Behind the Stars Read Online Free

you.”
    “Where you from?”
    “Meridian.”
    Mississippi or not, I wasn’t anywhere near ready to trust this guy. “Kind of far from home, aren’t you?”
    He exhaled, and studied his boots. “I was headed for the coast. Heard there’s work in construction down in Alabama.”
    Chewing my lip, I considered him. He was tall, maybe six foot with copperish skin and hair. Hazel eyes lit with the same determination I knew I felt, behind the haze of chloroform.
    “What are you suggesting we do?”
    He almost smiled then. “Looks like this is an old summer camp or something. You’ve got the dining hall up there, and further down the hill, hidden in those trees are small cabins. I think that’s where they sleep.”
    “You got a plan or something?” I’d seen everything he described, but I didn’t see how it mattered. Their cabins were opposite from where we all slept, with the dining hall, a medium-sized garden, and a large barn in the center.
    “Not yet.” Cleve looked all around the perimeter the same way I did.
    The blonde, general-lady appeared then entered one of the cabins farthest away. I figured that was hers. Cleve took a step back in the growing heat. The air was damp, and without air-conditioning, it wouldn’t be long before it was like an oven out here.
    “Look at the top of those trees.” He pointed to a bird that seemed to be sitting in mid-air.
    I held the front of my jumpsuit and pulled it in and out quickly to circulate the air next to my body as I squinted up. The bird swayed in the scant breeze, and I saw the glint of chicken-wire fencing. It was tall and stretched high.
    “That’s the fence.” He exhaled and shook his head. “It’s smart. The holes are too small for us to climb it, and if we try to bust through, we’ll just get all wound up in it.”
    “It’s metal, so we can’t break it without a tool.” My eyes traveled to the ground. “Maybe we can dig under it? At night or something?”
    “Depends on how close we’re being watched. And how hard the earth is packed. We need a tool. It’s not easy to dig a hole.”
    I wondered what Jackson would say to this guy. His words were right, but I still hesitated. The Band-Aid pulled at my arm, and I remembered the shot. Cleve must’ve got a lower dose than me. He was way more alert than anybody else here. Maybe his body metabolized the anesthesia faster?
    Two guards stepped out of the barn, and both of them looked at us. “We’ll talk more later,” he barely spoke.
    I shoved my hands in my pockets and resumed my path across the yard. Braxton sat alone on the grass, so I headed in his direction. He could help me decide whether to trust this guy. Roxy, another girl I knew from school, braided Yolanda’s hair as I passed, but we didn’t speak. None of them ever paid any attention to me.
    When my brother saw me coming, he pushed himself off the ground and caught me in a long hug. “You’re here, praise the Lord!”
    His body trembled, and he kept holding onto me until I pushed out of his arms. His face was wrinkled in anguish, and he seemed genuinely terrified.
    “What’s happening, Brax?”
    Calloused hands slid through his dark hair, and it looked like he’d been crying. “Judgment, Prentiss. It’s the end of days.”
    “Nah,” I shook my head. “You’d be gone if it was the Rapture. More like World War Three. We’ve been invaded or something. Taken over by the Russians.”
    “The Russians don’t want to invade us.”
    “Sure they do. They probably teamed up with China or North Korea like Daddy said.”
    Glancing around behind me, I didn’t see where Cleve had gone. The soldiers by the barn had also disappeared, but I guessed since everyone had found a place to fall asleep, they didn’t think they needed to watch us too close.
    Or maybe they were watching us, and we couldn’t see them. Maybe they were studying us, deciding which of us to use as an example of how they dealt with rebels “swiftly and finally”