was open, we went back to the one military vehicle we’d spared our attentions. It was a ten-wheel MOWAG Piranha armoured car, from Switzerland. Our armour-recognition classes had taught us to recognise it instantly, and from the second we’d seen it, it had figured prominently in our plans.

It was the latest, hottest thing in armoured cars, with amphibious capability, a turret on top with a 105-mm gun, more machine guns in ports on the sides, and the ability to cross almost any terrain. When we’d first seen it, I could see Homer and Lee all but licking their lips at the thought of all the fun they could have with it. Men. More usefully, it had lots of cargo capacity; it was designed to carry as many as fourteen troops at once, so if we got to the gold, we’d have no trouble carrying it away.

The hatches were unlocked. As I’d said, they weren’t expecting trouble around here, with the local population under lock and key. We were soon all in; the Piranha was nice and roomy, and it was very pleasant to be out of the rain. Homer and Kevin were prying off the bar that prevented the steering wheel from turning with a bolt-cutter. Once that was loose, a stab at a button, and the engine fired right up. Swiss engineering. Can’t beat it!

The car was fully-fuelled and stocked with ammo, but once we got it into motion, we stopped at the supply point and took aboard as much more ammo as we could. Our instructors had pounded the idea “you can never have too much ammunition, too much food or too much air support” into our heads, and topping up on ammunition or food (air support was a little bit difficult to arrange) had become reflexive. They also had some Russian RPGs there, and we took all of those we could find, along with a couple of launchers.

Once we were through the gate, we closed it behind us, so that the enemy might take a few more precious seconds to figure out just what was wrong, and drove toward Monmouth, which we could see on the horizon. Fi was at the wheel. There was no way in Hell…the real one, the one with fire…that I’d trust Homer at the wheel of an armoured fighting vehicle!

OOO

Our next stop was outside Monmouth, on a hilltop overlooking the petroleum refinery. It was brightly lit; the RNZAF couldn’t strike this far away from Kiwiland, so they thought they had nothing to fear.

We got out and went to work, setting up the automatic mortar. It was designed so that once set up and sighted in, it would fire by itself until it ran out of shells. We were well within range, and had a timer we could rig to it to make it wait a while to start its work.

Homer grinned a maniacal grin. “Once this thing starts going, it’ll set off the biggest damn bonfire in the history of Australia!” I could see that he was really enjoying the thought. Trust Homer. Then I saw the expresssions on my companions’ faces. All of them…Lee, Kevin, even gentle Fi…looked like kids staring at a big pile of Christmas pressies.

I imagined what the mortar bombs would do. I knew that any petroleum refinery’s a firestorm waiting to happen, and when the bombs started whistling in, it would become a raging inferno in minutes, at most. Even if they found out where the bombs were coming from, and found the mortar…we’d be long gone. And I felt my face twist into a smile very like theirs. I felt evil glee at the thought of the destruction that we were going to wreak. As payment for Corrie’s death, in my case. For that, no amount of vengeance would be enough. Vengeance never grows stale, though it may grow gray. And we all owed the invaders a great deal of payback.

Once the mortar was set up, we headed on into Monmouth. It was late at night, it was raining, and there was little traffic on the roads. At least the invaders drove on the left side of the road, as is the custom in civilised countries. I’d heard horror stories about poor souls who’d gone to countries where they drove on the right, and how much trouble it was to constantly have to fight one’s lifelong reflexes.

Driving one of the enemy’s own vehicles ensured that we had no trouble; even so, we were ready for anything. Lee, Fi and I manned machine gun positions, while Homer…of course…claimed the turret gun as his very own. I thought about what our old teachers would have said, to see Homer Yannos with a 105mm cannon, and smiled to myself. They’d have been running for the hills, along with anybody with the least bit of common sense!

We didn’t know how long we had before anybody’d check on the guards we’d killed. We’d watched as best we could, but we weren’t sure how often the guard was changed. We might have minutes before the alarm went up, or we could have till morning. Of course, in the second case, we’d have raised more than enough hell that nobody’d be paying attention to a few dead guards on a motor pool.

Monmouth was laid out in a nice, regular grid pattern, so we had little trouble getting to where we were going. Once or twice, we had to take side streets because the main routes were blocked up with what looked like construction; there’d apparently been some real fighting here when the invasion hit. I heard Fiona mutter “Good on you, Monmouth!” I hoped they’d cost the invaders some blood, unlike poor Wirrawee, which had been caught with its trousers right around its ankles.

The bank we were targeting was off in a side street. It was fairly inconspicuous, and only the presence of a few armed guards in the street betrayed its secret. Just as we started our approach, a glow of light against the clouds announced that our mortar had started its deadly work.

Peering through one of the viewslits on the side of the Piranha, I gasped in wonder. I had known, intellectually, how terribly inflammable petroleum refineries were, but this was bigger than I had thought it would be. The fire lit up the dark clouds overhead, painting them a vivid orange. In the distance, I could hear the roar of the fires.

The guards saw it too. They pointed and gaped, babbling to each other in their incomprehensible speech. At first, they didn’t pay us any attention. They were too busy speculating to each other on what the noise and light meant. They reminded me of people before the war, looking off toward the horizon at a brush-fire, and wondering if it would come their direction or not.

When they did notice that we’d parked nearby, they came wandering over, leaving their assigned posts behind. If I’d been their sergeant, they’d have been in trouble. Even though I wasn’t their sergeant, they were in trouble. They just didn’t know it yet.

One of them tried to talk to us, but we didn’t understand a word he said. He was within the firing-arc of Kevin’s machine gun, and Kevin speaks fluent Automatic Weapon, though. With a maniacal gleam in his eyes, he opened fire, his bullets chewed the soldier to bits. The soldier fell bonelessly, dead before he hit the ground.

From my own position, I engaged the other guards, shooting them as efficiently as I could. They’d been caught off their guard completely by our use of one of their own vehicles, and none of them even managed to unsling his rifle, much less return fire. In seconds, they were all dead.

Except for Kevin, whom we’d designated as our vehicle-sitter, we piled out of the Piranha as fast as we could, trotting across to the bank. Like a lot of modern banks, it was glassed-in, depending far more on the police and on things like exploding dye packets in the currency to ward off robbers than its own fortresslike qualities. If it had been an old-fashioned bank, this raid would have been much more difficult. The one my family used in Wirrawee would have required us to use explosives and that would have taken up a lot more time.

As it was, we were inside very quickly. The night lighting was on, and we fanned out, searching for where the gold was being kept. We found it in minutes; the bank people had locked the vaults up and the other side hadn’t been able to get them open, so the gold was sitting in crates out in one of the back rooms. They still had hand-trucks in there, and we took advantage of those, loading crates onto the hand trucks (and nobody had ever really gotten across to me how heavy gold is!) and hauling them out and across the street to the Piranha as fast as we could.

By the time we’d taken all the Piranha would hold, even the heavy-duty springs of the suspension were beginning to creak and groan. We piled aboard and pulled out, heading for our next destination. Fiona was back at the wheel, and all of us were in a cheery mood. So far, everything had gone perfectly.

That lasted until we came to a main street. Unlike the deserted side-streets, the main street was Chaos; people were milling around, and vehicles were trying to work their way through the crowds. From what we could gather, the fire had spread into Monmouth itself somehow.

Fiona commented dryly: “People, I think we may have a problem.”

Chapter 10

Ellie’s Heroes

Chapter 10

by Technomad

“Well, there’s only one thing for it.” Homer said. “We have to just drive on through, acting like we’ve every right to be here.” He saw us all looking at him like he’d finally gone ‘round the bend, and shrugged. “Look…we’re in one of their own vehicles, aren’t we? They won’t be expecting us to be mad enough to just go sauntering on in, will they?”

Thinking about it, I had to agree with Homer. Audacity had served us well so far; the enemy had been caught badly off-guard by our advent, not expecting us anywhere nearby. If the fighting had been closer-by, they’d have been harder to take by surprise. Right then, though, the alarm hadn’t apparently even gone up about our little raid on the bank, and we had the advantage of surprise.

The thought was father to the deed. We lurched out into the stream of traffic, merging on in as though we had every legal right to be where we were. Being in an armoured car helped a lot. The cars on the road were mostly in-town models, and not up to disputing the right-of-way with a vehicle that could crawl up and over them and squash them flat if it came down to it.

Traffic police tried to direct things, their whistles shrilling. We got to a traffic roundabout and saw a sign pointing to the “Fairgrounds,” so that was the road we took. Everybody who saw us seemed to be accepting us for one of their own military vehicles on a legitimate errand…the damned fools! I made up my mind to never accept things at face value, particularly in wartime. You never know. After all, if we hadn’t been just sitting there, fat, stupid and happy, the invasion might never have taken place.

We could see the flames that had spread into town. Apparently the fire at the refinery had been far bigger than anything they had anticipated when the refinery was built, and had caught some buildings near the refinery. The wind was blowing from the refinery toward Monmouth, and the fire brigades were just overwhelmed.

Right about then, we acquired some company. A car-ful of what had to be enemy MPs came up behind us. They seemed to be trying to wave us down, and since we were in an area that wasn’t crawling with people, we were more conspicuous than we’d been out in the middle of traffic. We came to a stop, and one of them jumped out, marching up to us with sublime overconfidence.

He began shouting at us in his incomprehensible language. When we didn’t respond in any way, he got angry, strutting up to the side of our armoured car and pounding on it. That did seem to call for a response.

I misdoubt that he expected just what sort of response he had provoked. Before he could react, the hatch nearest him had sprung open, and Homer leaned out, grabbing him and dragging him inside the armoured car. He yelled, but the feel of my pistol muzzle against the side of his head quieted him down instantly. He lay there on the floor, his eyes going wider and wider as he looked from one of us to the next, realising for the first time that he was in the hands of the enemy.

Meanwhile, outside, his friends had been as shocked as he was by his sudden capture. However, they were by no means daunted. They were yelling at us, and one of them drew his pistol and fired at our armoured car. I could hear the bullet going spang off the armour. The damned fool!

“Quick! Stop them before they can send for help!” I snapped, sitting on our captive and forcing him to lie still. Kevin nodded, bringing his machine-gun to bear. Just as they got to their car, where there had to be a radio, he shot it, and them, to pieces with one long burst. “Now, let’s get out of here! This place’ll be hotter than the refinery real soon now!”

The car lurched to life, and in seconds, we were roaring down the street, heading for the edge of town as fast as we could. We were soon passing through residential neighbourhoods, where the alarum had not yet gone up, and we slowed down slightly, since the streets were not as straight as they’d been in Monmouth proper.

Homer and I were interrogating our prisoner. “You…do you speak English?” snarled Homer, as I kept my pistol jammed against him. “Or Greek? Legete-te ellenika?”

“I speak English. Who are you? You aren’t of our people, and the Australians are all locked up out at the fairgrounds!” That last bit earned him a kick. We hadn’t forgotten what Kevin had said about how people were being treated in those places, and we all had friends or kin or both in them.

“Never mind who we are!” Homer’s voice was low and throbbed with rage. “Right now we’re asking the questions, so answer up and keep to the truth if you don’t want a nine-millimeter headache! What’s your name and rank, scumbag?”

“Captain…Captain Pin. I’m a military policeman. Are you going to kill me?”

“We haven’t decided…yet.” Homer smiled. No…he showed his teeth. I’ve seen friendlier smiles on sharks at the aquarium. If he’d smiled at me that way, old friend or no old friend, I’d have been backing away and reaching for a weapon. “You stay quiet and cooperative, and we’ve no reason to kill you…do we?” Wisely, Captain Pin held very still and kept very quiet.

We were outside the town now, and the flaming refinery could be seen even through the rain. The clouds were lit from underneath by the huge flames, and we could see the enemy fire brigades, struggling to contain the fire. I could have hugged myself with sheer glee. Even if this stunt didn’t come off, we’d definitely damaged the enemy’s capabilities to wage war, and taken pressure off our lot!

We came up over a rise, and saw the lights of the fairground-cum-prison up ahead. The alarm about us apparently hadn’t spread. The guards were walking the perimeter as usual, and the towers were manned, but there was no sign of unusual excitement. We pulled up to the front gate, and some guards came over to investigate us.

The looks of pure surprise on their faces as we gunned them down were utterly priceless. An alarm siren began to howl, and Homer, Lee and I jumped out of the armoured car, RPGs and guns at the ready.

Homer took careful aim, and fired his first RPG (outside of training; he’d fired a good few of them while we were being trained in New Zealand) at the nearest guard tower. Straight and true, it flew toward the tower, exploding and tearing the guard station at the top apart. At this, the other guards began shooting at us, and we took cover, firing back at them.

Meanwhile, Fi and Kevin were not exactly being idle. Fi had started the Piranha up, plowing through the gates as though they didn’t even exist, while Kevin used the turret gun to blow up more guard towers. By this time, the people who’d been imprisoned had to know that something unusual was up; they were coming out, staring in shock at us as we slaughtered their tormentors.

Homer blew up another guard tower, then yelled: “You’re being set free! Run for it! Go bush! Grab their guns and run!” The quicker-witted prisoners got the idea quickly, cheering and snatching the downed guards’ rifles before running through the smashed gates, spreading out into the countryside.

Privately, I didn’t think much of their chances. Unlike most of us, they weren’t rurals, and a lot of them had no more idea of how to live in the bush than I did about how to sail a sailboat. How could they? Those poor souls had lived their lives in town, and didn’t have skills that we took for granted. Even Fi, by this time, had a fair amount of bush-craft.

Even so, it was their call to make. Personally, having tasted enemy hospitality once, I’d rather have killed myself than go through it again. What Kevin had told us had only confirmed my resolve on that point. There were things that were worse than death. If anything, I’d been luckier than he was, even if the RNZAF hadn’t cracked us out and I’d ended up facing an enemy firing-squad, or standing on their gallows with their noose about my neck.

The enemy guards were not, to put it bluntly, the best men the other side had. That made sense; no sane enemy commander would waste his top men guarding a prison full of helpless civilians. That would be perfect duty for the chronic foul-ups, the soldiers one wouldn’t want to trust near the front lines or doing anything too complicated. After all, what could go wrong with guarding a prison camp, where nothing exciting ever happened?

Well…something exciting certainly had happened, and the guards were just not up to their tasks. I could see quite a few of them throwing down their rifles and running away in all directions. In an abstract way, even while I was shooting at them, I sympathized. They weren’t trained for anything like this.

The Piranha roared forward, heading for what had to be the Commandant’s offices. The turret swung around, bringing the big main gun to bear, and Kevin fired, and fired, and fired again. The offices exploded, and I could see bodies flying through the air. Kevin had to be having the time of his life. For him, far more than for any of us, this was sweet, sweet revenge.

A hatch opened, and Captain Pin’s body tumbled out in a splash of blood. Someone had shot him, and since he wasn’t any further use to us, he’d been given the old heave-ho. The armoured car went into reverse, and stopped by us.

Fi opened the hatch. “Anybody want a ride?” We all piled in, and headed out of there as soon as we were in and the hatches buttoned up tightly. And not before time…I could hear what had to be helicopters. The weather was foul, but we’d stirred up more than enough trouble that they’d have choppers in the air, searching for us. The bush was the place where we needed to be, and quickly.

END Chapter 10.

Chapter 11

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.)

Chapter 12

Ellie’s Heroes

Chapter 12

by Technomad

 

A few days later, we finally got back to familiar territory. The hunt had been intense; we’d had to hole up by day in deep forest, or in ravines, with cut branches hiding the Piranha and ourselves hidden nearby in case the other side found our getaway car and shot it up. We’d seen helicopters and airplanes going by overhead, and made ourselves very small and still to avoid being seen. I could really feel for rabbits…I figured I knew what it was like for them.

By night, we travelled as hard as we dared. Luckily, the moon was out, and we had ways to see what was ahead, so we didn’t have any nasty accidents, and the Piranha could handle terrain that no other vehicle I’d ever seen could. I agreed with Homer…after the war, I wanted one of these for our station! It’d be dead useful, and I could just see my dad’s face when he saw what it could do. Prying Dad away from it would be a real challenge.

When there wasn’t aerial surveillance overhead, we’d spent some of our days really getting familiar with the Piranha. It was completely amphibious, and we’d found the stopcocks that kept water from flooding it.

“All in all,” Kevin said, echoing my own thoughts, “this is easily the best vehicle we could have had. She holds us and the gold without any problem, and we’ve not found any terrain she can’t handle.”

“Can you imagine driving one of these around Wirrawee?” Homer asked, with an evil grin. “Remember that cop that was always giving me grief? He’d shit himself sideways about the first time he found out about that gun turret.”

When we got close to home, it came time to figure out just what to do with our plunder. We knew we had to hide it; the enemy’d be looking for it, and there were quite a few Australians I wouldn’t turn my back on, if they knew about that much gold being in the vicinity.

We batted ideas around for most of a day. By that time, we were out of the vicinity of Monmouth, and we seemed to have shaken off pursuit. Not that we relaxed; we had the Piranha hidden in an old barn on an outlying station, one that the enemy didn’t seem to be paying much attention to. We were up in the loft, where we could see out in all directions. Any enemy patrols we saw were going to get a very unpleasant, fatal surprise.

“We could just take the Piranha to the edge of Hell, and shove it over the cliff. That way, it’ll be pretty much out of sight, and we can cut brush and branches to hide it once it’s at the bottom,” said Fi.

“And think of the almighty crash it would make!” Homer’s eyes lit up.

I found I really didn’t like treating our faithful armoured car that way. It had served us well and faithfully, and just tipping it off a cliff struck me as, somehow, ungrateful. I know, it made no sense…but that was how I felt. I put my mind to work, and came up with another idea.

“How ‘bout we take the Piranha onto my station, and sink it in the deep pond at the back of our property?” I asked. “The pond’s more than deep enough to hide it, even from the air. Dad sounded it once, and said it was twenty feet deep, most places. I’ve been skinny-dipping there many times, and there’s plenty of room for the Piranha.”

“Skinny-dipping? And you didn’t invite us?” Homer grinned at me, and I knew what he was thinking. Men really only do think about one thing.

“Mind out of the gutter, Homer…if that’s possible,” Fi said, rather sharply, I thought. He hadn’t said anything, but I knew what he was thinking. Lee hadn’t said anything; he was lying there with his eyes closed. The poor guy had been driving all night, and he was knackered…but the way he smiled told me that he didn’t mind the idea of joining me for a skinny-dip. I didn’t mind that idea, myself…but we had no time nor privacy for such things. War really is all about sacrifice.

“Your place is about ten kilometers from here,” Kevin commented, looking at a map, “and we should be able to get onto your property without alerting whoever’s taken over your house.” At the thought of others…of invaders…usurping our house, I felt my lips ripple in a silent snarl. One fine night, I intended to pay those people a visit, and explain to them just how I felt. Preferably with an axe.

“The pond’s a good longish ways back away from the house. This is do-able, but I think we should wait till the next rainy night to try it,” I concluded. “Anybody got any different ideas?”

Nobody did, and we settled down to wait the day out.

OOO

A couple of days later, we got the weather we’d been wanting. The rest-up in the barn had been good for us; all that travelling had taken a lot more out of us than we’d realised. We’d tucked into the food we’d brought along, and I realised for the first time how hungry I’d been. All that excitement had been great fun, in its own scary way, but there hadn’t been much time for eating.

We rejoiced to see the clouds rolling in toward evening, and a few hours later, when we rolled on out, the rain was coming down; not hard enough to really hinder us, but enough to make aerial surveillance difficult or impossible. We didn’t want to be tracked. This far out of town, the chance of running across an enemy foot patrol, or one on motorbikes or in lorries, was not high. For some reason, the enemy tended to stick close to Wirrawee itself, not coming out into the country at night if they didn’t absolutely have to. I can’t imagine why…

There were some fences between where we were and the pond, but we made short work of those with the Piranha. The big soft tires didn’t leave much trail, and I hoped that nobody’d put two-and-two together. At least the area around the pond itself was mostly all rock, so people wouldn’t see tracks to the pond, and none going away.

When we got to the pond, we all got out, save only Homer. He’d insisted on being the one to do the honours.

“This is a man’s job, Ellie,” he’d said. As he’d known would happen, I snarled at him. I was ready to tear his head off…until I saw his grin. He’d planned to get my goat, and once again, he’d succeeded. Was I that easy to predict? I guess I must have been.

Homer drove the Piranha into the pond, and it drifted out toward the centre. I felt rather sad, as though I were betraying a good friend, and firmly sat on the feeling. It was just a stupid armoured car, and an enemy armoured car at that! Beside me, Fi sniffled softly, and I put my arm around her shoulder to comfort her.

“Don’t worry, Fi,” I whispered. “Homer may act like a clown, but he’s really quite competent. He’ll be all right.”

“I’m just a little sad to see the last of the Piranha,” she whispered back. “It’s been good to have. Riding along in it, I felt invincible, like nothing could stand in my way.”

Out in the middle of the pond, the Piranha suddenly began settling, sinking quickly. I saw Homer pop out of one of the topside hatches, and let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. Homer drives me crazy, but it would have broken my heart to lose him. As the car started its dive to the bottom of the pond, weighed down by its load of gold, Homer dove off the top and swam toward us. When he clambered out onto the shore, Fi flitted down and gave him a big kiss and hug, offering him a towel she’d stolen somewhere. Lee put his arm around my shoulders.

“Well, that’s our futures settled,” Lee commented. “All we have to do is survive till the end of the war, and we’ll all be rich.” He gave me a smile. “I don’t know about you, but I do think we’ve got this coming. We haven’t been offered a penny of pay, so we took our pay from the enemy.”

“Spoils of war,” Kevin agreed. “It might not fit the rules, but then again, when have we worried too much about those?”

Once Homer was dried off and re-dressed…I noticed Fi was happy to help him changing his clothes, and realised that more had been going on between those two than I’d known about…we headed back home. Back to our nice, safe tents in Hell.

OOO

A few days after we got back into Hell, we decided it was time to check in with New Zealand. Once we got the radio out and lugged it up to the top of Tailor’s Stitch, it was fairly easy to get through to Auckland. Enemy interference wasn’t as bad as it had been for some reason.

Colonel Finley was excited to hear from us. “Where have you lot been?” he asked. “We’ve tried and tried to get through to you! We thought you’d been captured again, or killed!”

“No,” Lee answered; we’d decided to let him be our spokesman. “We’re still free, and quite well, thanks for asking. Has anything interesting happened since we spoke last? How is Nigel?”

“Your friend is well, and eager for news of you. You made quite an impression on him, you know. There’s been an almighty uproar over by Monmouth. Would you lot know anything about it?”

“Well…” Lee winked at me, and I suppressed an urge to giggle…”we might. Wasn’t there a fire there?”

“A big refinery fire, and apparently, from what the enemy’s broadcasting that we can decode, a mutiny by some of their own soldiers. They seem to have robbed a bank and raised all sorts of hell before taking to the bush. There’s also been a mass escape from the internment camp they’d set up at the Monmouth Fairgrounds.”

“That’s wonderful news!” I leaned over to give Lee a kiss, as Fi did the same for Homer. Poor Kevin had nobody to kiss him, but he gave a “right on!” sign.

Colonel Finley paused for a second. If I had thought he was capable of such a thing, I’d have thought he was embarrassed. “I have to ask this…did your lot have anything to do with that?”

“Us? How could you associate us with such devilry?” Lee’s voice dripped innocence. “We might have had a little to do with that fire…it was ANZAC day, and we thought a nice big bonfire was just the way to celebrate.”

“I thought so! That op, at least, had your fingerprints all over it! You lot ought to get medals for it, if you weren’t already in line for some for the Cobbler’s Bay strike!”

“How are the enemy reacting?” That was Fi. She was probably the cleverest of us, and she cut through the nonsense. As long as the war went on, the enemy were not something we could ever leave out of our calculations.

“They seem very confused. Apparently a good bit of Monmouth’s been burnt down, and quite a few of their soldiers are missing; they don’t know whether they died in the fires, or deserted with the loot from the bank.”

That was what we wanted to know. We were notorious enough on the other side as it was; I’d seen “Wanted” posters with our faces on, and thanks to that damned traitor Major Harvey, the enemy knew just what names went with which faces. Our false identifications were not much protection, and if the enemy could link us with what they could call “common crimes,” they’d have yet another excuse to execute us if we were captured. Homer and I were already under sentence of death, but the others weren’t…yet.

A few nights later, it was bright and starry, and the others were resting up in Hell. I made some sort of excuse, and went up Tailor’s Stitch…by this time, I could have done it blindfold…and headed toward my home.

Standing on a ridge where I could see the main house, I could see lights on, and people moving about. I smiled to myself. It didn’t feel like a nice smile. They were more than overdue for a visit from the rightful daughter of the house and her friends.

They thought they were so safe…that nothing could threaten them. They would have never believed that any danger was near. And yet, from well within eyeshot of “their” house, I watched them with envious, hating eyes, studying their movements as though I were studying the creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. They never considered that anything could go wrong. And yet, so far away and yet so close, I drew my plans against them.

THE END