Free Arrival by Chris Morphew Page A

gunshots.
    Jordan’s eyes flashed to Reeve. ‘Should we –?’
    â€˜No,’ he said. ‘Go. Get out of here, fast as you can. Go straight home.
    â€™ ‘Definitely,’ Peter said, sounding like he was about to be sick.
    Officer Reeve tossed me his torch and then ran back to join the fray.
    We ran the rest of the way to the terminal building, grabbed our bikes, and pedalled away down the dirt track into the bush.

Chapter 12
    M ONDAY , M AY 11
94 DAYS
    There was no sign of Crazy Bill anywhere in town the next day.
    Not that I was expecting to see him. If he’d escaped the guards, he’d probably be hiding out somewhere, lying low. Or else he’d been shot or arrested, in which case he definitely wouldn’t be roaming the streets any time soon.
    I’d fallen asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow last night, but it didn’t last long. My dreams were a mess of shouts and gunshots and flashes of Crazy Bill’s twisted face, and I kept jolting awake, half-expecting to find that poor security officer’s crumpled body still lying next to me, his huge unblinking eye drilling a hole in my head.
    It was almost a relief when my alarm finally got me up for school.
    I saw Jordan on the way there. She was walking out of the office complex as I rode past, through a glass sliding door marked Phoenix Medical Centre. She waved to me on her way down the steps and I stopped to wait for her.
    â€˜Everything okay?’ I asked as she came over.
    â€˜Huh?’ She followed my eyes back to the medical centre. ‘Oh, right. Yeah, everything’s fine. Mum just went in for an appointment. Nothing serious.’
    â€˜Oh, okay. Good.’
    â€˜I got up early to come in with her,’ Jordan continued, bending down to unlock her bike from a rack out the front of the building. ‘You know, as a peace offering after last night. She wasn’t too happy when I came home after dark without a good reason.’
    â€˜But it was only eight-thirty!’ I said, raising an eyebrow. ‘Besides, it’s not like you could have called her and told her where you were.’
    â€˜Yeah, but missing dinner without a good reason is basically a criminal offence in my family,’ said Jordan, standing up again. ‘What about you? How was your mum about it?’
    â€˜She doesn’t even know I was gone,’ I said as we wheeled our bikes back out into the street. ‘I beat her home by twenty minutes.’
    â€˜Lucky,’ said Jordan.
    â€˜I guess so,’ I shrugged. But as far as family problems went, I thought having a mum who wanted me home in time for dinner was probably not so terrible.
    We walked down the street in silence for a while. I was still lost in the insanity of the night before, and I figured Jordan was probably feeling the same. She had this steely look in her eyes, like she was trying to push it all down so she didn’t have to think about it. I felt like I should say something to her. Ask her how she was feeling, or reassure her that everything would be okay, or … I don’t know. Something. But I couldn’t find the words for any of it.
    In the end, she was the one to break the silence.
    â€˜At least the security people haven’t contacted our parents,’ she said.
    â€˜Yeah,’ I said. ‘Not yet, anyway.’
    Jordan looked thoughtful. ‘I don’t think they will. Whatever Calvin is planning, the other guy in the recording told him to keep it quiet. I don’t think he’ll want to draw any unnecessary attention to what happened out there last night.’
    â€˜Yeah, guess not.’
    â€˜Assuming any of them even made it back from the airport,’ Jordan added quietly.
    My mind flashed back to Crazy Bill’s sudden psychopathic outburst, to that dark shape curving through the air towards me, to that horrible screaming that got louder and louder and then suddenly stopped .
    â€˜You saw it,