UnWholly

Once he’s gone, the guard takes a moment to look at the remains of his fallen comrade, then bolts. Somewhere in the bushes just outside the gate is a tranq’d girl. He doesn’t care. Every man for himself in a Juvey crackdown. Every girl, too. So rather than even looking for her, he takes off ru

67 • Co

With his volunteer defense force fully armed—about sixty kids in all—Co

“Maybe we’ll get lucky for once,” one kid says. “Maybe the Juvies won’t come after all.”

Co

Co

“Where will you be?” a girl asks.

“Right beside you, Casey,” Co

“No,” says another kid. “The king should never be on the front lines. In chess, I mean.”

“This isn’t chess,” Co

“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.

Co

“Co

“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.”

Co

68 • Vessels

To look at an airplane head on, one might get the unca

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 Co

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 Co

Toward the south end of the main aisle, Hush Puppy, the stealth bomber, watches as panicking Whollies ru

And Dolores, the Korean War bomber, stares blankly at Co

•   •   •

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.

“Co

“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.”

Co

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, Co

The riot squad is hit from both sides by everything Co

Meanwhile, on the side aisles, the kids Co

“Yes!” Hayden shouts. “No squad car has gotten past the third plane in the aisle, on either side,” he tells Co

Co

“My God!” screams one of the others. “They’re not just tranqing us, they’re killing us too!”

And this kid’s panic—Co

•   •   •

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 ru