UnWholly (Unwind Dystology 2)

“Juvies! Here! Tomorrow!” Starkey gasps. “Your parents! Unwinding you!”

“Nice try!” he says, and pulls back the bat, ready to swing again. “Run, Dad! Get out!” The man tries to scramble away but is cornered by other storks. Doesn’t this kid get it? Doesn’t he realize they already signed the order to have him unwound? Jesus LaVega tenses his muscles to swing just as one of Starkey’s storks comes up behind him with a large football trophy and swings the marble base at his head. The heavy stone connects with the back of Jesus’s head, and he crumples to the ground instantly. The trophy falls to the floor, broken.

“What did you do?” screams Starkey.

“He was gonna kill you!” screams the stork.

Starkey kneels down beside Jesus. Blood pours out of his head, soaking the carpet. His eyes are half-open. Starkey feels for a pulse but can’t find one, and when he turns the kid’s head, he can see how badly his skull was crushed by the heavy trophy base. One thing is certain: Jesus LaVega is not going to be unwound. Because he’s dead.

Starkey looks to the kid who did it, who panics under Starkey’s gaze. “I didn’t mean it, Starkey! Honest! I swear! He was gonna kill you!”

“It’s not your fault,” Starkey tells him, then turns to the kid’s father, who’s cornered like a spider.

“You did this!” Starkey screams. “You kept him here all his life just so you could unwind him. Do you even care that he’s dead?”

The man is horrified by the news. “D-dead? No!”

“Don’t pretend you care!” Starkey can’t hold it in anymore. He can’t hold back. This man—this monster who would unwind his stork-brought son—has to pay for what he’s done!

Ignoring the pain in his side, Starkey swings his foot, connecting with the man’s torso. He should feel this pain, not me. He should feel all of it! Starkey kicks again and again. The man screams, the man moans, but Starkey keeps swinging his foot, unable to stop—it’s as if he’s channeling the fury of every doorstep baby, every unwanted child, all kids everywhere who were treated like something less than human just because they were born to mothers who didn’t want them.

Finally one of the other storks grabs Starkey, pulling him away.

“That’s enough, man,” he says. “He gets the idea.”

The man, bloody and beaten, still has enough strength to crawl out the door. The rest of his family has escaped too, running to neighbors. They’ve probably called the police, and Starkey realizes that he can’t stop now, he’s gone too far—he has to take this all the way. This isn’t what he wanted, but somehow he can use it. Yes, the kid they came to rescue is dead, but this night can’t end with that. It has to stand for something. It has to be worth something. Not just for Starkey, but for all storks.

“Let this be a warning,” he yells out the front door as the man stumbles away. He spots neighbors on their porches. Strangers are there to hear his words. Good! It’s time for people to listen. “Let this be a warning,” he says again, “to anyone who would unwind a stork! You will all get what’s coming to you!” Then, in a flash of inspiration, he runs through the house and into the garage.

“Starkey!” one of the others yells after him. “What the hell are you doing?”

“You’ll see.”

In the garage he finds a gas can. It’s only half-full, but half is enough. He runs through the house pouring gasoline everywhere, and on the mantel above the fireplace he finds a book of matches.

Moments later he’s racing across the lawn away from the house, toward his friends in the waiting Jeeps, while an ominous glow rises within the house behind him. By the time he climbs into a Jeep, flames are rising in the windows, and the moment the Jeeps screech away into the night, those windows begin to explode, and smoke pours forth from the rising inferno. The entire house has become a blazing beacon to let the world know that Mason Starkey was here, and people are going to pay.

43 - Avalanche

This document I sign of my own free will.

That was the last line of the consent form that Risa Ward signed, just as Roberta had predicted she would. Signing that form has given her a new spine and the use of her legs, but that’s not all it did. It set into motion a cascading series of events that Risa could not have predicted, and yet was expertly orchestrated by Roberta, her associates, and their money.

. . . I sign of my own free will.

Risa has never gone skiing—such frivolous activities were not offered to state wards—yet lately she’s been dreaming that she’s skiing down a triple black diamond slope, chased by the leading edge of an avalanche. There’s no stopping until she either reaches the bottom, or sails off a cliff to her doom.

. . . my own free will.

Before the news interviews, before the public service announcements, before she knows any of what she’ll be asked to do, Risa’s damaged spine is replaced, and she awakes from a five-day medically induced coma into her brave new life.

44 - Risa

“Tell me if you can feel this,” a nurse says, scraping Risa’s toe with a strip of plastic. Risa gasps in spite of herself. Yes, she feels it—and it’s not just a phantom sensation. She can feel the sheets brushing against her legs. She can feel her toes again. She tries to move them, but just moving her toes makes every part of her body ache.

“Don’t try to move, dear,” the nurse tells her. “Let the healing agents do their job. We’re using second-generation healing agents. You’ll be up and walking in two weeks.”

It speeds her heart to hear those words. She wishes the connection between her heart and her mind could be more direct—that the part of her that wants this could be firmly ruled by the part of her that doesn’t—because although her mind wants to despise what they’ve done for her, the part of her that knows no reason is filled with joy at the prospect of holding her own balance and moving under the power of her own legs.