Among the Free

Chapter Five

Luke crashed through overgrown shrubs, dodged behind falling-down shacks. He heard gunshots behind him, but he didn't stop to see who was shooting whom, or whether anyone was shooting at him. He ran faster than he'd ever run in any game of football or kick-ball or spud; he ran without stopping even when his leg ached and his breath came in ragged gasps.

And then he fell to the ground and couldn't get back up. He lay in a heap for uncountable minutes, and then he rolled over on his back to stare straight up at the sky. Wispy clouds covered a dim, faraway sun, and then all of it blurred into a sea of gray.

He was crying. That was why everything looked so blurry.

Luke wiped his sleeve across his face, smearing clumps of dirt onto his skin. Dizzily, he raised himself up on his arms.

I didn't shoot her, he thought. Oh, thank Cod, I didn't shoot her.

The tears kept coming, and it didn't matter, because no one could see him. He was out in an empty field alone, and as far as he could tell, no one had followed him.

I should hide, he thought, but he didn't move. He sat there with broken cornstalks and clods of dirt poking at him, his muscles throbbing and his lungs still desperate for air. And somehow it was almost as comforting as leaning against his horse Jenny, letting her slide her warm nose under his arm.

I'm free, he thought. I made my choice.

His legs began to feel pleasantly numb, and his breathing slowed to a normal rate. Then a frightening thought crawled into his mind: 7 could freeze.

Ice crystals glistened in the mud around him, and now there was a frosty haze in the air. The weather was changing. Carefully Luke rose to his feet, the numbness giving way to pins and needles and pain. He stood, swaying unsteadily, and looked around. The field was surrounded by trees on all sides, but one direction led back to the village, one direction led out to the road, and one direction seemed to lead to yet another field. Painstakingly Luke began walking away from all that, toward the only place where the trees were thickly clumped.

Like the woods back home, Luke thought, and he had to choke back another sob that threatened to come bursting out. For most of his life, Luke's family had owned a huge woods beyond the edge of their backyard. Luke had never been allowed to go into the woods, but they had been his shield from the outside world, the protection that allowed him to play and work outside rather than cower in the house all day. Only when the Government forced Luke's family to sell the woods did Luke realize how trapped he was. Only then did he begin to long for freedom.

And only Jen told me freedom was possible, Luke thought with a pang.

He reached the edge of the woods and fought his way in through brambles and thorns. He had some vague notion of constructing a shelter for himself, just a place to stay until he could figure out what to do next. Just a place to stay until he stopped seeing the old woman staring at him every time he closed his eyes, until every random thought stopped throwing him into anguish. But most of the trees around him were soaring and thick-trunked, much too large to be felled by anything smaller than an ax or a chainsaw. The smaller trees and underbrush were worthless, barely fit to shelter a mouse or a squirrel.

Then the trees ended, and a wall of rock rose up before him. In spite of himself, Luke stared in amazement. He was used to flat farmland or, at most, gently rolling hills. This made him think of the mountains he'd seen only in books, the kind of thing he'd had to pretend to know about when he was attending school under a fake identity.

It's a wonder everyone didn't see through me, didn't know how ignorant I was, Luke thought. I never knew mountains were like this.

In awe, he ran his hands along the rock, his fingers tracing the crevices. He found layers of different colored rock, some that chipped away easily and some that held firm even when he pried against them with a stick. One of the layers led down at an angle; following it, Luke found an opening in the rock that seemed to lead deep into the mountain.

A cave, Luke thought, struggling to remember definitions and explanations he'd memorized for tests, never expecting the knowledge to have any use in the real world. Caves have a constant temperature, summer and winter. People used to live in caves.

Luke had found his shelter.

He crawled in, keeping his head down because the ceiling of the cave was only four or five feet above the ground. But it was warmer the farther he got from the opening. He slid back as far as he could go and still see, and he curled up against a wall of rock. He felt safer than he'd felt at any time since he'd joined the Population Police, maybe any time since the Government had torn down the woods behind his family's house.

He was just beginning to drift off to sleep when he heard the gunfire start up again.