UnDivided (11 page)

Now it's Fretwell's turn to taunt. He moves in closer. “We never shoulda let you go that first time,” he says. “Of course, that was before you were a clapper. You were nobody then.”

“And he's nobody now,” says Hennessey, then he turns to Una. “We'll give you five thousand for him, and not a penny more.”

Una is outraged, and Lev is, to say the least, insulted.

“Are you kidding me?” Una shouts. “He's got to be worth at least ten times that!”

Hennessey crosses his arms. “Oh, please! Don't be obtuse. The boy's organs are damaged from the explosive solution—his growth is stunted, and he's probably sterile. We are purveyors in flesh, sweetie. His flesh has no intrinsic value.”

Lev suppresses the urge to argue. His organs aren't perfect, but they do the job, and no, he won't grow, but the doctors never said anything about him being sterile. How dare they? But arguing for his own value won't help things.

“I'm not stupid,” says Una. “There are collectors who would pay top dollar for a piece of the clapper who didn't clap.”

Lev looks at them all with absolute disdain. “So I'm a collectible?”

“Not you, your parts!” says Fretwell, and laughs.

Hennessey throws a nasty glance in Fretwell's direction—a nonverbal chastising for getting in the way of his negotiation.

“Perhaps, and perhaps not,” Hennessey says. “But collectors are fickle. Who's to say what they're willing to pay for.” Then he grabs Lev by the chin, turning his head to the left and right, looking him over like a horse he's about to buy. “Seventy-five hundred cash. Final offer. If you don't like it, try to sell him yourself.”

Una looks at the two men, suitably disgusted, then says, “Fine.”

Hennessey gestures to Fretwell. “Cut him loose.” Fretwell pulls out a knife and bends down to cut the tie on Lev's right hand, while Hennessey pulls out his billfold. The instant Lev's hand is free, he reaches behind him, grabbing a handheld tranq dart, and jabs it in Fretwell's neck.

“Holy freaking mother of—” And Fretwell collapses unconscious before completing the thought.

Una, with lightning speed, has already grabbed her rifle and has it trained on Hennessey's face. “One move,” she says. “Go on, give me a reason.”

But Hennessey is quick-thinking. He hurls the wad of money in Una's face and bolts. The distraction is just enough to give him a full second head start. The bills drop from her face and she aims her rifle.

“Una, no!”

She fires but misses, blowing a hole in the front door of the container just as Hennessey escapes.

“Damn it!” She races after him, and Lev tries to race after
her—only to realize in a most painful way that his left hand is still secured to the wall.

“Una!”

But she's gone, and he must resort to searching for Fretwell's knife that lies somewhere in the shadows.

Una's fast, but a man running for his life is faster. He's out of the freight yard in seconds, and Una knows if he slips too far out of her sight, he'll be gone for good. She will not allow that. Capturing one of them is not enough. Capturing them both would not be enough to make up for Wil's unwinding either, but it will come closer.

He has a gun. She's sure of it. She hasn't seen it but she knows that he must, for men like him always do. He could be up ahead waiting to ambush her, so her pursuit needs to be stealthy. It needs to be more of a stalk than a chase—but you can't stalk someone who already knows you're coming after him. Una slows herself down. Allows herself to think. Back on the Rez, Pivane taught her to hunt. She was good at it. If she sees this as a hunt, she will prevail.

The flat, soulless walls of the old industrial buildings just outside the freight yard might give Hennessey cover, but they also provide a nice blind for her. She stops near a corner, keeping in shadow against a wall, and she listens. He will be listening too. Waiting for a moment to break for freedom. So, then, what will he see as freedom?

Una thinks she knows.

One block over, the industrial zone ends at the Mississippi River, and less than a quarter mile downriver is a stone arch pedestrian bridge. It's no longer in use, it has no overhead
streetlamps. If he can get across that bridge he could disappear into downtown Minneapolis. That bridge is his freedom.

Una makes her way toward the bridge as stealthily as she can. Then, hiding in the shadow of a mailbox that probably hasn't seen a letter in years, she waits.

Thirty seconds later he bolts from a side street, making a beeline toward that bridge. She knows she won't be able to intercept him if she runs, but she doesn't have to run. It might be dark, but she can see he has his gun out—an ostentatious silver thing that catches the moonlight nicely. Just as he gets on the bridge, she takes aim and fires low. He wails in pain and goes down. Now Una runs down to the bridge to see the damage. She can see him clearly in the faint footlights still speckling the bridge. The bullet got him in the left knee, rendering him virtually immobile. He fires at her, but his aim is off. She's on him quickly enough to kick the gun from his hand. Then she backs up and raises the rifle.

Panting, spitting, Hennessey pulls himself up against the stone railing.

“This is about that SlotMonger kid, isn't it!”

“He had a name!” growls Una, fingering the trigger, tempting herself to pull it.
Just give me a reason,
she said. But she has plenty of reasons already. “His name was Wil Tashi'ne. I want you to say it.”

He looks down at his shredded knee, and grimaces. “What's the point? You're going to kill me anyway. So do it.”

Could anything be more tempting than that invitation? “You have two choices,” she tells the man. “You could try to get away, and I'll kill you. Or you could surrender and be brought in to face Arápache justice.”

“How about a third choice?” he says . . . and without warning Hennessey hurls himself over the railing into the river. It's not the highest bridge. A man—even a wounded man—could
easily survive the fall and escape. Una hadn't considered this alternative, and is furious at herself, until she hears a faint
thud
from far below.

When she looks over the side, she sees not water, but a rocky shore. Hennessey severely misjudged and hit a boulder. Now he has all the choices of a dead man.

Una hears approaching footsteps, and sees Lev coming onto the bridge.

“What happened? I heard gunshots. Where is he?” He glances at the blood on the ground. “You didn't!”

“
I
didn't.
He
did.” And she draws his attention over the side of the bridge. Lev pulls out the flashlight and shines it down at the rocks, making the scene much clearer. Hennessey's spine is broken across the back of a sharp boulder just a few feet from the water's edge.

Lev lets off a shiver that Una can feel like a shock wave. She knows she should feel revulsion, too, but all she can feel is disappointment that she can no longer exact revenge from the man.

Together Una and Lev go down to the shoreline to confirm that Hennessey is dead. Then they bring his broken body to the water, turn him facedown, and push him off to be carried away by the current.

“At least we still have Fretwell,” says Lev. “That will be enough.”

“Enough for you to win over the Arápache people,” Una agrees, “but is it enough to get the Tribal Council to take a stand against unwinding?”

“It'll get them to listen to me,” Lev says. “Then it's up to me to convince them.”

In spite of the fact that they did no killing today, they both have blood on their hands from dragging Hennessey's body to the water. They wash their hands in the river as best they can.

“C'mon, we'd better get back to Fretwell,” says Lev. “I tied him up, but we should be on our way back to the Rez with him before his tranqs wear off.”

Before they leave, Una takes one last look at the jagged boulder that claimed Hennessey's life. How mystical, and how perfect the universe is! That boulder was shorn from a mountain by a glacier maybe a hundred thousand years ago, and then carefully deposited here with patient intent, waiting all these years to break that criminal's spine in two. All things have a purpose. That's something both she and Lev can take comfort in.

Hayden Upchurch watches it grow like a cancer clinging to the walls of the decaying power plant: Starkey's lethal crusade. It's ugly and toxic, and it won't stop devouring all the good that's left in these kids until there's none left. Starkey will drag his Stork Brigade through his bloody war front until they are either dead from bullets taken in battle, or dead on the inside from the things they've seen and done. Hayden knows that these harvest camp attacks are pointless. The consequence of Starkey's war on unwinding will not be the glorious vindication of AWOLs and storks, but instead their damnation.

“This is Radio Free Hayden podcasting from somewhere dark and dingy that smells of ancient grease and more recent body odor. If anyone actually hears this podcast, I must first apologize that there's no visual of me. My bandwidth is the digital equivalent of a mule train. So instead, I've posted this wonderful Norman Rockwell image instead of a video. You'll note how the poor innocent ginger kid standing on the chair with his butt
hanging out is about to be tranq'd in the ass by the ‘kindly country doctor.' I felt the image was somehow appropriate.”

Rumor is that Starkey's benefactors will be supplying clappers for the next harvest camp attack. Will there be anyone left not terrified of kids like them once Starkey is done? Starkey wants that terror—he thrives on it. Yet how could he not realize that the many who might have once been sympathetic to the cause are now turning to the Juvenile Authority for an answer to the violence. The Juvies have an answer, all right: the blessed peace of division. The eternal rest of unwinding.
That
will be Mason Starkey's legacy—an end to resistance, an end to rebellion, the absolute silencing of the last generation that could derail the hellish train civilization has boarded.

“I'm sure you've seen my brilliant and heartfelt call for a new teen uprising. I have to admit that heatstroke and dehydration from hours trapped in a sweltering World War II bomber turned me into quite the prophet. I'm sure my parents must be proud. Or horrified. Or are bitterly arguing about whether they're proud or horrified, and have already hired lawyers to resolve the dispute.”

Hayden's entire recording is in a whisper that sounds much more desperate than he wants it to sound, but he must be quiet. He can only sneak access to Starkey's “computer center” in the middle of the night. It's off in a room in the corner of the power plant, but there's no door, so it's open to the rest of the plant. He can hear the snoring of the kids, which means any of them who are awake could hear him if he speaks too loudly.

“What did I mean in my rant of solidarity? Well, there are uprisings and there are
uprisings
. I want to make it perfectly clear about the kind I'm talking about. I am NOT advocating taking the law into our own hands and blowing people
away, burning various and sundry vehicles, and being the kind of pissed-off ‘incorrigibles' who make society think that, yeah, maybe unwinding is a good idea. There are certain people—and I'm not naming names—who think that violence furthers our cause. It doesn't. I'm also not calling for a flower-child sit-in, or a Gandhi-like hunger strike. Passive resistance only works if the truck's not willing to run you over—and this truck is. What we need is something in between. We need to be loud enough and forceful enough to be heard—but sane enough that people will listen. The Juvenile Authority would like us to believe that we have no support—but that's a lie. Even the polls show that the various unwind-related propositions and initiatives on this year's ballots, as well as the bills slithering through Capitol Hill, are far more marginal than the Juvies will admit. But violence will tip the scale against us.”

Once he puts this podcast out there, there will be no turning back. No changing his mind. He will have shown his hand. Starkey could very well find out. He probably will, and pretty quickly, too. Will Starkey kill him for it, he wonders?

“So whether you're a stork, or an AWOL, or a kid frightened for your own future—or an adult scared for your kids' futures—we DO have an opportunity to deal unwinding a mortal blow. We just have to figure out how to do it. I wish I knew the answer, but I'm not brilliant enough to figure it out on my own. So I'm putting the call out to you. Any of you. All of you. What do YOU think we should do? Contact me at [email protected] with your own brilliance. All ideas will be considered. Even the stupid ones. This is Hayden Upchurch signing off. Stay sane, and stay whole.”

His finger hovers over the “send” button, and hovers some more. He can't seem to make his finger move, and he marvels at how one's entire life can come down to the pressing of a single button.

Then Hayden hears a noise. Something shuffling behind him, and he spins in his chair.

A rat—please, God, let it be a rat!

But it's no rat. It's Jeevan.

Hayden's heart misses a beat, then compensates with a powerful pump that he can feel pulse through his neck and into his eyeballs.

“Up late, Jeevan?” He tries to be nonchalant, but the kid's not buying it. Jeevan, at only fifteen, is Starkey's technology wunderkind—but back in the Graveyard, he used to do his magic for Hayden. So to whom is he more loyal? Hayden knows that Jeevan has been giving Starkey less than his best—working much less efficiently and skillfully than Hayden knows he can. It's a form of resistance, but being resistant and turning against the “Stork Lord” are two different things.