Free Tent City by Kelly Van Hull Page A

area covered with huge boulders. Then we climb to an area so high we can easily see everything below us.
    I take a seat as best I can and I am truly physically exhausted. I go to ask him again what he saw and then he puts his fingers to his mouth again to shush me and points to an area below us.
     
    What I see takes my breath away. It’s this massive black bear with two cubs. She spends a second on her hind legs and sniffs the air and then comes back down, searching for danger. The cubs are swatting playfully at each other. Then the mother seems to decide she doesn’t like the area anymore. She clacks her teeth together and huffs air in and out of her nose as a signal for the cubs to get moving.
     
    “That was amazing!” I say barely above a whisper.
     
    “You don’t have to whisper anymore,” he says with a chuckle. He’s smiling and I can’t help but get lost in his easy way. He’s slouched so comfortably on these boulders that it appears as if he was built for sitting on rocks. I shift uncomfortably.
     
    “Why are bears here?” I say still in astonishment. “I didn’t think we had bears here.”
     
    “Why is anything the way it is? Everything is weird now,” he responds.
     
    “True. So you really heard them while you were running? What did you hear?” I ask.
     
    “Well, I can’t take all the credit for superhuman hearing. I knew she lived somewhere around here, so I was trying to be careful.”
    “You didn’t seem careful. You were kicking my butt out there. No offense, but I thought I was going to make quick work of you. You’re pretty good.”
     
    “You’re no slouch yourself. You’re right. No girl in the camp here could keep up with you. But I’ll tell ya, there are a few guys who could give you a run for your money. We try to stay pretty fit here. It’s part of living off the land. We feel it’s important to be prepared for anything… It is interesting though. You say you have always been that fast?”
     
    “So are you saying keeping fit is mandatory?” I say avoiding his question. It seemed more rhetorical anyway.
     
    “No, nothing around here is mandatory. Everyone has the ability to do whatever they want. It’s just that if someone doesn’t want to pull their own weight, or keep up with what we’re trying to do around here, they might not get to stick around.”
     
    “You mean you kick people out?” I ask, wondering who died and made him king.
     
    “We have. Don’t get me wrong, Dani. That’s the last thing we want to do, but we have been successful here, and it’s because we keep to certain rules and regulations, but everyone is free to choose what they wanna do.”
     
    “Where do they go if they’ve been kicked out? How do you know they won’t just leave and turn you in?”
     
    “I’m not sure where they go,” he says.
     
    “And what about them turning you in? How do you know that they won’t go running to The Council?”
     
    “I don’t know. Leap of faith I guess.”
     
    “Can I ask you a question, Bentley?”
     
    “Besides that one?” he teases.
     
    “Yes, besides that one.”
     
    “Shoot.”
     
    “Where are all the supplies coming from? I couldn’t help but notice that they seem to be government supplies. Surely, they can’t know you are out here?”
     
    “Hell no. They’d shut the whole thing down. Probably put us in that safety camp you were telling me about. It’s Tuesday, should be a lot more action now. I wouldn’t be surprised if they started combing the woods now.”
     
    “You still haven’t answered my question.”
     
    “No need to worry about all that, Dani. I can’t imagine you’ll be on supply duty. What did you have in mind anyway? You’ll get about a week to acclimate yourself, but then you’ll be expected to pull your weight around here, and your brother too.”
     
    I must have hit a sore subject. His formerly charismatic and winning ways have now changed to cold and businesslike.
     
    That tells me he