Citizens of Logan Pond Box Set

by Rebecca Belliston

  “People are dropping like flies,” Donnelle whispered. “What is it?”

  Carrie couldn’t answer. Instead, she said, “Do they have a medical unit in here? Have the guards been giving out any shots of any kind?”

  Donnelle rubbed her neck again. “We’re lucky to get a washrag.”

  Then it had to be something different. Except…according to Greg and Oliver, President Rigsby himself had engineered this disease to wipe out those who had gone against him.

  What better place to test its potency?

  As the afternoon wore on, Donnelle’s pace slowed until Carrie started helping her, just to keep things moving. A few times Donnelle stopped to lean against the table, which earned her a stiff rebuke from the guard. Even more disconcerting, Donnelle stopped talking. For a full ten minutes, it was just the sound of other conversations around them.

  “Sorry,” Donnelle said finally. “I’m really out of it. Have you got kids, Carrie?”

  “Yes.” Carrie’s gaze flickered to Donnelle again, measuring the coloring of her skin, the pinch of her brows, the place she rubbed her head. How could Carrie help if this was the same thing?

  Worse, would Amber and Zach get sick, too? Or would the president deem them worthy enough to receive the treatment? They were wards of the state, not prisoners. Would that be enough?

  “Lovely,” Donnelle said. “What are their ages?”

  “Sixteen and thirteen,” Carrie said softly.

  Although other people around them had caught the virus, even though they had very little contact, Amber and Zach hadn’t. Greg had a theory that the illness had been manipulated to skip children somehow. Now Carrie hoped—prayed—he was right.

  Donnelle gave her a curious look. “Aren’t you a little young to have teenagers?”

  “Sorry. They’re my brother and sister.”

  Her survival instincts stopped her from explaining how they were taken, too, ripped from her arms. She couldn’t bear to hear that. Instead, she turned the question back to safer waters. “How old are your kids?”

  Donnelle lit up, looking a little livelier. “One’s eleven. The other is nine. I love ‘em to pieces. They visit me when they can, but it’s tough. There’s quite the waitin’ list to get in. Plus, my mom isn’t in the best shape anymore. It’s pretty hard for her to get them here.”

  “They’re with your mom?” A wild burst of jealousy shot through Carrie.

  “Yeah. Praise all that’s good and holy for that. I can’t even imagine what I’d do if they’d been taken.” Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “Those places for kids are prisons of their own, only it’s a prison of the mind, if you know what I mean. They pump them full of propaganda, brainwashing them into government-loving robots. Kimber from Block 6 says they’ve started sending the older ones out to fight, even before they’re eighteen. Can you believe it? Sending sixteen-year-olds out to fight rebels?”

  Carrie’s hands froze.

  Clueless, Donnelle went on. “I suppose my boys would be too young anyhow. But they’re also forcing the younger kids to rat out any illegals they know, including their own parents. My boys are awful at keeping secrets. Ah, well. Tashina, that tall lady from Block 7, says they work the kids every bit as hard as they work us here. Even the girls’ homes are rumored to be just as brutal as the boys’. Needless to say, I’m beyond relieved that my boys weren’t taken when I was.”

  The dizziness came back with a vengeance. Carrie gripped the table to keep from falling.

  “They…” Carrie struggled to find air. “Boys and girls aren’t together?”

  Donnelle snorted, which earned her a glare from a guard. “Would you put teenage boys and girls together in one place? I don’t even think they keep them in the same cities.”

  They weren’t together.

  Amber and Zach.

  Carrie had envisioned Amber taking care of Zach, the two of them eating lunch together in a quiet corner of a crowded cafeteria, going to class together, working a field together, or whatever they were forced to do. A support for each other. And yet they were alone. Entirely, completely, and utterly alone.

  Because of her.

  Carrie’s ears started to ring as she replayed Donnelle’s every aspect. Every horror. Alone.

  “Are you alright, hon?” Donnelle put a hand on her arm. “You don’t look so…”

  The table with the blue material began to disappear in a collapsing tunnel of vision. Carrie blinked rapidly, but it was too late.

  Everything went black.

  twenty-two

  AMBER ASHWORTH LOOKED DOWN at her school uniform. Blue. Everything in her new life was blue, including the suit of the woman who was lecturing her behind the desk, including the skin around the eye of the girl who had offered Amber a pity hug earlier, including the room they had locked Amber in afterward and in which she now sat, arms strapped to a chair. The only thing that wasn’t blue was the bright red bracelet around her wrist, the one that matched Braden’s. They would have to kill her before she took that off.

  “Miss Ashworth? I’m speaking to you.”

  Amber studied the blue sky out the window behind the woman’s head. The window didn’t look as thick as others in the building. Possibly with a chair or something bigger, Amber could break it. They were up two stories, but what were a few broken bones compared to a shattered heart?

  “She’s not the fighter her siblings are.”

  That patrolman couldn’t have uttered more painful words. Amber was a fighter. She would show the entire world how much she could fight.

  She twisted her wrists, testing the strength of the straps holding her down.

  When she had sat in the cafeteria thirty minutes ago, she made the mistake of thinking about her family: Zach, if he was as miserable and lonely as she was; Carrie, if she was still alive. Carrie had asked Amber to do one thing—just one!—and Amber had failed that, too, because that’s what she was. A failure. She couldn’t take care of Zach. She couldn’t even take care of herself.

  She hadn’t even realized she was crying until Natalia, a stupid, prissy girl who thought she knew everything about everything, put an arm around her shoulders and told her everything would be all right.

  Amber had elbowed Natalia in the face.

  The girl’s perfect nose had gushed blood. It had taken two caregivers to pull Amber off her. Amber just turned her wrath on them instead, kicking, screaming, and biting.

  “Miss Ashworth, I asked you a question. Miss Ashworth!”

  Amber’s eyes went back across the blue desk to the blue-suited woman with the glaring blue eyes. Amber didn’t bother responding. She hadn’t said a word since arriving, and she wasn’t about to start now. They could force her to package soap hour after hour, they could even force her to eat, but they wouldn’t get a word out of her.

  Not one.

  She twisted her wrists again. They’d tightened the straps to the chair ridiculously tightly.

  The woman clasped her hands on the desk, forming a tight steeple. “I understand more than you think, Miss Ashworth. I know it’s rough, especially for you teenagers when you first come here to Bristol’s Academy for Girls. But you’ll see soon enough how the girls like it here. They’re happy.” She forced a smile to reiterate her words. Amber wondered if she knew how fake it looked. “You can be happy here, too. We’ll keep you busy this summer, and come fall, you’ll have ample opportunity to catch up on all the schooling you’ve missed these years. But first,” her voice hardened, “you will stop causing trouble for everyone. Do you understand? Any more of this violence, and we’ll have to confine you permanently to…”

  As the blue-suited woman droned on, Amber’s gaze went back to the window. They were restraining her now, but if she could get back in here another time, maybe after another black eye or two, it just might be possible.

  * * * * *

  Zach’s hands felt raw and blistered as he climbed into the hot, stuffy bus. He hadn’t seen a mirror yet, but he was
sure his freckled face had burnt to a crisp after the long day of working in the sun.

  When that jerk of a patrolman had dumped him in this place, the headmaster said, “Oh, don’t worry. We’ll keep him busy. Busy boys stay out of trouble.” That seemed to be everyone’s motto.

  The older teens tried to scare Zach, saying they made them dig zombie graves all day. He wasn’t stupid enough to fall for that, but still, he had hoped the work involved something he understood like weeding cornfields or even working in a chicken factory like Greg had.

  No such luck.

  That morning they packed all the boys onto four busses, heading out to “refresh the streets”—which was code for cleaning up rubble. They took the boys to a new location each day, cleaning up charred buildings and smashed windows, scrubbing vandalized walls and torn fences, all while armed guards kept watch. Today they worked on a municipality building in DeKalb that the rebellion had burned to the ground.

  Zach spent the morning sweeping glass. That hadn’t been horrible. He heard boys whispering while they worked, talking about how anxious they were to turn sixteen and join the army. Zach still had three years before that, so he hadn’t listened much.

  Then a guard switched him to the rubble crew. Some of the blackened ashes had still been smoking as Zach dumped them into the bins. Because he was the new kid, he didn’t get shovels or wheelbarrows. He had nothing but his hands and arms to gather up the piles and trek them to the dumpsters. Three separate times he’d burned himself before he learned how to tell which piles were still hot. Now he couldn’t even grab the railing onto the bus without pain flaring in his blisters.

  Straggling down the aisle, he searched for an open spot to sit on the stuffy bus. Several boys glared at him, so he picked an empty spot near the back.

  Zach turned his palms over and studied two blisters that had split open in the last hour. The red, gaping wounds killed. Not only that, but they were filthy from the blackened ashes. He didn’t know how to fix blisters—especially dirty ones. He didn’t even know how to heal sunburns. Carrie had always told him what to do. How was he supposed to fix his blisters by tomorrow when he’d be back doing the same thing?

  Cold water?

  Soap?

  Heat built behind his eyes. Blinking rapidly, he pretended to rub his eyes as if he’d gotten something in them before the others could see.

  It was probably safer to not think about Carrie or Amber or what was happening to them. Instead, he decided to act like Greg. Greg liked to solve problems. Zach had a problem—several, actually. His hands weren’t going to survive this kind of work. Maybe when he made it back to the boys’ home, he would plunge them into cold water and hope that cleaned them well enough. Carrie used cold water when she burned herself cooking on the fire. Tomorrow he would wrap his hands in something while he worked, a rag or something.

  If they’d even give him one.

  As he entered the tall boys’ home, ready to head straight for the bathrooms, an adult shouted at him.

  “Hey, you!” the headmaster called. “New kid. Come this way.”

  After the long grueling day in the sun, Zach had to drag himself over to the headmaster’s office. The headmaster stood inside with another man in a dark suit.

  As soon as Zach entered, he felt cold air blowing from somewhere. Air conditioning. It felt amazing.

  “Did you see that?” the headmaster said to the man. “Look at how he walks.”

  The man turned to Zach. “What is wrong with your ankle, son?”

  “I…I don’t know,” Zach said, looking down. He’d been limping for years. Of course, a few boys had noticed and started calling him “Peg leg.”

  “Sit there,” the man said. “Sit right up on Mr. Cartwright’s desk. Let me look at that leg.”

  Zach winced as he used his blistered hands to push himself onto the desk. But instead of inspecting his hands, the man—presumably a doctor—rolled up Zach’s pant leg and started feeling around his ankle.

  “You broke it?” the doctor asked.

  “I fell out of a tree a few years ago,” Zach said. “My mom’s friend tried to fix it, but it didn’t set right. It doesn’t bother me, though. Usually.”

  The doctor shook his head. “This is why illegals shouldn’t be allowed to raise children. It’s appalling.” He turned back to the headmaster. “If you want him to be useful in the future, Mr. Cartwright, I need to reset his bone.”

  “But he broke it years ago,” Mr. Cartwright said. “Can you still fix it?”

  “It will require surgery.” The doctor rubbed his jaw. “If it’s healed like I think it has—of course I’ll be doing x-rays to double-check—I’m guessing the bones have knit together and probably calcified. I’ll have to cut the bone to realign it.”

  Cut.

  His bone.

  “No!” Zach said, backing up. “You can’t!”

  The doctor looked at him. “It’s not as bad as it sounds, son. You’ll be asleep the whole time. Then I’ll put a metal plate and screws in to stabilize it.” Back to the headmaster, he added, “He’ll be in a cast for a few weeks at the very least, and it might be several months before he’s functioning normally again, but once it heals, he’ll be as good as new.”

  “Several months? Never mind, then,” Mr. Cartwright said. “I can’t have him out that long.”

  Zach heaved a sigh of relief.

  But the slimy doctor wouldn’t let it go. “Think of it as an investment, Mr. Cartwright. A few months’ sacrifice now, and he’ll be fully functional later. He looks like a healthy kid. Skinny, but healthy. He’ll recover quickly, and then you can use him how you want down the road. But if he’s allowed to grow another six to eight inches on this ankle, he’ll be useless for the rest of his life. It needs to be fixed, preferably before he hits his growth spurt.”

  Mr. Cartwright pulled on his bottom lip. “Then I suppose we should do it. How soon?”

  “Wait!” Zach jumped off the desk. “I walk just fine. I can even run. Look, I’ll show you how fast I can run.”

  Mr. Cartwright grabbed his shoulder. “You will stay where you are, young man.” His fingers dug into his bicep until he trusted Zach to stay put. Then he circled around him like a vulture. “I think Dr. Wheeler is right. We better fix you up so you can become a good, strong soldier someday. Would you like to become a soldier, maybe even a patrolman? You can shoot guns and arrest the bad people.”

  “No,” Zach said stubbornly. He wanted to get out of there. “You can’t make me.”

  Mr. Cartwright grabbed his shoulder again, harder than before. “Watch your tongue, boy. Talking back will only get you time in the basement.”

  Zach swallowed. He didn’t know what the basement was, but from the few whispers he’d heard, it sounded bad.

  “That’s better.” Mr. Cartwright turned back to the doctor. “How soon can you do the procedure?”

  twenty-three

  “IS THAT YOU, RICHARD?” Greg’s grandma called.

  Greg shut the door to the Harrison’s home. Of all the homes his grandparents could have picked, he wished they hadn’t chosen Gayle Harrison’s, but it was in the back of the Ferris sub, and it used to be nice. Greg wondered if Carrie was in the same work camp as her mom’s best friend was.

  “Hello?” his grandma called again.

  “No, Grandma,” Greg said. “Just me. I’m back. Guess you don’t know where Richard is?”

  She came into the dusty entry way. “He was helping Sasha and the boys. Any word in town?”

  Greg shook his head. Each hour of hiding in the shadows had only plunged him further into despair. His thoughts had swayed violently from starting bold revolutions to pitiful suicide, from storming prisons to kidnapping mayors. Nothing useful. When the sun rose over the tall trees, he had given up and started back.

  His grandma covered her face and broke down. “Oh, my sweet Carrie.”

  “She’s gonna be okay, Grandma,” he said, patting her back. “I’m sure she’
s just fine.”

  “How?” she cried. “Do you really think she’s fine?”

  No, I don’t. Not a bit.

  “Think about it,” he said. “This is Carrie we’re talkin’ about. She’ll probably find a way to spruce up the prison. I bet she has flowers by her bed and new curtains on the windows.”

  And slashes across her back.

  And bruises on her face.

  Greg blinked to clear the haunting images.

  “She’s wonderful that way, isn’t she?” His grandma wiped her cheeks. “The way she finds happiness in the middle of everything. But she’s so tender and sweet. How will”—the water faucet turned back on—“how will she survive? How can she with such horrible, awful people?” She was really losing it now. “They’re probably all murderers…and fornicators…and, and, and they’ll kill her!” Her eyes widened with horror. “Or worse!”

  Now their thoughts were on the same page. He could think of plenty of things worse than death.

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” he said quickly. Anything to stop the tears that amplified his self-loathing by the second. “Real fine. Just really, very fine.”

  She nodded and looked up at him. “And how are you doing without her?”

  The question caught him off guard. Suddenly the lie wasn’t available. He was the furthest from fine he’d ever been.

  A lump swelled in his throat.

  “I’m, uh…” He rubbed his jaw and had to grit his teeth to keep from turning into the same emotional mess she was. “I’m…just…” He swallowed.

  She patted his hand. “I know. I know.”