The last time Trey had seen a television, he’d learned about the Population Police overthrowing the government. So he regarded this one uneasily.
“Our glorious leader gave an enormously well-received speech to the populace last evening,” a man was saying, over footage of Aldous Krakenaur standing with raised fists before a huge cheering crowd.
Where are the starving people begging for food? Trey wondered.
Feeling antsy again, he got up and began flipping through channels. The same footage was on the first four stations. The fifth channel was Krakenaur again, but alone at a desk in a room Trey recognized as Krakenaur’s office at Population Police headquarters. A tag line at the bottom of the screen read, “Population Police Official Network.”
It made sense: If the Barons had their own stations, why shouldn’t the Population Police?
Krakenaur was staring into the camera—and, it seemed, out at Trey—with frightening intensity.
“These five men were caught smuggling last night,” Krakenaur was saying. He held up a handful of pictures. The camera zoomed in to focus on each face individually.
Peering into the TV screen, Trey gasped. The first picture was the sentry from the bridge the night before. He guessed that the others were the men he’d seen carrying bags across the bridge the night before. Except, in the pictures, they were all dead.
“They were stealing food from our citizens,” Krakenaur was saying, icily. The camera focused on him again. “Death is too good for traitors like these. From now on, smugglers will be executed on sight. In my eyes, they are as vile and offensive as third children.”
Someone off-camera handed Krakenaur a sheet of paper. He glanced down to read it. Just from the small bits of televised news he’d seen before, Trey suspected that in a regular newscast the camera would have switched to someone else or some other footage. Watching a man read a note would have been considered dead airtime. But the camera stayed trained on Krakenaur, as if it might be treason to focus elsewhere without his permission.
When Krakenaur finally looked up, his eyes seemed even colder and harder, and his voice was filled with even icier fury.
“I have just been informed of other traitors,” he said. “A father and son, working in our midst. Population Police officers—trusted, respected, given great responsibility. And they have betrayed us! They have betrayed us all!” He pounded his fist on his desk. Trey flinched as if he were right there in the same room with Krakenaur’s rising wrath. As if Krakenaur’s fist were hitting him.
“Jonas Sabine and his son Jonathan will be executed as soon as we finish interrogating them,” Krakenaur said. “I am hereby instructing all Population Police officials to disregard all orders from Jonas or Jonathan Sabine. Hold all documents they have signed, and detain anyone carrying documents with their signatures. We are tracing the extent of their treachery, even as I speak. We’ll be notifying everyone involved as soon as possible.” Then he addressed someone off-camera. “Do we have pictures?”
Trey heard a muffed “Yes, sir” and “Right away, sir,” and a crashing sound, as if someone had knocked over a chair scrambling to obey Krakenaur. A hand slipped pictures onto his desk, and he held them up in front of the camera.
“All Population Police officers must report all conversations and encounters they’ve had with these two men,” Krakenaur was saying as the camera zoomed in. “Or else you will be considered traitors too.”
The pictures came slowly into focus. The son’s photo was first: a freckle-faced boy with a jaunty smile and features that Trey recognized instantly.
“Liber,” Trey whispered.
It was the boy who had found Trey on the Talbots’ porch, the boy who had saved Trey’s life by telling him to hide instead of reporting him. One of only two Population Police officials that Trey had ever heard speak of freedom.
Trey felt a horrible sense of dread rising in his gut.
When the father’s picture appeared, he was not surprised. It was a man with gray hair and eyes that looked familiar—familiar because they matched his son’s. Trey had noticed the resemblance only the night before, but not quite made the connection.
It was the Population Police guard from the Grants’ house. The one who had arranged all the documents Trey had brought to Nezeree.
“Disregard all orders from Jonas or Jonathan Sabine,” Krakenaur had said. “Hold all documents they have signed, and detain anyone carrying documents with their signatures. We are tracing the extent of their treachery, even as I speak. We’ll be notifying everyone involved as soon as possible.”
Could Trey and his friends escape Nezeree before the warden found out?
Distantly, Trey heard a phone ringing in another room. As if in a trance, he stumbled out of the TV room toward the ominous sound. He tripped into the warden’s office, and it was exactly as Trey feared: The phone on the warden’s desk was ringing. The one that was a direct line to Population Police headquarters.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Trey dived under the warden’s desk and yanked the phone cord out of the wall. He wished he had a knife. But he didn’t, so he put the plastic tip of the cord in his mouth and sawed it against his teeth. Finally, finally, he managed to bite off the end, leaving the wires frayed.
“What is the meaning of this?” a voice exploded behind him.
Trey spit out the plastic connector and hid the phone cord deep in the carpet. He backed out and slowly straightened up. The warden was just coming in the door. What had he seen? What had he heard?
“C-c-cockroach, sir,” Trey stammered. “I’m so sorry. I saw this bug running behind your desk, and I know how those things multiply, and I thought if I caught it—”
“Did you?” the warden asked.
“No, sir. I wasn’t fast enough. I’m sorry, sir.”
The warden regarded Trey doubtfully. What if he decided to get down on his hands and knees to look for himself?
He won’t, Trey tried to assure himself. He’s too fat to fit.
The warden glanced down at his desk. Was Trey being paranoid, or was the warden looking straight at his phone? Had he heard it ringing?
A printerlike machine behind Trey began churning out paper.
“Looks like I’m getting a fax,” the warden said. “Step aside, Officer Jackson. It’s undoubtedly classified, and you wouldn’t have clearance yet to see that.”
There was a challenging note to his voice, but Trey took hope from the word “yet.”
He still thinks I’m a gung-ho Population Police recruit, Trey thought. He still thinks I’ll have classified clearance someday.
“Here, sir, I’ll get the fax for you,” Trey said. “I won’t look at it. I promise.”
He did his best to sound earnest and overeager, not like a boy who was terrified of what that fax might say. But he didn’t have to look to know. “We’ll be notifying everyone involved as soon as possible,” Krakenaur had said. The phone call had failed, so of course the Population Police were using other methods.
“All right,” the warden said in an even tone. But he was watching Trey carefully.
The fax machine kept spitting out paper. Trey stood waiting, his hands over the machine, the dread growing inside him. Should he rip the papers in half when he picked them up? Should he run away with them? How could he do anything about the fax without giving himself away—and destroying any chance that Mark, Lee, and the others had for escape?
But what chance do any of us have anymore anyway? Trey wondered in despair.
The last sheet of paper churned out, and the machine lapsed into silence. Trey reached down and scooped up the papers. Without looking, he thumped them against the counter, straightening out the edges.
Do I dare to drop them? Buy myself a little time?
But he was too nervous to try that, and too scared of infuriating the warden.
The noise of a truck outside distracted him temporarily.
“Your prisoners from Slahood have arrived,” the warden said, glancing out the w
indow.
Trey let the hand holding the papers fall to his side. He rushed over to the window as if his eagerness to see his prisoners had made him forget about the fax.
“We were giving our prisoner one last beating before he leaves,” the warden said. He leaned over and spoke into the intercom, “Snyder, you may send him up now.”
Trey peered out the window as a truck pulled up in front of the warden’s office. Lee, Nina, Joel, and John were chained together in the back. So was a fifth person, a man.
The chauffeur? Trey suddenly thought. He hadn’t recognized him at first, because the chauffeur looked twenty years older than he had the last time Trey had seen him, back at the Talbots’ house only a week or so earlier. Mark and I didn’t ask to have the chauffeur released, Trey thought. We didn’t even mention his name. We don’t even know his name.
The chauffeur’s appearance only intensified Trey’s fears. Everything was spinning out of control, even without the danger presented by the fax papers burning in his hand.
“I’ll go help unload the prisoners,” Trey said.
“But my fax—young man! You haven’t been dismissed!” the warden yelled from behind him.
Trey pretended not to hear, though it was a shaky pretense. He would have had to be deaf to miss those shouts. He rushed out the door anyway. How long would it take the warden to catch up to him? A minute? Two? Would the warden pause to summon other guards over the intercom—guards who would come to beat him up?
Trey tried not to think about it.
Outside, the driver from Slahood was already jerking Trey’s friends and the chauffeur out of the truck bed. They stumbled and fell, knocking against one another. But the guard gave them no time to right themselves, just kept pulling on their chains until they were all in a heap on the ground.
None of them so much as cried out in pain.
“Who’s signing for this riffraff?” the guard asked.
“Me,” Trey said, blindly grabbing for the clipboard and pen the guard held out. He scrawled his most illegible signature at the bottom of the forms.
“Okay, then,” the guard said, and climbed back into his truck and drove away.
Trey knew he should be running, putting as much distance as he could between himself and the warden. Using every last second to save himself. But time seemed to stop as he stood there regarding his friends. They lay like corpses at his feet, not making the least attempt to untangle themselves. He wasn’t sure if they recognized him or not.
“Everything’s okay now,” he wanted to tell them. “I’m rescuing you.” But he knew that would be a lie—he had no hope of carrying off a rescue now. Failing that, Trey at least wanted to ask some questions: “Why did you leave me? Why did you go back to the Grants’ house? Why didn’t you come back for me?”
But it was too late for questions. The warden came storming out of his office, screaming, “Give me that fax this instant!”
At the same time, the guard who had taken Mark away, Nedley, was pulling up in Mark’s battered truck. Mark sat in the passenger’s seat, looking groggy but blessedly alive—for now, anyway. A body also lay in the back, but Trey couldn’t tell if he was looking at a corpse or at a living, breathing human.
That must be the prisoner that Jonas Sabine risked his life for. Wonder why Sabine cared so much? Trey thought dully. Probably none of his questions would ever be answered. He’d die still wondering why everything had happened, what any of his bravery had been worth.
Nedley put the truck in park and sprang out of the driver’s seat.
“Don’t just stand there—help me load,” he hissed at Trey.
Trey glanced from Nedley to the warden, rushing toward him. He didn’t really make a choice. He still had no hope of escape, but why confront his doom any sooner than he had to?
Trey crammed the fax into his pocket. Then, with Nedley’s help, he hoisted Nina, Lee, Joel, John, and the chauffeur onto the truck. Out of the corner of his eye, Trey could see the warden, huffing furiously, and two guards marching up behind him.
Of course. The warden wouldn’t do anything as undignified as grabbing Trey himself. He’d have someone else do the dirty work for him.
“You climb in too,” Nedley whispered to Trey.
“Huh?” Trey said.
In answer, Nedley shoved Trey, knocking him forward into the open truck bed. Nedley half-fell, half-climbed in on top of him.
“Stop! Wait! My hand’s caught in the chain!” Nedley called out loudly.
As if that were a cue, the truck suddenly jerked forward. Frantically, Trey clutched at the chains to keep from falling out the back. Nedley yanked up on the liftgate, trapping them all in the truck bed. The truck surged on, gathering speed.
“Help! The prisoner—we’re being kidnapped! Wait! Don’t shoot—I’ll get him!” Nedley stood up in the truck bed and began weaving toward the front of the truck, stepping over Lee and Nina and the others.
Trey wasn’t sure what was happening—whose side was Nedley on? Just in case, Trey tackled him, kicked him away to the side, then dived through the open window into the cab of the truck.
Mark was in the driver’s seat now, looking grim. His broken leg was covered with white plaster, from his knee down to his foot. He had the bottom of his cast jammed against the gas pedal.
“What are you doing?” Trey screamed at Mark. “Didn’t you see those trucks back there? They’ll catch us in nothing flat!”
“No they won’t,” Mark said, glancing over his shoulder anyhow. “We slashed all their tires.”
“You did?” Trey marveled.
Mark weaved around a guard running toward them waving a gun.
“Pretend to hit me,” Mark said. “Then lean down and push on the gas pedal as hard as you can. My leg’s killing me.”
Trey swung broadly at Mark, slipped down, and reached over Mark’s cast for the pedal.
“Faster? Slower?” he called up to Mark.
“Faster. Always faster,” Mark muttered.
Trey pushed even harder, straining the muscles in his arms. It was terrifying not to know what they were speeding toward. He remembered the high fences, the razor wire everywhere.
“The gates!” he screamed at Mark. “The guard! How are we going to get past—”
“The gates are still open for the other truck, the one from Slahood,” Mark muttered. ‘And the guard—”
Trey heard a pinging sound off to the side.
“Well, he missed,” Mark said matter-of-factly. “He just wasn’t a very good aim.”
Trey pushed even harder on the accelerator. Mark was swerving now, turning the steering wheel in wide arcs above Trey’s head. Trey could still hear gunfire.
“I thought we were past the gates!” he yelled. “Who’s shooting at us now?”
“Remember that truck from Slahood?” Mark asked, turning the wheel even more widely.
Trey heard more shots. They sounded closer than ever. But Mark just started laughing.
“What’s happening?” Trey screamed. He hated not knowing, not being able to see. If I get out of this alive, Trey vowed, I’m never hiding again.
‘All right!” Mark called out joyously. “That Nedley—what a guy!”
“WHAT IS GOING ON?” Trey screamed. “WHAT DID NEDLEY DO?”
“He shot out all the tires on the other truck,” Mark said. “They just stopped. They’ve lost us now. Oh, man—we are home free!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
They weren’t, of course. They were still miles from anyone’s home. They were fugitives now, likely to be shot on sight. And Trey still didn’t know why Nedley was helping them, who the mysterious prisoner was, or why the chauffeur had ended up in the back of their truck.
Still, after about fifteen minutes, they felt safe enough to pull over by the side of the road and let Trey take over all the driving responsibilities. (Trey was so happy to finally be able to see out that he didn’t mind the bright sun in the least.) Another fifteen minutes later, Tre
y steered the truck into a small copse of trees, totally hidden from the road. He and Nedley went back and brushed the gravel back into a normal formation, erasing all signs of their tracks.
“Why?” Trey asked. “Why did you help me and Mark?”
“Liber,” Nedley breathed.
“Oo-oh,” Trey said slowly. “Then there were more in the liber club than just two.”
“There were dozens of us,” Nedley said.
“That’s great. I mean—” Trey was trying to grasp it.
“Most of us are dead now,” Nedley said. “But at least you and Mark and I have saved our leader.”
“Who?” Trey said.
“The extra prisoner in the back of the truck,” Nedley said. “Don’t you know who that is?”
Trey shook his head. Everything had happened too fast; it wasn’t like there’d been time for introductions.
“Whoever it is, are you sure he’s still alive?” Trey asked.
“Let’s go see,” Nedley said grimly.
They trudged back to the truck. Lee and the others were just beginning to sit up, to cautiously peer over the edge of the truck bed.
“Trey?” Lee gasped, his voice cracking in astonishment.
“At your service,” Trey said.
“You’re wearing a Population Police uniform,” Lee said.
“I told you you wouldn’t believe what we had to go through to rescue you,” Mark said peevishly from the front of the truck.
“But you look so … real,” Lee said.
Trey nodded silently. He saw fear in Nina’s eyes, in Joel’s and John’s. Their gaze flickered from Trey to Nedley, in terror. For the first time, Trey felt the full weight of the uniform he was wearing.
“Aw, Luke,” Mark said. “That’s no way to thank somebody who just rescued you from jail.”
Lee’s gaze steadied.
“I owe you,” he said quietly.
“And I owe you,” Trey said. He hoped there’d be time later to explain what he meant, how grateful he was to Lee for teaching him how to run, how to tackle—how to do something besides hide.
How to be brave.
“I think Mr. Talbot needs a doctor,” Nina announced.
Among the Brave Page 14