UnWholly (Unwind Dystology #2)(108)

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.”





68 ? Vessels

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?”