Gone to Ground by Cheryl Taylor Read Free Book Online

She really didn’t care what the adults thought, but the constant turmoil that surrounded her began to affect her younger brothers, already badly traumatized by the death of both parents. Nick and Ryan began to retreat into their own little world, using their own “twin language” for the first time in at least four years. It pained Christina to see the distance grow between them, but she was so caught up into her grief and sense of injustice that she couldn’t bring herself to meekly acquiesce to the demands of the grownups.
    At the end of the three weeks, Christina, her brothers, and all the other children at the shelter, as well as all the adults in the town were gathered and moved to the Laughlin Authorized Population Zone, one of the first APZs in the state. There the children all found themselves housed in a converted hotel, the boys in one wing and the girls in another. With them were other children from all over the state of Nevada and western Arizona up to the age of sixteen.
    Once settled in the hotel, Christina continued asking her questions and spreading the information that had gotten her father killed. The caretakers in charge of this new shelter told her that until she began to follow directions and stopped stirring up trouble by spreading false information she wouldn’t be allowed to visit with her brothers. When she still didn’t fall in line, the adults told her that she would have to be removed from the program for awhile. That was how she found herself sitting in the little concrete cell.
    Actually, Christina thought, it wasn’t all that bad down here, without people yammering at her all the time, telling her that her dad was a liar and didn’t know what he was talking about. The only people she saw were the people who brought her food and the occasional ‘counselor’ trying to talk sense into her. She had her books, and her thoughts, and was content for the time being until she could figure out a way to get free from here and take her brothers with her.
    The other good thing about being here was that she’d met Him. He was the officer who’d brought her down here, and who came with the shelter staff when they showed up to try and convince her to drop her ideas. This Enforcer had nice eyes, though she thought they looked sort of sad and haunted.
    Then, one afternoon, about three days after she’d been put in the cell, he came by himself. He told her he was in charge of the security station that afternoon, the one where the camera in her cell was monitored. He wasn’t there about that, though. He wanted to ask her about the information her dad knew. Over and over again he asked her to repeat what her dad taught her and his eyes became more and more haunted with every telling.
    This went on for several days; her talking, him listening. She wanted to know more about the APZ, and what was happening in the world outside, but he resisted her questions, always posing another of his own. Then, one day out of the blue, he began telling her about a place where one wasn’t punished for telling the truth. It sounded truly fantastical, this place he described, as though it was in another dimension. He said it was a “camp” which seemed to mean a place where cowboys lived out closer to the cows. He said he’d been a cowboy. She studied him, trying to see the cowboy in the Enforcer. He was tall, with short-cropped wavy hair the color of the newly husked chestnuts she and her brothers used to collect every fall from the tree in their backyard; a sort of dark red-brown. His eyes were dark brown, almost black, and seemed so deep that you could fall into them if you weren’t careful. She guessed that maybe he looked like a cowboy, but she wasn’t sure.
    He said that this camp was in a place that no seekers could find, and that if you hid there, you would be safe. Many of the things he described were hard to grasp. Christina had lived all her life in the city, seldom going camping or even spending days in