Strike (9 page)

It was brutal, backbreaking work. We weren’t given gloves, which meant we ended up being jabbed with splinters on most every trip. The healing waters of the shower that night would take care of the wounds, but that didn’t help with the pain we suffered while doing the work. After only a few trips, the front of my coveralls had massive bloodstains from where I’d wiped my bleeding hands.

Kent and Tori worked together while I teamed with the woman named Scottie who had given me the heads-up on the bathrooms the night before. Fortunately she was strong, so I didn’t have to carry more than my half of the weight.

After about an hour we were given a much-needed water break. I sat next to Kent and Tori as the three of us leaned against a stack of wood. We didn’t say a word to one another. What was there to say? We made eye contact, shared quick smiles, and tried to find a sliver of shade to wait for the water carriers to come by with our meager ration.

“Attention!” the woman supervisor announced.

There were a few groans because we had only been resting for a few seconds and most people hadn’t gotten water yet.

“Inspection!” she announced.

Inspection? What the heck were they inspecting for? The three of us exchanged puzzled looks.

A jeep screamed up and stopped twenty yards from us.

“Uh-oh,” Kent muttered under his breath.

Out of the passenger side stepped Major Bova. As far as I could tell, nothing good ever happened when that guy showed up. He gave a half-hearted salute to our supervisor, who saluted back crisply.

“Forgive the intrusion,” Bova said to her. “We’d like to take a quick look at your workers.”

“Is there a problem, sir?” she asked nervously.

“No, no. You are all doing a fine job. We are looking for three individuals that arrived yesterday.”

“Prisoners come and go all the time, sir,” the woman said subserviently. “It’s hard to keep track.”

“Understood,” Bova said. “If they’re here, we’ll find them.”

He punctuated his sentence with a grin that showed no humor. Something was up and it couldn’t be good.

“This is it,” Kent whispered nervously. “He’s coming for us now. He’s gonna force the two of us to fight. I’m not going to fight you, Tucker.”

“I don’t think you’ll have to,” I whispered back. “He said he’s looking for three people, not two.”

Another soldier stepped out of the jeep. An officer. He had short blond hair and wore freshly cleaned fatigues. He stood up straight and set his gaze upon our ragged group of prisoners.

“Oh my God,” Tori whispered.

In that instant I knew exactly who these soldiers were looking for, and why. They were hunting down the three saboteurs who were responsible for destroying the entire Retro fleet of planes at Area 51.

They were looking for us.

Seeing this soldier answered a question that had been bothering me for days. When the final explosive charge erupted, destroying the massive attack craft that had wiped out Las Vegas, I had seen a mysterious dark shape blasting away from the doomed craft. It wasn’t until that moment, when the officer stepped out of that jeep, that I understood what it was.

It was an escape pod.

I thought Mr. Feit was killed in the explosion.

He wasn’t.

He was very much alive. . . . And he was here at Camp Retro looking for us.

“I
f he sees us we’re dead,” Tori whispered.

We were asked to line up, shoulder to shoulder, to be inspected. We stood at the end of a line of thirty people, watching Bova and Feit move closer. They strolled slowly, almost casually, past the tired, sweaty workers who wouldn’t dare look their tormentors in the eye.

Bova was more focused on Feit than on the prisoners. He had no idea of what we looked like. Feit, on the other hand, knew us all too well. Bova kept watching him for a reaction, waiting for him to identify his prey.

Us.

Feit was in no hurry. He must have known we’d either be in the camp, or dead. There was no way we could have survived the helicopter crash and made our way out of the desert alone. He looked at each person in turn, sometimes using his black baton weapon to lift their chins so he could look them square in the eye. It was like he didn’t want to actually touch any of us dirty primates with his fingers for fear we might contaminate him.

When I first met Feit on Pemberwick Island he seemed like a typical older surfer dude with long hair, a hoodie, and an earring. He was all sorts of casual . . . while dispensing a killer performance-enhancing drug to see how far he could push the human body before it crashed. His true identity wasn’t revealed until we met him again in Fenway Park, where the Retros were building another steel dome. It turned out Mr. Feit was actually Colonel Feit of the United States Air Force and a major player in the Retros’ campaign to change the course of civilization. Later on, when we confronted him aboard the flying death machine that had obliterated Las Vegas and was headed to wipe out the remaining survivors of Los Angeles, he was amazingly cool, as if he never doubted that he was in total control.

That had changed. It was subtle, but Feit’s entire attitude was different. His laid-back surfer manner was gone. He stood military straight and moved with precision. His eyes had gone cold. It even seemed as though the sadistic Bova was wary of him. Feit’s nose looked no worse for wear, considering I had broken it when I smashed his face into the hatch of the plane we were aboard. I shouldn’t have been surprised. All it took was a dose of the magical medicine.

Feit moved from prisoner to prisoner, appraising them like pieces of meat at the grocery store.

“He’s pissed,” Kent said under his breath. “What do we do, Rook?”

I had no idea. We couldn’t just cut and run. That would be futile. We couldn’t attack him, or bargain, or turn invisible. I stood there between Tori and Kent in total brain lock.

Feit and Bova moved closer. There were halfway down the line. In seconds they’d be standing in front of us.

“It’s you, isn’t it!” a woman prisoner shouted.

Everyone looked to see that one of the prisoners had stepped out of line to call out the guy Feit was about to inspect.

The screamer was Scottie, the woman from the barracks.

“Don’t go pointing at me,” the guy she was accusing yelled back at her. “This is your fault!”

The guy gave her a shove. Scottie took a step back and then leapt at him angrily, wrapping her arms around him and pushing him back.

The entire line of prisoners swung around to see what was going on.

Feit and Bova did too.

We had our chance.

I grabbed Kent and Tori by the hand and pulled them away from the group. They didn’t need convincing. We sprinted toward the pile of lumber we had been stacking all morning and skirted around to the back side. It was the only place that was close enough for us to hide quickly. It was a weak escape at best, but better than standing there until Feit walked right up to us.

The three of us fell to the sand and pressed our backs against the wood. We were all breathing hard as our hearts raced with fear. Nobody said a word. We just listened.

The sounds of the fight between the prisoners continued.

“They’re looking for you!” Scottie yelled. “Admit it!”

“I think it’s
you
they’re after!” the man shouted back.

“Enough! Stop it!” Bova shouted, sounding surprisingly frayed.

None of us dared peek around to see what was happening. We could only guess from what we heard. There was a lot of scuffling and heavy breathing.

“Grab them!” the woman supervisor yelled, which meant Retro soldiers had entered the dispute.

“What is wrong with you animals?” Bova yelled, sounding flustered. He must have been trying to impress Feit with his total control of the camp, and having two prisoners punching it out definitely didn’t look good.

“He’s not doing his share of the work,” Scottie cried. “He’s the one you’re looking for.”

“Me? I’ve been doing my own work and yours too! If you want to take someone, take her!”

The three of us exchanged looks.

“They’re doing this for us,” Tori whispered.

She was exactly right. We were the new arrivals, and just kids to boot. The rest of our unit knew that, even if our supervisor didn’t care enough to register us. Scottie had created a distraction so we would have a chance to do exactly what we did. Hide.

I hoped those two wouldn’t suffer because of it.

“You aren’t the ones we’re looking for,” Bova announced. “Control yourselves.”

“Back in line!” the supervisor shouted. “Now!”

The ruckus died down and I had to assume that everyone had dropped back into line.

“My apologies for that, Colonel,” Bova said, his voice shaken. “Shall we continue? Please?”

This was the moment. Would they realize the unit was suddenly three people short? The only sound we heard was the faint scuff of boots on the sand as Bova and Feit continued their inspection. I did all that I could to control my breathing so as not to give us away.

I squeezed Tori’s hand. Kent pressed his head against my back with his eyes closed.

A minute passed. I looked up, expecting to see Feit’s head looming over the top of the stack of boards. Another minute passed. Sweat dripped from my forehead into my eyes. It burned but I didn’t dare move to wipe them.

Another few agonizing seconds went by and then we heard the sound of the jeep’s engine powering up and the vehicle driving away.

We exchanged quick, hopeful looks.

Tori cautiously peered around the end of the stack of boards and gave us thumbs up.

“That’s it,” the supervisor bellowed. “Break’s over. We’ve still got two trucks to unload before noon.”

The group walked past our hiding place, headed for the trucks.

The three of us scrambled to our feet and melted into the moving crowd.

I was relieved to see that Scottie and the guy she had shoved were still there. There had been no punishment for their fight.

I took her hand and squeezed it, mouthing the words “thank you.”

Scottie smiled and gave me a wink.

I took a chance and put my hand over my heart. It was the gesture used by the mysterious Sounders. I thought maybe the prisoners might be part of the group.

Scottie nodded and smiled, but didn’t put her hand over her heart. If she was a Sounder, she didn’t admit it. She was just a nice brave lady trying to help out a fellow prisoner.

The three of us got back to work with the knowledge that we might have dodged a bullet, but we weren’t out of trouble. Not with Feit prowling around. He wouldn’t give up that easily. Sooner or later he would find us, and who knew what he would do once that happened? There was nothing I could think to do at that moment except continue unloading the trucks. We would have to come up with a new plan, fast. With Feit looking for us we couldn’t lay low and wait for an opportunity to make trouble.

There was only one option: escape.

For the next two hours we slaved in the hot sun. The whole time I kept glancing around, expecting Feit to return. Some workers passed out from heat exhaustion and were carried away, only to be replaced by other nameless workers. At midmorning we were given a short break and fed some kind of oatmeal-like gruel. It was disgusting but nourishing. Whatever was in it quickly filled my belly and restored some of my strength. I wondered if they had mixed in a little bit of ground-up Ruby.

The reprieve didn’t last long. In no time we were back at it, lugging huge lengths of lumber and stacking them near the construction site. We emptied the trucks by noon, just as our supervisor wanted. When the last length of lumber was off-loaded, the trucks pulled away . . . only to be replaced by twelve more trucks that were packed solid with more wood.

“And there’s our afternoon,” the supervisor announced. “Get to it.”

Complaining wouldn’t have helped. All I could think of was the evening shower and the rejuvenating water. The day couldn’t end fast enough.

I thought for sure that we’d be working until the sun dropped below the surrounding mountains, so I was surprised when the supervisor blew her whistle early.

“Whatever you’ve got, drop it right there,” she announced. “Fall in line.”

I didn’t think for a second that we were being given a break. Something was up.

We all dragged ourselves into a raggedy line. When the supervisor was satisfied, she blew her whistle again and we trudged on, following her.

“We gotta get outta here,” Kent whispered.

“I hear you,” I said. “Tonight. After dark.”

“I’d rather take my chances in the desert than with Feit,” Tori said.

With that quick exchange, it was settled. We were all thinking the same thing. After nightfall we’d make a break. It wasn’t what I had wanted. Running away wasn’t going to get us any closer to the truth about the Retros, or finding my mother, but Feit’s arrival changed that. The first thing we needed to do was survive. Staying in that camp while Feit was hunting for us would make that impossible. It was time to go.

The supervisor led us back to the clearing between buildings where Kent had fought the night before. A huge crowd of prisoners was gathered under the hot sun. They were encircled by dozens of Retro soldiers. Something was up. Something different. I couldn’t help but feel like a cow being led to the slaughter.

Our unit was pushed into joining the crowd of prisoners. It was lucky that we had arrived late. The first people who got there were in the center of this mess, pressed together by hundreds more bodies that kept arriving.

On the far side of the crowd was a military flatbed truck. Two Retro soldiers stood on the ground to either side of it. Though it was a huge crowd, it was eerily quiet. These people had been tortured into submission. They didn’t dare resist. At least not in any obvious way. The escape attempt the night before proved that there was a lot more communication and planning going on between them than the Retros knew about, or understood.

“Here we go,” Kent whispered.

I looked forward over the sea of prisoners to see Major Bova climb up onto the flatbed. He stood with his legs apart and his fists on his hips like some twisted version of Superman. He surveyed the tortured sea of humanity before him with an oily smile.

“May I please have your attention,” Bova called out, like we had any other choice. His voice was amplified and sprang from unseen speakers.

“An urgent matter has come to my attention that I must now bring to you,” he announced. “Please pay close attention. Your future will depend on it.”

Bova stepped to the side as Mr. Feit,
Colonel
Feit, climbed up onto the truck.

“This can’t be good,” Kent whispered.

Feit surveyed the silent crowd. Not that there was any chance of him seeing us from as far back as we were, but I crouched down just the same.

All eyes were on him, silently waiting for a speech that nobody wanted to hear.

“My name is Colonel Feit,” he began boldly. “I am one of the architects of your new future.
Our
new future.”

I held back the urge to boo. I’d guess every last prisoner felt the same way.

“You are all experiencing hardships. I understand that. It is the price that must be paid to build a better, safer tomorrow.”

Tori whispered, “Right. They’re rebuilding what the Retros destroyed, just like every other war in history. It’s all about destruction until it’s about rebuilding. So pointless.”

“I can assure you,” Feit continued. “The sacrifices you make today will help create a new and better world order for you and your children. Your children’s children. Hard choices have been made. Difficult choices. We are making them today in order to assure that mankind will not only survive, but thrive in the future.”

Feit was a different version of himself than any I’d seen before. He was deadly serious and used his words sparingly. The easygoing beach dude was long gone.

“Your cooperation and hard work are essential to guaranteeing your own safe future. You will not always be working in this camp. Soon you will be transferred to other parts of the country. Perhaps to your own hometown. From there you will begin your new, intelligently guided lives and take part in the transformation that will help ensure that we will pass on a better world to those who follow.”

He was speaking as if he expected to get a round of applause after each statement.

For the record, he didn’t.

“However, there are those among you who want to end this important progress. They don’t have the foresight to understand that until we stepped in, the world was on a collision course with disaster. To those people I say that it’s entirely your choice. You do not have to be part of the new order. But be warned. If you are not with us, you are against us, and you will be treated accordingly.”

Crickets. The crowd was deadly silent.

“I must now make a plea,” Feit went on. “There are three criminals in your midst. They have committed crimes against the new order and must face judgment.”

“Here it comes,” Kent said. “He is really pissed at us.”

“I ask that you reveal these traitors to your supervisors. Once they are in our custody, you will be rewarded with a full day off from labor.”

That finally got the crowd buzzing. A day off from work was a luxury that seemed impossible . . . until just then.

We were in trouble.

“Help me to purge the rot from this camp,” Feit bellowed. “Bring them to me.”