Unwind

“I don’t know what you mean, sir.”

“From what I can see, each fight you’ve engaged in has resolved one problem or another. Even the fights you lose. So, even then, you’re fixing things.”

He offers Connor that white-toothed smile. Connor shudders. He tries to hide it, but he’s sure the Admiral sees it.

They come to a small dining room and galley. “Here we are,” says the Admiral. The old coffeemaker sits on a counter. It’s a simple device. Connor’s about to pull out a screwdriver to open up the back when he notices that it’s not plugged in. When he plugs it in, the light comes on, and it starts to gurgle out coffee into the little glass pot.

“Well, how about that,” says the Admiral, with another of his terrible grins.

“I’m not here for the coffeemaker, am I?”

“Have a seat,” the Admiral says.

“I’d rather not.”

“Have one anyway.”

That’s when Connor sees the picture. There are several photos up on the wall, but the one that captures Connor’s attention is of a smiling kid about his age. The smile looks familiar. In fact, it looks exactly like the Admiral’s smile. It’s just like Roland had said!

Now Connor wants to bolt, but Risa’s voice is in his head again, telling him to scan his options. Sure, he can run. Chances are, he can get to the hatch before the Admiral can stop him—but opening the hatch won’t be easy. He could hit the Admiral with one of his tools. That might give him enough time to get away. But where would he go? Beyond the Graveyard there’s just desert, desert, and more desert. In the end, he realizes his best choice is to do as the Admiral says. He sits down.

“You don’t like me, do you?” asks the Admiral.

Connor won’t meet his gaze. “You saved my life by bringing me here. . . .”

“You will not avoid answering this question. You don’t like me, do you?”

Connor shudders once more, and this time doesn’t even try to hide it. “No, sir, I don’t.”

“I want to know your reasons.”

Connor lets out a single rueful chuckle as his answer.

“You think I’m a slave dealer,” says the Admiral. “And that I’m using these Unwinds for my own profit?”

“If you know what I’m going to say, why ask me?”

“I want you to look at me.”

But Connor doesn’t want to see the man’s eyes—or, more accurately, doesn’t want the Admiral seeing his.

“I said look at me!”

Reluctantly, Connor lifts his eyes and fixes them on the Admiral’s. “I’m looking.”

“I believe you are a smart kid. Now I want you to think. Think! I am a decorated Admiral of the United States Navy. Do you think I need to be selling children to earn money?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think! Do I care about money and lavish things? I do not live in a mansion. I do not vacation on a tropical island. I spend my time in the stinking desert living in a rotting plane 365 days a year. Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know!”

“I think you do.”

Connor stands up now. In spite of the Admiral’s tone of voice, he feels less and less intimidated by him. Whether it’s wise or whether it’s foolhardy, Connor decides to give the Admiral what he’s asking for. “You do it because of the power. You do it because it lets you keep hundreds of helpless kids in the palm of your hand. And you do it because you can pick and choose who gets unwound—and which parts you’ll get.”

The Admiral is caught off guard by this. Suddenly, he’s on the defensive.

“What did you say?”

“It’s obvious! All the scars. And those teeth! They’re not the ones you were born with, are they? So, what is it you want from me? Is it my eyes, or my ears? Or maybe it’s my hands that can fix things so well. Is that why I’m here? Is it?”

The Admiral’s voice is a predatory growl. “You’ve gone too far.”

“No, you’ve gone too far.” The fury in the Admiral’s eyes should terrify Connor, but his cannon has come loose, and it’s beyond locking down. “We come to you in desperation! What you do to us is . . . is . . . obscene!”

“So I’m a monster, then!”

“Yes!”

“And my teeth are the proof.”

“Yes!”

“Then you can have them!”

Then the Admiral does something beyond imagining. He reaches into his mouth, grabs onto his own jaw, and rips the teeth out of his mouth. His eyes blazing at Connor, he hurls the hard pink clump in his hand down on the table, where it clatters in two horrible pieces.

Connor screams in shock. It’s all there. Two rows of white teeth. Two sets of pink gums. But there’s no blood. Why is there no blood? There’s no blood in the Admiral’s mouth, either. His face seems to have collapsed onto itself—his mouth is just a floppy, puckered hole. Connor doesn’t know which is worse—the Admiral’s face, or the bloodless teeth.

“They’re called dentures,” the Admiral says. “They used to be common in the days before unwinding. But who wants false teeth when, for half the price, you can get real ones straight from a healthy Unwind? I had to get these made in Thailand—no one does it here anymore.”

“I . . . I don’t understand. . . .” Connor looks at the false teeth, and jerks his head almost involuntarily toward the picture of the smiling boy.

The Admiral follows his gaze. “That,” says the Admiral, “was my son. His teeth looked very much like my own at that age, so they designed my dentures using his dental records.”

It’s a relief to hear an explanation other than the one Roland gave. “I’m sorry.”

The Admiral neither accepts nor rejects Connor’s apology. “The money I get for placing Unwinds into service positions is used to feed the ones who remain, and to pay for the safe houses and warehouses that get runaway Unwinds off the street. It pays for the aircraft that get them here, and pays off anyone who needs bribery to look the other way. After that, the money that remains goes into the pockets of each Unwind on the day they turn eighteen and are sent out into this unforgiving world. So you see, I may still be, by your definition of the word, a slave dealer—but I am not quite the monster you think I am.”

Connor looks to the dentures that still sit there, glistening, on the table. He thinks to grab them and hand them back to the Admiral as a peace offering, but decides the prospect is simply too disgusting. He lets the Admiral do it himself.

“Do you believe the things I’ve told you today?” the Admiral asks.

Connor considers it, but finds his compass is out of whack. Truth and rumors, facts and lies are all spinning in his head so wildly he still can’t say what is what. “I think so,” says Connor.

“Know so,” says the Admiral. “Because you will see things today more awful than an old man’s false teeth. I need to know that my trust in you is not misplaced.”

* * *

Half a mile away, in aisle fourteen, space thirty-two, sits a FedEx jet that has not moved since it was towed here more than a month ago.

The Admiral has Connor drive him to the jet in his golf cart—but not before retrieving the pistol from his cabinet as “a precaution.”

Beneath the starboard wing of the FedEx jet are five mounds of dirt marked by crude headstones. These are the five who suffocated in transit. Their presence here makes this truly a graveyard.

The hatch to the hold is open. Once they’ve stopped, the Admiral says, “Climb inside and find crate number 2933. Then come out again, and we’ll talk.”