FRIDAY, 5.05 P.M.
Mike crept down the path along the side of the house.
On the other side of the fence he could hear the Loosley’s chooks, chipping and chupping and pecking at the orange peel and potato peelings in their run. They’d be eyeing the perches, thought Mike, getting ready for the who-gets-the-highest-perch chook discussion before they went to bed. Far off he could hear the mutter of a TV set, but it was too faint to tell if it came from the Loosley’s or further up the street.
It all seemed ordinary. If this was a movie, thought Mike, it wouldn’t be like this. There’d be that ‘da de da dead’ style of really suspenseful music in the background, not the sound of some advertisement for cereal. And the hero wouldn’t have crept along a fence among the dog droppings either.
There’d have been … what? A car chase probably, with lots of swerves and bangs. Loser would have stolen a car and raced off out of town and Mike would have grabbed one of the SES vehicles … Mr Johnstone’s old Mercedes maybe … and zoomed off after him. There’d have been speed and screeching tyres and you’d feel like laughing with the excitement of it all …
Not like this. Not like this at all. The hero in the movie wouldn’t have felt his mind jammed with fear for his friends in hospital, his friends left behind (had anyone else fallen sick while he was away, he wondered).
Fear for himself, too.
Jazz was right, he thought. It didn’t matter in movies how many people were killed, as long as the hero and heroine were safe at the end. The killing of bystanders just added to the excitement. But in real life no one was just a bystander. They were people that you knew.
What was Mr Loosley doing, wondered Mike. Was he up with the SES as usual, pretending he knew more than anyone else and telling everyone it wasn’t Loser’s fault at all? Or was he frantically hunting round the edges of town for his son?
Mike took a deep breath and clambered over the fence between his house and the Loosley’s shed. It was an old shed. Mike supposed it had been there when the Loosleys bought the place. If Mr Loosley had built it, one wall would have been only half-finished, or it would still be without a door.
It was a wooden shed, the old yellow paint splintered and showing the dull wood underneath. The small space between the shed and the fence was carpeted with morning glory leaves. Mum always complained when the Loosley’s morning glory tendrils poked through the fence. Johnny Shadwell, who came in to do the garden once a fortnight, had to keep cutting it back.
His feet made no sound on the thick mat of vine. Mike stepped carefully round the corner and peered through the dusty window.
The shed was empty. There were only the shelves of bottles and cobwebs and rusty cans filled with secondhand nails, a spade and a mattock at one end and a greasy chainsaw at the other. Mike carefully turned the door handle and stepped inside.