Among the Free

Chapter Twenty

Dusk passed quickly into darkness, but that didn't stop any of the cheering and shouting in the truck. Luke wondered what the truckload of people would do if they arrived at Population Police headquarters and discovered that everyone had gone home for the night. What would I do? he wondered. Where would I go?

But when the truck neared the headquarters a few hours later, it was clear that nightfall had had no effect on the celebration. The gates stood open, completely unguarded. On the walls around the headquarters, someone had mounted huge klieg lights, so the scene within was as bright as day. Some people were dancing on top of the walls; others were cheering from the ground below.

Luke saw no sign of the barbed wire that had once surrounded the walls. He saw no sign of the guard station that had once stood by the gate — no, wait, there it was: toppled over and tossed to the side.

Don parked his truck several yards away, in the midst of an assortment of other vehicles that people had appar-ently abandoned so quickly that some of them hadn't even bothered to close their doors.

"We're here!" Don called out, unnecessarily. "Everybody out!"

The others climbed down quickly, whooping and hollering and racing for the gate. Luke followed more slowly. He couldn't quite trust what he was seeing — his mind kept putting the barbed wire back in place, picturing the grim guards along the wall once again. The woman who had feared danger, Don's wife, hung back a little too. She gave Luke an uncertain smile.

"You never did tell us where you came from, did you?" she asked. "In all the excitement, did anyone even bother to ask your name?"

"No," Luke said. He didn't like the way she kept watching him. "I don't think names matter much anymore."

She started to say something else, but a crowd was shoving behind him, and Luke let the people push through, separating him from the rest of the group. By the time the tide had carried him to the gateway, he had lost sight of Ricky and Don and everyone else he'd ridden with in the pickup.

It doesn't matter. I've been alone before. And that woman seemed so suspicious.

At the gateway, the crowd bottlenecked, with people pushing from behind and everyone moving slowly at the front. Luke stood on tiptoe, trying to see what the holdup was. He had a quick flash of fear: Maybe they're checking I.D. 's after all. Maybe this was just a trap, an elaborate hoax set up by the Population Police to catch people like me. .

The fear didn't recede much when he saw the reason for the holdup: TV cameras. Simone and Tucker were interviewing people as they came through the gate, and even the people who weren't being interviewed were slowing down to gawk.

"We're not broadcasting this live," Simone was telling a thin, hunched-over man. "Philip is over by the wall doing the main broadcast right now. We're just creating a video archive that can be used later, after we edit everything. Philip says this will be like a historical document, almost. So tell me. Why did you come here tonight?"

The man straightened up a little.

"I came here," he began slowly, "because the Population Police beat me up when I asked for more food for my wife when she was pregnant. And she was pregnant legitimately. This was going to be my first child. She deserved that food. She needed it."

"Wow, sir — that's really sad. If you don't mind me saying so, you do still look kind of, urn, scarred up," Simone said.

Luke could see the man's face now. He had a badly healed gash running from his right eyelid down to his mouth. His nose sagged, as though the bones and cartilage inside had given up.

The man stared straight into the TV camera.

"That don't matter," he said. "What matters is, my baby was born dead. Malnourishment, the doctors said. He — he would have been absolutely fine otherwise. So it's like the Population Police murdered my son. And I came to see for myself… if they really did have plenty of food here the whole time…"

His face seemed to break up along the lines of scars. It was a horrifying sight, until Luke realized the man was only sobbing.

"I just — had — to — see—," he wailed.

Luke stopped standing on tiptoe and turned away. He couldn't watch anymore. He kept his eyes trained on the gray sweatshirt of the man standing in front of him. He hugged the quilt around himself even tighter as he inched forward. Then suddenly there was a break in the crowd and a bright light shone directly into Luke's eyes.

"What's your story, young man?"

Simone's voice. She was standing there right beside him, holding a microphone out toward his face.

"Huh?" Luke grunted. He could see himself reflected in the lens of the camera, a caveman huddled in an old quilt, with dirt smeared across his face and twigs sticking out of his matted, messy hair. He looked back at Simone, and she was even more beautiful close up than she'd been from a distance or on the TV screen. Her waterfall of blond hair shimmered; her blue eyes twinkled.

"We're asking everyone why they came here tonight," Simone said gently. "What interactions they've had with the Population Police previously, why they're rejoicing now… This is your chance to tell the whole country your story."

Luke stared at Simone, too many thoughts tumbling through his head at once. He could admit that he was the one in Chiutza who had refused to shoot the old lady. He could say that he really hadn't handed the gun to the rebels — that he'd just dropped it and run away, so he didn't deserve too much credit. He could tell her about what he and Nina and Trey had tried to do at Population Police headquarters, how they'd persevered even when they'd gotten discouraged. He could tell about how his friends had rescued him from a Population Police holding camp. He could tell about seeing two people murdered, right on this property. He could tell about Jen, and how he felt haunted by her even now, nearly a year later.

He could talk about being a third child.

Then he remembered how the scarred man had talked about his wife: "She was pregnant legitimately." He remembered the woman back in front of the TV set arguing: 'Any minute now, the Population Police could come back with tanks and guns and — and—" He remembered Eli talking about informing on the third child in their village. He remembered twelve years of hiding and watching his parents struggle with the fear that one day their secret would be revealed, that one day Luke would be killed.

"You — you're calling this Freedom News, right?" Luke finally said.

"Yes, that's right," Simone said. "We are."

She stood there expectantly, ready to record every one of his words, to broadcast his story out to the whole country.

"Then I'm free not to talk," Luke said. "I'm free not to tell you a single thing."