Among the Free (6 page)

What if they've got no more loyalty than the boy in the shed?

Luke could imagine the room falling into a horrified silence, someone rushing over to beat him up. To kill him. He was still wearing a Population Police uniform, after all.

Luke stepped into the shadow of the woods and, despite the cold, took his shirt off. He shoved his arms through the sleeves backward, turning them inside out, and pulled the front panels of the shirt together that way. It was hard buttoning the shirt back up from the inside, especially with his fingers going numb in the cold. But he felt better with the hated Population Police insignia hidden.

Luke heard a door opening behind him, so he crouched down in the weeds and looked around. It was only the boy creeping out of the shed toward the party house. Luke watched, wondering how the boy intended to get any food from a closed-up house filled with people. The boy sidled up to a window that was missing several panes of glass. Some of the panes had been replaced by plastic and some by squares of cardboard. The boy pushed at one
of the cardboard squares, squeezing his fingers under the bottom.

Even from a distance, Luke could see the triumphant smile on the boy's face. Luke imagined that the boy must have reached his hand into a bowlful of some great delicacy—raisins, maybe, or almonds. And then the boy's expression changed.

“Ow!” he howled.

He seemed to be trying to jerk his hand back, but his hand was caught somehow. The front door of the house opened and a horde of men rushed out, screaming, “Thief! Thief!” They circled the building, pulled the boy away from the window and threw him to the ground. Now the shouts were jumbled: One man growled, “There's Mary's cloak that was stolen,” and everyone else seemed to be shouting, “Population Police! We'll show the Population Police who's in charge!”

“No, wait!” the boy shrieked. “I'm on your side! I'm the kid who risked his life refusing to shoot the old woman! It's because of me you got the gun—”

“We'll show you the gun!” someone shouted, and then everyone stepped back as one of the men pulled a gun out of his pocket and held it up in the air, where it glinted in the last rays of sunlight.

The man pointed the gun straight at the boy, making everyone else laugh. He stepped forward, pretending to be about to shoot, then lowered the gun at the last minute. He did this two or three times, and the men around him
laughed all the harder as the boy squirmed on the ground in terror.

“Enough games,” the man said, raising the gun yet again. “And enough of the Population Police, I say.”

This time he cocked the gun and aimed carefully.

This is real,
Luke thought.
This is really going to happen.

“No, don't!” he screamed.

The man with the gun looked up, startled. His eyes searched the darkened woods. And then he aimed the gun at the tree where Luke was hiding and began shooting.

L
uke ran.

Later he wouldn't remember much about the ground he covered, the logs he leaped over, the underbrush he trampled. His mind had no time to record such useless details. He ran with terror urging him on, a voice constantly in his head:
They're right behind you. They've got to be. They're about to catch up. They're going to shoot again and this time they won't miss. There! Did you hear that? What was that? They're about to grab you—

He didn't turn around and look back. Even a second's lack of focus could have slammed him into a tree, snagged his feet on a root. He was so convinced he was about to be captured that he didn't worry about where he was running
to
—he just knew he had to get away.

So the sight of the mountain surprised him: The huge rock wall loomed directly in front of him. Automatically he veered to the right, then hesitated.
Was that—?
He saw telltale cracks in the rock, leading down to an opening at
the mountain's base. He finally dared to slow down and glance over his shoulder—no one was directly behind him. He dived down and slid on his stomach across the rock floor.

Yes. It was a cave.

Luke had no way of knowing if it was the same cave he'd found before. He scuttled back into the darkness and huddled against a rock wall, his entire body shaking, his desperate gasps for breath echoing as loudly as a steam train. He finally captured enough air in his lungs that he could hold his breath for a few seconds and listen. Were those footsteps outside? Was someone even now about to duck down and crawl in after him?
I'd be trapped. There's no escape . . .
Luke stared at the thin sliver of gray light coming in through the cave's opening. No figure moved in to block the light. Maybe Luke hadn't heard footsteps. Maybe he'd been tricked by the sound of his own pulse beating in his ears.

His body had more tricks in store for him. His mind kept replaying the scene that he'd witnessed, slowing down for the final frame: the man turning, pointing the gun at Luke. Shooting. Luke tried not to let himself focus on the man and the gun. He kept trying to make himself remember what he'd seen out of the corner of his eye, right before fleeing. There, on the ground. Had the boy been crawling away? Had he slipped out between the men's legs while they weren't looking? Had he been able to escape?

Oh, please . . .

Luke couldn't even have said why the boy's life mattered so much to him. The boy had been no friend to Luke. He'd shared information only because he was scared. He'd refused to share shelter or food. Why had Luke risked his own life trying to save the other boy?

Isn't it enough that the boy was alive? Isn't that reason enough for me to want him to stay alive?

Luke remembered the boy's own comment on life and death: “Lots of people die who don't deserve it.” If the roles had been reversed—if it had been Luke on the ground and the boy hiding in the woods—Luke didn't think the boy would have tried to save him.

I don't think like he does. I'm not that . . . free.
But was it freedom not to care about anyone but yourself? Not to care what side you were on, as long as you got food in your stomach?

Luke's own stomach felt squeezed in and petrified, almost beyond hunger. But he knew he wouldn't survive long without nourishment.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow I'll have to find food.
For now, even if his life depended on it, he couldn't force himself to crawl back out of his cave.

F
or a long time, Luke lay huddled against the rock wall, his ears straining to interpret every sound. Was that rustling noise a squirrel running through the fallen leaves or a person approaching Luke's cave? Was that scratching noise the wind blowing a twig against the mountain or a human lighting a match?

Eventually Luke slipped into a fitful sleep haunted by nightmares of guns firing and people chasing him. The woman he'd refused to shoot appeared in his dreams, but she never said anything. She just kept looking at Luke—why was she looking at him? The boy Luke had tried to save sat at a table spread with every delicious food Luke had ever seen, but every time Luke tried to approach, the boy said, “Oh, no, this is
my
gourmet meal. Nobody can make me share.” The stiff threads of the Population Police insignia stabbed against his chest, and he tore at it in his sleep, not sure if the pain was imaginary or real.

When Luke woke up the next morning, he felt weak and
trembly. His head ached from sleeping on rock, and his legs and arms felt bruised. He lay staring at the faint light filtering in through the cave's opening. He blinked one eye and then the other, making the light shift position, jump from side to side. That was the kind of thing he used to entertain himself with more than a year ago, when he was bored and lonely, hiding in his parents' attic. Before he met Jen.

You didn't shoot the woman. You tried to save the boy. Stop hiding, Luke. You're worth it, you really are. . . .

Luke decided this cave had to be the same one he'd discovered the day before, because it, too, was haunted by Jen's voice.

Get up. Go. Get out of here. Stop hiding.

“All right, all right,” Luke muttered.

He stretched and started to stand up, forgetting how low the cave's ceiling was. His head slammed against solid rock.

“Ow! Oooh—thanks a lot, Jen. Got any other great advice?”

He rubbed his throbbing head and half crawled, half slithered toward the cave's entrance. Then he sat there, peering out into the waiting woods. He needed food—to be able to think clearly, if nothing else. Maybe with food he'd even stop thinking that he could talk to ghosts. Chiutza had to be the nearest place with food, but every time he started thinking about heading in that direction, his legs shook and his heart felt like it was quivering in his chest.

I don't have to go there,
he told himself.
Maybe I'll just go . . . back.

He wasn't quite sure what he meant by “back.” He had such a jumble of images in his head. He could see himself showing up at home, his mother's arms wrapped around him, her face glowing with joy at the sight of him. He could see himself returning to the school he'd attended, his old headmaster, Mr. Hendricks, rolling out in his wheelchair, crying, “Oh, Luke, it's so good to see that you're safe.” He could see himself back at the stables, with his favorite horse, Jenny, whinnying and rubbing her nose contentedly against his arm. Luke thought that all of those places—home, Hendricks School, Population Police headquarters—were to the east. The sun had been behind him the whole time he'd been traveling yesterday morning. If he just walked toward the sun now, surely he'd eventually get someplace he wanted to go. It made sense, didn't it?

Luke stepped out of his cave and began walking.

His legs were wobbly and his throat was parched, but the cool air and the motion cleared his head a little. If the other boy had been right the night before, if the Population Police were really out of power, Luke had plenty of reason for rejoicing. When he got away from Chiutza, maybe he'd even find someone who'd help him get home. He'd be done with Population Police headquarters, done with boarding school—he could live a normal life with his own family.

And if the boy was wrong? If he was lying?

Luke thought he could handle that possibility too. The Population Police had been in power in one way or another his entire life. He'd survived. If the Population Police stopped him now, he could . . . he could use the other boy's story, just like the other boy had tried to use Luke's.

I was on a mission to hand out new identity cards in Chiutza. The villagers attacked the officer in charge, and then the driver sped away. I didn't desert. I was abandoned.

Luke didn't let himself think about how badly pretending had worked for the other boy. He didn't let himself wonder if the other boy had been killed after all.

Luke hadn't been walking for very long when he came to a stream gurgling with cool, clear water. He bent down to drink, taking long swallows from his cupped hands. As he rose, he saw that the stream led out of the woods toward a vast expanse of open land—another field. At the edge of the field was a row of trampled plants that Luke recognized as soybeans. For some reason, they'd escaped harvest. They'd been battered by the winter winds and snow and ice, but Luke could still see seed pods hanging from the thin, bent stems. Luke rushed over and pulled off pod after pod, cracking them open and tossing the withered beans into his mouth. It was hardly a gourmet meal, but Luke was so relieved to have something to chew, something to swallow. He was so absorbed in eating that it took him a few minutes to remember to look around, to be cautious.

That was when he saw the truck.