Among the Brave sc-5

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  Thinking hard, he backed out and then climbed in again, this time feet first.

  Ill be too heavy. The air duct will collapse under my weight, he worried, but this fear didn’t bother him much. As long as the duct didn’t collapse loudly, and didn’t fall too far, it would still be a safe place to hide.

  He slid both feet in, then his torso and chest, and the duct showed no sign of giving way. At the last moment, he reached down and pulled the Population Police uniform in after him. He didn’t think the Population Police officials had kept track of which uniform went to which recruit, but he didn’t want to take any chances or leave any evidence behind.

  What if I can’t put the grille back on from the inside? he wondered. But this fear too was needless. He pulled the grille down on its hinges and, by reaching back out through the holes, managed to reattach all but one of the clasps. Nobody would notice one out-of-place clasp, he assured himself.

  Breathing hard, Trey scooted backward down the duct so nobody would be able to see his face at the grille.

  Someone was rattling the doorknob again. This time, whoever it was started pounding on the door, too.

  “Come out now!” a voice yelled. “This instant!”

  This voice sounded more official. It might even have belonged to the officer who’d punched Trey before.

  Trey held his breath.

  Moments later, he heard a splintering sound. Through the narrow range of view the grille provided, he could see the bathroom door swing open.

  “There’s nobody in here!” the official-sounding voice cried out in disgust.

  Then Trey heard a yelp of pain, which probably meant that the official was punching whoever had summoned him to the bathroom.

  But nobody put his face up to the grille to look for Trey. Nobody seemed to notice he’d disappeared. Nobody called out, “Travis Jackson! Come out of hiding right now!”

  Trey breathed a huge but silent sigh of relief.

  He was safe.

  He congratulated himself on his brilliance. Mr. Hendricks is right, he thought. I am a genius. He felt as triumphant as if he’d just single-handedly defeated the Population Police.

  Maybe I can, he thought. And depending on where the duct led, he might have just discovered a way to save Mark and Lee and the others.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Trey slid down the duct backward, dragging the Population Police uniform behind him. It was slow going, because he had so little room to maneuver, and because he was terrified of making any noise. More than once the buttons of his flannel shirt scraped against the metal duct, and then he froze, horrified at the thought that someone might be about to rip the duct apart, screaming out, ‘Aha! You! We know everything now! You’re not Travis Jackson! You’re about to die!”

  No, they’ll just think that the Grant house has mice, Trey comforted himself. They’ll put out poison, and I can avoid that.

  Trey knew he wasn’t thinking very rationally. But he kept inching onward, feet first That began to bother him. He wished he had eyes on his toes. What if he was about to kick out another brass grille? What if he were about to slide out into another room — one less innocuous than the bathroom? What if he was at this very moment slipping past some sort of opening that anyone could see? Trey kept turning his head and looking back over his shoulder, but that gave him a terrible crick in his neck, and he could barely see past his own body anyway. And there seemed to be nothing but darkness ahead.

  He kept going.

  When it seemed as though he had been crawling backward for hours, he hit a metal wall where he’d expected open air. Was he disoriented, crawling crooked? No — the wall extended on, straight and smooth, totally blocking his path. Had he reached a dead end? How could a duct just end like that? He didn’t let himself panic. He stretched his legs out, tapping experimentally in all directions with his toes, and discovered that the metal walls he’d expected to find were missing to his left and right. Suddenly it all made sense: He’d reached a fork in his path, the place where the duct leading to the bathroom branched off from some main line. This was his route to the rest of the house.

  "Right or left? Which will it be?” he muttered to himself He tried to picture the ductwork in relationship to the floor plan of the entire house. He thought the left fork led toward the front door, and so was probably useless, but that was mostly just a guess. He moved his feet toward the right and began painstakingly turning the corner. Then he stopped, mid-turn.

  "Stupid,?" he said under his breath. “Don’t you know you can go face first now?”

  He retreated, shoved his feet the opposite direction down the duct, and soon was crawling forward, feeling his way with his hands and fingers instead of his feet and toes. He still couldn’t see anything ahead of him, but the change made him feel better.

  I ought to challenge Lee and the other boys to a heat duct race as soon as we get back to school, he thought I’d beat everyone.

  He was almost enjoying crawling through darkness.

  Heroism by hiding, he thought. Now, that I can handle. I’ll have to change my motto. What would it be in Latin ? — Virtus, I think. for “heroism,” and latente for “hiding….”

  That was when he saw the light.

  At first it was just a gray shadow up ahead, a slight variation on all the endless blackness. But as he scurried forward, trying harder than ever to crawl silently, the brightness grew. Soon he could see a whole patterned grid of light in the duct in front of him. And he could hear voices.

  “Unacceptable! Unacceptable, I tell you!” a man sputtered.

  The voice sounded vaguely familiar, but at first Trey couldn’t place it. It wasn’t Mr. Talbot or Mr. Hendricks or any of his teachers at school. It wasn’t the screaming man from the uniform room. What other men’s voices had Trey ever heard?

  Cautiously, he moved toward the light and peeked out a grille that was even larger and fancier than the one in the bathroom. He was looking down at a dark-haired man sitting at a huge desk. Rows of uniformed Population Police officers sat before him, like schoolchildren being scolded. Trey jerked back quickly, afraid one of them might look up at the wrong time. He rested his cheek against the cool metal of the duct, and listened to the pounding of his heart What if they’d already seen him? What if they could hear his heartbeat too?

  But nobody screamed out, “Hey! There’s a boy hiding behind that grille!” Nobody yelled, “Capture him!” Gradually, Trey’s terror ebbed, and he could listen again.

  “We are in charge now!” the man continued his tirade. “I am in charge now!”

  And suddenly Trey knew who the man was. Trey had heard his voice only once before, on television, at the Talbots’ house. Trey was eavesdropping on Aldous Krakenaur, the head of the Population Police, and now, the head of the entire country.

  And unless Aldous Krakenaur decided to send all his men away, letting Trey crawl on past, They was trapped there, a mere sneeze or a cough away from being discovered by his worst enemy.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Of course, thinking about sneezing or coughing instant1y made Trey want to do both. He thought about crawling backward, maybe even all the way to the bathroom where he’d started. But his fears about buttons raffling against the duct had multiplied tenfold. He didn’t think he was physically capable of moving right now. He lay paralyzed, listening in terror.

  “Don’t you understand that we are everything now?” Krakenaur lectured. “I appropriated this house because it was the only building in the entire country suitable to the grandeur of my Government, the glory of my vision.

  And because the Grants were dead and couldn’t object, Trey thought. He wondered if any of the Population Police sitting so obediently before their leader knew the truth. He felt a little more daring just to be able to think defiant thoughts.

  “So I arrive today, ready to rest and savor the accomplishments of my first few glorious days in office. And what do I discover? Ragamuffins trampling my front yard, tracking dirt into my
glorious entry hall. Prisoners in the basement — where is the glory and dignity and vision in that? I want a headquarters worthy of my honor!” He seemed to be pounding his fist on the desk to punctuate that last sentence.

  There was a shocked silence, as if none of the officers knew how to respond. Trey felt equally stunned.

  Prisoners in the basement... prisoners in the base……. Had Krakenaur just told Trey exactly where to find his friends? What other prisoners could there be?

  Now the officers were mumbling among themselves.

  “You issued the order to take new recruits,” someone said resentfully.

  “But surely there’s a back entrance?” Krakenaur spat out “Or some hut nearby that we could appropriate for processing purposes?”

  Nobody answered. Trey wondered if the officers were nodding obediently or looking dubious.

  “And it’s not like there are hundreds of prisoners in the basement,” someone else muttered. “There’s just one.”

  One? Trey’s heart sank. Then it was probably just Mark down there. Where could Lee and the others be?

  Another officer was adding in a soothing voice, ‘Anyhow, we’re just keeping that prisoner here until we finish our interrogation. Then we’ll dispose of him. It won’t be more than a few more hours.”

  Trey gulped so hard he feared the entire roomful of men could hear him. A few more hours… Trey didn’t have time to wait for Krakenaur to finish browbeating his officers and dismiss them all. He would have to crawl past them and go rescue Mark now.

  Trey stared at the pattern of light coming in through the fancy grille as though he could will it into darkness. Wait a minute — maybe he could. It probably looked dark to the people outside right now. He just had to make sure they didn’t see a changing pattern of skin, hair, flannel shirt, dark pants…. Carefully, he spread out the shirt of the Population Police uniform on the bottom of the duct. Then, very quickly — so quickly he didn’t have time to think about the danger — he lifted the shirt so it covered the entire grille from the inside.

  Nobody noticed.

  Trey gave himself a few moments to take deep breaths of relief. Then he slipped forward, holding the shirt in place over the grille with his hands, then his torso, then his legs.

  He didn’t worry about rattling buttons once.

  The entire procedure was going so smoothly, Trey was starting to think he had a future as a contortionist. And then, just as he was moving his leg away from the grille, he glanced back and realized: The uniform shirt had caught on his belt as he’d slid past He’d been in full view of anyone who cared to look for the past two minutes.

  Instantly, he jerked his leg away from the grille, only barely managing to stop himself from kicking the other side of the duct with a solid thump. And then he waited. Did anybody see me?

  It was torture, waiting, knowing he could do nothing now to correct his mistake. But down below, Krakenaur just kept berating his men.

  “We have a duty to our people!” he was yelling.

  Nobody had been looking at the grille. Nobody had seen Trey.

  Oh, thank you, he thought, feeling as if every moment for the rest of his life would be a pure gift. Because it was. He’d deserved to be discovered, and he hadn’t been.

  He turned his attention to finding Mark.

  Over the next hour or so, Trey despaired repeatedly of ever finding a way down to the basement. The ducts of the Grant mansion were like a maze, twisting and turning and branching off at odd intervals. More than once, They considered just turning around, climbing out a vent in some empty room, and then looking for actual stairs down to the basement. But seeing Krakenaur had chilled him. Trey could practically feel the danger in every room of the house — everywhere outside the ducts. He wore a hole in the knee of his pants, crawling; he rubbed the palms of his hands raw from feeling his way along. But that was still better than being out in the midst of the Population Police.

  And then, finally, as Trey reached a tired arm out yet again into the endless darkness, he touched — nothing. Just a hole where the duct plunged straight down.

  Trey hadn’t thought about its working that way. He’d been thinking of a nice gentle slope — something like the slides he’d seen in pictures of playgrounds.

  I can do this, Trey told himself. I have to.

  He reached across the hole, feeling around for the wall on the other side. As soon as he touched metal, he pulled his upper body over the hole and thrust his legs down it, bracing his feet and knees along the side of the metal chute. He banged his head on the top of the duct, and his leg muscles began trembling with the strain almost immediately But he didn’t fall. He inched down, each move absolute agony.

  How much farther can it possibly be? They wondered. How high are the Grants’ ceilings?

  Finally, They’s foot brushed something directly below him. He straightened out his legs, delighted that he’d soon be standing on solid ground.

  Well, solid duct, anyway, he corrected himself.

  He eased his stiff, aching arms away from the walls of the duct so all his weight was on his legs and the duct below.

  Suddenly there was a ripping sound. Trey plunged straight down. As he reached out frantically, clutching for anything that might stop his fall, his fingers brushed plastic. He grabbed what seemed to be a plastic tube, which swung down to the right Seconds later, he hit a concrete floor with a muffled thud.

  Trey lay still, too stunned even to try out his arms and legs and make sure that nothing was broken. In near-darkness, he peered straight up, trying to comprehend what had happened. He’d broken through the duct, of course, but why? He looked at the plastic tube he still hugged to his chest. Oh. He was in the basement, and the ducts down here were evidently plastic, not metal. The tube he was clutching was about as flimsy as a garbage bag.

  At least it was strong enough to break your fall, he told himself reassuringly. And nobody knows I’m here.

  "What was that?” someone yelled.

  Correction, They thought. At least they haven’t found me yet. At least I have time to hide.

  He glanced around, but he was in an empty room.

  I’ll hide in the tube, then, he told himself. But the plastic duct was too narrow. Even if he managed to climb into it in time, his shoulders would cause the tube to bulge. He’d be discovered instantly if anyone came to investigate.

  Then it’s back into the metal duct They thought, still feeling amazingly calm.

  He stood — his legs did still work, after all — and reached up.

  The bottom of the metal duct was a good two feet above his fingertips. He had nothing to stand on, he couldn’t jump that high — there was no way out.

  And he could hear footsteps coming his way.

  Chapter Twenty

  Know what I think that noise was?” a second voice called out. “Mice. Or rats, maybe. Hey, tell you what. You run back there and flush them out, drive them straight toward my cage, and I’ll catch them with my bare hands. I’ve done it before. Ever had rat roasted on an open flame? Mmm — mmm. Delicious.”

  It was Mark’s voice, sounding twangier and more hickish than ever. Trey’s knees went weak with relief.

  But so what? Trey reminded himself. That just means the two of us will be imprisoned together.

  The footsteps stopped.

  “I am a master guard in the Population Police,” the first voice snapped. “I don’t eat rats.”

  “Hey, hey, didn’t mean to insult you,” Mark said. “I should have thought about who I was talking to. I ain’t used to being around fancy officials and all. It probably ain’t rats, or mice, nohow. Not here. Not some highfalutin place like this.”

  “Hmmph,” the guard said. But, miraculously, he didn’t continue walking toward Trey’s room. Instead, he muttered, “No funny business.” And then his footsteps began to retreat Trey thought, by the way they echoed, that he might even be climbing stairs.

  Trey exhaled very slowly He took another deep breath,
then tiptoed to a doorway that seemed to lead out into the rest of the basement. Feeling ridiculously brave, he peeked around the corner.

  Mark was, indeed, crouched inside a cage, out in the middle of the floor. The cage was small — Mark couldn’t have stood up in it. Trey had the impression that the cage wasn’t even meant for humans. It was like the Population Police were just improvising, using whatever they could find lying around at the Grants’.

  Will that make it easier for me to set him free? Trey wondered.

  The guard wasn’t anywhere in sight now, but Mark’s cage was directly under a large, glaring overhead light I’ll wait until they turn that out, Trey thought Then I’ll creep nearby. A pile of boxes stood behind the cage. Trey could hide there.

  Trey’s plans were shaping up nicely. The only problem was, what were he and Mark going to do after Trey released him? If they had time to slide a stack of boxes over under the broken metal duct. . if they could do it quietly. . if the boxes were sturdy enough to climb on. . if they were able to climb back up the duct. .if everything fell into place, he and Mark would be safe.

  Trey didn’t like dealing with so many ifs, but he didn’t think he had a choice. He sat back, waiting until the light went out.

  Instead, after just a few minutes, the guard called down, “Prisoner, prepare to be interrogated.”

  Trey grimaced, remembering the conversation he’d overheard earlier. We’re just keeping that prisoner here until we finish our interrogation. Then we’ll dispose of him. It won’t be more than a few more hours. What if he didn’t have time to rescue Mark before they took him away? How much time had Trey already lost wandering around in the heat ducts?

  Trey glanced around the corner into the next room once more. And then, before he had time to reconsider, he dashed out and slipped between the pile of boxes and the wall.