Sabotage (Powerless Nation Book 3) (5 page)

“Are you nuts? We’re not going to learn on a cat. It’s not like we need it for food. Max is bringing our lunch in a couple of hours.”

“But what if he didn’t?” asked a small voice, and Dee realized it was McKenna. She let go of Dee’s hand and approached the group. “What if the food was gone? What if your mom and dad were sick and your baby sister was crying because she hadn’t had anything to eat in a week?”

The group was silent, looking at the little girl. She bent down and picked up a heavy stick. “What if his name was Blackie and you picked him out as a kitten?”

McKenna was obviously speaking from experience. She had everyone’s full attention.
 

“We do what we have to, to survive,” said McKenna, her voice unsteady. She took a step toward the cat.

Dee decided it was time to put a stop to this, but before she could move, Harvey went to McKenna and put his arm around her. “It’s okay, it’s going to be all right.”

McKenna looked up at the older boy with eyes that shone brightly in the thin morning light. She pressed her face into his shoulder and let the stick drop from her hand, her spare frame shaking beneath her winter coat.

“McKenna’s right,” Dee said. “Sometimes you have to do the unthinkable to survive. But not today. We’ve got Max bringing us a lunch soon. Let’s figure out how to let the cat go without someone losing an eye, and then we’ll head back up to the school and get warm.”

It was bitterly cold outside and it took longer than Dee expected to free the angry cat. Luckily it wasn’t really hurt, and when they released it, it limped quickly into the undergrowth.
 

On the way back to the school they discussed how to build a shelter if they were ever trapped in the cold. A couple of the boys were scouts and had gone winter camping, and they shared useful tips about choosing a campsite and staying dry and warm.
 

No one wanted to talk about the cat, but McKenna still held Harvey’s hand.

Once inside, they had a hard time warming up. “They should let us meet in a place with a woodstove,” said Harvey, teeth chattering.

“I’ll talk to Sena about it,” Dee promised. The morning sun through the wall of windows usually kept the rooms warm enough for a couple of hours, but the day was overcast and after spending the whole morning outside in the frigid weather, Dee could barely hold her pencil.

“How l-long until l-l-lunch?” asked Jamie.
 

One of the town’s women was given extra supplies and assigned the task of preparing school lunch in her home every day, and Max brought the lunches to the library. Dee suspected that the reason most of the children were here was for the free lunch.

Even though the town was no longer starving, they had to get through winter with their current food stores. Dee knew many people, including her grandpa, were worried about whether the town had enough food to make it until the first crops could be grown and harvested.

“I don’t understand why we can’t use the fireplace,” said Jeremy.

Dee sighed.
Here we go again.
“We can’t use it because it runs on gas and there hasn’t been gas in the lines for months.”

“If there isn’t gas in the lines, then we should be able to use the fireplace to build a fire out of wood though, right?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, guys,” said Dee.

“Why can’t we use gas from our farm?” asked one boy.

“You guys still have gas?” asked Angie.

“Yeah, we have a little.”

Dee shook her head. “It’s not the same kind of gas. The gas for this fireplace is called natural gas. The kind on your farm is gasoline.”

“What’s the difference?”

Dee rubbed her temples. Her class always had so many questions.

“I’m cold, Dee,” said McKenna.

“I’m cold too, honey. Listen, maybe we can start a tiny fire. But only if we can get it going without using matches or a lighter.” That was the next thing they were supposed to study and Dee was sure they wouldn’t be able to do it.
 

“I have something that might work,” said Harvey. “I read about it the other night in my chemistry book, and I thought maybe it would work in an emergency in case someone ever needed a fire really fast.”

“All right, what have you got?” asked Dee. She wasn’t worried. Even if he managed to produce a small flame, she was sure it would go right out. They didn’t have any logs or kindling.

Harvey pulled two plastic containers from his pocket. “This first one we got from the storage shed at the town pool. It’s a water purifier. We’ve been using it in our drinking water.”

“What’s it called?” asked Dee.

Harvey looked at the label. “Potassium Permanganate.”

“Potassium Per-what-ee-ate?” asked Kylie.

“Look,” said Harvey opening the bottle. He shook out a small piece on the table. It was a chalky, dark brown substance. Harvey touched the powder and some of it stuck to his finger. “It looks brown, right? Watch.”

He touched his stained fingertip to a glass of water, and amethyst threads streamed down through the liquid. “It’s so dark it’s purple.”

“That’s pretty,” breathed McKenna.

“So that’s going to start a fire?” asked Dee.

Harvey shook his head. “Not by itself. You also need glycerin. Luckily, we had some at home. It was in the garage with the stuff my dad used to use for the car.”

Harvey showed everyone another small plastic vial. It contained a clear, viscous liquid, like vegetable oil but thicker, like a strange, clear goo.

“What else do you need?” asked Dee. “Remember, no matches allowed.”

“That’s it,” said Harvey. “The book said these two ingredients together will ignite. So I guess I’ll put them in the fireplace?” He looked to Dee for confirmation.

“Sure,” she said, knowing a household liquid plus some water purifier wasn’t going to spontaneously burn.

Harvey crumbled some of the brown lumps of potassium permanganate and then he shook the brown powder onto the fake logs in the gas fireplace. “Okay, are you ready?” He sounded excited. The other kids gathered around to watch.

“Wait,” said Dee. “Who thinks this is going to work?”

A couple of the kids raised their hands.
 

“Harvey is the smartest guy in my class,” Jeremy explained. “If he says it’s going to burn, it’s going to burn.”

“Watch,” said Harvey, unable to wait any longer. He squirted some of the glycerin from the plastic container onto the powder.

Nothing happened.

“Don’t feel bad,” said Dee, turning away.

“Wait, look!” McKenna squealed. Dee looked back and saw that the substance was boiling. Suddenly it burst into a bright flame.

“Wow!” said Harvey. “That was awesome!”

The kids were laughing and clapping and watching the flames in the grate. They stood nearby, reaching their hands toward the warmth.

After a few minutes, the flame began to flicker and die and the children let out a combined sigh.

“Well,” said Dee, relieved. “That was fun. I bet it’s almost lunch time now though. Let’s clean up our books and get ready.”

“I have some paper we can burn,” said Jeremy, producing a notebook from his back pocket.

“Hang on,” said Dee. “That’s your school notebook. You can’t burn that.”

“It’s made of paper, it’ll burn,” said Jeremy. He ripped out a piece of paper and set it on the flame. The chemical reaction was fading quickly and the paper almost smothered it.

“Not like that,” said Harvey. “You have to crumple it up so it can burn the edges first.”

“Yeah,” added Kylie. “Here, use this tissue.”

Dee wanted to cry when the crumpled tissue was tossed on the fire. She hadn’t seen a tissue or square of toilet paper in months. The fire burned quickly through the fuel the kids tossed onto it.
 

“That’s enough,” said Dee, trying to sound firm. “It’s time we put out the fire. We all learned something new and useful from Harvey about starting a fire. Now we need to let it burn out.”

They watched the fire for a few minutes, but it didn’t look like it was going to burn out. Dee stepped closer and looked again. The fake wood logs in the gas fireplace were on fire.

Great
, thought Dee.
How am I going to put those out?

The room was filling with smoke. “Hey, Jeremy, run and open the window, let’s see if we can get this smoke out of here.”

She hadn’t even thought about smoke. What if it ruined the library books?

Jeremy opened the window and a cold breeze swirled powdery snow into the room. Instead of blowing out the fire, the draft added power to it. It burned brighter, and began to lick along the bottom of the grate.

A terrible smell filled the air. “I don’t think those logs are supposed to burn,” said Kylie, holding her fingers over her nose.
 

“This isn’t good,” said Dee. She dumped her bottle of water on the fire. It hissed, but didn’t go out. “Does anyone else have water?”

None of the students did. Clean water was hard to come by, and most of them only had what the town supplied with their lunch.

The flames were starting to lick at the bricks of the enclosure.

“Guys, I think we need to get out of here,” said Dee. “Get your things. No wait, leave them. Come on!”

CHAPTER SIX

T
HE
KIDS
WERE
SCARED
now, covering their mouths and coughing in the foul smelling, smoke-filled air. “Follow me!” Dee shouted, and headed for the door. She turned to look, but no one was following. The fireplace was near the exit and no one wanted to go near it. The panicked kids were hiding under tables or throwing books at the glass windows. It was pandemonium.

The door flew open and Max stood there, a cardboard box of lunches in his hand.

“What in the blazes!” he shouted. “Dee, get those kids out of here!” He dropped the box on the floor and tore it open, grabbing two gallon jugs of water. He raced over to the flames and poured all of the water into the fireplace, quenching the fire and filling the air with inky black smoke.

Sena appeared in the doorway and told Dee’s class to follow her. They evacuated through the front door of the library, huddling together in a small group near the book drop box. None of the kids had their coats, and they shivered in the frigid air.

Max came out of the library and stomped over to Dee. “What were you thinking? Starting a fire in a building? And you didn’t even have water nearby? Do you know how stupid that was?”

Dee felt like crying. She
had
been stupid. She kicked at the snow, refusing to meet Max’s eyes.

He turned to the children shivering in the cold. “School’s dismissed. You kids go on home. I’ll come by later tonight to let you know if we’re having school tomorrow.”

The kids remained standing in the snow, and no one moved. Finally McKenna asked in a small voice, “What about our lunches?”

“Oh right, of course,” said Max, softening at the look on the little girl’s face. “Hang on and I’ll get it for you.” He came back out with the box of lunches and a pile of coats. Soon, almost everyone was headed for home.

Dee stayed, expecting a lecture.

“You go on home too, girls,” Max told Dee and Sena. “I’ll be over in a while to talk to your folks.”

Great. Now my dad’s never going to trust me.

*

Dee told her mom the short version of what had happened and went into her room, waiting for her dad to come home. Sena waited with her, assuring Dee it was all going to be okay, and the important thing was the library hadn’t burned down.

Dee was secretly amused that Sena thought the library not burning down was the important thing, rather than the fact no one was hurt. Sena really
did
love books.

They didn’t have long to wait. Ted had already heard the story when he walked in the door. He lit into Dee immediately. “You say you want me to trust you and then you do something this stupid. Making a fire in a building full of flammable materials? Where was your brain?”

Sena slipped out when Ted and Claire came into the girls’ room. “It was one mistake, Dad,” said Dee. “It happened so fast. We haven’t started studying fire-making yet. I didn’t think it would even light.”

“You were teaching little kids how to build fires?” A vein throbbed in Ted’s forehead. “You’re supposed to be teaching them about world history and fractions.”

“What good is that going to do us? Look around, Dad. We need survival skills, not history lessons. School was a waste of time even before the world got messed up.”

“It obviously didn’t teach you good judgment.”

“That’s a little harsh, Ted,” said Claire.

“Is it?” demanded Ted. “Is it asking too much of our daughter not to risk children’s lives? That she show a little common sense? Teaching school was supposed to keep her
out
of trouble. Not land her
in
it.”

“I get it, okay?” said Dee. “I won’t teach survival skills any more. We’ll study the three R’s.”

“Too late. After the stunt you pulled, you can’t be trusted to take care of the students. You won’t be going back.”

Dee’s heart sank. “So, I’m fired?” She hadn’t wanted the job originally, but now she didn’t want to give it up.

“Don’t you think it would be best if you took a break from teaching school?” Claire said gently.

Dee stared at the floor and shrugged. She didn’t want them to see how disappointed she was.

“Is that all you have to say?” Ted demanded.

She shrugged again.

“Sena will teach both classes for now until we can find a new teacher,” Ted said. “You can help at home and at the clinic. Try not to burn it down.” He stood up. Her mother gave her shoulder a sympathetic squeeze and they both left the room.
 

Dee flopped back on her bed. Her dad would never understand her. She’d been trying to help the kids, not hurt them.
 

When Dee finally fell asleep, her dreams were full of smoke and shadows.

The next morning at breakfast, Dee grumbled to her mom, “What am I supposed to do all day? I’m guessing Dad still won’t let me join the militia.” He and Sena had already left, and the day stretched ahead of her, empty and boring. She wished she could go see Mason.