AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He gives Hayden the finger and continues to scarf down his waffle. Since arriving at the plant two weeks ago, Hayden has not only been in charge of inventory, he’s overseeing food preparation as well, due to the fact that the former kid in charge of the kitchen died in the Horse Creek Harvest Camp attack. It seems all of Hayden’s jobs of late have been the result of terminal vacation of post.
With each harvest camp takedown, the mood among the storks has become progressively more somber and volatile. There have been more threatening glares, more fights over nothing, more issues among kids who had plenty of issues already. The last attack brought a numbness and an indefinable throbbing like the ache of a phantom limb. There is a vacuum left behind by the dead that can’t be filled by the new faces added to their numbers, and there’s no way to predict the names and numbers of the casualties yet to come from their next mission.
Starkey still has his die-hard believers who try to compensate for the plunging morale by screaming and cheering the loudest when he tries to rally them to the fever pitch he feeds on, but their efforts are less and less effective.
“Where are they, Hayden?”
He turns to see a girl loudly dropping her plate into the bus bin next to her table with an angry clatter as the punctuation to her question—although clearly it’s an accusation. This is one of the girls liberated from Cold Springs Harvest Camp, where the director convinced everyone that Hayden was working for the Juvies. Those kids still cling to the belief that Hayden is a traitor. The one saving grace of the haters is that they keep him on his toes, never allowing him to get too complacent or comfortable.
“Where are what?” asks Hayden. “The sausages, you mean? They’re gone, but there’s still plenty of bacon.”
“Don’t play dumb. You said Starkey went with a team, but I’ve been checking around, and the only ones not here are Starkey, Bam, and Jeevan. That’s not the kind of team Starkey would take. If you ask me, I think you have something to do with their disappearance.”
A few other kids have taken notice of this little confrontation. One kid meets eyes with Hayden, rolling his as if to say I’m on your side—these Cold Springs kids are nuts. As more and more are added to their numbers, the voices of the Cold Springs haters mean less and less. In spite of them, Hayden knows he can be a leader here if he wants to. Good thing he doesn’t want to.
“Anyone with half a brain could see that Starkey needs an assault team leader to scope the place out, and a hacker to figure out how to foil the security system,” Hayden tells her, “otherwise more of us could die in the attack.” Hayden makes sure to emphasize the word “die.” Which has the desired affect. Everyone at the accusational girl’s table becomes uncomfortable, as if spiders have just crawled into their laps from beneath the table.
“Why do we have to attack another harvest camp?” asks Elias Dean, one of the mouthier kids. “Haven’t we done enough already?”
Hayden smiles. The fact that kids are voicing their reservations out loud is a very good sign. “Starkey says we’ll keep it up until either the harvest camps are all gone, or we’re all gone.”
More spiders, at more tables. The kind that bite.
“One of these days they’ll be ready for us,” someone else mumbles, “and take us all out before we even get through the gate.”
“Starkey’s a genius and all,” Elias says, “but it’s a little much, don’t you think?”
“Not my job to think, although I occasionally do,” Hayden says. “I’m glad that you do too.” And that’s as far as Hayden will take it. God forbid he be accused of fomenting dissent.
• • •
The “reconnaissance team” returns at noon.
“They’re back,” announces a guard running in from his lookout at the rusty front gate of the plant. At first Hayden thinks the plan must have failed—or that maybe Bam and Jeevan scrubbed it, unable to go through with it. Maybe their accomplice, the gardener, never showed to make the capture feel authentic. But when Bam and Jeevan enter, Starkey is not with them—a fact that the lookout was not observant enough to notice.
“Where’s Starkey?” comes the obvious question—not just from one stork, but from many, whispering the question to one another, not daring to ask Bam or Jeevan. The storks are afraid. They’re hopeful. They’re angry. They are filled with too many emotions to sort.
Hayden approaches Bam and Jeevan with caution, knowing he’s being watched, knowing that all three of them are being measured in the moment.
“Don’t tell me—you got stranded in a mountain pass, and had to do like the Donner party,” Hayden says. “If you ate Starkey, I hope you saved me some breast meat.”
“You’re not funny,” Bam says, loudly enough for Hayden to know it’s for show. “We were ambushed by parts pirates. We’re lucky we’re still in one piece.” She hesitates as more kids drift into hearing range, drawn by the curious gravity of tragedy. “They recognized Starkey, so they tranq’d Jeevan and me, and left us there. When we came to, Starkey was gone. They took him.”
No gasps, no cries, just silence. Jeevan tries to slip away, not wanting to be within this little center of attention, but Bam holds him tightly by the shoulder, preventing him from leaving.
“Starkey’s gone?” asks one of the youngest, smallest storks—one whom Hayden recalls having trouble wielding his weapon at the last takedown.
“I’m sorry,” says Bam. “There was nothing we could do.”
And to Hayden’s amazement, Bam’s eyes begin to cloud with tears. Either she’s far better at deception than Hayden ever gave her credit for, or at least part of her emotion is real.
“What do we do?” someone asks.
“We go on without him,” Bam says with subtle authority. “Gather everyone on the turbine floor. We have decisions to make.”
Word quickly spreads, and the somber sense of hopelessness lifts as everyone begins to grapple with the idea of a world without Starkey. The three girls in his personal harem alternate between comforting and sniping at one another. They are inconsolable, but they are the only ones. Even Garson DeGrutte and Starkey’s other supporters have quickly overcome their grief, and are now promoting themselves, jockeying for a leader
ship position in the new hierarchy. But when Bam addresses the storks later that morning, she’s a commanding presence that makes it clear who’s in charge. No one has the audacity to challenge her authority. From here on in, all the jockeying will be for positions beneath her leadership.
