UnWholly (Unwind Dystology 2)

That night the dogfaced kid takes Starkey to a drainage tunnel where he’s been hiding out, and once the kid falls asleep, Starkey gets to work. He goes out into a nearby neighborhood and leaves a bucket of chicken at some strangers’ front door, rings the bell, and runs.

There’s no chicken in the bucket, though. Instead there’s a hand-drawn map, along with the following note:

Need money? Then send the Juvey-cops here, and you’ll collect a fat reward. Happy holidays!

Right around dawn, Starkey watches from a nearby rooftop as Juvies storm the drainage tunnel and pull out the dogfaced kid like so much earwax.

“Congratulations, asshole,” he says to himself. “You’ve been storked.”

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“When my parents signed the unwind order, I was scared. I didn’t know what would happen to me. I thought, ‘Why me? Why am I being punished?’ But once I got to BigSky Harvest Camp, all that changed. I found other kids like me and was finally accepted for who I was. I found out that every single part of me was precious and valuable. Thanks to the people at BigSky Harvest Camp, I’m not afraid of my unwinding anymore.

“The divided state? Wow. What an adventure!”

Every AWOL Unwind will steal. It’s an argument that the authorities like to use to convince the public that Unwinds are rotten apples from skin to core—that criminality is part of their very nature, and the only way to separate them from it is to separate them from themselves.

Theft, however, is not about predisposition when it comes to Unwinds. It’s simply a matter of necessity. Kids who would never steal a penny find their fingers stickier than molasses and full of all sorts of pilfered goods, from food to clothes to medicine—the various things they need to survive—and those who were already prone to crime simply become even more so.

Starkey is no stranger to criminal activity—although until recently most of his crimes were misdemeanors of the rebellious sort. He shoplifted if a shopkeeper looked at him suspiciously. He tagged bits of his own personal philosophy, which usually involved some choice four-letter words, on buildings that stood for the very things that ticked him off. He even stole a car from a neighbor who always made his young children go inside whenever Starkey came out. He took that guy’s car on a joyride with a couple of friends. Fun was had by all. Along the way he sideswiped a row of parked cars, losing two hub-caps and a bumper. Their ride ended when the car jumped a curb and mounted a very unresponsive mailbox. The damage was just enough to have the car labeled a total loss, which was exactly what Starkey wanted.

They never could prove it was him, but everybody knew. He had to admit, it wasn’t one of his shining moments, but he knew he had had to do something to a man who didn’t think Starkey was good enough to breathe the same air as his own children. The guy simply had to be punished for that kind of behavior.

All of it seemed to pale now that he was a murderer. But no—It would do him no good to think of himself that way. Better to think of himself as a warrior: a foot soldier in the war against unwinding. Soldiers were given medals for taking out the enemy, weren’t they? So even though that night in the alley still plagues him in moments of insecurity, most of the time his conscience is clear. His conscience is also clear when he begins parting people from their wallets.

Starkey, imagining himself as a big-time Las Vegas magician someday, used to amaze friends and terrify adults by making their watches disappear off their wrists and turn up in other people’s pockets. It was a simple parlor trick, but one that had taken lots of time to perfect. Making wallets and purses disappear followed the same principle. A combination of distraction, skilled fingers, and the confidence to get it done.

On this night, Starkey’s mark is a man who comes stumbling drunk out of a bar and slips an overstuffed wallet into the wide pocket of his overcoat. The drunk fumbles with his keys on the way to his car. Starkey strolls past, bumping him just hard enough to dislodge the keys, and they fall to the ground.

“Hey, man, I’m sorry,” Starkey says, picking up the keys and handing them to him. The man never feels the fingers of Starkey’s other hand in his pocket, lifting the wallet at the same moment Starkey’s handing him the keys. Starkey strolls off whistling to himself, knowing the man will be halfway home before he realizes that his wallet is gone, and even then, he’ll think he just left it at the bar.

Starkey turns a corner, making sure he’s out of sight before he opens the wallet, and the second he does, a jolt of electricity courses through him with such power his feet fall out from under him and he’s left semiconscious on the ground, twitching.

A stun-wallet. He’s heard of such things but never saw one in action until now.

Within seconds, the drunk is there, not so drunk after all, with three others whose faces he can’t make out. They lift him up and shove him into the back of a waiting van.

As the door is pulled closed and the van accelerates, Starkey, only barely conscious, sees the face of the drunk/not-drunk man looking down at him through an electrically charged haze.

“Are you an Unwind, a runaway, or just a lowlife?” he asks.

Starkey’s lips feel like rubber. “Lowlife.”

“Great,” says the un-drunk. “That narrows it down. Unwind or runaway?”

“Runaway,” mumbles Starkey.

“Perfect,” the man says. “Now that we’ve established you’re an Unwind, we know what to do with you.”

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To be an AWOL Unwind is one thing, but to be a cop killer is another. The manhunt for Starkey becomes more than just your typical Unwind chase. It seems the whole world is put on alert. First Starkey changes his look, dying his straggly brown hair red, cutting it bookworm-short, and shaving off the little victory garden goatee that he’s been cultivating since middle school. Now when people see him, they might get a feeling they’ve seen him before, but not know from where, because now he looks less like a face from a wanted poster and more like someone you’d see on a Wheaties box. The red hair is a bit of a disconnect with his olive complexion, but then, being a genetic hodgepodge has served him well all his life. He’s always been a chameleon who could pass for any ethnicity. The red hair just adds one more level of misdirection.