“You know my answer!” Garson said.
As should be the answer of every member of the Stork Brigade. The future—Starkey’s future—is like Fourth of July fireworks: bright and bold, loud and dramatic, but deadly for those in the trajectory of the blasts. The Juvenile Authority fears him, the world is talking about him, and with the shadowy support of the clappers, there is no limit to the heights to which his fireworks will soar. It’s true that revolutionaries are always vilified by the societies they seek to take down, but history has a different perspective. History calls them freedom fighters, and freedom fighters have statues erected to them. Starkey is determined that his will be made of metals far finer than copper.
• • •
A team of mercenaries sent by the clappers now supervise weapons training because the storks’ arsenal has gotten so complex and diverse. After all, a thirteen-year-old shouldn’t use a handheld missile launcher without proper instruction. Starkey has conveniently forgotten that training was Bam’s suggestion.
Starkey, who wants to know how to use each and every weapon, trains with his own private instructor. He doesn’t want the storks to see his learning curve. They must think he already knows this stuff. That he’s the consummate guerrilla.
As for everyone else, the storks are each assigned a specific weapon, and train on that weapon for four hours a day.
So far there has only been one mishap.
• • •
Starkey decides that a good stork should be rewarded, and Garson DeGrutte is a good stork. Trustworthy. Dedicated. He follows orders without question, and has the right attitude. For this reason, Garson deserves some of the perks of Starkey’s power. So Starkey pays a visit to a girl named Abigail, whom Garson has been not-so-secretly pining over.
As it turns out, Abigail is the same girl who gave Starkey a lousy massage two weeks ago.
He finds her washing dishes, and with a single gesture dismisses everyone else at the bank of industrial sinks.
“Is there something you want, sir?” the girl asks timidly.
Starkey gives her his winning smile, and reaches up with his bad hand to brush back her hair, which has gone limp from the steamy dishwater. His gloved hand brushes her cheek as he does. She purses her lips as if the touch from his glove pains her. Or maybe terrifies her.
“Does it hurt?” she asks. “Your hand.”
“Only when I think about it,” he says, then gets to business. “I’m here to talk to you about one of the other storks.”
She visibly relaxes. “Which one?”
“Garson DeGrutte. Do you like him?”
“No, not really.”
“Well, he likes you.”
She looks up at him, trying to figure where this is going. “He told you that?”
“He mentioned it. And he also mentioned that you told him off.”
Abigail shrugs, but in a strained, uncomfortable way—as if shaking off a chill. “Like I said, I don’t really like him.”
Starkey reaches over and dries a plate with a dish towel. Abigail takes this as a cue to start doing the same. “Garson is a good fighter. A loyal stork. He deserves some happiness. He doesn’t deserve to be rejected.”
Abigail looks down at the plate in her hands. “So you want me to lie to him?”
“No! I want you to like him,” Starkey says. “I certainly like him. He’s a likeable guy.”
She still won’t look at him. “I can’t feel things that I don’t feel.”
Starkey grabs her shoulder with his good hand—a gentle grasp with a squeeze just hard enough to tip the scale of persuasion. “Yes, you can.”
Later that day, Garson is all smiles. Starkey doesn’t have to ask why, for he knows that today Cupid was armed with a stainless steel crossbow.
• • •
While Garson now enjoys the fruits of Cupid’s steel arrow, Starkey finds in his own love life that multiple piercings can be unpleasant.
“I didn’t trip her, it was an accident!” Makayla yells.
“She’s lying—she wants me to lose the baby! Admit it!” Emmalee screams.
“Go ahead, tear each other apart, we’ll all be better off,” says Kate-lynn.
The three girls in Starkey’s personal harem, once friends, now do nothing but fight. He thought they would see each other as sisters, but the glow they all seemed to share when he first chose them has degraded into a clawing competition. Starkey doesn’t even want to consider how they’ll behave toward one another once all three of his children are born. It’s still so many months away, it doesn’t feel real yet—but the battles between the girls are.
Perhaps it’s the problem of three. Maybe adding a fourth to their number will settle the dynamic. On the other hand, maybe it’s just best to just keep away from Makayla, Emmalee, and Kate-lynn altogether.
He takes comfort in anticipating the end result. The girls are beautiful; his children will be beautiful. And, thanks to their father, they will be raised in a world better than the world that gave birth to him. And he will love them unconditionally . . . if he can just get past the girls he chose to be their mothers.
“She thinks she’s better than me because she was the first, but mine will be the firstborn, you’ll see.”
“And it’ll be a whining little turd like its mother.”
Definitely a fourth. That’s what Starkey decides is needed. After the next harvest camp attack he will choose. A redhead this time. He dyed his hair red for a time to evade the authorities. He liked the way it looked. It would be nice to have a child who comes by it naturally.
• • •
“The applause department”—as Hayden so blithely calls the organization behind the clapper movement—requests an audience with Starkey. Jeevan sets up an encrypted teleconference, although Starkey suspects that those in charge of clappers have massive layers of their own encryption. On-screen is the man with salt-and-pepper hair, more salt than pepper. The man in charge. It still seems odd to Starkey that the man at the heart of the clapper movement appears about as radical as the Wall Street Journal. Starkey has to remind himself that the man was once a teenager himself, although somehow Starkey can’t imagine he was ever an outsider in any sense of the word.
The fact that he’s contacting them directly, rather than through the usual series of intermediaries, concerns Starkey. The only other time Starkey saw the guy was when they sent in a team to abduct Starkey in his sleep. Starkey thought he had been captured by the Juvies, but their little helicopter trip was nothing more than a courtship ritual. That was when the force behind the clapper movement offered the Stork Brigade its full support. That’s when the game changed. The man had declined to give him his name at the time, but a few weeks ago one of his underlings let slip that his name is Dandrich. Starkey knows better than to let on that he knows the man’s name. Or at least not until it serves Starkey’s interests.
“Hello, Mason. It’s good to see you.”
“Hi, yourself.”
Like Starkey, the man is short in stature and wields power with professional proficiency. Even on a small computer screen there’s something intimidating about him.
“You’re well, I trust?” Dandrich says. Small talk. Why do people in suits always insist on small talk before going for the jugular? Starkey braces himself for bad news. Has their location been compromised? Or worse, are the clappers pulling their support? No—why would they do such a thing when the harvest camp liberations have been so successful? Thousands have been freed, unwinders have been punished, and fear has been struck into the hearts of millions. Surely they’re happy with all of that.
“Yeah, I’m good. But I’m sure this isn’t about my health. Why are we talking?”
Dandrich chuckles, amused, perhaps a little bit impressed by Starkey’s directness. “Word has come down that you’re considering an attack on Pensacola Shores Harvest Camp. Our analysts are advising against it.”
Starkey leans back and takes a moment to reign in his annoyan
ce. After all he’s done, why can’t they simply trust his judgment? “That’s what you said about Horse Creek, but that place came down like a house of cards.”
Dandrich never loses his poise. “Yes, in spite of the risks, you prevailed. Pensacola Shores, however, is a different matter. It’s a maximum security camp for violent Unwinds and, as such, has many more layers of security. You simply don’t have the manpower to succeed. In addition, it’s on an isolated peninsula, and you could very easily be trapped, with no means of escape.”
“That’s why I requested boats.”
Now Dandrich becomes a little hot under his stiff collar. “Even if we could provide them, an armada attacking from the Gulf of Mexico would be hard to conceal.”
“Exactly,” says Starkey. “And what could be more dramatic than an old-fashioned siege? You know— like the conquistadors! Not only would it be newsworthy, it would be . . . it would be . . .”
Dandrich finds the word for him. “Iconic.”
“Yes! It would be iconic!”
“But at what cost? I assure you the battles of Waterloo and Little Bighorn were iconic, but only because of how completely Napoleon and Custer were defeated. The world remembers their failure.”
“I won’t fail.”
But Dandrich ignores him. “We have determined that the next harvest camp in your campaign should be Mousetail Divisional Academy, in central Tennessee.”
“Are you kidding me? Mousetail is all tithes!”
“Which is why they won’t be expecting it. You can continue your policy of executing the staff, and you won’t add any new mouths to feed, because there won’t be any storks. Let the tithes do whatever they want once you’ve liberated them. They can stay, they can run—either way it’s not your problem. This will give you time to continue training the kids you have before you’re saddled with more.”
“That’s not the way I do things! My instincts tell me to hit Pensacola, and I can’t go against my instincts.”
Dandrich leans closer. His face fills the screen. Starkey can practically feel the man’s hand reaching through the ether and grasping Starkey’s shoulder. A gentle grasp, but with enough pressure for Starkey to feel a subtle increase in the earth’s gravity.
“Yes, you can,” says Dandrich.
• • •
Starkey rages through the power plant, venting his indignation at anyone who crosses his path. He yells at Jeevan for not being aggressive enough during their last attack.
“You’re a soldier now, not a computer nerd, so start acting like one!”
He rips into kids who are laughing while coming back from weapons training.
“Those things aren’t toys, and this is no laughing matter!” He tells them to drop and give him twenty, and when they say, “Twenty what?” he storms off, too irritated to tell them.
Hayden strides past him with a nod, and he’s so furious at the casual way Hayden saunters, he complains about yesterday’s dinner, even though it was fine. “If you’re in charge of food then do your freaking job!”
And Bam.
He’s glad he doesn’t encounter Bam until he’s calmed down a bit, because he might do something he’d regret later. Bam has become a liability, but he can put her in her place. Although Garson DeGrutte doesn’t know it yet, the reward for his loyalty isn’t just getting the girl. Starkey’s going to put him in charge of a team on their next mission—and Bam will be part of that team. She will have to take orders from Garson, and it will humble her. It will remind her who is in charge. And if it doesn’t, he’ll simply have to step things up with her. It’s a shame, really. Bam had been so loyal for so long. But when loyalty runs out, so would any leader’s tolerance.
He finds her in the weapons locker. In spite of her concerns about arming the storks, the weapons locker seems her favorite place to be. When she sees him, she doesn’t come to crisp attention. She doesn’t even stop assembling the weapon she’s working on. She just glances up at him, then back down at her work.
“I heard about the call from Mr. Big. Do you have your orders?”
“I give the orders.”
“Whatever.” She wipes some sweat from her brow. “Is there something you want, Mason? Because I have to make sure these weapons are assembled correctly. Unless, of course, you’d rather go in with water balloons.”
Starkey considers telling her about her demotion, but decides against it. Let her find out the day of the attack, when it will hit her hardest. Maybe it will make her mad enough to take out some harvest camp personnel for once.
“I came to tell you that I’ve changed my mind,” he says. “We won’t be going after Pensacola right now.”
Bam finally stops what she’s doing and gives him her full attention. “You have another place in mind?”
“We’ll be going north instead. Mousetail Divisional Academy, in Tennessee.”
“But isn’t that place tithes-only? I thought you hated tithes.”
Starkey frowns, feeling his anger rekindling toward Dandrich and his lack of faith. Well, maybe Starkey can turn this into an event just as iconic as he would have had in Pensacola.
“Tithes are filthy unwinding sympathizers,” Starkey tells her. “Which is why, when we go in, our objective will be a little bit different.” Then he takes a deep breath, hardening his resolve.
`“This time, we’re not just taking out the staff. We’re killing every last tithe as well.”
26 • Podcast
“This is Radio Free Hayden, podcasting from a place that’s toxic in more ways than one. I’m not myself today. I’m not in my happy place at all—which is why the image accompanying today’s podcast is Dali’s Persistence of Memory. Time melting on a bleak landscape of doom. Yeah, that about sums it up.
“Everything changes today. Or nothing changes. If things go right, and we find a way to stop what’s about to happen, I’ll be in a much better place than I am now. Hell, I might even play some music for your listening pleasure. And if things go wrong, then the next sound you hear will be a collective scream that may never end.
“I can’t tell you the specifics, you’ll just have to trust me that big things are brewing, and this stew promises to be lethal. So in the next couple of days, if you hear something more horrific than usual in your evening news, and you’re faced with more dead kiddos than you’re comfortable with, then you’ll know that things did not go well.
“I suspect I’ll be one of the casualties if we can’t stop this particular speeding train, so you may never hear from me again. And, in which case, I hope you’ll dedicate our little uprising to my memory.
“And speaking of the uprising, I’ve been considering how it might go down. I know such an event needs some rallying point. A date, a time, a place. I’ve been thinking of maybe Monday, November first, in Washington—the day before Election Day. It somehow seems appropriate to me that Election Day falls so close to Halloween this year, considering some of the measures on the ballot. Voluntary unwinding for cash. Tossing the brains of criminals and unwinding the rest of them. The “three strikes” law that allows the Juvenile Authority to arrest and unwind teenage offenders without parental consent. It certainly feels to me like a trip through the haunted mansion, and not even that unwound witch’s head in the crystal ball can predict where it’s going to end.
“So that’s my proposal. A challenge for anyone who opposes unwinding to gather on November first, in Washington, DC. That gives you three weeks to make it happen. And if I don’t make it—maybe you can carve my name on some random memorial so the world knows I was here.”
27 • Mousetail
The story, far too old to be corroborated by anyone living, is that when the old tannery burned down, it was so infested with mice that they all ran out at once to escape the fire. The massive pack of mice raced toward the nearby Tennessee River, landing in a flood of vermin that rivaled the plagues on Egypt. And so, henceforth, and likely forevermore, the place came to be known as Mousetail Landing.
In the spot where the tannery once stood is now a harvest camp so picturesque it is often the subject of watercolors painted by vacationers camping across the river. The closest thing to mice at Mousetail now are the mild-mannered boys and girls all dressed in white, who arrive the day after their thirteenth birthdays. Happy children, all bright-eyed and trusting that the staff will ease them into a divided state with kindness and a reverence for the sanctity of their sacrifice.
The cabins of Mousetail Divisional Academy are heated in the winter by induction floorboards and cooled in the summer by multizone circulation systems that keep each tithe’s sleeping area at precisely the temperature the tithe prefers. Spectacular meals are supervised by a chef who once had his own TV show and served by graduates of the International Institute of Modern Butlers.
Tithes are accepted to Mousetail through a rigorous and competitive application process akin to that of the most exclusive universities. To be chosen for the academy is a source of pride for a tithe and his or her family—and to receive a Mousetail transplant is something bragged about in society’s highest strata.
Until recently, the academy’s front gate was not locked. In fact, there’s a sign just inside the gate in bright yellow and red that reads THOSE WHO WISH TO LEAVE UNDIVIDED MAY EXIT HERE. Yet in fourteen years of operation, there have been only four tithes who went AWOL. One of them was later found frozen in the woods. He was buried in a highly visible and well-maintained tomb in the camp, testifying to the love and care that Mousetail provides its guests—even the AWOL ones. And it also stands as a reminder to other tithes that the wage of cowardice is death.
In recent weeks, by request of the Juvenile Authority, the gate has been locked, and the minimal security staff has been augmented by three additional armed guards. It’s nowhere near the protection required for more likely targets of Mason Starkey’s wrath: nonvoluntary harvest camps, where the campers don’t actually want to be there.
The new security measures frighten the tithes, reminding them that there’s evil out in the world—but they take comfort in knowing that it won’t be coming for them. Very soon the evil of this world will no longer be their concern. In fact they are taught to pity the kind of ignorance that leads to violence against harvest camps.