Apparently, the Juvenile Authority had learned from its mistake, and for Hayden they went about things differently. With Hayden’s Unwind Manifesto still getting more hits online than a naked celebrity, they needed to damage his street cred.
Like Connor, they had immediately separated him from the other kids, but instead of making an example of him, Director Menard chose to treat Hayden to steak meals at the staff table and give him a three-room suite in the guest villa. At first Hayden was worried that the man was harboring some sort of romantic interest—but he had an altogether different agenda. Menard was spreading rumors that Hayden was cooperating with the Juvenile Authority and helping them round up the kids that escaped from the Graveyard. Although the only “evidence” was the fact that Hayden was being treated remarkably well, the kids at the harvest camp believed. The only ones who didn’t fall for it were kids like Nasim and Lizbeth, who knew him from before.
Now when he’s walked through the dining room, the kids boo and hiss, and his escort of guards—who at first were there to make sure he didn’t escape, or tell anyone the truth—now are there to protect him from the angry mob of Unwinds. It’s a masterful bit of manipulation that Hayden might appreciate were he not the butt of the joke. After all, what could be lower than a traitor to the traitors? Now, thanks to Menard, Hayden will leave this world shamed on all possible fronts.
“I won’t bother taking your teeth,” Menard had told him. “But I may put your middle finger on a key chain, to remind me of all the times you’ve flipped it at me.”
“Left or right?” Hayden had asked. “These things are important.”
But as summer pounds inexorably toward autumn and his postelection unwinding, Hayden finds it harder and harder to make light of personal impending doom. He’s beginning to finally believe his life as he knows it will end in the Chop Shop of Cold Springs Harvest Camp.
31 • Starkey
There’s an unwind transport truck on a winding road on a bright August day, and although it’s painted in pastel blues, pinks, and greens, nothing can hide the ugliness of its purpose.
The northern Nevada terrain is arid and rugged. There are mountains that seemed to see where they were headed and gave up before they were fully pushed forth from the earth, deciding it wasn’t worth the effort. Everything in the landscape is the neutral beige of institutional furniture. Now I know why tumbleweeds roll, Starkey thinks. Because they want to be anywhere else but here.
Starkey sits shotgun beside the driver of the transport truck. Although today it should be called “riding pistol,” because that’s the weapon he has pressed to the driver’s ribs.
“You really don’t need to do this,” the driver says nervously.
“This thing is bigger than you, Bubba. Just go with it, and you might actually live.” Starkey doesn’t know the man’s name. To him all truck drivers are Bubba.
As they come down into the valley toward Cold Springs Harvest Camp, Starkey gets a good view of the facility. Like all harvest camps, its calculated attention to design is part of the crime, putting forth an illusion of tranquillity and comfort. At a harvest camp, even the building where kids go in and never come out could be as inviting as Grandma’s house. Starkey shudders at the thought.
The builders of Cold Springs Harvest Camp tried to take architectural cues from its surroundings, attempting a natural Western look—but a huge oasis of green artificial turf in the midst of stucco buildings is a glaring reminder that there is nothing natural about this place at all.
Bubba sweats profusely as they approach the guard gate. “Stop sweating!” says Starkey. “It’s suspicious.”
“I can’t help it!”
To the guard at the gate, it’s business as usual. He checks the driver’s credentials and reviews the manifest. He seems not to care, or just doesn’t notice the driver’s perspiration. Nor does he pay attention to Starkey, who is dressed in the light gray coveralls of an Unwind transport worker. The guard goes back into his booth, hits a button, and the gates slowly swing open.
Now it’s Starkey’s turn to sweat. Until this moment it’s all been hypothetical. Even coming down the valley toward the camp seemed surreal and one step removed from reality, but now that he’s inside, there’s no turning back. This is going down.
They pull up to a loading dock, where a team of harvest camp counselors wait to greet their new arrivals with disarming smiles, then sort them and send them to their barracks to await unwinding. But that’s not going to happen today.
As soon as the back doors of the transport truck are swung open, the staff is met not with rows of restrained teenagers, but with an army. Kids leap out at them, screaming and brandishing weapons.
The instant the commotion begins, the driver leaps from the cab and runs for his life. Starkey doesn’t care, since the man has done his job. The shouts give way to gunfire. Workers race away from the scene, and guards race toward it.
Starkey gets out of the cab in time to see some of his precious storks go down. The east tower has a clear view of the loading dock, and a sharpshooter is taking kids out. The first couple of shots are tranqs, but the sharpshooter switches rifles. The next kid to go down, goes down for good.
Oh crap this is real this is real this is—
And then the sharpshooter aims at Starkey.
He dodges just as a bullet puts a hole in the door of the truck with a dainty ping. Panicked, Starkey leaps behind a boulder, smashing his bad hand on the way down, spitting curses from the pain.
The storks are spreading out. Some are going down, but more are gaining ground. Some use the counselors as human shields.
I can’t die, Starkey thinks. Who will lead them if I die?
But he knows he can’t stay crouched behind a boulder either. They have to see him fighting. They have to see him in charge. Not just the storks, but the kids he’s about to set free.
He pokes his head up and aims his pistol at the shadowy figure in the tower, who is now firing at kids running across the artificial turf. Starkey’s fourth shot is lucky. The sharpshooter goes down.
But there are other guards, other towers.
In the end, salvation for all of them comes from the kids of the camp itself. The grounds are filled with Unwinds going about their daily activities—sports and dexterity exercises all designed to maximize their divided value and physically groom them for unwinding. When they see what’s happening, they abandon their activities, overpower their counselors, and turn an attack into a revolt.
Starkey strides into the midst of it, amazed by what he’s witnessing. The staff running in panic, guards overpowered, their weapons pulled from them and added to the storks’ growing arsenal. He sees a woman in a white coat race across the lawn and behind a building, trying to use a cell phone—but the joke’s on her. Even before the storks ambushed the transport truck, Jeevan and a team of techies had jammed the two wireless towers feeding the valley and took out the landline. No communication of any sort is getting in or out of this place unless it’s running on two feet.
The rebellion feeds itself, fueled by desperation and unexpected hope. It grows in intensity until even the guards are running, only to be tackled by dozens of kids and restrained with their own handcuffs. It’s like Happy Jack! thinks Starkey. But this time it’ll be done right. Because I’m the one in charge.
Overpowered by sheer numbers, the staff is subdued, and the camp is liberated in fifteen minutes.
Kids are overwhelmed with joy. Some are in tears from the ordeal. Others tend to dead and dying friends. Adrenaline is still high, and Starkey decides to use it. Let the dead be dead. He must focus them now on life. He strides out into the middle of the common area, beside a flagpole poking out of the artificial turf, and draws their attention away from the human cost of their liberation.