UnWholly

The cache of weapons, which had been stowed in the overhead compartments, flies free as well, as those compartments tear loose and burst open. Pistols and rifles and machine guns and grenades become ballistic, creating casualties without ever having to go off.

Wrapped in the forward twist of bodies, Starkey feels his head hit something hard, leaving a gash on his forehead, but that’s nothing compared to the exploding pain in his battered hand.

Finally the tumbling jet comes to rest. The cries and wails sound like silence compared to the noise of the crash. Then somewhere toward the back of the cabin there’s an explosion: a grenade that lost its pin. It blows a hole in the side of the jet, and water begins to pour in. That’s when the electrical system fails, and they’re plunged into darkness.

“Over here!” Bam calls. She pulls a huge lever and opens the cabin’s front port-side door. A life raft automatically inflates and detaches, then drops to the water, and with a “Sayonara,” Bam leaps right out after it.

Starkey’s instinct is to get out now . . . but if he’s going to be seen as the protector of the storks, then he must be their protector in action, not just words. He waits, shooing kids out the door, making it clear he is not the first one out—but neither does he plan on being the last.

Farther back in the foundering jet, kids pull open wing exits and a midship hatch—but only on the left side. On the right, a slick of jet fuel has ignited in the water and burns beyond the windows.

“The weapons!” Starkey shouts. “Take the weapons! We still have to defend ourselves!” And so kids pick up any and all weapons they can find, throwing them out onto the rafts before jumping out themselves.

The fire outside provides enough light for Starkey to see to the far recesses of the main cabin, and he wishes he hadn’t looked. The dead are everywhere. Blood is smeared on every surface, sticky and thick. But there are more living than dead, and more kids ru

The angle of the floor has quickly changed as the jet begins to sink tail-first. The rear cabin is already flooded, and the water level rises in a steady, relentless surge past the central bulkhead. Then Starkey hears a muffled voice from the front of the jet.

“I need help here!”

Starkey makes his way to the cockpit door and pulls it open. The windshield is shattered, and the entire cockpit is a mess of smashed gauges, open panels, and exposed wires. The pilot’s chair has jammed forward, and Trace is pi

Which leaves Starkey in an interesting position.

“Starkey!” says Trace, relieved. “I need you to pull me out of here. I can’t do it by myself.”

“Yes, that’s a problem,” Starkey says. But is it his problem? They needed Trace to get them this far, but they don’t need a pilot anymore—and didn’t Trace already threaten to kill him? If Trace survives, from this moment on he’ll be nothing but a threat—and a dangerous one, at that.

“I never had the guts to try the great water escape,” says Starkey. “It killed Houdini, but I’m sure it’ll be easy for a big boeuf like you.” Then he backs out of the cockpit and closes the door.

“Starkey!” Trace yells. “Starkey, you son of a bitch!”

But Starkey’s decision is final, and as he returns to the main hatch, Trace’s muffled voice is drowned out by the sounds of panicking storks. There are about a dozen kids left—the slow ones, the injured ones, the ones afraid to jump because they can’t swim.

“What’s that awful smell?” one of them whines. “What is that out there?”

He’s right—there’s a stench to this lake like a fish tank left to putrify, but it’s the least of their problems. Water’s already pooling at their feet, and the floor is at a thirty-degree tilt.

Starkey pushes past the lingering kids. “Jump or drown, you’ve got no other choice, and I’m not waiting for stragglers.” Then he hurls himself out the door and into the foul-smelling brine of the Salton Sea.

78 • Trace

Trace’s calls for help go unanswered, and in furious frustration he pounds the console and bucks in the chair, but it doesn’t give. He’s so tightly wedged in by the accordioned cockpit, not even a boeuf of his strength can get out. He forces himself to calm down and review his options. All he can hear now are the diminishing moans and wails of kids too injured to escape, and of course the relentless rush of water. That’s when he realizes there are no options left to him anymore. Starkey made certain of that.

The lake begins to pour in through the broken cockpit window so quickly there’s no time to prepare himself. Trace cranes his neck, trying to keep his head above water as long as he can. Then he takes one deep gulp of air, holds it, and he’s underwater. Suddenly there’s silence all around him except for the metallic complaints of the sinking jet.

His body burns through the last of its oxygen; then, resigned to his fate, Trace releases his final breath. It bubbles away from him in the darkness, and his body gets to the business of drowning. It’s as awful as he ever imagined it might be, but he knows it won’t last long. Five seconds. Ten. Then the injustice of it all doesn’t seem to matter anymore. As the last of his consciousness filters away, Trace holds on to the hope that his choice to fight on the side of the AWOLs instead of the Juvenile Authority will be enough to pay his passage to a truly better place.

79 • Starkey

The water tastes like rubber and rot and is neither warm nor cold, but tepid, like tea left to steep an hour too long. The last of the plane disappears beneath the surface, leaving nothing but white water bubbling up through the brine and the fuel slick, which has almost burned itself out. Starkey looks around to see kids in the water, kids on rafts, and kids who’ve drifted too far away to see at all, calling out for help.

There’s a deserted shore just a few hundred yards way. Trace, rest his soul, knew enough to bring them down near the unpopulated side of the huge lake. Even so, people will have seen the crash and will come to investigate. They have to get away from the scene as quickly as possible—the attention of the locals is the last thing they need.

“This way!” Starkey tells them, and starts swimming, pulling himself forward with his good hand. The kids in rafts paddle, the kids in the water swim, and in a few minutes they’re pulling themselves out of the fetid water onto a spongy shore of pulverized fish bones.

Starkey sets Bam to do a head count, and she comes back with 128. They lost forty-one in the crash. Around him the survivors try to tally exactly who is missing, which just makes Starkey angry. Sitting here will do nothing but get them captured. He knows he’s cu

“Everybody up! We can’t waste our time licking our wounds and mourning the dead. We’ve got to get out of here.”

“Where do you suggest we go?” asks Bam.

“Right now, anywhere but here.”

Starkey knows he needs to give these kids direction and purpose. Now that they’re free from the holding pen of the Graveyard, their priorities need to change. Co

He goes to the nearest kids nursing their exhaustion and lifts them to their feet by their collars. “Let’s move! We’ll rest when we’re safe.”

“When will we ever be safe?” someone asks. Starkey doesn’t answer, because he knows they’ll probably never be. But that’s all right. They’ve been complacent for too long. Being on the edge will keep them sharp and focused.