Among the Enemy sc-6

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  Matthias was so overwhelmed with disappointment, he could barely focus on Nina's words.

  "Do you have a plan?" she asked. "Do you know a way out? You and Percy and Alia were so good at getting us out of that Population Police prison."

  "That was Percy and Alia," Matthias said bitterly. "They're the clever ones."

  He sank down to the floor in despair. Nina bent over and huddled beside him.

  "I'll try to think of something," she said. "You try too. And keep your eyes open." She bit her lip. "When we all joined up, we had so many ideas. We were going to tear the Population Police apart from inside. But it's been so hard— None of us could pick where they assigned us. All of us got such menial jobs. Trey scrubs out the garage when the Population Police mechanics are done working on their cars. I'm in the kitchen. Lee — remember Lee? — he shovels out the stall where the top officers have their own horses."

  "Trey could cut the brake lines on the Population Police cars," Matthias said. "Lee could make sure the horses buck everybody off. You could put poison in the food."

  Matthias felt evil just making those suggestions. Love your enemies and Killing is wrong echoed in his ears as if Samuel were right there crowded into that tiny room with him and Nina. Matthias was a little relieved when Nina shook her head sadly.

  "How could we do any of those things without becom^ ing as bad as the Population Police ourselves?" she asked. "Killing indiscriminately, not caring who dies? And what if we're caught?"

  That word—"caught" — seemed to linger in the air, dangerously.

  "So you're not doing anything?" Matthias asked.

  "We are," Nina said carefully. "I can't tell you what it is. I don't know everything myself. It's. . Mr. Talbot told us that's the best way to run something like this, so if any of us are caught and interrogated and. . and tortured, we won't give away everything." She grimaced. "I shouldn't have even mentioned Trey and Lee. Try to forget what I said about them."

  Matthias buried his head in his hands. He didn't care about Nina's secrets. He'd pinned such hopes on this meeting with Nina, but it was worthless. He'd just wasted the entire afternoon, when he could have been finding his way back to his friends.

  "Matthias?" Nina was saying. 'There are stories floating around about you. People say you saved Officer Tidwell's life."

  "I did," Matthias said. "Sort of."

  'And you went in with Officer Tidwell to a meeting with the commander."

  "Yeah," Matthias said.

  "But nobody sees the commander. Only the other leaders like Officer Tidwell."

  "So?" Matthias asked.

  "So you've already gotten better access than any of the rest of us, and we've all been here for weeks. I know you want to get back to Percy and Alia but. . maybe you should let someone else sneak out and go help our friends. Or maybe they're just fine now, with Mrs. Talbot and the guy you saw in the tree."

  Matthias looked up at Nina, and it was awful, what she was saying. How could he stay here, helping Nina, never knowing what had happened to Percy and Alia?

  Someone began pounding on the bathroom door. Nina scrambled up and struggled to jam herself back through the heat vent.

  "Just a minute," Matthias called.

  He ran water in the sink, hoping that would mask the sound of the vent cover clanging against the wall. As soon as Nina was out of sight, he opened the door.

  Tiddy was standing there, beaming.

  "Hey, little buddy, I made it back safely. Aren't you glad?"

  "Sure," Matthias said.

  "Mike said you worried about me all day," Tiddy con' tinued. "The guards told me you were in here. Mike took good care of you while I was away, didn't he?"

  "Uh, yeah," Matthias said. He swallowed hard. "Did you — did you, um, take care of all the bad guys?"

  "I'd say so!" Tiddy laughed.

  Matthias felt a chill traveling through his body. A premonition of horror.

  "How?" Matthias asked. "Did you shoot them all? Forty rebels?" Don't say you shot any children, he prayed. Oh, please, not Percy and Alia.

  "No," Tiddy said regretfully. "None of those cowards dared to show their faces. But we made sure we wouldn't have any more trouble from that sector. We burned them out."

  For the first time, Matthias noticed the smudges of ash on Tiddy's face, the tiny, singed hairs escaping from his cap.

  "Burned them out?" Matthias repeated stupidly.

  "We burned everything within a fifty-mile radius of that cabin," Tiddy said. "Nobody could have survived that!"

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Nobody could have survived that. . Nobody could have survived that. . The words seemed to whirl around Matthias, blocking out every other sound. Maybe Tiddy kept talking; maybe he just stood there waiting for Matthias to congratulate him.

  Percy, Matthias thought. Alia. Mrs. Talbot. The man in the tree. Nobody.

  There was no room for any hope now. No reason to try to move heaven and earth to get back to a certain cabin in a certain woods, the last place he'd seen his friends. The cabin was gone, the woods were gone.

  His friends were gone.

  Matthias gripped the doorframe because his legs seemed incapable of holding him up now. Matthias was surprised to find his hand could still hold on when his legs had failed: He wouldn't have thought it mattered if he stood or fell. He didn't care anymore if the Population Police found him out, learned of his true loyalties. He didn't care if they killed him.

  Still, his hand held on.

  "— so strange?" Tiddy was asking, and the words seemed to come at Matthias from across a great distance. They seemed to have traveled across a burning woods.

  Matthias shrugged, because nothing mattered anymore. But his ears started working again. Tiddy repeated his question. It wasn't, Why are you acting so strange? It was, "Why do I feel so strange?"

  "Tiddy?" Matthias said cautiously. He was surprised his voice worked. It came out thin and weak, like the birdcalls he and Percy and Alia had used as signals. Not Whip-poor-will! Whip-poor-will!" but What's wrong with Tiddy? What's wrong with Tiddy?

  Tiddy was swaying back and forth, stumbling from side to side.

  "My eyes—," he moaned. "I can't see!"

  He balled up his fists and rubbed them into his eye sockets. He seemed to be trying to rub his eyes out.

  "Don't! Stop!" he screamed.

  He fell to the ground and thrashed around as if struggling with an invisible opponent. A few guards standing nearby came over and watched curiously.

  "Hey, Tids, what's wrong?" the one asked.

  The other yelled out, "Call a medic!"

  "I — can't — breathe!" Tiddy gasped.

  He clutched his throat and thrashed about even more violently.

  And then he stopped moving. His hands loosened from his own throat. His head fell back against the marble floor.

  And Matthias knew that Tiddy was dead.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Matthias went numb. Too much had happened, and i w ft nothing made sense. He'd witnessed too many deaths to have any feelings left.

  He stood still, clutching the bathroom doorframe while guards ran around, roping off the area by Tiddy's body. Tiddy lay right between two marble pillars, so they had something to tie the ropes to.

  "What if it's biological?" someone asked, and then the words "germ warfare" whispered their way through the crowd that had gathered. People began panicking then; they ran.

  Matthias kept clutching his doorframe.

  The next group of people who came all wore masks over their faces and rubber gloves on their hands. They picked up Tiddy's body. They swabbed the floor with strong-smelling chemicals.

  The word they whispered was "poison."

  I told Nina she should put poison in the food, Matthias remembered. What if she was the one who killed Tiddy?

  The thought didn't lead anywhere. It just fell into the huge pool of Matthias's sorrow and grief and guilt. Would Tiddy's death be my fault, then, too? he t
hought.

  One of the masked men came over to Matthias. He peeled Matthias's fingers away from the doorframe.

  "Come," he said.

  It was the commander. His eyes were wet. He led Matthias by the hand, up the grand staircase, down the twisty halls. He tucked Matthias into a bed in a small room. He gave Matthias something to drink.

  "Sleep," he said.

  The world flickered out.

  When Matthias came back to consciousness, it was daylight again, and the commander was sitting beside Matthias's bed.

  "He was like a son to me," the commander said, and Matthias knew he meant Tiddy. "I always had to… try not to show it."

  The commander stared into Matthias's eyes. Matthias had the feeling that the commander had been there all night, waiting.

  "You saved him once," the commander said. "I did not thank you enough for that."

  The weight of Matthias's bedding pressed down on him. He felt entombed.

  "The scientists figured out what killed him," the commander said. "He'd confiscated some fake identity cards. They were coated with poison. Slow-acting poison, so the miscreants had time to get away. So Tiddy's friends got to witness his death." The commander was whispering now, each syllable like a dagger of pain. "I — never — should— have — sent — him — back — out — there."

  He lowered his head and began sobbing.

  So Nina had nothing to do with Tiddy's death, Matthias thought. Unless the poison I.D. cards were part of the secret project Nina wouldn't tell me about.

  Matthias couldn't find it within himself to care one way or another. Not when Percy and Alia were already dead.

  He felt the tears start in his own eyes. Wailing, the commander grasped Matthias's hand and buried his face in Matthias's blanket, and the two of them sobbed their hearts out together — the Population Police commander and the illegal boy. Both, in their own way, abandoned.

  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 weathe
r 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?"