Among the Enemy

Chapter Sixteen

The Population Police officer seemed to have satisfied all his doubts about Matthias now. He tucked his gun away out of sight before pressing his foot down on the accelerator again.

"My name's Tidwell, by the way," the officer said. "Friends call me Tiddy."'

"Tiddy"? Matthias thought. The big, fierce Population Police officer goes by "Tiddy"?

Without his official cap, Tiddy looked younger, almost boyish himself. His blond hair was cut very short, with razor-sharp precision, and his uniform was still crisply pressed, even after the march through the woods and the surprise attack. But he didn't have the cold, steely-eyed look of all the other Population Police Matthias had ever seen.

"Um, Tiddy?" Matthias asked. "Where are we going?"

"Back to HQ," Tiddy said. "Headquarters. You'll get your assignment — further assignment, I should say — and I'll put in orders for those reinforcements." He was silent for a minute, then added, "Wish you'd been able to save Hathaway, Grimes, and Sully, too."

Matthias guessed he meant the other three Population Police, the men who had died in the first hail of gunfire.

"Were they your friends?" Matthias asked.

"Yes," Tiddy said softly, his eyes carefully trained on the road ahead. "They were."

It was strange for Matthias to think of Tiddy, a Population Police officer, missing his friends just as Matthias was worrying about Percy and Alia.

"You should know," Tiddy went on, so quietly that he almost seemed to be talking to himself, "being in the Population Police is a dangerous business. It's not just about privileges and promotions. We're serving the cause and… not everybody understands."

"The cause?" Matthias asked.

Tiddy glanced over at him.

"You're thirteen, huh?" Tiddy said. "That's too young to remember the famines. I was just a boy myself then, not much older than you. We'd always had food. Back then, you could go into a grocery store and there'd be aisles and aisles of every food you could imagine. Even meat — I bet you've never tasted meat in your entire life, have you?"

Matthias shook his head. No. Of course he'd never tasted meat.

"They had these things called cheeseburgers. . Well, never mind. The point is, everyone had plenty of food. You didn't really think about it. You just ate. And then it stopped raining. It didn't rain ever. I wasn't really paying attention, I was just a kid, but the newspeople were always on TV blathering on about 'The droughts! The droughts! What if the rains never come back?' This is awful, but me and my friends, we used to laugh about it. It was like the grown-ups telling themselves horror stories, trying to scare themselves. Nobody was really worried. But then those grocery store shelves started emptying out, and people started fighting over what food there was. . Everybody would have starved if it hadn't been for the Population Police."

Matthias had heard a story sort of like this from Samuel. But in Samuel's version, told beside a small fire in the dark tunnel, he always ended by musing, "Was this a judgment on our wickedness, O Lord?"

And in Samuel's tale, the Population Police were part of the evil visited on the land, not the people's salvation.

"How did the Population Police keep people from starving?" Matthias asked.

"You don't know?" Tiddy asked. He shook his head in disbelief. "Look at it this way. If you've got one box of rice and ten thousand people, nobody's going to survive. But if you've got only ten people, everyone gets a bellyful. The Population Police just make sure there aren't too many people. It's, like, simple math."

Not so simple if you're one of the people who are "too many," Matthias thought.

"What's amazing," Tiddy continued, "is how people try to get around the rules. Rules that are there for their own good! You know what was happening back at that cabin? People were making fake I.D.'s so they could get extra food. And then they were so greedy that they fought about it and started shooting one another — that's why there were all those bodies by the side of the road. The Population Police, we were just going in to clean up the mess. But not only did the rebels start shooting at us, did you see that sign? By the bodies? Somebody wrote, 'The Population Police did this'—like they were trying to blame everything on us. Lies, lies, lies. It's just so wrong!"

Matthias froze. Did Tiddy have any idea who had written that sign? No — Tiddy was banging his hand on the steering wheel and his voice cracked with indignation, but he was also nodding his head toward Matthias, like he thought Matthias was completely on his side. An ally. (Well, hadn't Matthias acted like he was — saving Tiddy's life, shaking hands over the notion of joining the Population Police? Why would Tiddy suspect Matthias of anything?)

Something else struck Matthias: Tiddy seemed to truly believe that the rebels, not the Population Police, had killed those seventeen people.

Matthias opened his mouth. Then closed it He couldn't very well tell Tiddy, But you're the one who's wrong! I was there the night before last! I saw the Population Police kill the rebels! He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the seat.

"I know," Tiddy said sympathetically. "It's almost too much to bear, isn't it?"

They drove the rest of the way without much conversation. Matthias was worrying about Percy and Alia, and he suspected that Tiddy was grieving for his friends. Matthias watched the scenery flash by — first the countryside, with scant villages, then the streets of a large city Matthias didn't recognize. He paid close attention. He wanted to memorize the route so he could slip away and hike back to the cabin as soon as possible.

But when they got to Population Police headquarters— a monstrous building surrounded by a towering stone fence — he was chilled by the sight of guards everywhere. Hordes of them stood by the fence, by the gate, by every door and window. After Tiddy drove in past a guardhouse, a line of guards closed in across the road as quickly as a prison door slamming shut.

Oh, Percy, Matthias thought, as if his friend could really hear him, all those miles away, even you couldn't escape from this place.