by Jamie Canosa
“I’ve been told you’re visitors to our colony?” I get why that would be confusing. Colonies don’t get visitors. “What is it exactly that I can help you with today?”
Deciding that frankness is probably the best way to go—not that I know any other way—I launch into a recap of all things work camp related, and everything that has happened to us over the past month. Has it really only been a month? Peter jumps in where he can, and with him being the more socially competent one of the two of us, I defer to him as often as possible. He’s just getting to the good part when I make a decision on the fly, where most of my decisions seem to be being made lately.
“We escaped,” I cut him off, “the two of us.”
The look on Peter’s face is enough to give me up for the liar I am, but he recovers quickly. I couldn’t spill everyone’s secrets, not when we’re still clueless about how he’s going to respond to all of this. What if he agrees with the camps and calls security or something? They could just send in more guards to retake the camp. What if he already knows about all of this? Crap, I hadn’t even considered that. How far up the food chain do you have to be to be in the know about this sort of thing? No, it’s better if he thinks it’s just us until we see how he reacts. Hopefully, if something goes wrong and we don’t come back, they’ll be able to clear out of the camp before anyone else shows up.
“We were hoping you might allow us to stay here.”
If it weren’t for his high-pitched, nasally breaths, I’d be afraid he died right there at his desk from how long he just sits there staring at us. If nothing else, he seems so sufficiently stunned that I’m no longer worried if he was in on all of this already. Apparently, it’s above his pay grade. Why am I not surprised?
I’m still not convinced he’s not just trying to get rid of us when he says he has to gather the board to make this kind of decision. He must have been telling the truth, though, because an hour later, we’re sitting in front of a group of ten men and women, retelling our story for a second time. When we finish, the looks on their faces range anywhere from skepticism to pity. At least a few of them look like they feel bad for us. Our appearance may actually be working for us at the moment.
I’ve never been to a board meeting before, but the procedures seem kind of absurd to me. First, the mayor calls for a hand vote on whether or not to let us stay. I’m actually shocked when almost half the hands rise in agreement with taking us in. Then, just as I’m starting to get my hopes up, he proceeds to inform us that the decision needs to be unanimous. Thus, the absurdity. Even I could have told him it wasn’t going to be unanimous.
So, once again, we wait. They deposit us back in the stuffy reception area before sequestering themselves in the board room for hours. The urge to slam my head into a wall is overwhelming, and Peter’s incessant whistling is seriously driving me to the edge of insanity.
“Can you stop that?!”
“What?”
“The whistling. Could you at least pretend to be a little concerned here?”
“Why? Everything will be fine, Leigh. You saw how many people were in favor of letting us stay. Now, they just have to convince the others. Who’s going to refuse and look like the jerk in the room? They’ll say yes.”
“And what if they don’t, Peter?”
“Then we try another colony.”
Traveling across the eastern half of the country like a pack of freaking nomads is not my idea of a good time, but any plan is better than no plan, I guess.
“Do you think we should have told them about the others?” As with all of my in-the-moment decisions, I’m starting to have second thoughts now that the moment has passed.
“No, I think you were smart not to tell them. At least now whatever happens, it’ll just be us.”
“What do you think they’ll do with us if they decide not to let us stay?” Maybe this whole mission wasn’t such a great idea.
“I have no idea, Leigh, but we’ll figure it out.” The sincerity in his eyes almost makes me believe everything’s going to be all right. Almost.
“What if they send us back to another work camp?”
“That doesn’t seem to be a long term problem for you.” Ha—freaking—ha. He’s hilarious.
I have no idea what went on behind those closed doors, but when they finally open again, apparently they’ve reached their unanimous decision. I’m just not convinced I want to know what it is. When we retake our seats across from the board to await their verdict, I can’t seem to keep my leg from bouncing like the damn Energizer bunny. Peter’s hand settles on my knee for a moment before seeking out my hand, which is resting in my lap. After practically prying my fist open, he threads his fingers through mine and gives a reassuring squeeze.
Evidently the mayor doesn’t believe in mincing words. “I’m sorry, but it has been decided by this board that we can’t risk sheltering you here. For the safety of our colonists, we cannot allow you to stay.”
Peter looks genuinely surprised by the outcome, and I feel sorry for this blow to his ever optimistic view of humanity. I, however, really should have seen this coming, but still my heart sinks. The mayor draws out some long winded speech outlining their reasons, trying to justify their decision to us. At this point, they’re lucky I’m even making the effort to pretend to listen. I sort of tuned out somewhere after ‘no, we won’t help you’.
When he’s finished making excuses and finally gets around to what’s going to happen now, I refocus my attention, and once again, all of my anxiety seems to have accumulated in my jumpy knee. Peter’s thumb brushes across my knuckles, and I realize I’m still latched onto his hand for dear life.
In the end, their inspired decision is to simply send us on our way and pretend they never saw us. They don’t want any ‘negative attention’ that having this information may bring them. Heaven forbid they actually get mistaken for intelligent. Everyone is in agreement on this, even those who had voted to help us earlier. I swear, stupidity is contagious, it spreads like wildfire, and as hard as I try, logic does not seem to be the cure.
Chapter 20
By the time we get back to colony L, we’re a vibrant mixture of hot, tired, and demoralized, which seems to be at odds with the rest of the camp. People are bustling all over, and everyone looks upbeat and excited. I really hope they weren’t counting on us.
“You’re back!” After nearly an hour and almost a half dozen inquires, we finally catch up with Connor just as he’s climbing down out of one of the guard towers. “How did it go?”
“Not well.” His grin barely falters when I give him the bad news. “What’s going on here?”
“We’ve kinda been working on a backup plan.” Oh, brother. Now what?
“And what kind of plan might that be?”
“To fight back.” He says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, which it most definitely is not.
“Connor, we can’t stay here, you know that. Sooner or later, people are going to realize what happened, and come looking for us.”
“They already have. Somehow, word of what we did reached colony K. They overtook a soybean farm maybe twenty miles from here.”
“They did what?” I don’t even know where to begin. All I did was try and stop some girl from getting beaten to death by some jackass guard. How did all of this get so out of hand so fast?
“Yeah, and a bunch of them are headed this way to join us. They sent someone ahead to let us know. He got here this morning and told us to expect the rest of them sometime tonight.”
“Jeez, Connor, if word is already spreading, then now more than ever, we need to get everyone out of here.”
“Not if we can defend ourselves right here. We found caches of extra weapons and ammo in each of the towers. Almost three quarters of the workers are armed now.”
“Connor, can I just ask you a question?”
“Sure, Girlie, anything.”
“Have you lost your damn mind?”
He’s laughing. Re
ally? Well, that answers that.
“Good to know you’re concerned about my mental health, but I assure you, my mind is one hundred percent accounted for.”
“In that case, can we start this conversation over again? Because I must have misheard you.”
“No, you heard me right. I want to fight . . . we all do.”
“Fight who? With what? Connor, what are you talking about? We need to get these people out of here, find a place to hide, or disappear, or something.”
“That was plan A, but it doesn’t sound like its working out so well.” He sounds a little too enthusiastic about our failure. “Just hear me out, okay?”
For crying out loud . . . “Fine.”
Just add one more terrible idea to the long list of terrible ideas that seems to be making up the pattern of my life. Why not?
“Think about it, Girlie. We struck the match, now all we have to do is pour a little gasoline on the fire and watch it burn.”
“What exactly would this ‘gasoline’ be?”
“Rumors. We spread word of what we did and what we’re planning to do, and wait for others to join us.”
“And, how exactly do you plan on doing that?”
“Easy.” He’s grinning at me—this can’t be good. “We break into a few more camps. According to the schedule I found in the office, there’s a supply train scheduled to arrive here in the morning. If we can take it, then we’ll be able to travel to even the furthest camps.”
Hold on . . .
“You want to take over the train?” Nice of Peter to finally join the conversation. At least he sounds as skeptical as I am.
“Yeah!” Apparently our skepticism isn’t going to discourage Connor, though.
Peter thinks about it for a minute, and then his entire demeanor shifts. “It would be nice not to have to walk everywhere.”
When did I become the only sane person here? A few days ago, I was an idiot for wanting to break into a camp to rescue my friend, but now it’s a perfectly viable option? For what, to build some sort of army? To start some kind of revolution? This is not what I signed up for.
“Let’s say we did do this . . . and this is completely hypothetical because I still think you’re insane, but if we did, then who exactly would we be fighting?”
“Drew Reynolds. I’ve been through the rest of the paper work in the guard’s office while you guys were gone, and I think this Drew Reynolds guy is the key to all of this. As far as I can tell, he seems to be in charge of pretty much everything. If we can get to him, then maybe we’ll be able to bargain our way out of this situation.”
“Bargain with what, Connor? We don’t have anything he wants . . . except us.”
“We will.”
“And what is that?” Why does everything feel like a guessing game with him?
“His life. If we can capture him, we can coerce him into letting us all go free and clear. His life for our freedom. Sounds like a good trade to me.”
Why do I feel like I just stepped into some bad action film? This is a horrible plan, and I mean horrible in the worst possible sense of the word. Only problem is, I don’t have anything better to offer.
“Here, these are for you.” Connor hands shiny black guns to both me and Peter.
I’m pretty sure that if the best description of the weapon I can come up with is black and shiny, then I probably shouldn’t be handling it. “Connor, I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with that thing. Give it to someone else.”
“That’s why we set up a shooting range, to get everyone comfortable with firing their weapons. Check it out.” The long tables from the eating area have been lined up, and different sized tin cans are scattered across them. About twenty feet away, a line is clearly marked by broken stalks lying end to end.
“We were gone for like . . . three days.” I don’t bother concealing my disbelief.
“I work fast.”
Apparently.
“Shall we?” Peter looks like a kid in a candy shop heading for the shooting range. Yeah, I’ve definitely lost him.
At least the guns we have now aren’t like that monstrosity Peter was firing a couple days ago. They’re just regular handguns, like the kind you see in old movies. Within ten minutes, Peter’s hitting everything in sight. I keep at it for almost an hour, and manage to hit a grand total of two cans, two, and I’m honestly not sure I was actually aiming at either one of them. I am beyond awful at this. Yeah, fighting sounds like a great idea.
***
Sometime around four in the morning, Connor wakes me to let me know that the refugees from colony K have arrived. I shuffle, bleary eyed, out of the dorms to find nearly five hundred more workers pouring into the camp. The first to arrive are a man and a woman. The others congregate around them while we make introductions.
“Are you the one?” The woman, Julie, bombards me with way too much exuberance for the God-awful hour.
“The one what?”
“The one who stood up to that guard? The one who started all of this?”
How the hell do they know so damn much? And, for sanity’s sake, why do I keep getting blamed for this?
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Hey, Jacob, it’s her,” she calls to her friend, practically bouncing on her toes.
Great. What’s he gonna want, an autograph?
“You started all of this?” As much as I’d like to deny it, his disbelief is a little insulting.
“No, I just like to say I did for all of the fantastic benefits. You know, fame, fortune, a target on my back . . .” Okay, so I’m not exactly a morning person, but first impressions should never have to be made before dawn.
Julie and Jacob stick with us after we’ve found places for the others to get some rest, and Connor fills them in about our plan to confiscate the train later in the morning.
A few hours later, a large group of us are all armed and in position at the station when the supply train pulls in. Between our numbers, our weapons, and the element of surprise, it is hardly a fair fight. We take over the train with barely an argument. The whopping four guards that were actually on board are rounded up and escorted into the camp.
“What are we going to do with them?” Peter gives voice to the exact thing I’ve been wondering myself.
“Let them go,” I suggest. “It’s not like this is much of a secret anymore, so why not? We don’t need them for anything.”
“Not yet,” Connor jumps in. “I wanna talk to ‘em first. They might know about Reynolds.”
“Fine, ask them, but then we’re letting them go.”
“Who’s Reynolds?” Jacob doesn’t sound pleased to be out of the loop.
“We’re not sure, but his name keeps popping up.” Connor volunteers to catch him up to speed. “We think he may have enough power to get us out of this mess if we can find him.”
“Well then, what are we waiting for?” Jacob pushes past us and into the small bunk where the guards are being confined.
“All right, you’re gonna answer a few of my questions, and then we’ll send you on your merry way. Trust me, you want to answer them,” Connor explains amiably, following Jacob into the room. “So, who’s Drew Reynolds?”
I position myself in the doorway where I can see everyone. The guards cautiously eye one another, but no one says a word. Yeah, sure, this is gonna work.
“He asked you a question,” Jacob roars, and just to solidify the point, he punctuates it with a fist to one of the men’s faces.
What does he think he’s doing? I draw myself up to confront him, but Connor waves me back. He can’t possibly tolerate this.
“Who is Drew Reynolds?” Connor repeats the question, emphasizing each word slowly.
This time, one of the other men sitting near Jacob answers. “He runs the camps.”
“Where can we find him?”
“Don’t say anything else,” orders the guard with what looks like may be a broken nose, courtesy of Jacob.
“Shut up,�
� Jacob bellows, landing another blow to the man’s face, followed by a swift kick to his stomach.
I’ve seen enough.
“Colony O. He’s in colony O.” One of the other guards tries to come to his friend’s rescue.
Pushing past Connor, I grab Jacob’s arm and yank him away from the man who’s now just a heap on the floor.
“Get off me!” He has nearly a foot on me and is built almost as solidly as Connor. Maybe I didn’t think this through.
Chapter 21
“What the hell is wrong with you? I’m not going to let you beat that man to death.”
“Oh yeah? Who’s going to stop me? You?”
Before I can form a witty retort likely to get me my butt handed to me, Peter draws up beside me. Then Connor, who’s probably more threatening than Peter and I combined.
“Jacob, come on. We got the information we need.” Julie seems to be the only one capable of getting through his thick head.
The way he glares at her makes my pulse spike, but then his anger cools. When he follows her back out of the building, the entire room breathes a collective sigh of relief.
“Let them go,” I waved a hand at the four guards before leaving, completely disgusted with the entire situation.
***
I assume they did, because a few hours later, the bunk is vacant.
“They’re gone?”
“Watched them walk out the front gate myself, all four of them,” Peter assures me. “What’s next?”
Good question. We have a train, but the question remains, what are we going to do with it? A small group, including Connor, Peter, Julie, Jacob and myself, converges on the bunks to discuss our options. There aren’t many. Connor has a new recruit to his ‘guns-a-blazing’ strategy in Jacob, and Julie just seems to be on board with whatever Jacob decides. That leaves Peter and me as the only two not entirely sold on this idea, but when Peter leans towards acceptance as well, I’m willing to concede to the majority.