The Outrage by William Hussey

Author:William Hussey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Usborne Publishing Ltd

“We haven’t seen Eric since the day you were arrested. I’m sorry, Gabe, he isn’t part of this.”

My dad hands me the spare glasses I keep in my bedside table. Hooking them over my ears, I look around properly for the first time. There’s the crashed Pansy Wagon with its shot-out tyres on the edge of the road, the Rebels all clustered to one side. Across the road another van is parked up, shadows moving behind tinted windows.

It’s all so confusing, but the only thing I can concentrate on is the person who isn’t here. In a way, I suppose nothing’s changed. I’d already made peace with Eric’s accusation, hadn’t I? I signed the confession to save him, so why should I now feel distraught he hasn’t tried to save me?

Huxley steps over.

“Take your time,” he says to my dad. “We’ve got a few hours before they realize the van hasn’t arrived.”

The sergeant gives a nod and walks back to stand over the unconscious Rakes.

“Dad, what’s happening?” I ask. My gaze returns to the second van and a memory, half buried, stirs in the back of my mind. “The morning they took me…you said something about lives being at stake, about something you should have told me. What did you mean?”

“Well,” he smiles his sad smile, “the reality is, you don’t read as many banned books as I do and not want to fight against all this.”

It’s hard to describe, that moment when the person you’ve known all your life asks for you to look at them in a totally different way. I guess it’s a bit like when you realize your infallible parents are only human beings after all. This feels like that, only in reverse.

“Dad.” I stare at him. “Are you involved with the Resistance?”

He shrugs. “Honestly, it’s not that impressive.”

But it is. My softly spoken father is in the freaking Resistance! Okay, so in peaceful old Westwick we don’t hear much about the “terrorist scum” (as the Yellow Jackets call them), but their bombing of railway lines and robbing of Protectorate assets has made these freedom fighters into legends, to people like me anyway.

And now a lot of things begin to make sense: my dad taking a job with access to printing materials, a job that allows him a home phone line, and then there’s his plan to get me and Albert to Ireland. I thought it was some crazy romantic scheme. Maybe not.

“And I called us the Rebels,” I murmur, glancing over at the guys.

“Oh, you mean your movie club?”

“Wait. You know about that?”

“I have my sources.”

“Seriously, Dad, are you like…” I hesitate because it still sounds insane. “Are you a Resistance mastermind or something?”

He laughs out loud and shakes his head in the direction of the second van. “I’m very glad my colleagues didn’t hear you say that. No, Gabe. Thankfully I’m just an incredibly small cog in a very large machine.”

“But how long have you been involved?”

He whistles through his teeth. “Since I was about your age, I guess.

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