Among the Free by Margaret Peterson Haddix

that, Poppies?”
    Silently, Luke inched back toward the woods. Once he was under cover of the trees, he stood again and tiptoed as quickly as he could away from the direction of the road. His heart wouldn’t stop pounding; he couldn’t keep from turning his head from side to side compulsively, trying to look all around him all at once. He startled every time he heard a chipmunk running up a tree, a squirrel rustling in the leaves.
    Why am I so scared? he wondered. I wanted to see the Population Police overthrown. I dreamed about it. I was working toward that goal. If they’re out of power, shouldn’t I be happy? He kept hearing the gunfire and the blaring horn echoing inhis mind. He kept shivering with fear. But they were attacking the Population Police. My enemies. Shouldn’t the enemies of my enemies be my friends?
    He couldn’t help wondering about the person driving that truck on official Population Police business, delivering food. Had it been someone who truly believed in the Population Police cause, who wanted to see third children dead? Or had it been someone like Luke, who’d joined up solely to sabotage the Population Police from inside—who’d maybe ended up dying for a cause he opposed? Maybe it had been someone like the boy back in Chiutza, who’d joined the Population Police just to get food, who would join any cause that fed him. Did that make it wrong for the rebels to have killed him?
    Luke was confused. He was lost now too. He’d had no problem walking toward the east when the sun was low in the sky, but now it was almost directly overhead. He kept tilting his head back, looking up, and the sun seemed to waver, all depending on how he held his head.
    â€œJust keep walking in the same direction, stupid,” he muttered to himself. But that was easier said than done when he constantly had to dodge around trees, step over fallen logs, duck under low-hanging branches. He could never be sure that he was aiming in the right direction. What if he was walking straight back to Chiutza?
    They saw me in a Population Police uniform before. They’d remember me. . . . They’d recognize my voice from last night. . . . The terror coursed through Luke’s body so strongly, it wasall he could do to keep walking. He couldn’t let himself think about anything except placing one foot down and then the other.
    Shortly after what Luke guessed to be noon, when the sun began to drop a little in the sky, the woods directly ahead of him thinned out. He slowed down his stride, became even more careful to avoid stepping on twigs or into piles of dry, rustly leaves. He could see roofs and walls— was it Chiutza again? Then he noticed how many of the walls were broken off and crumbling, how many of the roofs had gaping holes open to the sky. It wasn’t Chiutza. Chiutza had been run-down and ramshackle but patched up. This village was in total ruins.
    Luke crept forward, watching for any sign of humans: smoke from the chimneys, perhaps, or the sound of a baby crying, or the smell of cooking stew. But the tumbledown houses and huts before him were silent and still. Timidly Luke stepped into the clearing around the village. He held his breath, listening harder. All he could hear was the wind blowing through empty window frames, making the same kind of lonely howl it had made blowing through empty branches in the woods.
    There were no people in this village. Luke was so sure of it that he walked to the exact center of the houses and huts—what had once been the village square, perhaps. A rutted dirt road led out of the village, but it looked as if no one had driven down it in a long, long time.
    â€œWhere did everyone go?” he muttered, truly puzzled.He knew about the droughts and famines years ago, before he was born. That was the reason the Government had instituted the Population Law, the one that made it illegal for people to have more