A cave, Luke thought, struggling to remember definitions and explanations he'd memorized for tests, never expecting the knowledge to have any use in the real world. Caves have a constant temperature, summer and winter. People used to live in caves.
Luke had found his shelter.
He crawled in, keeping his head down because the ceiling of the cave was only four or five feet above the ground. But it was warmer the farther he got from the opening. He slid back as far as he could go and still see, and he curled up against a wall of rock. He felt safer than he'd felt at any time since he'd joined the Population Police, maybe any time since the Government had torn down the woods behind his family's house.
He was just beginning to drift off to sleep when he heard the gunfire start up again.
Chapter Six
The gunshots didn't sound nearby, but there were so many of them. When he'd been running away from Chiutza, he'd heard a pop! pop! pop!… Three or four shots. That had been frightening enough, and maybe in his fear and desperation he'd miscounted or misheard.
This gunfire was even more terrifying, because it sounded like dozens of guns all firing at once, and firing again and again and again.
War, Luke thought, straining again to remember a con' cept he'd studied in school and never expected to encounter for real. Lots of people fighting.
Luke's first instinct was to curl up more tightly in the safety of his cave, his knees against his chin, his body pro^ tected by thick rock from any and every bullet. He was willing to slide on into sleep, just so he wouldn't have to hear the sounds of anyone else's struggle.
But then, unbidden, another memory forced its way into his mind: Jen arguing with him the day before she died.