UnWholly

“Hmm,” says Nelson, considering it. “It’s on an Indian rez. I’ll bet stinking Slotmongers are always giving sanctuary to AWOLs.”

He puts the gun across his lap and leans back in his chair. “Now I have a dilemma. Of all the AWOLs I’ve tagged, none of them have gone in that direction. So who should I believe? You or my data?”

“Where were you tagging them?” Lev asks quickly. “If they’re west of Pittsburgh, they probably go someplace else if the resistance picks them up—and don’t ask me where, because I don’t know!”

Nelson smiles. “You know, I’m so glad you didn’t blow yourself to smithereens last year, young man. Because you’ve just saved this girl’s life. Assuming, of course, that you’re telling the truth.”

“If I’m lying,” says Lev, “you can come back and kill us both.”

That makes Nelson laugh. “If it turns out you’re lying, I would have done that anyway, but thank you for giving me permission.”

Then he leaves, making no attempt to free them from their bonds.

54 • Lev

“Were you telling the truth?” Miracolina asks,

“Of course I was,” Lev says, just in case Nelson is still listening. A few moments later he hears Nelson’s van start and drive off. The fact is, it hadn’t mattered what Lev told him—what mattered was Nelson believing it. Lev pulled the location out of his memory—he had been to Indian Echo Caverns with his family many years before. He remembered the guide saying that it used to be a hideout for outlaws. Lev stayed close to his mother, fearing that those outlaws might still be lurking in shadowy crevices. Lev has no idea if AWOLs really are hiding there. He hopes not, now that he’s unleashed Nelson on the place.

“So what do we do?” Miracolina asks. “If he catches your friend, he won’t be back, and we’ll starve to death, and if your friend’s not there, he’ll come back and kill us.”

“I thought you weren’t afraid of dying.”

“I’m not. I just don’t want to die a senseless death.”

“We won’t. Not if I can help it.” Then he begins to roll back and forth on his bed. His hands are secured tightly to two of the metal bedposts with the cable ties, but his feet are able to build a kind of rocking momentum. He throws his weight left, then right, over and over again, and the bed begins to scrape on the ground beneath him as he does. He tries to flip the bed but can’t build the momentum, and eventually he has to rest.

“It’s not working,” Miracolina says, stating what’s more than obvious.

“Then maybe you should start praying. I sure am.”

After a few minutes’ rest, he tries it again. This time he’s able to slide the bed over a little bit more with his rocking, until one of the legs catches on an uneven floorboard. Now when he rocks the bed, the legs on the other side rise slightly off the ground. He loses his strength, and the pain of the plastic ties digging into his wrists gets to him. He has to stop, but after a few minutes of recovery he tries again, and again, each time getting closer to the exact force, and the exact torque it will take. Then finally, releasing a clenched-jawed groan, he hurls all his weight toward the far wall, practically wrenching his arms out of their sockets—and the bed rises, its future dangling like a coin between heads and tails—and then it flips upside down. The metal frame and the mattress land on top of him. Lev’s elbows smash painfully on the rotting wooden floor, splinters digging in. With the bed lying on top of him, he has a momentary flashback to the explosion in the town house and being pi

“You did it! That was great!” he can hear Miracolina saying, although he can’t see her. “Now what?”

“Not sure yet.”

Lev’s hands are still painfully tied to the metal headboard bars. He can see how badly his wrists are bleeding, and there’s rust on his hands too. He thinks about tetanus, and how they always want you to get a tetanus shot when you step on a rusty nail or something. He thinks about how, at his family’s beach home, the iron fence had rusted into nothing from exposure to salt air. Rusted into nothing . . . He looks to where the headboard bars co

“What’s going on down there?” Miracolina asks.

He reaches up and grabs her hand instead of telling her, and she gasps.

The bar that secures his right hand is not in the same weak state as the other, but it is rusty also, and rough. He knows he can’t break this pole like the other one, so he tries a different tactic. He begins to move his wrist back and forth, scraping the plastic tie against the jagged, rusted metal. Bit by bit the plastic is worn away, until finally the tie shreds apart and his hand comes free. He wipes the blood from his wrists on the mattress and stands up.

“How did you do it?” she asks.

“Superpowers,” he tells her. He looks at Miracolina’s bonds, then reaches beneath her mattress to find the same rusted metal. He pulls the bed away from the wall and, standing behind it, kicks at the bars until the ones Miracolina are attached to break free. She pulls her hands away, peeling the plastic loops over her knuckles.

“You okay?” Lev asks, and she nods. “Good. Let’s get out of here.” But the moment he puts weight on his right ankle, he grimaces and starts to limp.

“What is it?” Miracolina asks.

“I think I sprained my ankle kicking out the bars,” Lev tells her. She lets him put his weight on her, and she helps him walk.

As they open the front door, it becomes clear where they’re being held. It’s a cottage in the woods, so isolated they could have screamed at the top of their lungs for days and no one would have heard them.

There’s a dirt path leading out to what Lev hopes is a major road. He tries putting weight on his ankle and grimaces again—so she continues to let him put his arm over her shoulder, and he gratefully accepts her assistance.

Then, when they’re a good distance away from the shack, he says, “I’m really going to need your help now. You have to help me warn my friend.”

She steps away from him, and he almost topples, but manages to keep his balance.

“I’ll do no such thing. Your friend is not my problem.”

“Please, look at me. I can barely walk—I can’t make it there on my own.”

“I’ll get you to a hospital.”

Lev shakes his head. “When I went to Cavenaugh, I broke the terms of my parole. If I get caught, I’ll get locked away for good.”

“Don’t blame me for that!”

“I just saved your life,” Lev reminds her. “Don’t repay me by destroying mine.”

She looks at him almost as hatefully as the day they first met. “That parts pirate will get to the caverns before we do. What’s the point?” Then she studies him for a moment as if reading Lev’s mind, and says, “Your friend’s not in the caverns, is he?”

“No.”

She sighs. “Of course not.”

55 • Miracolina

Miracolina is not a girl given to impulsive behavior. All things must be pla

“I will contact my parents before I help you get anywhere,” she tells him, realizing that by saying this, she’s entered into negotiation. She’s actually considering going with him. Perhaps it’s post-traumatic stress disorder.

“You can’t call your parents. If you do, they’ll know your tithing bus wasn’t attacked by parts pirates. It will compromise the entire Cavenaugh operation.”