The Night Is for Hunting: Tomorrow by John Marsden

Author:John Marsden [Marsden, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Juvenile Fiction, General
ISBN: 9781742624525
Google: TnH0wdxLjoEC
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia
Published: 2010-09-01T07:55:21.629905+00:00

Chapter Eight

The truth was that we couldn’t do much about the enemy visitors. For one thing, we still didn’t know a lot about them. They could have been a patrol searching for us. They could have been a patrol having a general look around the mountains, making a routine inspection. They could have been a group of off-duty soldiers taking a stroll to admire the beautiful scenery. All three theories were equally possible. But if there was one thing that made me lean towards the first theory it was my fear of the results of our airfield attack. That attack took us out of the nuisance category and put us into the category of major dangers, who must be caught and eliminated. At all costs. That’s the way they’d be thinking. ‘If they’re there, find them. No matter what it takes, kill them.’

If they also connected us with the hit on Cobbler’s Bay and the breakout from Stratton Prison we were lucky they hadn’t nuked half the country in their determination to get us.

Our only real hope, in the long term, was that they’d think we’d gone away. A long way away. Like, to Alaska.

Preferably Northern Alaska.

I didn’t want to have to put sentries on Tailor’s Stitch every day and night. The cost to us would have been too great. Hell was where we came to rest and recover. If we needed one of the five on duty all the time there’d be no real rest for anyone.

Our biggest advantage was the geography of Hell itself. It was such a wild place, a casserole of trees and rocks. From above, standing on Tailor’s Stitch, you could see only the tops of the trees, and a glimpse of huge boulders. I had lived all my life on the other side of Tailor’s Stitch – the position of our farm made us the closest humans to Hell – and I had never heard of anyone finding their way into it. Except for the vague rumours of the Hermit, a hundred or so years before. Certainly no-one I knew had found the route. We’d fluked it.

So the chance of soldiers, men and women unused to the bush, making the same lucky discovery were pretty thin. Nevertheless we weren’t going to take the risk lightly. When Lee and I got back to the others we had an emergency meeting. We agreed to double and triple check our security. We covered the first two or three hundred metres of the track from Wombegonoo with bark and dead leaves, to make it look like an old animal path. We put a lot more camouflage over our tents and cooking area, so that planes or helicopters would be even less likely to see our campsite. When we had a cooking fire one of the kids got the job of standing over it with a piece of stiff bark, fanning the smoke away. I knew smoke could be visible for a couple of kilometres, but flames can only be seen from a few hundred metres.

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