Margaret Haddix: Among the Free

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.

The gunshots didn't sound nearby, but there were so many of them. When he'd been running away from Chiutza, he'd heard a pop! pop! pop!… Three or four shots. That had been frightening enough, and maybe in his fear and desperation he'd miscounted or misheard.

This gunfire was even more terrifying, because it sounded like dozens of guns all firing at once, and firing again and again and again.

War, Luke thought, straining again to remember a con' cept he'd studied in school and never expected to encounter for real. Lots of people fighting.

Luke's first instinct was to curl up more tightly in the safety of his cave, his knees against his chin, his body pro^ tected by thick rock from any and every bullet. He was willing to slide on into sleep, just so he wouldn't have to hear the sounds of anyone else's struggle.

But then, unbidden, another memory forced its way into his mind: Jen arguing with him the day before she died.

You can he a coward and hope someone else changes the world for you. You can hide up in that attic of yours until someone knocks at your door and says, "Oh, yeah, they freed the hidden. Want to come out?" Is that what you want?

She'd been trying to get him to come to the rally with her, the one protesting for third children's rights. She'd yelled at him that if he didn't play a role in seeking his own freedom, he'd always regret it: When you don't have to hide anymore, even years from now, there'll always be some small part of you whispering, "I don't deserve this. I didn't fight for it. I'm not worth it." And you are, Luke, you are. . .

Substitute the word "cave" for "attic" and she might as well be arguing with him now. He shivered with the same kind of chills he would have felt if Jen's ghost had appeared to him and urged, Get out of this cave this instant! Go and fight in that war!

"Stop," he muttered, pressing his hands over his ears, as if that could shut out a voice he heard only in his own mind. "Why should I listen to you? It's not like your rally did any good. It only got you killed. Do you want me to die too?"

But he couldn't really argue that Jen's rally had been use' less. So much had happened since then. Luke himself would never have gotten his fake I.D. and left home if it hadn't been for Jen and her rally. He never would have gone to Hendricks School or met any of his friends there. He never would have helped a boy named Smits come to terms with his brother's death. He never would have infiltrated Population Police headquarters, never tried to make a difference in the world, never ended up here in this cave.

And that's supposed to convince me? he wondered.

Still, he took his hands off his ears and crawled back toward the cave's opening. Peeking out, he could see nothing but trees, a peaceful scene. But the sounds of gunfire were even louder. Maybe the battle wasn't so far away, after all.

I don't know who's fighting whom. I wouldn't know which side to join. I don't have a weapon — I'd be killed for sure.

He was still arguing with Jen, and she'd been dead for nearly a year.

Sighing, Luke slipped out of his cave and stood upright. He could just go see what was going on. He'd hide and watch. Surely it wouldn't be dangerous if he didn't get too close.

He began walking toward the sounds of battle, but the noise echoed in the trees, confusing him. Twice he got turned around and found himself walking back toward the mountainside. Or maybe it was the mountain that curved around, hugging the woods on more than one side.

He'd just started to feel confident that he was walking in the right direction when suddenly the shooting stopped. He froze, waiting, but the woods were silent again. And then he heard whoops and hollers off in the distance — off in the distance, but getting closer.

Luke slid behind a tree and crouched down, trusting that the shadows would hide him.

"Woo-hoo! We showed them, didn't we?"

"Did you see their faces right before they turned tail and ran?"

The voices were barely close enough for Luke to make out the words. But he could hear the laughter, the trampling feet.

One other time Luke had stood behind a tree in a shadowy wood, eavesdropping. That time he'd been brave enough to jump out and announce his presence, to lay down a challenge. But he'd witnessed a lot of awful things since then; he'd been betrayed as well as encouraged, tortured as well as rescued from torture.

This time he stayed behind his tree.

Eventually the voices and the laughter and the footsteps faded into the distance again. Luke waited in the shadows a while longer, wondering, What was that all about? Which side were those people on? Were they involved in the shoot" ings? Who were they fighting against? Who ran away?

Luke remembered his own desperate fleeing, and the same sick panic flowed over him once again. He tamped it down, trying to think logically. The voices couldn't have been talking about him. He was just one person, not a "them."