Starkey wastes no time. “You’ve just been liberated,” he announces. The PFFTT of tranq pistols being fired herald several more staff members taken down by Starkey’s special-ops team, all of whom are disturbingly good shots. “Everyone to the basement. Don’t take anything but the clothes on your back and your shoes. Let’s move it!”
Then he goes upstairs to announce the girls’ liberation, leaving Hayden and his team to move the masses down and out.
In ten minutes, nearly three hundred kids are taken down into the caves and are on their way to freedom. Only the tithes, who are in a different building, and rescue-resistant by their very nature, must be left behind.
Hayden and his team lead the liberated Unwinds through the lava cave to the exit point, where four dark delivery trucks “borrowed” for the evening’s festivities wait on a lonely road to spirit them all away.
Gunfire from the fake assault still rages as they emerge from the caves, but it’s far away, like the sound of a distant battlefront. As the trucks are quickly packed with kids, Hayden dares to think that maybe, just maybe, he can turn Starkey’s guerilla war into something meaningful, and even admirable. Perhaps the road ahead isn’t all that bleak after all.
He has no idea that Starkey, who is still nowhere in sight, has just paved them a fresh road to hell.
46 • Starkey
Performing magic was never just about the tricks for Starkey. There must be style. There must be showmanship. There must be an audience. Making three hundred kids vanish is, admittedly, quite the trick, but liberating a harvest camp is about more than just freeing its Unwinds. Starkey sees a bigger, much more glorious picture.
Once the girls on the second floor are on the move toward the basement and Hayden is occupied getting everyone through the caves, Starkey takes a moment to study the high ceiling of the large dormitory, taking note of the ceiling fans. None of them are spinning, but that’s fine. In fact, it’s better that way.
“I need you to go upstairs and bring me six staff members,” he tells his team. “Tranq anyone who gives you trouble, but make sure the ones you bring me are conscious.”
“Why?” one of them asks. “What are we doing?”
“We’re sending a message.”
They return with three men and three women. Starkey has no idea what their positions are here. Administrators, surgeons, cooks—it doesn’t matter. To Starkey they’re all the same. They’re all unwinders. He orders them bound and gagged with duct tape. He looks up to the ceiling fans once more. There are six fans, suspended about ten feet from the ground. And Starkey brought plenty of rope.
No one in his special-ops team knows much about tying knots. The nooses are crude and inelegant, but aesthetics don’t matter as long as they hold. With the diversionary battle still raging outside like the shores of Normandy, Starkey and his team stand the six captives on chairs and lasso a blade of a ceiling fan above each of their heads with the other end of their respective ropes, pulling the ropes tight enough so that their captives can feel it, but not tight enough to actually hurt them. Once they’re all in place, Starkey steps forward to address them.
“My name is Mason Michael Starkey, the leader of the Stork Brigade. You have been found guilty of crimes against humanity. You’ve unwound thousands of innocent kids—many of them storks—and there must be a reckoning.” He pauses to let it sink in. Then he approaches the first captive—a woman who can’t stop crying.
“I can see that you’re frightened,” he says.
The woman, unable to speak through the duct tape, nods and pleads with her tearful eyes.
“Don’t worry,” he tells her. “I’m not going to hurt you—but I need you to remember everything I’ve said. When they come to set you free, I want you to tell them. Can you do that for me?”
The woman nods.
“Tell them that this is only the beginning. We’re coming for everyone who supports unwinding and mistreats storks. There’s nowhere you people can hide from us. Make sure you tell them. Make sure they know.”
The woman nods again, and Starkey pats her arm with his good hand, giving her a measure of comfort, and leaves her there on her chair, unharmed.
Then he goes to the five others, and one by one kicks the chair out from beneath them.
Part Five
A Murder of Storks
CHARLIE FUQUA, ARKANSAS LEGISLATIVE CANDIDATE, ENDORSES DEATH PENALTY FOR REBELLIOUS CHILDREN . . . .
The Huffington Post | By John Celock
Posted: 10/08/2012 1:29 p.m. Updated: 10/15/2012 8:08 a.m.
In . . . Fuqua’s 2012 book, the candidate wrote that while parents love their children, a process could be set up to allow for the institution of the death penalty for “rebellious children,” according to the
Arkansas Times
. Fuqua . . . points out that the course of action involved in sentencing a child to death is described in the Bible and would involve judicial approval. While it is unlikely that many parents would seek to have their children killed by the government, Fuqua wrote, such power would serve as a way to stop rebellious children.
According to the
Arkansas Times
, Fuqua wrote:
The maintenance of civil order in society rests on the foundation of family discipline. Therefore, a child who disrespects his parents must be permanently removed from society in a way that gives an example to all other children of the importance of respect for parents. The death penalty for rebellious children is not something to be taken lightly. The guidelines for administering the death penalty to rebellious children are given in Deut 21:18–21: This passage does not give parents blanket authority to kill their children. They must follow the proper procedure . . . . Even though this procedure would rarely be used, if it were the law of the land, it would give parents authority . . . and it would be a tremendous incentive for children to give proper respect to their parents.
Full article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/08/
charlie-fuqua-arkansas-candidate-death-penalty-rebellious-children_n_1948490.html
“I think my views are fairly well accepted by most people.”
—Charlie Fuqua
The Rheinschilds
Janson and Sonia Rheinschild have been asked to resign from their positions at the university. The chancellor cites “unauthorized use of biological material” as the reason. They could either resign or be arrested and have their names—and their work—dragged through the mud.
BioDynix Medical Instruments has not returned Janson’s calls for weeks. When he demands to know why, the receptionist, a bit flustered by his surliness, claims that they have no records of his previous calls, and in fact, they have no record of him in their system at all.
But the worst is yet to come.
Janson, unshaven and unshowered for maybe a week, shuffles to answer the doorbell. There’s a kid there, eighteen or so. It takes a moment for Janson to recognize him as one of Austin’s friends. Austin—Janson’s research assistant, rehabilitated from the streets—has been living with them for the past year. Sonia’s idea. They had converted their basement into an apartment for him. Of course, he has his own life, so the Rheinschilds don’t follow his comings and goings, and he’s been known to be away for days at a time when there’s no work to be done. That being the case, his current absence hasn’t been cause for alarm—especially now that Janson has neither an office nor research lab anymore.
“I don’t know how to tell you this, so I’ll just say it,” the kid says. “Austin was taken away for unwinding last night.”