Unwind

Lev would ask him which state they’ve crossed into, but he doesn’t want to sound stupid.

* * *

Any spot where multiple tracks merge or diverge, there’s a little two-story shack standing there like a displaced lighthouse. A railroad switch house. There are plenty of them along this stretch of the line, and these are the places Lev and CyFi find shelter each night.

“Aren’t you afraid someone from the railroads’ll find us here?” Lev asks as they approach one of the sorry- looking structures.

“Nah—they ain’t used anymore,” CyFi tells him. “The whole system’s automated—been that way for years, but it costs too much to tear all those switch houses down. Guess they figure nature will eventually tear them down for free.”

The switch house is padlocked, but a padlock is only as strong as the door it’s on—and this door had been routed by termites. A single kick rips the padlock hasp from the wood, and the door flies inward to a shower of dust and dead spiders.

Upstairs is an eight-by-eight room, windows on all four sides. It’s freezing.

CyFi has an expensive-looking winter coat that keeps him warm at night. Lev only has a puffy fiberfill jacket that he stole from a chair at the mall the other day.

CyFi had turned his nose up when he saw Lev take that jacket, just before they left the mall. “Stealing’s for lowlifes,” Cy had said. “If you got class, you don’t steal what you need, you get other people to give it to you of their own free will—just like I did back at that Chinese place. It’s all about being smart, and being smooth. You’ll learn.”

Lev’s stolen jacket is white, and he hates it. All his life he’d worn white—a pristine absence of color that defined him—but now there was no comfort in wearing it.

They eat well that night—thanks to Lev, who finally had his own survivalist brainstorm. It involved small animals killed by passing trains.

“I ain’t eatin’ no track-kill!” CyFi insisted when Lev had suggested it. “Those things coulda been rottin’ out here for weeks, for all we know.”

“No,” Lev told him. “Here’s what we do: We walk a few miles down the tracks, marking each dead critter with a stick. Then, when the next train comes through, we backtrack. Anything we find that’s not marked is fresh.” Granted, it was a fairly disgusting idea on the surface, but it was really no different from hunting—if your weapon were a diesel engine.

They build a small fire beside the switch house and dine on roast rabbit and armadillo—which doesn’t taste as bad as Lev thought it would. In the end, meat is meat, and barbecue does for armadillo exactly what it does for steak.

“Smorgas-bash!!” CyFi decides to call this hunting method as they eat. “That’s what I call creative problem solving. Maybe you’re a genius after all, Fry.”

It feels good to have Cy’s approval.

“Hey, is today Thursday?” says Lev, just realizing. “I think it’s Thanksgiving!”

“Well, Fry, we’re alive. That’s plenty to be thankful for.”

* * *

That night, up in the small room of the switch house, CyFi asks the big question. “Why’d your parents tithe you, Fry?”

One of the good things about being with CyFi is that he talks about himself a lot. It keeps Lev from having to think about his own life. Except, of course, when Cy asks. Lev answers him with silence, pretending to be asleep— and if there’s one thing he knows CyFi can’t stand, it’s silence, so he fills it himself.

“Were you a storked baby? Is that it? They didn’t want you in the first place, and couldn’t wait to get rid of you?”

Lev keeps his eyes closed and doesn’t move.

“Well, I was storked,” Cy says. “My dads got me on the doorstep the first day of summer. No big deal—they were ready to have a family anyway. In fact, they were so pleased, they finally made it official and got themselves mmarried.”

Lev opens his eyes, curious enough to admit he’s still awake. “But . . . after the Heartland War, didn’t they make it illegal for men to get married?”

“They didn’t get married, they got mmarried.”

“What’s the difference?”

CyFi looks at him like he’s a moron. “The letter m. Anyway, in case you’re wondering, I’m not like my dads—my compass points to girls, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah. Yeah, mine does too.” What he doesn’t tell CyFi is that the closest he’s ever been to a date or even kissing a girl was the slow dancing at his tithing party.

The thought of the party brings a sudden and sharp jolt of anxiety that makes him want to scream, so he squeezes his eyes tight and forces that explosive feeling to go away.

Everything from Lev’s old life is like that now—a ticking time bomb in his head. Forget that life, he tells himself. You’re not that boy anymore.

“What are your parents like?” CyFi asks.

“I hate them,” Lev says, surprised that he’s said it. Surprised that he means it.

“That’s not what I asked.”

This time Cy isn’t taking silence for an answer, so Lev tells him as best he can. “My parents,” he begins, “do everything they’re supposed to. They pay their taxes. They go to church. They vote the way their friends expect them to vote, and think what they’re supposed to think, and they send us to schools that raise us to think exactly like they do.”

“Doesn’t sound too terrible to me.”

“It wasn’t,” says Lev, his discomfort building. “But they loved God more than they loved me, and I hate them for it. So I guess that means I’m going to Hell.”

“Hmm. Tell you what. When you get there, save a room for me, okay?”

“Why? What makes you think you’re going there?”

“I don’t, but just in case. Gotta plan your contingencies, right?”

* * *

Two days later they find themselves in the town of Scottsburg, Indiana.

Well, at least Lev finally knows what state they’re in. He wonders if maybe this is CyFi’s destination, but Cy hasn’t said anything either way. They’ve left the railroad tracks, and CyFi tells Lev they have to go south on county roads until they can find tracks heading in that direction.

Cy hasn’t been acting right.

It began the night before. Something in his voice. Something in his eyes, too. At first Lev thought it was his imagination, but now in the pale light of the autumn day it’s clear that CyFi isn’t himself. He’s lagging behind Lev instead of leading. His stride is all off—more like a shuffle than a strut. It makes Lev anxious in a way he hasn’t been since before he met CyFi.

“Are you ever going to tell me where we’re going?” Lev asks, figuring that maybe they’re close, and maybe that’s why Cy’s acting weird.

CyFi hesitates, weighing the wisdom of saying anything. Finally he says, “We’re going to Joplin. That’s in southwest Missouri, so we’ve still got a long way to go.”

In the back of his mind, Lev registers that CyFi has completely dropped his Old Umber way of talking. Now he sounds like any other kid Lev might have known back home. But there’s also something dark and throaty about his voice now, too. Vaguely menacing, like the voice of a werewolf before it turns.

“What’s in Joplin?” Lev asks.

“Nothing for you to worry about.”

But Lev is beginning to worry—because when CyFi gets where he’s going, Lev will be alone again. This journey was easier when he didn’t know the destination.

As they walk, Lev can tell Cy’s mind is somewhere else. Maybe it’s in Joplin.

What could be there? Maybe a girlfriend moved there? Maybe he had tracked down his birth mother. Lev has worked up a dozen reasons for CyFi to be on this trip, and there’s probably a dozen more he hasn’t even thought