Among the Brave (21 page)

“God rest his soul,” Mrs. Talbot said. “God help us all.” And somehow this was the scariest thing of all, to hear

Mrs. Talbot sounding so solemn and reverent She’d changed since the last time Trey had seen her, when she’d bragged about polishing her fingernails, when she’d smashed expensive sculpture just for spite.

I’ve changed, too,
Trey thought
We all have.
But what did that mean about their futures?

Chapter Thirty-Four

For a week, Trey and his friends lived like invalids. They ate, they slept, they lay around. Sometimes they watched television, but it was almost always Aldous Krakenaur making glorious speeches in front of a cheering crowd. Sometimes Trey felt feisty enough to jeer back at the screen, “Oh yeah, and what are you not showing us? How many people starved today?” Mostly they all sat in silence, trembling before Krakenaur’s shouting image, until someone got up the gumption to snap the television off.

Trey knew his friends needed the time to heal and recover. Maybe he did too. He found himself reacting oddly to the bits of news that dribbled in. It was two or three days before he asked Mr. Hendricks anything about his fellow classmates at school.

“I know they wouldn’t be outside making noise,” Trey said. "But~they're all okay over there, aren’t they?”

Mr. Hendricks sighed heavily.

“No,” he said. ‘After the Government fell
...
after the Population Police took over.., they closed down all the schools. Temporarily, they said. They came and took away all my students for work camps. They took away the ablebodied teachers, too....

Trey could do nothing but stare at Mr. Hendricks in horror.

“I guess my wheelchair saved me,” Mr. Hendricks said. “That and the garden Lee had all the students plant back in the spring.”

And then Trey understood that everyone was gone, that the Population Police had left Mr. Hendricks behind to die. They didn’t know that Mr. Hendricks had plenty of food to survive the winter—plenty, even with nine extra people around.

But Trey said nothing more to Mr. Hendricks. He just went and sat down to watch more television with Lee.

A few days later, Mrs. Talbot announced that Mr. Talbot was certain to make a full recovery.

“He’s sitting up and speaking coherently,” she raved. “It’s a miracle.”

And Trey just nodded, as numb to joy as he was to fear and pain.

That evening, Mrs. Talbot stopped Trey in the hallway outside Mr. Talbot’s room.

“He wants to see you now,” she said.

“M-me?” Trey stammered. “Are you sure he didn’t want Lee?”

“Nope,” Mrs. Talbot said, shaking her head with just a trace of her old playfulness. “He asked for you by name.”

Trey followed Mrs. Talbot into Mr. Talbot’s sickroom. Mr. Talbot’s bruises had turned a sickly shade of yellow, but he could open his eyes now. Where it wasn’t bruised, his face looked pale even against the white pillowcase.

“I—don’t remember some things,” Mr. Talbot rasped. “But I remember—you came to see me that last day. You were at my door when they were already in my house, ready to take me away. Why? Why were you there? What was so... important?”

“The Grants,” Trey said. “They—” He broke off. He couldn’t tell a man who’d just barely escaped death that two of his closest friends were dead.

“Theo told me about them,” Mr. Talbot said. He slumped against his pillows. “That was all?”

“No,” Trey wanted to say. “We were terrified and we wanted you to take care of us. To make everything better.” But he knew that wasn’t possible now. Mr. Talbot wasn’t the all-powerful, all-knowing operator anymore. He was a defeated, seriously injured man huddled in a bed in a tiny cottage. And if the Population Police found him now, he’d likely be killed.

“I was going to give you the papers I found in Mr. Grant’s secret office,” Trey said instead, with a shrug.

This news transformed Mr. Talbot. He sat up straight, as if he’d just been miraculously cured.

“You were? Do you still have them?” he asked.

They had transferred the papers from the truck into his flannel shirt, then into his first Population Police uniform, then into the second one when he took a shower and changed back at Nezeree. But he hadn’t really looked at them since that first day back in the limousine. He supposed they were still tucked into the uniform, along with the warden’s fax, everything crumpled on the floor in his bedroom, kicked into a corner to be forgotten.

“I guess,” he said.

“Can you bring them to me now?” Mr. Talbot asked eagerly.

“Sure,” Trey said.

He went and got them. He smoothed out the wrinkles and fold marks and handed the papers to Mr. Talbot.

“They’re just financial records,” They said dully. “Mr. Grant owed you money when he died.”

“No,” Mr. Talbot said. “They’re codes. Each of these numbers represents a third child with a fake I.D. Grant thought I was just running a black-market business on the side.... He thought we were laundering money; even he never knew the truth. But if Krakenaur had found this... if the Population Police had been able to decode this
...
there would have been no hope for any of us.”

Trey gazed down at the documents with new respect. He remembered how he’d wanted to put them in the knapsack, which the Population Police confiscated and the mob tore apart. He remembered how he’d thought of using them to bargain with the Population Police for Mark’s release. He remembered how he’d considering leaving them back at the Nezeree prison. It seemed like a miracle that he’d managed to bring them safely to Mr. Talbot.

“I brought these from
your
house,” he said, holding out the rest of the papers. ‘And there are more out in the truck. Are these codes too?”

“No. That one’s just a grocery list,” Mr. Talbot said, pointing. “And this was a math worksheet my daughter did when she was a little .....
. .“
His face softened. They looked down at the row of numbers, with the name “Jen” written crookedly on them. “Thank you for bringing this to me,” Mr. Talbot murmured.

Mrs. Talbot gazed over his shoulder, tears in her eyes. They felt like he was intruding on a private moment

Maybe, back home, Mom acts this way when she comes across papers I wrote,
he thought Just because she’d sent him away, it didn’t mean she didn’t miss him.

It didn’t mean she didn’t love him.

“What are you going to do with the papers now?” They asked, to distract himself from the lump in his throat. “The ones with the secret codes, I mean?”

Mr. Talbot’s expression turned stony again.

“Destroy them,” he said. “We’ll burn them in the fireplace, so there’s no danger of the Population Police ever finding them.”

“We can make a ceremony of it” Mrs. Talbot said.

“But-,” Trey said.

“But what?” Mr. Talbot said.

“Ceremonial defiance—I like that” “But—,” Trey said.

“But what?” Mr. Talbot said.

Trey could only shake his head. He couldn’t quite figure out why he wanted to object Except he didn’t think miracles should be destroyed.

Isn’t it enough to know that the Population Police won’t ever get those papers?
he asked himself.

Mrs. Talbot borrowed a spare wheelchair from Mr. Hendricks and wheeled Mr. Talbot out into the living room. Mr. Hendricks rounded up everyone else. Lee lit a fire in the fireplace.

Mrs. Talbot held the papers high over her head.

“Aldous Krakenaur, eat your heart out,” she proclaimed gleefully. “Here are one hundred children who are safe from you forever."

“Nobody will ever know who they are,” Mr. Talbot intoned solemnly from his wheelchair.

Trey watched Mrs. Talbot lower the papers toward the flames. The words
Nobody will ever know who they are,
echoed in his head.

“Yes they will,” he muttered to himself.

Mrs. Talbot gently placed the first page in the fire. The flames began to lick at the edges. In seconds, the codes would be nothing but ash.

Trey sprang up from the couch and grabbed the paper out of the fireplace. The flames continued to eat away at the edges, hungrily working toward the all-important numbers in the center of the page, hungrily working toward Trey’s fingers. He dropped the paper to the carpet and stomped out the fire.

Everyone was staring at him, speechlessly. Mrs. Talbot, who’d been about to put the next page in the fire, stood frozen, her arm stopped mid-reach.

“They’ll
know,” Trey said. “The kids will. Even if every trace of their old identities—every paper record—is destroyed, they’ll still know who they are. Lee, who are you? Really?”

“I’m—” Lee began, and stopped.

Mark finished for him.

“He’s Luke Garner,” Mark said. “And even if he spends the next fifty years pretending to be Lee Grant, he’ll still be Luke Garner. My brother.”

He thumped his cast on the floor for emphasis.

“And you, Nina,” Trey said. “Do you think of yourself as Nina? Or—”

“Elodie,” Nina whispered. “Underneath it all, I’m still Elodie.”

“And Joel and John, you’ve gotten new fake names
twice.
Do you still remember who you began as?”

Silently, as timid as mice, the two younger boys nodded.

“And
I,”
Trey said, “am
not
Thavis Jackson. I’m braver than I used to be, I’ve done things now that I never would have dreamed of before. But I’m still Thahern Cromwell Torrance. I always will be.”

It was terrifying and thrilling, all at once, to say his name aloud. Trey turned to address the grown-ups.

“Don’t you see?” he said. “You’ve been wonderful helpers, but you don’t know what it’s like to be a third child. An illegal. The Population Police want to destroy us, to erase us from the earth. But—” He grabbed the remaining papers from Mrs. Talbot’s hands and shook them. “If anyone can defeat the Population Police, it’s us. It’s our lives at stake. We need these names, so we can unite all the third children. So we can resist their evil. Together.”

A stunned silence filled the room, then Mr. Talbot muttered sadly, “He sounds just like Jen.”

Trey remembered that Jen and her friends had died in their quest for freedom.

Somehow that fact didn’t scare him now.

Mr. Hendricks cleared his throat.

“Trey, I admire your sentiment,” he said. “Thuly I do. And your courage. You’ve already accomplished an incredible feat, saving your friends. But the Population Police have taken over everything now. George here spent years assembling his resistance movement, and it’s all gone now; I fear that the only ones left are in this room tonight. So, your little speech was certainly impassioned and noble— but not very realistic.”

“The game is
over,”
Mrs. Talbot said. “We lost.”

Trey looked from face to face, trying to gauge the emotions of his friends and the adults he’d grown to admire. These were the bravest people he’d ever met. But they all looked terrified.

“So what are you going to do?” he asked. “Hide out here forever?”

“What else can we do?” Mr. Hendricks asked.

They did mean to keep hiding, he realized. After everything that had happened, the most they felt capable of was to huddle in an out-of-the-way cottage and pray they were never discovered.

“I, for one, have had enough of hiding,” Trey said, amazed at the words he heard coming out of his own mouth. But they were true. “The Population Police are not invincible. They have mobs attacking them.” He remembered the sentry on the bridge. ‘Their own officers desert and steal their food. With all those televised speeches and cheering crowds, Aldous Krakenaur would have you believe that he’s wildly popular and totally in control. But he hasn’t consolidated his power. His organization is
.

disorganized. He’s vulnerable
now.
If we hide out and wait and bide our time, maybe we’ll miss the biggest chance of our lifetimes.”

“Again, pretty words,” Mr. Hendricks said. He had an edge to his voice now. “But what do you propose to
do?”

Trey didn’t know. He felt like he’d talked himself out onto a limb, and was about to faIl flat on his face. Maybe his words were just words after all; maybe they were meaningless.

And then, he did know what he had to do.

“I joined the Population Police,” he said. “I can go back. I can watch and listen and.., and sabotage them. Like Mr. Talbot did. And I can find others to help me.”

‘You’d be gambling that we managed to fool the warden back at Nezeree,” Nedley said. “And that there’s not a price out on your head because of your connection to the Sabines.”

“I can join again under another identity. In disguise. Nobody paid any attention to me as Thavis Jackson except the warden. I’d just have to avoid him and Nezeree. I
can
get another identity, can’t I?” Trey directed this question at Mr. Hendricks.

After a brief pause, Mr. Hendricks nodded.

“It’s a hard life,” Mr. Talbot said. “Dangerous. The most likely outcome is death.”

He stared into the fire, and Trey knew that he wasn’t just watching the flames. He was remembering all his friends and trusted colleagues, now dead. He had been beaten nearly to death himself

“I know,” Trey said. “But I have to try. Will—” He swallowed hard. “Will anyone come with me?”

The question hung in the air like smoke, and for a moment Trey feared that no one would answer it. He didn’t want to go alone. But he would if he had to.

Then Nedley stepped forward.

“I’m in,” he said. “I’m not much for waiting around; I’m ready for another adventure. If it’s the death of me, so be it.”

Lee was nodding too.

“Being in prison scared me,” he said. “Some things are... worse than death. But I stood back and let a friend be the brave one once before. This time, I’m going with Trey.”

“Me too,” Nina said.

“And me,” the chauffeur said.

Everyone looked at Joel and John, who silently shook their heads.

‘You can wait, and maybe join up later,” Trey said gently Who was he to shame anyone else for cowardice?

“Wait a minute,” Mark said. “What about me?”

Trey had almost forgotten Mark.

“This isn’t your cause,” Trey said. “It doesn’t have to be. You can go home and not worry—”

“No.” Mark was shaking his head violently. “You said all those third kids remember who they really are—don’t you think their families remember too? Don’t you think their families agonize and worry and fret, every day their kid is away? Every day of the kid’s life? My brother’s gone off without me twice already. Not again. I’ll take the truck back home and let my leg and burns heal and then—wherever you need me, that’s where I’ll be.”

Trey looked back at the grown-ups.

“We’ll do anything we can for you,” Mr. Hendricks said. “In the background. That’s—that’s the best we can do.”

He had tears in his eyes, but Trey couldn’t tell if they were tears of regret or fear. Or maybe sorrow. Maybe he was already mourning Trey and his friends.

Mrs. Talbot handed Trey the rest of the papers.

“You are responsible now for one hundred lives,” she said.

“I know,” Trey said.

He felt the full weight of the burden. He’d taken on the responsibility of rescuing Mr. Talbot and Lee and the others, and that had felt too heavy. He’d messed up again and again and again—being discovered on Mr. Talbot’s porch, rattling the weights in the Talbots’ basement, leaving the knapsack behind in the woods, crashing through the heat ducts, killing the truck’s engine right when the mob attacked. But everything had worked out in the end. Somehow, against all reason, he had faith that he could handle this responsibility as well.

With help.