Young Writers Society

I would really appreciate comments and suggestions.

The Hunt

The Mountains of Vermont glistened like the paint of an artist’s brush, gone wild.

Most would have found it pretty, but Kenneth Riley didn’t notice it’s stark beauty

anymore.

Kenneth sat as his desk in the Newport Shipping Station. It was the routing station

for all eastern Canadian products. The station itself was small, only three stories of plain

gray concrete. There was a lot behind it which was about the size of a football field.

Inside this lot, there were all manner of confiscated products, from vehicles to coffee

machines. Whatever food was confiscated was up for the taking. There was always a

shortage of food in the town, so there was very little chance that there wasn’t left when

Kenneth reached the lot. Food trucks only came twice a month, and the town would

almost starve by the time the next trucks came.

His office was on the third floor. Kenneth spent almost all of his time approving

or denying products that where to be moved through the station. He liked his job and

spent most of his free time at the station, going over the infinite amount of paperwork. In

fact the whole third floor of the office was dedicated to Kenneth and the seven others who

stamped the forms.

Three times a week, huge dump trucks would arrive to haul the confiscated

products to a landfill out near Montpellier, where it would be gleaned through and

stripped of anything that was left of value.

A bell rang twice and Kenneth looked up at the clock on the wall. There were only

five minutes before they were allowed to leave. He was hungry and couldn’t wait to get

home and cook some dinner. Then he would return to the office for another two or three

hours.

The sky had darkened considerably as Kenneth pulled on his overcoat. It would

probably snow. He headed down the stairs and almost collided with one of the runners.

They carried to paperwork from office to office. He had a large pile of papers in his

hands.

“ Ken, don’t be gone too long, this is just your paperwork for the shipments next

Tuesday.

Kenneth groaned. He wouldn’t get to sleep tonight. Usually the paperwork on the

weekends was minimal, only two to three hundred forms. That pile was at least a

thousand. He sighed heavily and walked out into the parking lot, with it’s cracked and

bumpy pavement. There were a few parking lot lights still on, but most had burnt out and

nobody cared enough to fix them. Kenneth wandered out into the all encompassing night

and opened the door to his old car. It started with a low thud, and he pulled out onto the

road. The drive was short and he arrived at his small house in about five minutes. The

house was old and rundown because he hadn’t taken the time to fix it and maintain it. He

spent most of his time at work, so he was rarely home, and barely ever used up his

electric allotment during the course of the month. He parked his car and walked up the

front steps. He opened the door with a creak and stepped into the small livingroom. The

room was dark and the flash of light when he turned on the lightswitch almost blinded

him. He surveyed the room for a moment or two, looking at the wall paper peeling at its

seams, the dusty television and the cracked roof. It seemed like everything here was in a

slow state of decay. He didn’t have time, as mentioned earlier, to fix his rundown house,

and he didn’t have the money to hire somebody to fix it. Not that anybody would have

anyway.

The kitchen was worse, if that was at all possible. The stove was small, and the

sink was orange from where the rusty water sat, as result of a faulty drain. The fan was

drooping and yellow, the cabinets blistered white paint. He wandered over to the small

countertop refrigerator and looked inside it at the measly amount of food. The trucks were

scheduled to come in a week, but Kenneth doubted that his food supply would last that

long. He pulled a fake egg and a strip of fatty bacon out of the fridge. While the stove

slowly heated up, Kenneth got a carton of juice from the fridge and poured himself a

small glass of fake, processed orange juice. It was an insubstantial dinner, and Kenneth

knew it, but he was itching to get back to work. He ate as fast as he could and washed the

dishes in the orangish water from the sink faucet. He went out the door, flicking off the

lightswitch as he went out and got back into his car. About halfway back to the station,

his car ran out of fuel. It sputtered sickeningly, then quit altogether. He was forced to

walk the rest of the way. The paperwork had piled up on his desk when Kenneth got back

to his office, and he began the arduous journey of stamping all the forms. One form in

particular caught his interest. A shipment of exotic foods was being sent to Washington

for the birthday party of one of the high party members. It contained foods from countless

countries. He went over the form, looking for anything that would seem suspicious. He

found nothing, but set it aside to work on later.

The night wore on and morning came with brilliance and splendor. Kenneth

hadn’t moved from his desk all night and he was exhausted. Slowly, the other workers at

the station, who hadn’t stayed all night, trickled in. They gave him a cheery hello, which

Kenneth didn’t return. The day promised to be an uneventful one, so Kenneth took the

opportunity to take quick catnaps in-between the infrequent forms and take a closer look

at the one for the foods. He scoured the form and could see no problems with it. So, doing

what he was supposed to do, Kenneth stamped the form with an approved stamp and sent

it on its way.. The day was getting on and Kenneth had recovered much of his lost sleep

when two men entered his office. They were police.

“ Can I help you gentlemen?” Kenneth asked apprehensively.

“ Are you Kenneth Riley?” One of them asked severely.

“ Yes,” Kenneth put down his pen and frowned.

“ You’re under arrest. Come with us.” Their tone was stern and hard.

“ What did I do,” Kenneth asked, getting up from his chair.

They didn’t answer. They came around the desk and took his arms, slapping

handcuffs on his wrist.

The entire trip to the police station, Kenneth shouted and demanded to know why

he was being arrested. The officers totally ignored him, and they drove in absolute

silence.

The police station was a dark terror at the edge of town, its walls were dark

concrete. Inside, The walls were painted a sickening green color. There was a small

ante-chamber which led into the cells. There were at least twenty cells, and many of them

were filled. They moved him down the line to a cell at the end.

Kenneth spent the entire night in the cell, wracking his brain for any possible

reason why he was under arrest.

Early the next morning, Kenneth was awakened by a guard who was hitting the

cell bars with a nightstick.

“ Hey, get up now.” The guard jeered.

“ What did I...”

The guard turned and walked away. A few minutes later, the guard returned with a

man who was in a Government Police uniform. The man was tall and slender and had a

big black mustache. The guard wrenched the cell door open and heaved Kenneth up onto

his feet.

“Get goin.” He said as he shoved Kenneth out the door, “You’re going to a

government camp.

The man in the GP uniform took Kenneth by the arm and steered him out of the

station. He was thrust into a police car and the man slammed the door and came around

the car to the diver’s side door. He got in and the car pulled out of the parking lot and

headed down the road.

“ Sorry about that back there,” the man said, as he pulled of the fake mustache and

the sunglasses and revealed himself to be Peter Toggs, a friend of Kenneth’s who worked

in the confiscation lot back at the Newport Shipping Station.

“ I heard you’d been arrested and so I came after you, knowing that they’d call the

GP. Do I look authentic? Oh, and by the way, What did you get arrested for?”

“ I have no idea. I can’t think of anything that I did wrong.”

“ Oh well, it doesn’t matter. You should leave the country. Go up to Canada. You

should be safe there.”

<><><><>

An hour later, two GP squad cars pulled up in front of the Newport police station.

The officers got out and entered, moving up to the front desk.

“ We’ll take Kenneth Riley of your hands now.” A burly officer said to a cop.

“ You boys took Riley this morning, uh, maybe you should check your papers.”

“ No, we weren’t here at all for him yet. That’s why we are here now.”

“ No, you guys came this morning. I am the one who signed Riley out. He

definitely left here with a GP officer.”

“ Which way did he go?”

“ Uh, north I think. What’s going on?”

“ You just signed Riley over to someone who isn’t in the GP. That’s what. Now

he has at least an hour head start.”

The GP officers with about two thirds of the Newport police force got into their

cars and headed north, in pursuit of Kenneth and Peter Toggs.

<><><><>

The sun was still high in the sky when Peter dropped Kenneth off at a motel about

fifty miles north of the border. He gave Kenneth strict instructions to head north towards

Montreal, where he could leave the country. The rest of the day, Kenneth sat in the motel

room, thinking about how to get to Montreal. It was growing dark and the shadows were

growing larger on the walls. Kenneth glanced out of the window and thought he saw

something. He thought he saw someone creeping along the road. He looked closer and

didn’t see anything. He looked away and turned off the light. He crept back to the

window and peered out again. There was nothing out there, except a dead mulberry bush.

He sat down on the edge of the bed and looked out the window for the third time. Was he

being paranoid or was there someone out there? He was certain that no one had followed

him to this motel. It would be the last place anyone would look for him.

He peered out the window again and saw a shadow on the concrete walk. He

moved as far away from the door and window as he could. He hoped that they would miss

the motel room in which he was staying. He heard a knock on his door, then someone

kicked the door down. It landed with a crash and about ten police officers burst into the

room.

<><><><>

Milan Drevski had been stopping at every hotel he came to, hoping to find

Kenneth Riley. So far he had very little success. He had asked one hotel manager about

the car they were driving. He had found that they had passed that way some two hours

ago. Drevski had continued north and stopped at a motel that looked out of the way. The

manager said that the stolen squad car had stopped, and a man had signed in. Then, the

car left, but one of the men stayed. He was in room 7. Drevski and the other officers

moved up the group of buildings to door number seven.

“ Don’t give this guy a chance to escape,” He said harshly. He stepped up to the

door and knocked softly. There was no answer. He stepped back and nodded to a officer

with a sledgehammer. He heave the hammer back, then whipped it forward, slamming the

door off its hinges. The officers burst into the room and found Kenneth Riley against the

wall.

“ We’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Drevski said, as the officers grabbed

Kenneth and thrust him savagely towards the door. Kenneth shouted several times at

them to tell him what he was under arrest for. They didn’t answer him. He was forced out

the door and into a waiting car. There he sat for at least two hours. They arrived back at

the

Newport police station, where Kenneth was thrust back into one of the cells. He sat in

that little cube for almost a week. Periodically, a guard would come and check on him,

but for the most part, he was neglected. Twice a day, he was brought food, but no matter

how much he asked, no one told him what he’d been arrested for.

Finally, Milan Drevski came back and ordered the cell opened. He and another

guard hauled Kenneth out the door and into a little fenced in area behind the building.

There were five men there with rifles. They’re going to kill me, Kenneth thought with a

sort of detached apprehension. He had half expected it. The way they were neglecting

him, it was pretty obvious that he was going to die. Whatever crime he was supposed to

have committed had to be terrible enough to cause all this trouble. They marched him to

the back wall of the fence. There, Drevski left him. He backed up a few feet, and said

loud enough for Kenneth t hear,

“ Are there any last words before we commence this execution.”

“ What am I being executed for?”

A sigh, “ You released a shipment of foods which were poisoned. They were sent

to one of the high party member’s birthday party. Before we figured out that the food was

poisoned, over ten members had been killed.”

“ I couldn...”

Drevski interrupted him, saying, “ Ready, aim, Fire!”

Just as Drevski yelled fire, Kenneth felt his first ever pang of hatred for the

government. The bullets tore through his torso, and Kenneth Riley of the Newport

Shipping Station slumped to the ground, dead.

There was very little ceremony for his funeral. The officers drug his body to a pit

that they had dug and buried him. Kenneth Riley was just one of thousands who had

suffered that fate, and his death had no impact in the town of Newport. He simply wasn’t

there anymore. Two days later, another man took Kenneth’s desk and the name of

Kenneth Riley only remained in the memories of the people he knew.