Exodus Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen
Helter Skelter

             
Okay boys and girls, and gentlemen and ladies, this is where any timid readers who've pushed on should stop now and go no further.

At this point you can pretend that the national guard stepped in. You can pretend that the outside world still had the resources to provide emergency relief and reinstate a normal world of rules and laws and safe living rooms where nobody else has to die in a food riot.

Anyone who isn't one of us should really put this book back, you know we're looking for you right now.

This is the point where we step past the point of no return. This is the point where any chance at a happy ending, as they show up in children's books and films, vanishes forever. This is where anyone from a happier world should stop and go no further.

Tell yourself whatever lies you want about what happened in Safehope Bluff. Pretend I'm lying to you. Pretend I don't know what I'm talking about. But whatever you do, don't keep reading if you can't handle a world where people don't ride in on white horses to save children from unhappy endings.

You think 'Old Yeller' is traumatizing to children? You think they should never have killed Optimus Prime in the animated 'Transformers' Movie? You think 'Bridge to Terabithia' went a little bit too far? Was it too much for you when Dumbledore bit the dust?

You haven't seen anything yet. Stop reading.

Only warriors should step beyond this point.

You have been warned.

* * *

Bart’s capture had shaken us. My mom hadn’t done anything, just stood by and watched while Mr. Wolf beat Bart like a dog. Everything felt unsafe. The death of Owl’s mom could have blamed on heat of the moment and losing control of the situation. But now I didn’t think so. The leadership obviously felt that this was okay. Mr. Wolf had brutalized Bart because he was the the focus of Mr. Wolf’s anger. This left us all feeling cold and unsafe. We knew they didn’t have enough food. We knew Mrs. Winter didn’t have a problem with letting people she didn’t like starve. We knew Mr. Wolf was happy to assault anybody he didn’t like. We knew that Raven’s parents hadn’t been seen since the protest. We knew that all the town council members who had objected were likewise gone, disappeared. Any business that disagreed had been used as a storage facility, the businesses own supplies confiscated. We had watched all of this happen, little by little. But seeing Bart bleeding in front of us seemed to bring it all into focus.

And so after Bart was captured we went back to our Obi-won in Mildred Sanger to ask for advice. It's funny, but Mildred was one of the last people assigned a bed. She came in after my own family. I still don't know how she managed that. But once she arrived we were able to rely up here and that lifted our spirits a little.

“Magic is creating through will alone. Taking thought and making it action.” Mildred said, as we spoke off from the main area on metal folding chairs.

“I showed you Tarot cards and I told you that magic is something that you understand that others do not. That is true, magic is a shapeshifting word. Magic is many things. In the sense that I currently am using it. Magic is created change through meaning.”

“Okay, but what does that mean?” Viper asked.

“Do you remember the story of Brave Young Man and Corn Lady.” She asked.

“It's pretty hard to forget. Especially looking at everything that's happened.” Viper answered.

“In other words, you see meaning and parallel between the story and your current situation? How did that happen? This was a fairy tale. This was a story that I told you outright had never happened. And yet it has helped transform your  understanding of the situation compared to those of the other people in this building. How could a simple piece of fiction do that?”

“Well the story showed us another way to interpret what we were experiencing.” Raven said.

“Magic is creating change through meaning. You have a new story that you have made yours. That story is part of how you understand the world and your place in it, and it has made you different. I wrote many such stories, although I was not allowed to retrieve them when I was forced to vacate my house, so I do not have them here to share. But such stories are key to changing the game that you play.”

“My dad told me that tribes are a different game from the game everyone's playing right now.” Owl added.

“You father is quite correct. Tribes are a different game, or more correctly, they play different games and the tell different stories. And not just different stories, tribes tell different types of stories. And the stories that they tell are what make the games that they play different. Different fairy tales produce different adults, eventually. Magic. The thing about tribes is that they need to be free, that is why they do not survive captivity- their stories and games do not function and cannot be played in captivity, whether a community center gymnasium or a reservation.”

"Well.” Raven ventured, "Bruce Lee always said to be like water."

"You mean wet and miserable?" Viper asked.

"He meant that we should be patient when trapped and flow throw any available opening." Raven answered. “I'm we wait until we see an opening and then take advantage of it.

“And do what?” Viper asked, “I mean, seriously, at this point what can we do?”

“My dad says that we should run away. He's told me three times now. I'm starting to think he's right. Maybe we can play a new game if we can get away.”

Wolf shook his head, “That's a big freaking scary idea there bud. Seriously? Walk away and never come back? That's your idea?”

I though about my mother with her silence and Mr. Wolf with his bloody nightstick.

“I think I would prefer that to this.” I said.

“Okay,” Raven said carefully, “But we aren't a tribe, not really, not yet. Even if we all agreed that this was the best option, we don't know how to live like a tribe, we don't know how to turn ourselves into one. I mean where on earth would we start?”

“Well, didn't you just say that they story about the Brave Young Man and the Corn Lady is part ofbeing a tribe,” Owl said to Mildred, “What if we started with that? What would we do next?”

“I don't have an easy answer for you, I'm afraid.” Mildred Sanger said quietly, “This is the work of the Witch Doctor, the Lonely Hero who comes with storm and has no home.”

“When it comes time for somebody to do the thing that nobody else has the fortitude to do, you will find yourself possessed by an outrage so deep that something is reborn within you, something ancient and powerful, and you will find that a ghostly force guides your hand. But never try to master it, for there is no victory for the Master.”

Viper shook her head, “Mrs. Sanger, are you saying that ghosts are real? Are you saying that a ghost will actually possess one of us?”

“You decide if ghosts are real or not. I will not say yes or no for you. I am saying that you should listen to the moving of forces grander and older than either you, your parents, or the civilization now decaying around us. I am saying nothing more than this, listen to what was here first.”

"There are many things that are useful, without necessarily being true. A fairy tale can be useful to teach a lesson. A myth or fable can encapsulate the broad strokes of a historical event even if it uses metaphors and is largely a fabrication in itself. Explanations of how to perceive the world, spirits in the earth, souls and things- need not be true to be useful."

"So it doesn't matter if magic is real or not?" Viper asked.

"That's not the point. Magic means different things to different people. But each belief, whether in ghosts, or psychics or ancient stories, can be measured both by whether it is true and by whether it is useful. And certainly it does matter if something is true. But something can be untrue factually, while still being useful for other reasons. And then it does matter, you need to remember that no matter how useful a belief may be, that doesn't make it true."

Mildred never liked to talk where other people could intrude. And so we had been meeting out of the way and hidden behind a pile of boxes labelled as soap. As we were finishing our conversation, we heard a door open on the other side of the wall of the boxes. I don't think we would have taken much note, if it weren't for the fact that the footsteps that followed were accompanied by the sound of rubber dragging across tile, a quiet squeaking of two shoes being pulled.

We turned and moved over to peer over and around the boxes. On the other side we could see Mrs. Winter and two of Them, holding the semi-conscious form of Bart.

“You are an agent of the enemy.” Mrs. Winter said to Bart as her guards held his limp form, “Your disinformation has made my job more difficult at every turn. You have disrupted our ability to control the message. You have challenged our authority. And I will not tolerate it any longer. My associates believe that you can be used as an example to show people how we can bring anybody in line. But I suspect that this will merely allow you one last chance to oppose me by becoming a martyr. I'm not going to allow you to become a martyr. You are simply going to vanish. And, in time, you will be forgotten.”

“People. Will wonder. I'm too loud. Will be missed.” Bart wheezed out throw split lips.

“Oh I don't agree. This is quite a crisis and if a few people go missing in the crisis, that's just what we call casualties and missing persons. Come spring all people will remember is that they have made it through and that they owe that and their continued survival to the new council. We'll need to come up with a new name. Interim is so, temporary sounding. And if people do wonder about your fate, it won't matter. They will depend upon us for food and protection and thus their loyalty will be assured. You've lost. I've won.”

“You can't. Kill ideas.”

“Perhaps not directly,” Mrs. Winter said, “But ideas only survive in a very particular environment, the human mind. And although I may not be able to kill an idea; I can certainly kill a human.”

She held out her hand, and the guard on her right placed a large straight bladed military style knife in her hand. She grabbed Bart's hair and pulled his head back, exposing his neck.

“Now. We know. Who the villain. Is.” Bart managed, and then Mrs. Winter thrust the knife into Bart throat and then quickly turned it and drew the blade upward and under the chin line. Blood spurted across Mrs. Winter's shoulder, some spattering across her sky blue blazer.

We pulled ourselves back around the boxes in horror.

“She can't do that!” Raven whispered.

“She did.” Wolf said.

“What do we do?” I whispered.

“We run.” Viper said, “Like Owl's dad said we should. We get out of here. Anywhere is better than here.”

We were whispering. But we clearly weren't quiet enough.

“Do you hear that?” Mrs. Winter said from the other side of the boxes.

“No ma'am.”

“I heard something. Clean this up and get rid of it. You with me, we're making certain there are no loose ends.”

Mildred looked at us, and then looked around the room. She pointed to a set of boxes where we could see a space large enough to squeeze through and hide.

“Go. I can buy time for you to escape. Make a new way, find a new game, a new story. Make me proud.”

There wasn't time to argue. We could here the sound of Bart's body being dragged away. And then the sound of two sets of footprints moving slowly towards our position. As we turned to run, Mildred said to Raven.

"Remember, hope is like a fire. Don't let it go out. Even dying embers can become a fire again if they are fed."

Raven nodded. And then we ran. Behind us I could hear footsteps approaching and then Mrs. Winter's voice.

“What is this, Mildred?”

“Call it a protest. I know you don't like that word Helen, but I don't have another for you I'm afraid.”

“A protest against what Mildred? Us keeping this town alive for so long?”

“A protest against your methods. That's quite a stain you've got on your jacket.” Mildred said, “I certainly wouldn't call you a people person at this point.”

"People will let you down if you let them. Control is safety. Give people a free hand and they will hurt you and break the rules and make everything fall apart. And so I need control. When my father walked out, I learned a lesson in human nature. And so now I know what people are really like. Everything will end up looking right- like it did in the old days." Mrs. Winters continued talking as she turned away from Mildred and back towards our position.

"These days, everyone assumes that Summer is just to make the story work," Milderd Sanger said, "But of course it might actually be a nickname."

Mrs. Winter froze in her tracks and turned back to face Mrs. Sanger.

"Explain yourself Mildred." Mrs. Winter said.

"You know the joke Helen. Winter froze her husband into Summer's bed. Did you think that people made the joke just because summer is warm compared to winter's snow and ice? Didn't you think that maybe the word summer was in some way descriptive of your husband's lover?"

As we moved along silently, I could hear them talking although I could no longer see them.

"How would it describe his lover Mildred?"

"Who was the town hippie, Helen?"

"You were Mildred. I don't like where you are going with this."

"People so rarely like the truth. Lies are fair more convenient. Far more useful. So Helen, what did hippies take part in?"

"You're going to have to tell me Mildred."

"The summer of love maybe?"

"And of course, therefore my husband might have nicknamed his lover 'Summer', because she- you- were the only hippie in town."

"I loved Gerard. Deeply. I didn't think much of marriage as a convention then, and I was so much less respectful of other people as a young woman. That said, he was miserable with you and he was happy with me. And then he was gone. What did you do to him Helen? Mmmm."

"You did everything! I did nothing! You stole him and I took him back!"

I heard a sharp heavy sound and heard Mildred Sanger gasp. Then I heard the sound of something hitting the ground and Mildred Sanger groaned in pain.

"I tracked him down and I took him home. He'll never leave me now."

"So," Mildred said slowly, "The ice boils at last Helen."

Once we were out of that room, nobody was watching and we crept along in the other direction. Before too long we were out of the building and running through the parking lot towards the shelter of the alleyways and their shadows.

“I hope Mildred is okay.” Raven said.

“They're going to put her under house arrest like they did your parents. They might even kill her, like they did Bart. She's out for the count. This was her last move on our behalf.” Owl said.

“I hope my parents are okay too.” Raven said quietly.

“We all do,” Viper said, “I think Owl just means that we count count on them for support. We're on our own now. He's just a dork about how he says it.”

Owl didn't look up as he spoke, “I need some supplies from my house."

"Nothing is going to be there. They've cleaned out all the houses after they send us to the relocation center."

"They did, but they didn't look really hard. I think they felt guilty about one of Them shooting my mom. And I know Mr. Wolf kind of feels some kind of loyalty or gratitude or something to my dad for that deer he brought over way back when. So there's a bunch of hidden things in my house that I want to grab."

We headed to Owl's house. The first thing I noticed when we arrived was that the windows were boarded up and so was the front door. The old pickup truck was missing from the drive way. I guess that They had decided they needed another truck.

"They took all the stuff that Mom and I hadn't hidden, and pretty much all the big hidden stuff as well. So there won't be much left, but we can use what is left.

As we walked up, Owl reflexively checked the birdhouse. And as he did, a note fell out, and landed in the snow. Owl stared at it, as though it were an unexploded grenade.

We all looked at the paper, and finally Raven snatched it up. "It's going to get damp in the snow." She admonished.

Raven handed Owl the note, and Owl stared at it for a long time before opening it.

"Well what does it say?" Viper asked.

"It's from the day she was shot." Owl said, trembling, "It looks like she wrote it right before she went out."

"Well? What does it say?"

"Hey kid, things are getting crazy and we need to make sure certain people understand that they aren't kings and queens to rule over the rest of us." Owl stumbled a little here.

"Doesn't that sound like Mildred?" Viepr asked.

Owl gathered himself and continued, "I don't want you to be scared. Remember that I love you, always. Remember that I'm proud of you."

Owl's voice drained away as he tried to keep reading, and Viper leaned in and put her arm around him.

"I'll see you in time for dinner. Love Mom." He finished haltingly.

The woods were really eerie as we walked through them. Owl was in the lead and the big difference was how quiet things were. We'd never had problems seeing animals in the woods before this, even in the winter. BUt there was nothing. The woods were silent as a graveyard.

We wandered for several hours, finally hitting a fence that marked one of the cattle fields for a farm on Sumter's Ridge. Owl climbed over it, and the rest of us followed. I think Owl was planning to kill a cow for meat. Wolf went over last and got caught on the barbed wire. He wrenched himself free and the old wooden posts of the fence shook with the force of it,  The post knocked against a red cedar tree next to is and a huge dump of snow landed on Wolf. He laughed and shook himself clean, brushing off what stuck.

As we entered the field, we discovered that we weren't the first people to think that. The field was almost empty. Most of the snow had been stamped down to brown mush. Around the field were sporadic red spattered stains on the earth. Big red patches amidst the white and brown. And in one corner, was a cow carcass. The cow had been partially skinned and dressed, but not completely. Animals had got to carcass now, and had eaten the meat off the bones and the organs out of the exposed torso of the animal.

"Why didn't whoever killed it, finish skinning it and cutting it up?" Wolf asked, confusion  apparent in his voice.

We moved closer, but everyone was on edge, so we moved slowly. As we got close enough to see around the carcass we saw the body of a man lifeless in a bank of crimson snow, with a pick axe rammed through his midsection. He was dressed in red flannel, which helped hide the gore, but it wasn't pretty to look at either way. The animals had been eating his corpse as well. There wasn't much in the way of skin or meat on the body and more than one creature had made an attempt at tearing open the heavy corduroy pants the corpse was wearing to get at the meat on the legs. The corpse looked as those it had been nibbled apart by thousands of sets of tiny jaws with tiny teeth. Kind of how I imagined that piranhas would eat.

I turned away. Wolf put a hand on my shoulder, "Bud, don't look away. Not looking is what got us all into this mess."

"there's not much left to hunt, I guess." Raven said, "It makes sense. If I was an animal, I'd stay away from here too."

"Maybe they've mostly just over hunted this area. Maybe there isn't anything left to stay away."

"That's not good for anyone if it's true."

"When has anything that we've learned in the last few months been good for anyone?"

We stalked around the woods for several hours, but didn't see anything larger than a chickadee. Owl was looking more and more defeated the longer we hunted and saw nothing. When we finally gave up and headed for town, Owl looked like a helium balloon a week after the party- crumbled and deflated.

As we swung around towards our hide out, we got close to the town dump. As we passed by the dump, Raven noticed a stray dog- some sort of poodle breed- nosing around in the piles of garage for food. We stopped for a moment to watch. The dog was thin, not starving, but hanging on.

"Should we help it?" Raven asked cautiously.

"I don't know if we can. I think it's doing better than we are." Owl said.

We watched the poodle for several minutes as it scrounged litte bits and peices of things it was willing to eat out of the piles of garbage and wolfed them down hungrilly. Then we heard the sound of something big moving through the garbage, the weird sound of styrofoam on aluminum as large legs pushed through piles of waste. A skinny faced woman in a heavy ill fitting man's winter coat pushed over the pile of garbage and looked around. I recognised her as coming from Sumter's ridge, but didn't know her name. She spotted the poodle, and called to it. The dog looked up warilly and cautiously wagged its tail. The woman reached into her coat and pulled out a small revolver pistol. She brought the gun up, held it with both hands and fired, and then fired again.

Raven gasped and covered her mouth.

Both shots hit the poodle in the face and the dog twisted horribly before falling to the ground in a heap. The woman waded through the garbage to the dog. She pulled out a skinning knife and began to dress and clean the dog right where it fell.

I could see Raven was crying.

"Let's go," Wolf said sourly, "It's kind of obvious that nobody is doing better than anybody else right now."

Once we were well away from the dump, Raven spoke.

"I can't do this on my own. Even with you guys, you're great, but we need sombody else to help or we're going to end up like that poor poodle, or that poor cow, or that guy with the pick axe in his tummy. We need somebody. We lost Mildred. Who else can we turn to?"

I noticed that Wolf was shivering. I looked a little closer, he was breathing really quickly too. He looked really pale too, now that I was looking him carefully.

"Wolf are you okay?" I asked.

"I don't know. Are you okay? Wait. If I don't no, then does that mean yes?" Wolf shook his head.

Owl looked over at Wolf, "You sound drunk." he said slowly.

"I don't, dad would murder me more than usual. I'm just tired. Maybe a little spaced out." He shook his head again, as though trying to clear it.

Owl looked closer, and then he turned to Raven and Viper, "You guys have first-aid training. Are you seeing what I'm seeing?"

Raven nodded.

Viper added, "Hypothermia, your mom called it with him not wearing a coat."

"It looks pretty mild, even though he's loopy. Everything else says he's still in the first stages." Raven said

"That makes it sound like I'm losing a video game." Wolf said.

"Since its mild, we should just use his own body heat." Raven said.

"So let's get him out of his wet shirt, and get him into something warm and dry." Viper said.

"Can we get him to the cabin?" Raven asked.

"We're closer to town, let's find an empty home and raid it for clothes." Owl suggested.

"Now we're stealing." Viper said flatly.

"This is Wolf. Yes, we're stealing. friends trump stuff." I said.

We ended up using Mrs. Giller's house. She had left a window open on the second floor, propped open with a copy of 'The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire'. I boosted Owl up to her balconey and from there he squirmed in through the window. From there he was able to unlock the back door and let us in.

Wolf was a little spacey, but he wasn't delirious or antyhing. His shirt was the only thing that was wet, probably from the snow that fell on him earlier. We dug out a t-shirt that wasn't pink for him to wear, which took a while. In the end Wolf had to settle for a powder blue shirt with a pile of cartoon kittens on the front. From their we stuffed him in a knitted sweater with a floral design that was mostly brown. And we followed that up by wrapping him in Mrs. Giller's housecoat because none of her jackets would fit him.

The house was as cold as the outside, but there wasn't any wind and we were dry. So we rested here for a bit while Wolf warmed back up. The whole thing had been a draining experience at the end of a draining ordeal and we were pretty much run dry.

"That was weird." Wolf said at last. "It felt like part of me was dying."

"Hey." I said, "That's kind of the point, isn't it? This is not about who we were. We aren't those people anymore, they died. The town we knew is gone- it died, our parents are strangers to us. We aren't who we were.  We're something new."

“We don't know enough yet. Owl, you know a lot about this stuff, but what do we do when everything's broken?”

“I don’t know.”

"Of course we don't. Batman trained his whole life to be Batman. We're a little behind in our homework here." Wolf said.

“We haven't become adults yet. We aren't warriors. We need adults to help us, to teach us. We need somebody that we can trust.”

“we don’t need adults. We need elders.”

“I don’t trust anybody trying to do the same old thing anymore.” Viper said quietly.

“We don't have elders anymore, do we?”

“We have Mildred.”

“She’s gone.”

"Gone Obi-won Kenobi style. And you know, what I think. I think that if Mildred Sanger is going to go all Obi-Won Kenobi, then we kind of owe it to her to go all Rebel Alliance on Them." I added.

“Okay, but how do we do that? We don’t exactly have much to work with here. We can’t even get by on our own.”

"You need to be like Batman here, not Superman. You don't have the super powers to be the good guy. Only people way stronger than the villains can afford to play fair when the bad guys don't." Wolf said to Owl.

“Maybe we can find somebody on our side. Most people are trying to get along as best they can. But I bet a lot of people disagree with what’s happening. Professor Tuttle tried to warn us about all of this stuff in his lessons. Maybe he can help us. Be our Yoda, now that Mildred is gone.”

“It’s worth a try. I don’t know who else to turn to at this point.”

Viper shook her head, “I don’t think we should turn to anybody. That was whole point. Adults are useless.”

“Yeah, but so are we until we can manage on our own.”

“Okay, fine. But I have a bad feeling about this. And so if we're going to see an adult, we should hide our equipment first."

"There's a lack of trust."

"I don't lack trust, I just trust him to act like all the other adults we've seen."

We trudged through slush and gravel towards Professor Tuttle's house. The Professor lived in a big old house that had belonged to the Professor's father. Professor Tuttle had inherited it a few years back when his father passed away after struggling with throat cancer for years. Before that, Professor Tuttle lived in basement suite of the house and paid his father rent. Now the whole house was the Professor's.

We approached cautiously and tried to ring the doorbell. A lot of places had no electricity these days. But the bell rang, clearly Professor Tuttle's power was till on.

Professor Tuttle answered the door, and looked at us in confusion for a moment before regaining his composure.

"I'm sorry. I didnt't expect to see any of my students on their own recognizance these days. How can I help you?"

"We need advice." Raven said.

"We need guidance." Owl added.

"We need a clue." Wolf finished.

"I suspect you also need a decent meal. Come in, I'll get you something and we can eat while you explain what you need from me."

He ushered us in. I noticed how warm Tuttle's house was compared to the relocation center. He sat us down in his living room, in chairs that were really old grandfather type chairs, and went into the other room. We waited nervously while he clattered around in the other room. He seemed to take a long time, but it was hard to tell. the professor's comment about food had reminded me how hungry I was. And hearing him rattle around making food was making my stomache ache with hunger.

He finally came back with bowls of chicken vegetable soup. It was clearly instant soup from a can, but it smelled amazing, and all of us devoured it.

Professor Tuttle waited while we ate, with a sad patient smile on his face. When we finished, he cleared away the bowls and sat back down.

"All right. Now, since you aren't in the relocation center, and since I know that you were assigned to the center; I assume that you are AWOL and attempting to manage on your own. Is this correct?"

Owl nodded.

"Everything's broken and we need another way. We were hoping you could help."

Professor Tuttle furrowed his brow.

"What do you mean?" He asked.

"All your spider web lines have broken down. Haven't they? The crisis that Mr. Wolf was warning us about has broken everything, because people panicked and did the wrong things and the wrong times. Right?" I said.

After a moment's pause, he nodded.

Viper continued, "And without your spiderwebs connecting everyone who makes stuff with the people who buy it and the people get the material used to make stuff, everything breaks down. No more life the way we know it. No more white picket fences and two car garages."

The Professor was silent, but nodded again.

"My dad and Mrs. Winter have stockpiled a bunch of food and supplies and stuff, but they didn't get enough before things fell apart, and they're running out early I think." Wolf said.

The Professor was still silent.

Raven continued, "And people don't know how to live together without that, so everyone is fighting, and trying to control things and nobody seems to know what to do. And we don't see how any of this is going to work, or how it will do anything except let everyone die really slowly."

"And?" Professor Tuttle quietly.

"And Mrs. Winter seems to be planning to use Mr. Wolf's army to make sure that the people who starve first are the ones that she doesn't like. And I guess she wants to build her own little country to rule with the people who are left over. Only I'm not sure that she can pull it off." Viper said.

"And so we need another way. We've tried doing this on our own, but we don't know enough yet. The animals are all gone or been hunted by other people," I added, "So we need advice on how to get through, because we aren't sure what to do. All of options seem like bad ones."

Professor Tuttle was quiet for a long time, and finally, when he spoke, he asked, "How do you know that the method being used by your parents and teachers and the other adults won't work?"

"Because my mother is dead. Raven's parents are locked up. Rabbit's mom feels blackmailed into what she's doing. Everyone on the Town Council who disagreed was either locked up, or disappeared in an avalanche." Owl said.

"This is like something out a 'The Empire Strikes back'," I said.
Professor Tuttle nodded.

"And where's the value in looking for another way? So what, in other words?"

Viper took a deep breath.

"The old way isn't working. So we need a new way."

"You are, of course, correct." Professor Tuttle said, "What you are missing, and it's only one thing- so don't take it too hard- is that this is the new way. It isn't pleasant, of course, but it is a reality."

"So you think we should just go back to the relocation center then?" Raven's voice had raised a little.

There was a heavy knock at the door. And then a voice said, "Council Authority, we're coming in. Do not attempt to run."

Professor Tuttle nodded again.

"Yes, that's exactly what I think."

"You sold us out." Viper said in disbelief.

Heavy men in ballistic armor and face plates marched into the room.

"Well done sir, excellent job keeping them here until we could arrive. We'll take them back to the center now. They shouldn't be any trouble in the future."

"Professor, what's the point in teaching us to think, to set our minds free, if you're going to help put the rest of us in cages?" Viper said, her voice cracking in outrage.

"The Castle walls do not hold, if the stones are removed from their places." Professor Tuttle said, but he wouldn't look at us when he spoke.

"Hey Professor. How do you know that they won't lock you up once you aren't useful to them anymore? It's not like Mr. Wolf trusts people who think too much."

They marched us back to the Community Center, where Mrs. Winter stood waiting for us. Mrs. Winter looked at us three, mostly at Owl, who appeared to be trying to staring her down.

“What you are doing is criminal. If we are going to preserve human life, we must maintain structure and order.”

Owl shook her head, “Structure and order are code words for dying slowly. I do okay in math and I can see that there are only so many containers of rice in the warehouse. And I can see that no more food is coming in. And I can see that every day, the people that stay here get less and less to eat. Your structure and your order are just there so we can can starve all neat and tidy. Screw you and your goon brigade Mrs. Winter. Adults are worthless if this is the best they can come up with, I'd rather go wild than die tame.”

Mrs. Winter shook her head and one of Them reached out a long arm to grasp Owl by his collar, “Order will be maintained whether you like it or not. Disciplinary action will be a reduction of rations to one third general levels for a period of three weeks.”

Mrs. Winter paused and then continued.

"I know you snuck out during the disturbance created by the late Mildred Sanger. I suspect that may have even been planned to do so. As a result, I think it's only just that you have a look at the human cost of the disturbance that you hid behind."

Mrs. Winter had four of Them lead us into a large unheated annex build behind the ice rink. The inside was unheated, and bitter cold, and lined up on mismatched tables that looked stolen from people's living rooms were about twenty corpses. Raven coughed and then doubled over and retched. We helped her up. They seemed oblivious to Raven's pain, they just waited until she straightened and then ushered us through the room to a table at the back. We passed the corpses of several people I recognized, including Viper's grandmother. Viper saw it and cried out. She buried herself in Owl's chest and began crying. Owl held her and again They waited without a word. When Viper managed to pull herself together, They pushed us forward again. On the table in the back of the room was Mildred Sanger's Corpse.

In September, I had never seen a dead body, and now I had seen dozens. The first was Owl's Mom and I didn't like how close together these two occurrences sat in the story of my life so far. I had the sudden sense that I would be getting far more practice staring at dead bodies than I ever expected to get.

The first thing I noticed is that everything became hyper real and unreal at the same time. I was staring at Mildred's face and it stood out in microscopic detail while everything around me warped and defocused.

Mildred's eyes were closed. I had, for some reason, expected them to be open. I think I had seen a lot of movies where the hero had to close the victim's eyelids. I noticed that her grey hair was wet, as though it had been washed, and was laid strangely- as though the hair were being positioned to hide something. The strangest thing was her skin color. Her skin was grey, she looked like a black and white photo that somebody had been trying to colorize, but hadn't quite finished. The color was devastating. The grey said, more than anything else- this is not a person anymore. The color told me that this is a body, decaying on a table. And from the color of her skin alone I knew, there was nothing left of the person I had known and depended upon for answers.

Mildred wasn't just dead. She was gone.

We marched like zombies back to the main seating area, and sat down.

"I'm used up." Owl said. Viper nodded, and I found myself nodding along with them.

"We tried everything. And people have died for us, and none of it helped. And none of it mattered. We can't recognise the town now. Would anyone call this place Safehope anymore. What's left?"

Viper said, "Everyone who ever helped us is either missing, broken, or dead- or has already betrayed us. We're alone. We're kids. We've got nothing left to try."

I added, "I don't know who my mom is anymore. We don't know where Raven's parents are. Viper's parents are even weirder than they were, and we can't trust them. Owl's dad is still broken, and his Mom...And Wolf's dad, well what do we do when the world is like this?"

We were silent for a minute or so, soaking in our grief and misery as though it were a swimming pool. And then Raven stood up.

"I'm used up too." She said, "I don't know what's happened to my mom and my dad. They were good people and they were trying to save us from the adults, and they were even trying to save the adults. But they lost. And Mildred was trying to save us too. And she's, she's gone. She's dead. And we still ended up back here. And Owl's mom is dead, trying to get food for us kids. And so I don't care if I think I'm used up. Mildred got used up. Owl's mom got used up. That's what used up really is. We only think we're used up."

"This is pretty harsh buds." Wolf said from sidelines.

"It's only harsh if we stop." Raven said, her voice actually sounded angry- which was new for Raven, "Right now I don't know who else is fighting their fight. My parents, Owl's mom, Mildred, they fought for us and our future, and if we stop fighting then everything they did was pointless. I don't care if we think we're used up, we owe it to them to try as hard as they did. I'm not done until I'm talking to Mildred Sanger again. I'm not done until they stop me."

“How many people have died because of us? Russell? My mom? Mildred? I don’t feel like I’m worth that many people dying?”

“No,” Raven said firmly, standing up as she continued to speak, “This does not end here. We have lost too much, had too many sacrifices and too much pain to stop here. Every person who’s died, whether for you or me or us or just for the idea that people could still be good to each other, is our responsibility.”

“What are you talking about? That’s not fair?”

“I never said it was fair. But if we stop, if we decide that this is all too much, then Mildred died for no reason. Then Frisk died protecting nobody. Then your Mom died fighting for nobody. Then we lost Russell and his family for no reason. The Bart got beaten up, and my parents disappeared all for no reason.”

“Oh come on!” Owl said.

“No! You will listen right now! Because, I! Am! talking!” Raven, and Owl’s eye’s widened and he sat down, “I don’t know where my parents are. And the reason I don’t know is because they tried to make this right. I don’t know if they are alive or dead, if they are okay or starving worse than the people here!”

“But that’s my point it's too much.” Owl said weakly.

“Then if it's too much, we can fail. We can die or get dragged away like Bart and my parents. But we do not quit. That’s what we owe everyone else who has either died or been punished up till now. We don’t stop, we don’t fall apart. We stand together and if we fall- then we fall fighting. I will not give up, when my parents never did. I will not give up after what Mildred did for us.”

“But it didn’t work. We failed.”

“We lost a battle. One battle. We are not done until we can’t get back up. And I am not going to let any member of the only family I have left decide not to get back up and fight when I know they could. So I don’t care how much it hurts. You still have your dad, I may not have either- so you will drag your butt up and stand with us and get back in the fight. You know how to do the stuff we need. More than anyone else amongst us, you know what we need- so get up and man up and let’s get going.”

“Well, hell.” Wolf said, “After that, I’m not backing out. Let’s go die like heroes.”

“I’m still here. I’m not going anywhere. I watched my mom compromise until there wasn’t anything left of what she wasn’t trying to protect. So yeah, to the death if we have to.”

"You can't see the whole until you break it up, and then its gone. You only know it when you've lost it."

Owl was standing in the darkest part of the room and the shadows seemed to swallow him whole and make him a part of them.

"The master loves the good slave. But what makes us good? The master wants us to obey and behave, and the master says that this is good. Well, I aim to misbehave. Because a good slave is a poor human being."

"You aren't making a lot of sense Owl."

"Mrs. Sanger died standing up and being free. My mom died trying to stay free. But more than that, I think they both died trying to keep us kids free. And I think that we owe them our best efforts on subject. I'm tired of being a little boy and I'm tired of being helpless. The only people that helps is the people who want to be in charge. I think it's time to be free."

Sparrow had walked up beside us. He tapped Owl on the shoulder, "So, what are you in for?"

"Thinking like a hero." Owl answered.

"Oo, good answer."

“No, not good enough!” Hawk said, striding towards Owl.

“You know,” Owl said, “I'm starting to associate your voice with immanent doom.”

“You'd better! Our town is dead, your mother is dead and your dog is dead. And we're all probably next. And there is no hope and nothing left to fight for or believe in!" Hawk had grabbed Owl by his shirt and was shaking him.

I could see Wolf tense up- his hands closing into fists- about to intervene, when a low growl intervened first.

Hawk froze mid shake. Owl's mouth dropped open in startled recognition and he looked around wildly.

Finally his gaze settled on a folding table with a plastic table cloth. Crouched ono his belly with his fangs barred, Frisk was glaring out from under the table at Hawk.

There was a moment like a note held in the middle of a song, where time seemed to stop. Owl eye's shone like he was about to cry, although he didn't. I couldn't tell if anyone was speaking, but everything seemed really quiet. Time hung there, floating slowly around Owl. And then he grabbed Hawk's hands, pulled free of her grip and ran over to the table and knelt in front of his dog.

The fangs vanished and Frisk's tongue hung out in joy, and his butt wiggled in excitement and Owl scratched behind the terrier's ears. Frisk vibrated with obvious joy at Owl's presence and squirmed and wiggled in delight as Owl rubbed his belly and scratched his ears and back. But to Frisk's credit, he didn't sit up or leave the safety of the table and its concealing table cloth.

Nobody said anything. For all I knew, Frisk was the only non-guard dog left alive in town. That he was still alive, somehow alive, seemed like a miracle, a gift from a universe that I would have previously called mean and nasty. Nobody spoke. Nobody wanted to jinx things, nobody wanted to get the miracle dog caught and killed.

In the midst of so much awful stuff, we had found a delicate fragile miracle, and we had to protect it.

Owl stood up.

"My mother is dead. My teacher is dead. My town may even be dead. But my dog is alive. And I am alive and you are alive and we are all alive. My mother died fighting. My teacher died fighting. If I'm going to die, I want to die fighting. If I'm going to live, I want to live the same way.”

Nobody spoke. Frisk's survival seemed to have granted Owl the right to speak uninterrupted.

“You can do what you like. I've got a fight to pick."