The Broken Peace Read online

  The Broken Peace

  Disorder

  Martha Adele

  Copyright © 2019 by Martha Adele.

  ISBN: Softcover 978-1-7960-2107-3

  eBook 978-1-7960-2108-0

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  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.

  Rev. date: 03/11/2019

  Xlibris

  1-888-795-4274

  www.Xlibris.com

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  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Sam

  Mavis

  Chapter Two

  Logan

  Mavis

  Chapter Three

  Sam

  Logan

  Chapter Four

  Sam

  Logan

  Chapter Five

  Mavis

  Chapter Six

  Sam

  Mavis

  Chapter Seven

  Logan

  Mavis

  Sam

  Chapter Eight

  Logan

  Mavis

  Sam

  Chapter Nine

  Logan

  Mavis

  Sam

  Chapter Ten

  Logan

  Mavis

  Sam

  Chapter Eleven

  Logan

  Mavis

  Sam

  Chapter Twelve

  Mavis

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mavis

  Sam

  Mavis

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sam

  Mavis

  Logan

  Chapter Fifteen

  Sam

  Logan

  Mavis

  Chapter Sixteen

  Mavis

  Sam

  Mavis

  Chapter Seventeen

  Werner

  Chapter Eighteen

  Logan

  Chapter Nineteen

  Werner

  Mavis

  Chapter Twenty

  Mavis

  Logan

  Werner

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Logan

  Mavis

  Werner

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Werner

  Mavis

  Logan

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Werner

  Logan

  Mavis

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Logan

  Werner

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Logan

  Werner

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Logan

  Mavis

  Werner

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Logan

  Werner

  Logan

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Werner

  Logan

  Mavis

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Logan

  Werner

  Mavis

  Chapter Thirty

  Logan

  Mavis

  Logan

  Zane

  Chapter Thirty-One

  June

  Logan

  June

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Logan

  June

  Logan

  June

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Logan

  June

  Zane

  June

  Logan

  June

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Zane

  June

  Logan

  June

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Logan

  June

  Logan

  Zane

  Logan

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Zane

  June

  Logan

  June

  Zane

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Logan

  June

  Logan

  Epilogue

  Sam

  PART TWO

  Broken Peace

  CHAPTER ONE

  Sam

  Finally.

  After weeks of working in the kitchens and weeks of packing things to take out of the mountain, Mavis, the rest of the workers, and I all get to leave Bergland.

  Most of the Bergland citizens had left to go help rebuild the streets, buildings, houses, and farmland in Bestellen after Bergland won the war, but a few people had to stay here in the mountain to help pack everything into the helicarriers and cargo cars. Mavis, Sarah, and I were three of the workers who stayed behind.

  We got our new schedules for the week yesterday and have been riding in one of the final helicarriers leaving Bergland ever since. Mavis and I have been assigned to work under Sarah in culinary aid in what has been declared as the “new capital” of this nation.

  According to Sarah, Janice and all of Bergland’s other teachers are spread throughout the new nation and are talking with all the Bestellen people to catch them up on everything and teaching them how this new government will work.

  “It will be the same setup as Bergland, government-wise,” Sarah tells us as we wait for the helicarrier to land, “but the economy and new businesses will be fun to see working outside of a strict schedule.”

  “What about the states?” I ask her, looking around the humid steel-lined room with many of the other workers strapped into similar seats as myself. “Are we going to have the same state lines? Same state names?”

  “No,” Sarah guffaws at the idea, “definitely not, Sam! They won’t have the same occupations either. I don’t think.”

  One of the other workers leans forward, past Sarah, and looks at Mavis and me. “What I heard was that they would be remaking and redefining every state’s borders, which will make it much more travel friendly.”

  “Me too!” another one of the workers cheer. “I think they are going to try to split the land of the old states up and divide it so that no single state remains the same, owning the same land.”

  “Meaning what?” I ask. “That they would give half of Bouw and half of Bloot to a new state?”

  Sarah shrugs. “I guess so.”

  Mavis and I remain quiet for the remainder of the helicarrier ride as we listen to the rest of the workers discuss what their hopes and dreams are for this new nation. Each person seems to have a different idea of their own utopia. Some want to live in a very rural and provincial state with gorgeous farmlands and houses far away from each other while others want to live in a tight-packed city with sky-high buildings and busy streets. Everyone seems to have an idea of where they want to live and what they want to do.

  All I know is tha
t I want to see my mom and to know if Logan is okay.

  As I sit and think, my mind can’t help but wonder how Mavis feels. At this point, she only has Logan and Derek, and both of them had been sent off to fight. She has no idea if either of them are alive, just as I have no idea if my mom is alive.

  Mavis and I may be the only one each other has left.

  The helicarrier engines whir loudly as the machine lowers itself to the ground. It lands on a brand-new clearing that has obviously just been paved. Everyone unbuckles themselves, and we help roll off the equipment and pack it into a large van. Once everything is loaded up, the vehicle carries us all to a new location. When we exit the van, I find myself slowly looking up, allowing my eyes to follow one of the elevators on the outside of the building as it rises to dozens of floors.

  “Woah,” I mutter under my breath, earning a nod of agreement from Mavis.

  “Follow me, everyone,” Sarah tells the group. As she leads us outside, the freezing wind meets my face and reminds me of one of the only reasons I hate going outside. The bitter cold almost instantly dries out my skin, as well as many of the other workers. Sarah quickly leads us into a much smaller kitchen than we originally had in Bergland and cheers. Opening her arms wide to our new culinary station, she announces loudly, “Welcome to my new kitchen!”

  A lot of the workers chuckle as they roll the equipment past Sarah and make comments about how it is their kitchen rather than hers. I wait for Sarah to stop messing with the other workers and make my way over to her.

  “Hey.” I tap her shoulder to get her attention. “What are the other floors on this building for?”

  “Oh, I’m glad you asked that!” She turns to the rest of the kitchen crew and claps to gather everyone’s attention. “Hey, guys!”

  No one stops, moving equipment and clashing pots and pans.

  “Hey!” she shouts louder. “Guys!” This time, a few people stop long enough to help everyone else notice that Sarah was trying to get their attention. “If you were paying attention, you may have noticed the height of this building on your way in. I was just alerted and told that this building is not only for cooking, but also for storing and growing some of Bergland’s superfoods. Instead of planting those foods in the ground, we had some workers prepare a similar setup to the ones we had back home so that we would always have some at hand for our use.”

  One of the workers in the back groans loudly, allowing their complaint to echo through the room. “Does that mean we have to be the ones to deal with them?”

  Sarah chuckles as the rest of the workers all chime in to answer and make smart-aleck comments. “All right, guys, whatever. Let’s get to work.”

  Mavis and I share a look as we scurry back over to Sarah.

  “Excuse me, Sarah,” Mavis says as she taps her on the shoulder just as I did earlier, “all the Bestellen citizens got to be reunited with their families before they were forced to work.”

  “Yeah,” I chime in. “What about us? How do we find out where our family is?”

  Sarah points back in the direction that we just came from. “Go ask one of the men up at the front of the building. They should know.”

  Mavis and I speed back through the building. When we finally do find someone, he is at the front desk and talking on the phone.

  “Um,” I say, not knowing when to chime in. “Excuse me.”

  He gives me an annoyed look and holds up one finger.

  Yes, I realize you are on the phone, but you probably know whether or not your family and friends are dead. We don’t.

  He hangs up after a few moments and fakes a smile. “What can I do for you two?”

  Mavis looks at me and waits for me to answer, but I’m not sure I can do it nicely. I take a moment and force up an equally fake smile as the man behind the desk. “We need to know where to go or who to talk to, to find out where our families are.”

  “You are looking for the AO.” He looks back down at his desk and scribbles something down on a small square piece of paper. “Wave down one of the cars with a bright-blue stripe on the side of it and tell the driver to take you to the Administrative Office. When you get there, ask the person at the desk about what you want and who you want.” The man looks up from his desk and tears off the piece of paper. Handing it to me, he simpers, “I wrote it down for you just in case.”

  I clench my teeth and make another effort to smile. “Thanks.”

  Mavis takes my arm and pulls me out to the street where we wait for one of the blue-striped vehicles to come. I glance down at the paper he gave me to see that he has scribbled down “Administrative Office,” as if I would be incapable of remembering “AO.”

  When we finally flag down one of the cars, I hold the door open for Mavis and look back through the glass doors of the building to see that the man has left his position behind the desk. I doubt this is the first time he has left his post while “on the clock.”

  “Where would you two fine-looking young people like to go today?” the driver cajoles.

  I smile back at him from the rearview mirror. “The Administrative Office please.”

  “All right, all right.” He shifts the vehicle’s gears and begins down the road. As we ride, Mavis and I see many rebuilt apartment complexes, along with many roads leading to houses and other buildings. Not to my surprise, there is a construction site almost everywhere I look. The sidewalks, perfect roads, a few cars, many pedestrians, and workers all perfectly functioning together seem to give me hope for the future.

  But the only hope I really have right now is the hope I get to see my mom again.

  I distract myself from any and all horrible thoughts by shifting my attention back to the driver. “Have you been here long?” I ask him, still not knowing his name.

  “Yep.” He nods and glances back at me through the mirror. “I grew up in Bestellen. I was one of the people who supported Bergland in Minje.”

  I pause for a moment, not knowing what to say. “That’s nice,” I finally answer. “I’m originally from Bouw, and Mavis here is from Bloot.”

  “Oh really?” He chuckles. “That’s great! So tell me, have either of you ever seen people build cities, or even buildings for that matter, this quickly?”

  I shrug back. “No, sir. I haven’t.”

  “Me neither,” he replies. The conversation is quickly taken over by this man as he fills the car with a sort of joy that comes from hearing people tell their stories, even if you don’t really care.

  As we pull up beside the AO building, he parks the car and turns back to Mavis and me. “Well, I am really enjoying having you two ride with me today! Would you like me to wait on you so I can finish my story?”

  Mavis looks at me and shrugs, obviously not wanting to hurt the man’s feelings. I get the idea that we may need a ride back to where we just were, so I nod to the man and ask him to wait.

  “Okay! I will.” He extends his hand to me and gives me a firm shake. “My name is Chuck by the way.”

  “Sam.” I return the shake and nod back at him as we exit the car. “Thank you very much, Chuck.”

  When Mavis and I enter the building, we find a small line of people leading to the front desk. My ears immediately cut through the silence and focus in on the woman at the front of the line.

  “Jodie Vaughn, Lisa Vaughn, and Rebecca Hurtz.” The woman brings a tissue up to her eye with her left hand and reveals a small rectangular strip of randomly placed dots on her wrist. “Please.” The woman sniffles and whines something that I cannot make out.

  The man working behind the desk answers the woman quietly, causing her to storm out of the building in hysterics. As the reality of it all slowly sets in, my eyes widen as we take a step forward in line.

  Allowing my eyes to dart around the room to keep myself busy, they fall upon multiple different paintings hanging on the walls of the building. S
ome of them are paintings of the old mine shafts that started Bergland; others are paintings of the river that flowed through the mountain, the same river I never got to go and see. Janice explained to us that they had turbines powered by the river, which provided a lot of Bergland’s power, but that this river was also blocked off to the public for safety reasons.

  When my eyes meet a man’s who has just come around the corner of the room, I turn away and focus on the person in front of me, who happens to have the same sort of black dotted code tattooed on their wrist as the woman who just left the building. I look past the man in front of me and notice that everyone in this room, other than Mavis and me, seems to have one of these tattoos.

  Much quicker than expected, the two of us make it to the front of the line, where the words seem to jump out of my mouth. “Bonnie Beckman. I need to know where Bonnie Beckman is, please.”

  After typing into his hologram computer, he looks at me and smiles. “She is in a hospital in State Five.” The man prints off a sheet of paper and hands it to me with the address of the hospital and a small map of the new town. “If you give this to one of the cabdrivers, they should be able to take you, but since—”

  “Wait.” Shocked, I stop him in midsentence. “Hospital? Why is she in the hospital? What happened?”

  “If you go to this address, you can find out, but I can’t tell you from what information I have here.” The man gives me a genuine smile and looks at Mavis. “Next?”

  Mavis steps up to the man and gives him names or asks him questions. My brain switches over to panic mode, and I don’t pay attention to what Mavis asks him.

  Why is she in the hospital? I mean, she is alive, but for how long?

  Is she even conscious? Will she remember me? What if she already died in the hospital?

  Mavis taps my arm and snaps me back with a look of horror in her eyes.

  “What happened?” I ask her.

  She stumbles to find her words for a moment before she lets out quietly, “Logan is in a hospital too.” She pulls out a sheet of paper with Logan’s hospital address on one half and Derek’s address on the other.

  Mavis

  The man told me that Derek and his mom are in the capital with Sam and me and that he is working as a builder.