Among the Free (13 page)

If the Population Police really are gone, if everyone really is free—how long will it be before I stop thinking about things like that?
Luke wondered.

He reached the back door of the headquarters building and let himself in. He was in an unfamiliar room lined with aprons hanging from hooks.

“The food's in here,” someone hollered at him.

He stepped into a larger room, this one full of tables. It reminded him of the dining hall back at Hendricks School, but there were no cooks bustling about, doling out food. Instead, people were lined up in front of a long countertop stacked with apples and oranges.

“Yesterday there was made stuff, not just fruit,” a kid
whined in front of him. “Where's the bread? Where are the waffles? Why aren't there doughnuts anymore?”

“All the workers left, remember?” Luke said. “Nobody's here to make bread or waffles or doughnuts.”

But he wasn't thrilled about having just fruit for breakfast either. He circled the countertop and headed into the kitchen.

“Nina?” he called softly, remembering that this was where she had worked. He would feel so much better if she popped her head out from behind the row of stainless-steel refrigerators, or sprang out from beyond one of the long cabinets. But the sound of her name just echoed in the silent, empty kitchen.

I didn't really expect her to be here,
Luke told himself.
She's free now, remember?

He opened one of the huge refrigerators and saw stacks of egg cartons, enormous jugs of milk.

“Can I . . . ?” he started to ask, then shrugged. The Population Police were gone. Nobody was there to tell him what he could or couldn't do, what he could or couldn't eat.

Luke found a pan and oil and figured out how to turn one of the stove burners on. He hunted up a fork and a bowl and scrambled five eggs together, then poured them into the pan. The eggs solidified quickly, the clear parts turning murky white. The smell of cooking egg rose from the pan, taking him back in time.

Last April: my farewell breakfast. Mother promised the
chicken factory forty hours of unpaid work just to get two eggs for me. . . .

Suddenly he was overcome with homesickness, almost as bad as he'd experienced when he'd first left home to go to Hendricks School. He just wanted to go home again. And if the Population Police were truly out of power, that was possible. Luke's presence wouldn't endanger his family anymore. They wouldn't have to worry about hiding him; he wouldn't have to worry about being seen.

Luke flipped his scrambled eggs.

But who's going to take care of the horses if I leave?
he thought.
And are the Population Police truly out of power?

The eggs started to burn. Luke slid them out of the pan and onto a plate. He couldn't find any forks in the kitchen, so he went back into the dining room.

“Wow! Where'd you get that?” It was the same kid who'd complained about the fruit before.

“Made it myself,” Luke said, feeling a little proud. “There's a lot of eggs and milk in the kitchen.”

His words—or maybe the smell of the eggs, wafting through the dining room—set off a mini stampede. People rushed into the kitchen. Luke chuckled to himself as he sat down at an empty table and began to eat.

Just beyond the table, someone had wheeled in a television, hooked up with extension cords to a plug in another room.

“This is breaking news,” a man was saying on the TV.
Luke recognized the voice: Philip Twinings, the newscaster he'd heard on the radio the night before. On the TV screen, he looked old and decrepit, with white, ghostly hair sticking out from under a tweed hat, and a white beard and mustache covering most of his face.

“Our researchers have been working feverishly through the night, trying to put together the story of this coup,” Philip Twinings said. “This has been a most unusual event. History tells us that in most governmental changes, no matter how many people are involved, there's almost always one person who stands out, who leads the charge to strike down the previous regime. Until now, this coup appeared to be an instance of the will of the people overcoming a—am I allowed to say this now?—a totalitarian government. But now, we've uncovered the details of the plot behind the coup . . . and the mastermind who coordinated it all.”

Philip Twinings paused, as if to give the people watching him a chance to gasp in amazement. Luke peered at the TV screen, and then through the window behind the TV. Distantly, through the trees, he could see the spot where Philip Twinings was standing in real life, in real time. The cameraman stood in front of Philip, and another figure stood beside him, though still out of range of the camera. Luke squinted. Something about the way the person was standing seemed familiar.

“We here at Freedom News have landed an exclusive interview with that mastermind, who's graciously agreed
to talk with us now. I present to you—”

The camera panned away from Philip, then slid over to focus on the person beside him. Luke dropped his fork. He stopped listening to Philip. He didn't have to.

The “mastermind” was someone he knew.

L
uke would have been overjoyed if the person on the TV screen with Philip Twinings had been Nina or Trey or Mr. Talbot or Mr. Hendricks or Nedley, another man who'd helped with their cause. He would have been proud; he would have stood up and shouted to the whole dining room,
That's my friend! I helped, too!

But the person beside Philip Twinings was a muscular man whose face still sometimes haunted Luke's dreams.

It was Oscar.

Back in the fall, when Luke had witnessed the death of two people right in front of this building, Oscar had been the one who'd killed them. Oscar had tried to manipulate Luke, tried to get him to betray an innocent boy, maybe even tried to kill him, too. Before Oscar had slipped away into the darkness that awful night, some of his last words to Luke had been, “You're a good kid, even if you aren't ready to work with me yet” and, “You owe me now.”

Oscar had always confused Luke.

And terrified him.

Now Luke peered at the TV screen, trying to understand.
Could Oscar have been involved all along? Did he help destroy the building where all the identity cards were stored? Did he coordinate the rebellions in the rest of the country? Have I been working with—for?—Oscar the past few months without even knowing it?
When Luke and his friends had first decided to go undercover to sabotage the Population Police from inside, Mr. Talbot had warned them about the need for secrecy. “The less you know about the other people you're working with, the better,” he'd said. “If you are ever caught, God forbid, you wouldn't mean to betray your friends, but things might slip out . . . during torture. If you don't know much, you can't reveal much.” So Luke had never known the fake names Nina and Trey were using at Population Police headquarters; he'd never known when or if his brother Mark had showed up to help; he'd never known anyone else's role in the plans they carried out. He'd been a cog in a wheel, and he'd never been able to see the whole wheel or where they going.

Could Oscar really have been the one steering?

“I must say,” Philip Twinings was saying on the TV screen, “it's very courageous of you to step forward at this point, when there are still rumors that the Population Police haven't been fully, um, eradicated. For the benefit of our TV audience, I'd like to point out that Oscar Wydell is
standing here at the former Population Police headquarters without any security around him.”

“You're standing here without security too, Philip. You should be complimented on your courage as well,” Oscar said, with a comfortable laugh. “I used to work as a bodyguard, and I learned to have a sixth sense about danger. I do not feel that I am in danger now. These are my friends here—my colleagues.”

“I see,” Philip said. “It's certainly been a very happy crowd, and everyone has been glad to find out about your role in the elimination of the Population Police. Do you feel that the overthrow is complete? Or are you concerned at all that the Population Police leaders might be consolidating their forces for a return to power?”

“Philip,” Oscar said, leaning earnestly toward the camera, “I understand why people are afraid. Our country has been through a very dark time, ever since the first drought and famine nearly twenty years ago. In the past six months, the Population Police have achieved new heights of oppression. But one of the reasons I agreed to speak with you this morning is to assure the entire country that my people and I are in control. We have Aldous Krakenaur and the rest of his . . . his
henchmen
locked up in a secure location. In due course, we will hold a trial, and anyone who wishes to will be allowed to testify against them.”

“And where might that secure location be?” Philip asked eagerly.

Oscar shook his head regretfully.

“I don't feel that I should reveal that, because of the extreme—and quite justifiable—anger so many people have against the Population Police,” he said. “We will punish the Population Police through
legal
means, not vigilante justice. We plan to hold trials.”

“But there are no laws in our country right now,” Philip said. “There is no government. What standards will you use to try them?”

“The standards of basic humanity,” Oscar said. “Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a great deal to accomplish this morning.”

“Of course,” Philip said, stepping back.

Oscar turned to go, the camera shot lingering on his muscular back. Then he turned back around.

“One more thing,” he said. “What you've been doing, interviewing people about their experiences with the Population Police . . . That could be helpful, as we form our new government. We want to make this truly a government of the people. I have a vision of people standing right here, testifying, talking about the mistakes of the past and their hopes for the future. It could be . . . cleansing.”

“What an excellent idea!” Philip gushed. “We've accumulated so much footage already, which we'll be showing momentarily . . . ”

Luke watched Oscar disappear from the TV screen. Through the window, out on the lawn, he could see Oscar striding away from Philip and the cameraman, toward the headquarters building.

If he came in here, into the dining hall, would he recognize me?
Luke wondered.
Does he know what
I
did? Would he call out, “Oh, yes, my brave friend, I'm so proud of you, so grateful for the part you played. Come and help us plan our government”?

Would I want him to?

On the TV screen, Philip was introducing the footage Simone and Tucker had taped the night before of people entering the gates of the big celebration.

“Here's one of the more humorous responses we got,” Philip said.

And then Luke saw his own image on the TV. Onscreen, he had Eli's quilt clutched around his shoulders and a desperate look in his eye.

“You—you're calling this Freedom News, right?” he was saying on the TV.

“Yes, that's right,” Simone said. “We are.”

The TV glowed with her loveliness, the camera clearly illuminating her lustrous blond hair, her bright blue eyes, her confident stance. Too quickly, the focus slid back to Luke with his wild hair, wild eyes, and ragged quilt.

“Then I'm free not to talk,” the televised Luke said. When he'd spoken those words, he'd thought he sounded dignified and noble, like a legal citizen claiming his rights. But on the TV screen his voice came out squeaky, shifting from high to low ranges just in the course of six words. He sounded crazy. He sounded like he deserved to be mocked.

Luke blushed and slid lower in his seat.

Hiding again.