“The gate is wide open. Your path to freedom is there. I suggest you take it.”
For a moment they linger, not trusting. Then a few turn and head toward the gate, then a few more, and in an instant it becomes a mass exodus. Starkey watches them go. Then he turns to the storks who remain.
“To you I give a choice,” he tells them. “You can run off with the others, or you can become part of something larger than yourselves. All your life you’ve been treated like second-class citizens and then handed the ultimate insult. You were sent here.” He gestures wide. “We are all storks here, condemned to be unwound—but we’ve taken back our lives, and we’re taking our revenge. So I ask you—do you want revenge?” He waits and receives a few guarded responses, so he raises his voice. “I said, do you want revenge?”
Now primed, the answer comes in a single chorus blast. “Yes!”
“Then welcome,” Starkey says, “to the Stork Brigade!”
32 • Hayden
Shortly before the liberation, Hayden takes a shower—which he now does almost obsessively three times a day, trying to wash off the filth of his situation. He knows no amount of scrubbing can do it, but it feels good all the same. The other Unwinds there hate him as much as they hate their jailers because they believe he’s one of them. So smooth was Camp Director Menard in creating the spin—in making everyone there believe that Hayden had been turned and was now working for the Juvenile Authority. He would rather die, of course, than ever do anything to help the Juvenile Authority, but it’s all about perception. People believe what they think they see. No, he’ll never wash away Menard’s lies, but they can’t stop him from trying.
When he steps out of his shower today, however, he discovers that his world has completely changed.
He immediately hears the gunfire—round after round of staccato, arrhythmic blasts that seem to be coming from multiple directions. Although his lap-of-luxury suite has a veranda, he’s not allowed on it, so it’s locked. Still, he can see what’s going on. The harvest camp is under attack by a team of kids with weapons—and each time a guard falls, a new weapon is added to their arsenal. Unwinds from the camp have joined with them, turning this into a full-scale revolt—and Hayden allows himself a glimmer of hope that perhaps the date set for his unwinding might be wrong after all.
o;I will,” Hayden had told him brightly. “And I’ll make a special request that you get my teeth. Now that you good people have had my braces removed, they’re ready for you. Of course, my orthodontist would suggest you wear a retainer for two years.”
Menard had just grunted and left.
It boggles Hayden that he’s been labeled a violent criminal when all he tried to do was save his life and the lives of other kids. But when the Juvenile Authority has a grudge against you, it can spin things any way it wants.
A year and a half ago, when Connor had arrived at Happy Jack Harvest Camp, he was paraded before all the Unwinds, a humbled, broken prisoner. They thought it would demoralize the other kids, but instead it practically turned Connor into a god. The falling, rising Unwind.
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.