Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

Carrie’s Farm, biking up to it, daybreak. Ellie sings a few unrecognizable words, then,

Someone: What’s that Ellie?

Ellie doesn’t answer.

Phil: (Later)on porch Come on Ellie.

Ellie: (Absentmindedly), What do you want to do?

Phil: Just sit down and eat.

Sitting and eating something simple. Talking about what happened. Not sure what you want to include. Very little dialog.

Phil: (afterwards) Don’t feel bad. This is war now. Normal rules don’t apply. These people invaded our land, locked up our families, and tried to kill you three. The (German) Greek? side of me understands these things. The moment they left their country to come here they knew what they were doing. They’re the ones who tore up the rule book, not us.

Ellie: (sincerely) Thanks Homer.

Kevin: So, what happened to you two?

Phil: Well, we had a good run at first, along Honey Street. But the further into town we got the more careful we had to be, and the slower we went. There wasn’t any excitement until the corner of Maldon and West. There’d been some kind of action there. Must have been a bit of a battle I think – there were two police cars, both on their sides, and a truck just down the road that had crashed into a tree. And there were spent cartridges everywhere, hundreds of them. No bodies

Amelia: But blood, a lot of blood.

Phil: Yes, well we think it was blood. A lot of dark stains. But there was oil and stuff everywhere – it was just a big mess. So we went through that pretty carefully, then cut through Jubilee Park. Out idea was to go down Barker Street, but honestly, it was a disaster area. Looked like those American riots on T.V. Every shop’s had its windows smashed, and there’s stuff all over the road and footpaths. I’d say these guys have had themselves a big party.
It was all dark and shadowy now. So we moseyed along there, across the parking lot, and into Glover Street. Then Amy, who’s got hearing like a bat, thought she heard voices, so we ducked into the public restrooms. Into the men’s of course. It wasn’t that smart, if they’d have caught us in there, we’d have been dead meat. There was someone coming, I could hear them now. I was thinking of using the restroom, but

Ellie: (interrupting), Come on Phil, I want to get to bed soon.

Phil: O.k. O.k., well we slipped into the janitor’s, I mean sanitary engineer’s, closet to hide

Amy: Don’t forget about your graffiti.

Phil: Oh yeah. (A lot of talk about going to the bathroom, I don’t want to write it all out). I didn’t recognize the language that they spoke. Neither did Amy, and she knows six, don’t you.

Amy: Yeah, German, Polish, French, Russian, Italian, and Spanish. Especially German and Polish!

Phil: After they left, we got back out of the sanitary engineer’s closet and took a peek out the door to see what they looked like. Man, they were a ragtag bunch. Three women maybe, two old guys, and two young ones. They were dressed in rough old uniforms.

Carrie: I guess to invade a country of this size they would need everyone with four limbs.

Amy: Remember the shadows?

Phil: oh yeah, you tell them.

Amy: About two blocks from my place there’s a restaurant, and it was looted like everything else. We were going across the park and some shadows of people came out of the restaurant. I called out because they weren’t acting like soldiers, then they ran away.

Phil: I nearly died when Amy started yelling. But, it is logical that other people are loose.

Now I left out the part about Amy’s home and cat.

Phil: (seriously) Do you know the Andersen’s? You know, the football coach. His house must have been bombed. There was nothing left. (Pause) I suppose we should get some sleep.

Carrie: Yeah, but we’d better have an escape route. Hey, how about the barn? Someone can watch from upstairs while the rest sleep. That way we could get across the pasture without being seen too.

Ellie: Make sure to take the bikes too. We might need them.