by Krista McGee
“Athens?”
“Yes.” Kristie picks up a piece of hay and rolls it with her fingers. “They sent people over, wanting our help. But they wanted to rebuild everything that was destroyed, with themselves as leaders—rulers. They wanted to rule with power, to use warfare to force people into submission. We refused to help them. We wanted to live peaceful lives, focusing on families and education. We didn’t see the benefit of trying to regain the technological advances from before the War. And we certainly did not want to see any more war. Never again. But after Victor died, Emile and Janet changed their minds. They didn’t want war, but neither did they want anyone to experience what Victor experienced. They were sure they could convince the Athenians to focus on medicine and not warfare.”
“Obviously that didn’t work.”
Kristie sighs. “They never spoke to us after that. We tried to visit, but the Athenians refused to even let us in their town. It is surrounded by a large wall and guarded at all times.”
“But Peter escaped.”
“It was difficult. But he had no choice. His grandparents developed pharmaceuticals. Strong ones. They died without completing the work. He refused to continue it.”
I have so many more questions—each new piece of information makes me hungry to learn so much more. But pain is heavy in Kristie’s eyes, and I should remain silent for now. Save my questions. We sit in silence until the sounds of the Athenians fade into the distance.
“We must return to our house.” Kristie stands and wipes dirt from her pants. “There will be chaos in the village.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Dozens of people are crowded in Kristie and Carey’s home. The smell of smoke lingers on them, and I cough to expel it from my lungs.
“They’re going too far now.” A man with a long beard points his finger at Kristie.
“Peter could have died,” another man says. “They targeted him specifically. How did they even know which house was his?”
“They’re watching us, I tell you.” The first man turns to the crowd. “They’ve got all that equipment. They can do anything. And we just sit back and let them.”
Several people begin talking at once. Some say they need to fight the Athenians; others say they’d be killed if they tried. The man with the beard shouts that they need to build a wall, but a woman argues the Athenians will just shoot their cannons over it or burn it down.
“So let’s burn theirs down,” the bearded man says. “Fight fire with fire.”
More shouting. My ears are still ringing from the blast, and this makes them ache even more.
Kristie stands on a chair and raises her arms. “Enough.” Her voice is not loud, but she speaks with authority, and surprisingly, the people stop shouting. “I agree that something must be done. But we will not respond in kind. We have agreed to avoid war. Our town is built upon a foundation of peace, and we will maintain that position.”
“And let those Athenians drive us out?” the bearded man shouts. “The time for peace is over. We didn’t start this, but we can finish it.”
Everyone has an opinion on this, and they all seem to be sharing it at the same time. I can’t hear any one person, just a cacophony of angry voices, like a hundred piano keys being banged at the same time.
Kristie is trying to restore order, but no one listens. Then a young woman walks in, and every person stops talking. She is about the same age as me, with reddish-brown hair, fair skin, and big brown eyes that look frightened. Her hands are shaking. Most of the crowd looks at her with anger.
Only Kristie takes a step toward her. “Who are you?”
“Diana.” Her voice is so quiet, I can barely hear the next words. “I am Peter’s sister.”
A collective gasp sounds, and Kristie puts an arm around Diana.
“Where is my brother?” Diana looks into Kristie’s eyes. “Is he all right?”
“I’ll take you to him.” Kristie turns to face the crowd. “The rest of you go home now. We’ll discuss this later.”
Murmurs abound but no one speaks as Kristie leads Diana away.
“Thalli.” Kristie looks at me. “Come with us. I don’t want to leave you here right now, not with the people as angry as they are.”
I gladly obey. We walk back outside. The fire has been put out, but the smoke still lingers and the ash that drifts down reminds me of the ground outside the State.
“How did you get here?” Kristie keeps her arm around Diana’s frail shoulders.
“I hid in the back of the car.”
“The car?” I didn’t think those existed anymore.
Kristie looks at me. “The Athenians pull a car with horses and they fill it up with food from New Hope.”
“Oh.” I recall seeing the other vehicle being pulled when we arrived. Transportation here is so different.
“I heard them planning to attack Peter. They discovered his location . . . they want to kill him.” Diana begins to cry. “I had to stop them. But I couldn’t do anything.”
Kristie doesn’t say anything. She allows Diana to cry and then waits for her to speak again. “It happened so fast. They didn’t even wait until we were close. I thought we had several more minutes left. The car didn’t even stop. I didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t.” Kristie pulls the young woman into a hug. “Peter is in the clinic now, but I believe he is all right. He wasn’t hit. He was trapped in the house for a few minutes, but some of our people were able to get him out.”
I cannot believe people would actually try to kill another human being. But then I am reminded that right before my escape from the State, I was in an annihilation room. My death would have been more humane than a fire. The gas would have put me to sleep and then my organs would have shut down while I was unconscious. But murder is murder. Are these Athenians any more or less barbaric because they use fire rather than gas?
“In here.” Kristie points to a pod that is smaller than her own quarters but larger than the ones they call “houses.” The clinic must be the equivalent of our medical facilities. The room has a strange mixture of smells. The first is smoke, although I am becoming accustomed to that now. The second stings my nose and brings tears to my eyes.
We walk through the first room, one with several chairs and a window in one wall, to a second room. This one is very small and has an oddly shaped sleeping platform. Peter is lying on it. His eyes are open but they are red. His face is smudged with black.
“Peter.”
“Diana.” Peter’s voice is barely audible. As soon as he says his sister’s name, he begins coughing. I turn away as he spits into a bowl on a table beside him. Rhen comes in with a container filled with water and hands it to Peter.
“Will he be all right?”
A man enters behind Rhen and looks from Diana to Peter. “He should be fine, but he will need to rest for several days.”
“Does he need to be on oxygen?” Kristie asks. “There should be some in the back.”
“No, he will recover without it.” The man waves Kristie off with his hands. “We need to save that.”
“But he can’t even talk.” Diana looks at the man.
“He just needs time.” The man puts a hand on Diana’s arm. “I have seen this before. When Dallas fell asleep at the bonfire. Remember, Kristie?”
She nods. “I certainly do remember. We were all out looking for him—Dallas couldn’t have been more than five or six at the time. We were so frightened. And there he was, sound asleep beside the ashes. I was sure he would suffer permanent damage.”
“I’m not so sure he didn’t.” The man laughs.
“Hey, I heard that.” Dallas enters the room, his smile undeterred by the circumstances. “And it wasn’t my fault you fed me so full that I fell asleep. And who left me there, huh? My own grandparents.”
Kristie runs her hands through Dallas’s dark hair.
“You gonna be okay, Peter?”
Peter nods at Dallas. He is probably too frighten
ed of coughing to speak again.
“Good, ’cause I’m stuck doing all your chores while you’re sick.” Dallas rolls his eyes. “I don’t know how you stand cleaning up after the horses. Must be ’cause they stink as bad as you do.”
“Dallas.” Kristie pulls her grandson away from Peter. “This is Diana. Peter’s sister.”
“Sorry to meet under these circumstances.” Dallas holds a hand out to Diana. “But we’re glad to have you both here. And Peter can tell you, we take good care of refugees. Right, Peter?”
He coughs in response.
“If you’re looking for a job, we’ve got an opening for a stable girl.”
Peter waves his hand, a weak smile covering his face. “Please.”
“Aw, look, Peter’s begging to keep that job.” Dallas laughs. “All right, buddy. I won’t give it away.”
Peter points a finger toward the door.
“I know you wanna get back to work, but you have to rest.” Dallas backs up as Peter picks up a cup and tries to throw it at his friend.
“Your brother doesn’t have very good manners, does he?” Dallas winks at Diana. He closes the door before Peter tosses a medicine bottle at him.
Kristie smiles, then squeezes Diana’s arm. “I need to see how the rest of the town is doing. Is it all right if I leave you here for now?”
“Yes, of course.” Diana’s gaze doesn’t leave her brother. I don’t even think she noticed Dallas was here. “Thank you.”
We walk out the door and I see that night is beginning to fall. With it comes the realization that I am exhausted. Beyond exhausted. So much has happened. I can hardly even comprehend all of it. I need to think through everything, to sort it all out. But all I can think about is sleep.
Kristie takes me back to my room, and I sink into the bed without even removing my clothing. I pull off my shoes, relax into the softness, and sleep.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
We must act!” An angry voice wakes me up.
“Gerald, please.” Carey’s voice is softer. I can only hear a few words.
“Guests . . . peace . . . dangerous.”
“If we let this go, they will just get worse.” I recognize the voice now—the bearded man. “Peace only works if both sides agree. They want war, Carey, and they’ll have it whether we agree or not.”
I run a hand through my tangled hair and slip into my shoes. I don’t know if our presence exacerbated these problems or not, but as we’re part of this community, their problems are ours. I do not want to be shielded from them.
“Thalli.” Kristie walks to me. Carey is standing inches away from the bearded man’s—Gerald’s—face. He is speaking quietly. Kristie tries to pull me into another room, but I ease her hand away and walk over to the men.
“Please tell me what is going on.”
“Me too.” Berk walks into the room. His light brown hair is messy. He doesn’t look at me.
“What’s going on,” Gerald begins, “is that these folks have gone from simple threats to out-and-out warfare. A cannon. That’s what they shot into that house yesterday. A burning cannon. Peter could have been killed. Dallas’s parents could have been killed. If we don’t retaliate, they’ll just do it again. What if it’s you next time? Or Dallas? Or little Nicole?”
“I understand your concern.” Carey looks to Kristie, an unspoken message passing between them. “But we need to think logically about this. We can’t afford to respond emotionally. Nothing good will come of that.”
Gerald’s face gets so red, he looks as if he’ll explode. He stomps out the door and slams it.
“I’m sorry.” Carey falls into the chair. Kristie sits on the couch and I join her.
Still refusing to meet my gaze, Berk takes a seat beside me. “What can we do?”
“We have a town meeting planned for later this morning.” Carey runs a hand through his red, thinning hair. “We’ll discuss it all then.”
“How many people agree with Gerald?” Will this meeting be similar to the shouting crowd who came here yesterday?
“I’m not exactly sure,” Carey says. “He is an agitator, and you can be sure he has visited everyone in town, giving them his opinion. He has been working for years to get an army together. I believe he is close to achieving that.”
“You should eat and bathe and relax a little before all of this.” Kristie stands, cutting off the conversation.
I want to know more, but I follow Kristie’s lead. I go to my closet to find clean clothes. These clothes are not like ours, but I like all the colors. I choose a pink shirt and a blue pair of pants. Rhen still prefers plain colors.
I smile to myself as I realize I feel less and less a part of the State. That Thalli from the State is disappearing, being made into Thalli from New Hope. But my smile fades. This new Thalli is one without Berk. The longer we avoid speaking to one another, the harder it will be to start again. And I don’t think I can be the first to speak. Not when he accused me of being compromised, when he justified his time alone with Rhen because I was “recovering” from the annihilation chamber.
I shake my head. I may have lost Berk, but I have new friends—Nicole and Dallas, Kristie and Carey. That is enough.
Perhaps if I say that to myself enough, I will eventually believe it.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The girl can’t stay!” Gerald is shouting. Again. Does that man know how to communicate in any other way? “Peter came over and they started burning up our houses. Now his sister is here. Who knows what they’ll plan when they find out she escaped too. No way. Uh-uh. She’s got to go.”
“We can’t send Diana back,” Carey argues. “She escaped. If we did that, can you imagine what they would do to her?”
“Look, you can’t have peace and these kids.” Gerald’s Adam’s apple bobs with each word. “Make up your mind. Keep ’em and we need to start defending ourselves. Because the Athenians will attack.”
“And what about those four?” A friend of Gerald’s, if his attitude is any indication, points at Berk, John, Rhen, and me. “How do we know they really escaped from the State? That they aren’t just spies from Athens?”
The crowd erupts in shouts, and it’s several minutes before Carey quiets them down. “That is enough. All of these kids have gone through far too much for us to treat them with anything but hospitality.”
A few people shout, “Hear, hear.” My heart warms at their support.
“We do need a strategy to deal with the Athenians, though.” Carey leans his head toward Gerald. “They are escalating. This time, they cleaned out the storehouse and took half a dozen cows.”
Rumbles begin low throughout the group. Many knew this information already, but it was obvious some were hearing it for the first time.
“I still say we need to build a wall.”
“And I still say they’ll just burn it.”
“Why can’t we try to negotiate peace?”
“Last time we tried that, they sent old Jeff back with a broken leg.”
Carey silences the crowd once more. “One thing we know: They want us to continue our way of life. Our food supplies them as well. They will not destroy us.”
“So we just keep giving them our stuff?” Gerald says. “Because we’re scared of ’em? What’s gonna stop them from taking more and more? Leaving us nothing?”
“Gerald makes a point.”
More shouting and grumbling and arguing ensues.
“What if I go?” I can’t even believe I said it. But the words are out. And the people are quiet. “I can gather information about their plans and report it back to you.”
“Thalli, no.” Berk is beside me, his eyes wide. Now he speaks to me? To tell me no?
“I am new. I am neutral. They will accept me because I am from the State.” The more I talk, the surer I am that this is the solution. One that will help New Hope, keep my friends safe, and give Berk time to spend with Rhen without my having to see them together.
“They’re danger
ous, Thalli.” Berk grabs my arm. “You saw what they did.”
“Yes, and I agree they may do that again.” I pull away. “Or worse. Something has to be done. And no one here can do it. I can.”
“Then I should go,” Berk says.
“You are still limping.” I stare at his leg. He could never walk all the way to Athens. “It has to be me.”
“And what if you are a spy from Athens?” Gerald steps closer to me. His breath smells like corn. “We just let you go back, tell them what you saw here, and give them the full layout of our land?”
“She is not a spy, Gerald.” Carey’s voice is raised, though still not to the same level as Gerald’s. “You’re the one who saw them come—from the north, not the west. You saw their equipment. It’s not from Athens.”
“How would we know that?” Gerald dismisses Carey with his hands. “We don’t know what they have in Athens. We’ve never been there. And who’s to say they didn’t just come around to the north to throw us off?”
“They’ve been here two weeks.” Dallas steps into the center of the room. “Any of us who have spent any time with them knows they aren’t spies. Am I right?”
Several people cheer, and my eyes burn with tears.
“My friends from the State are all here,” I shout. “They are the guarantee that I’m not a spy.”
The room is quiet again. Even Gerald seems to be considering this.
“All right. You go,” Gerald says. “But if it doesn’t work, we go in my way. With weapons and an army. We fight for our land.”
“Give me two weeks,” I say. “That should be enough time to gather information and return.”
“One week.” Gerald points his finger in my face.
“Then what?” Carey folds his arms.
“Then I go in.”
“A week isn’t enough.” I look from Gerald to Carey. “I’ve been here two weeks and there is still so much I don’t know.”
