UnSouled (Unwind Dystology 3)

Una sends Cam down into the basement. He’s too weary and spent to protest.

“I’ll wait here and make sure he stays put,” Una says. “Can I please have my rifle back?” And when Connor hesitates, she says, “Pivane will have a lot of questions if he sees you coming upstairs with that rifle.”

Although the last thing Connor wants to do is put that rifle in her hands, he gives it to her—but only after taking out the shells.

Una takes it, leans it up against the wall, then reaches into her pocket, pulling out several more rifle shells, showing them to Connor in defiance. But rather than loading the weapon, she just puts the shells back into her pocket and sits herself down on a stool near the basement door. “Go upstairs and find out why Pivane’s here.”

Connor resents being given orders, but he recognizes Una’s need to feel in control again—especially in her own domain. He heads upstairs, leaving her to guard Cam.

“Do I want to know why you were out?” Pivane asks as soon as Connor walks in.

“Probably not,” Connor tells him, and leaves it at that. He glances at Lev, who clearly wants to know what happened but is wise enough not to ask in front of Pivane.

Grace is all smiles. “The Hopis got the Juvies’ panties in a wad! Look at this!” She turns up the TV volume. It’s a press conference in which a spokesman for the Hopi tribe “will neither confirm nor deny” rumors that they’re giving sanctuary to the Akron AWOL. The reporters, however, seem to have plenty to go on. A shaky video of someone being moved in shadows into the Hopi council building. Media leaks from an “inside source,” insisting that the Akron AWOL is there. It looks like Chal worked his magic after all.

“Leave it to my brother,” Pivane says. “He could get milk from a stone.”

“My idea!” Grace reminds them. “Send the Juvies on a detour, I said.”

“Yes, you did, Grace,” Connor says, and she gives him a hug for agreeing with her.

“With the authorities distracted,” Pivane says, “now’s the time to get on with your business. Elina’s arranging for an unregistered car to be left at a rest stop just outside the north gate. I’ll drive you there tomorrow. After that, you’re on your own.”

Connor never told anyone on the rez where they were going—and he hoped Lev kept his mouth shut about it as well. Even if they’re among friends, the fewer people who know, the easier it will be to disappear. But there’s an added wrinkle now. What are they going to do about Cam?

42 • Nelson

Currently Nelson’s biggest problem is not the inflamed, peeling burns on the right half of his face. Nor is it the infected bites on his arms and legs from various unidentified desert wildlife. It’s the scrawny supermarket checker who’s been riding shotgun beside him these past few weeks.

“How much farther do you think?” Argent asks. “Are we still a day out? Two days?”

“We’ll be there by morning, if we drive through the night.”

“Is that what we’re doing? Driving through the night?”

“We’ll see.” The sun is behind them now, low in the sky. Argent has offered to drive since they left New Orleans, but Nelson will not surrender the wheel. He’s tired. He’s fighting a fever, but he won’t let on.

After more than a week of searching, New Orleans turned out to be a bust. If Connor Lassiter had business at Mary LaVeau’s, that business was done—and no one there could be persuaded to offer him information as to his whereabouts. Although New Orleans was a hot bed of illicit activity, none of it seemed to involve sheltering AWOLs. They wasted three more days heading north to Baton Rouge and searching there for signs of Lassiter or an Anti-Divisional underground that might be giving him sanctuary.

For more than a week they wandered, chasing hunches that Nelson had all over the deep South, until the damn checker said, “I don’t know why we just don’t go on to New York.”

“Why would we go there?” Nelson had asked.

The checker had looked at him with the stupid blinking brainlessness of a rodent. “I told you the other night.”

“You didn’t tell me anything.”

“Yeah, I did. Of course, you were storkfaced on whatever it was you were drinking. That and those pills of yours.”

“You didn’t tell me anything!”

“Okay, suit yourself,” Argent said, way too smug. “I didn’t tell you anything.”

In the end Nelson had to play into it like a goddamn knock-knock joke. “What did you tell me?”

“It was that news report about the Statue of Liberty. How they’re replacing her arm with an aluminum one on account of the copper one’s too heavy.”

Nelson didn’t have much patience for this. “What about it?”