Текст книги "UnSouled"

Автор книги: Neal Shusterman

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

10 • Connor

“Of all the freaking days to have roadwork!” Connor had been certain that they were going to be made. That one of the other drivers caught in the construction traffic was going to look into the car and see that he’s not deputy Joey at all.

“It’s not just today,” Grace tells him. “They been diggin’ up that sewer pipe for weeks. Stinks to high heaven too.”

Connor had been careful to avoid the traffic cones and any eye contact with the utility workers. Having followed the detour arrows, he now floors the accelerator down Cypress Street, speed limit be damned. Who’s gonna pull over a cop car for speeding?

Then suddenly some kid leaps into the road in front of him, and he immediately flashes back to the damnable ostrich—but if there’s roadkill today, it will be a lot worse than a dead bird. Connor slams on the brakes. He and Grace lurch forward. He hears the thud as the reckless kid connects with the front bumper. The car finally stops, and mercifully there is no telltale lurch of the car climbing over the kid’s body. He was hit, but not run over. He had been hit pretty solidly, though.

“Ooh, this is bad, Argie!” Grace says, probably not even realizing she just called Connor Argie.

Connor considers just speeding off and leaving the scene—but he considers it for only a fraction of a second before dismissing it. That’s not him. Not anymore. Some things have grown larger in him than primal self-preservation. Instead he gets out of the car to assess how bad this is and makes a pact with his survival instinct. If the kid is dead, then Connor will speed off and add hit-and-run to his list of offenses. Staying at the scene will not help a dead kid. But if he’s alive, Connor will stay and do what must be done until help arrives. And if it means capture, then that will be that.

The figure lying sprawled on the road is groaning. Connor is relieved that he’s alive but gripped with the fear of what will happen now. Then those feelings are slapped out of his head by shock and absolute disbelief when he sees who it is.

Lev’s face is a grimace of pain. “It is you,” Lev says. “I knew it.”

Speechless doesn’t even begin to describe Connor’s state.

“Is he dead?” Grace asks, stepping out of the car and covering her eyes. “I don’t wanna look—is he dead?”

“No, but . . .” Instead of saying anything more, he lifts Lev up, and Lev releases a helpless wail. Only now does Connor notice that Lev’s shoulder is bulging forward in a very unnatural way. Connor knows he can’t allow himself to think about that now.

“It’s him?” says Grace, having uncovered her eyes. “What’s he doing here? Did you plan this? It wasn’t a very good plan, if you did.”

On porches around them, people have come out to observe the little drama. Connor can’t think about that now either. He gingerly puts Lev into the backseat and has Grace sit with him. Then he gets back in himself, feigning calm, and drives off.

“Hospital’s up on Baxter,” Grace says.

“Can’t,” Connor tells her. “Not here.” Although he knows he means not anywhere. Medical attention brings other attention, too. If they bring Lev to a hospital, they’ll know who he is within minutes. Not only did Lev break house arrest; he ran from the people protecting him from the Juvenile Authority. Which means there’s no place safe to take him between here and Sonia’s.

Grace leans closer to Lev, looking at his shoulder. “Dislocated,” she says. “Happened to Argent once. Playing Ping-Pong. Rammed his shoulder into a wall. Blamed me for it, a’ course, since I sent him chasing the ball. Won the point too.” She puts both her hands on Lev’s shoulder. “This is gonna hurt like a son of a bitch.” Then she shoves with the full force of her weight.

Lev releases a siren wail of pain that makes Connor swerve out of his lane. Then Lev sucks in a breath and screams again. The third one is more of a whimper. When Connor looks back, he sees that Lev’s shoulder has popped into place.

“Like diving into a cold pool,” Grace says. “Gotta do it quick before you start thinkin’ on it.”

Even in his pain, Lev has the presence of mind to actually thank her for fixing his shoulder, but there must be more going on inside that they can’t see, because Lev grimaces in pain every time he shifts position.

Following Grace’s plan, they pull into the supermarket parking lot and leave the squad car there, along with the keys and the deputy’s gun—because a missing gun will beg too many questions. Leave the man his car and his gun, and he might just keep quiet to save himself from humiliation.

Connor hot-wires a blue Honda, out in the open, caution be damned, and in two minutes they’ve switched vehicles and are on the road again, heading for the interstate. It’s not a pleasant vehicle. The entire car smells of ass sweat and stale potato chips. The steering wheel shimmies, betraying poor alignment. But as long as it gets them the hell out of Heartsdale, it’s a magic coach as far as Connor is concerned. The town itself, however, seems to have taken umbrage against them. They hit every vindictive pothole and every pointless red light Heartsdale has to offer. Lev groans, grimaces, and hisses at every jolt.

“It’ll get worse before it gets better,” Grace says, stating the obvious, and Connor must suppress an urge to yell at her the way Argent might. Unlike Argent, Connor knows that it’s not Grace he’s frustrated with; it’s the entire situation.

At the last stop light before the interstate, Connor turns to look at Lev and asks him to lift his shirt.

“Why do you want him to do that?” asks Grace.

“Because there’s something I need to see.”

Lev lifts his shirt, and Connor grimaces as his worst fear is realized. The accident didn’t just dislocate Lev’s shoulder. His whole side has turned sunset purple. There’s internal bleeding, and there’s no way to know how bad it is.

“Lordy, lordy, lordy,” Grace says, her voice shaky. “You shouldn’t a’ hit him! You shouldn’t a’ hit him!”

“Okay,” Connor says, feeling himself getting light-headed. “Okay, now we know.”

“What do we know?” warbles Grace in a panic. “We don’t know nothin’!”

“You know my deep dark secret,” Lev says lazily. “I’m turning into an eggplant.” He tries to laugh at his own joke, but the laugh is aborted because it causes him too much pain.

Risa would know what to do, Connor thinks. He tries to hear her voice in his head. The clarity of her thought. She ran the infirmary at the Graveyard better than a professional. Tell me what to do, Risa. But today she’s mute and feels farther away than she ever did. It only increases Connor’s longing for her and his despair. When they get to Sonia, she’ll have a whole list of physicians supporting the cause, but this is still Kansas. Ohio never felt so far away.

He glances at the glove compartment. People sometimes keep ibuprofen or Aspirin in there, although he doesn’t expect that much luck, considering how his luck has been running lately. Luck, however, is too dumb to remain consistent, and as he reaches over and opens the glove box, a clatter of orange vials spills out.

Connor releases a breath of sheer relief and begins tossing them to Grace in the back. “Read me what they are,” Connor says, and Grace almost preens at the request. Whatever developmental issues she has, difficulty in reading complicated words is not one of them. She rattles off medication names Connor probably couldn’t even pronounce himself. Some of them he recognizes; others he is clueless about. One thing’s for sure—whoever belongs to this car is either very sick, a hypochondriac, or just a druggie.

Among the medications in the dashboard pharmacy are Motrins the size of horse pills and hydrocodone caplets almost as big.

“Great,” he tells Grace. “Give Lev those two. One of each.”

“With nothing to drink?” asks Grace.

Connor catches Lev’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “Sorry, Lev—either swallow them dry or chew them. We can’t stop for drinks right now, and better you get those meds in your system now than wait.”

“Don’t make him do that!” Grace complains. “It’ll taste bad.”

“I’ll deal,” Lev says. Connor doesn’t like how weak his voice sounds.

Lev works up some saliva, pops both pills at once, and manages to swallow them with just a little bit of gagging.

“Okay. Good,” says Connor. “We’ll stop in the next town and get ice to help with the swelling.”

Connor convinces himself that Lev’s situation isn’t all that bad. It’s not like bone is poking through the skin or anything. “You’ll be fine,” Connor tells Lev. “You’ll be fine.”

But even after they get ice ten miles down the road, Connor’s mantra of “you’ll be fine,” just isn’t ringing true. Lev’s side is darkening to a dull, puffy maroon. His left hand and fingers are swelling too, looking cartoonish and porcine. It’ll get worse before it gets better. Grace’s words echo in Connor’s thoughts. He catches Lev’s gaze in the rearview mirror. Lev’s eyes are wet and rheumy. He can barely keep them open.

“Stay awake, Lev!” Connor says a bit too loudly. “Grace, make him stay awake.”

“You heal when you sleep,” Grace tells him.

“Not if you’re going into shock. Stay awake, Lev!”

“I’m trying.” His voice is beginning to slur. Connor wants to believe it’s because of the medication, but he knows better.

Connor keeps his eyes fixed on the road. Their options are slim and the reality severe. But then Lev says, “I know a place we can go.”

“Another joke?” asks Connor.

“I hope not.” Lev takes a few slow breaths before he can build up the strength, or perhaps the courage, to tell them. “Get me to the Arápache Rez. West of Pueblo, Colorado.”

Connor knows Lev must be delirious. “A ChanceFolk reservation? Why would ChanceFolk have anything to do with us?”

“Sanctuary,” Lev hisses. “ChanceFolk never signed the Unwind Accord. The Arápache don’t have an extradition treaty. They give asylum to AWOL Unwinds. Sometimes.”

“Asylum is right!” says Grace. “No way I’m going to a SlotMonger rez!”

“You sound like Argent,” Connor scolds. That gives her pause for thought.

Connor considers their options. Seeking asylum from the Arápache would mean turning around and heading west, and even if they pushed the car, it would take at least four hours to get to the reservation. That’s a long time for the state that Lev’s in. But it’s either that, or turn themselves in at the nearest hospital. That’s not an option.

“How do you know all this about the Arápache?” Connor asks.

Lev sighs. “I’ve been around.”

“Well,” says Connor, more than a little bit nervous, “let’s hope you’re around a little while longer.” Then he turns the car across the dirt median and heads west, toward Colorado.

11 • Rez Sentry

In spite of all the literature and spin put forth by the Tribal Council, there is nothing noble about being a sentry at an Arápache Reservation gate. Once upon a time, when the United States was just a band of misfit colonies, and long before there were fences and walls marking off Arápache land, things were different. Back then, to be a perimeter scout was to be a warrior. Now all it means is standing in a booth in a blue uniform, checking passports and papers and saying híísi’ honobe, which roughly translates to “Have a beautiful day,” proving that the Arápache are not immune to the banality of modern society.

At thirty-eight, the rez sentry is the oldest of three on duty today at the east gate, and so, by his seniority, he’s the only one allowed to carry a weapon. However, his pistol is nowhere near as elegant and meaningful as the weapons of old, in those times when they were called Indians rather than ChanceFolk . . . or “SlotMongers,” that hideous slur put upon them by the very people who made casino gaming the only way tribes could earn back their self-reliance, self-respect, and the fortunes leeched from them over the centuries. Although the casinos are long gone, the names remain. “ChanceFolk” is their badge of honor. “SlotMongers” is their scar.

It’s late afternoon now. The line at the nonresident entry gate just across Grand Gorge Bridge is at least thirty cars deep. This is a good day. On bad days the line backs up to the other side of the bridge. About half of the cars in the line will be turned away. No one gets on the rez who doesn’t either live there or have legitimate business.

“We just want to take some pictures and buy some ChanceFolk crafts,” people would say. “Don’t you want to sell your goods?” As if their survival were dependent upon hawking trinkets to tourists.

“You can make a U-turn to your left,” he would politely tell them. “Híísi’ honobe!” He would feel for the disappointed children in the backseat, but after all, it’s their parents’ fault for being ignorant of the Arápache and their ways.

Not every tribe has taken such an isolationist approach, of course, but then, not many tribes have been as successful as the Arápache when it came to creating a thriving, self-sustaining, and admittedly affluent community. Theirs is a “Hi-Rez,” both admired and resented by certain other “Low-Rez” tribes who squandered those old casino earnings rather than investing in their own future.

As for the gates, they didn’t go up until after the Unwind Accord. Like other tribes, the Arápache refused to accept the legality of unwinding—just as they had refused to be a part of the Heartland War. “Swiss Cheese Natives,” detractors of the time had called them, for the ChanceFolk lands were holes of neutrality in the midst of a battling nation.

So the rest of the country, and much of the world, took to recycling the kids it didn’t want or need, and the Arápache Nation, along with all the rest of the American Tribal Congress, proclaimed, if not their independence, then their recalcitrance. They would not follow the law of the land as it stood, and if pressed, the entire Tribal Congress would secede from the union, truly making Swiss cheese of the United States. With one costly civil war just ending, Washington was wise to just let it be.

Of course, court battles have been raging for years as to whether or not the Arápache Nation has the right to demand passports to enter their territory, but the tribe has become very adept at doing the legal dance. The sentry doubts the issue will ever be resolved. At least not in his lifetime.

He processes car after car beneath an overcast sky that threatens rain but holds its water like an obstinate child. Some people get through; others get turned away.

And then he gets a car of AWOLs.

He can spot AWOLs the second they pull up. Their desperation wafts out at him like a musk. Although no tribe supports unwinding, the Arápache is one of the few that gives sanctuary to AWOL Unwinds, to the constant consternation of the Juvenile Authority. It’s not something they advertise or openly admit, but word gets around, so dealing with AWOLs is just another part of his day.

“Can I help you?” he asks the teenage driver.

“My friend is injured,” he says. “He needs medical attention.”

The sentry looks in the backseat, where a kid in poor shape rests his head in the lap of a girl in her early twenties who looks a little bit off. The kid in back doesn’t appear to be faking it.

“Best if you turn around,” the sentry tells him. “There’s a hospital in Cañon City—it’s much closer than the reservation’s medical lodge. I’ll give you directions if you like.”

“We can’t,” says the driver. “We need sanctuary. Asylum. Do you understand?”

So he was right after all. They’re AWOLs. The sentry scans the line of cars waiting to get through the bottleneck. One of the other guards looks at him to see what he’ll do. Their policy is very clear, and he must set an example for his coworkers. Being a rez sentry is not noble.

“I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“See?” says the girl in the back. “I knew this was a bad idea.”

But the kid driving won’t be deterred. “I thought you take in AWOLs.”

“AWOLs must be sponsored before we can let them in.”

The kid can’t hold in his frustration. “Sponsored? Are you serious? How would AWOL Unwinds get sponsored?”

The sentry sighs. Does he really have to spell it out? “You have to have a sponsor to enter officially,” he says. “But if you can find your way in unofficially, chances are you’ll find someone to sponsor you.” Only now does the sentry notice something familiar about his face, but he can’t place where he’s seen him before.

“We don’t have time for that! Do you think he’s going to climb a fence?” The driver indicates the semiconscious kid in the back, who, come to think of it, also looks familiar. Considering that kid’s sorry state, the sentry considers stepping forward to sponsor them himself, but he knows it will cost him his job. He’s paid to keep people out, not find ways to let them in. Compassion is not part of his job description.

“I’m sorry, but—”

And then the injured kid speaks up, as if out of a dream. “Friend of Elina Tashi’ne,” he mumbles.

That surprises the sentry. “The medicine woman?” There are many thousands on the rez, but there are those whose reputation is well known. The Tashi’ne family is very highly regarded—and everyone knows about the terrible tragedy they endured. Cars in line begin to honk, but he ignores them. This has gotten interesting.

The kid driving looks back at his delirious friend, as if this is a surprise to him as well.

“Call her,” the injured kid says; then his eyes flutter closed.

“You heard him!” says the driver. “Call her!”

The sentry calls the medical lodge and is quickly transferred to Dr. Elina. “Sorry to bother you,” he tells her, “but there are some kids here at the east gate, and one of them claims to know you.” He turns to the kid in the back, but he’s gone unconscious, so he asks the driver, “What’s his name?”

The driver hesitates, then finally says, “Lev Garrity. But she probably knows him as Lev Calder.”

The sentry does a double take. All at once he recognizes Lev, and the driver, too. He’s that kid they call the Akron AWOL. Connor something-or-other. The one who’s supposed to be dead. As for Lev, he was infamous on the rez before he became “the clapper who wouldn’t clap.” You can’t speak the name of poor Wil Tashi’ne without also thinking of Lev Calder and his involvement in that tragedy. And his friends here probably don’t even know. He imagines Lev wouldn’t talk much about what happened that awful day.

The sentry tries to hide his shock, but he doesn’t do a good job of it. Connor registers mild disgust. “Just tell her, okay?”

“Brace yourself,” he says into the phone. “It’s Lev Calder. And he’s injured.”

A long pause. The honking cars continue to build into a dissonant chorus. Finally Dr. Elina says, “Send him in.”

He hangs up the phone and turns to Connor. “Congratulations,” he says, feeling just the slightest bit noble. “You’ve got yourselves a sponsor.”

Part Two

Fine Young Specimens

GLOBAL ORGAN HARVESTING A BOOMING BLACK MARKET BUSINESS; A KIDNEY HARVESTED EVERY HOUR

By J. D. Heyes

NaturalNews / Sunday, June 3, 2012

In this age of instant, mass communication, it’s hard to cover up virtually anything, and yet there’s one story that has yet to be told on a wide scale—how organ trafficking has ballooned into a global business and that the practice is so widespread, one organ is sold every hour.

That’s according to the World Health Organization, which said recently in a report that there are new fears the illegal organ trade may once again be rising . . . .

Kidneys are in high demand

The World Health Organization says wealthy patients in developed nations are paying tens of thousands of dollars for a kidney to India-, China-, and Pakistan-based gangs, who harvest them from desperate people for as little as a few hundred dollars.

Eastern Europe, the U.N.–based health organization says, is becoming fertile ground for black-market organs; recently the Salvation Army said it rescued a woman who had been brought to the United Kingdom to have her organs harvested.

The illicit kidney trade makes up 75 percent of the black-market organ trade . . . experts say that is likely due to the diseases of affluence such as diabetes, high blood pressure and heart problems.

And, since there is such disparity between wealthy and poor countries, there isn’t much chance the illicit trade will end anytime soon.

The full article can be found at:

http://www.naturalnews.com/036052_organ_harvesting_kidneys_black_market.html