UnBound (33 page)

“No!” he shouts. “Eraser! Fumble! Red
X
!” He forces the right words. “Mistake! You're making . . . a mistake!”

And a boeuf-looking teen closest to him—one of the ones throwing stones the other day—glares at him with a brutal look of hatred and says, “You're the one who made a mistake. And it's going to be your last.”

“This could be worse,” Una tells Cam as they drive the short distance to Kaunakakai, followed by a whole military entourage.

“Really? How?”

“The girl could have been hurt, but she wasn't.”

Practically the same moment the security detail found the hole in the perimeter fence, the call came in from the Kaunakakai sheriff about the attack.

“One of your damn monsters came after a girl.” The sheriff had spoken with such seething vitriol in his voice it made Cam wince. “I want you to know I'm authorizing the use of deadly force.”

Cam pounds the steering wheel of the jeep hard enough to bruise his hand.

“Easy,” says Una, “that won't help anyone.” Then she adds, “Besides, those hands were meant for better things.”

He takes a deep breath and tries to dispel his frustration. This is entirely his fault. He should have given in to everyone else's paranoia. He should have treated them like prisoners. He should not have let his personal feelings get in the way. Maybe the rewinds need to prove their humanity before it can be granted to them. But he knows it's not all the rewinds, is it? There's only one that's a problem. One that's profoundly different from the others. Number 00047. Dirk Mullen. Even when he chose his name, he just pointed randomly to the page, as if he didn't care. As if he knew his existence didn't warrant a name. For so long Cam had obsessed over whether or not he himself had a soul. Now he realizes he must. Because he's seen into the eyes of one who doesn't, and that void within—whatever it is—is the very definition of hell.

“Of all the rewinds to escape, why did it have to be Forty-seven?”

“What about the other one?” Una asks.

“Keaton,” Cam says. Dirk might still be a number, but Keaton is not. “I wouldn't be surprised if Forty-seven killed him.”

“I hope not,” Una says. “He's a good kid.”

“They all are,” Cam points out, then has to qualify. “All but one.”

They're headed to the police station, but a commotion on what should be a quiet residential street pulls their attention. Shouts and headlights and revving engines, like some sort of street race—then the blast of a shotgun followed by silence.

“I was wrong,” Una says as they turn a corner and race toward the crowd. “This
couldn't
get any worse.”

Five minutes before Cam and Una hear the gunshot, the mob's emotion reaches a fever pitch. They will have justice. They will not wait for it to be meted out; they will take it themselves.

Keaton cannot speak. They have gagged him. But what would it matter if he could? They did not listen to his protests before; why should they listen to him now? They have their man. He fits the description. And what are the chances, really, that there'd be two rewinds running around town? Much less two rewinds with one umber hand and a cut on the forehead?

Keaton knows from their angry shouts what Dirk has done. Not the details but the gist of it, and it's enough. He doesn't blame the crowd for what they're doing. Were he one of them, he might do the same. Or maybe not. Because their choice of punishment is far too visceral, and Keaton feels the terror of every single Unwind within him. A hundred screams fill his head.

They have him stretched out on the ground in the middle of an intersection with ropes tied to each arm and each leg. The ends of those four ropes are tied to four vehicles, each pointed in a different direction. The ropes are slack now, but they won't be for long.

The boeuf-looking teen gets in his face—the one who probably threw the first stone the other day. He's so incensed, spittle flies from his mouth when he speaks.

“You're gonna die, you know that, don't you?”

“You tell him, Todd,” goads one of his buddies.

Keaton doesn't give him the satisfaction of mumbling from behind the gag.

“This is what they used to do to people who didn't deserve to live,” Todd says. “Back when punishment fit the crime. It's called quartering. We're gonna pull apart what never shoulda been put together in the first place.”

Engines rev. He feels vibrations in the ropes. They pull just taut enough to make his joints ache. He can hear people in the crowd talking to one another. Some are entirely on Todd's side and wait for this horrible circus to commence. But there are other voices too. “This is going too far,” he hears a woman say. “Someone should stop this.”

Someone. Not her. The faint voices of protest aren't really interested in stopping this, Keaton realizes. All they want is to assuage their own guilt, so after it happens, they can say to themselves,
Well I wanted to put an end to it, but nobody listened.
Which makes them just as complicit as the others.

Engines rev again. He closes his eyes and tenses his muscles, but he knows that he is no match for the horsepower in those four vehicles.

Then he hears a girl's voice. She's cursing. She's yelling at people to get out of her way. He opens his eyes to see her pushing through the crowd. Her eyes are red from crying. Her jaw is hardened in resolve—but as she looks at him, her expression changes. Her head tilts a bit. She suddenly looks confused. Troubled, but in a different way than she was just a moment ago. Keaton recognizes her, too. This is the girl who came up to him at the fence. The one who was kind to him. Keliana. He resolves to hold eye contact with her for as long as he can, until the cars throw their transmissions into gear, which will be any second now.

“This isn't him!” she says. Quietly at first, then again, more loudly. “This isn't him!”

Todd storms to her like he might strike her but doesn't. “What do you mean it isn't him? Of course it is!” He tries to move her away from Keaton. “You let us take care of this! He's hurt you enough.”

“No!” She shakes him off and comes closer to Keaton. “You can't do this!”

Todd ignores her and raises his hand, signaling the drivers.

Then a shotgun blast rings out. It brings everyone to silence.

Another man—a police officer, maybe the sheriff—comes forward, holding the shotgun he has just fired into the air.

“She says you have the wrong rewind. You want to go to prison, Todd? Not just for murder, but for killing the wrong man?”

“It's not a man!” screeches Todd.

“That's right,” says the sheriff calmly. “It's a boy. Now cut him loose.”

That's when Cam and Una arrive on his other side.

“Untie him, or I swear to you, every one of you will be held accountable!” the sheriff warns. The spirit of the mob seems to melt into the ground. It's no longer a mob but a bewildered group of people, sheepish and ashamed. Now people crowd around Keaton, untying him. It's Cam who takes the gag from his mouth, and Keaton coughs, choking on his own saliva.

“It's all right, Keaton,” Cam says. “It's all right.”

He tries to stand, but his joints ache from the strain, as if he'd been on a medieval rack. Una helps him to his feet. He turns and finds Keliana, who is still there, but keeping her distance. He holds up his umber hand to show her. “Not me!” he says. “Left hand, not right!”

“I know,” she says.

Then the sheriff calls out to the crowd. “Everyone better get yourselves home before I remember who was here tonight.”

People begin to meander away, then, from the edge of the crowd, someone says, “Hey—where the hell is my Harley?”

Cam's brain has begun to feel disjointed. Fragmented. It always does when stress starts to overwhelm him. He can't let it happen. Not now.
Lockdown,
he says to himself, and clamps down on his panic. The crew of his own personal submarine must not mutiny.

The first clue to Dirk's whereabouts is the missing motorcycle. While the mob was focused on lynching Keaton, Dirk must have snuck in right behind them and, masked by the mob's frenzy, taken off. Now he's loose to do whatever damage he intends to do. Cam suspects the attack on the girl will not be an isolated incident. Unless they can catch him, it's going to be a rampage, and there's no telling how bad it will be.

A part of Cam wants to run, just like Dirk trying to escape the mob's judgment. But he can't. He won't. He looks at Una, and, as always, her presence stabilizes him.

“You didn't make him,” Una says, reading him better than he reads himself. “What he did—what he is—it's not your fault.”

“No,” Cam admits. “But the fact that he escaped—that
is
my fault. Which means I'm accountable for anything that he does.”

There's nothing she can say that can soften that reality.

“I'll deal with the fallout later,” Cam says. “What matters now is that we catch him.”

As he looks around, he sees more and more military personnel from the compound arriving, not quite outnumbering the mob, but their presence begins to subdue the worst of the hatemongers even more than the sheriff's presence had. Some people leave, but more linger, probably anticipating a more accurate reckoning. Not mob justice, but at this point any justice will do.

With the support of troops under his jurisdiction, Cam tells the sheriff, “We'll take it from here. This is our problem.”

But the sheriff isn't about to yield. “It stopped being your problem when your
thing
attacked that girl.” For a moment it looks like there's going to be a standoff, until Keaton comes between them.

“Sunset!” he says. “Into the sunset!”

Keaton sputters and grimaces, trying to force coherence to his thoughts.

“What's this one babbling about?” asks the sheriff, with no patience for it.

“Shh!” says Cam, and gives Keaton time to form his thoughts.

“Ride . . . into the sunset,” he says. “Dirk. Dirk doesn't know. He doesn't know!”

And Cam gets it. “Dirk doesn't know we're on an island!”

Keaton smiles. “On the nose! Dirk doesn't know!”

Cam has become pretty familiar with the roads on Molokai. For Dirk, taking off into his metaphorical “sunset,” couldn't have been west, or he'd have passed right through the most populated part of town. He would have headed east, away from the populated areas. He'll be on Kamehameha V Highway, which wraps around the eastern tip of the island and doubles back along the north shore.

“How could he not know this is an island?” the sheriff asks.

“His mind hasn't integrated as well as the others,” Cam explains. “He probably can't think clearly enough to figure it out. The moon has already set, so he'll have no way to gauge his direction, and it's a slow curve going around the eastern tip, so he'll think he's going straight. We just have to cross a few miles to the north shore, and we'll catch him as he loops back.”

“And if you're wrong?” the sheriff asks.

“I'm not,” Cam says, then looks to Keaton. “We're not.” But just to be sure, Cam sends a fleet of jeeps down Kamehameha V Highway in pursuit. Then he and the bulk of his forces cross the narrow width of the island to the north shore and wait for Dirk to arrive.

Me. Wheels. Road. Squint. Face. Wind. Vroom-vroom. Ocean on the right. Ocean on the right. Smarter than them. Faster than them. Vroom-vroom. Ocean on the right. “Born to be Wild.” Steppenwolf. Lone wolf. No one catches a lone wolf. Stupid people. Killing Keaton. Stupid Keaton. Saw them do it. Saw them tie him. Rope, rope, rope, rope. Car, car, truck, van. Stretch Armstrong. Couldn't watch. Took Harley. No one saw. Stupid people.

Parts of me know how. Clutch. Accelerator. Vrooom-vrooom. Parts don't know how. Make
'
em learn fast. Almost fall. Learn quick or die.

Me. Me. Me. Not like other rewinds. Know that. Hate that. Think they're better than me. Better than them. Hate them. Keaton dead. Hate all the rest. Make them pay.

Still night. Still of the night. Morning soon. Let freedom ring. Far from here. Vroom-vroom. Ocean on the right. Heading south? North? Doesn't matter. Free either way. Find something pretty. Curvy. Prom night. Make her like it. Win the bet. Make them all like it. Smarter than them. Stronger. Stupid girl. Find her someday. Kill her for hurting me. But not now. Later. Later than you think. Dawn. Horizon. Ocean on the right. And ahead? And ahead?

No!

Can't be! Jeeps and police and boeufs. Roadblock. And Camus Comprix. Can't be faster than me. How are they here? How?

And Keaton.

Dead? Not dead? Ghosts. All ghosts. Are they?

Bird at my ear.

Not a bird. A tranq.

Missed.

Nowhere to go.

Pffft.
Missed again.

Ocean to the right. And a pier. Nowhere else to go. Vroom-vroom. Road, road, then wood. Wheels on rattling wood. A shack at the end of the pier. Nowhere else to go.

The sharpshooters aren't all that sharp. “It's the tranqs,” they complain. “They don't behave like standard bullets. It's not our fault we missed him.” No one wants to take responsibility for Dirk.

No one but Cam. Keaton can see the torment in Cam's face. He wishes he could ease it. All Cam did was try to give them some dignity. It worked for Keaton. It worked for all the others. But not for Dirk. Because Dirk is different. Dirk is missing the spark. Which means there's nothing holding him together but stitches.