His speech meets with affirmations and a sense of solidarity until someone in the back asks, “What about Starkey?”
Then everyone waits to see what Connor will say.
“Starkey is one of us,” Connor tells them. “And I won’t let a single one of us be unwound.”
- - -
With no one to fly the Dreamliner, there is no escape plan, so Connor calls together Hayden, Ashley, and half a dozen others—some from the Holy of Whollies, and other kids he knows he can trust. They meet in the ComBom—a makeshift war room for an unlikely general—and Connor pulls plan B out of thin air.
“We set up two fronts—here, and here.” He points to a hand-drawn map of the Graveyard. “The Juvies will come in through the north gate. Once they’re in, we drive them right down the main aisle, then ambush from both sides, with about fifty of us.”
“Live ammo?” Hayden asks.
“We hit them with everything we have. Live ammo, tranqs, everything.”
“They’ll have more than us,” Ashley points out. “No matter what we do, they’ll outlast us.”
“Yes, but it’s all about buying time,” Connor tells her. “When our ammo runs low, we retreat to here—behind the fuel tanker, east of the fighter jets.”
“Won’t they corner us?” another kid asks.
“When they start to close in, we blow the tanker and run east.”
“We’ll never make it!” says Ashley.
“Here’s the thing, though. The second the fifty take on the Juvies, more than six hundred fifty will be scattering to the south.” And on the map, Connor draws a dispersal pattern of kids spreading out like a fan toward the remote southern fence. “That fence is full of holes.”
Hayden nods, getting it, and points to the main aisle. “So if the fifty do their job here and then draw the Juvies to the east, keeping them engaged and distracted, by the time they realize everyone else is on the run, they’ll never be able to catch them.”
“They might be able to round up some, but the others will make it. They’ll all be on their own again, but at least they’ll be alive, and whole.”
And then comes the big question. “What about the fifty?”
Finally Connor has to answer. “We’ll be the sacrifices so the others can survive.”
He can actually hear the click in Hayden’s Adam’s apple as he swallows. “So much for a future in broadcasting,” Hayden says.
“Any of you who aren’t up for it, I won’t hold it against you if you leave,” Connor says, but everyone knows that’s like the minister asking if anyone objects to the wedding.
“All right, good,” he says when no one raises a hand. “Each of you put together a team of your most trusted friends who are willing to stand against the Juvies, then let the others know to start running when the alarm sounds, and not to stop running until they’re either caught or turn seventeen.”
“Why wait until the alarm sounds?” someone asks. “Why not abandon the Graveyard now?”
“Because,” Connor points out, “they’re watching our every move now. If they see us starting to bail, they’ll have squad cars lining that perimeter fence before we even get there, and they can pick us off like rabbits—but if all their forces are tied up in a single forward offensive, that’s when we’ll have a back door.”
They all approve of Connor’s logic. He seems to be the only one who knows he’s flying by the seat of his pants.
“How much time do we have?” Ashley asks.
Connor lets Hayden field that one.
“Days if we’re lucky,” Hayden tells her. “Hours if we’re not.”
58 - Trace
While Connor has his summit meeting, Trace breaks all speed limits racing back to the Graveyard. He had been called for an emergency meeting with his “employers,” to confirm that Graveyard AWOLs were responsible for the house fires in Tucson. There was enough evidence to lay the attacks on the Graveyard’s doorstep—it made no sense to deny it. What the suits from Proactive Citizenry wanted to know was why Trace hadn’t told them about these attacks ahead of time. After all, that was his entire purpose there—to let them know everything before it happened. They refused to believe that he had been just as blindsided by it as they were.
“Do you have any idea the position this puts us in?” they asked him. “The Juvenile Authority wants to clean the place out, and with these attacks on civilian neighborhoods, we won’t be able to stop them.”
“I thought you controlled them.”
The suits bristled in unison. “Our relationship with the Juvenile Authority is more complex than your simplistic boeuf understanding.” Then they told him they were ending his assignment, effective immediately.
But to Trace, this wasn’t an assignment anymore. And the time of playing both sides had come to an end.
So, preparing himself for battle, he sped off to the Graveyard like a surfer riding ahead of a tsunami.
Now, at dusk, he screeches to a halt before the locked gate and honks nonstop until the two teen guards on duty come out to see what the commotion is. When they see it’s Trace, they unlock the gate.
“Jesus, Trace, do you want to wake all of Tucson?”
The other kid on duty chuckles. “Ain’t nothing gonna wake Tucson.”
Poor bastards, thinks Trace. They have no idea what’s coming. He looks at the rifles they wield limply, like fashion accessories. “You got tranq bullets in those?” he asks.
“Yup,” says the first kid.
“Replace them with these.” Trace reaches over onto his passenger seat of his Jeep and hands them two boxes of the deadliest military ammunition made. Shells that could take the head off an elephant.
The kids look at the shells like they’ve been handed a newborn they’re afraid they’ll drop.
“Load them quick—and the next time you see someone headed for the gate, shoot first, and don’t stop until you’re out of bullets, do you hear me?”
“Y-yes, sir,” says the first kid. The other kid just nods mutely. “Why, sir?”
“Because the Juvies are right behind me.”
59 - Lev
It’s the fading edge of dusk when Lev and Miracolina arrive on the road that skirts the northern edge of the Graveyard. They’re on foot now. An old rusted road sign points ahead toward what was once Davis Air Force Base. The faint shape of aircraft can be seen rising in the desert more than a mile beyond the fence.
“An air force base? Your friend is holing up in an air force base?”
“It’s not a base anymore,” Lev tells her, “and hasn’t been since the war. It’s an aircraft salvage yard.”
“So the Akron AWOL is hiding in one of those planes?”
“Not just him, and not just one plane.”
The fence seems to go on forever. Every few minutes a car zooms past on its way to or away from Tucson. Lev knows that drivers must see them and wonder what two kids are doing way out here, but he doesn’t care. He’s too close to waste time hiding from headlights now.
“I know the gate’s up here somewhere. It’s guarded, but they’ll recognize me and let us in.”
“You sure about that? Not everyone in the world is like your worshipful tithes.”
At last the gate comes into view, and Lev picks up the pace.
“Slow down!” Miracolina yells.
“Catch up!” Lev yells right back.
As he nears the gate, he sees one of the kids on guard duty hurrying to greet him. There’s something in the kid’s hands, but it’s gotten too dark to see just what it is until it’s too late, and a single rifle shot explodes through the dying dusk.
60 - Starkey
From the moment the cuffs are on Starkey’s wrists, he begins his escape act. He has no secret key, no penknife in his shoe to pick the lock, but a true master knows how to improvise.
He keeps his wits about him as they bring him to Connor’s jet, suppressing his fury at the humiliation of being collared in front of the entire Graveyard. The arrogance of Connor! Allowing him to “preserve his dignity” was anything but dignified. Starkey would rather have fought as they dragged him through the dirt. That would be dignified—but to treat him with such limp pity? It was the ultimate insult.
The two kids assigned to guard him are bigger than him and are armed. Once inside the jet, they relock the handcuffs around a steel support strut so he stays in one place. Satisfied, the two kids leave, one of them dangling the key in front of him to taunt him, before shoving it in his pocket. They close the door, and Starkey finds himself an official prisoner of war.
He watches the two guards from the window of the jet, sizing them up. They’re chatty with each other—probably friends. Of course, neither of them are storks; Connor made sure of that. Storks are now the enemy. Well, if Starkey has his way, Connor will see what a formidable enemy they are.
This, Starkey knows, is the turning point of his life. Not his escape from the Juvies, not his arrival at the Graveyard, but this moment alone, handcuffed in a plane. Everything depends on getting out of this jet, and no mistakes can be made. If he’s going to lead the storks to greatness, he’s going to have to dazzle everyone with his escape.
Starkey squats, getting his feet on the chain between the cuffs. He knows they’re tempered steel. Not even bolt cutters would separate them. As for the support strut, it’s part of the plane’s airframe and can’t be torn loose. The weakest link here is flesh and bone.
Starkey takes a few deep breaths to steady himself. Every escape artist is someday faced with an impossible escape; however, the true artist knows that nothing is impossible if you’re willing to do the unthinkable.
Getting himself leverage and locking his jaw to keep from shouting out, Starkey brings the heel of his boot down on his left hand. The pain is excruciating, but he swallows his scream. He brings it down again, this time feeling the fine bones of his hand begin to break. The pain makes him weak. His body resists, but his will countermands that biological order, and he brings his heel down again.
Quickly, before blood flows into the area, making it swell, he shifts the cuff slightly and brings his heel down on his wrist. The bones of his wrist shatter on the metal of the cuff. He feels his vision begin to go as dark as if he’s been tranq’d, but he forces away the cloudiness and nausea, breathing slowly, deeply, forcing himself to stay conscious and transforming the pain into action. He’s bit his tongue; blood fills his mouth, but he spits it out. The job is done. With his right hand, he twists his left cuff. This time he’s unable to hold back the wail of pain as he forces his shattered left hand through the small hole.
61 - Noah
Being assigned to guard a guy who’s handcuffed and closed inside a jet isn’t exactly a difficult job, but hey—if Connor feels Starkey needs two guards, who is Noah Falkowski to argue? This is the first assignment given to Noah directly by Connor since he was rescued from his unwinding nearly four months ago, and he’s not gonna screw it up. Inside the jet, Starkey lets out a guttural scream.