Ashen Winter (Ashfall)

adjusted to the dim light coming through the open tent flaps behind us, a figure stepped out from among the parked trucks. “Orley?” I said.
    Then I saw his face. It was the bastard who had run Camp Galena when Darla and I were imprisoned there last year: Colonel Levitov.

Chapter 70
    I stepped back and shouted. But a dozen more guys in camo were already emerging from amid the trucks. They carried jagged-looking black assault rifles.
    Dad sighed heavily, burying a word I’d never heard him use before under his breath. Five of the Black Lake guys detached from the rest, moving behind us. If we turned to run, they had clear shots. If we fought, some of us were going to get killed.
    A guy about a foot taller than me forced my arms behind my back. I knew resisting would only make it worse. I felt thin plastic bands brush my wrists between my gloves and coat, and then the ties bit into my flesh. He kicked the back of my knee, and I fell to the ground, landing with a painful thud.
    Within moments, all five of us were handcuffed and sitting on the unforgiving, frozen ground. Ben rocked back and forth, but he wasn’t moaning. Maybe getting cuffed had become so common that it felt like part of his routine now.
    “Now,” Levitov said, “you’ll tell me everything you were going to report to Orley.”
    “Does Orley even exist?” I doubted it—what a sucker I’d been.
    “That’s immaterial. Talk,” Levitov ordered. An even worse thought occurred to me: What if Orley did exist and was working for Mason’s FERROA oversight committee but had reported me to Levitov instead of investigating? Had the U.S. government been completely co-opted by Black Lake?
    Dad shrugged, wincing as the cuffs cut into his wrists. “Might as well talk.”
    I was fuming. “This guy ran the camp outside Galena—the one where everyone was starving to death,” I said to Dad. “How’d you wind up here, anyway?” I shot an impaler’s glare at Levitov.
    “Promotion. For exemplary performance at Camp Galena.”
    “Very funny. Mass starvation and a breakout won you a promotion? Right.”
    “No,” Levitov replied, “after your stunt with the bulldozer, I convinced Washington to authorize us to reclaim the wheat you found on the stuck barges to feed the inmates. Conditions improved. I traded my leaf for a bird and was moved out here.”
    I wasn’t sure how to take the fact that he actually remembered me from among the thousands of prisoners at Camp Galena.
    “We’re barely getting enough food here,” Mom said.
    I snorted. “More than we got at Camp Galena.”
    “Enough,” Colonel Levitov said. “Talk.”
    I clamped my lips shut, but Dad started talking. Told Colonel Levitov the whole story: girls disappearing, his nighttime patrols, the battles with the DWBs.
    When he finished, a long silence ensued. “Not acceptable,” Levitov said finally.
    “What’s not acceptable?” I said. “That your guards are corrupt or that we had to do your job and protect the refugees ourselves!”
    “Both. And you do not understand our mission here. If I could write my own orders, protecting refugees might be my first priority. But what the politicians care about is preventing a flood of refugees from entering the yellow and green zones. People in areas that were less badly affected by the eruption, at least initially, are afraid of being overrun by refugees.”
    “You can’t keep people locked in camps forever,” Mom said.
    “True. Our strategic posture is unstable.”
    “Will civilian control order you to kill the refugees?” Ben asked.
    Mom gasped, but Colonel Levitov didn’t seem fazed. “A massacre? It could happen. I would not obey such an order.”
    “You would be within your rights under the Fourth Geneva Convention, which specifically protects—” Alyssa kicked Ben in the ankle, and surprisingly, he shut up.
    “So what happens to the other refugees? To my girls?” Mom asked.
    “I will see that those responsible for allowing the DWBs to enter the camp are reassigned.”
    “Reassigned?” I said. “They should be prosecuted.”
    Ben added, “Courts-martial would be the proper—”
    “I don’t have the manpower for that. But the kidnapping of inmates will end. You have my word on that.”
    I didn’t believe him, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.
    “So what happens to us?” Alyssa asked, her voice low.
    “You’ll be transferred to Camp Aledo in Illinois tomorrow. I recommend you keep your heads down.