Among the Brave

  Had the chauffeur been fooled?

  Mark narrowed his eyes and peered at Trey. Mark didn’t look like he thought Trey would be much of a bodyguard.

  “Seems like, if this driver was a good guy, if he had good reasons for taking my brother away, he wouldn’t have left you behind,” Mark said slowly.

  Yes, Trey thought. Exactly. He liked Mark a little better for saying that.

  “And the chauffeur went away before all the men in uniforms showed up,” Trey said. “So he wasn’t scared about his own safety. He left me behind on purpose.” It hurt just to speak those words, but Trey forced them out. It was like he actually had some hope that Mark could help.

  “So this dangerous man took Luke away and left you behind, and we don’t know why,” Mark said. He kicked the toe of his boot at the packed-dirt floor of the barn. “And did you hear that the Population Police are in control of everything now? Mother and Dad are inside listening to the radio right now, shaking in their shoes, scared to death. It’s like the whole world’s ending, but it hasn’t quite ended yet way out here. And what they’re most scared of is that something bad’s going to happen to Luke, and they won’t even know.” He kicked the dirt once more, then looked up. “Let’s go get him.”

  “Huh?” Trey said. He’d gotten lost in Mark’s reasoning after that first kick in the dirt.

  “You heard me,” Mark said. “I said let’s go get him. We’ll go to the Grants’ house and bring Luke back and everything will be okay.”

  Trey’s jaw dropped in disbelief. He’d always thought Lee was insanely brave. Now he knew Lee’s brother was even crazier.

  “We don’t have to go anywhere,” Trey finally managed to say. “We can call. We can call the Grants’ house, or call Mr. Hendricks back at the school—Mr. Hendricks can get Lee from the Grants’ house, if we just call …”

  He really meant that Mark could call. Mark or his parents. Trey was feeling better now, at the thought that somebody else could take care of everything and he wouldn’t have to. This was a good plan.

  But Mark was shaking his head.

  “The Population Police shut down all the phone lines in the country yesterday—security reasons, they said. And now they’ve shut off the electricity…. What if they come and take away our gasoline next? We can’t just sit around waiting. We’ve got to go rescue Luke.”

  He sounded almost happy at the thought that it would take more than a phone call to find his brother.

  “We don’t know for sure where he is,” Trey protested. He was suddenly desperate to avoid being roped into Mark’s dangerous plan. “For all we know, the chauffeur might have lied about going back to the Grants’ house. Trying to find Lee would be like … like looking for a needle in a haystack.” He thought Mark might appreciate the agricultural analogy. But it didn’t go far enough. He remembered what Mrs. Talbot had said about roadblocks and house-to-house searches. “No—now that the Population Police are in charge, it’d be like looking for a needle in a burning haystack.”

  “Oh, I’ve done that,” Mark said airily. “It’s a game we used to play, after we got rid of all our livestock and didn’t need our hay no more. You throw a match into the haystack, give the fire a three-second head start, and begin looking. You can find the needle every time if you work quick.”

  Trey couldn’t do anything but stare at the other boy. Mark wasn’t just crazily brave—he was stark, raving mad. Trey thought longingly of his cozy cupboard hiding place back in the Talbots’ kitchen. He could be back there in a matter of minutes. He certainly wasn’t spending any more time hanging around this lunatic.

  But Smits stepped forward.

  “You’ll help Mark, won’t you, Trey?” he said. “If the two of you work together, I know you can get to Lee. You’ll rescue him, won’t you?”

  It’s impossible, Trey thought. It’s ridiculous to risk two more lives when we’ve got no chance of success. This is insanity. It’s a suicide mission! He thought about how deluded Smits was, thinking Trey had ever been able to protect anybody, thinking Trey might be able to take care of somebody else, instead of needing somebody to take care of him.

  That one time I saved Lee’s life, it was a fluke, you know? he wanted to scream at Smits. I can’t do anything. I’m a coward!

  But what he said to Smits was: “Yes.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Okay. Ready to go?” Mark asked.

  “Now?” Trey squeaked. He wanted more ceremony somehow—a commissioning service, perhaps, or an anointing of the heroes, like he’d read about in books. Some acknowledgment that brave men (okay—boys) were about to head into danger.

  Or maybe he just wanted a delay. A chance to change his mind.

  “What—you want to wait until the Population Police make it a crime to go anywhere? Of course now!” Mark said.

  Trey could feel Smits’s eyes on him.

  “P-papers,” Trey managed to stammer. “We’ve got to take the papers from the Talbots’ house first.”

  He didn’t know why that seemed so important suddenly, except that he’d brought papers to the Talbots’ and it didn’t seem right to leave them behind.

  “The Talbots? They’re the ones in the big house over there?” Mark asked, pointing.

  Trey felt so disoriented that he barely could have identified up from down, but he nodded.

  Mark shrugged. “Always wanted to see inside one of those monster houses,” he said.

  And Trey was glad, because he wasn’t sure he could muster enough courage to go back into the Talbots’ house alone, then leave again, if he was also supposed to be gathering courage to go rescue Lee.

  Mark extinguished the lantern, and they stepped from the dark of the barn into the dark of the night. Mark led the way, holding branches back so Trey had a clear path. They were halfway to the Talbots’ house before Trey realized Smits hadn’t followed.

  “Shouldn’t we wait for Smits—I mean, Peter?” Trey asked.

  “I sent him to bed,” Mark said. “He’s just a little kid.”

  He’s a Baron, Trey thought. He’s used to other people doing his dirty work for him.

  What if Trey adopted that attitude? What if he just sent Mark out alone to rescue Lee?

  It was a tempting thought

  They reached the door of the Talbots’ house, and Mark hesitated for the first time.

  “They don’t have any of those fancy alarms on this, do they?” he asked.

  “I just walked out this door fifteen minutes ago,” Trey said. “No alarms went off then. The electricity’s out, anyway. What are you, scared?”

  Trey enjoyed taunting Mark, but his bravado was false. For all Trey knew, there could be silent alarms rigged up on the door, ones that secretly alerted the police even without electricity. Would that kind of an alarm be battery-operated, or would the Talbots have needed a backup generator? If they had a backup generator, wouldn’t the lights have stayed on in their house even when the rest of the neighborhood lost power? What if it was all a trick?

  While Trey was still considering every possibility, Mark shrugged and stepped into the Talbots’ house. Nothing happened. Feeling sheepish, Trey followed.

  “Draw the shades, and I’ll light the lantern again,” Mark said.

  Trey pulled blinds down over the window he’d used for spying, and jerked curtains along a rod to cover the sliding door they’d just walked in through. Then Mark struck a match and lit the lantern. His jaw dropped and his eyes widened.

  “Those Barons must have lived like pigs,” he said, surveying the mess before him.

  “Their house was searched, remember?” Trey said. “Fifty guys in uniforms trashed it. I bet this house was a show-place before.”

  He didn’t know why he felt compelled to defend the Talbots. He just didn’t like the note of glee in Mark’s voice.

  “Well, get your papers, then,” Mark said.

  Trey had hidden them in the kitchen cupboard. He retrieved them and, straightening up, saw the avalanche o
f papers covering the counters.

  “I should take those, too,” he said. The thought had just occurred to him. He hadn’t read any of them, and they were probably worthless, since the uniformed men hadn’t carted them off and Mrs. Talbot apparently hadn’t wanted them either. But it seemed wrong, suddenly, to leave them behind. Trey’s father had taught him that nothing was more valuable than the printed word, and Trey couldn’t shake that belief now.

  Mark didn’t seem to be listening.

  “So much food,” he muttered, looking at the boxes and bags strewn about the kitchen. “It was true, then: They even had more food than we did—and we were the ones growing it.”

  “All that food’s not doing the Talbots any good now,” Trey said.

  Mark squinted, and the dim light from the lantern turned each squint line into a deep shadow.

  “S’pose it would be stealing to take some of it?” Mark asked. “Just in case, I mean—if we’re going to be gone a while….”

  Trey didn’t like thinking about how long they might be gone. He didn’t even like thinking about the fact that they were going anywhere.

  “Mrs. Talbot said other people were welcome to anything in this house,” he said, trying to shrug casually “She left it all behind and didn’t care.”

  “Anything?” Mark asked, his eyes big.

  In the end, they took only some food and the papers, and bags to carry it all in. But after they’d stepped out into the darkness again, Mark kept casting longing glances back at the house.

  “Bet it’ll all be gone before I get home,” he muttered regretfully.

  Trey was more convinced than ever that Mark was a lunatic.

  They loaded everything into a mud-covered pickup truck back in the scary barn. Mark stuffed the papers into a slit in the seat—“Just in case we get stopped,” he muttered. The food from the Talbots’ house went into battered bushel baskets in the back. Mark covered the top of each basket with a layer of moldy-looking potatoes.

  He was admiring his work when someone pounded on the door of the barn. In a flash, Trey dived under the truck.

  “Mark!” a voice called from outside. “Mother says you’ve got to come in to bed now.”

  “Just a minute,” Mark called back.

  From his hiding place under the truck, Trey could see the door open. Another boy stepped into the barn.

  “What you doing out here anyway?” the boy asked.

  “Loading the truck for Dad to take to town. So’s he can take the potatoes to market,” Mark said. Trey was amazed at how calm Mark sounded, how even he kept his voice, how easily he lied.

  The other boy snorted.

  “Dad ain’t going to town,” he said. “The way things are going, Dad ain’t never leaving home again. And neither are we.”

  “You’ve been sneaking out to see Becky,” Mark said. “You’re risking your life to go visit your stupid, ugly girlfriend.”

  The other boy didn’t deny it. He didn’t even defend his girlfriend. Trey couldn’t see anything of him but his bare feet. The feet shifted awkwardly.

  “So?” the boy said.

  “So what do you see when you go?” Mark asked. His voice was low now, almost hypnotic. “You seen any soldiers or anything? Policemen? Anybody tried to stop you?”

  “I walk four miles there and four miles back, from Becky’s house,” the other boy said. “Through the cornfields. Ain’t no soldiers or policemen hiding out in the cornfields.”

  “Oh,” Mark said, almost sounding disappointed that the other boy hadn’t run into dozens of police officers, scads of soldiers. Mark, Trey decided, was smarter than he looked. He was trying to prepare for his trip by pumping the boy for information.

  But Mark and Trey wouldn’t be able to walk through cornfields to get to the Grants’ house.

  “Don’t you go tattling on me,” the other boy warned.

  “I won’t,” Mark said.

  Apparently satisfied, the boy walked out of the barn. Mark bent down and whispered to Trey.

  “I’ve got to go in now. Matthew—my brother—he’d tell Mother and Dad if I didn’t. We need some sleep anyhow. I’ll come back at dawn and then—and then …”

  “And then we leave,” Trey whispered back.

  “Reckon so,” Mark said roughly. In the shadows, Trey could barely see his face. “I’m sorry I can’t invite you into the house so … you know. You’ll be okay out here, won’t you? You won’t—won’t go nowhere or nothing, will you?”

  “Where would I go?” Trey asked.

  And then Mark went away, taking the light with him. In the dark, Trey twisted around uncomfortably on the hard packed-dirt floor.

  I should have told Mark I’d go back and sleep at the Talbots’ house and he could come and get me there in the morning. I could have slept in the lap of luxury tonight, instead of on dirt.

  But the Talbots’ house seemed scarier than ever now. He’d seen the gleam of greed in Mark’s eye when Trey had said that Mrs. Talbot had abandoned all her possessions and didn’t care about getting them back. There had to be dozens of others, even greedier, who wanted what the Talbots had had. Trey could close his eyes and imagine hordes descending upon the Talbots’ house: boys in flannel shirts, like Mark; men in uniform, like the Population Police; new Government bureaucrats in suits and ties.

  And Trey was afraid of them all.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It felt like the middle of the night when Mark was back, shaking Trey by the shoulders.

  “Here, put this on,” Mark muttered.

  Groggily Trey accepted a flannel shirt, thick with quilting—almost a jacket, really. He wrapped it around his shoulders. It was warmer, and Trey was a little touched that Mark had thought to share. Trey was still wearing the formal servant clothes he’d been wearing the night of the Grants’ fatal party: stiff black pants, a thin, white cotton shirt. Except that the white shirt wasn’t exactly white anymore, not after days of hiding out at the Talbots’ and, now, sleeping on a dirt floor.

  “Watch your head,” Mark said gruffly as Trey rolled out from under the truck.

  Mark opened the driver’s side door, and the light that glowed suddenly inside the truck’s cab seemed almost blinding.

  “Better button that up,” Mark said, and Trey blinked in confusion. Button a light? A door? A truck? “The shirt,” Mark said impatiently.

  Red-faced, Trey forced his clumsy fingers to prod buttons through buttonholes. Then he slipped into the seat of the truck, even though it felt like climbing into a spotlight. He slid as far away from the light as possible, and huddled against the far door.

  “Let’s go then,” Mark said.

  Trey glanced around and saw that Mark had opened a huge door behind the truck, leading out of the barn. A gigantic portion of the starry sky seemed to stare back at him.

  “No, wait,” Mark said. “Let’s push it out to the road.” Trey just stared at him. “So nobody hears.”

  It seemed to take Mark forever to explain in a way Trey could understand: Trey would have to get out of the truck, then stand at the front of the truck and shove on the hood as hard as he could, until the truck rolled out to the road.

  “I can’t,” Trey whimpered.

  Mark stared at him for a minute, then said, “Fine. You steer. I’ll push.”

  And then Mark practically had to give him an entire driving lesson: “Turn the wheel slowly…. No, no, don’t look straight ahead, look out the back window—”

  “Why?” Trey said. “Why does the seat face forward if I’m supposed to be looking backward?”

  “Because we’re going in reverse,” Mark said disgustedly.

  Trey wondered how much it would take for Mark to give up on him, to just snort, “Fine! You stay here! I’ll go rescue my brother by myself!”

  Is that what I really want? Trey wondered.

  It was yet another question he didn’t want to think about.

  Finally Mark seemed satisfied that Trey could steer the truck properly
. Mark put the truck in neutral, and moved around to the front.

  Mark was strong. It seemed like no time at all before he’d pushed the truck to the edge of the gravel driveway Then he went back to shut the barn door while Trey cowered in the truck.

  “Think you’re going to drive the whole way?” Mark asked when he came back.

  “What? Oh,” Trey said, and he slid over away from the steering wheel.

  Mark climbed in and shut the door. He turned the key, and the engine coughed a few times, then sputtered to life. The sound seemed as loud as a jumbo jet roaring through the night sky. Trey was certain that the racket would wake not just Mark’s family, but the entire countryside.

  Mark didn’t seem worried, though. He just patted the dashboard and muttered, “Good old Bessie.”

  Trey squeezed his eyes shut in terror. What was he thinking? How could he be doing this? Why go looking for danger?

  Beside him, Mark started whistling. Whistling!

  Trey opened his eyes a crack. The dashboard glowed with dials and numbers. Beyond, the truck’s headlights sliced into the solid darkness around them.

  “Why didn’t you tell your family?” Trey asked Mark softly. “How could you just—” He almost said “abandon them,” but stopped himself at the last minute. “How could you just leave without letting them know where you were going?”

  Mark glanced quickly over at Trey, then focused his eyes on the road again.

  “They’d worry,” he said.

  “And they’re not going to worry now? With you disappearing?” Trey asked incredulously.

  “They’ll think I’m just running around. Carousing. Getting in trouble.” Mark hesitated. “Little trouble, not big trouble.”

  Trey didn’t want any trouble, of any size. Had Mark done this kind of thing before—taking his family’s truck out in the middle of the night, going who-knows-where? Did they expect it of him? What was Trey thinking, casting his lot with a troublemaker?