Rikki dashed, gravel scattering beneath her shoes. She didn’t slow down until she was at least twenty meters outside the gate.
Li called, “Your friends will be on the ground soon. Tell them what you’ve seen. Tell them what I expect.
“And tell them the consequences if any of you fail to cooperate.”
DEFIANCE
(Autumn, Year Ten)
37
With a throaty roar, straining against its massive load, the tractor lurched into motion. It crept from the granary and, with its motor protesting more than ever, negotiated the turn onto Main Street. Dana found herself leaning forward—as though by shifting her weight she could make the poor, overburdened vehicle and its trailer move faster. Maybe, she mocked herself, it will speed up if I make vroom, vroom noises.
On both sides of the street, a few potted trees provided hints of autumn color. Dry leaves skittered down the pavement. The twin greenhouses teemed with unseasonable green. In their respective enclosures, chickens clucked and cows lowed.
Blake walked past the lumbering tractor.
From Dana’s perch on the tractor seat, she could see his shoulders tense as, passing through the open gate, he trod upon the strip of gravel. Nothing happened: the mines were switched off, as promised. As had been the case for countless deliveries.
Tribute, all of them, to Queen Li.
Carlos loitered inside the stockade, well back from the bright red-painted line that marked the inner edge of the minefield. Several of the oldest children were wrestling pipes embedded in concrete bases into position along the line: posts for the inside fence that must delimit the boundary once snow fell. The nip in the air suggested that wouldn’t be long.
When three among the children on snow-fence duty looked Dana’s way, she offered them a grandmotherly smile.
Boys? Girls? She couldn’t tell. All the children had hair down to their shoulders or longer. If haircuts for hundreds weren’t a massive enough undertaking, she still didn’t suppose grooming ranked high on Li’s list of priorities. Maybe unisex hair was part of the new order. Unisex garments definitely were, if only of practicality. Most of the hand-me-down pants, sweaters, and coats were too big or too small for their new owners; even the clothing that fit tended toward ragged and dirty.
The three watchful kids, whatever their genders, scowled back at Dana.
How many lies, and how vile, had these children been told over the years about the people who lived outside? She felt ill, just wondering.
“Stop!” Carlos shouted. “You know the drill.”
Dana applied the brakes with the tractor still well outside the gate. Four tonnes of cargo took their sweet time responding. To the accompaniment of a squeal, she brought the tractor to a halt atop the inactivated minefield that Li—nowhere in sight, but doubtless watching—could reactivate in an instant. Or if Li did not like something she saw, she might merely take a potshot from hiding.
It was best not to raise suspicions.
Children were everywhere. Milling about. Walking, running, and climbing. Peeking from between, and out the windows of, buildings throughout the compound. Indoors, the choruses clashing, three groups recited their rote lessons. Little Eve (only she was a young woman, not little anymore) supervised toddlers on the playground.
So many kids, and yet, to Dana’s knowledge, none had ever tried to escape. It would seem simple. Just run out when the gateway was opened for food. She thought of the children as hostages and prisoners. They must see themselves as besieged.
The kids were too active to make an accurate count, but she guessed a couple hundred and maybe a few dozen voices in the classrooms. The littlest kids would be in the childcare center. More of them all the time….
Three hundred in total, perhaps? That would be consistent with the quantities of food that Li so imperiously commanded to appear. In the few, low buildings, children would be sleeping cheek by jowl.
Carlos examined the underside of the tractor using a mirror mounted to a long carbon-fiber pole. “All right. Come forward two tractor lengths.” That would bring the tractor inside the fence and put the grain-laden trailer onto the gravel.
“Must we go through this nonsense every time?” Blake burst out.
“Yes, as it happens,” Carlos said. He eyeballed the bulging bags of wheat, then with his mirror began to inspect beneath the trailer.
Fooled you once, Dana thought, because even trivial successes came too seldom not to savor.
Not long after Li’s coup, Blake had rigged a gadget beneath a trailer, hidden within a spare tire. His jury-rig scooped up a bunch of stones—together with what they had been going for: one of the land mines—and refilled the hole with fresh gravel. The mine itself went into a metal box, shielded against the rearm signal.
Far from the compound, inside a copper-screen-sheeted workspace, they had unsealed the box. Sneering at Carlos, Blake had opened the mine, traced its firing circuits, and defused it.
And failed ever after to find a way to remotely disable the remote-control circuits. The mines inside the stockade remained out of reach. Carlos, though he did not know it, had had the last laugh.
Soon thereafter, whether by coincidence or having noticed a suspicious pattern in the gravel, under-vehicle inspections had begun.
What if, instead of trawling that day for a sample land mine to dissect, Blake had been under the trailer? If he had hidden within the compound till dark, sneaked into the bunker, disarmed the bombs….
Uh-huh. Suppose he had somehow evaded notice for hours and not gotten shot by Li. Then he would have had to disarm bombs he’d never before seen, using only the tools he’d been able to carry, while teetering atop a very tall stepladder. If anything had gone wrong, he’d have blown up himself and the last hopes of humanity.
Sending Blake in blind would have been a stupid, foolhardy stunt. It would have violated everything Dana had ever been taught about mission planning.
And through more sleepless nights than she would admit even to Antonio, she feared that by waiting to gather intel she had doomed them all.
“And that doesn’t excuse treating
