UnDivided

And then the Tribal Council will have to listen to him.

They will have to consider his plea to finally take a public stand against the Juvenile Authority.

Catching Hennessey and Fretwell won’t quite bring down the moon, but if the Arápache—arguably the most influential Chancefolk tribe—can be brought into the battle against unwinding, it will be more than the moon that falls.

5 • Starkey

Mason Michael Starkey couldn’t care less about what some Chancefolk tribe does or doesn’t do. He doesn’t need their pathetic support because he’s taken his battle against unwinding right to the enemy, in the form of a gun muzzle rammed down the Juvenile Authority’s throat. As far as he’s concerned, anything less is for losers. Starkey knows he is poised for greatness. In fact, he’s already achieved it. Now it’s just a matter of degree.

“A little higher,” he says. “Yes, right there.”

He escaped with his storks from the Graveyard before the Juvies could capture them. He survived a plane crash. And now Starkey is a war hero. Never mind that no official war has been declared—he has declared it, and that’s all that matters. If others out there choose to behave like this isn’t a war, then they deserve what’s coming to them.

“I’m not feeling it,” he says. “A little harder.”

Starkey is the savior of storks. He and his brigade of unwanted babies who grew into unwanted kids have now grown into an army bursting with righteous rage against a system that would permanently silence them. Society would have them dismantled, their parts going to “serve humanity.” Well, now humanity is getting a slightly different sort of service from them.

“You’re not very good at this, are you?”

“I’m trying! I’m doing everything you say!”

Starkey lies facedown on a massage table in a room that used to be the executive office of a power plant. The plant was gutted years ago, leaving nothing but a rusty shell within a chain-link fence, miles away from anyplace anyone wants to be. It’s a weedy corner of northern Mississippi, as overgrown and unloved as a place can be. The perfect hiding spot for an army of six hundred.

Starkey pushes himself up on one elbow. His masseuse, a pretty girl whose name he can’t remember, looks away, too intimidated to meet his eye. “A good back massage should hurt as much as it soothes,” Starkey tells her. “You have to work out the knots. You need to leave me loose and limber and ready for our next mission. Do you understand?”

The girl nods, overly obedient and too eager to please. “I think so.”

“You said you’ve done this before.”

“I know,” she tells him. “I just wanted the chance . . .”

Starkey sighs. This is the way of things around him now. They climb over each other like rats to be close to him. To bask in his light. He can’t blame them, really. He should applaud this girl for her ambition—but right now all he wants is a good massage.

“You can go,” he tells her.

“I’m sorry . . .”

She lingers, and he contemplates the moment. Starkey knows he could take a detour with this afternoon and maybe get something other than a massage from this eager girl. Whatever he wants, he knows she will oblige . . . but the fact that he can have it so easily makes it so much less desirable.

“Just go,” he tells her.

She slinks away, trying to do so quietly, but the rusty hinges on the door complain when she opens it. Rather than making the door squeal again, she leaves it open. Starkey can hear her clambering down the metal stairs, probably in tears at her failure to please him.

Alone now, he rolls his left shoulder and checks the bandage there. He took a bullet in the last harvest camp liberation. Well, not really. The bullet grazed him so slightly, it couldn’t even be called a flesh wound. Yes, it drew blood, and yes, it will leave a scar, but as wounds go, on a scale of one to ten, this one is somewhere around one-point-five. Still the bandage makes it look worse, and so he wears a tank top that clearly displays the bandage on his upper arm for all the storks to see. Another war wound to go with the one farther down that same arm. His ruined hand, the hand he smashed to free himself from handcuffs back at the airplane graveyard. Smashing his hand saved him. It freed him to escape with the storks and start his war. Considering that he was once on the fast track to be unwound, giving up one hand seems like a bargain. Now he keeps it in a very expensive Louis Vuitton glove. That day at the Graveyard was early July, and now it’s September. Less than three months have passed. Although it feels like a lifetime ago, his body measures the time properly, even if his mind doesn’t. His broken hand still aches, still oozes, still requires a nice dose of painkillers every once in a while. It will never heal properly. He will never use that hand again, but it matters little. He has hundreds of other hands to do the work for him.

He looks out of the cracked, grimy windows that overlook the gutted power plant floor, now lined with bedrolls, folding tables, and the various necessities of the Stork Brigade’s nomadic life.

“Keeping watch over your subjects?”

He turns to see Bam, his second-in-command, coming into the room, carrying a few newspapers.

“Some of the tabloids are now suggesting that you’re Satan’s spawn,” she says. “A woman in Peoria claims she saw a jackal give birth to you.”

Starkey laughs. “I’ve never even been to Peoria.”

“That’s okay,” she says. “I don’t think there are any jackals in Peoria either.”