Free Burning for Revenge by John Marsden Page B

barracks."
    "I'll look in the store building," Homer said, catching the mood quickly, realising this was our first chance, maybe our last.
    "What'll I do?" Fi asked.
    "Stay here," I said quickly, in case the boys came up with some stupid suggestion. Sometimes I had this funny wish to protect Fi, to take care of her. She'd have killed me if she'd known that.
    Homer opened the door a fraction more and the three of us started to slip out through the tiny gap.
    I went second, behind Lee.
    "Be careful," Fi said. I bit back a desire to laugh, and just nodded.
    Outside, the wind felt sharp, quite cold for summer. It was only a short dash to the barracks building, but I knew I had to use the buildings and shadows for cover,
as much as I could. I bent over and scurried across the roadway. It was weird because I felt I wasn't able to breathe, somehow. Yet here I was, running, so I must have been breathing. I felt really paranoid, too, certain someone somewhere must be seeing me. I didn't know if it would be the people in the control tower or a helicopter overhead or a soldier still left in the barracks, but I felt I couldn't get away with this: it was too outrageous, too much, thinking I could run around in this huge and vital enemy installation doing what I liked. So I waited for the shout, the cry of alarm, the rattle of a rifle being loaded and armed and swung into position.

    Then I was in the shadow of the doorway, and definitely breathing. Now my trouble was the opposite —I was breathing too hard: so noisily that anyone in the building must rush out, to see what was going on. I sounded like a set of bagpipes warming up. I sounded like Fi's little sister when she was crashing into another asthma attack. I struggled to get control but I could only give myself a few seconds. After about ten of those seconds I stepped out of the doorway's shadow and into the barracks itself.
    It was like a dormitory. And so clean and neat! Every bed beautifully made, every bedspread straight and symmetrical, every table and chair squared off. The place stank of disinfectant, so much that my eyes stung. The windows shone. I couldn't believe men were this neat. I wished Homer could come and see it. This is how his bedroom could have looked but never did.
    I scanned the place quickly. The slightest movement and I was in big trouble, having to make a decision to run or attack. Either way, I was cactus. I had no weapon,
except for the fruit knife in my sock. But the room was still. I hurried along the gap between the beds, looking for something, anything, to help us. There were no obvious treasures. At the end of the row I pulled open two locker doors at once, one with each hand. The insides of the lockers were as neat as the outsides. Uniforms and casual clothes, neatly wrapped in plastic bags, hung on coat-hangers. Each locker had a top shelf, and on it were the soldiers" personal possessions: photos and books and pens and cigarettes and sweets, again beautifully arranged. "Gosh, if Mum could see this..." I thought, but there was no time for that stuff. I scared of staying too long but I didn't want to go back to the others empty-handed either.

    In the corner an open door showed the way to a little kitchenette, so I ducked in there and opened the fridge. Even it was clean and neat, but crammed with goodies. Fresh food was one of our major dreams, a full-on fantasy for us all, so I loaded up with everything I could carry that wouldn't leave conspicuous gaps in the shelves. "They'll think they're knocking off each other's stuff," I figured. "It'll start a major fight and they'll kill each other and then we can take over the airfield."
    I got an avocado, some cheese, a small rock-melon, a bag of rocket and other greens, and some stuff that looked like rissoles and smelt like fish. Then I moved my ass out of there. I was in a real hurry to be back in the hangar. I didn't know how long it would be before the Papa Bears marched home with their rifles,