Free White by Ted Dekker

highway. The sight stopped her. What was a trucker doing driving fuel down the road, knowing that in ten days he would be dead unless the government managed to find a way to stop the Raison Strain? Did the driver really understand what was happening? The reports she’d heard suggested that most Americans were staying at home, glued to the news. The government was paying huge dividends to certain critical companies if they remained open. Mostly utilities, communications, trans-portation—the essentials.
    WHItE
    She assumed that traffic would be limited to people going home to be with their families. But a trucker? Maybe he was going home too.
    She headed back off the road, sticking to the grass shoulder. Not a single car drove by during the twenty minutes it took her to reach the Conoco sign.
    The station was closed.
    â€œHello?”
    Her voice echoed under the canopy that covered the deserted fuel islands. She walked for the window. “Hello?”
    Nothing. She didn’t blame them—the last thing she would do with ten days to live is work at a gas station.
    The door was locked. No sign of looting. No need to loot when the looters themselves were also infected. Riots would be instigated by thrill seekers determined to take their fear out on others rather than to seize any goods. It would start soon enough.
    In fact, now was as good a time as any.
    She picked up the small steel drum that read Garbage, drew it back, and swung it with all her strength at the window. The horrendous crash of breaking glass was loud enough to wake the dead. Good. She needed to wake the dead.
    Monique waited for a full minute, giving anyone who might have heard plenty of time to note that she wasn’t busy looting. Then she picked her way through the broken glass to the black phone on the counter.
    Dial tone.
    She dug out the card Gains had given her and stared at the number. What if he was the very mole she had warned him of? Maybe she should call the president himself. No, he was in New York today, speaking at the United Nations.
    She dialed the number, let the phone ring, and prayed that Gains, mole or not, would answer.

7
    T homas awoke on his back. The sheet was over his face. Odd. Although the desert night was cool at times, he wasn’t one to smother his breathing by burying his head under the covers like some. Covers also impaired hearing. At this moment he couldn’t hear his fellow prisoners breathing, though he knew they were sleeping to his right, chained at the ankles with him. He couldn’t even hear the sound of the horses near the camp. Nor the Scabs, talking over morning campfires. Nor the campfires themselves.
    He yanked the sheet from his face. It was still night. Dark. He still couldn’t hear anything other than his own heart, thumping lightly. No stars in the sky, no campfire, no sand dunes. Only this thin rubber mattress under him, and this cold sheet in his fingers.
    Thomas’s heart skipped a beat. He wasn’t in the desert! He was on a mattress in a dark room, and he’d awakened with a sheet over his face.
    He moved his feet. No chains. He’d fallen asleep as a prisoner in the desert and woken in the histories. Alive.
    He felt the edge of his bed. Cold steel tubes filled his hand. A gurney. Carlos had shot him, when? Three days ago, Kara had said. He hadn’t dreamed for thirteen months in the desert because there was no Thomas here to live the dream. They’d brought his body here, why? For examination? To keep the Americans guessing? And where was here?
    France.
    Thomas eased his legs from under the sheets and swung them to the cold concrete floor. A loud slap echoed in the room and he jumped. Nothing happened. Something had fallen on the floor.
    His eyes adjusted to the darkness. A wedge of light shone through the gap at the bottom of the door. He saw the square shape by his foot. Picked it up. A book. He felt its cover and froze.
    The blank Book of History,