The exodus doesn’t move as quickly or as smoothly as he wants it to, but at least it’s moving. The riot police are still a ways off, but the Juvey-cops themselves have taken up positions much closer and have begun taking out the swarms of kids fighting to get on the stairs. Most of his storks, however, are already onboard.
Then a Juvey targets one of the kids on the stairs. He’s tranq’d and goes down, slowing the storks behind him. They trample over him, and he seems to vanish beneath everyone’s feet.
Ashley, the secret weapon stork, is the last stork up the stairs. She smiles at Starkey.
“Made it!” she says, reaching for him to help her up the last few steps.
But just then one of the Juvies on the ground locks eyes with Starkey and takes aim at him. Thinking quickly, he smoothly pulls Ashley over just a bit. The tranq bullet embeds in her back instead of his chest. She locks eyes with him in shock.
“Sorry, Ashley.”
And before she can slump unconscious in his arms, he strategically pushes her back down the stairs, causing a domino-tumble of kids behind her. It gives Starkey just enough time to close the door.
The kids inside are both excited and terrified. Seeing that the front hatch is closed, they close the rear hatch as well. With the seats removed from the plane, no one quite knows what to do. Some kids sit, some stand, some look out of windows.
Starkey goes straight to the cockpit, where he finds Trace, focused and single-minded.
“Is everyone aboard?” Trace asks.
“Yeah, yeah, everyone’s here,” Starkey says. “Go!”
Only now does he realize Starkey’s in charge. “You? Where’s Connor?”
“He didn’t make it, now let’s get out of here.”
Instead Trace stands up, looks out the window, and sees the panic outside. Kids still flood the stairs even though the doors are closed, and a quick glance into the cabin makes it clear exactly which kids were saved and which weren’t.
“You son of a bitch!”
This is no time for arguments. Starkey pulls out a gun but keeps his distance so that Trace can’t use one of his fancy boeuf disarming maneuvers. “You’d save Connor’s kids, but you won’t save storks, is that it? Fly this plane or I shoot.”
“Kill me and no one gets out of here.”
But Starkey doesn’t lower his weapon because he’s not bluffing, and Trace knows it.
Trace’s glare could melt iron. He sits back down and eases the throttle forward. “When we land,” Trace says, “I’m going to kill you with my bare hands.”
Starkey’s pretty sure he’s not bluffing either.
- - -
The Dreamliner pulls forward, knocking over both sets of metal stairs. Kids and cops scramble to get out from under the huge plane’s wheels as it picks up speed, taxiing at nearly thirty miles per hour. Connor had positioned it with a clear path to the runway, and the Juvies try unsuccessfully to head it off.
On the ground, the stranded kids try to break away and go back to the old plan of running south, but now they’re surrounded. Juvies and riot police tranq them. They don’t even have to aim; just shoot into the crowd and someone goes down.
- - -
Connor watches in horror as it all goes wrong. A Juvey fires at him, and Connor deflects the tranq bullet with his rifle. Before the man can fire again, Connor charges him, taking him down with a single swing from the butt of his rifle. When Connor looks up, he sees the stork-filled Dreamliner begin to accelerate down the runway—but he quickly sees that there’s a problem.
Far, far away, barely visible in the night, is a dark, rectangular shape on the runway. It’s nearly a mile away, but as the plane picks up speed and closes the distance, its headlights illuminate an armored riot truck that has pulled right into the plane’s path, playing chicken with a 112-ton jet.
In the cockpit Trace sees it, but it’s too late to abort liftoff.
In the truck, the driver realizes a moment too late that this is a game he’s going to lose.
As the jet’s nose lifts off the ground, the truck swerves to get out of the way, but the driver isn’t fast enough. The starboard landing gear clips the truck, sending it tumbling like a toy, and a huge chunk of the landing gear rips loose, just as the plane leaves the ground. The Dreamliner lists precariously to one side, threatening to fall from the sky, but then stabilizes. Its broken landing gear, twisted and useless, retracts sluggishly into the wheel well.
On the ground, hundreds of earthbound kids are “tranq’d and yanked” by the Juvies, finding neither salvation nor sanctuary in the flightless vessels around them, while up above, the only vessel ever to be resurrected from the Graveyard carries 169 souls into the sky: 169 souls with no possible way to land.
69 - Lev
Lev has the advantage of being behind the action. He can see where the battlefront is, he can see the tactics of the Juvey attack force, and since no one has yet to graft eyes in the back of their head, Lev can move behind the battle without being caught.
And so can Nelson.
It’s before the escape jet has taxied away, when the focus is still on the armed AWOLs toward the north end of the main aisle. Lev spots Nelson leaving his van at the far western aisles of the Graveyard and moving in on foot. The parts pirate now wears a Juvey uniform he must have pulled from a real Juvey that he tranq’d. He’ll blend in. He’ll pass for one of them. The only thing Lev can pass for is an AWOL, and that won’t get him anything but unconscious. He knows he has to be careful.
Lev tries to figure out where Connor might be in this war zone, and suddenly he realizes that he doesn’t even know this Connor. The old Connor was all about saving himself, and he was good at it. But will he still be that way now that he’s responsible for every kid here? Connor saved a baby once. He also saved Lev. No, he won’t be running or hiding. He’ll be here until the last AWOL is taken down, and that last one may very well be him.
Nelson doesn’t know that. He sees Connor in only one dimension: a lowly AWOL. He won’t look for Connor at the battlefront, he’ll look for him on the fringes—and sure enough, Lev sees Nelson on the edges; places where stray kids have been tranq’d. Like a vulture pecking at carrion, Nelson lifts their heads off the ground, looks at each of their faces, then drops them back down again, moving on to the next one.
Lev circles behind Nelson in shadows, giving him a wide berth, and makes his way closer to the danger zone, where riot police clash with armed AWOLs. This is where Connor will be—but how can Lev save him from both Nelson and the Juvies?
When the answer comes to Lev, he grins in spite of the dire battle around him. The answer is simple. It’s terrifying. It’s impossible. It might work!
- - -
Lev nears the main aisle just as the Dreamliner begins to move and riot police advance on the crush of kids who never made it onboard.
A hundred yards away, on the failed front line, Lev sees a figure in off-color camouflage fearlessly charge a Juvey shooting at him. The kid takes the Juvey out—not with a bullet, but with the butt of his rifle—and there’s something about the way this kid moves that’s familiar.
Lev charges against a panic of escaping kids running toward him, ignoring the sound of gunfire, the roar of jet engines, and the crunch of crushing metal as the Dreamliner takes out a riot truck on takeoff.
The tumbling truck bursts into flames as the plane rises into the sky, and the light of the explosion illuminates the face of the kid in camouflage. Lev knows he’s found him.
“Connor!”
But Connor’s eyes are fixed on the escaping plane. “Don’t just stand there, run!” Connor tells him. “You were all supposed to run!”
“Connor, it’s me. It’s Lev.”
Even when Connor looks at Lev, he doesn’t seem to recognize him at first, and Lev knows it’s more than just the hair. Neither of them are the kids they were a year ago.
“Lev? What are you doing here? What, has the whole world gone nuts, and I’ve lost my mind?”
“I’m sure both are true, but I’m really here.” Lev bends down and takes the tranq gun away from the cop Connor has just rendered unconscious. “I came to save you.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!”
“That’s probably true too, but I have to warn you: There’s a parts pirate after you.”
“That’s the least of my problems right now!”
Another kid with an automatic rifle hurries up to Connor. “We’re out of ammunition! What do we do?”
“Sticks and stones and airplane parts,” Connor tells him. “Or you can take your chances and run. Starkey didn’t leave us many choices.”
“Freakin’ Starkey!” The kid drops his spent weapon. “Good luck, Connor,” he says, and hurries away, trying to lose himself in the night.
Farther away, the mob that has been trying to get on the Dreamliner is now lit by the spotlight of a police helicopter and is fully surrounded. There are maybe four hundred kids corralled and helpless, while huge transport trucks roll down the main aisle to gather them and take them away.
“There’s nothing you can do for them now,” Lev tells Connor.
“I won’t leave them.”
“That’s why I’m not giving you a choice.” Then Lev raises the tranq pistol he took from the unconscious Juvey and shoots Connor in the arm.
Connor’s spun away by the force of the blast and goes down, the tranqs taking effect in seconds. Lev catches him as he falls, and he looks up at Lev with half-open, fading eyes.
“It didn’t work, Lev,” he says weakly. “My plan didn’t work.”
“I know,” Lev tells him as Connor slips from consciousness, “but maybe mine will.”
70 - Nelson
He has no idea how many kids are here, how deep the airplane graveyard goes, or where his target might be in the midst of the chaos. No matter. If the Juvies do their job, and it looks like they will, the whole nest of AWOLs will be rounded up, tranq’d, and yanked. Lassiter will be among them. Nelson just needs to keep his eyes open and his head low, because some of these kids have weapons, and by the sound of them, they’re deadly.
Methodically he checks the AWOLs who have already been tranq’d and takes down a few himself, just so he really looks like a Juvey-cop doing his job. He keeps a safe distance from the heart of the battle, knowing that the Akron AWOL will do the same.
One of the Juvey-cops spots him looking at the faces of the fallen AWOLs. “Don’t waste your time,” he says. “It’s our asses if any of these kids get past us and into the desert.”
“I’m looking for an AWOL neighbor kid,” Nelson tells him without missing a beat. “Favor for the wife.”
But the cop is suspicious. “Do I know you? What unit are you with?”
“Unit Sixteen, down from Phoenix.”
“There is no Unit Sixteen in Phoenix.”
Deciding this has gone quite far enough, Nelson tranqs him, then tranqs an escaping AWOL who saw him do it. Then gets back to the task of finding the Akron AWOL.