The Last Voyage of Poe Blythe by Ally Condie

Author:Ally Condie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2019-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 26

DOWN WE GO, into the belly of the dredge.

As we descend the stairwell to the mining deck, Lily and I are so close that I can hear her breathing behind me. For a minute I think about stopping in my tracks, bringing my head back to knock into her chin, catching her off guard and taking her down. She reads my mind, and I feel her press the rifle into my spine. “Keep moving,” she says.

We go through the open door at the bottom of the stairs, and I breathe in the motor and dirt smells of the mining deck. Two of my machinists and an electrician look up, and their faces go slack and shocked at the sight of me. They’re working on the disemboweled control panel, the one I shot, and they’re surrounded by wiring, capacitors, and solenoids. I wonder if they’ve used every single spare part we brought on board to try and fix the mess I made.

“Hello, Officer Wray, Officer Lopez, Officer Jones,” I say, and Officer Jones raises his hand, the one that’s not coiled in a fistful of red wire, to salute. Then he realizes what he’s doing and drops his arm down to his side, darting a nervous glance at Porter, who’s standing next to him. “Keep up the good work,” I say as we pass by, as if I’m the captain and I never left and they’re not working for Porter now. As if they’re not undoing everything I’ve done.

They want to survive. I understand that. But it’s going to make everything harder.

“Up here,” Porter says. He motions for Lily and me to follow him up the metal stairs to the platform, the one where Brig and I stood before the raiders took the ship. I notice enormous canvas sacks and burlap bags and crew kit packs all stuffed and slumped against the railings, on top of the platform, and down on the floor of the mining deck. They’re everywhere. Are they bodies? I nudge one with my foot. It’s full of hard, lumpy, smaller shapes.

Gold. Have they really taken on so much in so short a time?

“It’s exactly what you think it is,” Porter says. At the top of the platform, he and Lily position me so I’m looking out over the main part of the deck instead of in the direction of the stacker. I have a bird’s-eye view of the work they’re doing and all the gold they’ve taken on. The storage bins are full. They’ve even taken the mining buckets off the elevator and filled them with gold. Sacks are everywhere. Several of the raiders’ light little boats are down on the floor of the mining deck, and they’re also filled with bags of gold.

As I watch, I notice that some of the crew is dumping gold out of one of the mining buckets. It takes four men to do the job. The gold tumbles onto the floor. The men haul the bucket over to the opening where the buckets usually enter the ship and, to my shock, shove the empty container into the river.

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