Free Half Lives by Sara Grant

wants to rebuild what was broken so long ago. The people who survived the plague and the wars were outcasts in one way or another. Greta was starting to feel she didn’t
belong – not with Da and his quest to conquer and not with her brothers, who were happy to follow orders. She’s never had someone to talk to, someone who wasn’t related or scared
of Da. But since meeting Beckett, for the first time in a long time, she doesn’t feel so alone.

 
     
     
     
Chapter Eight
     
     
     
     
    I stared out of the wall of windows overlooking the runways. Normally planes would be criss-crossing the sky like some airborne x-y graph. But all
the aeroplanes were parked in neat rows. The airport terminal had grown strangely quiet.
    I felt as if I was on the edge of my seat, but my seat was dangling by a dreadlock over the Grand Canyon. It was like a google times worse than the feeling I got when I watched horror movies. My
insides were bunched up and a primal scream was permanently wedged at the back of my throat. All that was missing were those screeching violins. But I couldn’t cover my eyes or switch off the
TV. This horror story was my life.
    I had to get out of here. I followed the exit signs. My spine felt as if the vertebrae were being crushed under the weight of my backpack. A queue of people stretched through the sliding doors
that led outside and slithered around a maze of barricades. They were checking and double-checking their phones. They all kept their heads down and their eyes averted. Women rummaged in their
handbags. Businessmen removed their jackets. Kids my age bobbed their heads in prayer to the iPod gods.
    Everyone was trying to act natural but tension sparked in the air. No one had any info about what was happening. It was as if everyone knew this was a Darwinian test on a massive scale. Survival
of the fittest. When I did inadvertently make eye contact, people’s eyes were glazed with panic and their faces were tight, nearly twitching with fear. It felt as if one wrong word would
transform this tenuous order into disaster-movie chaos.
    Up ahead a vision in pink was jumping and waving wildly. It took me less than a second to recognize the bald head, the ears that were more metal than flesh and the cat’s eyes. Even though
my predicament hadn’t improved a fizzle, something inside me lightened a little.
    ‘Icie! Hey, Icie!’
    Damn, that girl could project.
    She was nearly at the front of the queue, which I could see was marked ‘taxi’. Surveying the length of the line, I knew Marissa was my only hope of getting out of here any time soon.
I swallowed my fear of all these potential disease-carriers and weaved my way towards her.
    ‘She’s with me,’ she said to the people scowling at me. I handed her my backpack and then slipped between the metal bars of the barrier. I had to nudge a man in a purple golf
shirt to make some room. He grudgingly shifted his golf bag a whole five inches.
    Marissa placed my stuff on the ground between us and wheeled her fuchsia suitcase closer. ‘Got some supplies,’ she said, opening a canvas bag which was stuffed with bottled water, a
year’s supply of breath mints, and every snack food available at the airport travel mart. She had mad survival skills. I noticed the slogan on the bag:
Arizona is Dehydriffic!
Another Ripple.
    I couldn’t think of Lola right now. I couldn’t afford to think about everything I was leaving behind. I had to block out everything and focus like a laser on the one thing I could
control – getting out of the airport.
    ‘Thanks for the assist,’ I said. ‘Sorry about earlier. On the plane, you know. I didn’t mean to be rude.’
    ‘No problem,’ she said, spinning on the heels of her sneakers and clearing us a few more inches of space. ‘Desperate times call for outrageous actions?’
    ‘Desperate measures,’ I corrected. The saying was ‘desperate times call for desperate measures’.
    ‘Yeah, whatever. You know