It had been suggested that Connor take over the old Air Force One, but that was the Admiral’s style, not Connor’s. Instead he settled on a small, sleek corporate jet from the outskirts of the graveyard, and had it towed to the north end of the main aisle.
Connor occasionally hears kids grumbling about it: “Look at him living like a king, while the rest of us get nothing but a bedroll.”
“Nature of the beast,” Trace is always quick to remind him. “Respect doesn’t come without a little resentment.”
Connor knows he’s right, but he doesn’t have to like it.
The Holy of Whollies arrive mostly on time for the meeting. Once inside, they swivel side to side in the plush leather chairs, for no other reason than that they can. They enjoy the jet far more than Connor does.
Six out of seven are present. Risa, who’s the Graveyard’s chief medic, refuses to enter Connor’s jet until she can roll in on her own—and a wheelchair ramp just to access Connor’s jet seems like an extravagance.
Trace, always the first to arrive, is head of security, as well as Connor’s strategic adviser.
Hayden is master of the ComBom, running computer and radio communications, monitoring the outside world, police frequencies, and all communication with the resistance. He also has a radio station for the Whollies, with a signal that barely reaches half a mile. He calls it “Radio Free Hayden.”
There’s a big bruiser of a girl everyone calls Bam, who is in charge of food services. Her real name is Bambi, but anyone who calls her that ends up being treated by Risa in the infirmary.
There’s Drake, a rural kid who is the Sustainability Boss, which is just a fancy term for the guy who runs the farm, or the Green Aisle, which was entirely Connor’s idea. The food it produces has more than once taken the edge off hunger pangs when ADR food shipments have been too small or nonexistent.
Next is John, a gum-chewing kid with a restless leg who’s in charge of maintenance and waste management, and finally Ashley, who claims to be very “person centered” and deals with “issues”—and since just about every kid being tagged for unwinding has issues, she’s probably the busiest of the bunch.
“So what’s this about?” Bam asks. “Because I got stuff to do.”
“First off,” Connor tells them, “I met with the ADR dude today. We can expect more of the same.”
“More o’ nothin’ is still nothin’,” Drake says.
“You got it. We’ve pretty much known we’ve been on our own for a while—now it’s official. Deal with it.”
“What about supplies and stuff we can’t scavenge from other planes?” asks John, his leg bouncing more fiercely than usual.
“If we can’t get cash from the front office to buy it, we’ll have to creatively find it.” Creatively finding is Connor’s euphemism for stealing. He’s had to send kids as far as Phoenix to creatively find things the ADR won’t supply. Things like hard-to-find medications and welding torches.
“I just got word that a new jet is being retired here next Tuesday,” Hayden tells them. “I’m sure when we gut it, we’ll find a lot of things we need. Coolant compressors, hydraulic thingamajiggies, and all that other hardcore mechanical blue-collar stuff.”
“Is the baggage compartment gonna be stuffed full of Whollies?” someone asks.
“No plane arrives without mystery meat,” Hayden says. “No telling how many kids there’ll be, though.”
“I hope there aren’t any coffins this time,” Ashley says. “Do you have any idea how many kids had nightmares from that?”
“Oh please, coffins are so last month,” says Hayden. “This time it’s beer kegs!”
“The bigger issue,” says Connor, “is having an escape plan. We can’t rely on the ADR to save us if the Juvies decide it’s time for fresh parts.”
“Why don’t we just bail now,” asks Ashley, “and find a new place to be?”
“It’s not that easy to move seven hundred kids—and doing it would be like sending up a flare to every Juvey-cop in Arizona. Hayden’s team has been doing a pretty good job tracking the threat level, so we’ll have at least some warning before a raid—but if we don’t have an exit strategy, we’re screwed no matter what.”
Bam throws a glare at Trace, who never says much at these meetings. “What does he think?”
“I think you should do whatever Connor tells you to do,” Trace says.
Bam snorts. “Spoken like a true army boeuf.”
“Air force,” says Trace. “You’d be wise to remember that.”
“The point is,” says Connor, coming between them before Ashley can launch into her anger management speech, “that we all need to be thinking about how to kick out of here on a moment’s notice if we have to.”
The rest of the meeting deals with the minutiae of management. Connor wonders how the Admiral could stomach conversations about sanitary napkin supply, when the threat of harvest camp was a clear and present danger every minute of every day. “It’s all about delegation,” Trace has said—which is the real reason why Connor had called this meeting.
“You can all go,” Connor finally tells everyone, “except for Bam and John—we still have things to talk about.”
Everyone files out, and Connor has John wait outside, while he talks privately to Bam. Connor knows what he must do, he just doesn’t want to do it. Some people take joy in dishing out bad news, but Connor was never like that. He knows what it’s like to be pulled up short, to be told that you’re useless, that you’re better off unwound.
Bam stands with arms folded, sweating attitude. “So, what’s up?”
“Tell me about the tainted meat loaf.”
Bam shrugs like it’s nothing. “What’s the big deal? The generator to one of the refrigerators blew out. It’s fixed now.”
“How long was the power out?”
“Don’t know.”
“So you had no clue how long the thing was without power, and you still served the food inside?”
“How was I supposed to know people would get sick? They ate it, so it’s their problem.”
Connor imagines the punching bag and makes a fist with his right hand. Then he looks at the shark, and forces his hand to relax. “More than forty kids were down for over two days—and we’re lucky it wasn’t worse.”
“Yeah, right, so I won’t let it happen again.” Bam says it in such a rude tone of voice, Connor can imagine her saying it that same way to her teachers, her parents, the Juvies, every authority figure in her life. Connor hates the fact that he’s one of those authority figures now.
“There won’t be a next time, Bam. I’m sorry.”
“You’re getting rid of me just because of one stupid screwup?”
“No one is getting rid of you,” Connor tells her. “But you won’t be running food service anymore.”
She burns him a long, hateful glare, then says, “Fine. To hell with you. I don’t need this crap.”
“Thank you, Bam,” he says, having no idea what possessed him to thank her. “Send John in on your way out.”
Bam kicks the jet hatch open and storms out. She turns to John, who waits nervously outside, twisted in a full body flinch from her angry exit.
“Go on in,” Bam growls at him. “He’s firing you.”
- - -
That night Connor finds Starkey doing close-up magic for a bunch of Whollies beneath the recreation jet.
“How does he do that?” kids ask as he makes bracelets disappear from wrists and appear in other people’s pockets. When he’s done, Connor approaches him.
“You’re pretty good. But as the guy in charge, I should ask you to tell me how it’s done.”
Starkey only smiles. “A magician never reveals his secrets, not even to the guy in charge.”
“Listen,” says Connor, cutting to the chase, “there’s something I want to talk to you about. I’ve decided to shake things up in the Holy of Whollies.”
“A change for the better, I hope,” Starkey says, gripping his stomach. Connor chuckles because he already knows Starkey sees where this is going, but that’s okay.
“How would you like to be in charge of food?”
“I love food,” Starkey says. “And I’m not just saying that.”
“Do you think you can handle a team of thirty and get food on the tables three times a day for everyone else?”
Starkey waves his hand and makes an egg appear out of thin air, then hands it to Connor. He saw the egg trick a few minutes earlier, but now its relevance makes it even more entertaining.
“Great,” says Connor. “Now conjure up seven hundred more for breakfast.” And he walks away, chuckling to himself, knowing that Starkey does have what it takes to make things happen, and make them happen right.
For once Connor’s sure he’s made the right decision.
8 - Risa
In the early evenings, when the desert begins to cool, Risa plays piano beneath the left wing of Air Force One. She plays pieces that she knows by heart and pieces from sheet music that have found their way into the Graveyard.
As for the piano itself, it’s a black baby grand Hyundai—which made her laugh when she first saw it. She didn’t think Hyundai made pianos—but then, why should that surprise her? Multinationals can make anything they want if people will buy it. She once read that Mercedes-Benz had gotten heavy into artificial hearts before the Unwind Accord made such technology pointless. “The Pulsar Omega,” the advertisement went. “Take luxury to heart.” They invested a fortune in the product, only to lose every penny once unwinding began, and artificial hearts went the way of pagers and CDs.
Tonight she plays a forceful yet subtle Chopin sonata. It pours out like a ground fog, echoing within the hollow fuse-lages where the Whollies live. She knows it comforts them. Even those kids who claim to despise classical music have come asking her why she isn’t playing when she’s skipped a night. So she plays for them, but not really, because it’s herself that she’s playing for. Sometimes she has an audience sitting before her in the dust. Other times, like tonight, it’s just her. Sometimes Connor comes. He’ll sit beside her, yet somehow be distant, as if afraid to invade her musical space. The times Connor comes are her favorite, but he does not come often enough.
“He’s got too much on his mind,” Hayden has told her, making the excuses that Connor should make for himself. “He’s a man of the people.” Then he added with a smirk, “Or at least of two people.”
Hayden never passes up a chance to throw a verbal barb about Connor’s uninvited appendage. It ticks her off, because some things are no laughing matter. Sometimes she catches Connor looking at the arm with an expression that is so opaque, it frightens her. Like maybe he’s going to pull out an ax and chop the thing off right in front of everyone. Even though he also bears a replacement eye, the match is perfect, and the source unknown. It holds no power over him . . . but Roland’s arm is different, holding heavy emotional baggage in its powerful grasp.