Among the Free (11 page)

B
y the time Don backed his pickup truck out of his garage, more than a dozen others had decided to join them. Don didn't seem to care.

“Hop in,” he said, grinning from the driver's seat.

Three or four people crowded into the truck's cab; Luke was part of the group that jumped up into the truck's bed. He settled near the front, his back against the cab's window, his knees drawn up to his chest because there wasn't room to stretch them out. Most of the rest of the group were men and boys, though a few girls and women had crowded in too. At the last minute, just before they pulled away, Don's wife ran out of the house after them.

“Wait!” she called. “I'm coming too!”

“I thought you said it wasn't safe,” Don teased her. “Did you change your mind?”

“No, but if you're going, I am too,” she said.

The truckful of people cheered as she crowded into the cab. Two people got out to make room for her and
scrambled into the back instead. Everyone scooted closer together to make room. As they drove off, Luke had one kid's elbow in his ear and another kid practically sitting in his lap.

“At least this way we won't get cold!” someone shouted, and everybody else laughed.

Luke couldn't help remembering another time he'd been crowded with a bunch of other people onto the bed of a pickup truck. That time, his brother Mark had been driving, and Population Police officers had been shooting at them.

Could those Population Police officers have just given up?
Luke wondered.
And where's Mark now?

Around him, people were singing as they sped into the dusk, giving the whole truck the feel of a traveling carnival.

“Hey, folks, I'm picking up the newscast on the radio,” Don yelled back from the cab. “You won't believe this—it's Philip Twinings on the air!”

Luke was glad when one of the other kids asked, “Who's Philip Twinings?”

“He was a famous newscaster when we were kids,” one of the men explained. “He disappeared after the droughts—everybody thought he was dead.”

“Or arrested by the Government,” someone else muttered.

“That's right—he spoke out against all the new laws they put in place. I bet he's happy now!”

“Be quiet back there and I'll turn it up!” Don yelled again from the truck cab.

The singing stopped. Dimly, over the rushing sound of the wind, Luke could hear a wobbly, old-man voice saying, “I want to thank Simone and Tucker for inviting me onto the air with them to cover this phenomenal turn of events.”

“Don't mention it. We really didn't know what we were doing.” Simone's voice sounded small and hollow, suddenly.

“You did very well. You'll be telling this story to your grandchildren someday, and you'll have every right to be proud,” Philip said. His voice was stronger now. “We here at—shall we call it Freedom News, Simone?—are still trying to piece together this rapidly breaking news event. As near as we can tell, today's coup began with many small events. On Monday, the Population Police sent units out all across the country, to issue new identity cards. We've received reports that in many places, the people refused to be identified and some even attacked the Population Police units. And we've got an unconfirmed report that in Chiutza, a young Population Police recruit defied his commander and refused to shoot an old lady. He gave his gun to the rebels instead. . . . ”

Luke gasped. He had to bite back the words,
Wait! That was me—but that's not exactly how it happened!
He looked around and was glad that no one was watching him. Some of the people around him were squinting off into the distance, as if that could help them listen better.

“Philip, no disrespect here, but that story is pretty
much confirmed,” Simone was saying. “We had an eyewitness tell us that that's what gave his village the courage to throw the Population Police out. And everybody says that Chiutza is where the Population Police fell first.”

Luke tried to make sense of what he was hearing. When he'd dropped the gun, could someone have believed he was turning it over to the rebels? Could his one action have made that much of a difference?

“Uh, Mr. Twinings, sir,” Tucker was saying on the radio. “Shouldn't you say that this whole coup thing was caused by those rebels who destroyed all the I.D.'s? If they hadn't done that, the Population Police wouldn't have had to go out to Chiutza and all those other places to issue new identity cards.”

Philip Twinings chuckled.

“It is indeed difficult to separate out all the roots of this incredible event. My guess is that historians will be trying to figure everything out for years to come. But just as there were many small erosions of freedom that led to the Population Police seizing total control, it would appear that many, many small acts of bravery brought the people back to power. Each act was important; perhaps the Population Police never would have fallen without every single effort. No matter how well journalists and historians do their jobs, the world will probably never know the full story of those brave acts or the total number of individuals involved. . . . ”

A man near Luke was rolling his eyes.

“That Philip Twinings always was a pompous jerk,” he muttered.

“Shh!” several others around him hissed.

Luke stopped listening so intently. He was picturing a glob of horse manure placed carefully in a path—his contribution to the effort to destroy all the identity cards.

Horse manure and a dropped gun—are you proud of me now, Jen?
he thought. Maybe Philip Twinings was right, and even the smallest act was important.

Around him, the other people seemed to be getting tired of having to sit so quietly, listening.

“Shut up, Philip Twinings! I'm free to tell you that!” one man yelled, and everyone else laughed.

“No more showing identity cards every time we step outside!” someone else yelled.

“No more Poppies bossing us around!”

“No more Poppies telling us we don't deserve to eat!”

“No more Poppies!”

More laughter.

Luke could feel the edge of the Population Police insignia rubbing against his chest. If he told these people that he'd once been part of the Population Police, would they get upset? Would they believe him if he said he'd been the recruit in Chiutza who had maybe set off the whole overthrow of the government? Could he believe that himself? What if he told them he was a third child?

Am I still illegal?
he wondered as he burrowed back into
his corner of the truck bed. He was still holding the quilt that Eli had given him, and he wrapped it tighter around his shoulders.

Illegal or not, he was still trying to hide.

D
usk passed quickly into darkness, but that didn't stop any of the cheering and shouting in the truck. Luke wondered what the truckload of people would do if they arrived at Population Police headquarters and discovered that everyone had gone home for the night.
What would
I
do?
he wondered.
Where would I go?

But when the truck neared the headquarters a few hours later, it was clear that nightfall had had no effect on the celebration. The gates stood open, completely unguarded. On the walls around the headquarters, someone had mounted huge klieg lights, so the scene within was as bright as day. Some people were dancing on top of the walls; others were cheering from the ground below.

Luke saw no sign of the barbed wire that had once surrounded the walls. He saw no sign of the guard station that had once stood by the gate—no, wait, there it was: toppled over and tossed to the side.

Don parked his truck several yards away, in the midst of
an assortment of other vehicles that people had apparently abandoned so quickly that some of them hadn't even bothered to close their doors.

“We're here!” Don called out, unnecessarily. “Everybody out!”

The others climbed down quickly, whooping and hollering and racing for the gate. Luke followed more slowly. He couldn't quite trust what he was seeing—his mind kept putting the barbed wire back in place, picturing the grim guards along the wall once again. The woman who had feared danger, Don's wife, hung back a little too. She gave Luke an uncertain smile.

“You never did tell us where you came from, did you?” she asked. “In all the excitement, did anyone even bother to ask your name?”

“No,” Luke said. He didn't like the way she kept watching him. “I don't think names matter much anymore.”

She started to say something else, but a crowd was shoving behind him, and Luke let the people push through, separating him from the rest of the group. By the time the tide had carried him to the gateway, he had lost sight of Ricky and Don and everyone else he'd ridden with in the pickup.

It doesn't matter. I've been alone before. And that woman seemed so suspicious.

At the gateway, the crowd bottlenecked, with people pushing from behind and everyone moving slowly at the front. Luke stood on tiptoe, trying to see what the holdup
was. He had a quick flash of fear:
Maybe they're checking I.D.'s after all. Maybe this was just a trap, an elaborate hoax set up by the Population Police to catch people like me. . . .

The fear didn't recede much when he saw the reason for the holdup: TV cameras. Simone and Tucker were interviewing people as they came through the gate, and even the people who weren't being interviewed were slowing down to gawk.

“We're not broadcasting this live,” Simone was telling a thin, hunched-over man. “Philip is over by the wall doing the main broadcast right now. We're just creating a video archive that can be used later, after we edit everything. Philip says this will be like a historical document, almost. So tell me. Why did you come here tonight?”

The man straightened up a little.

“I came here,” he began slowly, “because the Population Police beat me up when I asked for more food for my wife when she was pregnant. And she was pregnant
legitimately.
This was going to be my first child. She deserved that food. She needed it.”

“Wow, sir—that's really sad. If you don't mind me saying so, you do still look kind of, um, scarred up,” Simone said.

Luke could see the man's face now. He had a badly healed gash running from his right eyelid down to his mouth. His nose sagged, as though the bones and cartilage inside had given up.

The man stared straight into the TV camera.

“That don't matter,” he said. “What matters is, my baby was born dead. Malnourishment, the doctors said. He—he would have been absolutely fine otherwise. So it's like the Population Police murdered my son. And I came to see for myself . . . if they really did have plenty of food here the whole time . . . ”

His face seemed to break up along the lines of scars. It was a horrifying sight, until Luke realized the man was only sobbing.

“I just—had—to—see—,” he wailed.

Luke stopped standing on tiptoe and turned away. He couldn't watch anymore. He kept his eyes trained on the gray sweatshirt of the man standing in front of him. He hugged the quilt around himself even tighter as he inched forward. Then suddenly there was a break in the crowd and a bright light shone directly into Luke's eyes.

“What's your story, young man?”

Simone's voice. She was standing there right beside him, holding a microphone out toward his face.

“Huh?” Luke grunted. He could see himself reflected in the lens of the camera, a caveman huddled in an old quilt, with dirt smeared across his face and twigs sticking out of his matted, messy hair. He looked back at Simone, and she was even more beautiful close up than she'd been from a distance or on the TV screen. Her waterfall of blond hair shimmered; her blue eyes twinkled.

“We're asking everyone why they came here tonight,” Simone said gently. “What interactions they've had with
the Population Police previously, why they're rejoicing now . . . This is your chance to tell the whole country your story.”

Luke stared at Simone, too many thoughts tumbling through his head at once. He could admit that he was the one in Chiutza who had refused to shoot the old lady. He could say that he really hadn't handed the gun to the rebels—that he'd just dropped it and run away, so he didn't deserve too much credit. He could tell her about what he and Nina and Trey had tried to do at Population Police headquarters, how they'd persevered even when they'd gotten discouraged. He could tell about how his friends had rescued him from a Population Police holding camp. He could tell about seeing two people murdered, right on this property. He could tell about Jen, and how he felt haunted by her even now, nearly a year later.