Free Behind the Stars by Leigh Talbert Moore Page A

die?
    Seconds ticked past and nothing happened. Nobody passed out. Nobody did anything strange—except forget what we’d just witnessed here. Braxton picked up his fork to finish his lunch. They all did. Like one of us had not just been taken out “swiftly and finally.”
    Only he had, and I was reeling from the shock. I barely knew Cleve, but he represented hope to me. He was my backup, and now I was completely alone.
    I wanted to mourn him, but I knew I had to hide my feelings or risk suffering the same fate. I’d have to figure out my next steps, and I’d have to double up on the secrecy.
    * * *
    A week passed, and they moved us girls from pulling potatoes to gathering ears of corn. The guys were put in the barn, shoveling and cleaning the stalls or digging pits for burying garbage and waste. No more boxes were buried from what I’d heard, but I was tense, on edge after the showdown in the dining hall.
    Braxton was changing, I could tell it. He didn’t pray so much anymore, and he’d stopped talking about the end of the world. He just sat and watched and slowly became more and more withdrawn.
    The sun beat down hot as we walked among the cornfields, and sweat tickled little lines down the back of my neck and between my shoulder blades. As usual, I lowered the top of my coveralls and tied the sleeves around my waist to catch a little breeze as I walked through the rows.
    The familiarity, the knowing what to expect was somehow comforting. I still had to get out, but for a moment, I could be with the earth, the plants that never stopped growing, and catch my breath.
    Jackson’s daddy had taught me how to feel the ends of the ears to see if they were ready for harvest before twisting them down and off the stalk. The other girls would pull back the green husks and poke their fingernails into the kernels to see if the middles ran clear and watery or milky-white—the sign they were ready to be harvested. The only problem with that was the ones that weren’t ready were now exposed to insects and birds and most likely wouldn’t survive to feed us.
    At lunch, I sat with Yolanda on my left and Flora on my right. After the watcher passed behind us, I slid half of my meat onto Flora’s tray hoping it would be enough to keep her blood healthy. Dr. Green said anemics could die of heart attack, but I’d made up my mind we weren’t losing another person.
    I was calm on the outside, placid, but a knot of anger and defiance ached in my chest. I was getting us out of here, and not another one of us was going in those boxes.
    Flora’s cheeks gained more color and her freckles weren’t as noticeable, but she was more lethargic as the days passed. I decided it was the additional calories combined with her easier work assignment. Or maybe it was because she believed even more she was never getting out of this camp alive.
    I on the other hand, felt my body getting stronger. My brain was clear, and what happened with Cleve forced me to reconsider my plans. Instead of a direct approach to escape, these days I decided to try and learn our captors’ ultimate goal. Maybe if I knew why they were holding us, I could figure out a timeline that included my escape, finding Jackson, and getting back here for the others. I didn’t want to be gone longer than necessary.
    Of course, there was also the problem of the supposed tracking devices. I’d studied my arm in the shower more than once, but other than a little purple spot like a pinprick, I didn’t see any signs of a chip. Either it was incredibly small, or it was the same color as my skin—or it was translucent.
    I thought of the time we’d studied microfibers in science class. They were thin as hair and clear. The memory made me hesitant. Who knew what technology these invaders had in their power?
    Every afternoon I walked the length of the fence, studying it and making mental notes. It was mostly unguarded, and there was a patch below the cabins that was almost completely obscured