UnWholly (Unwind Dystology 2)

6 - Risa

There is only one permanently disabled resident of the Graveyard. Since the disabled are a protected class, they’re never at risk for being unwound, so they never turn up at the Graveyard with all the other kids who ran from their unwind order. It’s a testimony to the swiss-cheese nature of public compassion. Lucky for those to whom grace is extended, but unlucky for those who wind up in the holes.

Risa is disabled by choice. That is to say, she refused surgery that would repair her severed spine, because it involved giving her the spine of an unwound kid. It used to be that spinal damage was irreversible, and if that was the card you were dealt, you spent the rest of your days with it. She wonders if it’s harder to live like that, or to live knowing you can be fixed but choose not to.

Now she lives in an old McDonnel Douglas MD-11, for which they built a wooden switchback ramp to the main hatch. The plane has been aptly named Accessible Mac, or AcMac for short. There are about ten kids with sprained ankles or other temporary conditions who currently share AcMac with Risa, each in sections divided by curtains, providing the illusion of personal space. Risa has the old first-class cabin of the jet, which is forward of the hatch. It gives her a larger living area, but she can’t stand the fact that it singles her out. The whole lousy jet singles her out—and although her shattered spine is a well-earned war wound, it doesn’t change the fact that she is constantly condemned to receive special treatment.

The only other plane with a ramp is the infirmary jet, where she works. It leaves Risa with a very limited choice of interior spaces, so she spends her free time outside when she can stand the heat.

Every day at five o’clock, Risa waits for Connor beneath a stealth bomber they’ve nicknamed Hush Puppy. Every day, Connor is late.

The bomber’s expansive black wings create a huge wedge of shade, and its radar-resistant skin wicks heat right out of the air. It’s one of the coolest spots in the Graveyard, in more ways than one.

She finally sees him approaching: a figure in blue camo that sets him apart from anyone else in the Graveyard. “I thought you weren’t coming,” Risa says as he reaches the shade of Hush Puppy.

“I was supervising an engine dismantling.”

“Yeah,” says Risa with a grin. “That’s what they all say.”

Connor brings his tension with him to these daily encounters with her. He says being with her is the only time he gets to feel normal, but he never truly relaxes. In fact, since she first met him, she’s never known him to relax. It doesn’t help to know that their legends are out there, living lives of their own. Stories of Connor and Risa have already grown deep roots in modern folklore, for few things are more compelling than an outlaw romance. They are Bonnie and Clyde for a new era; the subjects of bumper stickers and T-shirts.

Hard to imagine that so much notoriety came from merely surviving the blast at Happy Jack Harvest Camp. Merely because Connor was lucky enough to be the first Unwind ever to walk out of a Chop Shop in one piece. Of course, as far as the rest of the world knows, Connor died there and Risa is missing—either dead herself, or in hiding deep within some AWOL-friendly nation, if there even is such a thing anymore. She wonders how her legend would hold up if people knew she was right here in the Arizona desert, sunburned and dirty.

A breeze blows beneath Hush Puppy’s belly, getting even more dirt in Risa’s eyes. She blinks it away.

“Are you ready?” Connor asks her.

“Always.”

Then Connor kneels before Risa’s wheelchair and begins to massage her legs, trying to coax circulation to those parts of her that can no longer feel. It’s part of their daily ritual together, this physical contact between them. It’s coolly clinical, yet strangely intimate at the same time. Today, however, Connor is detached. Distant.

“Something’s bothering you even more than usual,” Risa says. A statement of fact, not a question. “Go on, spill it.”

Connor sighs, looks up at her, and asks the big question.

“Why are we here, Risa?”

She considers the question. “Do you mean why are we here philosophically, as a species, or why are we here, doing this in full view of anyone who cares to watch?”

“Let them watch,” he says. “I don’t care.” And clearly he doesn’t, because privacy is the first casualty when you live in the Graveyard. Even the small private jet Connor claimed as his quarters has no curtains on its windows. No, Risa knows that this has nothing do with their daily ritual, or the grand question of humanity. It has to do with survival.

“What I mean is, why are we still here in the Graveyard? Why haven’t the Juvies tranq’d and yanked us all?”

“You’ve said it yourself—they don’t see us as a threat.”

“But they should,” Connor points out. “They’re not stupid . . . which means that there’s some other reason why they haven’t taken this place down.”

Risa reaches over, rubbing Connor’s tense shoulder. “You think too much.”

Connor smiles at that. “When you met me, you accused me of not thinking enough.”

“Well, your brain is making up for lost time.”

“After what we’ve been through—after what we’ve seen—can you blame me?”

“I like you better as a man of action.”

“Action has to be well thought out. You taught me that.”