The Dead of Night by John Marsden Read Free Book Online Page B

making a comment that sounded like English, but pitched too low for us to make out the words. After what Nell had said I had the worst suspicions of what the girl was doing, and I raged against her, there in the darkness.
    One soldier walked past our little hidey-hole to go to the toilet, but we couldn't tell where the other one was, so we dared not move. That was at 3.45 am. He returned a few minutes later, and there was no other movement till 4.20, when the other one made the same trip to the toilet. Seconds later, a tall girl maybe about nineteen appeared at our kitchen door and whispered
into the darkness, facing towards us, "Quick, the other one's asleep. But don't make any noise." We were startled, wondering for a moment if she could possibly be talking to us. Then we realised that she must be. We rose and slipped around the food trolleys towards the door. The girl had already gone. Who was she? How did she know we were there? I still don't know the answers to those questions, but whoever she was, and whatever else she might have been doing, I know we owe her something special.

Four
    Homer was quite impressed to hear that we were so well-known, so notorious. "Let's show them we're still in business," he said, smiling his slowest, most dangerous smile.
    I shivered slightly. Despite my murderous impulse in the Hospital I still couldn't get used to exposing myself to danger, to standing up and waving at death the way Homer seemed to enjoy. Did he enjoy it? I remembered how he'd said courage was a state of mind; you had to think brave, so I tried to do that. It actually worked, a bit. I found myself joining in the conversation like I was talking about a game of Netball or a Chem test. We talked about targets, tactics, risks, ideas. It took us a day and a half, but it was quite strange. In all that time we didn't have a single argument. No one shouted or even
raised their voices. But there weren't many jokes either. It was something to do with the description Lee and I had given them of Corrie, and the news we'd had of Kevin; something to do with the news of the way people held at the Showground were starting to crumble; and especially to do with a new feeling in us: that as some of the few people free we should have done more already. We had a responsibility to do more now.

    So we'd become deadly serious. And I mean deadly.
    We decided that Wirrawee should not be our main target. Much as we loved Wirrawee, much as it was the centre of our lives, we had to recognise that the fate of the country wasn't going to depend on our little town. To hit the enemy hard we had to find a more important part of their operations, and that meant going back to the highway from Cobbler's Bay. The last time we'd been there it had been lousy with convoys; Cobbler's Bay was obviously a major landing place for them, and trucks were flowing from there to the major battlefields. Blowing up the bridge must have complicated their lives, as it would have caused them a big detour. But it wasn't going to lose them the war.
    So we took another long walk out into the countryside. We left Wirrawee at 2.30 am, when we were at our coldest and most tired, and trudged along, going through the routines that we now followed for self-protection: travelling in pairs, checking each intersection, keeping silent through the streets of the town. We went via the bridge, which none of us had seen since the big night of the petrol party. I walked with Fi this time, as I needed a break from Lee, and although I was still very depressed after seeing how ill Corrie was, I did
cheer up a bit when I got to the bridge and saw the damage we'd done. Basically it had burnt to the ground. Or to the river, to be more accurate. It had been an old wooden thing, and after the explosion it must have burnt so fiercely that no one was able to do much about it. There were just a few blackened pillars sticking out of the water and the mud, and no other evidence that there'd been a