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She doesn’t so much give a speech as tell everyone how it is. It’s not a rallying hyperbole-filled war cry like Starkey might have delivered, just a bracing dose of harsh, heavy reality. She drives three key points home:
“We’re a fugitive mob of unwanted kids with a price on our heads.”
“Our friends, the clappers, are worse than our enemies.”
“If we’re going to stay whole and alive, we’re going to have to stop taking down harvest camps, and disappear. Now.”
And although there are some who bluster about vengeance, and what Starkey would want, those voices are weak and find no resonance among the storks. With Bam’s declaration, their suicide run has ended, and their new mission is to live. Hard to argue with survival.
“Well done,” Hayden tells her, catching her alone in one of the ammunition storerooms. “Are you going to tell me what really happened?”
“You know what happened. Your plan happened, and he fell right into it, just like you said he would.”
Bam tells him about the video, carefully recorded and duplicated, and stashed in various virtual locations like defensive nukes, should Starkey launch an offensive.
“Are you really sure he won’t just come right back here?” Bam asks.
Although nothing is ever 100 percent, Hayden is pretty sure. “In the battle between ego and vengeance, Starkey’s ego wins. His image is more important than his need to get back at you. He might try, but not until he he’s scrounged himself up a new murder of storks to follow him.”
She gives him the sneering curl of her lip that feels less intimidating than it used to. “It pisses me off that you know him better than I do.”
“I’m a savant when it comes to character judgment,” he tells her. “For instance, most people wouldn’t see anything in you besides attitude and a need for stronger deodorant, but I think you can handle the storks almost as well as Connor handled the Graveyard.”
Bam gives him a halfhearted glare. “Can you ever give a compliment without also making it an insult?”
“No,” he admits. “Not possible. It’s the essence of my charm.”
Bam turns to restack some of the weapons piled in the room, and Hayden helps her, checking to make sure that they are all unloaded and safeties are in place. Can’t be too careful when it comes to deadly automatic firepower.
Bam pauses for a moment, looking at the weapons piled before them. “There’s no question that power blew out Starkey’s brain,” Bam says, “but what he did . . . it wasn’t all bad. We have more than five hundred kids who would have been unwound, and that doesn’t even count the nonstorks we freed from those harvest camps.”
Although Hayden isn’t big on apologetics for tyrants, he offers her the benefit of a shrug. “Maybe in the big picture the end justifies the means, and maybe not. All I know for sure is that no one else is going to be hanged, shot, or otherwise executed for Mason Starkey’s version of justice. And don’t forget we just prevented a major massacre of innocent kids.”
“Who will now be unwound on schedule,” Bam reminds him.
“But not by us.”
Several storks come into the storeroom to deposit their weapons. Bam thanks them, and they hurry out, relieved to make the guns someone else’s problem. The plan is to keep only enough weapons for defense, should defense be needed. The rest will be left behind when they leave the power plant—and they’ll have to leave soon. Once the bigwigs in the applause department know that Starkey is gone, it’s anyone’s guess what they’ll do. Perhaps descend from the skies in a mass of unmarked helicopters and snuff them all. Hayden wouldn’t put it past them.
“I’ve pegged Garson DeGrutte as my second-in-command, since you’ve made it clear you don’t want the position,” Bam says.
“You’re kidding me!”
“He was a nuisance under Starkey, but he respects authority and follows orders. With Starkey out of the picture, I think he’ll be an asset. And besides, we’ve got to keep him busy now that Abigail broke up with him.”
Hayden laughs. “Shucking corn can kill any relationship.” Then he finds himself getting uncharacteristically serious. “So what’s next?” he asks, because his plan for the Stork Brigade only went so far as Starkey’s removal.
“I have storks working on finding us somewhere safe,” Bam tells him. “There are lots of places to hide. We’ll find one, hunker down, and make it work.”
“I wish you luck,” Hayden tells her.
She eyes him with the old suspicion. “You’re not coming with us?”
Hayden presents her with an overexaggerated sigh. “As much as I would enjoy being éminence gris to your striking figurehead, it’s time I left for greener pastures. Actually, I’ve been considering setting out with a small crew of my own and reestablishing my broadcast radio show, since the podcasts keep being squelched by the Juvenile Authority a few hours after I post them.”
Bam laughs at that. “Hayden, your broadcast never reached beyond the Graveyard, and even then, no one was listening but you.”
“Yes, I do love to hear myself talk—but I think I can get a wider audience with the help of Jeevan and a few choice members of a special-ops team. We’ll be the Verbal Strike Force. VSF, for short, because initials are always much more impressive.”
