The Bar Code Rebellion by Suzanne Weyn Read Free Book Online Page A

you out of here, and you will have your day in court.”
    As the people stood and cheered him, Kayla wove through the throng. It seemed hopeless, the crowd was so thick. Mfumbe, where are you? she tried.
    Walk straight back, his mental answer came. I saw you for a second before everyone stood up.
    She didn’t like the weakness she sensed in him. Something was wrong. After a few more minutes of squeezing between tightly packed bodies, she found him lying on a cot, badly battered. His right eye was purple and swollen, his lip was split. There was something about the angle of his shoulder that worried her, too. “I look good, huh?” he attempted to joke as she knelt beside his cot.
    “You’ve looked better,” she confirmed, stroking his forehead instead of kissing his injured lips.
    “Here’s the worst of it.” He held out his right arm. A bar code tattoo was emblazoned there.
    “Bastards,” Kayla hissed, filled with hot rage.Angry tears sprang to her eyes. How could they do this to him? She swept the wetness away roughly. This wasn’t a time for crying.
    Inside the dense crowd, someone shouted angrily. Fighting had broken out. She scanned the crowd, searching for August but not seeing him.
    Dusa came alongside the cot. “Let’s slip out of here in this confusion.”
    “I can’t find August,” Kayla said. “We can’t leave without him.”
    “He’s not here,” Dusa reported. “One of my contacts saw your friend walking toward the Superlink this morning. It sounded like he was okay.”
    Mfumbe tried to pull himself up but winced in pain. He coughed harshly into his hand, and Kayla saw he’d spit up blood.
    Offering her arm, Dusa helped him to hoist himself up. Kayla supported his left side, and together they pushed their way along the back wall. Dusa seemed to have an idea where she was headed, so Kayla followed her. When they reached a corner of the Waters Shed, Kayla was sure she smelled burning plastic.
    Pounding her fist and kicking, Dusa forced open the spot where the walls met and the two sides came apart. Nate and Francis appeared on the other side, grinning, a blowtorch in Nate’s hand. “Help us,” Dusa ordered, taking the torch and shifting Mfumbe off to them. “Careful. He’s hurt bad.”
    Kayla followed Mfumbe as Nate and Francis carried him toward Dusa’s tractor trailer, parked about three yards away.
    Francis and Nate climbed into the trailer, carrying Mfumbe with them. Kayla scrambled in behind. As she closed the back doors, she saw other prisoners darting out the opening in the Waters Shed. She also witnessed a G-1 officer racing around to the back of it. The prisoners dispersed in various directions, and she didn’t have time to find out if any were recaptured.
    The truck sped off, lurching forward so strongly that she could barely latch the door before sliding across the back of the trailer.
    She had Mfumbe back … but what would they do now?

 
    They couldn’t bring Mfumbe to a hospital and risk the chance that he’d be taken back into custody. “But we can’t keep him in the truck or the garage,” Dusa said. “He needs help.”
    They were back at the Drakians’ garage. Mfumbe had been sleeping while Kayla sat beside him and read through his slim volume of poetry to pass the time. When he finally awoke, his right eye could barely open. This was bad, but the blood he started coughing up was even more worrisome to Kayla. “What about going to your parents?” she suggested.
    “There’s no way,” he told her. “My father and I weren’t even talking when I left home the last time.”
    Kayla had been reading a poem called “The Death of the Hired Man” by Robert Frost. “‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in,’” she said, reading a line from the poem.
    Mfumbe grunted unhappily. “Easy for him to say,” he mumbled, turning onto his side. “He didn’t know my father.”
    By the end of the day, however, they were onceagain