Outcasts

By Bradley Shaw

Following the second American civil war in the year 2100, a brutal empire arises from the ashes, spreading across North America and beyond. In this new world, those who rebel are punished severely—as are their family members. Children of criminals are placed in guarded, abandoned cities and towns called Squares, where they are permanently cast out from society.

Life is hard in the Square. Leo Hint ends up in one at seven years old, after his father rebels against the empire. Fortunately, he soon joins a gang that helps him stay alive and build a life over the next five years. Then one day, when he and his friend Mikak take things too far and get caught by a soldier, they find themselves facing the fight of their lives as they try to escape the Square. The boys discover something bigger than they ever expected, and now Leo, Mikak, the rest of their gang, and six new members must save each other.

In this first book of a planned series, a teen imprisoned in an abandoned town works with other young people to escape, doing their best to survive in a dangerous, hostile world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jan 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781480876583

Bradley Shaw

Bradley Shaw is a young author from Flagstaff, Arizona, where he lives with his mother and dog, Phoebe. He has written books for years and has taken many writing classes. This is his first published work. He believes children should be allowed to make their mark in the world and hopes that his stories will be an inspiration for them to stand out.

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Copyright © 2019 Bradley Shaw.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Archway Publishing

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-4808-7659-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-7660-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-7658-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019913966

Archway Publishing rev. date: 9/24/2019

Contents

Prologue

Part One The Square

Chapter One Introduction

Chapter Two Outside The Square

Chapter Three Running Low

Chapter Four The Escape

Chapter Five Leaving Home

Part Two Allies

Chapter Six The Wilderness

Chapter Seven Rescue

Chapter Eight The Ugly Truth

Chapter Nine Bullets

Chapter Ten The City

Chapter Eleven The Bunker

Chapter Twelve The Attack

Part Three Outlaws

Chapter Thirteen Cornered

Chapter Fourteen Going Home

Chapter Fifteen Chaos

Chapter Sixteen Goodbye

To Phoebe, the greatest dog in the whole world.

If our hearts are broken,

We will mend them.

If they are mended,

We will make them whole.

And if they are whole,

Then they will stay whole.

—Gudd Harvey

PROLOGUE

In the year 2100, a second civil war broke out in the United State of America. With both sides so heavily armed and prepared, each of their governments fell. From the ashes of the war, a new, stronger brand of soldiers took over the land, turning it into the first ever empire. Today, it controls all of North America and many of the off-land countries, including but not limited to Hawaii, Japan, Cuba, and Puerto Rico.

To remind everyone that war is not pretty and that the empire is still in control, many civilians are left to fend for themselves, often having to work hard to earn the smallest amount of payment. Women and children often do not have the proper essentials such as food and clothing to survive. If you commit a crime, it will be at a deadly cost. Your whole family will be punished. The adults will be taken to labor camps and used as slaves. Children younger than three are taken to prisons and are brainwashed into soldiers for the empire’s army. Children between the ages of four to eighteen are put into guarded abandoned cities and towns called Squares. Because they are separated from society, they are famously known as outcasts.

PART ONE

The Square

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CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

I t wasn’t my fault that we all got trapped outside the Square.

Really. Mikak was horsing around, and he got a little carried away, like he often did. Sometimes I found myself wondering if there was anything going on behind those blank eyes of his. I actually asked him that once, and he said, My eyes aren’t blank. They’re blue. My point proven.

Sorry—maybe I should start at the beginning.

My name is Leo Hint. I know Leo is a strange name to use this day and age, but I had no control over it. My parents chose it for me.

My parents were interesting people. My mother would always clean the house, even if she had just finished cleaning a certain spot the day before. And my father … well, he was a criminal. I know that sounds repulsive, but he was—and a very good one at that. He could sneak into just about anywhere and never get caught.

Until he got caught.

That was how I ended up in the Square in the first place. He got caught. For some reason, if one got caught doing a crime back home, the children were taken away. I used to think it was a load of bullcrap until I was taken away myself.

It was the second week of March, as I recall. Yes, it was, because all the snow had just finished melting. My family was inside eating supper. My mother had fixed up an incredible dinner, a whole roasted chicken. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but believe me, if my parents could do better, they would. Besides, Mother’s roasted chicken was absolutely divine.

Anyways, she had fixed a chicken for me and my older sister, KaCally. I loved my sister. She wasn’t one of those snappy girls who thought they were perfect and better that everyone else (though I could name quite a few of those people too). She was nice and easygoing. She was about a foot taller than me with long, dark, straight hair that seemed like it would always get in the way but didn’t, and she had soft hands that felt like the scruff of a dog’s neck. But don’t let her pretty exterior fool you. She could put up one hell of a fight, that girl. I once tried to surprise attack her from above, jumping off of our second-story balcony. She turned around and socked me in the jaw so hard it threw me right off her back. Then she showed me everything she knew about karate, kung fu, and boxing before she threw me into a garbage barrel.

Good old KaCally, or Kay as I liked to call her.

Back on the topic. Kay and I were ready to eat that chicken. But the bad news was that no matter what, Mother always fixed us a salad to go with it. I don’t like salad. Something about eating dry leaves, stale bread, and slimy cheese and tomatoes covered in a weird-tasting sauce doesn’t sound very appetizing to me. Every time we had to have it, I would act like I was eating it. Then when my mother wasn’t looking, I would sneak it onto her plate.

I had just finished dumping a large load of salad onto her plate when my father came bursting through the back door. He quickly locked it behind himself and then ran over to the table and us. In one hand, he held a plastic bag. In the other was a gun—a loaded rifle, to be exact. It smelled of gun smoke, indicating he had used it, perhaps multiple times.

He handed the bag to my mother, saying, The time has come. He then instructed us to go hide in my room with the bag. After that, he walked to the front door, aiming the gun at the center of it. I should mention that at that point, there were already several blast holes in the door and surrounding wall.

My mother hurried me and my sister to the top of the stairs and then into my room. It was a cramped room, housing only one twin-sized bed and a nightstand. The nightstand was covered in dust because I rarely used it. The bed was bare, nothing on it but an old, tattered mattress. It smelled like a petting zoo and had weird stains on it, but that didn’t bother me. In my town back home, even having a bed frame was a luxury.

My mother hid me and KaCally under the bed and then exited the room, locking the door behind her. Maybe that was sign that we should have stayed put, or at least stayed in the room. But we didn’t.

KaCally and I sneaked back downstairs. When we arrived, there were men in white armor with those high-tech targeting blasters that I would love to hold. They arrested me and KaCally. She put up a fight, thrashing around in her shackles and screaming curses at the men in white armor. As if that was going to do a damned thing.

They split us apart and loaded me onto a train. After a couple of days on the train, they threw me off it into the Square. I was still handcuffed at the time, meaning I was defenseless. I wandered around the Square for a few days after that, scrounging for food and water. I was only eight at the time, and so in order to find food, I had to beg people for it.

As I found out, the people in the Square were complete jerks. They slammed doors on my face and threw pans at me. One even took a bucket of perfectly good drinking water and drowned me with it.

After living like that for two weeks, Gudd found me. He was kind on the inside to those who didn’t stand up to him. He reminded me a lot about KaCally that way. He freed my hands from the cuffs and took me to a shack outside the actual city in the Square. There, I meet Conor, Rollan, and Atar. Mikak came later. Gudd also died later.

That’s how we were left to be together. And that’s where the story began.

I woke up early in the morning—three o’clock, to be precise. It wasn’t all that early, if you ask me. It was about the normal time I got up. Everyone else liked to sleep in until five. Not me. I got up hours before the sun.

It was a trait I picked up in the Square. Before Gudd found me, I had to get moving early to avoid getting caught sleeping in someone’s attic, as I often had to do so that I wouldn’t freeze to death at night.

I looked down off my bed on the support beam going across the room of the second-story floor. Conor was asleep by the doorway that used to lead to the balcony. It had collapsed a couple of years ago, meaning whoever took a step through the door would fall down about twenty feet before landing on the ground. Rollan sat on a chair next to Conor, sound asleep as well. Atar was snoring under the beam I was on.

I studied Atar’s face while he slept. He looked so peaceful and sane. Not in the state of anger he was constantly