Margaret Haddix: Among the Free

The van zoomed on, and Luke kept silent. It wasn't safe even to speak his friends' names. It wasn't safe to reveal that he knew them, that he'd ever had a life beyond shov-eling manure for the Population Police.

"What's wrong with you?" the boy beside Luke asked. Luke realized that he'd been wincing, that he'd failed to hide his anguish completely.

"I, uh — I'm going to miss the horses," Luke said.

"Why? You still have their stink on you," the boy said, and laughed rudely. He scooted away from Luke, closer to the boy on the other side of him, who laughed too. Luke heard them whispering about "stable rats."

And then Luke really did miss the horses, particularly Jenny with her comforting gaze.

What am 1 going to do? Luke wondered. Nina and the others won't know what happened to me. What if they think I've chick" ened out and run away? What if they're counting on me for one of our plans, and I'm not there? What if the plan is ruined because of that and someone gets hurt or killed or — discovered?

So many of their plans had gone wrong already. Luke and his friends had been terrified just stepping foot in Population Police headquarters. The Population Police had been created more than a dozen years ago, after a series of droughts and famines had made many people fear that their entire country would starve. The Government made it illegal for any family to have more than two children, and it was the job of the Population Police to hunt down and kill third children.

Luke was a third child. So were Nina and Trey and Matthias… all his friends.

Jen had been a third child too, but she'd been so brave and foolhardy that she'd organized a rally to ask for rights and freedom. She'd died at that rally. It had happened ten months ago, but the more time passed, the worse Luke felt about it.

That was just one of the reasons he felt capable of little more than shoveling manure.

If anyone can defeat the Population Police, it's us. The words flickered in Luke's mind like a lightbulb about to go out. That was what Trey had said back in the fall, persuading everyone to go to Population Police headquarters to try to sabotage the group from within. Trey was the smartest kid Luke knew. Why hadn't he seen how that sentence could be flipped around?

If we can't defeat the Population Police, nobody can.

Luke and his friends had tried to destroy certain Population Police documents, but there had been copies they hadn't known about. They'd tried to protect rebels who were making fake identity cards for illegal third chil' dren, but the Population Police had killed the rebels anyway. They'd tried to pass out stockpiled food to starv-ing people, but the Population Police had gotten it all back.

If we can't defeat the Population Police. . Truly hopeless words seemed to push their way into his mind: Why bother?

Luke closed his eyes and leaned his head against the cool glass of the window. And then he surrendered himself to sleep.

When he woke up, the van was stopped and the man with the medals on his chest was yelling at all the boys to get out and stand at attention.

"We're here! No time to waste! Out! Out, you lazy dogs!"

Luke was used to being yelled at, because of the stables. He knew that yells were quickly followed by swats and boxed ears and beatings if he didn't obey instantly. He stumbled through the van door before he'd even glanced outside. An icy wind pushed at him the minute he landed on the ground; mud sucked at his boots and made walking difficult. But he lined up and snapped his arm into atten-tion position. Only then did he dare to look around, letting his eyes dart from side to side.

They were parked before a long, low building, seem-ingly in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing but mud. No — there was more: A lineup of jeeps, more than Luke had ever seen before, stood idling just beyond the building. Uniformed men came rushing out of the building toward the vehicles. The man with the medals started counting off boys and shoving them in the direction of the jeeps.

"You two, go with Officer Ludwick. Over there. You two, with Officer Straley. You two—" The man pounded Luke's back, almost knocking him to the ground. Between the wind and his struggle to keep from falling, Luke barely heard the man's orders. Did he say Luke was supposed to go with Officer Hook? Or was it Officer Hawk? He hoped the other boy with him — the one who'd said Luke smelled like horse manure — had been paying attention. Luke scrambled off behind everyone else.

The mud still tugged at his boots, almost pulling one off. A memory flashed through his mind from childhood: Luke and his brothers running barefoot through mud. Barefoot was so much easier, but Mother always made them spray off their feet before they came into the house….

And then Luke shut that memory off, slamming a door in his mind. He couldn't think about Mother or his brothers right now. He just had to concentrate on reaching the proper jeep, sliding in, pulling his feet away from the ground before the jeep leaped forward.

"Officer Houk signing out, jeep serial number 80256," said one of the men in the front seat. He was speaking into a small phonelike object, maybe a walkie-talkie or some other kind of two-way radio. "With one driver and" — he glanced at Luke and the other boy in the backseat—"two assistants. Bound for Chiutza. Over."

"Copy that. Mission approved," a voice crackled out of the radio.

Chiutza? Luke thought. Is that a place? He'd never heard of it, but there was so much he'd never heard of before. He'd never even stepped foot off his parents' farm until he was twelve years old. His parents hadn't liked to discuss things beyond the edges of their property.

"Why talk of things that only make us sad?" Luke's mother had explained once, tears glistening in her eyes.

Luke couldn't remember what he'd asked her that particular day. He could remember asking only once about why he'd had to hide, why the Government thought it was wrong for him to be alive, why he couldn't go around freely like his brothers did. He wished now that he'd asked lots of questions: What did you think my life would be worth, hiding like that? What did you think would become of me? Why didn't you and all your friends and neighbors and the rest of the country do something to stop the Government, way back in the beginning? What would you do if you were in a speeding jeep and everyone thought you were on the Population Police's side and you had to pretend to be, but really —

"Here." The man holding the radio surprised Luke by tossing something into the backseat. "We've got at least an hour before we get there. Eat."

Luke started to reach for the packet that landed between him and the other boy, but the other boy grabbed it first. The boy peeled back greasy paper to reveal two hunks of cornbread, which he instantly crammed into his mouth in one bite. He chewed with his mouth open, leer^ ing at Luke and dropping crumbs on the seat.

"But—" The wind carried away Luke's protest. Luke clamped his teeth together, swallowing everything he wanted to say.

"You'll need your energy in Chiutza," Officer Houk said from the front seat. Now he turned around, now that all evidence of the other boy's greed was out of sight. "You have to knock on every door and summon every resident to a meeting in the town square."

"Why?" It was the other boy who asked this. Stealing Luke's food must have made him cocky.

Luke flinched, waiting for Officer Houk to reach back and strike the boy, and maybe Luke, too, for good measure. But Officer Houk only frowned.

"We're issuing new identification cards to every citizen in the country," Officer Houk said. "We're doing it all at once, in a single day. That's where all these jeeps are going, to give out the I.D.'s in other towns and villages." He gestured at the vehicles ahead of them and behind them, some already turning off the main road to smaller, rutted paths.