UnBound

by Neal Shusterman

“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 of martyr. The reluctant one. In the grand scheme of things, it is an envious position.” Then he picks up his phone and makes a call. “Yes, Sonthi. I have him now. Just what you were looking for. Yes, hazel eyes. I’ll send him to you now.” He ends the call with “Laeo phop gan mai krap.” A standard Thai good-bye.

  That’s when Colton realizes . . . hazel eyes . . . it was the AWOL girl who noticed that. How could he have been so stupid?

  Colton tries to plead for his life again, but the man raises his voice and cuts him off.

  “They’ll take you now. And you needn’t worry—the Dah Zey is not what the American media makes it out to be. Well, maybe it was back when Thuang was running it, but things have become more civilized since then. You will be treated well.”

  “Yeah, your Juvey-cops treated me real well too. This is illegal, you know. You’re finished if the Thai government finds out about this.”

  “That is why you must be unwound . . . ,” he says, his face growing serious. “And your brain discarded.”

  Colton didn’t think he could be any more horrified than he already was. “Shelled? I’m being shelled?”

  “The Dah Zey doesn’t deal in gray matter. Too unpredictable. You know too much. Who’s to say all those brain bits won’t exert some of your will over the recipients? The last thing the Dah Zey needs is a piece of your mind turning up in the wrong place.”

  “No!” shouts Colton, realizing that there is an alternative even worse than just unwinding. “My brain will stay quiet. I swear! Even divided! Just don’t shell me.”

  The man smiles sympathetically. “Just think of yourself as the humanitarian aid America never gave us.” And he gestures to the guard waiting at the door to take him.

  • • •

  The truck rumbles down the highway with Colton bound and gagged in the back. He knows he’s headed to Burma now. If he’s lucky, a military convoy might stop them and open the back of the truck—but he knows that such a thing is very unlikely. They’re probably taking an unregulated road or one where the soldiers have been paid off. His head throbs, and he curses the girl who turned him over.

  After what seems like days with scant rations of food and water, they pull him to his feet and drag him out like a corpse into the mud of a Dah Zey harvest camp.

  2 • Kunal

  “Come, Kunal! Must I wait for you? The truck is already here.”

  “Yes, Doctor. Coming, sir.”

  Kunal hates that the doctor forces him to take the long walk to the front entrance of the camp. He thinks he’s doing Kunal a kindness by allowing him out of the Green Manor to witness the deliveries, but Kunal would much rather stay within the manor’s gates. These long walks do nothing but make his ankles ache.

  The truck stops in the muddy expanse between the infirmary and the Eastern Refinery. This place used to be an opium farm, before unwound parts became more valuable than heroin. They don’t call them Unwinds here, though. The Burmese phrase for it is a htwat “harvest.” That’s all the AWOLs are to them. The cinder-block buildings that used to be opium refineries have long since been subdivided into cells for the Unwinds who move through here at a steady pace.

  The doctor watches every delivery with a pair of binoculars, keeping his distance. He brings Kunal along to hold his binoculars, because apparently they’re too heavy for the doctor to wear around his neck.

  There are guards everywhere. A show of force for kids who are too frightened, weak, and sleep deprived to fight back, even if they tried. The Dah Zey love overkill. That’s why there are three outer gates before reaching the camp. They are a box within a box within a box.

  A Burmese man in military camo approaches. Sonthi. He’s an imposing figure. Kunal is convinced that he was once part of one military junta or another that ran the country for its fifteen minutes of power. If this place is a factory, then Sonthi is the floor manager.

  “Mixed bag today,” Sonthi tells the doctor. “Many interesting eyes.”

  “Injected?”

  “Natural,” Sonthi says.

  “All the better.”

  About a dozen kids are manhandled, stumbling in the mud as they’re herded toward the infirmary. Kunal wonders how much they know about this place. How
much they’ve been told about what will be done to them. Do they know about the shelling? Better if they don’t. At least their demise will be painless—something they might not be expecting. But after all, on an old opium farm there is no shortage of morphine. Kunal worries more for the ones who don’t get unwound. But that’s not something he can ever say out loud.

  The doctor lowers his binoculars and hands them to Kunal. “Shouldn’t there be more?”

  Sonthi rolls his shoulders uncomfortably. He glances at Kunal, and Kunal glances away, afraid to meet his eye or draw the man’s attention in any way. “We expect another truck tomorrow,” Sonthi says, and the doctor sighs.

  “Go back, Kunal. I should be done here in an hour. Draw me a bath before I return—and please mind your posture.”

  “Yes, Doctor.” Binoculars in hand, Kunal makes his way back to the Green Manor, trying to mind his posture and ignore his aching ankles.

  3 • Colton

  He waits alone in a small room, too terrified to even move. The only light spills through slats in the wood. There’s nothing in the room but an old examination table and a chair. Finally a man comes in, dressed casually, but with the requisite stethoscope around his neck. “Hello, Colton,” he says. “I am Dr. Raotdanakosin. I know this is a mouthful, yes? Laotian names are long and never used twice. You can just call me Dr. Rodín.”

  Colton doesn’t want to call him anything. “Are you the one who’s going to unwind me?”

  Dr. Rodín laughs. “No, no—I see to your health. That is all. Others will do the deed when the time comes. Please say ‘aah.’ ”

  He gives Colton the standard checkup. It seems oddly normal for such a dire circumstance. Rodín’s demeanor is that of any physician. Somehow that makes Colton feel even worse—to be reminded of something normal in the midst of this nightmare. There’s also something else about him that Colton can’t place. Rodín is a doctor, yes, but Colton senses that he’s also playacting the role. Colton can tell that he’s more than just the camp’s doctor.

  “You came far,” Rodín says as he examines Colton’s ears. “Only to get caught. A shame, yes?”

  “How long?” Colton asks. “How soon will they . . . do it?”

  “The Dah Zey works on its own schedule,” Rodín says. “Who can say?”

  Then, when he’s done, he steps back and does an overall assessment. “Healthy. You were not on the run for long, am I right?”

  Colton hesitates. Will a nod get him unwound faster? He doesn’t know, so he doesn’t respond at all.

  “Are they really going to shell me?” he asks, knowing the answer, knowing how pathetic he sounds asking.

  Rodín considers Colton, looking at him a moment too long. No, he doesn’t look at me, Colton realizes. He looks at my parts. He looks through me. He sees dollar signs. “Brain disposal is official Dah Zey policy,” Rodín says, “but there are alternatives to shelling.” Then he turns to go, but just before he leaves, he adds, “There are alternatives to unwinding as well.”

  • • •

  He’s taken to a gray cinder-block building and thrown into a room with a dirt floor and four other Unwinds. There are three boys and a girl, who perhaps they mistook for a boy in the dark, but they didn’t care enough to correct their mistake. These kids couldn’t possibly look more defeated, Colton thinks. There’s nothing in the room but five straw mats, an ancient tube TV that probably doesn’t work, and some sort of prewar disc player. Obsolete technology that seems left there to mock them.

  “Looks like you had a fun ride, mate,” says a muscular Australian boy who looks about seventeen. The kid has a real loser vibe, like he was beating up geeks before he was on the run.

  Colton tries to say something, but he’s still shaking.

  “Not much for words, are you?” says the kid. “I’m Jenson. Welcome to the Magic Kingdom.”

  The Magic Kingdom is apparently what they’ve been calling this place. Jenson explains that it started out as some Unwind’s idea of a joke, but the name caught on among the guards. Now it’s official. It’s one of the seven Dah Zey harvest camps—the one closest to the Thai border, which is barely half a mile away.

  Jenson points to the two Thai boys, the smaller of whom is huddled in a corner fighting back sobs. The other one, a bit heftier, sits with his legs crossed in lotus position, a relaxed expression running contrary to the other boy’s tears.

  “Gamon’s the crying one,” says Jenson. “I don’t think he speaks English. The other is Kemo. Won’t hear a peep outta him. Kemo was planning to join a Buddhist monastery, but his parents sold him to the Dah Zey to pay for his father’s gambling debts instead. And Gamon was sold to pay for his brother’s wedding.” Then Jenson kicks Gamon—not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to display dominance. “Stop your bawling!” Jenson orders. Gamon’s sobs settle to whimpers. “He acts up each time someone new shows up—like he wants to prove he’s the most pathetic AWOL in the world.” Then Jenson takes a good look at Colton. “You’re not gonna be a problem, are you? I’m tired of problem AWOLs.”

  “Sounds like you’ve been here awhile,” Colton says.

  Jenson gets a bit uncomfortable. “Yeah, well three weeks feels like forever when you’re a guest of the Dah Zey.”

  As for the girl, she doesn’t introduce herself, just curses at Colton when he says hello. According to Jenson, she’s a Russian AWOL who claims to be a political prisoner. “She says she’s a pravda—a Russian clapper—and that she’s killed seventy Dah Zey members.”

  “Is true!” she insists. “I will kill you if you say is not.”

  Colton suspects she’s delusional. After all, a clapper in this environment would have detonated long before getting hurled into this room, but he knows her delusions are what get her through the day. In a way she’s not really lying, because she actually believes it—and she believes that the Russian government will pay for her release so they can extradite her for trial. “Pravda” can’t be older than fourteen.

  Jenson’s story is the same as Colton’s, without the girl. He got in the back of the wrong tuk-tuk, and it took him to the gray building. Jenson had heard stories about it from other AWOLs and started to run as soon as he saw where he was, but they tranq’d him. He admits he was being foolhardy, but no one had bothered him in the months he’d been hiding. He fell into a state of ease. When they passed the Cap-17 law in America, he thought he’d be safer. But Asia’s different.

  “That’s crazy about the girl, eh,” says Jenson, when Colton tells him about Karissa. “She’ll get what’s coming to her, though.”

  “I hope so,” says Colton, smiling for the first time since he’s gotten there. “I just wish I could be the one to dish it out to her.”

  The camp is full of groups of kids in small rooms. Every morning they’re flushed out, squinting into the light as guards line them up and inspect them. Kids are pulled out of the line to be unwound. After that everyone else breathes easy. The guards count them, feed them watery protein paste of an origin Colton does not want to consider. They’re checked for injuries, rashes, and new diseases. The kids with issues are sent to the infirmary, where Dr. Rodín will have a look at them. The rest are sent back to their rooms.

  The old TV, to Colton’s amazement, actually does work. At lineup that morning Jenson traded discs with some other kids for a pair of fresh movies. They’re all old films that nobody has seen or cared about since before the Heartland War, but it’s better than staring at the cinder-block walls. Or at each other.

  Apparently it’s Jenson’s ritual to put on a movie after morning inspection. Today’s features an invisible alien in a jungle not unlike the one around them. As if they now need something invisible to worry about.

  “Why does the Dah Zey bother to keep us entertained?” Colton wonders out loud.

  “Who knows?” says Jenson. “Maybe it makes them feel better about themselves. Their watered-down version of mercy.”

  At a particularly suspenseful part of the movie
some new misery must occur to Gamon, because he begins sobbing again, louder than the TV’s tiny distorted speaker. That’s when Jenson snaps and begins whaling on Gamon, brutally beating him, swearing and cursing—probably the very type of loose-cannon behavior that got him on an Unwind list to begin with. “I TOLD! YOU! TO SHUT! THE HELL UP!”

  “Jenson! Enough!” Colton struggles to pull Jenson off the poor kid, who doesn’t even defend himself. Jenson looks at Colton as if coming out of a trance. “He . . . he was asking for it,” Jenson says weakly. “He was ruining the movie. . . . He had it coming. . . .” But not even Jenson buys his own argument. Gamon is a bruised, bloody mess. He pulls himself into a ball, his sobs sounding no different than before the beating.

  Then Kemo breaks concentration and rises in a calm, fluid motion. All eyes turn to him as his slow, steady footfalls bring him to Jenson. Even though Kemo is more than a head shorter than Jenson, his presence makes the larger boy shrink.

  “You just damaged their property,” Kemo says in perfect English. “You know what they do to you if you damage their property, don’t you?” Colton is taken aback for a moment by Kemo’s calm, by the thought of them as property, and by Kemo’s unexpected command of English.

  Jenson doesn’t say anything but backs away, flexing his fingers and looking at his bloody knuckles. His blood? Probably not.

  Kemo turns his back to him. “Yes, you know.” Then he returns to where he was meditating and reassumes lotus position.

  So the stories about the Dah Zey are true, then, Colton thinks, or at least Kemo believes them. But he has to ask. He approaches Kemo.

  “What do they do?”

  Kemo doesn’t respond. His face is unreadable.

  “What do they do, Kemo?”

  It’s Pravda who answers from across the room. “Many things,” she says. “Maybe you vill get to see.” And she smiles as if she might want to see herself.

  Jenson doesn’t say anything. He just goes to the back wall and sinks to the ground, putting his bloodied hands to his head, no longer interested in an alien that rips out people’s spines.