UnBound - Neal Shusterman Page 0,61
the driver the address, but he doesn’t seem to be listening. “Yeah, yeah, take you home . . .”
• • •
Exhausted, Colton dozes, waking up every time they hit a rough patch of road—which is every few seconds. After a particularly bad bump, Colton opens his eyes to see he’s in a part of town he’s never seen before. It’s impoverished, so unpleasant that not even brothels will open up shop here.
“Yo, man—this is not where I live,” says Colton, irritated.
“Shortcut, shortcut,” says the tuk-tuk driver. “Get there soon.”
Colton looks around. This idiot must have gotten lost, he thinks.
The tuk-tuk stops in front of a large, gray building that dwarfs the rest, like a mausoleum in a sea of tombstones.
“What the hell—”
Then the tuk-tuk driver gets up and leaves. He just runs off into the darkness, abandoning Colton there.
Colton knows this is bad, but his body is slow to move. He tries to get up, but his legs feel like rubber. Has he been drugged? He labors out of the tuk-tuk. The world spins around him. The few people in the street at this time of night give him fearful looks. Or perhaps they are looks of pity. Either way, they don’t gaze at him for long before shuffling off—as if looking will curse them somehow.
Colton tries to stumble away, but before he can get anywhere, he runs into a soldier who seems to appear out of thin air.
“Whoa, whoa. Where you going?” says the soldier in Thai—Colton can understand that much.
“The hell outta here,” Colton answers in English. “Move!”
“No, no. You come with us,” the soldier says, now in heavily accented English.
Colton tries to push past, but a second soldier comes out of the darkness, slamming a rifle butt to the back of his head. His vision spins worse than before. The hit doesn’t knock him out, but it does make him stumble into the arms of the first soldier, who laughs.
Colton rubs his head and feels blood. Gotta get outta here, he thinks. Gotta get out of here fast. But now there are more of them, and he’s surrounded. These aren’t soldiers, he realizes. They’re police officers. Two officers grab him and drag him into the dead gray building.
• • •
“Colton Ellis,” the Thai man behind the desk says in perfect English. On his head is a beret. He smells of cologne and wears the smile of a used-car salesman. Behind him a grenade launcher casually leans against a file cabinet, upon which are a coffee machine and an old-school microwave.
“Look . . . ,” says Colton. “What’s this all about? What do you want? Money?”
Even as Colton says the words, he knows that can’t be why this is happening, but he has nothing else with which to bargain.
The man seems to know this and ignores him, waiting an uncomfortably long time before speaking again. Just before Colton starts pleading, the man says, “When I was a boy, I stepped on a land mine. A land mine put there by Americans during the Vietnam War long before I was born. I lost my leg. I thought I’d lost it for good, but then came the Dah Zey.”
The man takes a sip of his coffee, seeming to savor the taste as much as he savors Colton’s wide-eyed reaction. Colton looks around for something he can use to hit the man and escape. There’s nothing within reach. The grenade launcher is close enough only to mock him.
“My parents were poor, but the Dah Zey offered free parts to anyone who had lost a limb due to American explosives. Thousands of people who thought they would have to beg in the streets for the rest of their lives suddenly had new leases on life. But there was a catch: The Dah Zey needed us as enforcers, agents, and merchants. I like to think of myself as all three.”
“Let me out of here! This is a mistake! My . . . my parents are rich! They’ll pay you double what the Dah Zey will!” It’s all he can think to say, and he knows it’s probably true. But they think he’s an AWOL Unwind. How can he convince them he’s not?
“The unwind order that they signed surely says otherwise.”
“But they didn’t! They never signed one!”
He just ignores Colton. “Karma has already decided your fate,” he says as if by rote—he’s had the same conversation hundreds of times. “I bring balance to the world. Justice. In a way, you are the greatest sort