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When you believe in yourself that strongly, it attracts the belief of others. The more storks believe in Starkey, the more they want to, and the more fervent that belief becomes. Jeevan was one of those. He would have died for Starkey in those first days. Now he finally realizes the blindness of that faith, just in time for him to actually die for it.
As Jeevan’s team races into the fray, blasting weapons with enough recoil to blow them backward every time they pull the trigger, Jeevan prays only to survive.
“Today you are a warrior,” Starkey told him, clapping him on the shoulder like a brother when he said it. But Jeevan knows the truth behind the words. Now you are expendable is what Starkey meant—because with the power and resources of the clapper movement behind him, Starkey no longer needs Jeevan to work his computer magic. All the hard-core hacking for this operation was done elsewhere, and on hardware far superior to anything they’ve had until now. Jeevan is a redundancy. And so today, he is a warrior.
The battle rages around him, so one-sided, he could almost laugh if bullets weren’t flying past him, if people weren’t dying left and right. The camp’s beefed-up security force is no match for the Stork Brigade.
Jeevan’s orders are to shoot anyone over seventeen. Like many others, though, he’s just been firing high, letting loose a battle scream, so it seems like he’s killing, when all he’s really doing is making a lot of noise. He stays away from open spaces, where he’s a target, and finds himself standing amid topiary hedges that have been shredded by explosions. Then he sees motion—someone crawling through the ivy. Shoot anyone over seventeen. Is Starkey watching? What if he is? What if he sees Jeevan failing in his new role as a foot soldier in the Stork Brigade? What will Starkey do when he decides Jeevan is entirely useless?
Jeevan aims his machine gun at the crawling man, but when the man sees it, he rises and hurls himself at Jeevan. The machine gun tumbles to the ground. Desperately the two scramble for it in the ivy.
The man, a gardener, swings a pair of garden shears at Jeevan, the blades connecting above his left eye. Blood spills forth from the gash, much more blood than such a small gash should bring. It clouds his vision. Jeevan grabs the machine gun, but his hands are slick with blood. His fingers slip, and the gardener grabs it away from him. He stands over Jeevan in the snarl of ruined hedges, aiming at him, finger on the trigger, and Jeevan knows that he’s made a crucial error. He should have shot the man without hesitation the moment he saw him—because it’s kill or be killed. Starkey has left no room for anything in between.
The man wails in anguish. He tightens his finger on the trigger aimed right at Jeevan’s face. Tightens. Tightens. Then he falls to his knees, dropping the machine gun. For a moment Jeevan thinks the man’s been shot in the back, but he hasn’t been. The gardener’s wailing drops an octave into sobs.
Another explosion rocks a building to their right, and both Jeevan and the man drop down to their bellies in the Ivy as pieces of glass, stone, and brick fly past them, shredding the topiary beyond all recognition. And lying there, blood still streaming into his eyes, Jeevan does something. He doesn’t know what possesses him to do it, but he is so terrified, so disconnected, that he is driven to find some sort of connection. He reaches through the ivy and grabs the hand of the gardener, now caked in both mud and blood. He clasps the man’s hand tightly. And the man clasps his back.
He can’t see the gardener’s face—leaves are in the way—but in the midst of this chaos that clasped hand is an oasis of comfort. For both of them.
“We’re not all evil,” the man says.
“Neither are we,” Jeevan responds.
And they wait there in silence hiding in the ivy, hiding to stay alive, until the sounds of gunfire fade and Starkey, the triumphant general, enters the theater of battle to claim his victory.
16 • Bam
When the battle begins, Bam and her team of twenty-five storks are positioned at the camp’s back entrance. Their view is of the loading dock behind the Chop Shop, where medical vans haul away coolers of life, ready to be transplanted to those deemed more deserving. Or at least those whose pocketbooks or insurance can afford new parts. A single van is parked by the loading dock today, ready for the next shipment.
Bam’s team—“Marabou Squad,” as Starkey has called them, since he insists on naming each assault team after some kind of stork—waits outside the electrified gate, hidden by a dense oak grove, its branches filled with the oversize leaves of late September, just beginning to yellow. They have explosives to take out the fence. Bam is determined not to use them.
When the explosions begin on the other side of the harvest camp. Bam’s team gets anxious. They remove the safeties from their weapons—weapons that they’ve only been minimally trained to use. The slighter kids can barely hold them, much less use them.
“Put the safeties back on!” Bam orders.
A meek, wide-eyed girl named Bree looks at her, almost more terrified by her order than by what lay ahead. “But . . . if we keep them on—”
“You heard me!”
All around, Bam hears the clicks of the weapons being returned to the safe position. She takes a deep breath. Another explosion from somewhere beyond the Chop Shop shakes the ground beneath their feet and dislodges a hail of acorns. From this angle, all they can see are trees and the loading dock. Debris flies over the Chop Shop, landing on the loading dock. Small chunks of concrete pummel the roof of the medical van.
“We should go in!” says Garson DeGrutte. He’s a muscular kid with painfully piercing gray eyes and a jarhead haircut. Clearly he wanted to be a military boeuf, and must see the Stork Brigade as his chance to live out his dream. “We need to go in now!” Garson shouts.
“Quiet!” yells Bam. “We’re the second wave.”
That’s a lie, of course. Starkey adheres to an “all in” strategy: Hold nothing in reserve. Do or die. But Bam is determined to save these kid’s lives. Today that is her personal mission.
“Look!” Bree says, pointing.
People in medical whites and scrubs burst out of the back door of the Chop Shop. Surgeons, nurses—the people who do the actual unwinding. Bam feels a surge of hate rage within her as the medical staff desperately tries the doors of the van, but can’t get in. Another explosion blows out some of the Chop Shop’s windows. The medical staff abandons the van and runs toward the gate. One of them hits a remote, and the gate begins to open.
“We’re in without wasting explosives!” says Garson. “Pretty smart, Bam.”
“Just shut your freaking mouth!” Bam growls at him. She glances to see the safety is off his weapon again and she burns him a glare that makes him click the safety back in place.
The medical workers, about seven or eight of them, race out of the gate.
“You’re just letting them go?” Garson asks, incredulous.
