Unwind (16 page)

“Any weed dumb enough to grow tall ain't got no chance. It gets decapitated by the next train that comes through. Decapitated—that means ‘head cut off.'”

“I know what ‘decapitated' means—and you can stop talking that way; all double negatives and stuff.”

CyFi stops right there in the middle of the railroad tracks and stares at Lev like he's trying to melt him with his eyes.

“You got a problem with the way I talk? You got a problem with an Old World Umber patois?”

“I do when it's fake.”

“Whachoo talkin' about, foo'!”

“It's obvious. I'll bet people never even said things like ‘foo,' except on dumb prewar TV shows and stuff. You're speaking wrong on purpose.”

“Wrong? What makes it wrong? It's classic, just like those TV shows—and I ain't appreciating you disrespecting my patois. Patois means—”

“I know what it means,” Lev says even though he isn't entirely sure. “I ain't stupid!”

CyFi puts up an accusing finger like a lawyer. “A-HA! You said ‘ain't.' Now who's talking wrong?”

“That doesn't count! I said it because it's all I hear from you! After a while I can't help but sound like you!”

At that, CyFi grins. “Yeah,” he says. “Ain't that the truth. Old World Umber is contagious. It's
dominant
. And talkin' the talk don't make a person dumb. I'll have you know, I got the highest readin' and writin' score in my school, Fry. But I gotta respect my ancestors an' all they went through so I could be here. Sure, I can talk like you, but I
choose
not to. It's like art, you know? Picasso had to prove to the world he can paint the right way, before he goes putting both eyes on one side of a face, and noses stickin' outta kneecaps and stuff. See, if you paint wrong because that's the best you can do, you just a chump. But you do it because you want to? Then you're an artist.” He smiles at Lev. “That's a bit of CyFi wisdom right there, Fry. You can take
that
to the grave, and dig it up when you need it!”

CyFi turns and spits out a piece of gum that hits a train rail and sticks there, then he shoves another piece in his mouth. “Anyway, my dads got no problem with it—and they're lily-sienna like you.”

“They?” Cy had said “dads” before, but Lev had figured it was just some more Old Umber slang.

“Yeah,” says CyFi, with a shrug. “I got two. Ain't no thang.”

Lev tries his best to process this. Of course, he's heard of male parenting—or “yin families,” as they're currently called—but in the sheltered structure of his life, such things always belonged to an alternate universe.

CyFi, however, doesn't even catch Lev's surprise. He's still on his brag jag.

“Yeah, I got myself an IQ of 155. Did you know that, Fry? A'course not—how would you know?” Then he hesitates. “It went down a few points, though, on account the accident. I was on my bike and got hit by some damfoo' in a Mercedes.” He points to a scar on the side of his head. “What a mess. Splattered—y'know? I was nearly roadkill. It turned my right temporal lobe into Jell-O.” He shivers as he thinks about it, then shrugs. “But brain damage ain't a problem like it used to be. They just replace the brain tissue and you're good as new. My dads even paid off the surgeon so I'd get an entire temporal lobe from an Unwind—no offense—rather than getting a buncha brain bits, like people are
supposed
to get.”

Lev knows about that. His sister Cara has epilepsy, so they replaced a small part of her brain with a hundred tiny brain bits. It took care of the problem, and she didn't seem any worse for it. It had never occurred to Lev where those tiny pieces of brain tissue might have come from.

“See, brain bits work okay, but they don't work great,” CyFi explains. “It's like puttin' spackle over a hole in a wall. No matter how well you do it, that wall ain't never gonna be as good. So my dads made sure I got an entire temporal lobe from a single donor. But that kid wasn't as smart as me. He wasn't no dummy, but he didn't have the 155. The last brain scan put me at 130. That's in the top 5 percent of the population, and still considered genius. Just not with a capital
G.
What's your IQ?” he asks Lev. “Are you a dim bulb or high-wattage?”

Lev sighs. “I don't know. My parents don't believe in intelligence scans. It's kind of a religious thing. Everyone's equal in God's eyes and all that.”

“Oh—you come from one of
those
families.” CyFi takes a
good look at him. “So if they all high and mighty, why they unwinding you?”

Although Lev doesn't want to get into it, he figures CyFi is the only friend he's got. Might as well tell him the truth. “I'm a tithe.”

CyFi looks at him with eyes all wide, like Lev just told him he was God himself.

“Damn! So you all holy and stuff?”

“Not anymore.”

CyFi nods and purses his lips, saying nothing for a while. They walk along the tracks. The railroad ties change from wood to stone, and the gravel on the side of the tracks now seems better maintained.

“We just crossed the state line,” CyFi says.

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 of.

There's a main street in Scottsburg trying to be quaint but just looking tired. It's late morning as they move through town. Restaurants are gearing up for the lunch crowd.

“So, are you gonna use your charms to get us a free meal, or is it my turn to try?” Lev asks. He turns to Cy, but he's not there. A quick scan of the shops behind him and Lev sees a door swinging closed. It's a Christmas store, its windows all
done up in green and red decorations, plastic reindeer, and cotton snow. Lev can't imagine Cy has gone in there, but when he peers in the window, there he is, looking around like a customer. With the weird way CyFi has been acting, Lev has no choice but to go in as well.

It's warm in the store, and it smells of artificial pine. It's the kind of scent they put on cardboard air fresheners. There are fully trimmed aluminum Christmas trees all around, displaying all sorts of holiday decorations, each tree with a different theme. In another time and place, Lev would have loved wandering through a store like this.