Fifty Years of Peace (Abrupt Dissent Series) by Charlotte Andrews Page B

that showed up.”
     
    “That means that you fought people from Louisville?”
     
    “That’s right.”
     
    “And from all over?”
     
    “Jenny, I don’t know where they were all from.”
     
    “Did you…did you kill them?”
     
    “If I had to.”
     
    She sat down on one of the black boxes, shaking her head at how little people knew of what really happened.
     
    “I never wanted to tell you Jenny because I didn’t think it would matter. You were happy, and you didn’t need an old man putting fifty-year old nightmares in your head.”
     
    Tears came to her eyes at what her grandfather must have been through, and she flew to him and held him.
     
    “Thank you so much Grandpa. Thank you for telling me.”
     
    He stopped pedaling on the generator and held her for a long time. She closed her eyes and listened to his heartbeat until the lights above them flickered and died.
     
    After a long silence, Jenny unwrapped her arms, and her grandpa relit the lamp at his side to provide light.
     
    “Why don’t we have computers now?” Jenny asked as she followed her grandfather back up the stairs. “We never see any when we go to Old Louisville. The teachers never talk about them.”
     
    “That is a question I’ve asked myself many times,” he said. “I took these from a library in town one day pretty soon after the computers crashed. There used to be lot of them around, but it’s been decades since I’ve seen one anywhere.”
     
    “So why are you hiding all these in the tool shed?” she asked. “Why aren’t you telling people about them?”
     
    “Jenny do you think your grandpa is smart?” he asked.
     
    “Of course.”
     
    “Do you think he’s the only smart person in the county?”
     
    “Well, no.”
     
    “Exactly, so think about what I told you, and ask yourself why you don’t learn that version in school, and why they only ever talk about food and farming.”
     
    The revelation hit her with force, and she nearly slipped on the steps. He reached up and pushed the trap door open.
     
    “Because the New States doesn’t want us to know that it wasn’t the U.S. that caused the Starving. Why would they do that Grandpa?”
     
    “I don’t know,” he said as he closed the shed door. “All I can tell you is that the people I used to talk to about these kind of things, those people that helped keep this town alive when it was hardest, a lot of them have disappeared…”
     
    He trailed off and lifted the lantern high overhead. “Who’s there?” he called.
     
    She turned in the direction he was facing, and saw George Washington sitting on their back porch, waiting for them with a rifle against his shoulder.

Chapter Nine
     
    “Now you want to put that weapon down boy,” her grandfather called. His voice had a deep note of threat that she’d never heard before, and suddenly she realized that the man who’d killed to keep his town alive was facing the scared boy from the festival.
     
    “Stay where you are,” the boy called out. “Put your hands up, both of you!”
     
    “Grandpa…” Jenny whispered.
     
    “Do as he says,” her grandfather said. He raised his hands, and Jenny stepped out from behind him and did the same. “Girl you get behind me…” he hissed.
     
    “Don’t move!” George called.
     
    “Grandpa,” she said loud enough for George to hear her. “I know him, this is George Washington.”
     
    “The boy from the fair,” her grandfather called, “the terrorist?”
     
    “No!” George shouted. He stood and tightened the rifle against his shoulder.
     
    “You followed my daughter here to my house, is that it? Well take whatever you came here for. We’ve got money, I’ll show you where it is; if it’s food you want we have that too, but if you try and harm my granddaughter I will see the end of you.”
     
    “What were you doing in that shed?” George asked. Moonlight trembled against his thin cheeks, and his eyes swept back and forth behind the