Infraction Read Online Free PDF

that Jack
is still with me, and the soldiers thrust us into the truck
together.
    We stumble inside, and I fall to the floor of the
truck, my cheek scraped up against hard metal. Murmurs fill my
ears.
    “Get up before you get us all in trouble.”
    “Are you okay?”
    “Don't look at them.”
    “Get up!”
    “It's them,” a voice hisses.
    My heart stops when I hear that voice. It belongs to
one of the nomads who searched for us last night. I let my black
hair fall between my face and the voice, willing myself to become
invisible. Jack stumbles behind me. I hope he hasn't made eye
contact.
    A soldier nudges me with the toe of his boot, and I
get up. He shoves me onto a bench. The heavy back doors of the
truck creak closed, and then the engine roars to life. I'm wedged
between two women—all the men line the other side of the truck—and
my arms are cramped and aching behind my back. In the faint light
from the lamp at the roof of the truck, I see that some of the
women's faces are damp with tears, and everyone's faces are stony.
Maybe they've moved past sorrow on to something else entirely,
something that makes them look not quite human. Maybe it helps them
feel not quite alive. It could help. I suspect we're on our way to
a labor camp, and from what I've heard, I'd rather be numb to it as
well.
    The truck lurches as it finds its way back onto the
road Jack and I followed. I bump shoulders with those around me,
but I don't talk. I feel the eyes on me, the vicious stares of the
nomads who hunted us. Fortunately, Jack sits three men down from
them. There is one soldier just behind the cab of the truck and two
soldiers by the doors. If those nomads try anything, I'd like to
think the soldiers could stop them. I close my eyes, though,
because the thought crosses my mind: why would they even care?
    I sit that way, with my eyes closed, not wanting to
see the people around me, not wanting to see the soldiers' guns.
Then closing my eyes brings on all kinds of new horrors: what the
soldiers look like when they take their masks off. Do they have
human faces, or are they like the fish that live at the bottom of
the ocean floor—colorless eyes, gaping mouths with long, spiny
teeth? Sometimes seeing the truth is better than what I'm able to
dream up.
    When I open my eyes, the nomads are watching me. Who
knows where our packs are, the ones the nomads took. Searched
probably, but then just left wherever the nomads were picked up?
Discarded as common garbage? Jessa's letter is out there somewhere,
my last physical reminder of my sister and my past life. Like a
relic, I guess. I don't think I'll ever find it again. I have the
most important parts memorized, however, and that will never be
taken from me.
    I just wish you would have told me so that I could
understand. I want to understand. I love you.
    Would Jessa understand this ? That my dream was
to come here, and now I'm being taken by these men and shipped off
as a slave? No, she wouldn't have and neither do I. Yes, the colony
has flaws, but they treat people humanely. Not everyone saw the
colony as the prison I did. I glance at Jack. His head hangs from
his shoulders and bobs with the motion of the truck. He looks
inconsolable. People like Jack belong in the colony; people who are
too gentle for this world. People like Nell. They deserve to be
taken there and given a chance at a different life. But that will
never happen. As far as I know, I am the only colonist on the Burn,
and if I'm in a labor camp, no one will ever find the colony.
Hopeless as it may be, though, a small fire flares in my heart. If
only I could take a handful of these people to the colony and offer
them a chance at peace and rest.
    The first light of dawn filters in through the
windows on the doors of the truck. The woman next to me slumps, and
her head dips down to touch my shoulder. She jerks awake and
refuses to look at me. Even the soldiers look exhausted. I wonder
when they last slept. How long have they been