Day 2

I woke up in a cold sweat. I’d been having nightmares about the previous days, but it wasn’t my bad dreams that made me sit up. I heard noises in the distance- it sounded like an engine. It was getting closer. As if reading my mind, I heard Brendon speak.

‘Do you hear that?’

‘Yeah, we ought to wake the others.’

As a group, we had decided not to walk into Picton. Instead, we slept the night in another field. We took the risk of being seen, but it was better that being cooped up in that old trailer with sheep that hadn’t been properly toilet trained. The driver had let us off and pointed in the direction of a shortcut across a couple of farms. He said we should spend the night somewhere safe, and than walk the rest of the way in time to catch the 3pm ferry across to Wellington. What he didn’t tell us was that there would be a crowd of pig farmers with a price on our heads, chasing us in a 1960’s tractor that had a max. speed of 17 km/h.

‘Guys!’ Brendon and I screamed, ‘Wake up!’ You’d think they’d been out partying for New Year’s, the way they reacted. Mike mumbled something and rolled over, Sean sat up and lay down again, and Joe moved an eyelid. I frantically spun around trying to find what was making the noise that was nearing every second. I squinted my eyes against the morning sun, as I saw the silouhette of a small tractor in the distance. Who knows who was driving it, but they looked like they were coming towards us. I spun again to look at Brendon, then back down at the others, who still hadn’t attempted to get up.

‘Goddamit!’ my voice was getting hoarse. ‘There’s a tractor heading straight at us, and you guys are having a nice nap. Get up, now!’ It wasn’t me that got them up, but the tractor noise had just gotten louder. They suddenly all got up like a bunch of jack-in-the-boxes all going off at once. If Joe ever had a personal best time for getting up early in the morning, it was then.

We literally grabbed our stuff and ran, like in those police shows where the robbers know the cops are right behind them. Personally, I’d rather be in their place right now. At least they know that if they give up, the cops aren’t going to gun them down in cold-blood. In our situation, I didn’t know what ‘they’ were going to do if the caught us. This thought multiplied into two more, which each divided into two again. Suddenly in two seconds, more thoughts that I’d ever had in my life all attempted to cram through the small funnel-hole that was the entry point to my mind. Thinking made me forget the pain of running while holding a carton of ketchup bottles. We’d already finished a couple.

‘Why the hell did you bring that?’ Mike said as he ran beside me.

‘I dunno,’ was the best answer I could think of. It seemed like the ketchup was the last object I needed to cling on to. Maybe I would feel better dying beside it. I took a better look at Mike and what he was carrying.

‘Well with a due respect, I’m not the one lugging a barbecue through the middle of a field.’ There was no time to rub it in as we could hear the tractor gaining on us. I didn’t know how far away it was, but I wasn’t prepared to take a five-minute coffee break just to turn around and see.

I suddenly dawned on me that maybe these people weren’t chasing us after all. Perhaps we’d got it all wrong. Maybe if we stopped running away, we would minimize the risk of getting killed. Hey, whoever was behind us could just be out for a morning ‘drive around the farm’ routine. A couple of bullets from a two-twelve gauge pig tranquilizer settled that idea.

We heard yelling and shouting behind us. The engine sounded like it had missed its monthly tune-up fifty years ago. The tractor accelerated a few metres beside us. I looked over my shoulder to see five farmers in blue overalls, riding it. Three of them were sitting on the hood. I froze when I heard the frightening, gruff kiwi accent.

‘Stop running now, and we won’t hurt you!’ His voice sounded so sarcastic that I knew he was lying, but I figured we could buy some extra time if we stopped. We? Where had the others gone? I looked ahead and saw they were still running. The tractor was still after them. I lay down on my stomach. There was still people on the tractor-maybe I was safe. Hang on, there was only four farmers. My stomach lurched, again. As I felt the barrel of the gun being squeezed hard against my soft cheek, I suddenly wished I had figured that out sooner. I heard him laugh.

‘One down, four to go!’

Up ahead, the others were still running, despite the farmers’ attempts to yell at them over the noise of the engine. They were sure doing a great job of peeving them off. The tractor was so bouncy, that they couldn’t get a good aim at them. Then Mike did something so amazing and genius, even I wouldn’t have been able to think of it.

The tractor was old, and it had wheels with rusty steel spokes holding it together. Mike was in the right place at the right time, holding the right thing. He got in close to the back-left wheel and jammed one of the legs of the barbecue into the turning spokes. I thought it would have snapped them and collapsed the whole thing, but the result wasn’t what I expected. The wheel just stopped, and the opposite one kept going. This led to the tractor spinning around on the jammed wheel for awhile, before momentum kicked in causing it to topple over on its side.

The man eased the gun off my face and stared in horror at the tractor.

‘Oh my god! Guys, are you alright?’

That was all I needed to tackle him around the waist, put his hands behind his back and sit on his back holding the gun triumphantly.

We tied them up with some of their own rope they were carrying. First, we had to force them to tip the tractor back on its wheels. They told us that whatever we did to them, not to destroy the tractor (if it hadn’t already been) because it was part of they’re ‘ farming heritage.’

‘What are you doing?’ the farmer who I tackled asked as we started untying the ropes that bound their ankles and wrists.

‘Well,’ I answered. ‘Since we’re nice people, we’ll let you go- and you can have your tractor back.’ However, we didn’t fully untie them.

We attached six lengths of rope to the back of the tractor, and connected them to each of the suspenders that were on their farming overalls. Mike pulled the barbecue out of the spokes, and found there was nothing wrong with the tractor. Sean refilled the tank with some spare fuel and I put a large rock onto the gas pedal, jamming it. Joe cranked up the ignition while Brendon put it into second gear.
Off they went, being dragged along by they’re own tractor. I smiled, almost cruelly, as I saw them unsuccessfully try to get up. I shielded my face from the late-morning sun and looked at where they were going. It would be a while before they hit a fence.

‘Boy,’ I thought. ‘Were they ever in for the ride of their lives!’ Joe was thinking the same thing.

‘They’re going to have a major ‘wedgy’ after that!’

We sat and contemplated our hard day’s work whilst watching (and laughing!) at our ‘would-be’ enemies who were on their five-star cruise to the middle of nowhere. It was now too late to catch today’s ferry, so we’d just have to wait till tomorrow.