A New World: Taken by John O'Brien

later, the ones gathered outside are guided into what used to be the school lunch room along with the other prisoners from all of the buildings.
    “Guess it’s dinner time,” I say.
    “Guess so,” Greg responds.
    Following their apparent dinner, everyone is herded into the gym for a short time and then the females are brought back to the classrooms.   There is still no sign of the kids or Gonzalez.   The tower guards are exchanged and, close to the sun disappearing over the hills behind us, the rest of the wooden towers are manned.   The faint sound of generators reach us and the perimeter lights turn on shortly thereafter.
    “Okay, time for us to get our own bite to eat and close up shop,” I say standing and brushing off pine needles and dirt.
    “Sounds good,” Greg says rising as well.   “We’ll compare notes and times with any radio calls.”
    I pull in the outlying guards.   We gulp down our meager dinner while taking a look at the radio logs and compare them with our observations.   We remove the tarp from the windows and the night shift takes over, continuing to watch the camp from the Humvee windows.   We gathered a fair bit during the afternoon but not enough for any pattern to emerge.   The night should prove interesting though.   I’m almost eager to see what happens.   This will make a huge difference in what we do.   If we have to go in during the day, I’m thinking we’ll take the camp first and wait for the buses.   With the guards so close to the prisoners, that will be a risky proposition to say the least.   At no time did I notice the guards separate, which means there is a high potential for collateral casualties.   Maybe we’ll have to take the field out first or a two-pronged attack.   I’m just not sure at this point.
    I stay up with the night shift to observe the night activities.   We parked the Humvee so that we can see into the camp from the cab and laid branches across the top to disguise the silhouette.   The vehicles are sealed in case any night runners appear in our location.   If we have to, we’ll start up and leave.   Night descends slowly, blanketing the area first in the blue shadows of dusk as the sun vanishes behind the hills, casting reds and oranges in the sky, deepening to the brilliant orange-red of the sunset as the sun says its goodbye to the day.   Darkness envelopes us as our time of relative safety ends.   With little surrounding light to blanket them, the stars twinkle brightly overhead against the velvet sky.
    The camp itself is bathed in the same darkness as ourselves.   I see the gray outlines of the buildings within a field of surrounding blackness.   The perimeter lights cast arcs of light outward to a considerable distance, illuminating the fence and surrounding area in a crisp silver-white light.   The lights leave no areas of darkness except a small area on the west side where the trees have been cut back.   A small gap in the light protection exists.   Not a big one and more of a gray shading than complete darkness, but a gap nonetheless.   However, spotlights, either handheld or mounted, stab out into the area from the towers.   Their lights venture further into the darkness than the perimeter lights reach.
    Several very faint shrieks reach our location, seeming to come from further to the south towards town.   The night runners are out.   This is the part that I’m most interested in seeing.   The lights stabbing out from the camp won’t harm the night runners, at least that I know of.   Perhaps it’s the brightness of the lights that keeps them away although our lights in the buildings didn’t seem to bother them in the least.   I focus my binoculars on the area just outside of where the perimeter light boundary is.
    “There.   Can you see them?   Just on the outside of where the lights reach,” I ask Henderson who is sitting beside me monitoring the area as well.
    “I don’t see a thing, sir,” he