Free Tomorrow When The War Began by John Marsden

fists.
You could see her calming herself, like she did at netball
sometimes.
    At last she continued. ‘Look everyone, I
didn’t want to say much. Just that we’ve got to be careful. If we
go rushing around the countryside, to seven different houses, well,
it mightn’t be such a bright thing to do, that’s all. We should
decide some things, like whether to stick together, or break into
small groups, like Kevin and Corrie want to do. Whether we should
use the vehicles. Whether we should go any further in daylight.
It’s almost dark now. For a start I suggest no one goes on from
here until it is dark, and that when they do go they don’t use
lights.’
    ‘What do you think’s happened?’ I asked. ‘Do
you think the same as Lee?’
    ‘Well,’ said Robyn. ‘There’s no sign of anyone
leaving in a hurry, like in an emergency. They left some days ago.
And they expected to come back some days ago. Now, what’s something
that everyone would have gone off to some days ago, expecting to
come back? We all know the answer to that.’
    ‘Commemoration Day,’ said Corrie. ‘The
Show.’
    ‘Exactly.’
    ‘Homer,’ I said, ‘is there some way you can
tell if your parents came back from the Show? I mean, if I’d
thought of it before, I could have looked for a couple of our bulls
that I know Dad was showing, that he wouldn’t have sold for any
price. And he wouldn’t have come back from the Show without them. I
mean, he would have kept those bulls in the bedroom if Mum had let
him.’
    Homer thought for a minute.
    ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Mum’s needlepoint. She
enters a new piece every year, then win lose or draw she brings it
back and hangs it on her Honour Wall. She gets a big thrill putting
it up there. Hang on a sec.’
    He ran out, and we waited in silence. He was
back a moment later. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘It’s not there.’
    ‘OK,’ Robyn said. ‘Let’s assume that a lot of
people went to the Show and didn’t come back. And let’s assume that
since Commem Day all power and phones have been cut, all radio
stations are off the air, and there have been a number of fires.
And the people who went to the Show wanted to come back but
couldn’t. Where does that get us?’
    ‘And there’s the other thing,’ Lee said.
    Robyn looked at him. ‘Yes,’ she said.
    Lee continued, ‘The night of the Show those
hundreds of aircraft, maybe even more than hundreds, that came in
over the coast, flying low and at high speed.’
    ‘And without lights,’ I added, realising that
critical point for the first time.
    ‘Without lights?’ Kevin said. ‘You didn’t tell
us that.’
    ‘It didn’t strike me,’ I said. ‘You know how
you notice something, but not consciously? That’s what it was
like.’
    ‘Let’s assume something else,’ Fi said. She
sounded, and looked, angry. ‘Let’s assume that what you’re saying
is absolutely ridiculous.’ She sounded like me, in this same room,
not very many minutes earlier. Hadn’t I said ‘absolutely
ridiculous’? But now I was starting to come round to Lee and
Robyn’s way of thinking. That little point about the lights had
made a difference to me. No legitimate aircraft, no aircraft on a
legitimate mission, would have been flying without lights. I should
have registered it at the time, and I was annoyed at myself that I
hadn’t.
    But Fi continued, ‘There are dozens more
likely theories. Dozens! I don’t know why you won’t consider
them.’
    ‘OK Fi, fire away,’ said Kevin. ‘But fire
quickly.’ The strain was really showing in Kevin’s face.
    ‘All right,’ said Fi. ‘Number one. They’re
sick. They went to the Show and got food poisoning or something.
They’re in hospital.’
    ‘Then the neighbours would have been here,
looking after the place,’ Homer said.
    ‘They got sick too,’ said Fi.
    ‘That doesn’t explain why all the radio
stations are off the air,’ said Corrie.
    ‘Everyone’s sick then,’ said Fi. ‘There’s