UnWholly (Unwind Dystology 2)
Someone—Connor suspects it’s Hayden—alerts the Admiral that he’s not taking Risa’s capture well, so the Admiral pays a surprise visit.
He arrives at the Graveyard in a black limo waxed to such a smooth sheen it doesn’t collect the dust it kicks up. Connor barely recognizes him when he steps out. The Admiral’s thin. Not just thin but gaunt. His skin, once bronzed from his years in the Graveyard sun, has gotten pale, and he’s dressed not in his medal-covered uniform, but in slacks and a plaid shirt, like he’s out for a round of golf. He still stands tall, though, and has the unmistakable bearing of a commanding officer.
Connor expects the Admiral will tear him a new one, giving him a reprimand more severe than he himself gave Starkey—but as always, the Admiral’s strategy cannot be predicted.
“You’ve put on some muscle since I last saw you,” the Admiral tells him. “I hope to God you’re not shooting up those damn military steroids they have the boeufs on; they shrink your testicles down to peanuts.”
“No sir.”
“Good. Because your genes might actually be worth passing on.”
He invites Connor to join him in his plush, air-conditioned limo, and they sit idling on the runway like the thing could sprout wings and take off at any given moment.
They make small talk just a bit. The Admiral tells him of the Great Harlan Reunion: a huge party with all the people who had received his son’s parts.
“I’ll swear till the day I die that Harlan was there, alive in that garden, and no one can prove he wasn’t.”
He tells Connor how, when all the “parts” went their separate ways, Emby, his asthmatic friend, had nowhere to go, so the Admiral kept him on and is now raising him like a grandson.
“Not the shiniest Easter egg on the lawn,” the Admiral says, “but he’s very sincere.”
He also tells Connor that due to his damaged heart, the Admiral was given six months to live.
“Of course, that was almost a year ago. Doctors are mostly imbeciles.”
Connor suspects that the Admiral will be alive and kicking for years to come.
Finally he gets down to the real reason for his visit. “I hear that this thing with Risa is getting to you,” the Admiral says, then holds his silence, knowing Connor will eventually feel compelled to break it, which he does.
Lev
Lev doesn’t pay much attention to the driver. He’s just glad to be out of the storm and to have transportation away from his gilded cage. He has lied to Miracolina. He has no intention of letting her turn herself in to the Juvenile Authority. He knows he might not be able to stop her, but that doesn’t mean he can’t try.
A gust of wind almost pushes the van off the road as they drive, and the driver fights it with both hands on the wheel. “Some storm, huh?” The man says as he glances at Lev in the rearview mirror. Lev averts his gaze. The last thing he wants is to be recognized as “that clapper kid.”
“Comfy back there?” the man asks. He hasn’t asked them where they’re headed yet. Lev runs though his mind the names of towns he knows in the area for when the question is inevitably asked.
Outside the rain slices at the windshield at such a violent angle, the wipers are defeated, and they have to pull over. The man turns to them.
“Tornado watch, you say? Do you suppose we’ll be taken to Oz?” He seems far too jovial under the circumstances.
“The sooner we all get home the better,” Miracolina offers.
“Yes, but you’re not headed home,” he says, the same happy tone to his voice. “We all know that, don’t we?”
Miracolina throws Lev a worried glance. The man has locked his gaze on Lev, and only now does Lev see how very mismatched his eyes are. The sight gives him a chill that has nothing to do with the storm.
“I know you don’t remember me, Mr. Calder, because you were unconscious at our last encounter. But I certainly remember you.”
Lev reaches for the van door, but it’s locked, with no visible way to unlock it.
“Lev!” shouts Miracolina, and when he looks back, he sees the man has pulled out a tranq pistol, which looks extremely large and nasty in such close quarters. Heavy hail begins to pummel the van, and the man must shout to be heard over it.
“The first time I shot you, it was an accident,” he says. “This time it’s not.” Then he tranqs both of them before they can say a word. Lev catches sight of Miracolina’s eyes rolling back and her slumping in the seat before he begins to drown in his own tranquilizer cocktail, spinning down, down, down, while outside the sound of hail gives way to a roar like a freight train barreling through hell.
35 - Nelson
In a flash of lightning, he sees a glimpse of the tornado. It tears out trees from the side of the road not a hundred yards ahead of him. It tears up the road itself—chunks of asphalt flying into the sky. Something—a piece of road or a tree limb—puts a dent in the roof like the angry stomp of a giant. A side window shatters, and the van is dragged sideways from the shoulder and into the middle of the road.