Unwind: UnWholly Part 33

53 * Nelson

Nelson decides to give Lev plenty of time to think about it. In the meantime, he sits in an adjoining room of the cottage, researching the leads he already has. Not that many. He has tagged nearly a dozen AWOLs, letting them think they've escaped from him. Some are still on the streets not far from where he originally captured them. Others are at harvest camps, having been caught by the Juvies. One appears to be in Argentina, although he suspects the kid was caught by another parts pirate and unwound on the black market, which means only his tagged part went to South America. There are two signals pinging from Arizona at the site of an old defunct air force base. This he finds the most curious. He heard talk of some sort of AWOL sanctuary in the Southwest when he was still with the Juvies, but details were sketchy, and he hadn't had high enough security clearance to learn any more about it, or interest at the time to care. In any case, Arizona is too far away for him to jump to any conclusions. Unless, of course, his little clapper boy places Connor there.

The tranq bullets Nelson loaded in his pistol are the mildest kind, with the shortest half-life. When he returns about two hours later, he lingers outside the door, listening. The girl is awake but groggy, and Lev is all about apologizing for getting her involved in this. No talk of Connor or any potential AWOL hideouts.

Nelson kicks open the door for effect, then sits calmly in the chair between them, brandis.h.i.+ng his pistol, just in case there's any question about his intentions.

"Are we ready?" Nelson says. "Five bullets left. A twenty percent chance that the next one is lethal."

Lev avoids eye contact with him, struggling to keep his breathing under control. As he already knows the surprise ending of the game, Nelson aims the gun at the girl even before asking the question.

"You think I'm afraid to die, but I'm not," the girl says. However, the warble in her voice says otherwise.

"Please," Lev begs. "You don't have to do this."

"I believe I do," Nelson cheerfully tells him. He clears his throat. "Round two. The question is . . . Where is the Akron AWOL hiding? You have three seconds before the buzzer."

"Please don't," Lev pleads again.

"One!"

"Turn it on me! She has nothing to do with this!"

"Two!"

"I'm the one with the wrong answers! Not her!"

"Three!"

"No! Wait! I'll tell you! I'll tell you!"

He c.o.c.ks the trigger. "Better make it quick."

Lev takes a deep, shuddering breath. "Indian Echo Caverns. In Pennsylvania. It's where the AWOLs from the East Coast are hidden. They take them deep in the caverns and keep them there until they turn seventeen. Connor's helping them run it."

"Hmm," says Nelson, considering it. "It's on an Indian rez. I'll bet stinking Slotmongers are always giving sanctuary to AWOLs."

He puts the gun across his lap and leans back in his chair. "Now I have a dilemma. Of all the AWOLs I've tagged, none of them have gone in that direction. So who should I believe? You or my data?"

"Where were you tagging them?" Lev asks quickly. "If they're west of Pittsburgh, they probably go someplace else if the resistance picks them up-and don't ask me where, because I don't know!"

Nelson smiles. "You know, I'm so glad you didn't blow yourself to smithereens last year, young man. Because you've just saved this girl's life. a.s.suming, of course, that you're telling the truth."

"If I'm lying," says Lev, "you can come back and kill us both."

That makes Nelson laugh. "If it turns out you're lying, I would have done that anyway, but thank you for giving me permission."

Then he leaves, making no attempt to free them from their bonds.

54 * Lev

"Were you telling the truth?" Miracolina asks, "Of course I was," Lev says, just in case Nelson is still listening. A few moments later he hears Nelson's van start and drive off. The fact is, it hadn't mattered what Lev told him-what mattered was Nelson believing it. Lev pulled the location out of his memory-he had been to Indian Echo Caverns with his family many years before. He remembered the guide saying that it used to be a hideout for outlaws. Lev stayed close to his mother, fearing that those outlaws might still be lurking in shadowy crevices. Lev has no idea if AWOLs really are hiding there. He hopes not, now that he's unleashed Nelson on the place.

"So what do we do?" Miracolina asks. "If he catches your friend, he won't be back, and we'll starve to death, and if your friend's not there, he'll come back and kill us."

"I thought you weren't afraid of dying."

"I'm not. I just don't want to die a senseless death."

"We won't. Not if I can help it." Then he begins to roll back and forth on his bed. His hands are secured tightly to two of the metal bedposts with the cable ties, but his feet are able to build a kind of rocking momentum. He throws his weight left, then right, over and over again, and the bed begins to sc.r.a.pe on the ground beneath him as he does. He tries to flip the bed but can't build the momentum, and eventually he has to rest.

"It's not working," Miracolina says, stating what's more than obvious.

"Then maybe you should start praying. I sure am."

After a few minutes' rest, he tries it again. This time he's able to slide the bed over a little bit more with his rocking, until one of the legs catches on an uneven floorboard. Now when he rocks the bed, the legs on the other side rise slightly off the ground. He loses his strength, and the pain of the plastic ties digging into his wrists gets to him. He has to stop, but after a few minutes of recovery he tries again, and again, each time getting closer to the exact force, and the exact torque it will take. Then finally, releasing a clenched-jawed groan, he hurls all his weight toward the far wall, practically wrenching his arms out of their sockets-and the bed rises, its future dangling like a coin between heads and tails-and then it flips upside down. The metal frame and the mattress land on top of him. Lev's elbows smash painfully on the rotting wooden floor, splinters digging in. With the bed lying on top of him, he has a momentary flashback to the explosion in the town house and being pinned beneath the sofa. His brother's face, and Pastor Dan's. He tries to draw strength from the moment, rather than let himself be overwhelmed by grief.

"You did it! That was great!" he can hear Miracolina saying, although he can't see her. "Now what?"

"Not sure yet."

Lev's hands are still painfully tied to the metal headboard bars. He can see how badly his wrists are bleeding, and there's rust on his hands too. He thinks about teta.n.u.s, and how they always want you to get a teta.n.u.s shot when you step on a rusty nail or something. He thinks about how, at his family's beach home, the iron fence had rusted into nothing from exposure to salt air. Rusted into nothing . . . He looks to where the headboard bars connect to the bed frame. The bar to which his left hand is attached is practically rusted all the way through. Ignoring the pain again, he tugs and he tugs until finally the pole breaks and his hand comes free.

"What's going on down there?" Miracolina asks.

He reaches up and grabs her hand instead of telling her, and she gasps.

The bar that secures his right hand is not in the same weak state as the other, but it is rusty also, and rough. He knows he can't break this pole like the other one, so he tries a different tactic. He begins to move his wrist back and forth, sc.r.a.ping the plastic tie against the jagged, rusted metal. Bit by bit the plastic is worn away, until finally the tie shreds apart and his hand comes free. He wipes the blood from his wrists on the mattress and stands up.

"How did you do it?" she asks.

"Superpowers," he tells her. He looks at Miracolina's bonds, then reaches beneath her mattress to find the same rusted metal. He pulls the bed away from the wall and, standing behind it, kicks at the bars until the ones Miracolina are attached to break free. She pulls her hands away, peeling the plastic loops over her knuckles.

"You okay?" Lev asks, and she nods. "Good. Let's get out of here." But the moment he puts weight on his right ankle, he grimaces and starts to limp.

"What is it?" Miracolina asks.

"I think I sprained my ankle kicking out the bars," Lev tells her. She lets him put his weight on her, and she helps him walk.

As they open the front door, it becomes clear where they're being held. It's a cottage in the woods, so isolated they could have screamed at the top of their lungs for days and no one would have heard them.

There's a dirt path leading out to what Lev hopes is a major road. He tries putting weight on his ankle and grimaces again-so she continues to let him put his arm over her shoulder, and he gratefully accepts her a.s.sistance.

Then, when they're a good distance away from the shack, he says, "I'm really going to need your help now. You have to help me warn my friend."

She steps away from him, and he almost topples, but manages to keep his balance.

"I'll do no such thing. Your friend is not my problem."

"Please, look at me. I can barely walk-I can't make it there on my own."

"I'll get you to a hospital."

Lev shakes his head. "When I went to Cavenaugh, I broke the terms of my parole. If I get caught, I'll get locked away for good."

"Don't blame me for that!"

"I just saved your life," Lev reminds her. "Don't repay me by destroying mine."

She looks at him almost as hatefully as the day they first met. "That parts pirate will get to the caverns before we do. What's the point?" Then she studies him for a moment as if reading Lev's mind, and says, "Your friend's not in the caverns, is he?"

"No."

She sighs. "Of course not."

55 * Miracolina

Miracolina is not a girl given to impulsive behavior. All things must be planned and have sufficient time to settle before being carried out. Even her escape from the Cavenaugh mansion was not a wild bolt, but the result of careful preparation. Therefore, she is completely unprepared for the madness that overtakes her as she stands in that dirt path with Lev.

"I will contact my parents before I help you get anywhere," she tells him, realizing that by saying this, she's entered into negotiation. She's actually considering going with him. Perhaps it's post-traumatic stress disorder.

"You can't call your parents. If you do, they'll know your t.i.thing bus wasn't attacked by parts pirates. It will compromise the entire Cavenaugh operation."

"If you care so much about it," she asks him, "then why did you run?"

He takes a moment before answering, s.h.i.+fting his weight and grimacing again. "Their work is good," he says. "It just isn't mine."

This baffles her. His motives-his hazy integrity. It was easy to dismiss Lev as "part of the problem" when she did not know him, but now it's not so easy. He's a paradox. This is a boy who almost blew himself to bits in an attempt to kill others, and yet he offered himself to the parts pirate in order to save Miracolina's life. How could someone go from having no respect for one's own existence to being willing to give himself as a sacrifice for someone he barely knows? It flies in the face of the truths that have defined Miracolina's life. The bad are bad, the good are good, and being caught in between is just an illusion. There is no gray.

"I will contact my parents and let them know that I am alive," she demands, holding firm. "Just knowing I'm alive will make them happy."

"A call can be traced."

"We'll be moving, won't we? If my parents report it to the Juvenile Authority, they'll only know where we've been, not where we're going." And then she asks, "Where are we going?"

"I guess you can get in touch with your parents," Lev says, giving in, "but don't ask where we're going. The less you know, the better."

And although that sends a red warning flag flying to the top of her mast, she says, "Fine." Then she puts her hands on her hips. "And you can stop pretending your ankle hurts. That will just slow us down."

Lev puts his full weight on the ankle and offers her up an impish little grin. It's in this moment that Miracolina realizes she lost this negotiation before it began. Because even before he asked her to come along with him, a part of herself-secret even to her-had already decided that she would.

56 * Lev

The journey to the Graveyard is different for Lev than his first time. That first trek had no definite destination beyond a slow downward spiral, and was made while his wounded spirit was so raw, he had been ripe for recruitment by the Clappers. He had been lost with no real way to cope with his anger.

First there was CyFi, and the kid in CyFi's head who didn't even know he had already been unwound. Then Lev was left alone to fend for himself, prey for bottom-feeders as stealthy as mosquitoes. They would offer help, or shelter, or food-but they all had some bloodsucking agenda. A brief stint in a Chance folk rez bolstered his strength, but even that ended with a nasty run-in with a parts pirate. Lev's time surviving under the radar had made him street-smart and resourceful. He had been toughened by a brutal baptism of life experience. In those bleak days, the idea of blowing himself up and taking as much of the world with him as he could didn't sound like such a bad idea.

But he is not in that dark place now, and he knows that no matter what happens to him, he'll never be in that place again.

To honor Miracolina's wishes, Lev slips a cell phone out of the coat pocket of a businessman so she can call home. The call is brief, and as promised, she gives no more information than the fact that she's alive, cutting off her mother's rapid-fire inquiry by quickly hanging up.

"There, are you happy?" she snaps at Lev. "Short and sweet." She insists he return the phone to the same businessman's pocket, but he's long gone, so he drops it in the pocket of a similar man.

With no money of their own, everything they need must be stolen. Lev uses milder versions of the survival tricks he learned his first time on the streets. Smash and grab without the smash. Breaking and entering without any actual breaking. Oddly, Miracolina has no problem with them stealing.

"I am making a list of all the things we take, and where we take them from," she tells him. "All will be paid for in full before I am unwound."

However, the fact that she is allowing for the bending of her personal moral code gives Lev hope that it may bend enough to break her of her t.i.thing fixation.

He knows that time is of the essence. Nelson is the kind of human bloodhound who won't give up-and he'll be even more relentless once he realizes Lev has lied to him. They have to warn Connor.

Neither Lev nor Miracolina can drive, or look old enough to get away with it if they could-and kids their age traveling on conventional transportation stick out like sore thumbs. So they ride in the shadows of the world. The containers of eighteen-wheelers, when they can get inside; the beds of pickups when there are tarps under which to hide. More than once they're chased away, but never seriously pursued. Luckily, most people have more important things to do than run after a couple of kids.

"I hate what we're doing, and how we're doing it!" Miracolina yells, after running from a particularly aggressive trucker who chased them with a tire iron for all of ten yards. "I feel dirty! I feel subhuman."

"Good," Lev tells her. "Now you know how a real AWOL feels."