Strike Read Online Free PDF Page B

didn’t need any more workers, which was fine by me.
    The guard came back to me and said, “This is your unit. Unit Blue. Do whatever your supervisor orders you to do. The more productive you are, the easier it will be for you. More food.
Better
food. Shorter shifts. Better bunks. If you don’t produce, then . . .” He let his voice trail off and he shrugged.
    I wanted to hit him, and might have, if he hadn’t made eye contact with me.
    Up until that moment he had been totally cold, as if I were an annoying dog that needed training. But in that brief moment I thought I saw something in his eyes that looked strangely like sympathy.
    Or maybe I just imagined it.
    He gave me a slight nod and headed off, leaving me alone with the silver-haired supervisor who didn’t look any happier about being there than I was.
    The guard hadn’t told me the supervisor’s name and I didn’t dare ask. Maybe her name was as irrelevant as mine supposedly was.
    “Grab a shovel,” the woman barked without looking at me. “We need to move two tons of earth before nightfall. Get to work.”
    Nightfall. Was that how it was going to be? Were the prisoners forced to work until it was too dark to see? I picked up a shovel from a pile near the edge of the pit and gazed over the side to see at least twenty people laboring in the furnace that was to be the foundation of yet another bunkhouse. The hole was roughly six feet deep. Grave depth. But it was only half the size of one of the long buildings. There was a lot of work to be done.
    I didn’t want to go down there. I feared that I might never come out. In that one moment, all the horror I’d been through since the night of Marty Wiggins’s death on Pemberwick Island came flooding back in a rush of violent images that sprang from my memory. I couldn’t catch my breath. My heart raced. What was going on? Was I suddenly overcome by sorrow? Or was it fear?
    No, it was anger. Who were these Retros and how were they able to use the United States Air Force to take over the world and enslave the survivors? They had turned the world upside down. For what? Nothing could justify the deaths, the destruction, the loss. To make it worse, they were treating the survivors like animals in a slaughterhouse. We were given numbers. Numbers had no personality. No history. No humanity. What was next? Would they brand us with a burning hot iron?
    I gripped the shovel tighter as my rage grew. I glanced at the silver-haired Retro supervisor who still didn’t think enough of me to make sure I was climbing down into that pit. She was busily scanning her tablet. In that one second I felt as though she alone represented the heartless force that had destroyed our world. I wanted her to suffer for what they had done. I raised the blade of the shovel and strode toward her. I’m not crazy, or a killer, but in that moment I didn’t feel like myself. I was a number. Zero Three One One. If they could treat me like I was nothing, then I could do the same to them. I raised the shovel, poised to bash it over her head and exorcise the demons that had taken control of my emotions.
    I lifted the shovel higher, ready to strike . . .
    . . . as a military jeep came screaming out from behind the last of the completed barracks. The sound jolted me back to my senses. I assumed it was carrying Retro guards who were coming to stop me from beaning the unwary supervisor.
    I was a heartbeat away from dropping the shovel and running when the jeep turned hard and an orange-clad body was thrown out. He hit the ground with a sickening thud and tumbled in the sand like a broken doll before coming to rest.
    Three Retro soldiers sat in the jeep. One behind the wheel, the second in the passenger seat. The third Retro was in back. That was the guy who had tossed the prisoner to the dirt. The jeep slid to a stop near the edge of the foundation pit, kicking up sand and dust that hung in the air and giving a coughing fit to a few of the