Among the Free (7 page)

I
t was traveling down a road on the other side of the field, its engine purring, its tires rolling smoothly. Luke was pretty sure the truck's driver wouldn't have any reason to glance his way, but he crouched down anyway, flattening his body against the cold dirt.

The engine's hum changed, from speeding along to idling,
Luke thought.

Did he see me? Is the driver climbing out of his truck to come and get me?
Terror pinned Luke to the ground. He wanted to run, but he didn't seem to have control over his legs anymore.

Then he heard someone yell, “Hey, get that off the road! I'm on official Population Police business!”

Was the Population Police business coming to look for Luke? Did they know what he had done?

Gunfire sounded, and then the horn of the truck began to blare, endlessly, as if something or someone had fallen against it and wouldn't or couldn't move.

Then the blaring stopped, and another voice shouted out, “That's what we think of official Population Police business!”

Luke lay flat on the ground, his heart pounding, his mind scrambling to make sense of what he'd heard. Someone had blocked the road—the rebels? Someone had been shot—the person driving the Population Police truck?

There was a creaking sound, like metal doors being opened.

“Yee-haw! Look at all this food!” yet another voice screamed.

Luke couldn't quite make out the rest of the shouting because several voices were yelling at once—something like “It's all ours, now!” and maybe “I'd just like to see the Population Police try to take it back. Hear that, Poppies?”

Silently, Luke inched back toward the woods. Once he was under cover of the trees, he stood again and tiptoed as quickly as he could away from the direction of the road. His heart wouldn't stop pounding; he couldn't keep from turning his head from side to side compulsively, trying to look all around him all at once. He startled every time he heard a chipmunk running up a tree, a squirrel rustling in the leaves.

Why am I so scared?
he wondered.
I wanted to see the Population Police overthrown. I dreamed about it. I was working toward that goal. If they're out of power, shouldn't I be happy?
He kept hearing the gunfire and the blaring horn echoing in
his mind. He kept shivering with fear.
But they were attacking the Population Police. My enemies. Shouldn't the enemies of my enemies be my friends?

He couldn't help wondering about the person driving that truck on official Population Police business, delivering food. Had it been someone who truly believed in the Population Police cause, who wanted to see third children dead? Or had it been someone like Luke, who'd joined up solely to sabotage the Population Police from inside—who'd maybe ended up dying for a cause he opposed? Maybe it had been someone like the boy back in Chiutza, who'd joined the Population Police just to get food, who would join any cause that fed him. Did that make it wrong for the rebels to have killed him?

Luke was confused. He was lost now too. He'd had no problem walking toward the east when the sun was low in the sky, but now it was almost directly overhead. He kept tilting his head back, looking up, and the sun seemed to waver, all depending on how he held his head.

“Just keep walking in the same direction, stupid,” he muttered to himself. But that was easier said than done when he constantly had to dodge around trees, step over fallen logs, duck under low-hanging branches. He could never be sure that he was aiming in the right direction. What if he was walking straight back to Chiutza?

They saw me in a Population Police uniform before. They'd remember me. . . . They'd recognize my voice from last night. . . .
The terror coursed through Luke's body so strongly, it was
all he could do to keep walking. He couldn't let himself think about anything except placing one foot down and then the other.

Shortly after what Luke guessed to be noon, when the sun began to drop a little in the sky, the woods directly ahead of him thinned out. He slowed down his stride, became even more careful to avoid stepping on twigs or into piles of dry, rustly leaves. He could see roofs and walls—
was
it Chiutza again? Then he noticed how many of the walls were broken off and crumbling, how many of the roofs had gaping holes open to the sky. It wasn't Chiutza. Chiutza had been run-down and ramshackle but patched up. This village was in total ruins.

Luke crept forward, watching for any sign of humans: smoke from the chimneys, perhaps, or the sound of a baby crying, or the smell of cooking stew. But the tumbledown houses and huts before him were silent and still. Timidly Luke stepped into the clearing around the village. He held his breath, listening harder. All he could hear was the wind blowing through empty window frames, making the same kind of lonely howl it had made blowing through empty branches in the woods.

There were no people in this village. Luke was so sure of it that he walked to the exact center of the houses and huts—what had once been the village square, perhaps. A rutted dirt road led out of the village, but it looked as if no one had driven down it in a long, long time.

“Where did everyone go?” he muttered, truly puzzled.
He knew about the droughts and famines years ago, before he was born. That was the reason the Government had instituted the Population Law, the one that made it illegal for people to have more than two children. According to the Government, there had been too many people.

This village looked like there hadn't been enough people—not enough to fill the houses, to patch the roofs, to putty the walls, to trim back the trees.

Luke pushed against the door of one of the houses. It creaked back on rusty hinges, revealing a room full of broken chairs and tattered wallpaper.

Did the people leave quickly?
Luke wondered.
Or did they have time to pack, to sort out what they wanted to take and what they wanted to leave behind?
His stomach growled, reminding him that this wasn't just a philosophical question.
Did they leave any food?

He walked on through the house to a kitchen in the back, where linoleum peeled up from the floor, a sink dangled from a rotted board, and rusty pipes hung out from the wall. He left muddy footprints across the linoleum, but he didn't see how that could matter. He opened cupboard doors, hoping for canned food—canned food and maybe a can opener, too, for good measure. Or maybe jars of preserves like his mother used to prepare every year, with every fruit and vegetable that came into season. He remembered the rows of corncobs cooling on her kitchen counters, the bushel baskets full of tomatoes, the cooked apples she always let him smash up into sauce. His mouth
watered and his eyesight blurred, making it hard to see that the cupboards in front of him now were bare.

Of course they're bare,
Luke told himself.
Of course there's no food. People were starving, remember? They wouldn't have left any food behind.

He slipped to the floor, bending his head down in despair against his knees. He was so hungry. He was so tired. He'd walked so far and been so scared for so long—what would it hurt if he rested for just a few minutes? He tilted sideways until he was lying on the floor, his head resting against a coil of the linoleum that had been heaved up from the decaying floor. He wrapped his arms around his knees, drawing them toward his chest.

Just for a few minutes,
he told himself, slipping almost instantly off to sleep.

The next thing he knew there were voices talking. Talking in the same house he was in.

B
ut sir, this is an unauthorized village,” someone was arguing from the front room of the house. “Can't you see no one's been here in years?”

“A lot has happened lately that the Population Police didn't authorize,” another voice growled. “Our orders are to search every house in every village we come to and kill any unauthorized person we find. And we will follow orders.”

Luke's eyes sprang open. With his head against the linoleum, he had a clear line of sight to the muddy footprints he'd tracked across the floor. He scrambled up, and began frantically scrubbing the mud away with his sleeve. But that just left streaks.

They'll still be able to see that it's fresh mud.

“The Population Police will prevail,” the growly voice went on. “We always have. It's just a matter of time.”

The sound of footsteps echoed through the house, moving closer to the kitchen.

Did I leave muddy footprints everywhere?
Luke wondered.
How much time do I have before they notice?

He was standing now, glancing around for any exit. Why hadn't he looked for anything in the kitchen besides food? Incredibly enough, the window in this room wasn't broken, and when Luke shoved against the window frame, it seemed to be warped permanently shut. But beneath the window there was a hole in the wall, a place where mold had eaten the drywall away and the boards behind didn't meet exactly. Luke thought it looked like small animals had crawled in and out through that hole—raccoons, perhaps, or possums. Could Luke fit through too?

He didn't have time to measure carefully. He dived for the hole, shoving his shoulders against the rotting, splintering wood. Even if the men in the house didn't notice the fresh mud on the floor, they'd certainly see this enlarged hole.

What other choice do I have?

Luke broke through and landed in a thicket outside. He rolled onto his feet and around glanced quickly—he saw just the bumper of some vehicle parked at the front of the house, but no sign of other Population Police officials wandering through the ruins. He took off running for the woods.

“Hey! You! Stop! We're the Population Police!” someone yelled behind him.

Luke tried to run faster, but it was hard with his legs so stiff and sore. He'd run so much the day before; he'd used up so much of his energy walking all morning.

“You can't escape! We'll find you! We'll hunt you down!”

Luke crashed into the woods, and it was like a flashback to his terror-stricken dreams the night before: running, being chased, nowhere to go, nowhere to hide . . .

“We're still in charge!” someone shouted behind him. How far away was the voice? Was it just behind him or several yards back, still in the ruins of the village?

Maybe Luke was a little delirious; maybe his brain wasn't getting enough oxygen to think straight. For whole minutes, he had trouble remembering whom he was running from: the Population Police officers doing their house-to-house search? The Chiutzan villager with the gun? Officer Houk? Somehow Luke's legs were carrying him so fast that his eyes couldn't absorb the sights around him quickly enough. Trees. Grass. Sky. Branches. No more branches. Lots more sky. Houses. Faces. A lot of faces, all looking down at him.

Luke blinked, fighting an awful blackness.

“I think he's passing out,” someone said. A woman. The voice seemed to come from a million miles away. Luke knew he couldn't surrender to unconsciousness now. He forced his eyes back open, trying to focus on the circle of faces around him.

“Here. Here's something to drink,” a new voice said, and someone poured liquid down his throat. Luke couldn't have said whether it was cold or hot, water or broth. But somehow it brought him back to himself. He struggled to sit up.

“Got—to—go—,” he moaned, trying to get his muscles to work, to pull himself upright, to propel himself forward again.

“Easy there, pal.” It was a man's voice this time. Friendly-sounding. Luke tried to focus on the source of the voice, the face of the man who had spoken. He saw white whiskers, blue eyes, a craggy nose. “I don't think you're going to be able to go anywhere for a while. Not on your own, anyway. Where were you trying to get to? Was someone chasing you?”

“Yes,” Luke whispered.

“Who was it?”

Dizzily, Luke managed to stand, though he didn't quite trust his legs to hold him up. He rubbed his hand across his face. Which side would these people be on? Would they be like the villagers back in Chiutza—eager to attack the Population Police? Or would they be Population Police sympathizers—eager to help Luke if he said he worked for the Population Police, eager to turn him in if he didn't?

“Is that a Population Police uniform you're wearing?” someone asked.

Luke kept his hand over his eyes. Through the slits between his fingers, he tried to peer out at the faces around him, to gauge their expressions. Anxious? Angry? Sympathetic? Luke couldn't tell. Was it good or bad that he still had the shirt of his uniform turned inside out? Which side of the shirt would these people rather see? Luke had had to lie and pretend so much during the past
year, ever since leaving home. What was he supposed to do now, when he had no way of knowing which lie would save him, which pretense would keep him alive?