Margaret Haddix: Among the Enemy

He'd discovered the bundles of belongings Percy and Matthias had pulled together. He yanked them away and tossed them out the back of the truck, into the dark night.

"Won't we need clothes at the work camp?" Percy dared to ask.

"The Government will provide," the officer said. "The Government will provide everything you need."

Then the officer moved on to the next kid.

"You okay?" Percy whispered.

"I'll live," Matthias said, rubbing the knot that was already forming at the back of his head. 'Alia?"

"I'm fine," the little girl said cheerfully. "What's our plan?"

"Cut the seat belts, then jump off the truck when no one's looking," Percy said.

"Sounds good to me," Matthias said.

He reached down into his pocket for his knife. But he'd forgotten: He was still wearing his pajama pants. His knife was in his other pants, in the bundle the Population Police officer had thrown off the truck.

"Percy?" he whispered, trying to keep the panic out of his voice, out of his mind. Surely Percy would have thought to keep his knife with him.

But even in the darkness, Matthias could recognize the look of dismay on Percy's face as Percy, too, shoved his hand down into an empty pocket.

'Alia?" Matthias asked. "Did you have time to bring anything with you when the Population Police came?"

Alia shook her head.

"I was asleep and somebody picked me up," she said. "One of them." She pointed at the Population Police officer shoving kids down near the other side of the truck bed.

Alia's voice was calm, but Matthias thought it must have been terrifying for her to wake up in the arms of her worst enemy.

"So none of us has a knife," Percy muttered, with his usual ability to cut right to the point of a matter.

We're so stupid, Matthias thought. Why weren't we sleeping with our clothes on under our pajamas? Why didn't we have all our tools stuffed in our pockets, all the time? He knew the answer. They'd gone soft, living indoors. They'd started to believe they belonged in central heat, with electricity and hot and cold running water. They'd started to trust in their own safety.

It's all my fault, Matthias thought. He was the oldest. If he'd told the other two to stay on constant alert, they would have.

Angrily, he yanked on the belt holding him in place, straining against the trap he'd been caught in. Amazingly, the belt pulled clean away from the wall.

He was free.

Matthias stared at the unattached metal end of the belt in disbelief. He held it up into the dim light, just inches from his eyes, trying to puzzle out how it'd come apart.

"Matty!" Percy exploded in a low voice. He shoved Matthias's hand down. "Don't let them see."

Matthias hid the metal end of the belt back against the wooden wall. He was thinking again.

"Pull on your belts," he hissed to Percy and Alia. "Maybe they'll come loose too."

But no matter how much Percy and Alia strained and tugged and pulled, their belts stayed firmly locked in place.

The Population Police officers were done loading chil' dren onto the truck now. Several children were crying, but no harsh male voices barked orders at them anymore. The sobs floated up toward the dark sky unmixed with any sound except the churning of the trucks' engines. All the officials, Matthias realized, had retreated back to the trucks' cabs.

They were about to drive away.

Percy and Alia seemed to grasp the situation at the same time Matthias did.

"Matt'Matt, go" Alia said, using the name she'd given him back when she was a baby, barely able to talk.

"Save yourself," Percy urged, his voice cracking. "You can't save us."

Matthias looked back and forth between his two closest friends. No—"friends" was much too shallow a word to describe his relationship with Percy and Alia. They were like a brother and a sister who, by some strange accident, happened not to have the same parents. They were as much a part of him as his own arms; he couldn't imagine living without them.

"No," he said. "We stick together. Always."

He slid back against the wooden wall and tucked the broken end of his belt behind his back, hiding his chance at freedom.

Then the truck lurched forward, and it was too late to change his mind.

The wind whipped Matthias's hair into his face as the truck picked up speed. It would be easiest to close his eyes and lean back and let whatever was going to happen, happen. But he could feel Alia shivering beside him; he could feel the scrawny muscles in Percy's arm tensed with fear.

"Maybe it won't be so bad, where we're going," Matthias said.

"Maybe we can still escape," Percy whispered back. "Like last time."

They'd been picked up by the Population Police once before. Matthias still had nightmares about that awful time in their lives. Samuel, the kindly man who'd raised them, had been killed, and Matthias was suddenly in charge, even though he'd been only ten years old (give or take — none of them knew how old they really were). For weeks, Matthias had lived in fear that he would fail the other two, that they would starve or be hurt or killed. Or captured. He could still feel the hand of the Population Police officer on his shoulder, still hear the echo of the booming voice shouting out, "You're under arrest! Those I.D.'s are fake!"

But in Population Police prison, only moments before Matthias and Percy and Alia thought they were going to be executed, a man had come to them and whispered, "I'm on your side…."

It was tempting to dwell on that moment, to hope for another miracle. But Matthias's memory backed up a little. He frowned at Percy.

"This isn't like the last time," he said slowly. "They aren't arresting us. They didn't even ask to see our I.D.'s."

As far as he knew, Matthias had never had a valid I.D. He didn't know his real name. He didn't even know if he'd been given a name before his parents, whoever they were, had abandoned him. Samuel had always told him and Percy and Alia that they were the lucky ones. They were lucky they'd been abandoned, not killed.

"There are laws in this land," Samuel had told them. "Evil laws. A woman who's had two children isn't allowed to have any more. That's why babies show up on my doorstep…."

Samuel's doorstep had been a concrete block in a dark alley. His home had been an abandoned tunnel that flooded every spring and was cold and dank year-round. But Samuel had never turned away a child, even when hiding children put his own life in danger. He'd taken them in and taught them everything he knew: how to survive on the streets; how to work for good in an evil world; how to make fake identity cards for other illegal children.

What if the Population Police no longer cared about identity cards? What if they'd figured out some other way to decide whether people had the right to live?

"That man in the dining hall said there's a new leader," Matthias said now, trying to puzzle everything out.

"Yeah, a new leader who thinks little kids don't deserve to eat," Percy snorted. "We've got to escape. Don't we have anything sharp at all?"

Hopelessly, the three of them felt around them, as if they really thought a spare knife would be lying on the floor of the truck bed. Matthias, sliding his hand along the rough wood, found only a gaping hole where the floor was broken off. Daringly, he reached down through the hole, pulling back only when he felt the breeze from the spinning tires directly below. Now it was his turn to shiver. What if Alia had fallen through this hole? What if, even now, she slid forward and dropped through it, regardless of the seat belt?

'Alia, sit back," he commanded roughly. "It's not safe over here."

"Did you get a splinter?" Alia asked.