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Authors: Lara Fanning

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BOOK: Red Fox
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So I stand, shaking violently, certain I know what horrendous fate awaits me. More names are called and more people are sorted. There is a rising sense of alarm among people, along with restrained anger. Yet, as families are torn apart and everyone realises the D group are being drafted towards their death, no one makes a stand, and the thought of how pitiful and weak we are infuriates me—for I would never let my family be murdered without fighting and screaming and risking my own life.

I don’t know how long we stand there waiting for our names to be called. It must be hours, because my feet are aching with numbness and the sun is high in the sky by the time Seiger reaches the surnames beginning with
T
and calls out, “Benjamin True.”

After hearing so many names and letters called, my mind has gone blank but at the mention of this name, I seize up. That is Clara’s father, and Clara’s entire family is Christian. That means they will be placed in D. My eyes dart wildly for some sign of Clara’s family, but I can’t see them amongst the hundreds of other people. Then Clara’s father, modest and kind, appears on the stage. His face has drained of all colour.

“Benjamin True?” Seiger says for confirmation and Benjamin nods. He runs his thick index finger down his list. “D.”

No.

No, this cannot happen. I see Benjamin’s face fall but with the guns trained on him, he has no choice but to step from the platform and leave through the brick archway, watched by hundreds of sympathetic, horrified eyes. Everyone knows Benjamin and his family because we buy bread from his store. The whole town knows what a sweet family they are, and seeing this good man sent to the D group extinguishes any hope we had of a fair trial.

Most of the people in the square have now realised that those in D won’t be returning. Even adults have broken down into hysterical tears and there is the occasion sob of despair that racks the air. I look at my parents. They don’t look frightened. Their faces are contorted with rage. They have no reason to be fearful. If my suspicions are right, the people in A are mostly farmers so my entire family is safe. Except me because I lied. But I still have some time to figure out a plan. Clara doesn’t have time.

“Where’s Clara?” I say to my dad. My voice is little more than a croaky whisper.

He scans the crowd for her and so do I but there are too many people to pick out my best friend. I have to find her and help her escape. She has to get out. I try to pull away from Jack, but his hand tightens around my arm. I spin around to him, searching his face for a sign that he has a plan. There is no clever, logical look on his face, only a hopeless expression of shock and despair. I see the tears welling in his brown eyes so they shine and my chest suddenly feels hollow. He has no plan. The girl he has fantasized about for years is about to be murdered. My best friend since kindergarten is on the brink of death, and there is nothing either of us can do about it.

“Clara True?” Seiger calls out.

My whole body freezes as I finally see the brunette hair bob passed the remaining people who still crowd the front of the stage. Clara steps onto the platform and faces Seiger calmly. She looks so religious! Hands folded neatly in front of her, looking clean and pure in a white frock. Her angelic expression for once does not work in her favour. Seiger looks her up and down and then glances at his extensive list.

“Hmm…” Seiger says. “You’re in the—”

“NO!” I shriek.

4.

 

Every face in the square turns towards me as I pummel my way passed people to reach the stage. Even Clara and Seiger watch me like they weren’t expecting someone to eventually speak up. My family hollers for me in frantic terror. I hear every gun on the wall load and the combined noise sounds like dozens of beetles clicking their pincers. Launching myself onto the stage, I yank Clara behind me, putting myself between her and Seiger. Livid, my body tenses like a cat about to pounce and I bare my teeth at Seiger.

“You can’t put her in D,” I spit with venomous fury. “She is the kindest person I know!”

“Freya, it’s okay. Don’t risk yourself,” Clara says. Her voice is level and calm, like she has already accepted her fate. I ignore her.

“You won’t take her,” I say to Seiger, narrowing my eyes in a hostile, challenging glare.

Realising I won’t back down with simple threats, Seiger takes the pistol from his holster and taps it once in the palm of his open hand. “Get out of the way or I’ll be made to forcibly remove you.”

“No,” I snarl.

I’m unaware of anything around me expect huge Seiger looming in front of me with a gun in his hand, and Clara’s tiny body shielded behind me. Seiger shakes his head, like he actually regrets having to kill, and raises the gun towards my head. I hear my family scream out in horror. The entire town square is suddenly echoing with roars of fury and shrieks of terror. The crowd surges towards the stage in a wave of battering bodies and outstretched limbs. Children scream and bawl. I hear several gunshots ring out but no bullets hit me.

A pump of adrenalin courses through my veins like fire. One instant I am looking into the gaping black mouth of Seiger’s pistol and the next, I lunge at him, hands outstretched like a lion pouncing on its prey. My fingernails dig deep into the exposed skin around his neck. I hiss like a wild animal, and he gives a shout of surprise, trying to tear me away with his enormous hands. I hold tight and sink my teeth into the area where his neck flows into his shoulder muscle. I taste metallic blood. My jaw twinges as my canine teeth slide all the way into his flesh, so deep that my teeth touch bone. People are screaming everywhere and gunshots are firing every few seconds, yet nothing connects with my body.

After recovering from his shock, Seiger grabs me violently. His hands wrap around my throat and squeeze so tight I can’t breathe. I turn from offense to defence and claw at his hand as he drags me away from his body. My teeth slip from the puncture wounds I’ve made and I writhe violently, choking and gagging loudly. Seiger holds me out in front of him like a ragdoll, fingers tightening until my airway is completely blocked. There is a moment of blind, white terror in which my vision blurs and my every thought turns towards the claw-like hand grasping my trachea.

Then I’m thrown to the ground ruthlessly. My head hits the concrete with a crack. Sudden pain shoots through my temple like a pointed stake has been driven through my brain. Gasping for breath, I struggle to my feet again, teetering dangerously. Several drops of blood plop to the ground at my feet. I feel a weeping heat around my temple and when I reach to touch it and withdraw my hand, it is covered in sticky vermillion. My stomach gives an unpleasant heave as I see the children on the stage staring at me, tears streaming down their faces. Do they know what I’ve done? Do they realise I am going to die protecting my friend?

I turn my attention back towards Seiger and am glad to see a good chunk of flesh hangs from his shoulder by just a few bloody tendons. The wound I’ve given him is deep and bleeding freely. The crimson trail of blood vanishes beneath his jumpsuit but I can see it beginning to blossom in bright red on the fabric. The wound won’t heal by itself. It will need skin grafting, which no longer exists because modern day hospitals have closed down. I can only hope this horrible man will die from infection in the coming weeks.

The look on Seiger’s face isn’t one of fear or pain. It isn’t even an expression of anger. In fact, he looks
pleased
. His cold eyes glint with approval at my attack and my stomach lurches with dread. Anyone who can look impressed by physical violence is seriously sick in the head. Clara still stands behind me and she is choking on her tears while clutching my arm, steadying me. I didn’t realise how much I was swaying on the spot. The world is churning beneath me in a whirlpool of colour, but I have to stay upright. I have to stay conscious.

My breath escapes my tightened, damaged throat in ragged snarls. I open my arms in front of Clara again and this time, Seiger positively beams. I feel hatred building inside my chest. I want to hurt this man. I want to
kill
him.

“Well done!” he says finally, “Our first B member.”

I hear his words as a ringing in my ears. The blood from my head is now dripping into my eyelashes, obscuring my vision and giving the world a vivid pink sheen. I blink the blood away and bare my teeth at Seiger.

“Unfortunately, that doesn’t change the fact that your friend here is a D and you’ve set a terrible example for everyone else. Those who are not fit for the new world may not be a part of it.”

He raises the gun. I get ready to lunge at him again but this time, he doesn’t hesitate even for a second. The trigger is pulled. An ear shattering bang sounds and then the dull
thud
of a bullet hitting a body sends a ripple of goose bumps over my flesh. I wonder if he missed because I feel no pain. Maybe there is so much adrenalin pumping through my veins that I didn’t feel the bullet pierce my skin. Seiger’s face is again void of all emotion when I look at him. There is a tiny wisp of smoke leaving the barrel of the gun.

Then, as Clara’s hands fall away from my arm, I realise he wasn’t aiming for me.

I swing around, stumbling and unsteady, and Clara crumples to the ground. Her head hits the cement hard, harder than mine did, and blood immediately seeps from the bullet wound in her forehead, creating a puddle around her face. Her eyes have already glazed over with a glassy film. Her limbs jut out from beneath her body in a deformed way, twitching several times while the life flees its vessel.

I hear myself scream. It is a blood-curdling scream. I wouldn’t think I could make such a terrible sound. I twist towards Seiger, set to kill, but something sharp hits me in the neck and I feel a chill in my blood. I slap at my neck and an empty glass syringe with a red feather tail falls to the ground and shatters. Another second goes by and black specks dance before my eyes. I try to rub them away with my fist but the specks get bigger until they have covered my vision with darkness. I feel my body smack into the ground without realising I was falling, and then the blackness consumes me.

5.

I don’t want to wake up.

Or maybe I do?

That couldn’t have been real. Things like that don’t happen in real life. The past three years of my life could all have been a dream that occurred in just a few hours of sleep. That terrifying rally might have been the last few moments within my wandering unconscious mind.

Yes, that must be it. I’m waking from a dream—a nightmare. I will open my eyes and see the familiar grainy patterns of my wooden roof in my bedroom. Mum will be preparing breakfast in the kitchen. Dad will already be outside in the paddocks working. My brother and I will walk to school together in an hour. I’ll meet Clara in the classroom…

Clara.

I open my eyes.

I am looking at grainy wood patterns but they aren’t familiar. They aren’t the ones I have stared at thousands of times in my bedroom. I am not at home.

I feel like I am moving, although I am lying on my back. I can hear the sound of wheels rolling slowly, and every now and then they jolt over a patch of rough terrain, causing painful bumps. I am in some sort of large wooden box. Flakes of blood cling to my eyelashes, keeping them from opening fully. I want to scratch it from my eyes, but I realise my hands are bound behind my back and my shoulders ache from sleeping in such an awkward position.

Not sleeping,
I remind myself
. Knocked unconscious by that tranquilizer
.

Disturbing images flood back to me so quickly my brain gives a painful throb. The horror of the assembly, the hours of people being sent off into herds like cattle, then Clara’s name called and… I quickly shut the thoughts off and refrain from any attempt to move—am I alone or being watched? I don’t want anyone knowing I am awake.

My arms feel numb and heavy, but finally my eyes adjust. I loll my throbbing head and through the slit of crusty blood I see I am alone in the large wooden crate.

I glance around the wooden box and strain my ears, listening. I hear the sound of metal horseshoes clip-clopping on a road. There are two horses, judging by the amount of steps I can hear, towing my box on wheels. One window in the back of the box has steel bars running horizontally across and it offers a depressing glimpse of light outside. I wouldn’t be able to fit through the gaps. Every part of my brain is searching for an escape route, looking for weaknesses in the wall or roof, but my crate is sturdy and God knows where I am. Even if I could escape the box, where would I go?

Anywhere is better than our destination. If the D group was murdered, what is going to happen to me—the girl who violently savaged Lieutenant Seiger? Torture, imprisonment, death? Worse?

After concentrating for another minute, I realise I must be in a horse drawn caravan, like gypsy people used to travel in. The new government doesn’t allow the use of cars after all. As far as I can tell from my squinting, lying down position, there is no way out. I try to keep myself calm and wonder what in God’s name I am doing locked in a wooden caravan by myself, but my breathing quickly becomes fast and shallow. What have these lunatics done with my family if they were happy to shoot my best friend in front of a crowd of hundreds of people? Is my family being punished for my wild, dangerous behaviour? I have to escape and find them. We have to run away and go into hiding. This government has now completely lost the plot. I knew it was only a matter of time.

However, I won’t escape by lying here and waiting for someone to come and retrieve me. I sit up quietly, rolling my aching shoulders, and then tentatively testing how squeaky the wooden boarding is by pressing my boot to the floor. It’s very creaky but the noise of the wheels jolting up and down drowns it out. I don’t want anyone to know I am awake and even if I’m not guarded, someone must be driving the horses. Using the wall to support myself, I manage to struggle to my feet. On my toes, I creep over to the barred window and peek outside.

To my dismay, I see Lieutenant Seiger and several other guards on horseback plodding along behind my box. Seiger still has the gun that murdered my best friend strapped at his waist, and his guards are armed as well. Even their magnificent, muscled horses are wearing medieval style armoured breastplates and brow bands—as if something is going to jump out and try to kill these vile people to rescue me. Who would want to rescue me anyhow? My, possibly deceased, family? My definitely dead best friend? Seiger isn’t wearing his jumpsuit anymore, but instead a long sleeved white shirt and jeans. Beneath the white fabric, I can see bandages wrapped awkwardly around his shoulder and neck. I revel when I spot the darker shades of blood that seep through both the bandage and the shirt. I seriously hurt him—and he deserved every bit of pain.

We are traveling on a dirt road dimpled with potholes in the middle of monotonous Australian bushland. I see the gnarled trunks of red streaked Snow Gum trees and the straight shafts of Candlebarks growing thick, white and ghostly. Ugly brown Bracken Fern, tussocks of stringy Snowgrass and some native shrubbery grow beneath the pale barked trees. Everything is covered with a fine layer of powdery white snow, and the patchy red bark of the Snow Gums shows so vividly in the pale world that it looks like Seiger’s blood-spotted bandage. We must be in the mountains for it to be snowing at the end of winter. The bushland looks vaguely familiar to me, with the dense tree cover and low growing shrubbery. When all of the guards twist in their saddles to watch a fox scamper into the low growing tea tree bushes, I stand on my toes, stick my nose out the window and inhale a breath. My terrified racing heart slows as a rush of nostalgia hits me.

I’ve been here before! Or at least I’ve been in this general area. We are in the high country Alps, up in the mountains where there are no people, no houses, no civilisation. I would recognise the landscape and the sweet, eucalypt scent of it anywhere. My aunt and uncle live an hour away by car. Or they used to. I wonder if they have been rallied up yet or not. They probably have. I doubt the government would rally and sort one town at a time. Word would spread too quickly. People would go into hiding.

No, if they did it to our town, every other town in Australia had the same thing done on the same day.

Despite this, I feel a twinge of hope. If I can escape this caravan, I can survive in this part of the world. The Alps are as much a part of me as the farmhouse my family lives in. I’ve been here so often to visit my aunt and uncle and go horse riding and cattle droving with them. Excited by the old comforts of the Alps, it takes a minute before I notice a pushdown handle two feet below the barred window. The back wall of my crate is a door! I turn backwards, curl my sore hands around the lever and push down. The metal handle sinks an inch and then jars to a stop. It’s locked. A frustrated sigh rattles out of my mouth in a steamy breath of vapour. I should have known better than to think the door would be open.

I have to wait until Seiger opens the caravan door and hope that we are still in the Alps when he does. Until then, I need to think about how far away from home I am. By car, the trip from my home town to the Alps would take a good three hours. A horse drawn caravan would take much, much longer to travel: probably two days if we stopped overnight. From what I can see peeking out the window, the sun is high in the sky, about midday. It feels like the horses are walking at a steady gait now so we aren’t moving quickly. Was I loaded into this caravan straight after the rally or held somewhere else first? Have I only been in it for a day or two?

Knowing I won’t get out by bashing my weight against the walls or hollering for help, I walk back over to my resting spot and sit against the wall, wriggling my hands in their painful bonds. I twist them so much that the ropes pinch my skin and eventually I give up. They are far too tight to wriggle free.

I wonder if all of the Ds are dead already. And what happened to my family? They should have been in the As because they were farmers, useful people to the government, but what does that mean anyhow? Where are they now? Were they allowed to go home after the rally? Or were they, like me, to be transported elsewhere?

Then I remember all of the gunshots I heard as I was mauling Seiger and wondering why I wasn’t being hit. The bullets were never intended for me. Seiger’s rooftop gunmen had been targeting people rioting in the crowd. And more than likely, my family would have been among those rebelling as Clara dropped dead and I was darted.

I don’t feel panic or terror anymore, just confusion and emptiness. I am too tired to keep thinking. My forehead feels like it has swollen to twice its normal size and my stomach gives a loud grumble. My mouth feels like a kitty-litter tray, dry and scratchy. How long has it been since I drank or ate or went to the bathroom? I sniff my armpits but I don’t smell bad. I suppose you don’t work up much of a sweat when you’re unconscious. I’d kill for a slice of bread and a cup of water because the acid in my stomach feels as though it’s eating the lining of my belly. I groan and let my head hit the back wall with a thud. The movement sends a shudder of pain through my brain and I curse.

“Hello?” a voice from behind me says.

Thinking I imagined it, I ignore it but the same voice comes again, “Who is that?”

I gingerly turn my sore body towards the wooden wall and find there is a small hole in one of the planks of wood. It is about the size of a twenty-cent piece and when I lower my eye to it, I see a human mouth, lips parted slightly, on the other side. A spark of hope surges inside of me. Whoever the person is, they don’t sound like a guard. The caravan must be divided into two sections and the person on the other side is a prisoner just like me.

I press my lips against the hole and whisper. “Who is that?”

“Who are you first?” comes the suspicious reply.

“I’m Freya,” I say quietly. “Are you in B too?”

“Yes,” the reply comes. The voice sounds tired but it is also smooth and flowing and deep. It’s definitely a male on the other side, but I can’t tell if he is young or old. “My name is Whil.”

“Whil?” I repeat. There were many Whils in my school. “Where are you from?”

“Canberra.”

My heart sinks. He isn’t from my hometown. Canberra, a large city that I have never been to, is a long distance from my hometown of Thesal. My parents went to Canberra once to sell cows and it took hours of driving to get there. It would have been nice to be stuck with someone from my own town. Then I realise it doesn’t matter at all. The man on the other side of the wall is in the same situation as I am and understands what I’ve been through.

“What did you do to get put into B?” Whil asks.

“I attacked Seiger for killing my best friend.”

After a slight pause, he says, “I’m sorry for your friend. Are you okay?”

“I haven’t had time to think about it yet. What’d you do?”

“I attacked one of Seiger’s men who was in charge of my town. Except it was for my mother.”

I imagine my mother falling back with a bullet in her brain and shiver. I pray to a God I don’t believe in that it didn’t happen. To any of my family.

“I’m sorry,” I say sincerely.

“It’s okay. Do you know what the B group are meant to be?” Whil asks.

“No, do you? I don’t really know what the A group are for either. Seiger didn’t tell us much.”

“The A’s are people that the new government thinks are useful to the world they want to build. Farmers, butchers, horse trainers, blacksmiths that sort of thing. I don’t know what B is for. I just know that in all of Canberra, I was one of five chosen for it. We were all separated. They brought me in a car to your town and then we both got thrown in here yesterday morning.”

I frown against the wooden panelling. Car? The cars that are supposed to be prohibited? And one of five? From what I’ve heard, Canberra has a massive population of people and yet only
five
were chosen to be in B? I’d been surprised enough that my own hometown, with a population of five or six hundred people, had only spawned one B member nearing the end of the rally: me. Our town once had a population of two thousand, but people had fled the town to join their families when the electricity had been switched off. And some, with no family to turn to, had killed themselves or had died from combinations of malnutrition and ailments that could no longer be treated. If the Ds are already dead, that means the population has plummeted again.

Aside from all of that, why are we so rare and special? Why is the government so taken by our ferocity? Why wouldn’t they simply kill all of us vicious rebels since they had no reservations about killing others?

“Is there a guard with you, Whil?”

“No. And there isn’t a way out of the caravan. Seiger won’t let us out until we get there, but he isn’t going to hurt you.”

“He killed my best friend!” I snarl against the wall.

“I just meant he isn’t a womaniser,” Whil says quietly. “And he hasn’t been cruel to me.”

“Oh.”

I’m nearly kissing the wooden boards talking to the man on the other side. I want to remain as close to Whil as possible. He’s like a safety blanket—something of comfort. Another human who understands and is in the same position as me is the only thing comforting about my situation.

There is silence between us for a few seconds and then Whil asks, “Can you put your eye to the hole so I can see you?”

“Don’t poke it out or something,” I say, a lame attempt at a joke. He chuckles anyway. The sound fills me with a welcomed bit of relief, a warmth, and I crouch low to hold my eye against the hole.

BOOK: Red Fox
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