Free Darkness Be My Friend by John Marsden

Around the Showground the big spotlights were definitely on: so strong they seemed to burn the air.
    It was one of the weirdest feelings I've ever had, to know that my parents were probably there, so close to me, less than a k away. As close as we had been for nearly a year. Only once, when I'd been in the carpark itself, had I been any closer. Now I wished I could fly
over and land beside them. Or call out, as loudly as I could, "Hello, I'm here! Hello, Mum! Hello, Dad!"

    As we stood there, looking out across the town, I took Lee's hand in mine. I don't think he even noticed. His hand was trembling slightly. It felt like the fluttering wings of a gentle butterfly. At this moment I didn't even remember that these same hands had taken human life, had killed. I certainly wasn't thinking of the fact that my hands too had taken life. For that moment I was close to Lee again, as close as I'd ever been.
    Away to the west was the other big change in Wirrawee. We'd heard a little about it, but it was still weird to see it there. It was the airfield. Wirrawee had always had an airfield, of course, but just a paddock with a runway and hangar, and a small brick building called the Wirrawee Aviation Club. There were never more than six or eight small planes there. Comparing it to this new military airbase was like comparing a milk bar to the Centrepoint Shopping Complex.
    And this place sure was complex. The thin dirt strip, good enough for the little Cessnas, had been replaced by a long concrete runway, gleaming in the dim lights that now surrounded the whole area. A tall cyclone fence stretched away into the distance. The Wirrawee Aviation Clubhouse was just a little thing stuck on the side of a big new grey building, three storeys high. It must have been thrown up in a hurry, and probably wasn't even finished, because there was still scaffolding on one side of it. I thought I could see a couple of bulldozers in the shadows near the scaffolding.
    Iain had already moved a hundred metres down the
hill and was waiting for us to catch up. Kind of reluctantly, remembering we were meant to be leading, I went down there, passed him, and took up my position. Lee and Ursula were both in front of me, on the other side of the road. In front of me on my side was a man called Tim, a very solid-looking brown guy from Nauru.

    We set off. The Kiwis had a method of moving through the town, not much different to the way we'd done it. I was quite pleased about that, thinking maybe we hadn't been so amateurish after all. It was a leapfrog technique, where the first people sneaked down the street, one on each side of the road, then stopped in a good hiding spot. The second pair followed them, passed them, and went on in the same way until they too stopped in a good place, and waited for the first pair. Behind us the others were doing the same thing. Lee was on the opposite side of the street, so that if either of us wanted to warn the Kiwis about something dangerous we could do it easily: I'd tell Tim as I went past him, and Lee would tell Ursula.
    We were going along Warrigle Road, not far from the Mathers', and I knew I'd have to struggle not to be affected by that. We'd spent a lot of happy times at Robyn's place: my parents and I had gone there for barbeques every few months, and one drought year, when our swimming dam dried up, I'd practically lived in their pool. But I had to be tough, tough in my mind, and sternly tell myself not to think about Robyn. "It's just for an hour or two," I pleaded with her silently. "Don't be too angry with me."
    I focused my eyes on the first dark patch we were
heading for, a spot under a bush about a hundred metres along, between two pools of light from street lamps. The street was silent, nothing moving. I remembered the first time I had left somewhere safe and entered a hostile area: in the carpark at the Showground, way back. I felt then that coming out of those shadows had changed me forever.

    I walked like a