Many years ago i got on an airplane for a cross country flight. When I got on there was a book in the magazine holder in front of me. I seem to remember that it was a well known classic SF author, although i cannot remember it, but it was a wonderful read.
Regardless, the book followed an orphan into an orphanage in a post apocalyptic America ( at least I think it was America). He does something wrong, and doesnt get dinner that night, and the same night all of the other orphans get sick. Come to find out that the new managers of the orphanage were buying meat on the black market. He ends up hiding with the dead bodies as they are removed from the orphanage to avoid being killed by the new managers, and escapes to the streets. He makes a friend (maybe?) and meets a girl, i think. regardless, he is living in a warehouse at some point in time and trying to avoid the people that round up the homeless to be killed or sent to labor camps. At some point in time or another he takes a test with an old man and scores supremely high on it. at that point in time he gets recruited to go across the mississippi, to where the "prison" part of the country is. when he first gets there he sees this monstrous machine, designed to handle radioactive waste, run up to someone and gently wipe its "hands" up one side of them and down the other. When he asks about it he is told that that person has just found to be a spy, and is left to die from radiation poisoning.
Obviously there is a lot more to this than what i have put down, but that is kind of it in a nutshell. I have looked high and low for this book, and any help in finding it would be greatly appreciated. If you have read it, let me know, but better yet if you know the author and title, even better, please post!
Thank you Escape Pod community.
(ps if you are old here, i seem to remember posting a thread about this here a year or 2 ago, i meant to anyways. If it is a repeat sorry
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