Agenda 21: Into the Shadows by Glenn Beck

Author:Glenn Beck [Beck, Glenn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Thrillers, Political, Dystopian
ISBN: 9781476746821
Google: idsGBgAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1476746826
Publisher: Threshold Editions
Published: 2010-01-01T11:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

* * *

He wasn’t as large as I remembered. His hair had thinned and his shoulders weren’t as broad. It was as if all of him had shrunken, been reduced somehow.

“Emmeline?” George’s voice was shaking, unsure. “Oh my God, Emmeline. Is that really you? How did you get here?” He took a step closer, his arms reaching for me. The metal ball dragged behind him. I felt and heard his desperation. I took a step back and fought the urge to run. Would the guard hear him? I looked around. I saw no one.

It couldn’t be George standing in front of me. It just couldn’t be. The Authorities told me he and Father were dead. “We regret to inform you . . .” they had said, but there had been no regret, no sorrow or pity in their voices, and no expressions on their faces. None. Mother had wailed, her cries so shrill I felt like they were cutting my skin. I had asked to see their bodies but the Authorities said that wasn’t possible. They said it was a bus-box accident, that the brakes had failed going downhill. But now here he was, in front of me. If he was alive, maybe Father was, too. I looked around, hoping to see the dark shadow of another man, hoping I’d see Father.

“The baby? You had our baby?”

The rain beat down, relentlessly pummeling us. Were those tears on his face mixed with the rain?

“They said you were dead.” I heard myself say the words but it was as if someone else was talking, not me. I felt disconnected from my own voice. “They said Father was dead.”

He didn’t say anything for a long moment. There was a wall of awkward silence between us. I waited for his answer, afraid to breathe.

Finally, he spoke. “Your father died. I didn’t.”

I let out a huge puff of air as though I had been punched in the stomach. I had never seen Father’s body, so a part of me had held out hope he was alive somewhere, somehow. But George said he was dead. That made it final. Grief lay heavy on my shoulders. George had been there. George knew the truth. I trusted him.

I dropped the half-full sack of peas and sank to my knees, the ground wet and cold on my legs. Peas spilled from the open mouth of the sack onto my feet. George knelt in front of me.

“The night we planned to smuggle you out of the Compound before you had the baby. Do you remember?”

Of course I remembered. It had rained that night, too. I didn’t go to the Social Update meeting. I slept instead. Pregnancy had privileges. The three of them—Mother, Father, and George—were whispering, planning. I heard them when I woke. Father was nervous, pacing to the window slit, urging everyone to talk quietly.

“I remember,” I said. “I remember asking Mother if it was dangerous. She said yes, that most good things are.”

“She was such a wise woman.

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