Free Red Fox by Lara Fanning

clumsy. I don’t help him out, but instead watch him with critical eyes as he struggles out of the pit.
    “Seiger didn’t have to look at his list when he said I belonged in B,” I say, after Whil has recovered from the fall. We walk on. “So being in B had nothing to do with our test. It had to do with us attacking Seiger.”
    “Why? Why would they want people that are aggressive?”
    “I don’t know,” I reply, trying to sound indifferent, but I’m scared.
    Collecting up people who show signs of aggression cannot mean anything good. What are they planning to do with us? If we survive this test and can’t escape, do they plan on using us like fighting dogs? Will they throw us in a pit and hold us at gunpoint until we fight one another as some sick form of entertainment? Do they want us as guards to do their bidding? To kill innocent people like Seiger does?
    I snort inadvertently. They will never make me do that. I will never hurt people who are just like me. Who have suffered worse than I have because of this government. They are monstrous.
    “Whil, is there an Imperium anymore?” I ask. “Like there used to be in the old government? A top dog?”
    “I don’t think so,” he says. “I think they just have a group of Biocentrics that rule together these days. Probably so an Imperium won’t be assassinated. That way the system won’t come crashing down if the Imperium died. With a committee, someone would have to take out every individual member to make the government fail. I’m sure they expect people to revolt sooner or later and being eradicated is a big fear of theirs.”
    “You seem smart,” I say.
    He shrugs modestly. “Being smart doesn’t help much when you’re thrown out into the bush.”
    He’s right.
    We finally come to a clearing and I realise my suspicions are right. We are in the exact place I thought. We’ve come to a familiar high country meadow where the wild horses graze. It’s probably a good ten acres of cleared pasture, spotted with a few ancient looking gumtrees. Baby grass pokes its head through the thin snow and tussocks grow here and there. There are a few shallow wallowing holes where wild horses like to roll in the dirt when the weather is dryer. The clearing is lagoon shaped and surrounded on all sides by thick, high trees and low heathland. It feels like a safe haven here. I know there will be clean water nearby that the brumbies will use to drink. Food will have to be our prime priority. In agreement, my stomach rumbles noisily and I notice how weak my body feels from lack of food. Whil said I was put in the caravan yesterday but I could have been out longer than that. Who knows how long it’s been since I ate last?
    There aren’t any horses on the flat, but I didn’t expect there to be. They take cover in the bush during the day and only come onto the grazing flats in the evenings and early mornings.
    “Where are we?” Whil asks, glancing around the picturesque place. The beautiful little flat is bathed in the golden light of late afternoon and it smells sweet—as if the scents of spring are rising from the warmer lower plains and into the mountains.
    We stay on the edge of the bush, hidden in the cover of the trees. The flat is too open and noticeably bare in thousands of hectares of bushland. I’m wary that even though helicopters and aeroplanes are illegal to fly, the government might sneak one into the sky to monitor us. After all, they’d apparently used a car to transport Whil earlier, and the guards had been equipped with guns. Both cars and guns are illegal. Do as the government says, not as they do. Already I’m becoming paranoid but not without reason.
    I find a dry log and sit down on it. “This is Native Cat Flat.”
    “How do you know?”  Whil sits on the log, a meter away.
    “I’ve been here before. Horse riding. There is a track on the other side that leads to Native Dog Flat and there is a public road right next to Native Dog that will