Free Tomorrow When The War Began by John Marsden Page B

not built for sprinting, and he lumbered along like a
draft horse, but for once we couldn’t keep up with him. Except
Robyn, who was always fit. After a while I couldn’t see them ahead
of us, but I could hear Kevin’s heavy panting coming out of the
darkness. As we grew closer to the house Lee called, ‘Be careful
when you get there Kev’, but he got no reply.
    He beat us there by two or three minutes I’d
say, he and Robyn. But there wasn’t much point. His house was the
same as Homer’s and mine. Three dead working dogs on chains, a dead
cockatoo in a cage on the verandah, two dead poddy lambs by the
verandah steps. But his old pet corgi had been locked in the house,
with a bucket of food and a bucket of water in the laundry. She was
alive but she’d chosen one of the bedrooms for a toilet, so the
house smelt pretty foul. She was delirious with joy to see Kevin;
when we got there she was still leaping at his face, crying
pitifully, doing excited midair stunts and wetting herself with
excitement.
    Corrie, grim-faced, went past me with a mop
and a handful of rags. I’d noticed when I’d stayed with Corrie that
if things got too emotional she’d start cleaning up. It was a
useful habit she had.
    We had another quick conference. There seemed
to be so many problems and so many choices. Robyn had the bright
idea that bicycles were quick and silent – the perfect transport.
Kevin had two little brothers, so we scored three bikes from their
shed. Homer asked if we knew anyone who wouldn’t have gone to the
Show; he’d realised that finding someone who’d stayed home that day
might be the solution to the whole mystery. Lee said he didn’t
think his parents would have gone: his sisters and brothers usually
went, but not his parents. Kevin said he wanted to bring the corgi,
Flip, along with us. He couldn’t bear to leave her alone again
after what she’d been through.
    This was a tough one. We all felt sympathetic
to the dog, who seemed to be attached to Kevin’s heels by a metre
of invisible lead, but we were starting to get more and more
conscious of our own safety. We finally agreed to take her with us
to Corrie’s, and make another decision depending on what we found
there.
    ‘But Kevin,’ warned Lee, ‘we might have to
make some ugly choices.’
    Kevin just nodded. He knew.
    Robyn, who’d thought of the bikes, ended up
jogging most of the way to Corrie’s. We could only get two on a
bike, and she said she needed the exercise. Homer dinked Kevin, who
nursed Flip in his arms. The little corgi spent the whole trip
licking his face in an ecstasy of love and gratitude. It would have
been funny, if we’d had any emotional energy left to laugh.
    The image I’ll always remember from Corrie’s
place is of Corrie standing alone in the middle of the sitting
room, tears streaming down her face. Then Kevin came in from
checking the bedrooms, saw her, and moving quickly to her took her
in his arms and held her close. They just stood there for quite a
few minutes. I liked Kevin a lot for that.
    Under a lot of pressure from Robyn we agreed
to try to eat before doing any more. She had been so logical all
evening, and she was still being logical, even though it was her
house that we would head for next. So she and I and Homer made
sandwiches with stale bread and salami, and lettuce and tomatoes
from Mrs Mackenzie’s famous vegetable garden. We made tea and
coffee too, using long-life milk and a little solid-fuel camping
stove. It was hard to force the food down our dry and choked-up
throats, but we nagged and nagged until everyone had eaten at least
one sandwich, and it did make a difference to our energy and
morale.
    We decided as we ate that we would go to
Robyn’s, but we knew that we were heading into a whole new set of
problems. Out here in the country, where most of us lived, where
the air was free and the paddocks wide and empty, we had still been
moving fairly confidently. Danger just didn’t seem real. We