Among the Enemy

Chapter Twenty-Three

The weeks that followed were the strangest of Matthias's life. He stayed in the little bedroom just off the commander's office. He spent hours just staring up at the ceiling, thinking nothing. Nobody mentioned the classes he was supposed to be taking, the duties he might carry out.

The commander came in and out of the room and stroked Matthias's hair from his face. When the hollows deepened in Matthias's face, the commander was the one who ordered that someone come in and feed Matthias three times a day. He was the one who ordered a servant to bathe Matthias ever,y morning, to give him clean clothes.

Matthias wouldn't let anyone wash or throw away the sweater he'd been wearing when he'd arrived at Population Police headquarters.

"It's sentimental for him," he heard the commander tell a particularly determined servant. "Because of Tiddy. Leave it alone."

Matthias didn't bother correcting the commander. He didn't see any reason to bother doing much of anything. But in spite of himself, his mind swirled with memories. He remembered telling Mrs. Talbot about Samuel's philosophy of life: "Governments will rise and governments will fall, and man will do evil to man, and all we can do is turn our hearts to good."

Matthias couldn't see anymore how Samuel had reached that conclusion.

Don't you know how hard I tried to do good? he thought, wishing he could fling those words at Samuel, at God. But he couldn't feel sure anymore that God listened. I tried to save Percy and Alia on the Population Police truck, and innocent children died. I tried to take Alia to safety, and Percy got shot. I ran for help and lured Mrs. Talbot to the cabin, and now she's probably dead too, killed in the fire with Percy and Alia and the man in the tree. I saved Tiddy's life, only to watch him die hours later. What does any of it matter?

He could hear the drone of voices from the commander's office. They were planning something, probably plotting more deaths. Revenge.

So what? Matthias thought. / tried to do good and ended up killing people. How am I any less evil than the Population Police?

Once, Nina was the servant who came upstairs with the trayful of food. She tried to talk to him. Matthias grabbed a pad of paper and scribbled out, NO! Room is bugged!

He didn't know if it was or not, but it was too painful for him to see the hope in her eyes.

Then let's write back and forth, Nina scribbled back on his pad. You can help—

Matthias tore the page off the notepad, tore it to bits. He shook his head violently.

"They're dead," he said aloud. "Don't you understand?"

Nina looked around fearfully. Matthias strode over to the door to the commander's office.

"Sir," he said, "can you send this servant girl away? She's annoying me."

The commander looked coldly at Nina. "Dismissed," he said.

Nina scurried out of the room.

That night the commander came into Matthias's room and sat by his bed.

"People don't understand," he said. "After a loss like we suffered.."

"No," Matthias said. "Nobody understands."

"You understand me. I understand you," the commander said.

They sat in companionable silence for a while.

"Tiddy was like a shooting star," the commander finally said. "His zest for life was so great."

A thought flickered in Matthias's mind: Tiddy was a Population Police officer. His job was killing people. How did that show a zest for life? But it was followed by the words, So what? Who cares? Didn't I kill people too?

"We were working on a plan. It was brilliant, the best ever. Now it's almost ready. And Tiddy's not here to share in the glory with me," the commander said. He stared at Matthias, his red-rimmed eyes burning. "Come on. I want to show you something."

Matthias obediently slid out from under his covers and pulled on slippers that had somehow appeared beside his bed. Matthias had never owned a pair of slippers before in his life.

"No, real clothes," the commander said. "We have to drive somewhere."

He waited while Matthias located his uniform shirt and pants. Amazingly, the pant legs and sleeves didn't have to be rolled up so many times; the belt didn't need to be pulled over to the extra hole. Somehow Matthias had filled out and gotten taller while he was lying around being fed and pampered, in mourning. It seemed like another bit of evil on Matthias's part, that he could keep growing after Percy and Alia were dead.

"Perfect," the commander proclaimed when Matthias was dressed, the starched uniform stiff against his skin.

They stepped out into the hallway. Guards snapped salute after salute as they passed by.

"Someday they'll be saluting you like that," the commander said. "Would you like that?"

They stepped out into the night, and Matthias was startled by the frostiness in the air. Hard-core winter had arrived while he'd been grieving.

"Don't worry. They'll have the car heated for us," the commander said as Matthias shivered.

A car slipped through the darkness and stopped in front of Matthias and the commander. The commander held the door for Matthias, then leaned in and told the driver, "I won't be needing your services tonight. I'll drive myself."

'As you wish, sir," the driver said, and stepped out of the car. "Will you be wanting security behind you?"

"I don't wish to be followed," the commander said sharply. "Is that clear?"

Matthias's heart ached a little as they drove out of the gates. If only he'd left Population Police headquarters weeks ago, the same day he arrived, when there was still time to rescue Percy and Alia.

The world was quiet outside the commander's car. They drove down city streets full of rubble and burned^out buildings. Matthias saw no signs of life in the ruins. He almost could have believed that everyone outside Population Police headquarters was dead.

"The rebellions are over now," the commander said. Matthias gave him a quick glance, and he chuckled. "Oh, yes, I'm allowed to admit that there were rebellions. The Population Police had a harder time consolidating power than we expected. But starving people do not make good warriors. And the weather was on our side. Who can fight on an empty belly in the wintertime?"

The commander pulled the car into a dark alley and turned off the engine.

"Quickly," the commander said.

He stepped out of the car, and Matthias followed him, close at his heels. The commander climbed stairs to a brick wall and stabbed a gloved finger at a button Matthias could barely see.

"Glorious future," the commander said into an inter^ com.

There was a buzzing, and the commander opened a windowless door in the wall. A guard stood just inside the door.

"Commander," he said, managing a flustered salute. "I wasn't expecting you — usually nobody comes at night."

The commander slapped him so hard, the guard's head slammed back against the wall.

"You must be on alert always!" the commander snapped.

The guard said nothing, only bowed his head as if he'd fully deserved the slap, fully deserved the pain.

The commander began walking angrily down a long, vacant corridor. Matthias practically had to run to keep up. When they reached a door on the left side of the cor^ ridor, the commander slid a key from his pocket He looked down at the key, smiling, his anger gone. Then, almost reverently, he slid the key into the lock and turned the doorknob.

Even before the commander flipped on the lights, Matthias had the sense that he was standing before an enormous room. The darkness was that vast. When the lights flickered to life a second later, Matthias could only gape.

In front of him lay a gigantic storeroom of food. Shelves filled with canned goods ran from the floor to the ceiling— and the ceiling was high overhead, seemingly as distant as the sky. Crates of apples, oranges, peaches, and potatoes were stacked as far as the eye could see. Cans of condensed milk and wheels of cheese towered above Matthias's head.

To Matthias, who'd lived on crusts of bread from other people's garbage for most of his life, the sight before him was more dazzling than a roomful of diamonds.

"Ooooh," Matthias breathed out. He wished fervently that Percy and Alia were still alive to see this marvel, to share this view with him. "How did you find all this?"

He was thinking that the Population Police must have caught some amazingly skillful smuggler.

"We didn't 'find' it," the commander replied with a chuckle. "Oh, no. We've been storing up food here for more than a decade. Since the droughts began. Of course, we've had to throw some food away as it rots."

"Throw it away?" Matthias repeated, uncomprehend-ingly. He looked back and forth between the commander and the mountains of food. When he peered closely, he could see signs of rot on some of the potatoes, bruises on some of the apples, the beginnings of mold on some of the cheese. "You just throw it out?" he said. "But… people are starving."

The commander shrugged.

"It's our food, not theirs," he said.

And something happened to Matthias in that moment, watching the commander shrug. He lost none of his grief, none of his anguish over his friends. But something changed inside him. He looked at the piles of food again, and it was like he was seeing it with new eyes.

This is wrong, he thought. Letting food rot while people die of hunger. It's evil.

He thought about all the awful things that had hap-pened that he felt responsible for. The tree falling, killing innocent children, and hurting Alia. Percy being shot. Mrs. Talbot being trapped. He'd never intended anything bad to happen. He'd been trying his hardest to keep every' one safe.

But the Population Police did their evil deeds deliberately. The commander knew that people were dying, and he didn't care.

I am not like the commander, Matthias thought. We have nothing in common.

An ache grew in his throat and he wanted to sob, but he set his jaw and held it in. He'd been wrong to send Nina away, wrong to refuse to help her, wrong to let the commander treat him like a pet. He'd been wrong to think that everything ended when he lost Percy and Alia.

But those are mistakes I can fix, Matthias told himself. He breathed in the too-sweet smell of rotting food, and it was almost intoxicating. Empowering.

I can stop this evil, he thought.