She looked around. Everywhere cops were directing people away from the city centre, moving the crowds back towards the west. She turned and joined the stream of grumbling commuters with their shopping bags and expensive haircuts, half of them talking on their phones.
âThey've checkpointed the west tunnel,' a woman said crossly, phone stuck to her ear. âIt'll take forever to get through.'
Tally jammed her school hat down tight and slunk along, trying to blend in with the crowd.
âLet's try the station,' said an old man to his wife. âSurely they won't stop the trains.' They seemed annoyed rather than frightened, these people, but then they had no reason to be afraid. They were legit.
She let the crowd carry her along until they were slowed by a bottleneck. A huge queue stretched outside the train station: the cops were checking IDs. She stopped still, watching the obediently shuffling lines of people, the blinking lights of the scanners.
They were closing off all the exits from the city. Her disguise couldn't help her now. The siren was still sending out its slow panicked wail, with smaller sirens swooping dizzily through it, and an acrid smell hung in the air; she couldn't think straight. On the edges of the crowd, Tally spied uncertain figures drifting here and there: a young guy dressed in black, his eyes darting around; two kids in baseball caps, conferring with each other nervously; a young woman hugging one arm to her chest, like she was injured. Undocs, like her, no doubt wondering the same thing she was: how to get through to the Quarter without being caught by the cops.
There was only one option, Tally knew. She thought of that long dank blackness, like an echo chamber, a concrete trap that magnified the tiniest sound. She had never walked through there alone; it was dangerous down there, but now she didn't have a choice. She turned away from the crowd and set off for the old tunnel.
But the cops were all over the Interzone too, patrolling in groups, stopping people to check IDs; another paddy wagon was parked at the kerb, and a kid about her age was being marched towards it, the cop's hand clamped tight around his skinny arm. Tally began to run. The stench of smoke filled the night, and she ran past a burning rubbish bin, past a woman slumped at a bus stop holding her stomach, past a group of cops who had a guy pinned to the ground face down.
Tally was flying along now, weaving and swerving, zigzagging around the trouble spots, the two-hundred-metre sprint champion of at least four schools. She would not stop to help anyone; she didn't care about other people anymore â they were not her problem. She would look after one person, and one person only. She ran past them all: an old woman struggling along, bent almost double with age; a scared-looking kid with fresh welts all down one side of his face; a dark-haired young woman in a torn green dress, limping along barefoot. None of them mattered to her: just look after number one.
And as she ran, over the squall of the sirens, over the clamour of the whole place going to pieces around her, Tally heard a voice â frightened but clear, a girl's voice that brought a sweet, sharp stab of recognition â carry through the smoke.
âHey!' it called out after her. âHey, wait! Do you know how to get out of here?'
Acknowledgements
Writing a book can be a lonesome undertaking, but it doesn't happen in a vacuum, and this one made it onto the shelves with the help of many people. Thanks are due to Marion May Campbell for being a brilliant supervisor and inspiring author; to my editor Aviva Tuffield at Scribe for her early interest and superb manuscript-polishing skills; and to my agent Clare Forster at Curtis Brown for her faith, warmth and backing. Thanks also to the Australian Centre at the University of Melbourne, for awarding the manuscript the 2007 D.J. (Dinny) O'Hearn Memorial Prize; to Scribe and the Copyright Agency Limited for shortlisting it for the 2010 CAL Scribe Fiction Prize; and to Cate Kennedy, Sophie Cunningham, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Tom Cho, Crusader Hillis, Mark Rubbo and Kerryn Goldsworthy for behind-the-scenes encouragement on these two fronts. I'd also like to thank Associate Professor Robyn Ferrell, and my fellow students at the University of Melbourne, for feedback on drafts; the very patient Marc Martin for the gorgeous cover; Ian âEagle Eye' See for his detailed and thoughtful proofreading; and Amanda Soogun for her fine photographic talents. I'm very grateful to James Bradley, Catherine O'Flynn and Chris Womersley for reading the manuscript and offering their kind and generous words of endorsement. And, finally, a big thank you to my fantastic family and friends for their ongoing encouragement, creativity and support; to my sweet cat Ollie for keeping me company at my desk all those years; and, last but not least, to Andi Pekarek, for finally arriving.