Có tiền và có những thứ tiền có thể mua được là điều tốt, tuy nhiên, đôi khi cũng nên xem lại và đảm bảo rằng mình không mất những thứ mà tiền không mua được.
George Horace Lorimer
ePub
A4Part 2 - Hotel California, Sort Of
W
e clear on Plan B?” I asked, raising my voice so Fang and Nudge could hear me over the roar of the wind.We were headed into the sun, south-southwest. Leaving the Sangre de Cristo Mountains behind, streaking through the sky at a steady ninety miles per hour. If we hit a nice air current, we could add twenty miles per hour to our speed. The glory of flight.
Fang nodded. God, is he ever the strong and silent type.
“Uh-huh,” said Nudge. “If we get separated somehow-though I don’t see how we could, unless maybe one of us gets lost in a cloud or something-do you think that could happen? I haven’t ever been inside a cloud. I bet it’s creepy. Can you see anything inside a cloud-“
I shot her a look. She paused, then quickly finished, “We meet up at the northmost point of Lake Mead.”
I nodded. “And where’s the School?”
“In Death Valley, eight miles due north from the Bad-water Basin.” Her mouth opened to add more, but I raised my eyebrows at her. I love Nudge, Nudge is a great kid, but that motormouth of hers could have turned Mother Teresa into an ax murderer.
“You got it,” I said. “Good job.” Did you hear that address? Could the School be located in a more perfect place? Death Valley. Above the Badwater Basin. Like, when we got there, we’d see a road paved with good intentions and have to cross the river Styx to get in. Wouldn’t surprise me.
The wind was undoing my braid, and chunks of long hair whipped annoyingly across my face. Note to self: Cut hair short.
The Gasman and Iggy had been none-too-happy campers when we’d left, but I thought I’d made the right decision. That was the problem with this leader stuff. It didn’t come with an instruction manual. Given what Angel was facing, their being unhappy was the least of my concerns.
I glanced over at Fang and saw that his face looked serene, almost-well, not exactly happy, Fang’s never happy-but just really calm. I edged closer to him.
“On the plus side, flying is just really, really cool,” I said, and he looked at me with a half smile of understanding. His dark wings moved powerfully, glinting faintly purple in the sunlight. The wind was whistling in our ears; we could see everything for miles. It was like being God. I imagine.
Oh, yeah. “On the minus side, we’re mutant freaks who will never live a normal life.”
Fang shrugged. “Win some, lose some.”
I was too upset to laugh but gave a wry smile and looked over at Nudge. She was three years younger than us but was holding her own. Like all of us, she was tall for her age, and skinny, probably weighing no more than sixty pounds, thanks to her strong, light bird bones.
Ninety miles an hour wasn’t fast enough. The “scientists” at the School could do a lot of damage in seven hours. Even so, I knew we’d have to take a break before we got there. If we were going to hit the School, we’d need to be rested, not hungry.
I checked my watch-we’d been skyborne for a good two hours. I was already feeling empty, a little shaky. Flying burned energy like nothing else, and after a long flight, I felt like I could eat a cow. Fork optional. Even needing to get to Angel, we couldn’t forget the basic necessity of eating.
“Max?” Nudge’s big eyes, the same tawny russet as her wings, looked over at me. “I was thinking-“
Here we go.
“I mean, right before we left? I just looked at Jeb’s old files, you know? And some of them were about us. Or me. I saw my name on a page, my real name, Monique, and then, like, some people’s names, and then-Tipisco, Arizona. Tipisco is right on the Arizona-California border-I found it on the map. Real tiny town, it looked like. Anyway, I was thinking, none of us ever knew our real parents, and, you know, we’ve always wondered, or at least I mean I’ve always wondered, but I guess the rest of you have too, like, whether they gave me up voluntarily or whether-“
“Nudge. I know how you feel. But those names might not have anything to do with you. We don’t know if we were just test-tube babies or what. Please. Let’s focus on rescuing Angel.”
No response.
“Nudge?”
“Yeah, okay. I was just thinking.”
I knew this one was going to come back and bite me in the butt.
Her mouth was so dry. Her head ached-everything ached. Angel blinked several times, trying to wake up. Above her was a dark brown plastic roof. A cage. A dog crate. A Kanine Kamper, size medium. Fuzzy thoughts pushed at her brain as she struggled to a sitting position. She knew where she was-she would recognize that chemical, disinfectant smell anywhere. She was at the School.
New new ‘n’ wings and new new wings girl new
Quickly, Angel turned in the direction of the thoughts.
In a crate next to hers were two other children, younger than she. Their eyes, too big for their hungry faces, locked onto her.
“Hi,” Angel whispered. She didn’t feel any whitecoats around-just the scrambled, incoherent thoughts of these kids.
Mouth noise girl wings new new
The other children stared without answering. Trying to smile, Angel looked at them more closely. She thought they were both boys. One had rough, scaly skin-literally scaly, like a fish, but just in patches, not all over. Not a happy effect.
The other one just looked like… a mistake. He had extra fingers and toes, and hardly any neck. His eyes were huge and bulging, and the hair on his head was sparse. It made Angel’s heart hurt just to look at him.
“I’m Angel,” she whispered again. “Do you have names?”
Noise noise bad girl wings bad noise
The two boys looked afraid, and they turned from her and edged farther back in their cage.
Angel swallowed hard and was quiet. What had happened to Max and the others? Were they in cages too?
A door opened and footsteps sounded on the linoleum floor. Angel felt the caged boys trembling with dread, crazed, swirling thoughts of fear crashing in their brains. They huddled together at the back of their cage. But the two whitecoats stopped in front of Angel’s.
“Oh, my God-Harrison was right,” one whitecoat said, hunching down to stare at Angel through the grate. “They got her! Do you know how long I’ve wanted to get my hands on this one?” He turned excitedly to the other whitecoat. “Did you ever read the Director’s precept report about this recombinant group?”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t sure I believed it,” said the other whitecoat, a woman. “Are you saying this is Subject Eleven? This little girl?”
The first whitecoat rubbed his hands together with glee. “You’re looking at it.” He leaned forward to unhook her cage door. “Come on, little thing. You’re wanted in lab seven.” Oh, yes! Man, when I section herbrain…
Angel winced, then rough hands dragged her out.
Pathetic relief washed through the boys that it was she who was being taken and not them.
Angel didn’t blame them one bit.
“Max? I’m starving.”
I had been ignoring my own ferociously growling innards for half an hour. There was no way I was going to break first-and give Fang the satisfaction? I don’t think so. But I did have an obligation, as leader, to take care of Nudge. As much as I hated to stop and lose time, it was a reality.
“Okay, okay. We need food.” How’s that for incisive leadership? “Fang! We need to refuel. Ideas?”
Fang pondered. It always amazes me how he’s able to seem so calm at the absolute worst times. Sometimes he seems like a droid-or a drone. Fang of Nine. Fang2-D2.
Below us were mountains-the San Francisco Peaks, according to our map.
Our glances met-it was creepy how we knew what each other was thinking so much of the time. “Ski slopes,” I said, and he nodded. “Pre-season. Empty vacation houses.”
“Would they have food?” Nudge asked.
“Let’s go find out,” I said.
We flew in a big circle around the edge of the mountains. Small towns that came alive in winter dotted the foothills. I led us away from them, to where a few homes stood like train-set models among the trees. One house was apart from the others. No cars parked outside, no smoke coming from the chimney. Nobody home?
I banked and slowed, tucked my wings in a bit, and started to drop.
We landed a hundred yards away. As usual, after flying for hours, my legs felt a tad rubbery. I shook them out, then folded my warm wings in tight against my body.
Nudge and Fang did the same.
We crept quietly through the woods. No signs of life. The porch was covered with pine needles, the driveway hadn’t been used, the shrubbery was way overgrown.
I gave Nudge the thumbs-up, and she smiled, though, amazingly, she stayed quiet. Bless you, child.
A quick reconnaissance revealed no alarm system I could see. No red lights blinking inside for motion detectors. This wasn’t a big fancy house worth alarming, anyway. It was just a teeny-tiny vacation cottage.
With my pocketknife I slit a window screen and unhooked the latch. The screen lifted off easily, and I set it carefully against the side of the house: A thoughtful burglar, that’s me.
Then Fang and I shook the old wooden window frame until the lock at the top jiggled open. Fang climbed in first, then I boosted Nudge in, then I scrambled in and shut the window.
Dust covered everything. The fridge was turned off, its door open. I started opening kitchen cupboards. “Bingo,” I said, holding up a dusty can of soup.
“Oh, yeah, pay dirt, woo-hoo!” Cans of beans, fruit, condensed milk, whatever that was-it sounded bad. The ever-popular ravioli. “We’re golden!”
Fang found some dusty bottles of orange soda, and we popped those suckers open. But let me tell you-there’s a reason people serve that stuff cold.
Half an hour later, we were sprawled on the musty couches, our eyes at half-mast, our bellies way too full.
“Uhhnnhh,” Nudge moaned. “I feel like, like concrete.”
“Let’s take ten, rest a bit,” Fang said, closing his eyes. He lay back against the couch and crossed his long legs. “Digest a minute, we’ll feel better.”
“I second that emotion,” I muttered, my own eyes closing. We’re coming, Angel. In a minute.
“Let’s throw all their stuff into the canyon,” Iggy said angrily, punching a door frame.
Having to listen to the rest of the flock leaving while he sat around being blind was more than he could stand. “I think even their beds would fit out the hall window.”
The Gasman scowled. “I can’t believe I have to stay home while they go off and save my own sister.”
He kicked a worn red sneaker against the kitchen island. The house seemed empty and too quiet. He found himself listening for Angel’s voice, waiting to hear her singing softly or talking to her stuffed animals. He swallowed hard. She was his sister. He was responsible for her.
An open bag of cereal lay on the counter, and he dug out a dry handful and ate it. Suddenly, he picked up the bag of cereal and hurled it at a wall. The bag split open, and Frootios sprayed everywhere.
“This sucks!” the Gasman shouted.
“Oh. did that just occur to you?” Iggy said sarcastically.
“I guess you can’t fool the Gasman. He might not look like the sharpest tool in the shed, but-“
“Shut up,” said the Gasman, and Iggy raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Look. This sucks so bad. Max left us here ’cause she thought we couldn’t keep up.”
Iggy’s face stiffened.
“But was she thinking about what would happen if the Erasers came back here?” the Gasman asked. “Like, they got Angel not far from here-they saw all the rest of us. So they know we must be somewhere in the area. Why wouldn’t they come back for us?”
“Huh,” Iggy said thoughtfully. “Course, it would be hard to find this place, and even harder to get to it.”
“Not if they have a chopper,” the Gasman pointed out. “Which they do.”
“Huh,” said Iggy, and the Gasman felt proud that he had thought of all this before Iggy had, even though Iggy was older-as old as Max and Fang. Nearly ancient.
“Does that mean we have to sit here and take it?” the Gasman asked, pounding his fist on the counter. “No! We don’t have to wait for the Erasers to come get us! We can do stuff! We can make plans. I mean, we’re not useless, no matter what Max thinks.”
“Right,” said Iggy, nodding. He came to sit next to the Gasman at the counter, his feet crunching over dry cereal. “Yeah, I see what you mean. So to speak.”
“I mean, we’re smart! We’re tough as nails! Max might not have thought about keeping the camp safe, but we did, and we can do it.”
“Yeah, now you’re talking. Uhhh… But how?”
“We could make traps! Do sabotage! Bombs!” The Gasman rubbed his hands together.
Iggy grinned. “Bombs are good. I love bombs. Remember the one from last fall? I almost caused an avalanche.”
“That was to make a trail through the woods. Okay. There was a reason for it. Max approved it.” The Gasman pawed through a hill of ancient newspapers, piles of junk, someone’s old socks, a long-forgotten bowl that had once held some sort of food substance-oops-until he found a slightly oil-stained memo pad.
“Knew it was around here,” he muttered, ripping off used sheets. A similar search revealed part of a pencil. “Now. We need a great plan. What are our objectives?”
Iggy groaned. “Oh, no-years of Max influence are taking their toll. You sound just like her. You’re, like, a Maxlet. A Maxketeer. A… a…”
The Gasman frowned at Iggy and started writing. “Number one: Make firebombs-for our protection only. Number two: Blow up demonic Erasers when they return.” He held the paper up and reread it, then smiled. “Oh, yeah. Now we’re getting somewhere. This is for you, Angel!”
Angel knew she couldn’t go on like this much longer.
Her lungs had started burning bad an hour ago; she hadn’t been able to feel her leg muscles for longer than that. But every time she stopped running, a sadistic whitecoat-Reilly-zapped her with a stick thing. It jolted electricity into her, making her yelp and jump. She had four burn marks from it already, and they really, really hurt. What was worse was she could feel his eager anticipation-he wanted to hurt her.
Well, he could zap her a thousand million times, if he wanted. This was it-she couldn’t go on.
It was a relief to let go. Angel saw the whole world narrow down to a little fuzzy tube in front of her, and then even that went gray. She sort of felt herself falling, felt her feet tangle in the treadmill belt. The zap came, once, twice, three times, but it felt distant, more an unpleasant stinging than real pain. Then Angel was lost, lost in a dream, and Max was there. Max was stroking her sweaty hair and crying.
Angel knew it was a dream because Max never cried. Max was the strongest person she knew. Not that she had known that many people.
Ripping sounds and a new, searing pain on her skin pulled Angel back. She blinked into white lights. Hospital lights, prison lights. She smelled that awful smell and almost retched. Hands were pulling off all the electrodes taped to her skin, rip, rip, rip.
“Oh, my God, three and a half hours,” Reilly was murmuring. “And its heart rate only increased by seventeen percent. And then at the end-it was only in the last, like, twenty minutes that its peak oxygen levels broke.”
It! Angel thought and wanted to scream. I’m not an it!
“I can’t believe we’ve got a chance to study Subject Eleven. I’ve been wanting to dissect this recombinant for four years,” another low voice said. “Interesting intelligence levels-I can’t wait to get a brain sample.”
Angel felt their admiration, their crummy pleasure. They liked all the things wrong with her, all the ways she wasn’t normal. And all those stupid long words added up to one thing: Angel was an experiment. To the whitecoats, she was a piece of science equipment, like a test tube. She was an it.
Someone put a straw into her mouth. Water. She started swallowing quick-she was so thirsty, like she’d been eating sand. Then another whitecoat scooped her up. She was too tired to fight.
I have to think of how to get out of here, she reminded herself, but thoughts were really hard to string together right now.
Someone opened the door of her dog crate and flopped her inside. Angel lay where she fell-at least she was lying down. She just had to sleep for a while. Then she would try to escape.
Wearily, she blinked and saw the fish boy staring at her. The other boy was gone. Poor little guy had been gone this morning, hadn’t come back. Might not.
Not me, Angel thought. I’m gonna fight. Right… after…I… rest.
“Unhhh…”
This bed was horrible! What was wrong with my bed?
Irritated, I punched my pillow into a better shape, then started sneezing hysterically as clouds of dust sailed up my nose.
“Wah, ah, ah, choo!” I grabbed my nose in an attempt to keep some of my brains inside my head, but the sudden movement caused me to lose my balance, and with no warning I fell hard to the floor. Crash!
“Ouch! Son of a gu-” I scrambled to get up. My hands hit rough upholstery and the edge of a table. Okay, now I was lost. Prying open my bleary eyes, I peered around. “What the…”
Where was I? I looked around wildly. I was in a… cabin. A cabin! Ohhh. A cabin. Right, right.
It was oh-dark-thirty-not yet dawn.
I leaped to my feet, scanned the room, and saw nothing to be alarmedabout.Except for the fact that obviously, Fang, Nudge, and I had just wasted precious hours sleeping!
Oh, my God. I hurried over to Nudge, who was sprawled across a recliner. “Nudge! Nudge! Wake up! Oh, man…”
I turned to Fang, to find him swinging his feet over the edge of a couch. He sneezed and shook his head.
“What time is it?” he asked calmly.
“Almost morning!” I said, terribly upset. “Of the next day!”
He was already moving toward the kitchen cupboards. He’d found an ancient, stained backpack in a closet, and now he methodically started to fill it with cans of tuna, sealed bags of crackers, zip-locked bags of trail mix.
“Wha’s happ’nin’?” Nudge asked, blinking groggily.
“We fell asleep!” I told her, grabbing her hands and pulling her upright. “Come on! We’ve gotta go!”
Dropping to all fours, I raked my shoes out from under the couch and blew dust bunnies off them. “Fang, you can’t carry all that,” I said. “It’ll weigh you down. Nothing’s heavier than cans.”
Fang shrugged and pulled the backpack on. Stubborn kind of fella. He moved soundlessly across the room and slipped through the window like a shadow.
Now I was jamming Nudge’s shoes onto her feet, rubbing her back, trying to wake her up. Nudge was always a reaaallly slow waker. Usually I appreciated the lack of word-spew, which would begin when she was fully functioning, but right now we needed to move, move, move!
I practically threw Nudge through the window, slithered out myself, then propped the screen back in place as best I could.
A quick run down a country road and we were off, stroking hard, pushing to get airborne.
Sorry, Angel. Sorry, sorry, sorry, my baby.
Okay. Despite the imminent sunrise, I felt better once we were flying above the treetops.
But still! How stupid was that? What kind of a loser was I, to let us fall asleep in the middle of a freaking rescue! I thought about Angel waiting for us, and my heart clenched. With a sense of dread, I banked and set us going about ten, twelve degrees southwest. Anxiety fueled my wings, and I had to remember to find good air currents, set my wings at an angle, and coast when I could.
“We had to rest,” Fang said, coming up beside me.
I shot him an upset glance. “For ten hours?”
“Today we’ve got another four hours to go, maybe a bit more,” he said. “We couldn’t have done it in one shot. It was late when we left. We’re going to have to stop again anyway, right before we get there, and refuel.”
There’s nothing more annoying than cold logic and reason when you’ve got a good fit going.
Fang was right, of course-sigh-and of course we’d have to stop again. We hadn’t even hit the California border yet. Far from it.
“We going to storm the place or what?” Fang asked an hour later.
“Yeah, Max, I was wondering what your plan was,” said Nudge, coming up alongside. “I mean, there’s only three of us, and a whole bunch of them. And the Erasers have guns. Could we, like, drive a truck through the gates? Or even into a building? Or maybe we could wait till nightfall, sneak in, and sneak out with Angel before anyone notices us.”
That crazy thought cheered her up. I kept silent-I didn’t have the heart to tell her we had about as much chance of that as we did of flying to the moon. But if worse came to worst, I had a secret Plan C.
If it worked, everyone would escape and get free.
Except me. But that was okay.
Despite my growing anxiety, it was glorious up here. Not many birds flew this high-some falcons, hawks, other raptors. Every once in a while some of them would come check us out, probably thinking, Man, those are some dang ugly birds.
This high up, the land below took on a checkerboard effect of Robin Hoodsy greens and browns. Cars looked like busy ants moving purposefully down their trails. Every once in a while I picked something small down below and focused on it. It was cool how some little tiny thing, like a swimming pool, a tractor, whatever, would ratchet into focus. At least those maniacs at the School hadn’t had time to “improve” my vision like they improved Iggy’s.
“Gosh, I wonder what Iggy and the Gasman are doing now?” Nudge babbled. “Maybe they got the TV working again. I hope they don’t feel too bad. It would have-I mean, I guess it’s kind of easier for them to be home. But I bet they’re not cleaning up or getting wood or doing any of their chores.”
I bet they’re cursing my name from dawn to dusk. But at least they’re safe. Absently, I chose a flickering shape below and focused on it, watching a small blob become people, take on features, clothing, individuality. It was a group of kids, maybe my age, maybe older. Who couldn’t be more unlike me.
Well, so what? I thought. They were just boring kids, stuck on the ground, doing homework. With bedtimes and a million grown-ups telling them what to do, how to do everything, all the time. Alarm clocks and school and afternoon jobs. Those poor saps. While we were, free, free, free. Soaring through the air like rockets. Being cradled by breezes. Doing whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted.
Pretty good, huh? I almost convinced myself.
I glanced down again and refocused. Then I scowled. What had, at first glance, looked like just a bunch of boring, earthbound kids schlepping to school together now turned, upon closer examination, into what looked like several big kids surrounding a much smaller kid. Okay, maybe I’m paranoid, danger everywhere, but I could swear the bigger kids looked really threatening.
The bigger kids were boys. The smaller kid in the middle was a girl.
Coincidence? I think not.
Don’t even get me started about the whole Y chromosome thing. I live with three guys, remember? They’re three of the good ones, and they’re still obnoxious as all get-out.
I made one of my famous snap decisions, the kind that everyone remembers later for being either the stupidest dumb-butt thing they ever saw or else the miraculous saving of the day. I seemed to hear more about the first kind. That’s gratitude for you.
I turned to Fang and barely opened my mouth.
“No,” he said.
My eyes narrowed…I opened my mouth again.
“No.”
“Meet me at the northernmost point of Lake Mead,” I said.
“What? What are you talking about?” Nudge asked. “Are we stopping? I’m hungry again.”
“Max wants to go be Supergirl, defender of the weak,” Fang said, sounding irritated.
“Oh.” Nudge looked down, frowning at the ground as if it would all become clear soon.
I had started a wide circle that would take me back toward the girl below. I kept thinking, What if that girl was in trouble, like Angel, and no one stopped to help her?
“Oh! Max, remember when you got that little rabbit away from the fox, and we kept it in a carton in the kitchen, and then when it was well you let it go? That was cool.” Nudge paused. “Did you see another rabbit?”
“Kind of,” I said, my patience starting to wear thin. “It’ll take two seconds.”
I told Fang, “I’ll catch up with you guys before you’ve gone forty miles. Just keep on course, and if anything weird happens, I’ll meet you at Lake Mead.”
Fang stared ahead, the wind whipping through his hair. He hated this, I knew.
Well, you can’t please everybody all the time.
“Okay,” I said briskly. “See you in a few.”
The thing about Iggy was, well, sometimes he could figure stuff out like a real scientist. He was that supersmart, scary smart.
“Do we have any chlorine?” the Gasman asked Iggy. “It seems to be kind of explosive when mixed with other stuff.”
Iggy frowned. “Like what, your socks? No, we don’t have chlorine. No swimming pool. What color is this wire?”
The Gasman leaned over and examined the tangled pile of stereo guts spread out on the kitchen table. “It looks like a robot came in here and threw up,” he observed. “That wire’s yellow.”
“Okay. Keep track of the yellow wire. Very important. Do not confuse it with the red one.”
The Gasman consulted the schematics he had downloaded off the Internet. This morning Iggy had unfrozen the compressor fan inside the CPU, so the computer now worked without shutting down in hysteria every ten minutes. He had just fixed the computer, presto change-o.
“Okey dokey,” Gazzy muttered, flipping through pages. “Next step, we need some kind of timing device.”
Iggy thought for a moment. Then he smiled. Even his eyes seemed to smile.
“Well, that’s an evil grin,” Gasser said uneasily.
“Go get me Max’s alarm clock. The Mickey Mouse one.”
I landed a bit hard and had to run really fast to keep from doing a total face plant. I was somewhere in Arizona, trotting through scrubby brush behind a deserted warehouse. I pulled my wings in, feeling them fold, hot from exercise, into a tight accordion on either side of my spine. I tied my windbreaker around my neck. There. Perfectly normal looking.
When I rounded the corner of the warehouse, I saw that there were three guys, maybe fifteen, sixteen years old. The girl looked younger, maybe twelve or so.
“I told you not to tell anybody about my little situation with Ortiz,” one boy was yelling at her. “It was none of your business. I had to teach him a lesson.”
The girl bit her lip, looking angry and scared. “By beating him up? He looks like he got hit by a car. And he didn’t do anything to you,” she said, and I thought, You go, girl.
“He mouthed off to me. He exists. He breathes my air.” said the guy, and his jerk friends laughed meanly. God, what creeps. Armed creeps. One of them was holding a shotgun loosely in the crook of his arm. America, right to bear arms, yada, yada, yada. How old were these yahoos? Did their parents know they had guns?
It gets so tiring, this strong-picking-on-the-weak stuff. It was the story of my life-literally-and it seemed to be a big part of the outside world too. I was sick of it, sick of guys like these, stupid and bullying.
I stepped out from beside the building. The girl saw me, and her eyes flicked in surprise. It was enough. The guys wheeled to look behind them.
Just another stupid girl, they thought, relieved. Their eyes lingered a moment on my scratched face, my black eye, but they didn’t keep watching me. Mistake number one.
“So, Ella, what have you got to say for yourself?” the lead guy taunted. “Is there any reason I shouldn’t teach you a lesson too?”
“Three guys against one girl. That seems about even,” I said, striding up. It was hard to keep the fury off my face. My blood was singing with it.
“Shut up, chick,” one of the boys snapped. “You better get out of here if you know what’s good for you.”
“Can’t,” I said, walking to stand next to the girl named Ella. She looked at me in alarm. “Actually, I think kicking your stupid butts would be good for me.”
They laughed. Mistake number two.
Like the rest of the flock, I’m much stronger than even a grown man-genetic engineering at work. And all of us had been trained in self-defense by Jeb. I had skills. Until yesterday, I’d never had to use them. If I could just get Ella out of here…
“Grab Big Mouth,” said the head guy, and the other two moved to flank me.
Which made mistake number three. Bam, you’re out.
I moved fast, fast, fast. With no warning, I snapped a high kick right into the lead jerk’s chest. A blow that would have only knocked Fang’s breath away actually seemed to snap a rib on this guy. I heard the crack, and the guy choked, looking shocked, and fell backward.
The remaining guys rushed me at once. I whirled and grabbed the shotgun out of one’s hands. Holding its barrel, I swung it in a wide arc against the side of his head. Crack! Stunned, he staggered sideways as a bright red flow of blood streamed from his scalp.
I glanced over and saw Ella still standing there, looking afraid. I hoped not of me.
“Run!” I yelled at her. “Get out of here!” After a moment of hesitation, she turned and ran, leaving a little cloud of red dust behind her.
The third grabbed my arm, and I yanked it loose, then swung and punched him, aiming for his chin but hitting his nose. I winced-oops-feeling his nose break, and there was a slow-motion pause of about a second before it started gushing blood. Jeezum-humans were like eggshells.
The bullyboys were a mess. But still they staggered to their feet, rage and humiliation twisting their ugly faces. One of them picked up his gun and cocked it, favoring his right arm.
“You’re gonna be so sorry,” he promised, spitting blood out of his mouth and starting toward me.
“Bet I won’t,” I said. Then I turned tail and raced for the woods as fast as I could.
Of course, if I could have taken off, I’d have been a little speck in the sky by then. But T couldn’t let those yoyos see my wings, and within seconds I was in the woods anyway.
I ran through the underbrush, smacking branches out of my way, glad I was wearing shoes. I had no idea where I was going.
Behind me I could hear a couple of the bozos yelling, swearing, threatening. I wanted to laugh but couldn’t spare the time. I was steadily increasing the distance between us.
Then I heard a loud bang! from the shotgun, and tree bark exploded around my head. That stupid gun.
Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking? Are you wondering if I noticed the similarities between this asinine situation and my dream? Well, yeah. I’m not an idiot. As to what it all meant, well, I’ll work on that later.
In the next second, there was another bang, and almost simultaneously a sudden, searing pain in my left shoulder. I gasped and glanced over to see blood blossoming on my sleeve. That idiot had actually hit me!
Then sheer bad luck made me instantly trip over a tree root, fall on my hurt shoulder, and slide crazily down a steep slope, through bushes, underbrush, vines, and rocks. I tried to grab anything, but my left arm couldn’t move well, and my right hand scrabbled uselessly.
Finally, I tumbled to a stop at the bottom of an overgrown ravine. Looking up, I saw only green: I was covered by vines and shrubs.
I lay very still, trying to catch my breath, trying to think. Far above me, I heard the wild boys yelling and shooting again. They sounded like elephants crashing through the woods, and I tracked them clearly as they ran right past where I fell.
I felt like an ogre had just beaten me all over with a club. I could barely move my left arm, and it hurt like fire. I tried to stretch out my wing, only to suck my breath in hard as I found out it had been hit too. I couldn’t see it well over my shoulder, but my big clue was the screaming pain.
I was scraped all over, had lost my windbreaker, and, if I wasn’t mistaken, I was sitting in a patch of poison ivy.
Slowly, I stood up, smothering gasps of pain. I had to get out of here. I checked the sun and started working my way north. I swallowed a groan as I realized that Nudge and Fang were no doubt wondering where the heck I was.
I had messed up big-time. Angel was waiting for me too-if she was still alive. I had let them all down.
On top of it, I was hurt pretty bad and had gun-toting maniacs after me. Crap.
I scowled. It’s in my nature to fight for the underdog. Jeb had always told me it was my fatal flaw.
Jeb had been right.
“Fang? I’m really hungry, you know?” It had been almost an hour since Max had left them. Nudge still didn’t understand exactly what had happened, where Max had gone.
Fang nodded curtly, then motioned with his head. Nudge banked slightly and followed him.
They were coming up on some cliffs, flat on top and made of striated rock. Fang headed toward a shadowy indentation, and Nudge started backpedaling to slow down for a landing. This close, the indentation turned into a broad, shallow cave, and Nudge ducked a bit as she set down inside.
Fang landed almost silently beside her.
The cave went maybe fifteen feet in and was about twenty feet wide, tapering at both ends. The floor was sandy and dry, and Nudge sat down thankfully.
Fang took off his backpack and started handing her food.
“Oh, yes, yes,” Nudge said, ripping open a bag of dried fruit.
Fang waved a chocolate bar in front of her, and she squealed happily. “Oh, Fang, where did you find this? You must have been hiding it-you didn’t say anything, and all this time you’ve had chocolate, and oh, God, it’s so good…”
Fang gave her a little smile and sat down. He bit into his chocolate and closed his dark eyes for a few moments, chewing slowly.
“So where’s Max?” Nudge asked a few minutes later. “Why’d she go down there? Shouldn’t she be back by now? Aren’t we supposed to go all the way to Lake Mead? What are we gonna do if she doesn’t come back soon-” She stopped when Fang held up his hand.
“Max saw someone in trouble, down below, and went to help,” he said in his quiet, deliberate voice. “We’ll wait here for her; Lake Mead is right below us.”
Nudge worried. Every second counted. So why were they stuck here? What was Max doing that was more important than Angel? She finished her last dried apricot and looked around.
Okay, now that Fang mentioned it, she could see the blue edge of Lake Mead off to her left. Nudge stood up; her head barely touched the ceiling. Their cave had a fairly wide ledge on either side of it, and she walked out on the left ledge to see the lake better.
She froze. “Uh, Fang?”
Fang came out next to Nudge, then stood perfectly still. The ledge curved upward toward the top of the cliff. Thin, scrubby plants dotted the area, and boulders stuck out of hard-packed clay and rock.
In and among the rocks and plants were large nests, each about two feet across. Most of the nests had large fuzzy fledglings in them, and most of the fledglings had larger rust-colored parents, and most of the parents were staring tensely at Nudge and Fang with cold predators’ eyes.
“What are they?” Nudge whispered out the side of her mouth.
“Ferruginous hawks,” Fang said softly. “Largest raptor in the States. Sit down, very slowly. No sudden movements or we’re both bird feed.”
Okaaaay, Nudge thought, gradually sinking to her knees. She wanted to turn and run but guessed if she did, she might be attacked. The few talons she could see looked lethal. Not to mention the severe beaks, sharply curved and mean looking.
“Do you think-” she began softly, but Fang motioned for her to be quiet, very quiet.
He lowered himself next to her, his eyes on the birds. One of the hawks had a partially dismembered gopher in its mouth. Its fledglings were squawking loudly for it.
After several minutes, Nudge felt like she needed to scream. She hated sitting still, had a million things to ask, didn’t know how much longer she could take this inaction.
A small movement caught her eye. Fang was very slowly extending one of his wings.
Every hawk head swiveled in unison, their eyes focusing on the wing like lasers.
“I’m letting them catch my scent.” Fang’s lips barely moved.
What felt like a year later, the hawks seemed to relax a bit. They were huge, with an almost five-foot wingspan, and looked cold and powerful. On top, their wing feathers were mostly brown with russet streaks, and they were streaked with white below. Not unlike Nudge’s own wings, except hers were so much bigger, twice as big.
Some hawks went back to feeding their noisy offspring, others left in search of food, still others returned with dinner.
“Eew,” Nudge couldn’t help whispering when one hawk brought back a still-wriggling snake. The fledglings were excited to see it and practically climbed over one another trying to get the first bite. “Double eew.”
Fang turned his head slowly and grinned at her. Nudge was so surprised that she smiled back.
This was pretty cool. She was itchy to leave, wished Max would show up soon, and she wished they had more food, but all the same, it was pretty awesome to sit here in the sun, surrounded by huge, beautiful birds, her own wings stretched out and resting. She guessed it couldn’t hurt to do this for a little bit longer.
But not that long.
“Angel’s waiting for us,” Nudge said a bit later. “I mean, she’s like a little sister, like everyone’s little sister.”
She brushed some rock dust off her already dusty tan legs and scowled, picking at a scab on her knee. “At night, when we’re supposed to be asleep, me and Angel talk and tell jokes and stuff.” Her large brown eyes met Fang’s. “I mean, am I going to have to sleep in that room alone, whenever we get home? Max has to come back. She wouldn’t let Angel go, right?”
“No,” said Fang. “She won’t let Angel go. Look-you see how that big hawk, the one with the dark stripe on its shoulders-you see how he seems to move one wing faster than the other when he banks? It makes his bank really tight and smooth. We should try it.”
Nudge looked at him. That was probably the longest speech she’d ever heard Fang make.
She turned to watch the hawk he’d pointed out. “Yeah, I see what you mean.” But she’d barely finished before Fang had stood up, run lightly toward the edge of the cliff, and leaped off. His large, powerful dark wings caught the air and swooped him up. Fang flew closer to where the other hawks were circling in a kind of hawk ballet.
Nudge sighed. She really, really wished Max were here. Was Max hurt? Should they go back? She would ask Fang when he returned.
Just then he swept past her, level with their cave. “Come on!” he called. “Try it! You’ll fly better.”
Nudge sighed again and brushed some chocolate crumbs off her shirt. Wasn’t he worried about Angel? If he was, he probably wouldn’t show it, she guessed. But she knew Fang loved Angel-he’d read to her before she learned how to read, and even now he still held her when she was upset about something.
Well, I might as well practice too. Better than sitting around doing nothing. She flung herself off the cliff, unable to keep a bittersweet happiness from flooding her chest. It just felt so-beautiful, to float in the air, to move her wings strongly and feel herself glide freely through space.
She flew alongside Fang, and he demonstrated the move for her. She watched him and imitated it. It worked great.
She flew in huge circles, practicing the move and flying closer to the hawks, who seemed to be tolerating her. As long as she didn’t think about Max or Angel, she would be okay.
That evening Nudge lay on her stomach, her wings flat out around her, and watched the parent hawks grooming their young. They were so gentle, so attentive. These fierce, strong birds were carefully smoothing their fledglings’ mottled white feathers, feeding them, helping them get out of the nest to practice flying.
A lump came to her throat. She sniffled.
“What?” said Fang.
“These birds,” said Nudge, wiping her eyes and feeling stupid. “Like, these dumb hawks have more of a mom than I ever had. The parents are taking care of the little ones. No one ever did that for me. Well, besides Max. But she’s not a mom.”
“Yeah. I get it.” Fang didn’t look at her. His voice almost sounded sad.
The sun set, and the hawks settled down in their nests. Finally, the raucous fledglings quieted. When it had been dark for an hour, Fang edged closer to Nudge and held out his left hand in a fist. Nudge looked up at him, then stacked her left fist on top of his. It was something the flock always did together before bedtime.
Except they hadn’t done it when they’d fallen asleep in that cabin last night. And now it was just the two of them.
Nudge tapped his fist with her right hand, and he tapped hers.
“Night,” she whispered, feeling as if everything she cared about had been ripped away from her. Silently, she curled up against the wall of the cave.
“Night, Nudge,” whispered Fang.
Oh, man. This was not the best day I’d ever had. My shoulder was still bleeding a bit, even though I’d been pressing on it for hours. Every time I jostled it, warm blood oozed through my fingers.
I hadn’t run into the gun-carrying clowns again, but I’d heard them off and on. I’d been working my way north in a big arc, trying to weave a confusing trail for whoever might be following me. Every time I heard them, I froze for endless minutes, trying to blend in with the brush.
Then, cramped and stiffening, I would painstakingly start again. In case they brought dogs, I’d splashed through streams at least four times, and let me tell you, trying to keep your balance on moss-covered rocks in icy water with a hurt shoulder is no picnic.
I’d felt around on my shoulder and wing, and as far as I could tell, the shot had just scooped out a trail of flesh and wing but hadn’t actually lodged inside. Whatever-my arm and wing felt useless and they hurt awfully.
It was getting late. Angel was somewhere hours away, being subjected to God knows what horror, wondering where I was. I pressed my lips together, trying not to cry. I couldn’t fly, couldn’t catch up to Fang and Nudge, who were probably furious by now. It wasn’t like I could call their cell phones or anything.
This situation totally sucked, and it was 100 percent my own stupid fault, which made it suck even worse.
Then, of course, it started pouring rain.
So now I was slogging my way through wet woods, wet brush, red clay mud, wiping water out of my eyes, getting more chilled and more miserable and more hungry and more insanely furious at myself.
I hadn’t heard the guys in a long time-they had probably gone home to get out of the rain.
A minute later I blinked and wiped my eyes. I squinted. There were lights ahead.
If it was a store or shed, I could wait till everyone left and then hole up for the night. Soon I was only ten yards away, hunching down in the darkness, peering through the wet trees. It was a house.
A figure passed a window, and my eyebrows raised. It was that girl, Ella. This must be her house.
I bit my lip. She probably lived here with her two doting parents and her 1.6 siblings. How nice for her. Anyway, I was glad she had gotten home safe. Despite everything, if I had let those horrible guys beat her up, I never would have forgiven myself.
I shivered hard, feeling the icy rain run down my back. I was about to fall over. What to do here, get a plan…
I was still waiting for a brilliant inspiration when the side door of the house opened. Ella came out holding a huge umbrella. A shadow moved at her feet. It was a dog, a low-to-the-ground, fat dog.
“Come on, Magnolia,” Ella called. “Make it fast. You don’t want to get too wet.”
The dog started sniffing around the edge of their yard, snuffling in the weeds, oblivious to the rain. Ella turned and walked up and down, twirling her umbrella, scanning her yard. Her back was to me.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. I don’t know who first said that, but they were right on the money. I took a deep breath, then very, very quietly, began to move toward Ella.
Okay, two more blood samples and the glucose assay will be done. Then we can do the EEGs.
Why isn’t this over? Where are you, Max? Angel thought sadly as the whitecoat approached. The front of Angel’s dog crate opened, and a guy knelt down and peered in at her. She pressed herself against the back as hard as she could.
He reached in to grab her hand, where the shunt was, and noticed her face. He turned back to his fellow white-coats. “What happened to it?”
“It bit Reilly earlier,” someone said. “He hit it.”
Angel tried to pull herself into a tight little ball. The whole left side of her face throbbed. But she was glad she’d bitten him. She hated him. Hated all of them.
Stupid Reilly. Guy should work in a car wash. If he wrecks this specimen, I’ll kill him.
“Doesn’t he realize how unique this subject is?” the whitecoat said angrily. “I mean, this is Subject Eleven. Does he know how long we’ve been looking for it? You tell Reilly not to damage the merchandise.”
He reached in and tried to take Angel’s hand again.
Angel didn’t know what she should do. The plastic shunt on the back of her hand hurt, and she’d cradled it against her chest. All day she’d had nothing to eat or drink, and then they’d made her drink some horrible, sickly sweet orange stuff. They’d taken blood from her arm, but she’d fought them and bit that one guy. So they’d put a shunt in the back of her hand to make taking blood easier. They’d drawn her blood three times already.
Angel felt near tears but clenched her jaw.
Slowly, she uncoiled herself a tiny bit and edged closer to the opening. She stretched her hand toward the lab guy.
“That’s it,” he said soothingly, and pulled out a needle with a test tube attached. He undipped the stop on the shunt and pushed the needle in. “This won’t hurt. Honest.”
Angel turned away, keeping her back to him, that one hand stretched away from her.
It didn’t take long, and it didn’t hurt. Maybe he was a good whitecoat-like Jeb. And maybe the moon was made out of cream cheese.
“Okay,” said Iggy. “We’re being very careful. Hello? Gazzy? We’re being very careful?”
“Check,” said the Gasman, patting the explosive package they called Big Boy.
“Nails?”
The Gasman rattled the jar. “Check.”
“Tarp? Cooking oil?”
“Check, check.” The Gasman nodded. “We are geniuses. Those Erasers’ll never know what hit ‘em. If only we had time to dig a pit.”
“Yeah, and put poison stakes at the bottom,” Iggy agreed. “But I think what we’ve got is good. Now we need to fly out, stay out of sight, and check on how the roads run, and whether the Erasers have made camp anywhere.”
“Okay. Then we can seed the roads with the nails and set up the tarp and oil.” The Gasman grinned. “We just have to make sure not to get caught.”
“Yes. That would be bad,” Iggy said with a straight face. “Now, is it night yet?”
“Pretty much. I found you some dark clothes.” The Gasman pressed a shirt and pants into Iggy’s hands. “And I’ve got some too. So, you ready to roll?” He hoped Iggy couldn’t hear how nervous he was. This was a great plan; they had to do it-but failure would be disastrous. And probably deadly.
“Yeah. I’m bringing Big Boy in case an opportunity arises.” Iggy changed his clothes, then put their homemade bomb into a backpack and slung it onto his shoulders. “Don’t worry,” he said, as if he could see the Gasman’s expression. “It can’t go off till I set the timer. It’s, like, a safety bomb.”
The Gasman tried to smile. He cranked open the hall window as wide as it would go and perched on the ledge. His palms were sweating, and his stomach was all flut-tery. But he had no choice-this was for Angel. This was to show people what would happen if they messed with his family.
He swallowed hard and launched himself out into the night air. It was amazing, to be able to spread his wings and fly. It was great. As he felt the night wind against his face, the Gasman’s spirits rose. He felt strong, powerful, and dangerous. Not at all like an eight-year-old mutant freak.
“Um, Ella?”
The girl stiffened and jumped back.
I stepped forward a bit, out of the underbrush, so she could see my face. “It’s me,” I said, feeling even stupider. “The girl from before.”
It was getting dark and still raining, and I hoped she could recognize me. The dog trotted over, saw me, and gave a halfhearted woof of warning.
“Oh, yeah. Hey, thanks-for helping me,” said Ella, squinting at me through the rain. “Are you okay? What are you doing?” She sounded wary and glanced around, like maybe in the time since she’d last seen me I had gone over to the side of evil.
“I’m okay,” I said lamely. “Well, actually, I guess I need help.” Those words had never left my lips before. Thank God Jeb wasn’t here to see me doing something so incredibly boneheaded and weak.
“Oh,” said Ella. “Gosh. Okay. Did those guys…”
“One of them managed to clip me with some shot, if you can believe that,” I said, inching closer.
Ella gasped and put her hand over her mouth. “Oh, no! Why didn’t you tell me? You’re hurt? Why didn’t you go to the hospital? Oh, my gosh, come on in!”
She stepped back to give me room and urged Magnolia, who had lumbered over and started sniffing my wet clothes with interest, away from me.
Guess what. I hesitated. Here was the moment of decision. Until I stepped into that house, I could still turn and run, escape. Once I was in that house, it would be much harder. Call it a little quirk of my personality, but I tend to freak out if I feel trapped anywhere. We all do-the flock, I mean. Living in a cage during your formative years can do that.
But I was honest enough with myself to know that I really couldn’t go on like this-wet, cold, starving, and a little wonky from loss of blood. I had to suck it up and accept help. From strangers.
“Are your parents home?” I asked.
“There’s just my mom,” said Ella. “No dad. Come on, let’s get you inside. My mom can help. Magnolia, here, girl.” Ella turned and strode toward the house. She clomped up wooden steps, then turned and looked for me. “Can you walk okay?”
“Uh-huh.” Slowly, I headed toward Ella’s small house, which was glowing with warmth and light. I felt light-headed and panicky. This could be the last huge mistake in a long line of huge mistakes I had already made today.
I cradled my hurt arm with my good one.
“Oh, my God-is that blood?” Ella said, staring at my pale blue sweatshirt. “Oh, no, come on, we have to get you inside quick!” She shoved the door open with her shoulder, almost tripping on Magnolia, who trotted in quickly. “Mom! Mom! This girl needs help!”
I felt frozen. Stay or run. Stay or run. Stay?
“You think that wire will hold?” the Gasman whispered.
Iggy nodded, frowning as he twisted the two cable ends together with pliers. He leaned against a pine tree for leverage, and when the wire was tight, he snapped on a cable clamp and pinched it shut. “That’ll hold a bit,” he whispered back. “Until a certain Hummer hits it at top speed.”
The Gasman nodded grimly. What a night. They had gotten so much done-Max couldn’t have done better herself. He hoped Max had already rescued Angel by now. He hoped nothing had gone wrong. If the whitecoats had gotten hold of Angel… For just an instant he saw her, white and lifeless, laid on a cold steel slab while whitecoats lectured about her unusual bone structure. He swallowed and shook the dreadful image off. Once more, he glanced around, listening.
“Back home?” Iggy whispered.
“Yeah.” Standing up, the Gasman pushed off from the ground, staying close to the trees. He followed Iggy’s dark shadow as he braked and headed back west, toward home. From up here, the Gasman couldn’t see any of their handiwork-which was a good thing. They didn’t want the Erasers’ chopper to be able to pick out the tarp or the trip wire until it was too late.
“We covered the ways in and out,” he said to Iggy once they were at cruising height. “Oil slick, nails in the road, trip wire. That should do it.”
Iggy nodded. “I’m bummed we couldn’t use Big Boy,” he said. “But I don’t want to waste it. We have to actually see them first. I mean, you do.”
“Maybe tomorrow,” the Gasman said encouragingly. “We’ll go out and see what havoc we’ve wreaked.”
“Wrought,” said Iggy.
“Whatever,” said the Gasman, breathing deeply in the cool night air. Wait till Max found out how cool they had been.
A dark-haired woman with worried eyes opened the door wider. “What is it, Ella? What’s wrong?”
“Mom, this is-” Ella stopped, her hand in midair.
“Max,” I said. Why didn’t I give a fake name? Because I didn’t think of it.
“My friend Max. She’s the girl I told you about, the one who saved me from Jose and Dwayne and them. She saved me. But they shot her.”
“Oh, no!” exclaimed Ella’s mother. “Please, Max, come in. Do you want me to call your parents?”
I stood on the doormat, reluctant to drip rain, and blood, on their floor. “Um…”
Then Ella’s mom saw my bloodstained sweatshirt, and her eyes flew to my face. My cheek was scratched, one eye was black. The whole situation changed in that instant.
“Let me get my stuff,” she said gently. “Take off your shoes and go with Ella to the bathroom.”
I sloshed down the hallway in my wet socks. “What stuff is she going to get?” I whispered.
Ella turned on a light and ushered me into an old-fashioned bathroom with green tiles and a rust ring around the sink drain.
“Her doctor stuff,” Ella whispered back. “She’s a vet, so she’s good with injuries. Even on people.”
A vet! I started laughing weakly and had to sit down on the edge of the tub. A vet. Wait till they found out how appropriate that was.
Ella’s mom came in with a plastic box of first aid supplies. “Ella, maybe you could get Max some juice or something. She probably needs some sugar and fluids.”
“Juice would be great,” I said with feeling.
Ella nodded and hurried down the hall.
“I take it you don’t want me to call your parents?” Ella’s mom said softly, starting to cut away the neck of my sweatshirt.
“Uh, no.” Hello, lab? May I speak to a test tube, please?
“Or the police, either, right?”
“No need to get them involved,” I agreed, then I sucked in my breath as her gentle fingers found the wound on my upper arm. “I think the bullet only grazed me.”
“Yes, I think you’re right, but it’s pretty deep and messy. And over here-” I sat frozen, staring straight ahead, as all my senses tensed. I was taking a huge risk here. You have no idea how huge. I had never, ever let someone outside the flock see my wings. But this was one situation I couldn’t fix by myself. I hated that.
Ella’s mom frowned slightly. She finished cutting the neck and then stretched the shirt off, leaving me in my tank top. I sat there like a statue, feeling a chilled coldness inside that had nothing to do with being wet.
“Here.” Ella handed me a big glass of orange juice. I practically choked, trying to drink it down as fast as possible. Oh, my God, it was so good.
“What’s-” Ella’s mom said, her fingers skimming along the edge of my wing where it folded and tucked into an indentation next to my spine, between my shoulder and my waist. She leaned over to see better.
I stared at my wet socks, my toes clenching.
She turned me slightly, and I let her.
“Max.” Her dark brown eyes were concerned, tired, and upset, all at once. “Max, what is this?” she asked gently, touching the feathers that were just barely visible.
I swallowed hard, knowing that I had just lost any hope for a normal connection with Ella and her mom. In my mind I reviewed the house layout: a right down the hall, a quick left, and through the front door. It would take only a few seconds. I could do it. I could probably grab my boots on the way out too.
“It’s a… wing,” I whispered. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ella frown. “My, um, wing.” Silence. “It got hurt too.”
I took a deep breath, feeling like I was going to hurl, then slowly and painfully extended my wing just a bit, so Ella’s mom could see where I’d been shot.
Their eyes widened. And widened. And widened. Until I began to expect them to just pop out and land on the floor.
“Wha’…” Ella began wonderingly.
Her mom leaned over and examined it more closely. Amazingly, she was trying to act casual, like, oh, okay, you have a wing. No biggie.
I was practically hyperventilating, feeling lightheaded and kind of tunnel-visiony.
“Yeah, your wing got hit too,” Ella’s mom murmured, extending it ever so gently. “I think the shot nicked a bit of bone.” She sat back and looked at me.
I stared at the floor, feeling the weight of her gaze. I could not believe I was in this situation. Fang was going to kill me. And after I was dead, he would kill me again.
And I deserved it.
Ella’s mom took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay, Max,” she said in a calm, controlled voice. “First, we have to clean the wounds and stop the bleeding. When’s the last time you had a tetanus shot?”
I stared up into her eyes. Ella’s mom seemed no-nonsense and… incredibly caring. About me. I had become a huge crybaby in the last couple days, so I wasn’t surprised to feel tears haze my vision.
“Um, never?”
“Okay. I can take care of that too.”
“Come on, come on,” the Gasman breathed. He was holding on to the pine branch so hard that he could barely feel his fingers anymore.
“What’s happening?” Iggy demanded impatiently. “Tell me everything.”
It was early morning, and the two of them were perched near the top of an old-growth pine overlooking one of the abandoned logging roads. They had cased the situation, and the Gasman had been right: At least two Erasers, maybe more, had set up a rough camp not far from where the helicopter had landed. It seemed clear they were looking for the rest of the flock. It didn’t matter whether they wanted to kill them or only kidnap them: Capture was unthinkable.
The Gasman still had nightmares in which he found himself back at the School. He dreamed that whitecoats took blood, injected him with various drugs to see how he reacted, made him run and jump and then swallow radioactive dye so they could study his circulation. Days and endless weeks and years of feeling sick, hurting, vomiting, being exhausted, being stuck in a cage. The Gasman would die before he went back there. Angel would rather have died too, he knew-but she hadn’t had a choice.
“The Hummer’s coming,” the Gasman said under his breath.
“On the right road?”
“Uh-huh. And they’re driving too fast.” The Gasman gave a tight, worried smile.
“They’re not practicing safe driving habits. Tsk. What a shame.”
“Okay, they’re coming up,” the Gasman muttered. “Another quarter mile.”
“Can you see the tarp?”
“No.”
The Gasman watched tensely as the muddied black Humvee sped down the unpaved logging road. “Any second now,” he whispered to Iggy, who was practically vibrating with excitement.
“Hope they’re wearing their seat belts. Not!”
Then it happened.
It was like watching a movie. One second, the boxy black vehicle was tearing along the road, and the next second, it swerved violently to the left with an audible squealing of brakes. It began a slow, graceless series of jerky spins down the road, then gave an unexpected jump toward the trees on one side. It hit the trees at an angle and went airborne, sailing upside down about fifteen feet before landing with a heavy crunching sound.
“Whoa,” the Gasman said softly. “That was incredible.”
“You have two seconds to give me the picture,” Iggy said irritably.
“It hit the oil, all right. It spun, hit the trees, and did a flip,” the Gasman told him. “Now it’s on its back, like a big, ugly, dead beetle.”
“Yes!” Iggy punched the air, making their branch sway. “Signs of life?”
“Uh… oh, yeah. Yeah, one of them just punched out a window. Now they’re climbing out. They look pretty dang mad. They’re walking, so they’re not that hurt.” The Gasman wanted the Erasers out of the picture, so he wouldn’t have to worry about them anymore. At the same time, he wasn’t sure how he would feel if they had actually died.
Then he remembered that they had taken Angel.
He decided he was probably okay with them suffering a life-threatening accident.
“Shoot.” Iggy sounded disappointed. “Any point in dropping Big Boy on them right now?”
The Gasman shook his head, remembered Iggy couldn’t see it, and said, “I don’t think so. They’re talking on walkie-talkies. Now they’re heading straight into the woods. We’d probably cause a huge forest fire or something.”
“Hmm.” Iggy frowned. “Okay. We need to regroup, come up with Phase Two. How about we hang at the old cabin for a minute?”
“Cool,” said the Gasman. “Let’s go. We’ve done enough good for one day.”
Eighty years ago, loggers had used a makeshift cabin nearby as a base during logging season. Abandoned for the last thirty years, it was practically in ruins. Which made it an especially good clubhouse for the flock.
“So Phase One is complete,” said Iggy, sitting in a broken plastic lawn chair. He sniffed the air. “We haven’t been here in ages.”
“Uh-uh,” said the Gasman, glancing around. “In case you’re wondering, it’s still a dump.”
“It’s always been a dump,” Iggy said. “That’s why we like it.”
“Man, I can’t get over it-that tarp full of oil so totally wiped the Hummer out,” the Gasman said. “It was kind of-scary. To really do it.”
Iggy opened the backpack and took out Big Boy, running his sensitive fingers over the clock duct-taped to the explosive package.
“We have to eliminate the Erasers,” he murmured. “So they can’t ever hurt us again.”
“So they can’t ever take Angel again,” the Gasman said, his eyes narrowing. “I say we bomb the chopper.”
Iggy nodded and stood up. “Yeah. Listen, let’s get out of here, get back home, make more plans.”
In the next instant, the faintest vibration of the floorboards made Iggy freeze. The Gasman quickly looked at him, saw Iggy’s sightless eyes flick to and fro.
“Did you hear?” the Gasman whispered, and Iggy nodded, holding up his hand. “Maybe a raccoon-“
“Not in the daytime,” Iggy barely mouthed back.
A slight scratching on the door made the Gasman’s blood turn to ice in his veins. Surely it was just an animal, a squirrel or somethi-
“Little pigs, little pigs, let me come in.” The whispered voice, serene and angelic, seemed to float through the cracks in the door like poisonous smoke. It was an Eraser’s voice, a voice that could ask you to jump off a cliff and you’d do it.
Heart pounding, the Gasman quickly scanned the room. The door. Two windows, one in the main room and a tiny one in the bathroom. He doubted he could fit through the one in the bathroom, much less Iggy.
The Eraser scratched at the door again, and the hairs on the back of the Gasman’s neck stood up. Okay, the window in here, then. He began to edge his way over to it, knowing that Iggy would be able to follow the almost imperceptible sound.
Crash! The door burst open, splintered wood flying through the air like darts.
“Eight o’clock!” the Gasman whispered, telling Iggy where the window was as his brain registered the hulking Eraser filling the doorway. His muscles tensed for the leap through the window-but its light was suddenly blocked by a huge, grinning head.
“Hey, piggy, piggy, piggy,” a second Eraser taunted through the dirt-clouded glass.
Years of Max-enforced training kicked in as adrenaline sped through the Gasman’s body. Door blocked. Window blocked. They were surrounded, with no clean escape available. It was going to be a tight, he realized, already preparing himself.
More than likely a fight to the death.
Nudge woke up four times before she finally rolled over and pried her eyes open.
It was barely dawn. Fang was gone. First Angel, then Max-now Fang.
Gone! Nudge looked around, crawling to the opening of the cave on her hands and knees. There’s nothing like panic to really wake you up, get all your senses going. Nudge felt keenly alert, frightened, too many thoughts starting to rush in her brain.
Movement caught her eye, and her head swiveled in line with a loose formation of hawks wheeling through the crisp, white blue sky. They were so beautiful, powerful, graceful, completely one with the sky and the earth and the rough cliffs.
One of them was Fang.
Nudge stood quickly, almost bumping her head on the low ceiling of the cave. Without hesitation, she leaped off the cliff edge, out into the sky. Her wings unfolded and caught the wind like sails, and suddenly she was a small brown boat soaring across an endless blue sea.
She approached the hawks, and after hard, glinting glances at her, they moved so she could join them. Fang was watching her, and Nudge was surprised by his face-how alive he looked, how… untight. Fang always looked very tight, somehow, taut, like the string on a bow. Now he looked loose and free and alive.
“Morning,” he said.
“I’m hungry,” said Nudge.
He nodded. “Town about three minutes away. Follow me.” He tilted his body in a new way that led him up and away without moving his wings. It was cool, like a plane. Nudge tried it, but it didn’t work as well for her. She would practice.
Below them was a thin two-lane highway, clotted with a last few shops and businesses before the road wound away into the desert. Fang dipped his head: A fast-food place had a large Dumpster out back. Even from up this high, Nudge could see a worker tossing cardboard boxes of stuff into it, getting ready for a new day.
They circled a couple times till they were sure the worker wasn’t coming out again, then dropped quickly, like bombs, tucking their wings in tight with just the feather tips guiding their descent. Thirty feet above the Dumpster, they blew their wings out again, braking sharply, then they landed, almost silently, on the metal edge of the Dumpster.
“Nirvana,” Fang said, pawing through food that was still good but not sellable. “Burger?”
Nudge thought, then shook her head. “I don’t know-after watching the hawks shredding little animals-oh, but look, here’s a couple salads. And some apple pies! Bonus!”
They tightened the drawstrings of their windbreakers around their waists. Then, working fast, they started stuffing food inside their jackets, anything that would travel. Three minutes after they’d landed, they were airborne again, lumpy and smiling.
It was amazing how much better Nudge felt after eating. She sighed and sat cross-legged in the cave entrance, watching the hawks fly.
Fang finished his fifth thin hamburger patty and wiped his fingers on his jeans. “You know, I think the way they swoop and stuff is like a message to the other hawks,” he said. “Like they’re telling them where there’s game or where they’ll be or something. I haven’t figured it out yet. But I will.”
“Oh.” Nudge sat back on her heels and spread her wings out, enjoying the feel of the sun warming her feathers. She tried to be quiet and not disturb Fang, but after five minutes she was close to meltdown.
“Fang? We’ve just got to go find Max,” she said. “Or should we go on and try to find Angel?”
Fang pulled his attention away from the hawks with difficulty. “We’re going to circle back, look for Max,” he said. “She must have-run into something.”
Nudge nodded solemnly, unable to define what kind of something would have kept Max from them. She didn’t want to think about it.
Fang stood, tall and dark against the weathered sandstone of the rock cliff. He looked down at her, his face calm and patient, his eyes reflecting no light whatsoever. “You ready?”
Nudge jumped to her feet, brushing sand off her butt. “Absolutely. Um, where do you think we should-“
But Fang was already gone, snatched away by the wind, borne upward by air rising from the canyon below.
Nudge took a small running leap off the cliff after him.
‘Tarzan!” she yelled. Whatever that was supposed to mean.
I woke up warm, dry, bandaged, and safe.
I felt like death.
As always, as soon as I was conscious, I panicked for a second, not knowing where I was. My brain anxiously registered flowered wallpaper. A soft, warm bed that smelled like laundry softener. I looked down. I was wearing a huge T-shirt that had a cartoon character on it, one I didn’t know.
I was at Ella’s house. I was supposed to be rescuing Angel-if she was even still alive. Fang and Nudge were probably sticking pins in a Max doll by now. I didn’t blame them.
Now that I was awake, the pain in my shoulder and wing hit me all over again, a stinging ache that radiated out like a starburst. Ugh. I remembered once I’d dislocated my shoulder, sparring with Fang. It had hurt so bad, and I had staggered around clutching my shoulder and trying not to cry. Jeb had calmed me down, talking to me, taking my mind off it, and then, when I least expected it, he had popped it right back into place. Instantly, all the pain was gone, He’d smiled and stroked my sweaty hair off my forehead and gotten me some lemonade. And I’d thought, This is what a dad would do. This is better than what a dad would do.
I still missed Jeb so much it made my throat close.
Suddenly, I froze, because my bedroom door was opening very, very slowly and quietly.
Run! my mind screamed as my hands curled into claws against the sheets. Fly!
Ella’s brown eyes, curious and eager, peered around the door. She spoke softly over her shoulder. “I think she’s awake.”
Ella’s mom appeared. “Morning, Max. You hungry? Do you like pancakes?”
“And little breakfast sausages?” Ella added. “And fruit and stuff?”
I hoped it only felt like I was drooling on my nightshirt. I nodded. They smiled and left, and then I saw the clothes on my bed. My own jeans and socks had been washed, and there was a lavender sweatshirt with large slits newly cut into the back.
Ella’s mom was taking care of me, like Jeb had. I didn’t know how to act, what to say.
A girl could get used to this.
No matter how quickly the Erasers killed them, the Gasman was sure it would feel like forever.
“Up and away,” Iggy breathed, inching slightly closer to him.
Up and away? The Gasman frowned. Iggy had to be kidding. Straight up?
Crash! The Gasman jumped as the window behind him shattered with a shower of glass and broken wood. An Eraser pushed through the ragged opening with a silent grin.
“Guess what?” the first Eraser asked with a pleasant smile. “We got the little one-they don’t need you two alive.” They laughed, the sound like deep bells ringing, and then their faces began to change. The Gasman couldn’t help grimacing as they morphed, becoming more wolflike, their muzzles extending, their teeth protruding until it looked like they had a mouthful of knives.
“Boys, boys,” one almost purred. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you? You can run, but you can’t hide.” His shiny dark hair was becoming thicker, and more hair sprouted grotesquely on his arms and hands. He literally licked his chops and rubbed his huge, hairy hands together, as if he’d learned how to be a bad guy from cartoons.
“Ready?”
Iggy’s voice was so faint, his lips so still that the Gasman wasn’t sure he’d heard anything. Every second seemed oddly stretched out. His hands closed into fists by his sides. He was ready. Sure.
“This freak’s blind,” one Eraser said, gesturing toward Iggy. “Don’t worry, kid. It’ll all be over soon, and you won’t have to worry about being blind anymore. But it’s a shame they didn’t give you one of their new eyes-like mine.”
The Gasman looked up at him, and a feeling of revulsion rose in his throat as he saw what the Eraser meant. Set deep into one orbital socket was a stainless steel ball. A red laserlike glow made it look as though it was filled with blood. The Eraser grinned and turned his eye to the Gasman. A red dot appeared on the Gasman’s shirt and, as he watched, it slowly began to burn a small hole in the fabric.
The Erasers laughed.
“You left before they could fix you up with the latest technology,” one said. “Your loss.”
Yeah, right, the Gasman thought in disgust.
“How about it, piggies?” the first Eraser asked. “Do you want to try to run? Who knows-you might get lucky. For a little while.”
Grinning with anticipation, the Eraser drew closer.
“On three.”
Once again, the Gasman wasn’t sure if he’d heard Iggy or if he was imagining it.
“One.”
The Gasman’s toes clenched inside his sneakers.
“Two.”
When Iggy shouted, “Three!” the Gasman leaped straight into the air, unfurling his wings with a huge whoosh. With a roar of anger, one Eraser grabbed the Gasman’s foot and yanked. Above him, Iggy burst through the rotting roof of the cabin, out into the sky. The Gasman broke free of the Eraser’s grip.
Then he was pushing through the shattered roof, tucking his wings in tight to get through the hole. Outside, he lost altitude too fast and landed clumsily on a rickety roof beam. He slid sideways, grabbing roof shingles that came off in his hands.
Iggy yelled from twenty feet above him, “Gasser! Move!”
Just as he slid over the edge of the roof, the Gasman spread his wings. He pushed down hard with all his strength, then pulled his wings up and pushed them down again. As he surged up to meet Iggy, Iggy threw a package down into the cabin.
“Move, move, move!” Iggy yelled, flapping like crazy. Within seconds, they were a hundred yards away.
Boom! Only it was more like ba-ba-boooooom!
The two boys recoiled from the blast, tumbling backward in the air from the shock wave. The Gasman righted himself, eyes wide, as a fireball ten yards in diameter rose from where the cabin had been.
He was speechless.
After the fireball from Big Boy disintegrated, the cabin burned brightly, its old, rotted wood consumed as instantly as kindling. Flames reached for the sky, licking at the green trees nearby, snaking along the ground as brittle brown pine needles caught fire.
God, it was beautiful.
“Well,” Iggy said after a long while, “that takes care of them.”
The Gasman nodded, feeling sick. One dark body had flown upward in the blast, falling back to earth as a glowing coal. The other Eraser had crawled a few feet away from the cabin, a burning silhouette that had collapsed, its outlines blurred by flame.
“Unless they escaped,” Iggy added.
Of course Iggy hadn’t seen anything. The Gasman cleared his throat. “No,” he said. “They’re dead.” He felt slightly queasy, guilty, and dirty. Then he remembered Angel, how she’d shared the last of the ice cream with him three nights ago. She was so small, and God only knew what horrible things they were doing to her. His jaw hardened.
“Take that,” he muttered. ‘That was for my sister, for Angel, you scum-sucking jerks.”
Then he saw the black Hummer, its hood crumpled, driving fast toward the burning cabin. An Eraser was leaning out the passenger window, looking through binoculars.
“Come on, Iggy,” said the Gasman. “Let’s get out of here.”
The bell clanged jarringly, and rough hands pushed Angel forward. She stumbled, catching herself at the last second before falling onto coils of razor wire.
Angel wanted to cry. She’d been doing this all day-it was late afternoon by now.
She was starving and light-headed and every muscle ached-and still they made her run.
It was a maze, Angel knew that.
They had made it in a huge gymlike room in the School’s main building. They rang a bell and pushed her forward, and then she had to run as fast as she could to find the exit. Each time, the maze was different, the exit in a different place. If she slowed down, she got an electric shock so strong it scrambled her brain, or red-hot wires under her feet burned her. So, eyes blurry with tears, Angel ran forward blindly, taking this turn and that until she finally stumbled out the exit.
Then she would get a sip of water and a five-minute rest while they redid the maze.
Angel sniffled, trying to keep quiet. She hated this! If only she knew beforehand-if only she knew, she could run through fast and not get shocked or burned.
Angel sat up, a tingle of excitement running down her spine. She closed her eyes and tried to listen to what the whitecoats were thinking.
One of them wanted to let an Eraser loose in the maze, have it fight with her, see how strong she really was. One of them thought they should increase the heated wires so she always had to run on them, whether she was slowing down or not. Then he could study the effect of stress on her adrenaline levels.
Angel wanted them all to burn in h-e-double toothpicks forever.
One of them was designing the next maze, the creep.
Angel concentrated, trying to look as though she was resting. Someone gave her another sip of water, and she sucked it down fast. She could see the rough plan of the maze! It was in her mind because it was in the white-coat’s mind. Deliberately, Angel breathed in and out, looking spent, but she felt a new surge of possibility.
She got it. She knew what the next maze would look like. Blinking tiredly, Angel sat up, keeping her eyes unfocused. In her mind, she was reviewing the maze’s layout: a quick right, then another right, then a left, skip the next three rights and take the fourth one… and so on, till she saw the exit.
She could see all the traps, the dead ends, the paths that led nowhere.
She could hardly wait to blow their minds. This would be fun!
A whitecoat grabbed her, made her stand in front of the new maze’s entrance.
The bell clanged.
Someone pushed her.
Angel took off. Running as fast as she could in case all the wires were hot, she took a quick right, another right, then a left, and so on. She raced through with record speed, with no hesitation. She didn’t get shocked once and never felt a hot wire under her feet.
She burst out of the maze’s exit, then collapsed onto the cool wooden floor.
Time passed.
Words floated to her: Amazing. Cognitive ability. Interpretive skills. Creative problem solving. Dissect her brain. Preserve her organs. Extract her DNA.
A voice said, “No, no, we can’t dissect her brain just yet.” The speaker laughed, as if it were funny. His voice sounded… like she’d heard it in a fairy tale or something, like at night, or at home, or with Max…
Angel blinked and swam toward consciousness. She made the mistake of looking up. An older man was there. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and was smiling at her. She got no thoughts from him whatsoever. He looked…
“Hello, Angel,” said Jeb Batchelder kindly. “I haven’t seen you in a long time. I missed you, kiddo.”
Nudge didn’t know exactly what Fang expected to see. Max, flying toward them? Max, standing on the ground below, waving her arms to get their attention? Max’s body, crumpled-Nudge shut that thought down. She would just wait. Fang was older and really smart; Max trusted him. Nudge trusted him too.
How far back had Max separated from them? Nudge couldn’t remember. She and Fang had been flying in ever-widening circles for hours. How did they know Max hadn’t passed them somehow and was waiting for them back at Lake Mead?
“Fang? Do you remember where we left Max?”
“Yes.”
“Are we going to go there?”
Pause. “Not if we can help it.”
“But why? Maybe Max is hurt and needs help. Maybe we need to save her before we go save Angel.” It was hard, keeping these missions separate. First Angel, now Max, then Angel again.
Fang banked to the left, tightening the angle as they’d seen the hawks do. Nudge followed him. Below them, the ground looked parched, with only occasional roads, cactuses, brush.
“I don’t think Max would have gotten hurt all by herself,” Fang said slowly. “She’s not going to fly into a tree or crash-land. So if she’s late because she’s hurt, it probably means that someone, a person, hurt her. Which means that someone knows about her. We don’t want that someone to know about us too. Which they would if we went to where Max is.”
Nudge’s jaw dropped.
“And if Max is late because she’s busy, then our going to her won’t speed things up-she’ll come when she’s good and ready. So for right now, we do a general look-see. But we’re not going all the way back.”
Nudge heard Max’s voice in her head: Think before you speak. So she shut her mouth and thought. She had no idea how Fang could not get Max, even if it meant they might get captured or hurt themselves. They all might get captured or hurt saving Angel, right? Why was Max different from Angel? Max was more important than Angel, Nudge thought, feeling guilty. Max took care of them, helped run their whole lives.
She snuck a look at Fang. Fang was good, if not very warm or huggy. He was strong and handsome and capable. But would he stick around to take care of everyone if there were no Max? Or would he take off and go live by himself somewhere and not be bothered with them? Nudge didn’t know what Fang was really thinking.
Suddenly, Nudge was brushing tears out of her eyes, swallowing down the lump in her throat, feeling her nose clog up. Oh, God. She couldn’t bear it without Max. Blinking, she tried to clear her vision, tried to think about something else. She saw a white truck down below and focused on it, forcing herself to wonder what it was carrying, where it was coming from. Like any of it mattered. She drew in deep breaths and held them, refusing to cry in front of Fang. She might have to start being very strong, very soon. She might as well practice now.
The truck headed toward an intersection that had signs marking a junction. Nudge blinked and looked as the signs became clear and she could read them. One said, California Welcome Center, 18 miles. One said, Las Vegas, North, 98 miles. One said, Tipisco, 3 miles.
Tipisco! Tipisco, Arizona! Where Nudge was from! Where her parents had been! Oh, God-could she still find her parents? Would they want her back? Had they missed her so much all these years?
“Fang!” she shouted, already beginning the descent. “It’s Tipisco, down below! I’m going there!”
“No way, Nudge,” Fang said, flying closer to her. “Don’t get sidetracked now. Stay with me.”
“No!” said Nudge, feeling daring and desperate and brave. She hunched her shoulders and tucked her head down, feeling herself lose altitude. “I have to go find my parents! If Max is gone, I’m going to need someone.”
Fang’s dark eyes widened in surprise. “What? Nudge, you’re crazy. Come on, let’s talk about it. Let’s find a place, take a break.”
“No!” said Nudge, tears coming to her eyes again. “I’m going down-and you can’t stop me!”
“We’re pretty safe, unless the Erasers catch our scent,” the Gasman whispered to Iggy. The two of them were tucked inside a narrow fissure in the side of a cliff, up high. Scraggly bushes obscured the opening. The Erasers would have to rock climb to get them, or use the chopper.
Iggy kicked back and rested his hands on his knees. “Well, this is a total suckfest,” he said grumpily. “I thought with those two Erasers taking dirt naps, we’d be free and clear, at least for a while. They must have sent for backup even before they attacked the cabin.”
The Gasman ground dust between his fingertips. “At least we took two of them out.” He wondered if Iggy felt as weird and bad about it as he did. He couldn’t tell.
“Yeah, but what now? We’re kinda all dressed up with no place to go,” Iggy said. “There’s no way we can go home-they’re probably everywhere. What are we supposed to do with ourselves? And what if Max and the others come back just to fly into an ambush?”
“I don’t know,” the Gasman said in frustration. “I hadn’t thought beyond just blowing them the heck up. Maybe you should come up with a plan.”
The two boys sat in the semidarkness of the fissure, breathing the stale air. The Gasman’s stomach rumbled.
“Tell me about it,” Iggy said, resting his head on his knees.
“Okay, okay,” the Gasman said suddenly. “I have an idea. It’s risky, and Max will kill us when she finds out.”
Iggy raised his head. “Sounds like my kind of idea.”
Never in my fourteen looong years have I felt the slightest bit normal-except for my day with Ella and her mom, Dr. Martinez.
First, we ate a real breakfast together, around the kitchen table. On plates, with forks and knives and napkins. Instead of, like, a hot dog stuck on a barbecue fork, burned black over an open flame, then eaten right off the fork. Or cereal with no milk. Or peanut butter off a knife. Beanie weenies from the can.
Then Ella had to go to school. I was worried about the jerks from before, but she said her teacher was good at keeping kids in line, and so was the school bus driver. A real school bus! Like on TV shows.
So it was me and Dr. Martinez. “So, Max,” she said as she unloaded the dishwasher.
I tensed.
“Do you want to talk about… anything?”
I looked at her. Her face was tan and kind, her eyes warm and understanding. But I knew if I started talking, I would never stop. I would break down and start crying. I would freak out. Then I wouldn’t be Max anymore, wouldn’t be able to function, take care of the others, be the alpha girl. To save Angel. If it wasn’t already too late.
“Not really,” I said.
She nodded and started stacking clean plates. I fantasized about actually being friends with Ella and her mom long after I left here and went home. I could come back and visit sometimes… Yeah, and we could have picnics, exchange Christmas cards… I’m so sure. I was totally losing my grip on reality. I had to get out of here.
Dr. Martinez put away the clean plates and loaded the dirty ones into the dishwasher. “Do you have a last name?”
I thought. Since I didn’t have an “official” identity, there wasn’t anything she could do with the information. I rubbed my temples-a headache had been creeping up on me since breakfast.
“Yeah,” I said finally. I shrugged. “I gave it to myself.”
On my eleventh birthday (which was also a day I picked for myself), I had asked Jeb about a last name. I guess I was hoping he would say, “Your name is Batchelder, like me.” But he hadn’t. He’d said, “You should choose one yourself.”
So I’d thought about it, thought about how I could fly and who I was.
“My last name is Ride,” I told Ella’s mom. “Like Sally Ride, the astronaut. Maximum Ride.”
She nodded. “That’s a good name. Are there others like you?” she asked.
I pressed my lips together and looked away. My head was throbbing. I wanted to tell her-that was the awful part. Something inside me wanted to blurt out everything. But I couldn’t. Not after years of Jeb telling me I couldn’t trust anybody, ever.
“Do you need help?” My eyes flicked back to her face. “Max-with your wings-can you actually fly?”
“Well, yeah” I was startled into saying. That’s me: mouth-like-a-steel-trap Maximum. Yep, you have to use all your tricks to get me to talk. Jeez. That’s what I get for sleeping on a soft bed and eating homey food.
“Really? You can really fly?” She looked fascinated, alarmed, and a little envious.
I nodded. “My bones are… thin,” I began, hating myself. Shut up, Max! “Thin and light. I have extra muscles. My lungs are bigger. And my heart. More efficient. But I need to eat a lot. It’s hard.” Abruptly, I clammed up, a furious blush heating my cheeks. That, folks, was the most I had ever said to a non-flock member. But when I spill the beans, I spill big! I might as well have hired a skywriting plane to scrawl, “I’m a mutant freak!” in huge letters across the sky.
“How did this happen?” Ella’s mom asked softly. My eyes shut of their own volition. If I’d been alone I would have put my hands over my ears and hunkered down into a little ball on the floor. Fractured images, memories, fear, pain, all came crashing together inside my brain. You think being a regular teenager with growing pains is hard? Try doing it with DNA that’s not your own, not even from a mammal.
“I don’t remember,” I told her. It was a lie.
Dr. Martinez looked distressed. “Max, are you sure I can’t help in some way?”
I shook my head, irritated at myself, irritated at her for bringing all this up. “Nah. It’s all over, anyway. Done. But-I have to get out of here. Some friends are waiting for me. It’s really important.”
“How will you get to them? Can I give you a ride?”
“No,” I said, frowning and rubbing my hurt shoulder. “I need to, um, fly there. But I don’t think I can fly yet.”
Dr. Martinez creased her forehead, thinking. “It would be dangerous for you to strain your injury before it’s healed. I couldn’t tell the extent of it. But I could give you a better idea if we had an X-ray.”
I looked at her solemnly. “Do you have X-ray vision?”
She laughed, startled, and I couldn’t help grinning too. God, Ella had this all the time. A real mom.
“No. Not all of us have superhuman powers,” she said teasingly. “But some of us have access to X-ray machines.”
Dr. Martinez shared a vet practice with another doctor. Today was her day off, but she was sure no one would think it was weird for us to show up at the office. She gave me a windbreaker to wear, but I was still pretty freaked about seeing other people up close.
“Hi, guys,” Dr. Martinez said as we walked into the office. “This is a friend of Ella’s. She’s doing a report on being a vet, and I told her I’d give her a quick tour.”
The three people behind the counter smiled and nodded as if this was totally believable. Maybe it was. How would I know?
Two seconds after I walked in, I froze in the doorway, feeling the blood rush out of my face and a wash of terror sweep over me,
There was a man there.
In a white coat.
Dr. Martinez glanced back. “Max?”
I stared at her mutely. She gently took my arm and led me off into an exam room. “Yes, in here is where we see our patients,” she said cheerfully as she shut the door behind us. Then she turned and lowered her voice. “Max, what’s wrong? What’s the matter?”
I forced myself to take several slow, deep breaths, to uncoil the fists at my sides. “It’s the smell,” I whispered, embarrassed. “The chemical smell, like a lab. The guy in the white coat. I have to get out of here, okay? Can we just go now, really fast?” I looked for an exit, a window.
Her hand rubbed my back. “I can promise that you’re safe here. Can you stay just long enough for me to get a quick X ray, and then we’ll leave right away?”
I tried to swallow, but my mouth was dry. My heart was pounding so hard it made a rushing sound in my ears.
“Please, Max.”
I forced myself to nod. Dr. Martinez checked to make sure I wasn’t wearing jewelry-as if-then carefully positioned me on a table. A machine hovered over me. I felt like my nerves were about to snap.
She stepped out of the room, I heard a tiny buzz, and it was all over.
Two minutes later she showed me a large dark sheet with my shoulder bones, arm, and part of my wing showing in shades of white. She stuck it up on a glass box on the wall and turned on its light. The picture jumped out brightly.
“Look,” she said, tracing my shoulder blade with her finger. “This bone is fine. It’s all muscle damage-you can see the torn tissue here and here.”
I nodded.
“And your wing bones,” she said, unconsciously lowering her voice, “all seem fine. Which is good. Unfortunately, muscle damage usually takes longer to heal than bones do. Though your rate of regeneration seems weirdly fast, I must say.”
She frowned at the X-ray, tapping it with her finger. “Your bones are so fine and light,” she murmured, as if talking to herself. “They’re beautiful. And then… huh. What’s this thing?”
She was pointing to a bright white square, maybe half an inch wide, that sat smack-dab in the middle of my forearm. “That’s not jewelry, is it?” She glanced down at me. “Is it the zipper of the windbreaker?”
“No-I took it off.”
Dr. Martinez leaned closer to the picture, squinting her eyes. “It’s a-it looks like a…” Her voice trailed off.
“What?” I said, unnerved by the expression on her face.
“It’s a microchip,” she said hesitantly. “We put something similar into animals. To identify them in case they’re lost. Yours looks like a, like ones we use on really expensive pets, show dogs and such. They have a tracer in them in case they’re stolen. They can be tracked, wherever they are.”
The look of comprehending horror that rose in my face alarmed Dr. Martinez.
“I’m not saying that’s what it is,” she said quickly. “It’s just what it looks like.”
“Take it out,” I said hoarsely. I held out my arm and pushed up my sleeve. “Please. Take it out right now.”
She looked at the X-ray again, studying it for several minutes while I tried not to jump out of my skin.
“I’m sorry, Max,” she said at last. “I don’t think it can be surgically removed. It looks like it was implanted a long time ago, when your arm was much smaller. Now your muscles and nerves, blood vessels, have grown around it so completely that I think if we tried to take it out, you could possibly lose the use of your hand.”
You’d think I’d get used to the ongoing nightmare that was my life, but I was actually pathetically surprised that those demonoids from the School could continue to wreak havoc on me from so far away, so long ago.
But why was I surprised? I asked myself bitterly. They had done just that two days ago, when they’d kidnapped Angel. An image of her popped into my mind, her sweet, small face smiling up at me, love shining out. I swallowed hard and took a deep breath.
Right then, we became aware of voices in the waiting room, men’s voices, smooth and charming, asking questions.
I froze again, doing my deer-in-the-headlights imitation.
Dr. Martinez looked at me and listened to the voices. “I’m sure this is nothing, Max,” she said calmly. “But why don’t you step in here for a minute?”
In the hall was a small door that led to their medicine storage closet. Several long white coats hung inside, and I slid in behind them, flattening myself against the wall.
And yes, I get the irony, thanks.
Dr. Martinez turned off the light and closed the door. Barely twenty seconds later, I heard the voices in the examining room where I had been.
“What’s going on here?” Dr. Martinez said sharply, sounding outraged. “This is a doctor’s office!”
“Sorry, ma’am,” one voice said, sounding as if it were made of honey. My heart began to pound.
“Doctor!” she snapped.
“Sorry, Doctor,” another voice said. It was soothing, calming, placating. “Forgive us for interrupting. There’s nothing to be concerned about. We’re with local law enforcement.”
“We’re looking for anything unusual,” said the first voice. “Just a precaution. I’m afraid I can’t tell you more than that.” Implying that it was all top-secret government stuff. Maybe I was.
There was a pause. Was Dr. Martinez being drawn in by their voices? She wouldn’t be the first one. Oh, God…
I suddenly remembered my X-ray up on the light box, and I clapped my hand over my mouth. My stomach tightened. In the next minute I could be fighting for my life. It was too dark to look for possible weapons. Think, think…
“Unusual like what?” Dr. Martinez said acidly. “A double rainbow? Gasoline for less than a buck fifty? Sugar-free soda that actually tastes good?”
I couldn’t help grinning. She was just so great. And she seemed immune to Erasers, which was really weird.
“No,” said the second voice after a moment. “Unusual people, for instance. Strangers in the neighborhood. Children or teenagers that you don’t know or who look suspicious. Or unusual animals, even.”
“I’m a veterinary surgeon,” said Dr. Martinez in a chilling voice. “To tell you the truth, I usually don’t look at my patients’ owners much. And I haven’t seen any strangers around. As for unusual animals, last week I treated a cow that had a bicornuate uterus. She had a healthy calf in each side. Does that help?”
Silence. I would hate to be on the receiving end of her anger.
“Um…” said the first voice.
“If you gentlemen will excuse me, I have a business to run.” Icicles dripped off her words. “The way out is through that door.”
“If you do see or hear of anything unusual, here’s a number for you to call. Thanks for your time. Sorry to disturb you.”
Heavy footsteps faded from my hearing. A minute later I felt the front door slam shut.
“If you see those two guys again, call the cops,” Dr. Martinez said to the receptionist.
She came and let me out of the closet, looking at my face solemnly.
“Those guys were bad news,” she said, “am I right?”
I nodded. “I better leave right now.”
She shook her head. “Tomorrow morning is soon enough. One more night of rest. Promise me.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but what came out was “Okay. I promise.”
“Nudge, for the last time, give this up. This is a bad idea,” said Fang. “A terrible idea.”
Privately, Nudge was surprised that Fang was still with her. Fang had threatened to leave her several times, but when he saw she really wouldn’t budge, he’d retreated into angry silence.
Now they were at the edge of a trailer home neighborhood. Nudge had remembered an address, and Tipisco was so small that it wasn’t hard to get around and find it. She didn’t know what she had expected, but somehow this wasn’t it.
The trailer park was divided into meandering rows, most marked by rickety wooden signs with names like Roadrunner Lane or Seguro Street on them.
“Come on,” Fang said softly. “I see Chaparral Court.”
They snaked their way through the chokecherry bushes, gnarled junipers, abandoned appliances, and car skeletons that surrounded the neighborhood. No white picket fences anywhere.
Nudge’s quick eyes spotted an address, 4625, on the last mobile home of the line. She swallowed. Her parents could be right there. She pushed aside some spray paint cans, and she and Fang crouched beside an abandoned, graffitied car.
“What if they moved?” Fang asked for the nth time. “What if you misunderstood what you read and these people aren’t related to you at all?” Then, with horrible gentleness, he said, “Nudge, even if you weren’t a test-tube baby-which you probably were-what if there was a reason they gave you up? They might not want you back.”
“Do you think I haven’t thought of that?” she whispered with uncharacteristic anger. “I know that! But I have to try. I mean, if there’s the slightest chance- wouldn’t you try?”
“I don’t know,” Fang said after a pause.
“That’s because you don’t need anything or anybody,” Nudge said, turning back to stare at the mobile home. “But I’m not like that. I need people.”
Fang was silent.
They were fairly out of sight between the car and some small pinyon trees. Nudge felt so nervous she was practically shaking.
Beside her, Fang tensed, and then Nudge heard a door opening. She held her breath as a woman came out of the mobile home. Nudge quickly looked at her own arm to see if their skin tones matched. Kind of. It was hard to tell. The woman came down into the front yard, which was covered in brown pine needles, and sat down in a cheap lawn chair in the shade.
Her hair was wet and in curlers, and there was a towel draped around her shoulders. She leaned back, lit a cigarette, and popped the top on a can of soda.
“Coke. It’s not just for breakfast anymore,” Fang whispered, and Nudge elbowed him.
Hmm. Nudge sat back on her heels. It was weird. Part of her hoped that wasn’t her mom. It would have been better if she’d been, like, setting a tray of cookies on the windowsill to cool or gardening or something. Something mommish. But part of her still hoped it was her mom, because, frankly, someone, anyone, was better than no one.
Nudge just needed to get up, stroll over there, and say, “Um, did you lose a daughter named Monique, about ten, eleven years ago?” Yep, that’s all she had to say. And then the woman would say-
“Looking for something, freaks? Guess you found it.”
There was no mistaking that beautiful, melodic Eraser laugh, right behind them.
Nudge jackknifed to her feet. There were three of them, and they were already beginning to morph. They started off looking like male models, but then their freaky muzzles elongated, fangs erupted from bloodred gums, ragged claws grew from their fingertips.
“Ari,” Fang said evenly.
Nudge frowned and looked at the leader. Her eyes widened. “Ari!” she said. “You were just a little kid.”
He smiled, flexing his clawed hands. “And now I’m a great big grown-up Eraser,” he said. He snapped his teeth together playfully, making strong clicking sounds. “And you’re a little brown piglet. Yum.”
“What did they do to you?” Nudge asked quietly. “I’m sorry, Ari.”
He frowned, his hairy brow lowering. “Save your pity for yourself. I’m exactly who I want to be. And I’ve got some news for you.” He rolled up his sleeves to reveal heavily corded, muscled, hairy arms. “Your hideout in the mountains is nothing but ashes. Your pals keep having unfortunate accidents. You two are the last ones alive-and now we’ve got you.”
This struck the Erasers as funny, and they chuckled, shoulders shaking, while Nudge’s brain reeled. Last two alive? The others were dead? Their house had burned down?
She began to cry and commanded herself to stop but couldn’t. Then she was weeping like a baby.
She glanced anxiously at Fang, but he was watching Ari, his jaw tight, his hands coiled into fists.
“Pinwheel,” he muttered out of the side of his mouth.
Ari frowned, obviously wondering what pinwheel meant, his large, beautiful eyes narrowing.
“Cholla first,” Nudge muttered. She couldn’t believe she was being so brave, almost like Fang. The rest of the flock was dead? It couldn’t be! It just couldn’t!
“Count of three,” Fang said evenly. Which meant count of one.
Ari leaned over, lightning fast, and cuffed Fang’s shoulder. “Shut up!”
“One,” Fang said, regaining his balance, and Nudge instantly lunged forward, shoving the second Eraser in the chest as hard as she could. Taken off guard, he staggered backward, right into the sharp spines of a cholla cactus. Cursing, the Eraser waved his arms but landed smack on top of its three-inch needles, shrieking like a train wreck in the making. A lovely, musical train wreck.
In the next second, Nudge launched herself into the air sideways, praying that Fang would catch her.
He did, grabbing her arms and swinging her, following her momentum. Her feet kicked outward, smashing Ari in the side of the neck, almost knocking him over, and leaving him choking and gagging.
Then Fang swung Nudge as hard as he could, spinning her through the air as she snapped out her wings and beat them so fast that she stayed airborne.
“You’re gonna die, mutant,” Ari snarled, leaping for Fang as he pushed off the ground. He grabbed Fang’s leg, and they both fell heavily. Then Ari was sitting on Fang’s chest, punching him. Nudge gasped and put her hand over her mouth as she saw blood erupt from Fang’s nose. The second Eraser kicked at Fang’s chest, hard, over and over, thunk, thunk.
Nudge was freaking-this was a disaster. The people in the trailer park were bound to notice her, hovering in front of the trees. Fang took another hit, his head jerking sideways, and then he spit a stream of bloody saliva right into Ari’s face. Ari roared and brought both hands down onto Fang’s chest with enough force to snap his ribs. Nudge heard Fang’s breath leave him with a whoosh.
What to do? If she went down to the ground she would be dead meat, and so would Fang. If only she could-
Then she remembered the cans of spray paint on the ground. Maybe they were empty. Maybe not.
In an instant, she had dropped down, grabbed up the nearest can, and leaped back into the air, out of reach. She shook the can hard, then dropped a few feet and aimed it right at Ari’s face. After a heart-stopping wheeze, green paint arced through the air. Ari screamed and jumped to his feet, his clawed hands swiping at his eyes.
Fang leaped up and took off faster than she’d ever seen him move. Nudge managed to get another Eraser in the face, and then the paint ran out. Nudge threw it hard at Ari’s head, where it bounced off his healthy, thick, green hair.
Then she and Fang were in the air, well above the Erasers. Ari was still standing, but his pal was on the ground, swearing and trying to wipe paint out of his eyes. The one who’d finally gotten off the cactus was way scratched up. Between the red blood and green paint, they looked kind of Christmassy.
“You’re dead, freaks,” Ari snarled, his eyes streaming with tears, his long yellow teeth seeming too large for his mouth.
“Oh, like you’re not a freak yourself,” Nudge said meanly. “Try looking in a mirror, dog boy!”
Ari fumbled in his jacket, then pulled out a gun. Nudge and Fang rocketed out of there as fast as they could. A bullet whistled right past Nudge’s ear. She’d been that close to being deaf and dead.
When they were safely away, Nudge said breathlessly, “I’m sorry, Fang. It was my fault you got hurt.”
Fang spit more blood out and watched it fall a long, long way to the ground. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said. “You’re just a kid.”
“Let’s go home,” she said.
“They said it burned down,” Fang answered, wiping blood from his lip.
“No, I mean the home with the hawks,” said Nudge.
Angel stared and stared and stared at Jeb Batchelder.
She knew who he was. She had been only four years old the last time she’d seen him, but still, she knew his face, his smile. She remembered Jeb tying her shoes, playing Old Maid with her, making popcorn. She remembered hurting herself and Jeb picking her up to hold her tight. Max had filled in for her how good Jeb had been, how he’d saved them from the bad people at the School. How he’d disappeared and they thought he was dead.
But he was alive! And he was here! He had come back to save her again! Hope filled her like warm light. Angel almost jumped up to ran to his arms.
Wait. Think. There was something wrong with this picture.
She couldn’t get a single thought from his head-it was a gray blank. That had never happened before. Also, he was wearing a white coat. He smelled all antisepticky.
The fact that he was here at all. Her brain felt simultaneously hyper and sluggish, and she blinked several times, trying to figure this out, as if it were a two-minute mystery.
Jeb knelt on the wooden floor in front of her. The whitecoats who’d been running the maze melted into the background. Jeb reached back, then held something out to her.
Angel looked at it blankly.
It was a tray of food, lots of delish-looking food, hot and steaming. It smelled so good Angel felt a whimper of longing rise in her throat.
She stared at the tray, her brain crackling with input, and she had a bunch of thoughts all at once.
One, Jeb looked like he was on their side now. An enemy of the flock, like all the other whitecoats at the School.
Two, wait till Max found out about this. Max would be, well, she’d be so mad and so hurt and so upset that Angel couldn’t even imagine it. She didn’t want to imagine it. She didn’t want Max to ever feel that way.
“Angel, aren’t you hungry? You haven’t been getting very much to eat, have you?” Jeb looked concerned. “When they told me what they’d been feeding you- well, they misunderstood, sweetheart. They didn’t know about your appetite.”
He laughed a little, shaking his head. “I remember once we were having hot dogs for lunch. Everyone else had two hot dogs each. But you-you ate four hot dogs by yourself.” He laughed again, looking at her as if he thought she was amazing. “You were three years old. Four hot dogs!”
He leaned forward, gently pushing the food tray nearer so it was right beneath Angel’s nose.
“The thing is, Angel, with your metabolism, and how old you are now, you should be getting about three thousand calories a day. I bet you haven’t been hitting a thousand.” He shook his head again. “That’s going to change now that I’m here. I’ll make sure they treat you right, okay?”
Angel narrowed her eyes. This was a trap. This was exactly the kind of thing Max had warned them all about. Only Max had never guessed it would come from Jeb.
Without saying a word, Angel sat up, crossing her arms over her chest and staring at him the way Max stared at Fang when they were having an argument and she was going to win. Angel made herself not look at the food, not even smell the food. She was so freaked at seeing Jeb here that her stomach was all in knots anyway. The fact that she couldn’t pick up any of his thoughts made him seem weird and dead to her.
Jeb smiled ruefully and patted Angel’s knee. “It’s okay, Angel. Go ahead and eat. You need to. I want you to feel better.”
She tried not to even blink, not to show how upset she was.
Sighing, Jeb unrolled the white paper napkin, took out a fork, and placed the fork right into the food on the plate. All she would have to do is reach down… and she was doomed?
“I know this is all confusing, Angel,” Jeb said gently.
“I can’t explain everything now. It will all become clear soon, though, and then you’ll understand.”
“Suurrre.” Angel put every bit of pain at her betrayal into that one word.
“The thing is, Angel,” Jeb went on earnestly, “life itself is a test. It’s all a test. Sometimes you just have to get through it, and then later on everything makes more sense. You’ll see. Now, go ahead and eat. I promise it’s okay. I promise.”
Like she would believe any of his promises.
“I hate you,” she said.
Jeb didn’t look surprised. Maybe a bit sad. “That’s okay too, sweetheart. That’s perfectly okay.”
“I. Am. In. Heaven,” I said, inhaling deeply.
Dr. Martinez laughed. “Watched cookies never brown,” she teased me.
To make my Mayberry holiday complete, the three of us had actually made chocolate chip cookies-from scratch-after dinner.
I ate enough raw cookie dough to make myself sick, and then I got high off the fumes of gently baking cookies. I could see the chocolate chips melting through the oven window.
Note to self: Show Nudge and Angel how to make choc-chip cookies.
If I ever saw Angel again.
Ella’s mom took the first cookie sheet out of the oven and slid in the second. I could hardly wait for the cookies to cool and, seizing one, took a bite, almost burning my tongue.
Incoherent murmurings of pleasure escaped my lips as I chewed slowly, savoring every bite. Ella and her mom watched me, identical smiles lighting their faces.
“You’d think you’d never tasted homemade cookies before,” Ella said.
“Haven’t,” I mumbled, swallowing. It was the best thing I had ever tasted in my entire life. It tasted like home.
“Well, have another,” said Dr. Martinez.
“I have to take off tomorrow,” I told Ella that night when we were getting ready for bed.
“No!” she said, distressed. “I love having you here. You’re like a cousin. Or my sister.”
Funny how something like that can make you feel worse. “People are depending on me-it’s really important.”
“Will you come back to visit?” she asked. “Ever? “
I looked at her helplessly. It was the first time I had ever connected with a nonflock human being-besides Jeb.
It had been really cool. The best.
Plus her mom was so awesome. She was strict about some things-don’t leave your socks lying around-but so not strict about other things, like calling the cops about my bullet wound. Unlike any other parent I’d ever heard of, she didn’t press for details, didn’t lecture, and believed what I said. She actually accepted me. Like she accepted Ella, for who she was.
It was enough to give me a psychotic break-if I let myself dwell on it.
“Probably not,” I said, hating the hurt look on Ella’s face. “I just-don’t think I’ll be able to. If I ever could, I would, but-“
I turned away and started brushing my teeth. Jeb had always said to think with your brain, not your emotions. He’d been right, as usual. So I put all my feelings in a box and locked it.
Nudge still couldn’t accept that Max and the others were dead. It was impossible-she couldn’t deal with it-so she forced herself to think other thoughts.
Nudge guessed it was kind of sad that, right now, this scraped-out shallow ledge in the middle of a desert cliff actually felt cozy and comfortable to her. She lay on her back, feet up against the wall, bruised legs out straight, examining the strata of colors-cream, tan, pink, peach-in the solid rock overhead. The sun out there was hot, but it was cool in here, and breezy.
It just goes to show you, she thought. You think you need all your stuff, your favorite cup, your best blanket, soap, your parents-and then you realize that all you really need is to be where the Erasers can’t get you.
She couldn’t get over Ari. He’d been a little kid the last time she’d seen him. She remembered how he’d seemed to get on Max’s nerves, always following her around. Now he was a full-grown Eraser, the worst of them all. How could that have happened in only four years?
Half an hour ago, she and Fang had heard the very distant chop-chop of a helicopter. They’d pulled as far back into the cave as they could, flattening themselves against the cool back wall. After twenty minutes of silence, Fang had decided it was safe and gone to look for food. She hoped he came back soon.
Their house was burned to cinders. Every one of her friends except Fang was dead. She and Fang were really on their own-maybe forever.
Fang flapped up the side of the cliff, landing almost silently on their ledge. Nudge felt a warm flow of relief.
“Can I interest you in a bit of raw desert rat?” he asked, patting his windbreaker pocket.
“Oh, no!” Nudge said, horrified.
He shrugged off his windbreaker and brushed some dust off his black T-shirt. Popping something in his mouth, he chewed and swallowed loudly. “Can’t get fresher,” he said cajolingly.
“Ugh!” Nudge shuddered and turned away from him. Rat! Flying like the hawks was one thing; eating like them was not going to happen.
“Okay, then,” said Fang. “How about some kabobs? You get the vegetables.”
Whirling, Nudge saw Fang unfolding a foil packet. Instantly, the smoky, meaty smell of cooked beef and vegetables filled her nose.
“Kabobs!” she said, hurrying to sit by Fang. “Where did you get them? You didn’t have time to go all the way to town. Oh, my gosh, they’re still hot.”
“Let’s just say some campers are going to be a little surprised,” Fang said drily, pushing the meat off into one pile, the onions and peppers into another.
Nudge took a bite of grilled pepper. It was warm, smoky, tender-utter heaven.
“Now, this is food,” she said, closing her eyes.
“So I guess we have to decide whether to keep looking for Max or go try to save Angel,” said Fang, eating the chunks of beef.
“But the Erasers said everyone else was dead. Doesn’t that mean Angel and Max too?” Nudge asked, feeling a sad weight settle on her again.
“No way to tell,” Fang said. “The thing is, if Max isn’t here, is it because she’s dead? How would they have found her? Angel…” He paused. “Well, we knew they had Angel. That’s probably all over by now.”
Nudge held her head in her hands. “I can’t think about it.”
“I know. But what are your-” He stopped, squinting, looking off into the distance.
Shading her eyes, Nudge looked out too. Way far off, she could barely make out two dark splotches. Well, so what? Just more hawks.
She sat back and slowly ate her last chunk of onion, then licked the foil they’d been wrapped in. Fang had to come up with a plan-that was all there was to it.
But Fang kept looking out at the sky.
Nudge frowned. The two dark splotches were bigger now, closer. They must be mighty big hawks. Maybe they were eagles!
Suddenly, Fang stood and fished in his pocket for his small metal mirror. Holding out his hand, he caught the last bits of sunset in the mirror, flashing their reflection outward.
He flashed it, then stopped, flashed, then stopped.
The hawks became larger, closer. Now they were definitely spiraling downward in their direction.
Please don’t let them be flying Erasers, Nudge thought in sudden panic. She’d realized they were too big, too awkward to be real raptors.
Then her mouth dropped open. Half a minute later, Iggy and the Gasman landed clumsily on the ledge, knocking rocks and dust everywhere. Nudge just stared at them, so happy she could hardly believe it.
“You aren’t dead,” she said.
“No. You aren’t dead either,” said Iggy irritably. “How about just ‘hello’?”
“Hi, guys,” said the Gasman, brushing dust out of his hair. “We couldn’t stay home-there’s Erasers all over the mountain. So we decided to come here. Anybody have a problem with that?”
The next morning I pulled on my new sweatshirt. I’d tried out my wing. It worked, though it was incredibly stiff and sore.
I was relieved to go, to get back in the air. I knew Fang and Nudge were going to kill me. I knew I had let Angel down. But there was no way I could have not done what I did. I wouldn’t be Max.
To tell you the truth, not being Max sometimes had its appeal.
Dr. Martinez pushed a small backpack at me. “It’s an old one-I don’t use it,” she said quickly, knowing I wanted to refuse any more help. “Please take it.”
“Well, since you said ‘please,’” I muttered, and she laughed.
Ella was watching the ground, her shoulders hunched. I tried not to look at her either.
“If you ever need anything, anything at all, please call us,” said Ella’s mom. “I put my phone numbers inside the pack.”
I nodded, even though I knew I would never use the numbers. I had no idea what to say. But I had to try.
“You guys helped me,” I said stiffly, “and you didn’t even know me. It would have been bad if you hadn’t.” How’s that for eloquent, eh? I sounded like freaking Tarzxm.
“You helped me,” Ella pointed out. “And you didn’t even know me. You got hurt because of me.”
I shrugged in that endearing way I have. “Anyway- thanks. Thanks for everything. I really appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome,” said Ella’s mom, smiling kindly. “We were glad to do it. And good luck-with whatever happens.”
I nodded, and then-get this-they both hugged me at once, like a Max sandwich. Once again, I felt the horror of tears starting in my eyes, and I blinked them back quickly. But I let them hug me, and sort of patted Ella’s elbow, which was all I could reach. I won’t lie to you-it felt really good. And really awful at the same time. Because what’s worse than knowing you want something, besides knowing you can never have it?
I disengaged myself gently and opened the door. Outside, it was sunny and warm. I gave a little half-wave, hoping it was jaunty, then headed out into the yard. I’d decided to give them a sort-of present. I felt they deserved it.
Would they think I looked goofy? What did we-the flock-look like to outsiders? I had no idea, and I didn’t have time to start caring. I adjusted my sweatshirt and the backpack. I turned. Ella and her mom were watching me with wide, curious eyes.
I ran a few steps and leaped upward, unfurling my wings, feeling them fill with air, wincing slightly as my damaged muscles pulled and strained. Fully extended, my wings were thirteen feet across, speckled brown and splotched with white.
A hard downstroke, ouch, then upward, ouch, then down. The familiar rhythm. Ella’s face was awed and delighted, her hands clasped together. Dr. Martinez was wiping her eyes, her smile wobbly.
A minute later, I was way high, looking down on Ella’s little house, at the two small figures waving hard up at me. I waved back, then banked, feeling the familiar joy of flying, the freedom, the speed. I soared off toward the horizon, heading northwest, on my way to meet Nudge and Fang, who I hoped would miraculously still be where I’d told them to be.
Thanks, Ella, I thought, refusing to feel sad. Thank you both, for everything.
Angel, I’m on my way at last.
