The Bar Code Rebellion Read Online Free Page B

shouting and yelling.
    Global-1 cruisers appeared, blocking the entrances to side streets. Kayla coughed hard. Mfumbe’s hand was over his mouth and he seemed to be choking. Several yards away, August staggered forward, gasping for breath. Some kind ofcrowd control gas, she heard Mfumbe say. We’ve got to get out of here!
    Hot tears stung her eyes as they stumbled through the escaping crowd. Someone pushed Mfumbe but Kayla clutched his shirt, keeping him from toppling over.
    She was still steadying him when a wave of nausea hit her. It was something in the gas.
    She released his shirt and stumbled several steps away from him. Clutching her stomach, she began to vomit uncontrollably.
    Heavy footsteps came up behind her. As she lifted her head to see who it was, something smashed down hard across her shoulders with incredible force. She was knocked down — and almost knocked out.
    Through slitted eyes she was aware of red spinning lights. A man’s voice boomed through an address system, bellowing commands. “DEPOSIT ALL CELL PHONES IN THE BINS PROVIDED. ANY PHONES NOT VOLUNTARILY SURRENDERED WILL BE FORCIBLY TAKEN. PROCEED IN AN ORDERLY FASHION AS INSTRUCTED BY THE GLOBAL-1 OFFICER NEAREST YOU.”
    The pain in her back was terrible. When she tried to push herself up, she was forced back to the ground by its searing ferocity.
    “Quick! Quick!” someone whispered nearby. A woman’s voice. “Take her to the truck.”
    Strong hands grasped her firmly by the upper arms.
    A high whine of animal pain flew from her parched lips when they moved her. Her legs were lifted off the ground and she was spirited away across the dark street, too weak to resist.

 
    Kayla dreamed she was walking through a burning building. It was her high school. Smoke blackened the hallways. She pulled off her T-shirt and soaked it in the water fountain before holding the cloth over her nose and mouth. Inside each classroom, flames blazed out of control, engulfing desks, books, and posters like a ravenous monster.
    Through the blinding smoke, a soot-blackened woman floated toward her, her feet dangling just above the ground. Her hair was aflame. It blazed around her head, a fiery halo.
    Kayla sucked in a sharp breath of smoke-filled air as she realized who the woman was. The fiery, ephemeral figure was her dead mother. “Kayl-l-la,” she intoned, her voice trilling as if some mechanism within it had become stuck on the l, a tinny, metallic sound. Her mother’s voice had sounded like that, occasionally stalling on a consonant sound. Why had she never noticed it before?
    Paralyzed with shock, Kayla was unable to react as the haunting vision of her mother approached. “Kayl-l-l …” Her mother’s face twisted into a grimace of frustration as though the effort of speaking was defeating her. And then, with a sudden burstof determination, she began to scream. “You don’t know! You don’t know! You don’t know! You don’t —”
    Still screaming, Ashley Reed reached out and touched Kayla’s hair. It, too, burst into jets of white-hot fire.
    “No!” Kayla shrieked, shielding her face with her hands. She raised her arms high as the fire jumped from her head and raced along her arms to her fingertips. “No!”
    Her body began to gyrate uncontrollably, then lifted into the air and began banging off the walls.
    “Wake up!” a woman commanded firmly as she shook Kayla’s shoulders.
    Kayla’s eyes snapped open. She was in a dark place, on a hard floor. Her first response was to run. She scrambled to her feet, but a hand caught her firmly by the wrist. Kayla yanked it away.
    The pain in her back drove her to her knees. Instantly, the other person was by her side. A high beam microlight snapped on, illuminating a woman’s face. “Do you remember me?”
    “Katie.” Kayla recalled the long-haul trucker who had once given her a lift to the Superlink. It had been on the night she’d escaped from the hospital where they had wanted to bar-code