Then Connor sees him. Starkey. He stands atop the forward staircase, shepherding in his flock of storks—but it’s not just storks who are trying to get on. Now a massive push of kids crowds the base of both staircases in a panic. It’s perhaps the entire population of the Graveyard, fighting one another to get onto those narrow stairs.
Even before the riot police get down to them, Juvies come in on either side and start taking kids down with tranqs, like a shooting gallery. Connor can do nothing but watch as his plan—and all hope—crumbles into desert dust.
- - -
For once storks come first. For once storks will be victorious. And to hell with everyone else. The bio-raised world never did anything for Starkey. Well, now it will. Those bio-raised kids will be targets and draw the fire of the Juvies while his storks get onboard.
o;Behind the trailer . . .”
“Good. Give me the keys.”
And this younger kid’s voice is so commanding, the guard obeys, reaching into his pocket and handing him the keys.
“Listen to me,” the kid says. “There’s a girl outside the gate. She’s been tranq’d. I want you to get her and run. Take her someplace safe. Do you understand?”
The guard nods “Yeah, sure. Someplace safe.”
“Promise me you’ll do that.”
“Yeah, yeah, I promise.”
Satisfied, the kid gets into the Jeep and drives off toward the main aisle, where gunfire can already be heard. Clearly he doesn’t know how to drive, but that really doesn’t matter much when there’s no road, only hardpan desert.
Once he’s gone, the guard takes a moment to look at the remains of his fallen comrade, then bolts. Somewhere in the bushes just outside the gate is a tranq’d girl. He doesn’t care. Every man for himself in a Juvey crackdown. Every girl, too. So rather than even looking for her, he takes off running as fast as he can, and leaves the girl to the Juvies, or the coyotes—whichever come first.
67 - Connor
With his volunteer defense force fully armed—about sixty kids in all—Connor dispatches half of them to hide behind Rip, the largest boys’ dormitory. It’s a C-130 cargo plane with its wings ripped off and a belly slung so low to the ground that a small militia can hide behind it. “You’re the left defense flank,” he tells them. “Do what you can to draw the Juvies’ fire and keep them in the north end of the main aisle.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky for once,” one kid says. “Maybe the Juvies won’t come after all.”
Connor tries to offer him a reassuring smile. He doesn’t know the boy’s name. He tried his best to learn as many names as he could, but there was only so much he could do. If this kid gets killed, or worse, unwound, who will remember him? Who will remember any of them? He wishes he could have been wise enough to have had each kid carve his or her name into the steel of the old Air Force One, as a testament to the fact that they existed. Even if no would ever see it, at least it would be there. But now it’s too late.
Connor takes the rest of his fighting force to the Rec Jet, directly across the main aisle from Rip. “We’ll set up a barricade beneath the wings,” he tells them, “and shoot out from behind it.”
“Where will you be?” a girl asks.
“Right beside you, Casey,” Connor tells her, happy to have remembered her name.
“No,” says another kid. “The king should never be on the front lines. In chess, I mean.”
“This isn’t chess,” Connor points out. “It’s our lives.”
“Yeah,” he says, “but I kinda like to picture myself as a knight.”
“Well, you got the horse face,” says Casey, and everyone laughs. That they can laugh in the face of this says more about their courage than anything else.
Connor and his left flank fighters race to push couches, tables, and arcade machines into a barricade. Then, while Connor’s upending a pool table, Hayden’s voice blares in his earpiece.
“Connor, something’s wrong. I can’t raise the guards at the gate—no one’s responding.”
“It can’t be! We’re not ready!”
Then the horse-faced kid says, “We’ll never be ready. So I guess that means we’re as ready as we’ll ever be.”
Connor climbs to the hatch of the Rec Jet and looks north across the dark desert to see a wall of approaching headlights fanning out . . . getting wider. “Sound the alarm,” he tells Hayden. “Here we go.”
68 - Vessels