I can share. And because you’re not supposed to be here and said information is need-to-know, our little game is up. If you don’t want to tell me why you’re here or where you came from that’s fine, Red, but I have to remove you from this zone.”
“Remove us to where?” Red asked, though she already knew. She just wanted him to say it out loud so she wouldn’t hear the cage door slamming.
“To a quarantine camp, of course,” Regan said. “Which is where you’re supposed to be in any case. All noninfected citizens are required to relocate to the nearest quarantine camp.”
“Why?” Red said. “We’re not infected. So why send us into a prison?”
“It’s not a prison,” Regan said.
“If you’re not free to leave, then it’s a prison,” Red said.
“It’s for your own safety—” Regan said.
“That’s a load of bullshit. It’s to make things easier for you, or for whoever is in charge of you,” Red said, her voice rising. “It’s a hell of a lot easier to control the population if said population is neatly portioned into the geographical location of your choosing.”
She felt her face warming, her heart pounding faster. She didn’t want to go to any camp. The thought of the net closing around them sent her blood into jittery Panic Mode.
“That’s enough, Red,” Adam said, holding his arm in front of her. “Sorry, Lieutenant.”
Red hadn’t realized she’d been getting closer to the lieutenant’s face as she shouted. He hadn’t moved a centimeter, which meant he wasn’t concerned in the least about her as a physical threat.
That made her unaccountably angry on top of everything else, because he thought she was just an amusing little bug. When he was done toying with her then he would put her back in the bug box where she belonged.
She thought about grabbing her axe off her belt and waving it in his face, just to prove a point, but she wasn’t that dumb. He had a gun and she was sure he was trained to use it.
Even if he didn’t kill her (and dying was not on her agenda for the day) the last thing she needed was an injury—especially if they were going to get away from the convoy or whatever it was called. And she was going to get away. No man was going to put her in a camp.
“Now, Red and Adam, Sergeant Sirois is going to do a quick blood test to see if you are, in fact, uninfected as you claim,” Regan said.
“You’d know if we were infected,” Red said. “We’d be coughing.”
“Some people don’t show symptoms right away,” Sirois said. He pulled something that was shaped roughly like a staple gun out of the little bag he carried.
Red took three steps back. Adam looked from Sirois to Red.
“What’s in that thing?” he asked.
“Probably a tracker,” Red said. “So they can find us if we get away.”
“You really don’t trust anyone, do you?” Regan asked.
“Tell me again why I should trust a guy who’s telling me he’s going to put me in a truck and take me someplace I don’t want to go.”
“Enough, Red,” Adam said. “The game is over. Stop trying to pretend that it isn’t.”
He pushed off his pack and rolled up the sleeve of his shirt.
“Do your thing, Sergeant,” Adam said.
Red narrowed her eyes at him. Of course Adam was giving in. Adam had been waiting for an opportunity to give in this whole time. He’d never wanted to walk or get to Grandma’s or do anything that might be construed as vaguely nonconformist.
And it wasn’t a surprise, either, because Adam had always been a conformer. He liked the music on the radio and the top twenty Nielsen-rated TV shows and shopping at the same places all the white kids liked to shop. He went to a party college where he could major in business—just like everyone else who wasn’t really sure what to do with their life. He got average grades and drove an average car.