Among the Enemy

Chapter Nine

Matthias did everything he could for his friends, but there was so much he didn't know. Could Percy's leg heal even if Matthias didn't take the bullet out? What did it mean that Alia flickered in and out of consciousness and seemed barely aware even when she was awake?

"They'll both be fine tomorrow," he told himself firmly. He managed to choke down a bit of bread and water him^ self, then blew out the lantern and curled up on a cot between his two friends.

He woke, hours later, to the sound of Alia crying. He lit the lantern and crouched by her cot.

"Shh," he murmured. "I'm here."

Alia stared up at him.

"Why doesn't it stop hurting?" she asked. "It feels like my head cracked in half, and every time I move, it cracks open some more." She flinched, as if just the act of talking was painful.

"Shh. Go back to sleep" was the best comfort Matthias could offer. He wished he had some aspirin, but maybe even that wouldn't be enough for her.

He lay back down on his own cot, but sleep was impossible now.

What can I do, God? he prayed desperately. How can I help Alia? How can I save Percy?

He got up and took the lantern around the room, searching more thoroughly than he'd searched the night before. The cupboards and shelves over the sink contained an amazing quantity of food: bread and potatoes, apples, even a hunk of cheese. But that was all there was.

“Why did they even have this room?” he muttered to himself. It must have been hard work digging out this huge space. Why hadn’t the cabin’s owners just built a larger cabin?

Because they had something to hide. .

Matthias walked slowly around the room, stopping every few paces to tap his foot on the dirt floor. Then he felt carefully along the walls.

He found what he was looking for behind one of the cabinets over the sink. The wood wall swung away, revealing a safe with a combination lock.

Percy was the smart one, and Alia was the one with a sixth sense for picking locks. But neither of them could help Matthias now. At least he had determination on his side. He turned the numbered lock slowly, listening for clicks. A hope had begun to grow inside him. Maybe the seventeen "rebels" in the cabin had been smuggling medical supplies. Sometimes people did that. Once, Matthias remembered, a man had come and asked Samuel if they could use his tunnel to store some stolen medicine.

"You'd be helping people, old man," the smuggler had said. "The people who are going to get this medicine would die without it. The Government certainly isn't doing anything for them."

Samuel had asked the man for a few days to think it over. Matthias remembered watching Samuel sit and pray and think. Finally he told the smuggler no.

"What about the people the medicine was intended for?" Samuel had asked. "What happens to them when you steal their medicine? What if they die? It's not my place to decide who lives and who dies, whose life has the greater value."

"But — those people are Barons. They're rich. They have everything they need!" the smuggler had argued.

"Maybe not," Samuel had said. "Not if they're unwilling to share with the poor. They need love, and they need compassion, and they need to know God. Stealing from them won't give them any of those things."

The smuggler had left shaking his head at Samuel's foolishness. Matthias thought maybe the smuggler had offered Samuel money too — money to feed himself and Percy and Alia. Matthias hadn't really understood. If this safe contains medicine, he told himself, still turning the lock, I'm giving it to Percy and Alia. I don't care who else was supposed to have it.

The lock clicked one final time, and Matthias jerked on the safe door. It actually opened an inch or so.

Medicine, medicine, medicine. ., Matthias chanted to himself as he swung the safe door farther out.

Flat white plastic cards fell out on the ground.

Fake I.D.'s.

Matthias picked up one in disgust and threw it against the wall.

"I could make these myself, if I needed to," he muttered, and started to slam the door of the safe. Then he reconsidered. If someone found them hiding here in this secret room, they'd be in even bigger trouble if they didn't have identity cards. The identity cards could be "proof" that they weren't the three kids who had slipped away from the Population Police truck.

Matthias forced himself to slow down and search through the stack, until he found cards with pictures that bore some resemblance to himself and Percy and Alia. Most of the cards were for adults, so it took quite a while. By the time Matthias held three suitable I.D.'s in his hand, Percy was moaning.

"Over here, I think there's a cabin ahead. Oh no! Bullet! Shot! Climb hill! Hide!" he said, his voice crescendoing to a shriek. In his dreams, he seemed to be reliving the attack of the night before. He thrashed around on his bed so violently that Matthias feared he'd hurt himself even worse. Matthias put his hand on his friend's forehead, to calm him down and smooth the hair out of his face. But Percy's forehead was fiery hot; Matthias jerked his hand bade as though Percy's skin could burn him.

"You've got a fever," Matthias said. "Thaf s all. Just a little fever. I—" His voice shook. "I'm going upstairs to look for medicine there."

His legs trembled as he climbed the stairs and pushed up on the trapdoor. He was surprised by the bright sunlight that greeted him. It was still very early morning, but the woods outside the splintered door and broken win-dows seemed to sparkle. Percy's prediction had been right: It had snowed overnight.

Matthias refused to let himself be dazzled by the scene. He gingerly shut the trapdoor and focused his eyes on the ruined cabin.

It had probably not looked like much to begin with, but now it was a nightmarish place of overturned chairs and dark stains everywhere.

Bloodstains. Bloodstains from where seventeen rebels had fought and died.

Why didn't they just stay hidden in the secret underground room? Matthias wondered. But he thought he knew the answer. If they hadn't fought back, the Population Police would have come in and searched the place; they would have found the secret room anyway — and probably the safe with all the fake I.D.'s. The rebels had protected that room and that safe with their lives.

Was it worth it? Matthias wanted to know., He went out and looked at the pile of bodies the Population Police had made. With the dusting of snow on their clothes and faces, the bodies didn't look like real people anymore. They looked like statues or sculptures, somebody's twisted idea of art. The sign saying Enemies of the People flapped in the breeze on a post beside the bodies.

Matthias had seen dead people before. He'd seen plenty of awful scenes when he'd lived in the city: children beaten by their parents, starving people screaming for food. But he'd had Samuel to protect him then — Samuel to protect him, and Percy and Alia to cuddle with at night. His life had been cozy in the midst of death and horror.

Now all that had been ripped away. The dead bodies seemed to stare at him, their tortured expressions seemed to whisper, Percy will be joining us soon. Alia will be joining us soon. .

"No!" Matthias screamed.

He whirled around and ran back into the cabin. He tore through it, ceiling to floor. He even searched between the cracks in the floor, in case some stray pills had fallen there. But the cabin contained no medicine. He had no way to help Percy and Alia. Not here.

"We'll leave, then," he muttered, lying on his stomach on the floor after searching the last crack. "We'll go somewhere else for help."

But he couldn't carry both of his friends at once. He'd barely managed to drag the two of them down the hill the night before.

He let his head fall, defeated, against the wood floor. His cheek rested against a bloodstain. Some people prayed this way, he remembered, their bodies absolutely flat on the ground. But Matthias wasn't praying. He was coming to terms with an awful truth.

I have to go away to get help for Percy and Alia, he thought. I have to.

But I have to leave them behind.