Part 20 (2/2)
On this night, Starkey's mark is a man who comes stumbling drunk out of a bar and slips an overstuffed wallet into the wide pocket of his overcoat. The drunk fumbles with his keys on the way to his car. Starkey strolls past, b.u.mping him just hard enough to dislodge the keys, and they fall to the ground.
”Hey, man, I'm sorry,” Starkey says, picking up the keys and handing them to him. The man never feels the fingers of Starkey's other hand in his pocket, lifting the wallet at the same moment Starkey's handing him the keys. Starkey strolls off whistling to himself, knowing the man will be halfway home before he realizes that his wallet is gone, and even then, he'll think he just left it at the bar.
Starkey turns a corner, making sure he's out of sight before he opens the wallet, and the second he does, a jolt of electricity courses through him with such power his feet fall out from under him and he's left semiconscious on the ground, twitching.
A stun-wallet. He's heard of such things but never saw one in action until now.
Within seconds, the drunk is there, not so drunk after all, with three others whose faces he can't make out. They lift him up and shove him into the back of a waiting van.
As the door is pulled closed and the van accelerates, Starkey, only barely conscious, sees the face of the drunk/not-drunk man looking down at him through an electrically charged haze.
”Are you an Unwind, a runaway, or just a lowlife?” he asks.
Starkey's lips feel like rubber. ”Lowlife.”
”Great,” says the un-drunk. ”That narrows it down. Unwind or runaway?”
”Runaway,” mumbles Starkey.
”Perfect,” the man says. ”Now that we've established you're an Unwind, we know what to do with you.”
Starkey groans, and some woman beyond his limited peripheral vision laughs. ”Don't be so surprised. Unwinds all got this look in their eye that lowlifes and runaways don't. We knew the truth without you saying a thing.”
Starkey tries to move, but he can barely lift his limbs.
”Don't,” says a girl he can't see from somewhere behind him. ”Don't move or I'll zap you even worse than the wallet did.”
Starkey knows he's fallen for a parts pirate's trap. He thought he was smarter, and he silently curses his luck . . . until the man who pretended to be drunk says, ”You'll like this safe house. Good food, even if it does smell a little.”
”Wh-what?”
Laughs from everyone around him. There may be four or five people in the van. But his vision still isn't clear enough to get an accurate count.
”I love that look on their faces,” the woman says. Now she comes into his field of vision and grins at him. ”You know how they tranq escaped lions so they can bring them back to safety before they get themselves in a heap of trouble?” she says. ”Well, today you're the lion.”
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT.
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The safe house is a sewer pump station. Automated. No city workers ever show up unless something breaks.
”You get used to the smell,” Starkey is told as they bring him in, which he finds hard to believe-but it turns out to be true. Apparently one's sense of smell realizes it's going to lose the battle and just goes with it-and, as they told him in the van, the food makes up for it.
The whole place is a petri dish of angst, generated by kids whose parents gave up on them, which is the worst kind of angst there is. There are fights and ridiculous posturing on a daily basis.
Starkey's always been a natural leader among sketchy outcasts and borderline personalities, and the safe house is no exception. He quickly rises in the social ranks. Word of his escape act is already churning out smoke in the rumor mill, helping his status from the very beginning.
”Is it true you shot two Juvey-cops?”
”Yep.”
”Is it true you shot your way out of lockup with a machine gun?”
”Sure, why not?”
And the best part is that the storked kids-who, even among Unwinds, are treated like second-cla.s.s citizens-are now the elite, thanks to him!
Starkey says the storks get served first? They get served first. Starkey says they get the best beds, farthest from the stinking vents? They get the best beds. His word is law. Even those running the place know that Starkey is their greatest a.s.set, and they know to keep him happy, because if he becomes an enemy, then every Unwind there is an enemy too.
He starts to settle in, figuring he'll be there until he's seventeen-but then in the middle of the night they're rounded up and taken away by the ADR-shuffled like a deck of cards to different safe houses.
”This is the way it works,” they're all told. The reason, Starkey comes to understand, is twofold. One, it keep the kids moving closer to their destination, wherever that might be. Two, it splits them apart to keep any alliances from becoming permanent. Kind of like unwinding the mob rather than the individuals to keep them in line.
Their plan, however, backfires with Starkey, because in each safe house he manages to earn respect, building his credibility among more and more kids. In each new location he comes across Unwinds who fancy themselves alpha males, trying to take charge, but in truth they're just betas waiting for an alpha to humble them into submission.
In every instance, Starkey finds his opportunity to challenge, defeat, and rise above. Then there's another midnight ride, another shake-up, and a new safe house. Each time Starkey learns a new social skill, something to serve him, something to make him even more effective at gathering and galvanizing these scared, angry kids. There could be no better leaders.h.i.+p program than the safe houses of the Anti-Divisional Resistance.
And then come the coffins.
They show up at the final safe house: a s.h.i.+pment of lacquered wood caskets with rich satin linings. Most kids are terrified; Starkey is just amused.
”Get in!” they're told by armed resistance fighters who look more like special ops. ”No questions, just get in. Two to a box! Move it!”
Some kids hesitate, but the smarter ones quickly find a partner like it's a sudden square dance, and n.o.body wants to be stuck with someone too tall, too fat, too unwashed, or too randy-because none of those things would fare well in the confines of a coffin-but no one actually gets in until Starkey gives the nod.
”If they meant to bury us,” he tells them, ”they would have done it already.” As it turns out, he's more persuasive than the guys with the guns.
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