Tomorrow 7 - The Other Side Of Dawn Read Free

taking so long, even in the worst circumstances. The trouble was I hadn’t had any real sleep since Colonel Finley told us we were getting a visitor. Not much more than twenty-four hours ago, but it felt like a fortnight. I knew every tree, every pothole, every bend of that track, but I could swear someone had taken the road and stretched it out like a piece of chewie, till it was a hundred per cent longer.
    The light gradually got grey rather than black, then that sort of fuzzy grey before dawn. Shapes started to appear. Suddenly I could see trees a hundred metres up the track. We were nearly at the top, thank God. Everyone had stopped talking. I guess we were all tired, and a bit puffed by the last steep bit of the climb. I glanced at the crest that we were toiling towards. I felt like I was watching a black and white movie. And there were new actors in this movie. A line of them, three, then four, then five.
    I was so tired that for a moment I didn’t believe what I was seeing. They were like a line of ghost soldiers. I stood still, in shock. My body tingled and burned. Ahead of me Kevin had seen them, and he stopped too. I guess that’s what convinced me they were real. Homer and Lee and Ryan plodded on with heads down. To my amazement, the soldiers on the ridge were still walking past in profile. Then Homer, now at the front of our group, suddenly saw them. He stopped like he’d been snap-frozen. That at last made the other two realise something was wrong, and they froze too.
    The five of us were perfect targets. If the patrol went into attack mode we’d have to dive off into the bushes and hope we could find cover. But incredibly, the soldiers just kept walking. They looked pretty tired themselves. They were actually better targets than us, lined across the horizon like ducks in the shooting gallery at the Wirrawee Show. Maybe they’d been out all night too.
    The last one moved across my line of vision and was gone. The bush was still and peaceful as though no humans had ever trodden through it.
    We stared at each other in shock, then, without anyone needing to suggest it, we sidled like spirits into a patch of scrub on our left. We sneaked in about twenty metres, then gathered in a group. We were all trembling a bit I think. It had been so unexpected. There was just nowhere safe for us any more.
    The first thing that was obvious was Ryan’s anger. I didn’t blame him. He’d put his life in our hands and almost lost it. I suppose we’d been too tired, not thinking things through enough. But in the middle of the night, so far from anywhere, with one patrol dead and buried just hours ago, and us certain no-one would come looking for them for days, we’d convinced ourselves that we’d be OK.
    I always had the feeling that the New Zealanders weren’t sure that we really knew what we were doing. I just got the sense from talking to them that they thought we were a bunch of kids who’d done some crazy, wacky stuff and by a few lucky flukes got away with it. The first time I felt Colonel Finley finally, really, completely took us seriously was when we told him over the radio that we’d wiped out an entire patrol of enemy soldiers without getting a scratch. And now, such a short time later, it looked like we’d blown our reputation again. It was very aggravating.
    Ryan said to all of us, ‘Well, that was a great effort’, then he said to me: ‘Good call, Ellie.’
    Steam was coming out of every opening in his body – well, the visible ones anyway. He was flurried and flustered now. First he’d gone off at Homer and Lee for chucking mud, now his blood pressure was off the scale a second time. I was scared his moustache would catch fire.
    It was funny having an argument in whispers, but we didn’t have much choice. And for once I didn’t buckle at this attack. I’d always struggled to cope with these army guys. Major Harvey and even Colonel Finley sometimes too. But now I looked Ryan straight in the eye and