N by Scott John

Author:Scott John
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Brandl & Schlesinger
Published: 2015-10-25T00:00:00+00:00

6

TO TALLON

Menadue stays with the petrol-less jeep as it gathers speed on the incline, steering it the remaining few yards, then flings himself free. The vehicle lurches onwards, a sea-sway across the last of the smoothfaced rock, before it plummets. Seconds later comes the dull report – a volley, a battery of answering thuds through the surrounding hills like the sound of a distant battle reaching him with its mallet blows of engagement.

After that, nothing.

A silence.

And he knows from the depths of it that to turn back, if it has ever been a possibility, is now unthinkable. There is a speech, a passage, he half-remembers from school, from Shakespeare, half-learnt. About wading in so deep one might just as well go on as return. He would like the authority of Shakespeare to make something of this journey (Enter Menadue, a Captain in the Australian Army, with Fisher, a Sergeant, and Cooke and Young, common soldiers), something more than how he knows it seems – a selfish rush for survival.

Now, he is nothing more than one of four men, deserters, stockstill, staring at their slouching bodies – a nagging guilt evident in every stance.

“Snap out of it!” Menadue barks, much to himself; and each breaks, turns from his own stupor to find his once captain already stripped to the waist and pulling on a dull checked flannel shirt.

He and Fisher are the first to dress for this next life, the first to walk with the discarded bundles of army issue and toss them from the ledge, watching the khaki skins unravel in the air, flounder down towards the jeep, before lodging in the spindly vegetation below.

“We should be burying the uniforms,” comes Young’s advice to his returning sergeant. “In case they find them.”

‘They’.

Whichever way it falls, a line has been drawn. If Menadue is to make any sense of it he must consider his enemies to be both Japanese and Australian. Meanwhile, Fisher is spelling it out, snapping back at the private:

“If they don’t find the jeep, they’re not going to find the bloody uniforms.” Menadue looks up to see him standing, shaking his head. So, he notes, Young is getting on his nerves as well.

“D’yer reckon they’ll be coming after us?” Cooke is asking. Bent, re-lacing his boots. Apprehensive.

‘They’, again.

Only now do the questions begin to surface. Now that the speeding vehicle has gone with its wind-buffet and its shudder, and they must continue, on foot. Who follows them? Who now gains on them with every passing minute? Whose vehicles, well-stocked with petrol, will inexorably run them down?

Menadue looks up and meets the questioner’s eye. There is a trace too much white. The nostrils too flared. If Cooke were a horse he’d be gone, thundering blindly to some horizon as likely nearer-to than farther-from what he was escaping.

“Who’s it gonna be?” Young adds, straightening. “The Japs or our blokes?”

Fisher fields the enquiry.

“Doesn’t make a great deal of difference now, does it? But for mine, I don’t reckon we’ll be seeing our blokes again for a while.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.