John Marsden - Darkness Be My Friend (The Tomorrow Series #4)

DARKNESS, BE MY FRIEND

Chapter One

I didnt want to go back.

That sounds pretty casual, doesnt it? Like saying, I dont want to go to the movie, I think Ill give that party the flick, I dont feel like it today.

Just one of those comments you make.

But the truth is, I felt so sick at the thought of going back that my insides liquefied. I felt like my guts would pour out of me until my stomach caved in. I could even picture it: my ribs touching my backbone.

But my insides didnt pour out. After they told us what they wanted Id go and sit on the dunny, but nothing happened. Sitting there holding myself, wondering if Id ever feel good again.

And it was because my life was at stake. My life. I thought there should be a long time to think about that, a lot of careful thinking, a lot of discussion. Everyone giving their opinions, heaps of counselling and stuff, then me going away and spending weeks weighing up the options.

But it wasnt like that. They pretended there was a choice, but they were just, you know, doing it to make me feel good. And OK, maybe the truth is there couldnt be a choice, because the whole thing was too important. But I didnt want to know about that. I wanted to scream at them, Listen to me, will you! I dont care about your big plans, I just want to hide under the bed and wait until the wars over. All right? Thats all I want. End of story.

And I wanted someone, anyone, to acknowledge that I was being asked to put my life on the line. That what they wanted me to do was enormous, gigantic, ginormous.

Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;

But young men think it is, and we were young.

Thats from a poem a World War One guy wrote. A teacher in Dunedin gave it to me, and OK, Im a young woman not a young man, but I still dont want to lose my life. I dont know much about anything but I do know that.

So, there I was, wanting weeks to think, to concentrate, to feel. To get used to the idea of going back. To get ready.

Wanting weeks and getting days. Five days to be exact. Five days between Colonel Finley asking us, and our arriving at the airfield.

If anything, I guess I felt angry. Cheated. They were treating me and my life like I was a plastic toy. Pick it up, play with it a moment, chuck it aside. Plenty more where that came from.

Colonel Finley always talked to us like we were soldiers under his command. Like there was no difference between us and his troops. But they had signed up to take risks and fight wars and shoot people. We hadnt! Seemed like only yesterday that wed needed a lollipop lady before we could even cross the road outside school. And yes, I know, people have told me a thousand times how in some countries kids are in the army when theyre eleven years old, but I didnt care about that.

Thats not how we do it, I wanted to shout at them. Were different.

That was all that mattered to me.

Only Fi seemed to understand how I felt. Up to a point, anyway. I couldnt help thinking that she didnt see it quite the way I did. That surprised me, Ive got to admit. I didnt want to look like a wimp, compared to the others. I wanted to be stronger than everyone. Fi had her own strengths; I knew that, of course, but I liked to think that I was more of a leader than her. Yet here she was saying pretty well straightaway that shed go, while I sat there in shock, dithering, wanting to go off for a few years and think about it.

I was actually angry at her, that was the crazy thing.

Or maybe not so crazy. After all, I was angry at everyone. Might as well include her.

It started when wed been in New Zealand almost five months. Wed escaped from a nightmare, or we thought we had. The truth is, theres no escape from some nightmares. This one followed us across the Tasman. Theyd air-lifted us out of our own country after it was invaded. Wed arrived in New Zealand burnt and injured and shocked, with broken bones, and scars inside and out. Wed lost contact with our families, wed seen friends die, wed caused other people to die by our own deliberate actions.

We were just typical survivors of war, I guess.

And then it all started again.

It was the end of spring, moving into summer. The bushfire season. And thats appropriate because the whole thing began a bit like a bushfire. You know how it is. First you hear warnings on the radio, then you hear a rustling in the distance, like bark in a breeze, then theres white smoke, could be clouds, maybe not, cant be sure, but at last comes the smell, the never-could-be-mistaken smell of burning.

And suddenly its on you. Suddenly there are trees exploding a hundred metres from the house and the heats like youve opened an oven door and sat in front of it and theres the sound of roaring wind and in among the grey and white smoke you see the wild wicked flames dancing.

For us the first hint, the first warning, was a rumour going round the refugees that some of them would be dropped back into occupied areas. Either with Kiwi troops or, in some cases, on their own. Either to carry out a particular job, or to be guerillas, doing the sort of stuff wed done around Wirrawee and Cobblers Bay.

I must be dumb, because I didnt think theyd ask us. It never crossed my mind. Lee heard about it first. Bet were on their shopping list, he said. But I didnt take any notice: I think I was reading at the time. Emma, as I recall.

Ive got to keep on trying to be honest here, because I have been, ever since I started writing stuff down, so Id better say that the reason I thought they wouldnt ask us is that wed done so much already. God, hadnt we done enough? Hadnt we gone for it, time and time again? Hadnt we blown up a ship and wrecked Cobblers Bay and killed a general in Wirrawee? Hadnt we had Lee shot in the calf and the other three? (I cant even say their names right now.) And hadnt we stared death right in the face and felt its cold fingers tightening its grip on the backs of our necks? What would satisfy them? Did we all have to die before theyd say, OK, thatll do, you can have the rest of the war off.?

How much did we have to do?

It gets me so upset thinking about it.

I know theres no logic in this. I know when theres a war on they cant just say, Look, well carry on without you guys for a while, you give it a miss for a year or two.

But somewhere along the line, somewhere way back in childhood, wed been taught that life is actually fair, that you get out of it what you put in, that if you want something badly enough you can achieve it.

Thats garbage. I know that now.

Suddenly at the time in my life when I most wanted things to be fair, suddenly no one was mentioning the word any more. It wasnt on our spelling list; there was no Pictionary card for it; the Macquarie went straight from faint to fairy.

The New Zealanders had been good to us before this, Ive got to admit. Of course that made it even harder to refuse Colonel Finley. But yes, theyd been good to us. Right from the start theyd arranged a lot of counselling and stuff. We all ended up getting that, even Homer and Lee who once upon a time wouldnt have gone to a shrink if youd paid them. The psychologist they gave me, Andrea, I got really close to her. She became like a second mum.

And we did actually have holidays and everything. Im not kidding, we were like heroes. Anything we asked for, they gave us. Fi and I made a sort of game of it for a few weeks, asking for everything we could think of. Then suddenly I got sick of that game.

But we went to the South Island, and skied the Remarkables, and we flew to Milford Sound and drove out through a tunnel, and we checked out Mt Cook, then followed the east coast down and went across to Invercargill.

Andrea said I was in denial, rushing around like a maniac because I didnt want to look at the things that had happened to us. Not that she said like a maniac. It wouldnt be very tactful for a shrink to say that.