Free Exodus by Julie Bertagna Page B

patchwork canopy of plastic bags and tatty tarpaulin. Grime has settled into the harsh, ungenerous lines of the woman’s face.
    â€œWhere else can we go?” demands Brenna, one of Mara’s mother’s friends, staring back just as furiously. “There’s no room anywhere.”
    â€œShould have got here earlier then, shouldn’t you?” the woman snaps. “It’s your own fault.”
    An ugly, unwelcoming grumble grows as the inhabitants of the surrounding boats stare resentfully from their ramshackle floating homes. Some shout abuse, some even fling filthy waste at the new arrivals. Steely eyed, Alex continues to steer into the edges of the boat camp. There’s nothing else he can do; there’s nowhere else to go but the open ocean.
    Mara puts her head upon her knees. She screws her eyes tight shut and puts her fists over her ears to block out the horror of the refugee camp. But she can’t. The putrid, stomach-turning stench of sewage, sweat, and sickness is overwhelming.
    Although she’s frail and shattered from the journey, and despite the surrounding hostility, Gail manages to strike up a conversation with a boy on the rickety boat next door.Gail could charm words out of a stone, if she wanted to. After a while, the familiar sound of her friend’s chatter calms Mara just enough to let her lift her head from her knees and survey the noisy, frightening chaos she now belongs to. And she must look, she tells herself, she must look hard and keep looking till she finds her family.
    â€œAsk about food and fresh water, Gail,” cries Brenna, struggling to cope with her brood of hungry and restless young children. “Find out where we get them.”
    After a few moments Gail turns around from the neighboring boat, her face pale and scared.
    â€œIt’s hopeless.” Gail slumps down on the deck. Everyone stares across the boats to the impenetrable wall of New Mungo.
    â€œThere must be some kind of aid from the city,” says Rowan. “They can’t keep us out here with no food and water.”
    â€œOf course they can,” cries Brenna, nursing a limp and pale toddler. “Why should they care? We should have stayed with the old folk on the island, all together, where we belonged. We’ll die anyway in these rotten seas.”
    I wish we had stayed on the island too
, Mara silently cries, as an outburst of panic and anger explodes around her.
Anything but this
.
    In the midsummer night that never quite grows dark, New Mungo cloaks itself in mist. Its shadows lengthen across the water and the people of the boats grow quiet as the city’s brilliance turns sinister, menacing. While the other refugees huddle under mothy tarpaulins, plastic coverings and blankets, Mara jumps from boat to boat, calling desperately for her parents, peering through the dim twilight for the arrival of any new boats.
    The city glints under the midsummer blue of a star-sprinkled sky. It’s awesome, beautiful, an impossible thing. Mara gazes up, puzzling over the many strange, coiling mechanisms attached to the edges of the towers and the sky tunnels. They whirl in the wind, filling the air with ghostly moans and whispers. As she studies the vast geometry of the city, she feels a spark of her old curiosity. What kind of people could dream up such a thing?
    Whoever they are, the cyberfox is one of them.
    Where are you, Fox?
she wonders.
Are you really up there? How can I get up there too? And if I did, would I ever be able to find you?
    In the middle of the night there’s a clamor that sounds like the end of the world. Mara wakens with a start from her cocoon of blanket. A great swarm of police speedboats and waterbikes buzz around the city wall. Lights flash, sirens scream. Everyone is looking out to sea and as Mara looks too she sees the lights of a great white ship. As it draws close to the city the police send volleys of gunfire into the sky as a warning.