A/N: I love the GONE books by Michael Grant, so I thought I'd write this. Hope you enjoy, and please review!

I don't own GONE. Don't read if you haven't read Plague. xx :)


Chapter 1

1) No violence on any kind unless in proven self-defence.

2) No stealing or damaging other people's belongings.

3) No lying to the council or the jury.

4) No damaging council property (e.g. tents, fishing equipment), or using it without permission of the council, or your employer of the day.

5) No bothering the healer unless in an emergency.

6) No anti-freak/normal behaviour.

7) No taking more than your share of food or water.

8) No wasting resources.

9) Curfew is ten pm, and cannot be broken unless in an emergency.

10) Anyone who wishes to leave to join Caine's colony may do so, however all rotas, systems and organisation will be altered, so they might not be allowed back.

11) Everyone must do the jobs they are assigned, no complaining, unless they have a proven, official reason for absence (e.g. illness.).

12) All children below four are the responsibility of the day care, and must remain with Brother John or a member of his staff at all times.

13) Children below the age of eight must attend an hour of schooling a day, unless they have a proven, official reason of absence (e.g. illness).

14) Everyone over the age of eight is required to do jury duty, and can be called up at any time, for any case, unless they have a proven, official reason of absence (e.g. illness).

15) Failure to comply with these rules will result in a prison sentence, or (in serious cases) exile from the camp.

16) If two people enter into a relationship, they are forbidden from sharing a tent, and from going past second base. This alone will result in a week of imprisonment.

17) Anyone who wishes for a clean slate after aggressive or bad behaviour that occurred prior to the forming of the Community shall be given it, but if they break a law, their previous record is liable to be held against them for means of behavioural explanation and jury decisions.

18) All the members of the council reserve the right to arrest any member of the Community, if there are no Guards present, provided they have reason and proof.

19) No consumption of drugs or alcohol, unless for medical purpose (e.g. pain relief).


Sam stood with his back to the glittering lake, reading over the somehow immaculate list of laws that Astrid and Edilio had drawn up in the former's neat script. He sighed, smirking slightly as he read number 15. The 'prison' was a tent guarded 24/7 (when occupied) by two Guards, a few meters away from the tree with the rules. But it was empty at the moment: the last offender had left the previous day, after having served his two day sentence for skipping work.

Sam wandered past the tree the list was nailed to, officially entering the 'Town Square' of the camp. There was a crude, yet surprisingly well-built table in the middle of a small marquee/large tent called the Council Room, which was surrounded by a combination of fold-out chairs and stools made by the Carpenters, and covered in a blue plastic tarpaulin. Underneath it were all the records, rotas and log books that Albert used for the running of the council and the Community. A bookshelf in the corner was crammed with 'DIY for Dummies' and the like, and all the pregnency and birthing books that Astrid and Diana poured over together.

On one side of the Council Room was the medical tent, on the other the day care and school area, and behind that stretched several rows of three to nine man tents, scavenged by the Community's occupants and bribed off Caine's followers by Albert. Behind all the tents was a space for bonfires where Community meetings and trails were held, and after that stretched several miles of forest, the first line of trees marking the boundary of the Community's camp. A slit trench had been dug a quarter of a mile away down the way, upstream of the place where they got their drinking water.

A couple of Guards approached the Council Room that Sam had walked into, both raising a hand in greeting, who returned the gesture as they walked up to him, choosing to look past the guns both of them were clutching. Most people in the Community didn't carry weapons; there was no rule against it, but everyone felt so much safer than they had done during the Famine (as the inhabitants of the FAYZ had named the desperate time of constant hunger before Albert had pulled them together), they this precarious balance of life no longer warranted protection in their books. Not day-to-day within the camp, anyway.

However, each of the ten-strong team of Guards that Edilio and Ellen ran had their own gun (the EED, Edilio and Ellen Defence- as named by Howard, of course), and were prepared to defend the relative peace of the Community at a moment's notice. The Guards had a dress code of essentially anything they could find that was dark coloured, and every one of them had two tattoos of the defence team logo- two E's back to back, followed by a D, in a clear circle. They weren't actual tattoos, they were drawn on with permanent marker, but it stood out on the backs of their hands and acted as an identification system. The Guards weren't just a police force, they acted as the fire and general emergency services as well; although Dhara ran the hospital.

"What's wrong?" Sam asked as they stood in front of him, shifting from foot to foot. They didn't just look obviously guilty about something, they looked sad. Sam recognised one of them as Virtue, Sanjit's brother, and noticed his eyes were red, as his he had been crying.

"Albert ordered us to round up the council." Sarah, the other person said. "There's been an accident."

"What sort of accident?" Sam said suspiciously, an all-too familiar feeling of dread settling into the pit of his stomach.

"I think it would be best if you came and saw for yourself." Virtue said hoarsely, and Sam nodded. If whatever it was had upset Virtue, a member of one of the strongest families he knew, then it must be bad.


Sam followed the pair as they hurried through the camp, which was strangely devoid of people. Was Sam the last to know about this incident? It wouldn't be the first time: he had been the last to know when Diana's baby kicked, the last to know about almost every Council meeting. Maybe people were forgetting him?

As soon as Sam thought that, he was immediately disgusted with himself. Wasn't that what he had wanted from day one? To be able to live a quiet life, not to always be asked for about every tiny little thing, to be expected to always be strong and play the hero? Shaking his head, Sam decided to leave the thought for later, when he was lying awake in the tent he share with Edilio, Toto, Quinn and Sanjit, desperately trying to evade the nightmares that still plagued him every night.

The group of Sam and the soldiers walked briskly through the rows and rows of tents to the back row, by the trees, and once they had reached the outskirts of the Camp, Sam saw the large group of people. They were spilling out around the furthest few tents, the area the EED occupied, but Sam could tell that the cluster of people- which he realised was probably the entirety of the Community, except for the Prees- that they spilled a long way into the trees.

One glance told Sam that some of them were crying. Some looked scared, but mostly they were just angry. Angry that things looked like they were about to revert back to the old ways, when they had been so good for such a relatively long time. Because once everyone had cleared a path for Sam and the Guards who had led him there, he saw a small shape sprawled on the floor, the clothes and skin on its back ripped and bloody from chilling familiar whip marks.