UnSouled (Unwind Dystology 3)

“He’s a flight risk, but we can’t make him look like a prisoner,” Starkey had said. “We’re not the Juvenile Authority.”

Of course, Hayden is a prisoner—but God forbid they make him look like one.

It was Bam’s suggestion that he be put in charge of food distribution. First because it was what he did when he first arrived at the Graveyard, so he had experience. Second because the kid who had been doing it was killed today.

She finds him taking inventory of their canned goods and being very chatty with the guard, gleaning information about the plane crash and everything that happened since then from the 7-Eleven raids and their stint at the abandoned Palm Springs hotel to Camp Red Heron and the Egret Academy. Bam is going to have to make sure the guards know enough not to talk about anything with Hayden that doesn’t involve Spam and canned corn.

The guard asks if he can go to the bathroom, which is quite a hike from this spot in the mine, and she lets him go. “I’ll watch Hayden until you get back.” He offers her his Uzi, but she refuses it.

Hayden has a pad and jots down notes about their food supply.

“You have way too much chili,” he says, pointing to a stack of gallon-sized cans. “And it’s not like you can disguise it to be anything but chili.”

Bam crosses her arms. “I knew you’d already be complaining. In case you forgot, we just set you free. You should be grateful.”

“I am. In fact, I’m ecstatic. But incarceration at a harvest camp must have left me a little brain damaged because suddenly I’m putting larger concerns ahead of my own.”

“Like having too much chili?”

o;Why did you do that?” she demands. “Why did you do that?”

And Cam suddenly understands. “Because he likes your hair free. He always pulled out your hair ribbons, didn’t he?” He lets loose a sudden laugh, as the emotion of the memory hits him all at once like a sonic boom.

She stares at him—her face is hard to read. He doesn’t know whether she’s going to run in terror, or pick up the chain saw again. Instead she bends down to pick up her ribbon and rises, keeping her distance.

“What else do you know?” she asks.

“I know what I feel when I play his music. He was in love with someone. Deeply.”

That brings tears to her eyes, but Cam knows they are tears of anger.

“You’re a monster.”

“I know.”

“You should never have been made.”

“Not my fault.”

“You say you know he loved me—but do you even know my name?”

Cam searches his memory for her name, but there are neither words nor images in his personal piece of Wil Tashi’ne’s psyche. There is only music, gestures, and a disconnected history of touch. So instead of a name, he shares with her what he does know.

“There’s a birthmark on your back he would tickle when you danced,” Cam says. “He liked toying with an earring in the shape of a whale. The feel of his guitar-callused fingertips in the crook of your elbow made you tremble.”

“Enough!” she says, taking a step back. Then more quietly, “Enough.”

“I’m sorry. I just wanted you to see that he’s still here . . . in these hands.”

She’s silent for a moment, looking at his face, looking at his hands. Then she comes closer, pulls out a pocketknife, and cuts the shirt that ties him to the other pole.

“Show me,” she says.

And so he reaches up, abandoning thought, and putting all trust in his fingertips the way he did when searching for the key to her shop. He touches the nape of her neck, moves a finger across her lips, and remembers the feel of them. He cups her cheek in his palm; then he brings the fingertips of his other hand drizzling down her wrist, over her forearm, to that singular spot in the crook of her elbow.

And she trembles.

Then she raises the heavy stone she’s been hiding in her other hand and smashes him in the side of the head, knocking him out cold again.