UnBound - Neal Shusterman Page 0,104

we have to do. Take no prisoners.”

Keaton looks at the gun in his hand. His umber hand doesn’t know how to hold it, but his sienna one does. In fact it feels almost familiar. He wonders what that’s about, but then decides he’d rather not know.

“No prisoners, Dirk.”

16 • Cam

This was a mistake. He knows it. Just one more in a whole series of mistakes. He should have gone in there himself. Yet he knows if he had, Dirk would have shot him dead in an instant. Keaton was the only one who stood a chance. But how do you reason with a creation that knows no reason? Not even its own reason to be?

“We can still take out the structure,” suggests his mortar-happy officer. “If all else fails.”

Then a single gunshot splits the morning, sending the gulls flapping from the pier like a release of doves. Cam holds his breath.

The front door of the burger shack opens, and Keaton steps out. The gun is in his hand by his side. All weapons on the pier are trained on him.

“Lower your weapons,” Cam orders.

They obey. Keaton walks down the pier toward Cam and puts the gun in Cam’s hand.

“Done” is all Keaton says. Then he climbs into the passenger seat of the nearest jeep and closes his eyes, waiting for whatever’s coming next.

• • •

There’s an old leper cemetery by a rustic white church on a western Molokai bluff. Dirk is buried with a small ceremony by a military pastor. No one else is in attendance but Cam and Una. The pastor says his litany by rote. Words about God’s mercy, everlasting life, and how Dirk’s soul is now remanded to the Almighty. It makes Cam grimace, feeling himself a hypocrite to be party to the travesty. But then who is he to decide if Dirk truly was soulless? Better to err on the side of grace.

The whole incident of Dirk’s escape and subsequent death is reported to Cam’s superiors in Washington. Dr. Pettigrew writes a scathing indictment of how Cam handled it—but it is balanced by the account of the sheriff, who, to Cam’s surprise, commends Cam for his leadership in the crisis.

In the end there is no official inquest or investigation. Not even the obligatory slap on the wrist.

“Are you disappointed?” Una asks him once things slip back into a shade of normality around the compound.

“Actually, yeah. A little.” The truth is, the whole Molokai compound is an albatross around the neck of the military, and the rewinds are so unloved as to be completely ignored. Now Cam realizes that he’s no different. He was once the military’s shining star, now he’s the reminder of their unchecked hubris. Clearly they’d rather not be reminded.

“Being ignored has its advantages,” Una is quick to point out. “Dignity doesn’t grow under a microscope.”

• • •

Three weeks after the incident there is a day of rejoicing. A new milestone in the lives of the rewinds. Six of them—three boys, three girls—the six most well-integrated—will begin attending Molokai High School. Tenth grade—arbitrary since their internal communities range from thirteen to seventeen, but it seemed unnecessarily cruel to make them freshman. To Cam’s surprise the suggestion of allowing the rewinds to attend Molokai High came from the local population—perhaps as a response to the hatemongers. Sometimes prejudice can be slapped upside the head by tolerance. Especially now that people in town have come to see Keaton Shelton as a sort of folk hero.

The night before their big day Cam and Una hold a dinner for the six school-bound rewinds in the formal dining room where Proactive Citizenry once wined, dined, and bribed the movers and shakers of the world. No longer are these rewinds wearing drab convalescent scrubs. The boys are in jeans, with comfortable shirts, and Una made a trip to Honolulu to find the latest fashions for the girls.

Dinner conversation is upbeat and only a little bit disjointed and stilted. After dessert the half dozen rewinds cajole Cam and Una to play guitar for them, an impromptu duet that ends the evening. It took the rewinds themselves to convince Una to play in front of an audience—something Cam could never do on his own.

Then the evening concludes, but as the others board golf carts that will take them back to the rewind ward, Keaton lingers. He comes up to Cam and points at his own temple.

“Someone here played guitar, but badly.” Then he holds up his umber hand. “This hand played drums,