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Janson stammers for a moment in protective denial. “That can’t be. There must be some mistake—he’s too old to be unwound now! In fact, he celebrated his birthday just this past weekend.”
“His actual birthday’s tomorrow,” the kid says.
“But . . . but . . . he’s not a feral! He has a home! A job!”
The kid shakes his head. “Don’t matter. His father signed an unwind order.”
And in the stunned silence that follows, Sonia comes down the stairs. “Janson, what’s wrong?”
But he finds he can’t tell her. He can’t even repeat the words aloud. She comes to his side, and the boy at the door, wringing a woolen hat in his hands, continues. “His dad, see—he’s got a drug problem—that’s the reason Austin was on the streets to begin with. From what I hear, someone offered him a lot of money to sign those papers.”
Sonia gasps, covering her mouth as she realizes what has happened. Janson’s face goes red with fury. “We’ll stop it! We’ll pay whatever we have to pay, bribe whomever we need to bribe—”
“It’s too late,” says the kid, looking to the welcome mat at his feet. “Austin was unwound this morning.”
None of them can speak. The three stand in an impotent tableau of grief until the kid says, “I’m sorry,” and hurries away.
Janson closes the door and then holds his wife close. They don’t talk about it. They can’t. He suspects they’ll never speak of it to each other again. Janson knows this was intended as a warning—but a warning to do what? Stay quiet? Embrace unwinding? Cease to exist? And if he tries to rattle his saber at Proactive Citizenry, what good will it do? They haven’t actually broken the law. They never do! Instead they mold the law to encompass whatever it is they wish to accomplish.
He lets go of Sonia and goes to the stairs, refusing to look at her. “I’m going to bed,” he tells her.
“Janson, it’s barely noon.”
“Why should that make a difference?”
In the bedroom, he draws the shades, and as he buries himself in the covers, in the dark, he thinks back to the time Austin broke into their home and hit Janson in the head. Now Janson wishes that the blow would have killed him. Because then Austin might still be whole.
47 • Connor
Starkey. He should have known it was Starkey. The numbers of the dead reported from the crash in the Salton Sea didn’t match with the numbers he knew escaped. He was foolish enough to think that either Starkey had been among the dead, or would lie low, content with his petty principality of storks. As Connor prepares to leave Una’s apartment and continue the journey to Ohio, he can’t help but be drawn in by the news reports coming in on every station about the attack on MoonCrater Harvest Camp.
“You mean you know this guy?” Lev asks.
“He’s the one who stole the escape plane,” Connor explains. “You saw it take off from the Graveyard, didn’t you? He took all the storks and left the rest of us for the Juvies.”
“Nice guy.”
“Yeah. I was an idiot for not seeing his psycho factor before it was too late.”
The premeditated lynchings at MoonCrater is Starkey’s line in the sand, and it’s quickly deepening into a trench. Five staff members hung and a sixth one left alive to tell the tale. The media scrutiny is turning Mason Starkey into a swollen image much larger than his five-foot-six stature, and Connor realizes, as much as he hates to admit it, that they are in the same club now. They are both cult figures in hiding, hated by some, adored by others. Vilified and lionized. He wouldn’t be surprised if someone starts making T-shirts featuring both of them side by side, as if their renegade status makes them in any way comrades in arms.
Starkey claims to speak for storks, but people don’t differentiate when it comes to AWOLs. As far as the public is concerned, he’s the maniacal voice of all Unwinds—and that’s a big problem. As Starkey’s trench in the sand fills with blood, the fear of AWOLs will grow, tearing apart everything Connor has fought for.
He used to impress upon the Whollies at the Graveyard the importance of keeping their wits about them and using their heads. “They think we’re hopelessly violent and better off unwound,” he would tell them. “We have to prove to the world that they’re wrong.”
All it might take to destroy everything that Connor has worked for is Starkey kicking out five chairs.
Connor turns off the TV, his eyes aching from all the coverage. “Starkey won’t stop there,” he tells Lev. “It’s only going to get worse.”
“Which means there are three sides in this war now,” Lev points out, and Connor realizes that he’s right.
“So, if the first side is driven by hate and the second by fear, what drives us?”
“Hope?” suggests Lev.
Connor shakes his head in frustration. “We’re gonna need a lot more than that. Which is why we have to get to Akron and find out what Sonia knows.”
Then from behind him he hears, “Sonia who?”
