Authors: Neal Shusterman
With his volunteer defense force fully armed—about sixty kids in all—Connor dispatches half of them to hide behind Rip, the largest boys’ dormitory. It’s a C-130 cargo plane with its wings
ripped off and a belly slung so low to the ground that a small militia can hide behind it. “You’re the left defense flank,” he tells them. “Do what you can to draw the Juvies’ fire and keep them in the north end of the main aisle.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky for once,” one kid says. “Maybe the Juvies won’t come after all.”
Connor tries to offer him a reassuring smile. He doesn’t know the boy’s name. He tried his best to learn as many names as he could, but there was only so much he could do. If this kid gets killed, or worse, unwound, who will remember him? Who will remember any of them? He wishes he could have been wise enough to have had each kid carve his or her name into the steel of the old Air Force One, as a testament to the fact that they existed. Even if no would ever see it, at least it would be there. But now it’s too late.
Connor takes the rest of his fighting force to the Rec Jet, directly across the main aisle from Rip. “We’ll set up a barricade beneath the wings,” he tells them, “and shoot out from behind it.”
“Where will you be?” a girl asks.
“Right beside you, Casey,” Connor tells her, happy to have remembered her name.
“No,” says another kid. “The king should never be on the front lines. In chess, I mean.”
“This isn’t chess,” Connor points out. “It’s our lives.”
“Yeah,” he says, “but I kinda like to picture myself as a knight.”
“Well, you got the horse face,” says Casey, and everyone laughs. That they can laugh in the face of this says more about their courage than anything else.
Connor and his left flank fighters race to push couches, tables, and arcade machines into a barricade. Then, while Connor’s upending a pool table, Hayden’s voice blares in his earpiece.
“Connor, something’s wrong. I can’t raise the guards at the gate—no one’s responding.”
“It can’t be! We’re not ready!”
Then the horse-faced kid says, “We’ll never be ready. So I guess that means we’re as ready as we’ll ever be.”
Connor climbs to the hatch of the Rec Jet and looks north across the dark desert to see a wall of approaching headlights fanning out . . . getting wider. “Sound the alarm,” he tells Hayden. “Here we go.”
To look at an airplane head on, one might get the uncanny feeling that it has eyes. No doubt the planes of the Graveyard have witnessed many things, and perhaps they are the only ones with a clear perspective of fight and folly on the day the Juvenile Authority invades.
GymBo, the northernmost jet on the main aisle, has the best view of the approaching Juvey force. Its fuselage resonates with the monotone blare of the general alarm. On the ground around it, kids who had been trying to save what they can from the salvage yard drop what they’re doing and run south, as they’ve been told. What was an organized chaos now becomes full-fledged panic around the stalwart rows of retired aircraft.
The medical jet has a clear view of the Dreamliner and its engines, which are powering up, preparing for flight. If Connor could see what the medical jet sees, he might alter his plan and call for everyone to get onboard before the Juvies arrive, but he has no idea that the escape jet is back in play.
The Dreamliner has an unobstructed view of Starkey, who is no longer bothering to hide his face as he prepares to signal the storks to abandon Connor’s plan and follow his. But Trace
in the cockpit is too involved in prepping the plane to share the jet’s vision.
Toward the south end of the main aisle, Hush Puppy, the stealth bomber, watches as panicking Whollies running beneath its wings and belly stop as they hear the Dreamliner’s engines begin to power up. “What’s this?” they cry. “Are we flying out of here after all?” And rather than running south they hesitate, unsure of what to do.
And Dolores, the Korean War bomber, stares blankly at Connor, unable to tell him how badly he’s about to be blindsided by mutiny. Although he’s in radio contact with Hayden in the ComBom, who monitors videocams all around the Graveyard, none of those cameras can see what the planes already know—that this graveyard of gutted, dismantled aircraft is about to become a human graveyard as well.
• • •
The Juvey squad cars part left and right as they approach the main aisle, revealing behind them four armored riot trucks, black and angular like diesel engines. They stop at the head of the main aisle, and out of them flood dozens of armed officers in ballistic riot gear.
In the ComBom, Hayden flips from one surveillance camera to another, hoping that a new view might make the situation look less dire.
“Connor, are you seeing this?” he says into his headpiece. “It’s not just Juvies—they’ve brought a freaking SWAT team!”
“I can see that. The squad cars are breaking off. Where are they going?”
“Hold on.” Hayden flips to a different camera. “The aisles on either side of you. They’re trying to surround us.”
Connor orders a handful of kids from both the left and right flank to intercept the squad cars before they can get past, but keeps the larger part of his force hiding, waiting to ambush
the riot team as soon as they’re far enough down the main aisle. “We don’t have to beat them,” Connor reminds everyone. “We just have to keep them fighting us, instead of going after the others.”
Just then a panicked kid runs out of the shadows into the main aisle in a frenzy to escape. A riot cop raises a gun and tranqs him, and as he drops to the dust, Connor gives the order to attack.
The riot squad is hit from both sides by everything Connor’s team has. They take cover and return fire.
Meanwhile, on the side aisles, the kids Connor sent to take out the Juvey squad cars fire round after round, blowing out tires and shattering the windshields. One car careens into the forward landing gear of an old fighter jet and bursts into flames.
“Yes!” Hayden shouts. “No squad car has gotten past the third plane in the aisle, on either side,” he tells Connor. “They’re scrambling out of their cars, firing into the dark. Connor? Connor, are you there?”
Connor’s there, but his brain won’t give rise to words. Beside him Casey lies draped over the leg of the upended pool table with a tranq bullet in her neck—but worse than that is the horse-faced boy. He took a real bullet to the forehead.
“My God!” screams one of the others. “They’re not just tranqing us, they’re killing us too!”
And this kid’s panic—Connor’s
own
panic—is the reason why. Sure, the Juvenile Authority wants to save them for unwinding—but a bullet through the brain of the kid next to you is enough to make anyone panic and run. So Connor digs down into his own fortitude and finds courage enough to stand his ground, and following his example, so do the others.
• • •
Starkey, at the foot of the Dreamliner’s forward staircase, jabs himself with a morphine hypodermic brought to him by a
medic who also happens to be a stork. In seconds he begins to feel dizzy and distant, but he fights the wooziness. He climbs the stairs and waits at the jet’s open door. His hand is already numbing from the morphine, and although the powerful painkiller wants to put him to sleep, his own adrenaline rush fights back. What remains is a calm in the midst of the chaos that is almost transcendent. He is untouchable. He raises the flare gun and fires, lighting the sky in shimmering pink. The storks, who had been hiding rather than running south, all come out and surge toward the Dreamliner, streaming up the two sets of stairs.
• • •
Farther south, kids who have reached the fringe planes of the Graveyard see the wave of Whollies flooding toward the escape jet.
“Hey, there’s someone in there! Someone’s flying it! Come on!” They double back, heading toward the Dreamliner instead of running south, and as more escaping kids see others do an about-face, mob mentality takes over. They all run toward the waiting jet.
• • •
On the battlefront, Connor’s force is outnumbered and outclassed by the weapon skills of the riot team. But this was expected. This is all part of the plan. About a third of Connor’s team is down on both flanks. He doesn’t want to know who’s been tranq’d and who’s been killed.
“You’re clear for phase two,” Hayden tells him, and Connor prepares to order the right flank to abandon their position and race toward the fuel tankers, drawing the invaders’ attention away from the kids breaking south.
“No . . . no, wait,” Hayden tells him. “Something’s wrong!”
Suddenly the riot squad is no longer interested in Connor and his defense force. They’re pushing forward, racing down
the main aisle—and only now, with the bursts of deafening crossfire gone, does Connor hear the whine of jet engines. He turns to see kids rushing the escape jet.
“No! What are they doing?”
Then Connor sees him. Starkey. He stands atop the forward staircase, shepherding in his flock of storks—but it’s not just storks who are trying to get on. Now a massive push of kids crowds the base of both staircases in a panic. It’s perhaps the entire population of the Graveyard, fighting one another to get onto those narrow stairs.
Even before the riot police get down to them, Juvies come in on either side and start taking kids down with tranqs, like a shooting gallery. Connor can do nothing but watch as his plan—and all hope—crumbles into desert dust.
• • •
For once storks come first. For once storks will be victorious. And to hell with everyone else. The bio-raised world never did anything for Starkey. Well, now it will. Those bio-raised kids will be targets and draw the fire of the Juvies while his storks get onboard.
The exodus doesn’t move as quickly or as smoothly as he wants it to, but at least it’s moving. The riot police are still a ways off, but the Juvey-cops themselves have taken up positions much closer and have begun taking out the swarms of kids fighting to get on the stairs. Most of his storks, however, are already onboard.
Then a Juvey targets one of the kids on the stairs. He’s tranq’d and goes down, slowing the storks behind him. They trample over him, and he seems to vanish beneath everyone’s feet.
Ashley, the secret weapon stork, is the last stork up the stairs. She smiles at Starkey.
“Made it!” she says, reaching for him to help her up the last few steps.
But just then one of the Juvies on the ground locks eyes with Starkey and takes aim at him. Thinking quickly, he smoothly pulls Ashley over just a bit. The tranq bullet embeds in her back instead of his chest. She locks eyes with him in shock.
“Sorry, Ashley.”
And before she can slump unconscious in his arms, he strategically pushes her back down the stairs, causing a domino-tumble of kids behind her. It gives Starkey just enough time to close the door.
The kids inside are both excited and terrified. Seeing that the front hatch is closed, they close the rear hatch as well. With the seats removed from the plane, no one quite knows what to do. Some kids sit, some stand, some look out of windows.
Starkey goes straight to the cockpit, where he finds Trace, focused and single-minded.
“Is everyone aboard?” Trace asks.
“Yeah, yeah, everyone’s here,” Starkey says. “Go!”
Only now does he realize Starkey’s in charge. “You? Where’s Connor?”
“He didn’t make it, now let’s get out of here.”
Instead Trace stands up, looks out the window, and sees the panic outside. Kids still flood the stairs even though the doors are closed, and a quick glance into the cabin makes it clear exactly which kids were saved and which weren’t.
“You son of a bitch!”
This is no time for arguments. Starkey pulls out a gun but keeps his distance so that Trace can’t use one of his fancy boeuf disarming maneuvers. “You’d save Connor’s kids, but you won’t save storks, is that it? Fly this plane or I shoot.”
“Kill me and no one gets out of here.”
But Starkey doesn’t lower his weapon because he’s not bluffing, and Trace knows it.
Trace’s glare could melt iron. He sits back down and eases the throttle forward. “When we land,” Trace says, “I’m going to kill you with my bare hands.”
Starkey’s pretty sure he’s not bluffing either.
• • •
The Dreamliner pulls forward, knocking over both sets of metal stairs. Kids and cops scramble to get out from under the huge plane’s wheels as it picks up speed, taxiing at nearly thirty miles per hour. Connor had positioned it with a clear path to the runway, and the Juvies try unsuccessfully to head it off.
On the ground, the stranded kids try to break away and go back to the old plan of running south, but now they’re surrounded. Juvies and riot police tranq them. They don’t even have to aim; just shoot into the crowd and someone goes down.
• • •
Connor watches in horror as it all goes wrong. A Juvey fires at him, and Connor deflects the tranq bullet with his rifle. Before the man can fire again, Connor charges him, taking him down with a single swing from the butt of his rifle. When Connor looks up, he sees the stork-filled Dreamliner begin to accelerate down the runway—but he quickly sees that there’s a problem.
Far, far away, barely visible in the night, is a dark, rectangular shape on the runway. It’s nearly a mile away, but as the plane picks up speed and closes the distance, its headlights illuminate an armored riot truck that has pulled right into the plane’s path, playing chicken with a 112-ton jet.
In the cockpit Trace sees it, but it’s too late to abort liftoff.
In the truck, the driver realizes a moment too late that this is a game he’s going to lose.
As the jet’s nose lifts off the ground, the truck swerves to get out of the way, but the driver isn’t fast enough. The starboard landing gear clips the truck, sending it tumbling like a
toy, and a huge chunk of the landing gear rips loose, just as the plane leaves the ground. The Dreamliner lists precariously to one side, threatening to fall from the sky, but then stabilizes. Its broken landing gear, twisted and useless, retracts sluggishly into the wheel well.