Tomorrow 7 - The Other Side Of Dawn Read Online Free PDF Page A

and turning around, and talking nonstop in his own language. I don’t know what he was saying. Half the time he sounded like he was begging, half the time like he was really angry. He’d dragged himself up over the edge of the hole but had stopped trying to get any further. He was in too much pain. Pain’s like that. No matter where it is on your body it still gets you in the gut.
    None of us could be bothered with him. God I can’t believe how brutal we were getting, how callous. Homer just said: ‘Well, he isn’t going to give us any more trouble for a while.’ Lee and Homer started off again but I stopped them and said: ‘Look, hold the phone a sec, I think we’d better have someone go up the top, make sure there’re no more soldiers, and that Kevin’s OK.’
    They stood there taking that in, thinking about it, then Lee said: ‘Yeah, you’re right, I’ll go.’
    ‘What about Ryan?’ Homer asked.
    ‘He’ll have to wait.’
    It was getting so confusing, people everywhere, but we had to stay calm. We were all ready to faint with weariness, but somehow the energy had to be found, to keep on keeping on. We agreed with Lee on a signal, his green T-shirt tied to a tree on Wombegonoo if things were under control, Homer’s brown one if there was trouble. Homer pulled off his shirt with a primeval grunt and gave it to Lee who slipped away up the track, a phantom of the bush.
    Watching him go, I felt that there was nothing out there that he couldn’t handle, no enemy too smart or too strong for him. I had at last learned to trust him again, completely.

Chapter Three
     
     
    Homer said: ‘Let’s take it slow and steady along the side of the ridge and watch out for the slightest sign of trouble.’
    We were all packing it pretty heavily. Fi had been beside herself when she heard the gunshots, and the kids were hysterical with fear. Even Gavin was the most nervous I’d ever seen him. When we went past the guy with the wrecked leg they stared at him like he had three heads and a bright-blue bum.
    Fifty metres up the track we met Kevin and Lee, who were bringing the prisoner down into Hell. Lee had suggested that the two soldiers should be together, so they could help each other, but I don’t think this woman was going to be much help to anyone. She looked off her head. It was like she wasn’t seeing anything. Her eyes didn’t focus on us. She had slobber drooling out of her mouth, and she was talking to herself in this strange singsong voice. She was young and strong, but being caught by us might have done something funny to her mind. Or maybe she was like that normally. Maybe she was on drugs, I don’t know.
    I went back with Lee and we tied her to a tree, with constrictor knots. I had to harden my mind to do it, because there was always the chance that she wouldn’t get out of them and I kept having images of her skeleton still tied to the tree, years after she’d starved to death. But I honestly believed that in a few hours she’d get them undone. That was all the time we’d need. She ranted and raved while we were doing it, and she was certainly aware of us then, because she hissed and growled at me like a feral cat in a corner. What with that and the bloke with the crook leg, moaning and crying and begging, it was an ugly scene all round, and I wasn’t too unhappy about leaving them there and hurrying up to the top with the others.
    No sooner had we got there, puffing and panting, than Gavin paid his way again. He was taking a leak against a tree trunk, half-a-dozen metres off the track. Just as he finished, he started waving urgently to us. A glint of metal, further in the bush, had caught his eye.
    We ran in there. In a neat circle were the soldiers’ packs, along with two radio sets. There was no time to open anything. We carried the lot to a cliff and dropped them into the thickest patch of undergrowth we could see where they should be safe for a few hundred years.
    We tiptoed along Tailor’s