25. BOMB
Aidan—
The mob hits in waves. So many kids they push and shove each other almost as often as they strike me. A storm of dirty fists and dirtier shoes attached to bodies belonging to faces I’ve seen over the Council table. Across The Dance. A few Lawson has made out with. Several I’ve bartered with. Many have beat me, or Sam, or Kylie.
My survival response kicks in, like it has only a couple times in the past. My heart squeezes, while I freeze, eyes wide, adrenaline ravaging me. I can’t breathe, can’t move my muscles. The sheer press of their bodies holds me upright.
Awareness narrows to a single point. That point is messy brown hair and hazel eyes. Lawson, always.
There’s a gap in my attackers just as he races up from the dugout, and for that first, eternal moment I’m sure he’s a mirage. He’s dressed just the same as when I last saw him, but dirt-smeared and roughed-up. A machine gun hangs from his grip like an extension of his arm. Our gazes lock, and he stumbles.
He strides forward, grim, raising the gun.
Don’t! Just one word, but my body won’t let my lips part to shout it.
Lawson reaches centerfield unnoticed by anyone but me; Lin and Tab are nowhere in sight. He fires a spray of bullets into the ground and grit hits my cheek; that’s how I know he’s real.
Air rushes into my lungs, heat pulses through me, and sensation returns. Bloody shit, it hurts. My legs fold.
“What. The. Bang?” Lawson demands. “That’s mine.”
He means the supplies; I know he means the supplies, but for a second it sounds like he means me, and a thrill flutters across the physical agony, not lessening it, but making it irrelevant as the mob shifts its attention. D-towners glance back and forth, and Xavier separates himself from the crowd to face Lawson.
“Traitor,” Xavier spits.
Lawson aims the gun at him. “Bang you. Prove it and fight me like a guy.”
Xavier hesitates, then gestures to the supplies. “You didn’t share with your tribe.” He doesn’t sound nearly as cocky as a second ago.
“So what? We’re not bloody Love Childs. Everything that’s mine isn’t yours.” Lawson’s gaze cuts to me.
I try for a smile.
He frowns and hefts the gun. “Let my lover go. I’ve had a really bad day, and I’m not in the mood for this.”
The two guys stare at each other for a long minute, gazes locked, weighing.
“That one confessed to being the spy,” Xavier says peevishly.
Lawson’s eyes narrow. “Aidan lied. I told you, the supplies are mine.”
Finally Xavier nods. “We’re taking the weapons.”
Lawson shrugs. “Whatever, but the vests are mine.”
Leave it to Lawson to negotiate at a time like this.
The rest of the crowd, obviously interpreting we to include them, breaks from around me to engulf the supplies, and within a few moments loud squabbles break out. Tribe leaders start shouting for order, and Xavier rushes off, declaring, “Those are Real Dealer supplies!”
I crawl toward Lawson, but in the next second he’s in front of me, the gun dropping from his slack grip into the weeds beside us as he sinks to his knees.
“Hey, don’t move, baby.”
“I’m fine.”
“Liar,” he chides, wiping my cheek.
My wet cheek; I’ve been crying. Because of Tab’s suffering? From the thrashing? Or is it seeing Lawson, alive and free, when I thought him lost?
His arms hover, open, just out of range. “You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay,” he chants. Like he’s trying to convince himself, more so than me.
I sink back on my heels and reach for his hand. “Only you,” I croak.
He cradles my fingers.
“Only you could avoid death by train, get captured, and wind up with a machine gun to show for it. I want some of your luck.”
His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. He stares at my face so hard, he must be refusing to look at the rest of me, so I don’t glance down either. He releases my hand in order to pull off his GeeGee shirt and shift his handgun around to the front. Wince. I wish he wouldn’t wear it there. Then he turns the shirt inside out and presses the fabric against my bleeding nose. I reach to take it from him, but he doesn’t let go. We sit for a few minutes with our hands stacked together, while the other kids argue, haggle, and threaten.
Then Lawson asks in a tight voice, “You didn’t tell anyone, did you?”
“Course not.” With the shirt over my nose, the words come out nasal.
He sucks in a raw breath. His mouth opens, closes. His gaze flicks wildly over my face. His lips part again. Then his shoulders slump.
“Of course not,” he echoes. His throat convulses. His eyes close for an instant before he fixes them on mine and leans closer. “They let me go, Aidan. I mean, I broke out, but it’s like you said, it was too easy. I have a really bad feeling. I was unconscious for a while in there. They could have put something in me. A tracking chip? A microphone? Except it’s not like they don’t know where D-town is, and they already have spies.” He pulls one hand from under mine and touches a raised scar on his abdomen.
My mind flashes back to the alley where we changed into the stolen clothes. That feels like a lifetime ago, but it was just yesterday. Lawson didn’t have a scar then. He didn’t even have a cut. Only GeeGee medicine heals that fast, and when he fell he landed on his back. There’s no reason for him to have injured his stomach. He was one teenage boy against a whole army, and yet he’s standing here alive with a machine gun.
“I have a really bad feeling,” he repeats.
So do I.
“A bomb.” The idea forms and flies off my tongue. I hear myself speak almost before I realize what I’m thinking, and then I inhale, like I can suck the words back in.
Hazel eyes give one slow blink.
“You’re a living bomb,” I whisper. “That has to be it.”
He stares at me for a moment, then drops his face into his hands. His shoulders shake and I don’t know if he’s laughing or crying. Maybe both.
“Want me to stay away from you?” he asks, without lifting his head.
“No!” I touch his knee. “Come on. Putting my own safety first? Does that sound like me at all?”
“Not so much.”
“Not so much.” I reach out and slide a bloody finger under his chin, trying to tilt up his head.
He resists.
“And don’t even think what you’re thinking right now,” I continue.
The flow of blood from my nose has stopped, so I lower the shirt. Without meeting my eyes, Lawson pulls it out of my grip and lays it out on the ground to dry.
“What would that be, then?” he asks.
“That you should stay away from me to keep me safe.”
He looks up. “Aidan, if I could stay away from you, don’t you think I would have made that choice a long time ago.”
My lips part. I’m going to kiss him; just as soon as I convince my aching body to move, I’m going to throw myself at him and knock him back into the weeds. His gaze releases mine, and his eyes rove lower, to my mouth, I think, and down. He squeezes his eyes shut.
“I’m going to kill bloody Xavier.” He opens his eyes again, keeping them fixed on mine, and grits his teeth. “Maybe all of them. Where’s Tab?”
Oh, crap. He already wants to kill people, and if I tell him what happened…but Tab will tell him, and then he’ll be mad at me for keeping it from him…Oh, hell, hopefully he’ll have calmed…down…by…then.
My thoughts stutter to a stop because I’ve looked down at myself. My GeeGee shirt is shredded, sticky with dirt-encrusted blood. My pants aren’t in much better condition and wherever skin shows bruises and welts are forming. It looks bad; in a few hours it will look worse, and all I can think is that the beating must have lasted only a minute before Lawson arrived. Time must have slowed for me. That’s the only explanation for the fact that nothing is broken. Of co
urse, I might have internal bleeding; can’t see that, but—
“Where’s Tab?”
Crap, again. I’ve hesitated too long.
“I asked Lin to take Tab away,” I hedge, touching one of the bruises on my thigh. It doesn’t feel any different than any other bruise.
“Aidan,” Lawson asks, “what aren’t you telling me?”
“We’ll take those,” a deep voice interrupts.
Lawson stumbles to his feet, putting himself between the speaker and me, but there’s only one of him and about twenty GeeGee guards fanned out around us with blasters raised and heavy-duty muffs over their ears. They should never have been able to sneak up on us in this wide-open space, but no one was paying attention and this time the guards are wearing GeeGee green. Ironic that they should find us here in the only part of D-town where that color would blend in.
There’s a mad scramble for weapons on our side, and the hair on the back of Lawson’s head shivers but, miraculously, he remains in front of me while one of the guards steps out of line and plucks the discarded automatic weapon out of the weeds.
“Stop,” the lead guard commands. Not the Captain this time, but an unfamiliar guy. He trains his blaster on Xavier.
About half of the kids freeze. A quarter of them drop the weapons they’re holding. Xavier and a few others keep methodically loading ammunition into guns. Lawson’s body collides with mine, and I cry out as he presses me into the earth. All I can see is his stubbly cheek as the muscles in his body go rigid. The muscle in his jaw stands out under pale skin, and a groan slips between his teeth. Then he relaxes on top of me, gasping.
The hard line of the gun presses against my stomach, where I’d rather feel something else. Hot pain spreads through my guts from the warning blast. If I have internal bleeding, the GeeGee just made it worse. Lawson braces his hands on either side of my head and lifts his weight off me.
“Don’t move,” a guard orders.
I can’t see, but I have a feeling there’s still a blaster aimed at Lawson, so I lie absolutely still.
“Back away from the weapons,” the lead guard says from farther away. “Slowly.”
Sounds of motion ensue.
Lawson’s arms begin to shake with the effort of holding himself off me. I ever so slowly lift my hand and rest my fingertips against the taught skin of his stomach, trying to give him strength. His eyes widen.
“What?” I mouth.
“I. Love. You.”
“Love you more.”
He closes his eyes, and when he opens them again there is something in his gaze, something more than tears. Like if a person could cry blood, his would spill down his face.
My hand crawls up to his chest, so his heart beats against the pads of my fingers. “What is it?”
But he just shakes his head.
“This isn’t D-town anymore,” the lead guard’s voice intrudes. “This is Recycling and Reproduction Area 4 of Urban Center 63.”
He speaks so self-importantly, like what he says matters, that I almost expect the bomb inside Lawson to go off and kill us all right then, but the guards just gather the weapons and march away.