UnWholly (Unwind Dystology #2)(74)
“Please, mister, you don’t gotta do this. Please . . .”
Nelson kneels down and takes a good look at him.
“I’ll tell you what,” he says. “I like your eyes, so I’ll make you a deal.”
He cuts the cable tie, and offers the same deal he always offers. A countdown. A chance to run. These AWOLs never realize that the game is rigged. It never occurs to them that Nelson can count as fast as he chooses, and they don’t know that he’s a very, very good shot.
This boy, like all the others, thinks he’ll be the one to escape. He takes off, tripping in the field and picking himself up while Nelson counts. He nears the road as Nelson gets to “eight” and raises his gun. “Nine.” He has a clear target—the clothing logo on the kid’s back. “Ten!” Then Nelson lowers the gun and doesn’t fire. Instead he watches as the kid races across the road, nearly getting hit by a car—but the car swerves around him. The kid then disappears into the woods.
Nelson applauds his own restraint. It would have been so easy to take the kid down. But he has other plans for this AWOL. The injection he gave the kid wasn’t an antibiotic at all, but a delivery system for a microscopic tracking chip. The kind they used to monitor the populations of endangered species. This is the fourth AWOL Nelson has tagged and released into the wild since his new mission began. With any luck they’ll get picked up by the resistance and give him a clear path to the AWOL sanctuary where Connor Lassiter is holed up. But in the meantime, there are plenty of local leads to follow up on. Nelson smiles. It’s good to have a goal. Something joyful to look forward to.
31 ? Miracolina
Miracolina endures her captivity and deprogramming at the hands of the Anti-Divisional Resistance for weeks but never surrenders her core. She never gives in to the things they try to teach her. Oh, she’s learned to function within their little world of ex-tithes, doing what’s expected, if only so they’ll leave her alone. More tithes are brought in, others are placed with families and given new identities. There’s no such plan for Miracolina. Even semi-cooperative, she’s still too much of a risk. They have no idea, however, what she’s really planning.
Miracolina considers herself up for any challenge. While she is a tithe, she has not lived the same sheltered life as most other tithes, and although she’s not a girl from the hard streets, she considers herself street-smart and world savvy. Escaping from the velvet-gloved fist of the resistance will be a challenge, but not an insurmountable one.
Early on Lev personally warned her of the futility of an escape attempt. “There are sharpshooters with tranq rifles everywhere,” he said, making it sound hopeless. Yet every bit of information helps her, because Lev let it slip that although there’s a fence, it isn’t electrified. Good to know.
She explores every corner of the huge mansion to which she has access, paying special attention to the many unused, dilapidated rooms and corridors too far gone to be restored. Most of the windows are boarded over, and all the doors to the outside are locked. But the more forgotten an area is, the less reliable those locks will be—and a padlock hasp is only as good as the wood it’s screwed into. Such as the lock on the garden door, which has an unpleasant termite infestation. Once she finds the door, she files the information away for future reference.
The ex-tithes’ meals are usually served on chipped china that must have been part of the Cavenaugh collection in better days, but on Sundays, the finest stuff is brought out, including silver platters just large enough to fit beneath her shirt, like armor. Again, she files the information away for future reference.
Now all she needs is a diversion—not just inside the mansion, but outside as well. Unfortunately, that’s not something she can create, so she bides her time, confident that an opportunity will present itself. An opportunity such as a tornado watch on a Sunday night.
? ? ?
The wind is already picking up at dinnertime. Talk of the coming storm rumbles throughout the crowd of kids. Some are scared, some are excited. Lev is notably absent. Maybe he’s left to avoid the storm, whisked away by his protectors to a place of greater safety. When the meal is over, Miracolina clears her plate, taking with her a couple of silver serving platters, presumably to bring to the kitchen.
“You don’t have to do that, Miracolina,” says one of her teachers.
“It’s okay, I don’t mind,” she says with a smile, and the teacher smiles back, glad to see her finally settling in.
The storm hits like spring storms do, a warning wind, then a deluge like heaven itself has ruptured. Rain pours through holes in the roof into the areas that have yet to be repaired. The ballroom, where Miracolina was first greeted by Lev, is at least an inch deep with water. Pans set up beneath leaks in bedrooms fill and must be dumped. It’s like bailing out a sinking ship. The Weather Channel shows a grid of Michigan counties blinking angry red with tornado alerts.
“Don’t worry,” says one of the teachers, “there’s a storm cellar if they call a tornado alert in our area.” Which they do, at exactly 8:43.
Immediately the staff begins rounding up the kids. With lightning striking and agitated kids, it’s hard to keep track of everyone. That’s when Miracolina slips away with several serving platters and disappears down a side passage, hurrying toward the termite-ridden door.