The Scourge of the Earth by Mara O'Reilly

Author:Mara O'Reilly [O'Reilly, Mara]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Grey Matter
Published: 2022-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

FORTY-TWO ~ PREPARATIONS

◆◆◆

Ben arrived in the Fourteenth Week of the year, stressed and exhausted. He said he had been working both his full-time job at the lab, shifts at the Services For The Deceased, and spending a significant amount of time coordinating things within his underground network.

The first batch of pamphlets had been printed with no issues and was delivered to the distributors without incident. The distributors had traveled far and wide dispensing their portions of the pamphlets, and as the days passed, Ben received word that they had been dispersed as far out as 2000 miles away. Word was spreading.

“The whole underground system has ignited!” he said, beaming.

“It’s a little terrifying how successful everything has been, actually. I wasn’t sure if it would work, or even if it would make a difference other than putting everyone in danger. But, man, was I wrong about how hungry people were for the truth and a little bit of hope.”

“You know we couldn’t have done any of this without you,” he said, pulling me close and kissing my forehead.

“Your words changed everything. It’s really been difficult to keep track of everything, but we’ve had reports coming in from as far away as Indianapolis. That’s over two thousand miles! We expected it to spread a fair bit through the more rural areas, but to know that we’re getting recruits from larger cities and we’re covering that kind of distance is tremendous.”

“But how will you ensure that you’re not getting set-up? How will you possibly be able to vet new people, especially if there are so many of them and they’re all coming in from different zones?” My concern was valid; I didn’t want any greater risk for either of us than necessary, and it didn’t seem possible to remove all potential risks.

“Well, I can’t, really. But we’ve known all along that there would be a certain degree of risk involved even when we were just moving books. One book, Margaret. One book, and we could lose our lives. So if those are the standards—then one book may as well be a thousand, or a thousand libraries—it makes no difference. And if one contraband item can result in death, then one pamphlet would definitely result in a death sentence—and if one pamphlet is enough, then we may as well have a million out there. The risks are equal—and the more people we have, the more power we have in the long run.”

He picked up my hand and kissed my fingers; an endearing, reassuring habit of his that I had grown all-too-accustomed to.

“Don’t worry. My risks aren’t any greater than they ever were. Yes, there’s now a much greater chance that some member of Law Enforcement or another government agency will catch wind of it. And if we’re really given some bad luck, they’ll even get their hands on a pamphlet as evidence. But no one except a few people could ever trace those words back to Washington State, let alone to us. It’s just

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