But stubbornly, like an idiot, I kept looking.

Then another whisper from Corrie: ‘Over here’.

Kevin and I converged on it at the same time. Just as we did I saw a torch flash for a moment, somewhere near the front verandah. ‘They’re coming,’ I said. ‘Quick. Help me push it. But quietly.’

We got it on one side of the driveway, near the brick wall of Mrs Alexander’s studio.

‘What are the hammer and chisel for?’ Kevin whispered urgently.

‘To make a hole in the petrol tank,’ I said. ‘But now I think it’ll make too much noise, doing it.’

‘Why do you need a hole?’ he asked. ‘Why not just unscrew the lid?’

I just kept right on feeling stupid. Later I realised I was even more stupid again, because a hammer and chisel would have caused a spark that would have blown us all up.

Kevin had worked out what I wanted and he unscrewed the cap.

‘We’ll need to be behind the wall,’ I whispered. ‘And we need a trail of petrol to it.’ He nodded and pulled off his T-shirt, pushing it into the tank to soak it. Then he sat the cap back on the tank and used his shirt to lay the trail of liquid to the wall. We only had seconds left. We could hear the crunch of gravel under soft menacing feet, and an occasional muttered comment. I heard one male voice and one female. The torch flashed again, right at the corner of the drive.

Kevin’s voice breathed in my ear. ‘We need to make sure they’re all together.’

I nodded. I’d just realised the same problem. I could see two dark figures but I assumed we were being hunted by the three patrolling sentries we’d seen before. Kevin confirmed it, breathing in my ear again, ‘I saw three of them in the road’.

I nodded again, then took a deep breath and let out a short weak moan of pain. The effect on the two soldiers was dramatic. They turned towards us like they had antennae. I gave a little gasp and a sob. One of the soldiers, the male, called out, urgently, in a language I didn’t recognise, and a moment later the third soldier came through the line of trees and joined the first two. They talked for a moment, gesturing in our direction. They must have known by then that we weren’t armed: we would have surely let off a few shots by now if we had been. They spread out a little though, and came walking slowly towards us. I waited and waited, till they were about three metres from the mower. The small squat dark shape sat there, as if demanding that they notice it. For the first time I saw their faces; then I struck the match.

It didn’t light.

My hand, which had been very steady till then, got the shakes. I thought, ‘We’re about to die, just because I couldn’t light a match’. It seemed unfair, almost ridiculous. I tried again, but was shaking too much. The soldiers were almost past the mower. Kevin grabbed my wrist. ‘Do it.’ he mouthed fiercely in my ear. The soldiers seemed to have heard Kevin, from the way their eager faces turned in our direction again. I struck the match for the third time, almost sure that there wouldn’t be enough sulphur left to ignite. But it lit, making a harsh little noise, and I threw it to the ground. I threw it too fast; I don’t know how it didn’t go out. It should have, and it almost did For a moment it died to a small dot of light and again I thought ‘We’re dead, and it’s all my fault’. Then the petrol caught, with a quiet quick whoosh.

The flames ran along the line of petrol in fits and starts, like a stuttering snake, but very fast. The soldiers saw it, of course. They turned, looked, seemed to flinch. But in their surprise they were too slow to move, just as I would have been. One lifted an arm, as if to point. Another leaned backwards, almost in slow motion. That’s the last image I have of them, because then Kevin pulled me back, behind the brick wall, and an instant later the mower became an exploding bomb. The night seemed to erupt. The wall swayed and shook, and then settled again. A small orange fireball ripped up into the darkness, with little tracer bullets of fire shooting away from it. The noise was shrill and loud and frightening. It hurt my ears. I could see bits of shrapnel hurtling into the trees and I heard and felt a number of bits thud into the wall behind which we were hiding. Then Kevin was tugging at me, saying, ‘Run, run’.

At the same time the screams began from the other side of the wall.

We ran through the fruit trees and down the slope at an angle, past the chook shed, reaching Mrs Alexander’s front fence at the corner where it met the next property. The screams behind us were ripping the night apart. I hoped that the faster and further we ran the quicker the screams would fade, but that didn’t seem to be happening. I didn’t know if I was hearing them only with my ears or in my mind as well.

‘There’s just time,’ Corrie panted, from behind me. It took me a minute to realise what she meant: time to meet the others.

‘We can go straight there,’ Kevin called.

‘How’s your leg Corrie?’ I asked, trying unsuccessfully to return to the normal world.

‘OK,’ she answered.

We saw headlights coming and ducked into a garden as a truck went past at high speed. It was a tray truck from Wirrawee Hardware, but with soldiers in the back instead of garden tools. Only two soldiers though.

We ran on, reaching Warrigle Street, then racing up the Mathers’ steep drive, taking no precautions at all. We were struggling for breath now. My legs felt old and slow. They were really hurting. I stopped and waited for Corrie, then we walked on together, holding hands. We couldn’t do any more, go any faster, or fight anyone else.

Homer and Fi were there, surrounded by bikes, a full set of seven now. Our dinking days were over, but ironically, just when we had enough bikes, there were only five of us to ride them. There was no sign of Lee and Robyn. It was 3.35, and from the hill we could see other vehicles leaving the Showground, all heading for Racecourse Road. One of them was the Wirrawee ambulance. We couldn’t wait any longer. With only a few tired mumbled words between us – mainly to find out that Fi’s house too had been empty – we mounted the cold bikes and pedalled down the hill. I don’t know about the others but I felt as though I was going round and round on the spot. I stood and made my legs go harder and faster. As we warmed up we all started to accelerate. It seemed incredible that we could find any more energy but for me the simple need to keep up with the others, not to be left behind, forced me to increase my rate. By the time we passed the ‘Welcome to Wirrawee’ sign we were going like bats out of Hell.

Chapter Eight

We arrived at Corrie’s place a few minutes before dawn. The sky was just starting to lighten. It had been a horrible ride. At every tree I promised myself that we were nearly at the turnoff, but I doubt if we were even half way there when I started promising that. I had pain in every part of me, first in the legs, but then in the chest, then the back, the arms, the throat, the mouth. I burned, I felt sick, I ached. My head got lower and lower, until I was following the back wheel of whoever was in front of me, Corrie I think. My mind was singing a tired chorus of a meaningless song:

‘I look at your picture and what do I see?

The face of an angel looking back at me ...’

I must have sung that a thousand times. It went round and round in my head like the wheels of the bicycle until I could have screamed in frustration, but nothing would make it go away. I didn’t want to think about what had happened at Mrs Alexander’s, or the fate of the three soldiers who had chased us, or what might have happened to Lee and Robyn, so it seemed I had no choice but to sing to myself: