“Do you think they’ll just let us die?” Tad asks. “Won’t they try to save us?”
Hayden doesn’t want to answer him, because he knows the answer is no. From the Juvies’ point of view, if they die, all they lose are kids no one wanted anyway. All they lose are parts.
“With the news vans out there,” suggests Lizbeth, “maybe our deaths will stand for something. People will remember that we chose death over unwinding.”
“Maybe,” Hayden says. “That’s a good thought, Lizbeth. Hold on to it.”
It’s 115 degrees. 8:40 a.m. Hayden’s finding it harder and harder to breathe, and he realizes the heat might not get them at all. It might be the lack of oxygen. He wonders which is lower on the list of bad ways to die.
“I don’t feel so good,” says a girl across from him. Hayden knew her name five minutes ago, but he can’t think clearly enough to remember it. He knows it’s only minutes now.
Beside him, Tad, his eyes half-open, begins babbling. Something about a vacation. Sandy beaches, swimming pools. “Daddy lost the passports and ooh, Mommy’s gonna be mad.” Hayden puts his arm around him and holds him like a little brother. “No passports . . . ,” Tad says. “No passports . . . can’t get back home.”
“Don’t even try, Tad,” Hayden says. “Wherever you are, stay there; it sounds like the place to be.”
Soon Hayden feels his eyesight starting to black out, and he goes places too. A house he lived in as a kid before his parents started fighting. Riding his bike up a jump ramp he can’t handle and breaking his arm in the fall. What were you thinking, son? A fight his parents had over custody in the heat of their divorce. You’ll have him, all right! You’ll have him over my dead body, and Hayden just laughing and laughing, because it’s his only defense against the prospect of his family collapsing around him. And then overhearing their decision to unwind him rather than allowing the other to have custody. Not so much a decision, but an impasse.
Fine!
Fine!
If that’s the way you want it!
If that’s the way YOU want it!
Don’t put this on me!
They signed the unwind order just to spite each other, but laugh, laugh, laugh, Hayden, because if you ever stop laughing, it might just tear you apart worse than a Chop Shop.
Now he’s far away, floating in the clouds, playing Scrabble with the Dalai Lama, but wouldn’t you know it, all the tiles are in Tibetan. Then for a moment his vision clears and he comes back to the here and now. He’s lucid enough to realize he’s in the ComBom where the temperature is too hot to imagine. He looks around him. The kids are awake, but barely. They slump in corners. They lie on the ground.
“You were talking about stuff,” someone says weakly. “Keep talking, Hayden. We liked it.”
Then Esme reaches over and touches Tad on the neck, feeling his pulse. His eyes are still half-open, but he’s no longer babbling about tropical beaches.
“Tad’s dead, Hayden.”
Hayden closes his eyes. Once one goes, he knows the rest of them won’t be far behind. He looks at the machine gun next to him. It’s heavy. It’s loaded. He doesn’t even know if he can lift it anymore, but he does, and although he’s never used it, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. There’s a safety, easily removed. There’s a trigger.
He looks at the suffering kids around him, wondering where “machine-gun fire” falls on the list of bad ways to die. Certainly a quick death is better than a slow one. He considers his options a moment more, then says, “I’m sorry, guys. I’m sorry I failed you . . . but I can’t do this.”
Then he turns the machine gun toward the cockpit and blasts out the windshield, flooding the ComBom with cool, fresh air.
82 - Connor
He wakes up in a comfortable bed, in a comfortable room, with a computer, a late-model TV, and sports posters all over the walls. He’s groggy enough to think he actually might be in heaven, but nauseous enough to know he’s not.
“I know you’re pissed at me, Connor, but I had to do it.”
He turns to see Lev sitting in the corner, in a chair that’s painted with footballs and soccer balls and tennis balls to match the decor of the room.
“Where are we?”
“We’re in Sunset Ridge Homes, model number three: the Bahaman.”
“You brought me to a model home?”
“I figured we both deserved comfortable beds, at least for one night. It’s a trick I learned from my days on the streets. Security patrols are looking for thieves, not squatters. They roll past but never go into model homes unless they see or hear something suspicious. So as long as you don’t snore too loud, you’re fine.” Then he adds, “Of course, we’ve gotta be out by ten; that’s when they open. I stayed too late at a model once and nearly scared a realtor to death.”