Dandrich never loses his poise. “Yes, in spite of the risks, you prevailed. Pensacola Shores, however, is a different matter. It’s a maximum security camp for violent Unwinds and, as such, has many more layers of security. You simply don’t have the manpower to succeed. In addition, it’s on an isolated peninsula, and you could very easily be trapped, with no means of escape.”
“That’s why I requested boats.”
Now Dandrich becomes a little hot under his stiff collar. “Even if we could provide them, an armada attacking from the Gulf of Mexico would be hard to conceal.”
“Exactly,” says Starkey. “And what could be more dramatic than an old-fashioned siege? You know— like the conquistadors! Not only would it be newsworthy, it would be . . . it would be . . .”
Dandrich finds the word for him. “Iconic.”
“Yes! It would be iconic!”
“But at what cost? I assure you the battles of Waterloo and Little Bighorn were iconic, but only because of how completely Napoleon and Custer were defeated. The world remembers their failure.”
“I won’t fail.”
But Dandrich ignores him. “We have determined that the next harvest camp in your campaign should be Mousetail Divisional Academy, in central Tennessee.”
“Are you kidding me? Mousetail is all tithes!”
“Which is why they won’t be expecting it. You can continue your policy of executing the staff, and you won’t add any new mouths to feed, because there won’t be any storks. Let the tithes do whatever they want once you’ve liberated them. They can stay, they can run—either way it’s not your problem. This will give you time to continue training the kids you have before you’re saddled with more.”
“That’s not the way I do things! My instincts tell me to hit Pensacola, and I can’t go against my instincts.”
Dandrich leans closer. His face fills the screen. Starkey can practically feel the man’s hand reaching through the ether and grasping Starkey’s shoulder. A gentle grasp, but with enough pressure for Starkey to feel a subtle increase in the earth’s gravity.
“Yes, you can,” says Dandrich.
• • •
Starkey rages through the power plant, venting his indignation at anyone who crosses his path. He yells at Jeevan for not being aggressive enough during their last attack.
“You’re a soldier now, not a computer nerd, so start acting like one!”
He rips into kids who are laughing while coming back from weapons training.
“Those things aren’t toys, and this is no laughing matter!” He tells them to drop and give him twenty, and when they say, “Twenty what?” he storms off, too irritated to tell them.
Hayden strides past him with a nod, and he’s so furious at the casual way Hayden saunters, he complains about yesterday’s dinner, even though it was fine. “If you’re in charge of food then do your freaking job!”
And Bam.
He’s glad he doesn’t encounter Bam until he’s calmed down a bit, because he might do something he’d regret later. Bam has become a liability, but he can put her in her place. Although Garson DeGrutte doesn’t know it yet, the reward for his loyalty isn’t just getting the girl. Starkey’s going to put him in charge of a team on their next mission—and Bam will be part of that team. She will have to take orders from Garson, and it will humble her. It will remind her who is in charge. And if it doesn’t, he’ll simply have to step things up with her. It’s a shame, really. Bam had been so loyal for so long. But when loyalty runs out, so would any leader’s tolerance.
He finds her in the weapons locker. In spite of her concerns about arming the storks, the weapons locker seems her favorite place to be. When she sees him, she doesn’t come to crisp attention. She doesn’t even stop assembling the weapon she’s working on. She just glances up at him, then back down at her work.
“I heard about the call from Mr. Big. Do you have your orders?”
“I give the orders.”
“Whatever.” She wipes some sweat from her brow. “Is there something you want, Mason? Because I have to make sure these weapons are assembled correctly. Unless, of course, you’d rather go in with water balloons.”
Starkey considers telling her about her demotion, but decides against it. Let her find out the day of the attack, when it will hit her hardest. Maybe it will make her mad enough to take out some harvest camp personnel for once.
“I came to tell you that I’ve changed my mind,” he says. “We won’t be going after Pensacola right now.”
Bam finally stops what she’s doing and gives him her full attention. “You have another place in mind?”
“We’ll be going north instead. Mousetail Divisional Academy, in Tennessee.”
“But isn’t that place tithes-only? I thought you hated tithes.”
Starkey frowns, feeling his anger rekindling toward Dandrich and his lack of faith. Well, maybe Starkey can turn this into an event just as iconic as he would have had in Pensacola.
“Tithes are filthy unwinding sympathizers,” Starkey tells her. “Which is why, when we go in, our objective will be a little bit different.” Then he takes a deep breath, hardening his resolve.
`“This time, we’re not just taking out the staff. We’re killing every last tithe as well.”
26 • Podcast
“This is Radio Free Hayden, podcasting from a place that’s toxic in more ways than one. I’m not myself today. I’m not in my happy place at all—which is why the image accompanying today’s podcast is Dali’s Persistence of Memory. Time melting on a bleak landscape of doom. Yeah, that about sums it up.
“Everything changes today. Or nothing changes. If things go right, and we find a way to stop what’s about to happen, I’ll be in a much better place than I am now. Hell, I might even play some music for your listening pleasure. And if things go wrong, then the next sound you hear will be a collective scream that may never end.
“I can’t tell you the specifics, you’ll just have to trust me that big things are brewing, and this stew promises to be lethal. So in the next couple of days, if you hear something more horrific than usual in your evening news, and you’re faced with more dead kiddos than you’re comfortable with, then you’ll know that things did not go well.
“I suspect I’ll be one of the casualties if we can’t stop this particular speeding train, so you may never hear from me again. And, in which case, I hope you’ll dedicate our little uprising to my memory.
“And speaking of the uprising, I’ve been considering how it might go down. I know such an event needs some rallying point. A date, a time, a place. I’ve been thinking of maybe Monday, November first, in Washington—the day before Election Day. It somehow seems appropriate to me that Election Day falls so close to Halloween this year, considering some of the measures on the ballot. Voluntary unwinding for cash. Tossing the brains of criminals and unwinding the rest of them. The “three strikes” law that allows the Juvenile Authority to arrest and unwind teenage offenders without parental consent. It certainly feels to me like a trip through the haunted mansion, and not even that unwound witch’s head in the crystal ball can predict where it’s going to end.
“So that’s my proposal. A challenge for anyone who opposes unwinding to gather on November first, in Washington, DC. That gives you three weeks to make it happen. And if I don’t make it—maybe you can carve my name on some random memorial so the world knows I was here.”
27 • Mousetail