Among the Enemy

I’m in the wilderness! Where am I supposed to find soap and water? he wanted to shout. But then the answer came to him.

The cabin.

If Matthias had stopped to consider how hard it would be to get both Alia and Percy down to the cabin, he might have given up right then. But the thought that kept cycling through his mind was, Can't leave Alia, can't leave Percy, can't leave Alia, can't leave Percy. . If he put Alia down to carry Percy, she might freeze to death before he could come back. If he left Percy behind and took Alia first, he might not be able to find Percy again in the dark. And then he'd have to wait for the morning light, and Percy could have bled to death by then.

What if Percy bled to death anyhow?

Don't think about that, he commanded himself.

He forced himself to concentrate on shifting Alia's limp body to one side, so he could support her with just one arm looped around her waist. With his other arm he reached down — awkwardly, almost toppling over — and wedged his hand under Percy's armpit. And then he began dragging both of them downhill.

He made slow, torturous progress, and both of them whimpered and moaned and cried out in their sleep, in pain. He was of two minds about their cries. At least they were still alive — but, oh, how could he be the one hurting them?

The trek down the hill took so long, Matthias was almost surprised when he lifted his head and saw a wall of logs directly in front of him. He had a moment of worry-ing that there might be Population Police guards remaining behind in the cabin — or perhaps more rebels left alive who might feel no friendlier toward Matthias than they did toward the Population Police. But he was too desperate to give that worry much thought.

'Just a — little — farther,' he grunted to his two friends, even though they probably couldn't hear him.

He dragged them around to the front of the cabin and then lifted them, one by one, over the splintered door.

Inside the cabin was utter darkness.

Well, of course it is. What did I expect?

The last, lingering light of dusk illuminated only the first few inches inside the shattered doorway. Even as Matthias huddled there with Percy and Alia, that light seemed to fade and disappear.

We've survived in darkness before, Matthias reminded himself. For most of their time in Population Police prison, they'd been in an underground dungeon and had gone for days without seeing sunlight.

Percy and Alia weren't injured then, Matthias thought. And we had candles that we could light in an emergency.

Maybe there were candles in the cabin as well.

Even though every muscle in his body cried out in exhaustion, Matthias forced himself to reach out and grope around on the floor. He tried not to think about how many people had just died in the cabin. saying that somehow gave him the courage to keep reaching out, keep grasping for hope. All he asked for was a single candle and a single match, although a flashlight would be easier to work with. And he certainly wouldn't complain if he found medical supplies just lying around, waiting for him….

At first he found only splinters. The floor was made of rough wooden planks that hadn't been sanded and didn't fit together well. The gaps between the planks were so wide that Matthias began to fear an entire book of matches could be hidden between two planks and Matthias would never know. So he fell into a pattern of sweeping his entire hand across a plank (carefully, trying to avoid the splin-ters), then wedging his fingers down between the cracks before moving on to the next plank.

That was how he discovered the secret latch.:

Matthias didn't know what it was when his fingers brushed it, tucked away on the underside of one of the planks. But it was the first thing he'd touched that wasn't wood, and it puzzled him: Who would put a round, hard knob underneath a floor? He felt all around it, pushing it from side to side. When he pushed it to the right, something clicked.

And then the floor rose up before him.

Chapter Eight

Matthias was so stunned, it took him a few minutes even to wonder how he could see the floor moving. There was a light. Under the floor. He blinked a few times, and the sight before him began to make sense. He'd found the latch for a trapdoor, leading, to an underground room.

Matthias slid over to the trapdoor opening — for it was i actually just a small square that had moved, not the entire 'floor — and peered down. A ladder led down to a tidy room illuminated by one dim lantern. A row of cots stood at one end of the room, and he could just barely make out a sink at the other end. Cots. A sink.

'I think I just found us a place to stay for the night,' he said aloud to Percy and Alia. 'And then you'll both be fine in the morning. Okay?'

His voice sounded strange and croaky in the dark night. Neither of his friends answered.

He pulled Alia toward him and began struggling to carry her down the ladder. He laid her as gently as he could on one of the cots and covered her with a blanket he found on the floor.

'I'll try to find some food for you as soon as I take care of Percy,' he told her.

Her only response was a moan. The bandage Percy had fashioned for her had fallen off somewhere in the woods, so the wound on her head was exposed, all seepy and puffy-looking. A few strands of her hair were plastered to the wound, and Matthias felt faint at the thought of hav-ing to pull them away, hurting her even more.

'I'll be right back,' he promised her. n He went back up the ladder. He tried carrying Percy down the same way he had Alia: over his shoulder. But Percy was nearly as tall and heavy as Matthias himself, and Matthias couldn't work out the proper arrangement of arms and legs. Halfway down the ladder, Matthias fell, and Percy landed right on top of him on the packed-dirt floor. Percy let out a roar of agony.

'I'm sorry. I'm sorry,' Matthias apologized, but even the fall didn't awaken Percy.

Matthias struggled to his feet. Ignoring the pain in his own legs and spine, he dragged Percy over to a cot near Alia's. Percy left a trail of blood behind him.

How much blood can somebody lose and still live? Matthias wondered.

'I'll stop the bleeding now,' he promised Percy. 'Right after I shut the trapdoor. When the trapdoor's shut, no one can find us down here. We're safe. I think there's some food down here — oh, yes! I see some bread over there on a shelf. I'll soak that in water and feed it to you and Alia. And I can tear up some of these blankets for bandages….'

He wanted so badly for one of his friends to finish his list of blessings for him with And God loves us. Then he would be able to believe that the underground room was a safe place, that nobody would find them there, that his friends' wounds would heal. But his voice trailed off into silence, and no one answered him, no one at all.

Chapter Nine

Matthias did everything he could for his friends, but there was so much he didn't know. Could Percy's leg heal even if Matthias didn't take the bullet out? What did it mean that Alia flickered in and out of consciousness and seemed barely aware even when she was awake?

'They'll both be fine tomorrow,' he told himself firmly. He managed to choke down a bit of bread and water him^ self, then blew out the lantern and curled up on a cot between his two friends.

He woke, hours later, to the sound of Alia crying. He lit the lantern and crouched by her cot.

'Shh,' he murmured. 'I'm here.'