UnSouled

“Why did you do that?” she demands. “Why did you do that?”

And Cam suddenly understands. “Because he likes your hair free. He always pulled out your hair ribbons, didn’t he?” He lets loose a sudden laugh, as the emotion of the memory hits him all at once like a sonic boom.

She stares at him—her face is hard to read. He doesn’t know whether she’s going to run in terror, or pick up the chain saw again. Instead she bends down to pick up her ribbon and rises, keeping her distance.

“What else do you know?” she asks.

“I know what I feel when I play his music. He was in love with someone. Deeply.”

That brings tears to her eyes, but Cam knows they are tears of anger.

“You’re a monster.”

“I know.”

“You should never have been made.”

“Not my fault.”

“You say you know he loved me—but do you even know my name?”

Cam searches his memory for her name, but there are neither words nor images in his personal piece of Wil Tashi’ne’s psyche. There is only music, gestures, and a disconnected history of touch. So instead of a name, he shares with her what he does know.

“There’s a birthmark on your back he would tickle when you danced,” Cam says. “He liked toying with an earring in the shape of a whale. The feel of his guitar-callused fingertips in the crook of your elbow made you tremble.”

“Enough!” she says, taking a step back. Then more quietly, “Enough.”

“I’m sorry. I just wanted you to see that he’s still here . . . in these hands.”

She’s silent for a moment, looking at his face, looking at his hands. Then she comes closer, pulls out a pocketknife, and cuts the shirt that ties him to the other pole.

“Show me,” she says.

And so he reaches up, abandoning thought, and putting all trust in his fingertips the way he did when searching for the key to her shop. He touches the nape of her neck, moves a finger across her lips, and remembers the feel of them. He cups her cheek in his palm; then he brings the fingertips of his other hand drizzling down her wrist, over her forearm, to that singular spot in the crook of her elbow.

And she trembles.

Then she raises the heavy stone she’s been hiding in her other hand and smashes him in the side of the head, knocking him out cold again.

• • •

When he regains consciousness, he’s tied to the poles once more. And once again, he’s alone.

* * *

NEWS UPDATE

In Nevada today, a coordinated attack on a harvest camp has left 23 dead, dozens wounded, and hundreds of Unwinds unaccounted for.

It began at 11:14 local time, when communication lines were cut to and from Cold Springs Harvest Camp, and by the time communication was restored an hour later, it was all over. Staff were tied up and forced to lie facedown while the armed attackers set loose hundreds of violent adolescents designated for unwinding.

Early reports suggest that the camp director was murdered execution style. While the investigation is ongoing, it is believed that Connor Lassiter, also known as the Akron AWOL, is responsible for the attack.

* * *

39 • Starkey

In the claustrophobic confines of the abandoned mine where the storks are holing up, Starkey kicks the dark stone walls. He kicks the rotting beams. He kicks everything in sight, searching for something breakable. After all his effort and all his risk, every last measure of his victory has been stolen from him and attributed to Connor Lassiter!

“You’ll bring down the whole freaking mine if you keep kicking the beams like that,” yells Bam. Everyone else is smart enough to stay deeper in the mine and keep their distance from him, but she always has to shove herself into his business.

“So let it come down!”

“And bury us all—that will really help your cause, won’t it? All those storks you say you want to save, buried alive. Real smart, Starkey.”

Out of spite, he kicks a support beam one more time. It quivers, and flecks of dust rain down on them. It’s enough to make him stop.

“You heard them!” he yells. “It’s all about the Akron AWOL.” It should be Starkey’s face on the news. He should be the one the experts are profiling. They should be camping out at his family’s door, prying into what his private life was like before they cut him loose to be unwound. “I do all the work, and he gets all the credit.”

“You call it credit, but out there it’s called blame. You should be happy they’re looking elsewhere after that bloodbath!”

Starkey turns on her, wanting to grab her and shake some sense into her, but she’s taller than him, bigger than him, and he knows Bam is a girl who fights back. How would it look to the others if she floored him? So instead he smacks her down with words.

“Don’t you dare accept their spin! I know you’re smarter than that. What we did was a liberation! We freed nearly four hundred Unwinds and added more than a hundred storks to our number.”

“And in the process more than twenty kids died—plus, we still don’t have an accurate count of how many were tranq’d and got left behind.”

“It couldn’t be helped!”

He looks farther down the low-roofed tunnel to see, lit by the dim hanging incandescents, a cluster of kids eavesdropping. He wants to yell at them, too, but he’s in control enough now to rein in that urge. He brings his voice down so only Bam can hear.

“We’re at war,” he reminds her. “There are always casualties in war.” He steels his eye contact, trying to make her look away, but she doesn’t. But she also doesn’t argue. He reaches out, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder, which she doesn’t shake off.

“The thing to remember, Bam, is that our plan worked.”

Now she finally looks away from him, signaling her acquiescence. “That valley was pretty isolated,” she says. “It was a long road out for those kids who went running through the gate. I don’t know if you heard the latest, but nearly half of them have already been captured.”

He moves his hand from her shoulder to her cheek and smiles. “Which means half of them got away. The glass is half-full, Bam. That’s what we need to remind everyone. You’re my second in command, and I need you to focus on the positive instead of the negative. Do you think you can do that?”

Bam hesitates; then her shoulders slump at his gentle touch, and she gives him a reluctant nod, as he’d known she would.

“Good. That’s what I like about you, Bam. You take me to task, as you should, but in the end, you always see reason.”

She turns to go, but before she leaves, she tosses him one more question. “Where do you see this ending, Starkey?”

He smiles at her even more broadly than before. “I don’t see it ending. That’s the beauty of it!”

40 • Bam

Bam moves through the tunnels and chambers of the mine, taking mental snapshots.

A kid in tears, mourning the death of a friend.

A terrified new arrival, calmed by an older stork.

A hapless fourteen-year-old “medic” trying to suture a leg wound using dental floss.

She sees scenes of hope and despair around her and doesn’t know which to give more credence.

She passes one kid sharing his ration of food with another, while beside them a young girl teaches an even younger girl how to use one of the automatic rifles they confiscated from Cold Springs.

And then there’s the boy who was forced to shoot the harvest camp director, sitting alone, staring off into nowhere. Bam would comfort him, but she’s not the comforting type.

“Starkey’s proud of all of you and happy with our victory today,” she tells them. “We took the battle to the enemy, and we made history!”

She primes them, but she holds back, because she knows she mustn’t steal Starkey’s thunder. She’s Bam the Baptist, preparing the way for the Savior of Storks.

“He’ll be gathering everyone before dinner. He’s got a lot to tell you.” Of course it’s really not about telling them anything; it’s about rallying them and keeping them focused on the positive, just as he told Bam. He’ll have gentle words for the dead, but will move past it. Gloss over it. Direct the audience’s attention elsewhere. He’s so very good at that. It’s why they’ve gotten so far. Bam is in awe of the way Mason Starkey can work magic in the world around him. He’s kept their hoard virtually invisible for more than a month now, keeping them clothed and fed with money that no one can trace. Yes, she’s in awe of him, and she’s also a little more afraid of him every day. That’s normal, she decides. A good leader should be just a little bit frightening in the way he or she wields power.

When she’s done priming the masses for Starkey, she turns down a side passageway that should be familiar, but she bumps her head for the umpteenth time on a jutting piece of stone. So many of these tunnels are alike; she always knows exactly where she is when she hits that damn stone. The walls begin to spread, opening into a wider cavern. The lights, which are strung around the edge, create an odd sense of darkness in the very center of the space, as if there’s a black hole in the middle of the room.

This is the storage room, where food and supplies are kept. This is also where Hayden is currently stationed, with an armed guard at all times who is there for both his protection and to make sure he stays on his best behavior.

“He’s a flight risk, but we can’t make him look like a prisoner,” Starkey had said. “We’re not the Juvenile Authority.”

Of course, Hayden is a prisoner—but God forbid they make him look like one.

It was Bam’s suggestion that he be put in charge of food distribution. First because it was what he did when he first arrived at the Graveyard, so he had experience. Second because the kid who had been doing it was killed today.

She finds him taking inventory of their canned goods and being very chatty with the guard, gleaning information about the plane crash and everything that happened since then from the 7-Eleven raids and their stint at the abandoned Palm Springs hotel to Camp Red Heron and the Egret Academy. Bam is going to have to make sure the guards know enough not to talk about anything with Hayden that doesn’t involve Spam and canned corn.

The guard asks if he can go to the bathroom, which is quite a hike from this spot in the mine, and she lets him go. “I’ll watch Hayden until you get back.” He offers her his Uzi, but she refuses it.

Hayden has a pad and jots down notes about their food supply.

“You have way too much chili,” he says, pointing to a stack of gallon-sized cans. “And it’s not like you can disguise it to be anything but chili.”

Bam crosses her arms. “I knew you’d already be complaining. In case you forgot, we just set you free. You should be grateful.”

“I am. In fact, I’m ecstatic. But incarceration at a harvest camp must have left me a little brain damaged because suddenly I’m putting larger concerns ahead of my own.”

“Like having too much chili?”