I’m back and making coffee in the kitchen before anyone else is awake. But by 5.30 we’re all eating breakfast and the restaurant walls are lined with backpacks, sleeping bags, boxes of rations and crates of water. HB has her typewriter and manuscript. I don’t mention the clink of booze in Stannis’s backpack. It’s like we’re about to go on camp. Except for our small arsenal.
‘If it’s all the same to you,’ Stannis says with a wheeze, ‘I’ll go out the same way I came in.’
Will looks from him to me with a frown. ‘The little plane?’
‘Ultralight,’ Stannis corrects.
‘Is that a good idea?’ Amber asks. ‘I mean, you could be seen.’
‘Not in the dark I won’t,’ Stannis says, tapping a walkie-talkie. ‘I’ll go ahead, be there in a few minutes, get the lay of the land and call you lot if there’s any trouble between here and there.’
There are nods around the table. Everyone wants to know we’re not driving straight into Jacks out there on the highway. I explain how to do a Morse code K and Stannis nods and coughs into his handkerchief.
HB takes his arm. ‘Are you up to this?’
‘Right as rain,’ he says.
·•·
Nathan and Johnno and I wheel the ultralight out on the highway. Stannis climbs into the seat and stows a rifle and walkie-talkie within reach. I hand him my night-vision goggles and he straps them on.
‘All you need’s a scarf there, Biggles,’ Johnno says, giving his shoulder a squeeze. ‘Take care, you old fart.’
‘Roger that,’ Stannis says before he bumps along the highway and lifts off over the cars and trees.
I sit with the walkie-talkie on the quad between the station wagon and panel van. Johnno listens from his driver’s seat, HB and Nathan beside him, Gail, Lottie and Liam in the back with a stack of supplies. Will pushes the last pack into the back of the station wagon as Amber, Rachel, Hal and Milly listen eagerly for Stannis’s message. The radio crackles in my hand. Long beep. Short beep. Long beep.
‘K,’ I say.
I smile. Nod at the others. Start my engine and lead off. I volunteered to be the point person. If we encounter enemies I’m the best equipped to hold them off while the others try to get away. But I’m under no illusions that we’ll survive and escape if it comes to that.
Against the dawn’s brown haze, Stannis leans against his ultralight in a paddock as we bump off the highway and along a dirt track. With the day brightening above us, we stand on the banks of the creek and look at the Chinese junk.
‘She’s a beaut,’ Will says. ‘So long as we can get her going.’
‘Full house,’ says Johnno.
‘Fu Hao,’ corrects Stannis.
‘I meant it’s gonna be a full house,’ Johnno says. ‘All of us and all our gear.’
I have to agree. It’s going to be a tight fit. Even without me on board.
·•·
‘Don’t set up here,’ Will calls from the bow of the boat, apologetic smile on his face, grease all over his clothes. ‘There’s no need.’
My heart bottoms and Nathan and I exchange a glance over the AK-47s we’ve got trained on the highway. The others pause carrying stuff from cars draped in camouflage netting to the spot in the trees we’d planned to put up the tents.
‘It’s no good?’ HB asks.
Will grins and nods below at Amber. ‘Fire her up!’
With that the Fu Hao’s engine roars to life.
Leaving Nathan to keep watch, I creep over to the boat.
‘Engine’s fine,’ Amber says. ‘Workhorse. She’ll make good speed, too. But we need to replace a few hoses and get a new alternator before we go. Wouldn’t be a bad idea to get spare spark plugs and a backup battery. And we need a lot of fuel.’
‘Navigational charts, too,’ says Will. ‘Barometer so we’ve got an idea of what the weather’s doing.’
I tell them about the marina I saw from Davo’s but that it looked like a fire had gone through a few of the boats there.
‘Most of the place is still fine,’ Johnno pipes up. ‘Well, at least when I drove by there it was.’
We crowd around my map and I point out the marina’s location. There’s a quick discussion and it’s decided.
Stannis’s ultralight bobs across the paddock, thrusts into the air and turns towards Port Macquarie. He’ll be at the marina in five minutes and let us know if there’s any trouble. Will, Rachel, Johnno, HB and Gail will keep loading the Fu Hao and take it downriver, where Amber, Nathan and I are to meet them with the fuel and parts and charts.
·•·
‘I’m glad the kids are on the river with Will,’ Amber says as she steers the station wagon around desiccated bodies on the street that leads down to the marina. ‘I don’t know how you guys’ve coped seeing this all the time. I hope Lord Howe’s not like this.’
I like how confident she sounds. Nathan catches my eye and smiles. I force myself to return it. But I’m going to have to tell him soon that I’m not going. That I’m staying behind to finish what I started with Evan. I realise that finding my little brother and spiriting him away will be next to impossible. But I have to try.
‘There’s Stannis,’ I say, seeing the ultralight under a Morton Bay fig tree in the riverside park by a dry dock compound with big boats up on scaffolding.
We pull up near him and pile out.
‘You good to wait here and keep watch?’ I ask, handing Stannis the binoculars.
He nods, leans back against the tree, walkie-talkie in his lap. I drape camo netting over the ultralight’s wings.
Port Marina looks like the maritime version of what I’ve seen on so many roads. Cruisers and yachts, names like Nimrod, Omega Man and Myth Right, jammed tight behind a houseboat that burned and sank in the exit to the river. Bodies fester on decks and boardwalks. There are skeletons in the shallow water beneath the cafes along the shore. The only sounds are ropes clanging against masts and water lapping against hulls.
‘It’s a miracle this place didn’t blow sky high,’ Amber says.
‘Do we use that?’ I ask, pointing along a jetty to a petrol bowser.
Amber shakes her head. ‘Will can pull the boat in there. But the bowser won’t work without electricity.’ She points to the sheds off to one side of the boatyard. ‘Let’s check in those.’
It takes all of us to carry each of the three 44-gallon drums of diesel we find outside.
‘Is this going to be enough?’ I ask when we’ve rolled the last one to the end of the jetty.
Amber nods. ‘Plenty.’ Again I’m loving her confidence. She angles her head towards the shop. ‘I need charts and the barometer.’
I hand her a menthol tube. ‘Under the nostrils,’ I say. ‘It helps a bit.’
Amber smears liniment under her nose and walks up the boardwalk and around the bodies that lie in the open doorway of the marina shop.
Nathan and I stand on the end of the jetty and look at the river.
‘Everything got screwed up,’ he says.
‘The world, you mean.’
‘That, too,’ he says with a grin.
‘Between us?’
He nods. ‘Everything’s been so . . . so . . .’
‘I know. It’s okay, okay?’
I hold out my hand. He takes it. We step closer to each other and stare across the water at the thick greenery of Pelican Island. The big birds that give it its name glide and circle and splash on the white fringe of beach.
‘Nathan, I—’
I’m about to tell him what I have to tell him when we hear a chugga-chugga and see the Fu Hao slicing up the channel towards us, white waters carving off its bow. Will’s at the wheel, Johnno covers starboard with an AK-47 and HB points her weapon out over a portside railing. At the back of the boat, under the low green and black roof, Rachel and Gail huddle with the kids among the boxes and backpacks.
Amber runs down the jetty and waves Will in as he reduces the throttle. As the Fu Hao slows, Johnno shoulders his rifle and tosses Amber a rope that she expertly ties around a jetty pylon.
I see Rachel’s expression as she spies the marina’s bodies.
‘Let’s go inside,’ she says, quickly shepherding Gail and the children into the small cabin below deck.
‘You’ve done well.’ Will says, looking at the drums and parts and maps.
‘How’s she running?’ Amber asks.
He nods. ‘Bit of engine clatter I’m not too keen on but otherwise—’
My walkie-talkie crackles in my hand. Poor Stannis: we’ve left him out the front.
I’m about to say I’ll go get him when thunder tears the sky all around us.
We whirl, eyes everywhere in the heavens, trying to find the source of the sound. Nathan points and I see them: three fighter jets streaking towards us from the south. We duck down behind the junk’s low wooden walls as the planes roar closer.
‘Did they see us?’ Nathan mouths.
I shake my head as they scream overhead. If they had I’m sure the Fu Hao would be riddled with bullets or blown to pieces. Instead, they’re out over the northern beaches. Risking a look, I see the jets circle and turn back south, come in low over the river and descend one after the other behind trees that look like they’re just a few blocks from us.
There’s movement inside the marina office. I raise my rifle as Stannis emerges from the doorway. He’s been smart enough not to use the walkie-talkie. We wave him along the jetty to the Fu Hao.
Below decks, in the cabin, we crowd around the map while Rachel keeps the kids calm and quiet.
‘This is where they landed,’ I say, pointing at Port Macquarie’s airfield.
‘Less than two kilometres from here,’ says Amber.
‘If it’s just three planes,’ Will says, ‘it could be reconnaissance or something.’
I shake my head. ‘I wish. But if my theory’s right, for them to get here there have to be others on the ground within thirty-five kilometres. That means—’
‘They’re coming,’ Nathan says.
‘We have to go now,’ HB says. ‘Before they get here.’
Johnno nods. ‘If they’re on the ground at the airport they can’t see us. It’s too far away to hear the boat’s engine, right?’
Will nods. He has his charts. Amber’s got her fuel and spare parts. It’s only a kilometre to the breakwalls and the sea. But it’ll take a long time to get over the horizon. If the jets take to the air again, the Fu Hao will be dead in the water. I peer out the porthole window at a circle of Port Macquarie’s shops and towers.
‘Danby?’ Nathan says. ‘What do you think?’
I’m about to answer when my mind’s sucked into a chopper surging towards us from the south, one of five that’ve spread out like the formation that attacked Terrigal.
This-is-it, Tregan thinks. A-new-beginning.
Through her eyes I see Evan beside her and Damon next to the pilot. It’s the best and worst thing that could’ve happened.
Flashing to her mind, I see that Tregan and my brother spent the first night after Baroonah under guard at a luxury suite at a Hunter Valley winery. The next morning they were choppered farther west and kept in a historic hotel. The day after that they were taken still deeper inland and put up in a roadside motel. Then yesterday Damon woke her up with a smile and said it was over.
‘Did you get them?’ Tregan asked groggily. ‘Are they dead?’
Damon shook his head. Told her he was calling quits on the search. That the area out west was just too big.
‘It’s time for us to get on with our lives,’ he said. ‘Go somewhere they can’t find us. Somewhere big enough for us. Not so big we can’t defend it and clear it of bodies. A place we can breathe fresh air and maybe feel the sun on our faces.’
‘Is there anywhere like that left?’ Tregan asked.
Damon nodded. ‘Have you ever been to Port Macquarie?’
There was none of the urgency of Tregan’s evacuation from the Nattai cabins. Damon made her and Evan breakfast in the motel’s kitchenette while choppers clattered over the countryside and cars, trucks, Humvees and armoured vehicles rumbled by on the highway.
When they left, just an hour ago, Tregan had been amazed at how evenly spaced the convoy was beneath the chopper, like stepping stones that stretched all the way from the western plains through the northern mountains and down to the eastern sea. She saw a lot of bodies and destruction on the flight but the strangest sight were the six dead men in suits just outside a town that’d burned to the ground. It looked . . . recent.
‘What happened there?’ she said. ‘Was it her?’
Damon looked over his shoulder at Tregan—at me—and shook his head. ‘It was our guys,’ he said. ‘They attacked us.’
Fair-enough-Glad-he’s-not-afraid-to-be-tough—
‘Sounds like you had no choice,’ she said.
He nodded. The look in his eyes. He’d deliberately flown over Prestige so I’d see how I’d come undone.
Now, surging waves and rugged coastline rush beneath her as what I recognise as North Brother Mountain slides by to her left. They’re thirty kilometres south. They’ll be in Port Macquarie in minutes. I’m guessing ground troops are almost on top of the city or the jets wouldn’t have been able to get this far.
‘Not long now,’ Damon says to Tregan—to me.
·•·
‘Shit, that’s them, isn’t it?’ Johnno says.
‘That’s the lady who was in the video,’ Lottie says in a trance-like voice. ‘And your brother.’
‘What?’ Will asks. ‘What’s happening?’
He, Amber, Rachel, Hal and Milly are looking at the rest of us like we’re ghosts. Without telepathy, they’re not seeing through Tregan.
‘You explain,’ I say to Johnno. ‘Nathan, quick!’
I race up onto the deck and leap onto the jetty.
‘What do we do?’ Nathan asks. ‘We can’t fight them. Not that many.’
I bend to a man on the boardwalk who has been dried to leather. ‘Help me get him up on the boat.’
Nathan gets my idea and grabs the guy’s stiff legs.
It takes a few minutes to lug three corpses onto the Fu Hao’s deck. I hope it’s enough to make it look like just another dead boat in the devastated marina. We hustle back into the cabin and pull the doors closed behind us as the sound of the choppers fills the air over Port Macquarie.