Tomorrow when the war began

[ChocolateGal]

This was for school, as an extended chapter to an awesome book. Here goes (please comment below):

Chapter 23
Just when I thought I’d finished writing our story, it became obvious there was so much more to write. Kevin came back from the hospital a few days after he left, with a few cuts and scratches, but was mainly all right. However, the plan to leave Corrie in the Merc didn’t work quite as he had planned. After he left the car parked in front of the hospital, he left all the windows down, so a passer by could see Corrie’s body in the moonlight. On his way back though, a large van drove past him, surrounded by four small utes, with a few men on the back of each one, guns cocked, ready to shoot.

Kevin, being Kevin, followed the vehicles, knowing that something important was in that van. As they passed the hospital, one of the soldiers, just for fun, shot at the Merc with Corrie in it. Kevin had run over to the car, but luckily Corrie had not been hit. But the people in the hospital had been alerted and came running out of the doors, shaking their fists at the passing vans. Their voices softened as they saw Corrie through the window, and came rushing over. Kevin had hidden on the other side of the car, hoping they didn’t come around. Luckily, they took Corrie out of the car and carried her into the hospital. Kevin made a run for it, but was seen on his way back. He ran for the bush, but the soldiers didn’t follow him. That’s when he came back to us.

He had been living in a few houses; the Mackenzie’s, the Nelsons, and eventually my house. He told us that the people from the hospital looked caring, but didn’t know what they were going to do. There was no more we could do for Corrie, and breaking her out was madness, even Kevin accepted that. But we were interested in the large van, and that day, we decided that we would split up; Homer, Kevin, Fi and I going to investigate the van in the town, and Lee, Chris and Robyn to collect more supplies.

We took the Landie and left it with Lee, Chris and Robyn, who left it parked at Homer’s house. We all went on foot through there, the scavengers going to each house to collect food and supplies. We all agreed that they wouldn’t get ferrets from Homer’s uncle, as the last time they tried Corrie was nearly killed. We then went through paddocks to get to the town, where the showground was. Once we saw the remains of the bridge in sight, we saw the van parked by it, and the soldiers standing outside, trying to figure out how to get over the river bed. Eventually, they opened the back of the huge van, and pulled out a massive machine gun. It took the twelve soldiers and the driver of the van to carry the machine gun down the river bed towards the campground. One man came back and grabbed a big box from the van, probably the ammunition.

Homer, Kevin, Fi and I looked at each other, our eyes very wide.
“What do you think they’ll do?” whispered Homer, looking back to the soldiers.
“I don’t know, but it looks like our planes don’t have a chance now,” said Kevin, shaking his head.
There was a moment’s silence, then Fi whispered, “They’re going to kill our families. They’ve used them to get everything they want, and now they’re going to kill them to hide the proof.” Homer and I gasped, and Kevin bowed his head.
I asked Fi, “How do you know this? I mean, have you been told this by a rebel?”
Fi replied, “Well, you know how I’ve been going out every so often into town?”
“Yeah,” Kevin replied glumly.
“After a few visits I came across one of their cars. Luckily it was empty so I searched through and found one of the generals’ folders. Pretty lucky actually.” It was very rare for Fi to speak slang like that.
“Continue,” said Homer, gesturing with his hand.
“Well, after I found that, I took it, along with a few other things, and came back. The soldiers came back soon after because I checked the van the next day and found it gone.”
“What did it say?” I asked, “The folder.”
“It wasn’t in English, but it was in Pig Latin. Do you remember when we studied that in year 5, Ellie?”
I smiled. Those were good times.
“Come on!” Kevin said, obviously agitated.
“Okay, one of the pieces was a letter from a general to another general; possibly back in their home country, where ever that was. Anyway, they wrote it in English Pig Latin to confuse other readers. But it didn’t fool me.” She paused, and then pulled out a piece of paper from her pocket. “It said, in Pig Latin:
Earday Elijasway,
Iway avehay orderedway inway ethay ungay asway ouyay orderedway. Enwhay eythay on'tday expectway itway, eferablypray atway ightnay, ustjay illkay emthay inway ierthay entstay.”
I turned and stopped listening to her once she said that. I knew exactly what she was saying.
“Here’s what it means.” continued Fi, unnerved by the letter.
“Dear Elijas,
I have ordered in the gun as you instructed. When they don't expect it, preferably at night, just kill them in their tents. We don't need their use anymore, and you can turn their town into a base. Then, expand from there into the rest of Australia, but don't go into that place... the Hell place. We can't risk you losing any more men. See you soon.
Avenskly…” She trailed off in the end, obviously the words now affecting her.
I put my head in my hands as Kevin put a comforting hand on my back. Fi rested her head on Homer’s shoulders and he stared meaninglessly at the ground. Then, as if it couldn’t get any worse, it did. “There was also, at the bottom of the letter, a date.” Fi said quietly, “It only arrived about a week ago. They could kill them tonight.”
“We’ve got to do something about this” said Kevin, beginning to think about the situation. “They can’t kill our families. They have no right. Just ‘cause they’ve used them in war doesn’t mean they need to throw them out like yesterday’s garbage. It’s just not right.”
“But Kevin,” I said softly. “It’s war, no one cares who dies in war. At least these horrors don’t.” The group thought for a minute, then Homer said the most intelligent thing all day.
“We’ve got to hijack the machine gun, and destroy it” he said, looking back at the van again.
“Maybe if we steal it, we could drive them out of Wirrawee. You know they’re so scared of having their soldiers killed. They would flee when we started to fire at them” Fi said, becoming more enthusiastic.
Homer shivered. “That would be harder, but I get your point. We could save our town by this.” He paused, and then said. “We need to get into a house and get all the guns and ammo there. And I’m cold.”
“Should we find the others and get their help?” I asked the group, who all promptly nodded, looking around for a house.
So we set off back through the paddocks back to Homer’s place. We still found the Landie parked there, and looking towards the town, we saw our friends coming back, their arms full of objects that we needed back in Hell. As they came closer, their faces became serious as they saw our own. When they reached us and we went into Homer’s place, we began to talk.
“So, how do we do it without harming the soldiers?” Robyn asked.
“We can’t do that. We are going to have to harm… or even kill the soldiers to get the machine gun. Then we can fire a few shots and hopefully make them abandon Wirrawee.” Fi explained, watching Robyn bow her head. She wasn’t a fan of killing people, and because of her religion she would find the task very hard to comprehend.
Chris took his cigarette out of his mouth to speak. “I reckon,” he paused, for suspense. “That when we get the soldiers out of Wirrawee, we’ll be called heroes.” We all rolled our eyes as he nodded smugly, and Lee leaned closer to me, whispering. “He found some extra strong smokes at one of the town houses. He’s been on them since we left.” I grinned, however it wouldn’t be fun trying to get him to concentrate enough to do things properly.
“But what will we do exactly Fi?” I asked, looking at our weapons piled on the table. “We can’t run at them firing like crazy.”
“Well,” said Fi, who had been thinking about the exact plan for a few hours. “I think that we’ve got to get these guns and weapons, and go back to the bridge. Then we surround them, and at the pace they are going we might catch them. We’ll wait until they can’t see us, and then we’ll shoot them from our hiding spots. They won’t be able to see us and while they fall, we’ll go in and take the gun and the ammo. But we’ve got to kill all of the soldiers before we run in. We need to fire from all angles. They left all of their guns in the cars and vans, so we could use some of them. But we have to kill them… properly.” She paused as we all looked at the ground, feeling insecure. We did not want to kill any one, but it was for the safety of our families. We had to do it.
“I can’t do it.” Robyn said, “I can’t kill. I will not kill.” She looked assertive, but very scared.
“Robyn,” Fi said simply, “It’s these people or your family.”
Robyn nodded, knowing to save her family she must destroy the lives of others. “Well,” she said, “What next?”
Fi continued. “We’ll take the gun and put it in the Landie, then we’ll go back and stay in Hell for a day. Once the other soldiers find their friends they’ll probably get worried, then we’ll drive back to the bridge. We’ll fire a few shots into the soldiers’ tents. And if they come out we have to kill them. We have to fire until they get into their puny cars and drive away. They find that gun dangerous even when they have total control of it. Then when they’ve gone we power up the electricity and call for help from other countries.”
“Whoa, don’t jump the gun Fi,” said Lee, smiling. “We’ll hand things over to the adults when we drive the soldiers out.”
So we collected up the guns, two each, with spares in the Landie. We loaded them all up, then drove to a house further down the road, where we parked the car and took out the guns. We crept in the dead of night towards the bridge, where we then surrounded the soldiers in the river bed. I went around to the trees on the other side of the river bed, then waited as the others crept passed me so they surrounded the soldiers, who were still carrying the gun across the dip in the earth. Robyn passed me shaking, small beads of sweat dripping down her face. I held her arm for a moment, smiled at her, and then let her creep to her position. Once we all were in our positions, we signalled to each other. A rustle of branches. The soldiers in the river bed were too preoccupied with the gun to notice the rustle. Then in the first shot, fired by Fi, we all began to shoot at the soldiers. It was very noisy, but we continued as the soldiers dropped the gun and turned wildly around, trying to find the sources of gunfire. After a few long seconds one man fell, then more men fell to the ground. After half were dead we had to swap guns and began firing at the rest. After another twenty prolonged seconds of gunfire, all on the river bed were dead.
We shakily came out of our hiding places and ran towards the gun. We had feared that the soldiers in the base would suspect something, but they had often played target practice on their patrols. As we came closer together, Chris stumbling and Lee limping, I could see Robyn was crying. Fi got to the gun first, and the rest then came together. It was a clean massacre, if there was one, with little blood from the bullet wounds. We all looked at each other, then cast our eyes on the gun and its large box of ammunition.
“I’ve heard that drunk people can carry greater amounts of weight than sober ones” Kevin said, trying to cheer everyone’s moods. He slapped Chris on the back, who then fell over, oblivious to any words exchanged. “Sorry mate.” He said quietly, helping Chris up again. Fi then took command.
“Okay, Homer, Kevin, Ellie, Chris, Lee and I will take the gun.” She turned to Robyn. “I think you should take the ammo. It will probably be easier.” So we all took part of the gun, and began to lug it towards the other side of the river bed, in the Landie’s direction. Just after we began to carry the gun away, Robyn dropped to her knees by the deceased soldiers before her, and began to pray. We could see she would never forget this, but at least she had done the next best thing; pray for forgiveness. As we carried the gun on our shoulders, Robyn soon caught up with us, her eyes dry, and we all walked along in silence. Once we climbed up the steep slope of the dry banks, I ran ahead to get the Landie to drive it back to the river side. I felt my breath become very heavy, but I pushed myself on. Then I realised I was crying, for the lives of the soldiers, and what I was going to do to their friends tomorrow. Once I drove back to the others, we loaded the gun into the back, and then drove towards Hell.

We slept for most of the next day, after we took the supplies down to Hell but left the gun in the back of the Landie. We counted how many bullets we had for the machine gun, and prepared them for the attack later the following night. For the day however, we reviewed what we had done, and regained our courage for the twilight attack. Robyn had told us about each of the soldiers, about their appearance and how she thought they lived. We listened intently to her, but only so she could let her feelings flow out.

That night was a different matter though, as we drove to the side of the river. The next few hours were blurred to me, as many lives were lost, in an ongoing attack. But I will try to review it quickly without much detail.

Once we arrived we set up the machine gun up, facing the showground with a clear view of the soldier’s tents. Then, as we had planned, we fired the first bullet. A soldier poked his head out of the tent, looking worried as we fired a bullet at him. The range was very good with this machine gun, as we must have been two hundred or so metres away from the tents. He dropped down, and more soldiers poured out of the tents. They finally saw us, and started to fire, but their tiny guns could not shoot at the distance or accuracy our could. Homer, who sat behind the gun, let a flow of bullets loose at the soldiers. Then, we saw men get into the cars and drive out of the showground towards us. But in a few shots Homer had broken the glass on the windscreens and watched the car swerve and crash into the trees, the drivers killed instantly. A few more cars emerged, but Homer easily shot them down, until there was only the large van left, which I suspected they would use to escape. No one came running into the fire for a few minutes, and then a line of prisoners came out to protect the soldiers behind them. We all stopped and looked at each other wildly, then in a strange and amazing moment Chris leaned forward and whispered something into Homer’s ear. Homer nodded madly and then nodded approval to us. “It will work.” He said to us, then turned to the line of prisoners and yelled. “Australians! Duck!” And the line of people crouched down helplessly. Quick as a flash Homer began to fire at the visible soldiers behind them, who were beginning to turn and run.

I had never seen Homer so determined as he unleashed hell on the soldiers. They fell by the second and Homer continued to shoot at them. He stopped as the rest of the soldiers ran, and watched the prisoners stand up and run back away into the nearby trees, far away from the soldiers. Homer nodded approval to Chris, who nodded back to him. I figured out what he’d done. The soldiers didn’t understand English so when Homer had yelled they had no idea what he was saying. They were sitting targets for the machine gun. Chris, in a drunken state, had saved our lives and our friends’ lives. We all slapped Chris on the back happily as he raised his cigarette in a ‘toast’ like fashion and grinned profoundly. We had completely forgotten about the soldiers as we revelled in Chris’s wit. We saw the last remaining soldiers pile into the tanks, and without a hesitation or bullet shot, they drove away quickly into the night. We fired a few celebratory bullets as they left, and then waited a while before creeping up towards the showground, the place we had feared for such a long time. Town folk started emerging too, and as they saw us they yelled in triumph, as if a greeting. The next few minutes as all of the people emerged from their tents and houses, I began to see people I knew, and in ten minutes, I saw my parents. I ran over to them, as I had seen the others do, and embraced them crying and laughing.

For the next few weeks the power was switched back on, and the hospital and houses were properly attended to. We found Corrie was in a stable condition in the hospital, and visited her daily. Most families began to clean up the town and rural areas, and begin to start their lives over again. We left a lot of things back in Hell, just in case, but we have had no other trouble so far. We placed the gun on a plaque in the Showground, to symbolise the winning of our war, and the saving of so many lives. The American troops came to the town a few days ago as well, and were very proud of our efforts during the invasion. They said that the war had subsided in the rest of Australia, but there still may be some danger lurking, however, this was very unlikely. But I don’t care at all about that, I just care that I have my family and friends safely around me. And that’s the way I want it to stay. Forever.

[ChocolateGal]

Hate it? Okay then...

[Heather]

Oh! It's good! Keep going!

[Daisy Rabbit Mae]

i like it

[ChocolateGal]

That's it.. it was an ending chapter to a really good book! There's no more!

[Queso]

It's really good!