Fang: A Maximum Ride Novel (10 page)

38

I WAS STILL about a half mile from home when I smelled smoke. I sped up, and my heart seized as I saw the toofamiliar bright flickering of flames coming from inside the house. I swooped inside and skidded to a halt in the foyer.

Our couch was in flames.

Jeb hurried in from the kitchen, Angel right behind him. He had a big mixing bowl of water, and Angel had a juice pitcher. They threw the water onto the couch, where it barely made a dent in the blaze.

“What’s going on here?” I shouted as loud as I could to be heard over the din of bird kids yelping at one another. I lunged into the kitchen and grabbed a red cylinder out of the corner. “Any of you ever hear of a
fire extinguisher?
” I screeched as I put out the blaze.

Everyone turned and started yelling at
me,
God only knows why. I covered my ears. “Where’s Fang?”

Nudge put her hands on her hips, tears in her eyes. “Isn’t he with you?” she asked. “He’s always with you.”

Just then, to complete my perfect evening, the automatic sprinkler system finally detected the blaze and went off, spraying us all, soaking everything with cold water. I stood there, my hair getting plastered down. The couch sputtered and fizzled and filled the air with the scent of Eau de Wet ‘n’ Charred upholstery.

I gave Gazzy my best “You’re in so much trouble” glare and went out onto the back deck to look for Fang.

On the deck, I jumped to the railing and balanced there, planning my search pattern. It wasn’t long before I could make out Dylan’s voice nearby — he was under the house, close to the edge of the cliff.

I jumped over the railing and landed on the ground almost silently. I saw Dylan first, and then, with a flood of relief, Fang. They were standing tensely by a concrete piling. I could tell this wasn’t, like, guys’ night out.

“This is bigger than you and what you want.” Dylan sounded ice cold. It was actually the first time I’d heard his voice like that, and it was unnerving somehow. “I’m telling you, the danger I saw today was real.”

Fang’s voice was just as cold as Dylan’s. “Why should I believe you? We don’t know anything about you.”

“I get that, Fang. What matters is that
I
know a lot about
her,
” Dylan said. “Probably even more than you do.”

Fang’s face showed dark fury. I might have witnessed the first bird kid boy fight in history if I hadn’t bolted forward, my feet crunching on the gravel. “Fang!”

They swiveled and saw me. Dylan looked taken aback, and Fang’s expression was angry and shut.

“The house was on
fire,
” I greeted them tersely. “In case you’re
interested
.”

They both glanced up overhead as if to make sure the house was still standing. Fang sniffed, smelling the smoke, and I saw comprehension cross his face.

“It’s out, right?” he said. I just looked at him.

“Is everyone okay?” Dylan asked stiffly.

“I’m sure you had some super important and
crucial
reason for being out here,” I said, my words like icy spikes, “when the living room was going up in
flames
over your
heads
.”

“Everything seems under control, Max.” Fang shoved his hands into his pockets as he redirected his eyes toward me.

“We were talking about you,” Dylan — who hadn’t yet learned that honesty isn’t
always
the best policy — blurted out.

Fang’s gaze sent daggers at him.

I was now ready to crack these two numbskulls’ heads together. “Dylan, Flock Rule Number One: The safety of the kids is always most important. Period.”

“I understand,” Dylan insisted. “But Max, I have to tell you that —”

“And Flock Rule Number Two is, Don’t argue with Max or you’ll live to regret it.” I spun and stomped out to the clearing, turning back for one last jab at Dylan. “And by the way, you clearly
don’t
know me better than Fang does. Do you see Fang arguing with me? No, you do not.”

Fang rolled his eyes. I jumped up and landed back on the deck.

Advanced life-forms, my sweet patootie. Jerks. Both of them.

39

IT TOOK THE FLOCK about two seconds to correctly read the insane glint of rage in my eye, and they all scuttled out for cleaning supplies while I sloshed around the living room, cataloging damage.

“Max.”

I swung my head to see Jeb standing against a wall. Soot was smeared on his face, and his eyes were bloodshot. “Good job taking off like that,” Jeb said tersely. “You can’t just leave them on their own. And you can’t just run away from problems every time you get upset.”

“Go jump!” I yelled at him. “How dare you judge me!
You’re
the one who left us
all
on our own, when we were much younger than
this!
You
butthead!
”

“Let bygones be bygones, Max. I know we’ve had our differences, but we should put them behind us — for the good of the flock.” He gestured to the disaster before us. “This clearly isn’t working. You need help. I think I should come back and live here. I should take up where I left off.”

“Forget it!” I told him in my best voice of authority. “There is no freaking way you will ever live in this house like one of us. I wouldn’t trust you if you were the last life raft leaving the
Titanic
!”

“You haven’t done much better,” Jeb said. “Look at this place! Not to mention how the other kids are feeling so alienated by you and Fang now that you seem to have become your own cozy flock of two.”

My face went red. No snappy comeback for that one.

“We never intended for that to happen,” Jeb said — like “they” had made a whole flowchart of our lives before we were even born. That was the last straw.

“Guess what? You don’t get to
intend
squat to happen in my life, ever again!” I shouted. “You don’t get to pick out what freaking
socks
I wear, much less anything else!”

Jeb glared at me. “You’re not making good decisions, Max,” he said with quiet intensity. “You’re being run by your heart, not your head. That isn’t how I brought you up.”

I thought my chest was going to explode. “You brought me up in a
dog crate,
” I said, trying not to shriek. “Those days are over.
Forever
.”

40

I HAD NIGHTMARES THAT NIGHT. I dreamed that I slapped Angel, hard, and her head split open — then her face peeled aside to reveal Mr. Chu, my old nemesis. I dreamed that Fang and I were dressed up and walking down an aisle in a church, but when I turned to look at him, he had the head of an Eraser. I dreamed that Ivory boy Dylan had disgusting boils on his face. Eew. I guess my subconscious was trying to make an oh, so subtle point: People aren’t always what they seem.

It was late morning when I finally woke, feeling almost as if I’d been drugged. The amount of sun coming in the window told me it was almost lunchtime. I padded down the hall, the smell of smoke and charred couch becoming stronger. When I reached the living room, I stopped in surprise.

It was almost empty. All the ruined furniture was gone. The water had been mopped up. Nudge was on a step stool, spraying the sooty ceiling with cleaner. Without a word, I went into the kitchen for some chow.

Gazzy and Iggy followed me in, carrying dirty dishes and a pile of dirty clothes. Iggy dropped the clothes by the washing machine. When did these guys get so industrious?

“What’s all that?” I asked.

“I told them to clean up their pigsty,” Angel said. “Gaz, put those dishes in the sink. Iggy, start a load of laundry. Some of your clothes have mold on them.”

Was I still having a nightmare? Since when did Angel give orders?

I opened the fridge, but it was empty. I looked around and saw a couple empty cereal boxes, an empty bread wrapper.

“Are we all out of food?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said Angel, tapping a piece of paper with a pencil. “I’ve been making a list. Jeb said he’d stop at a store on the way back from the dump.”

“Bless his heart,” I said sourly. “But I’ve always provided the food for this flock. You’re all acting like I’m not even here or something.” I felt the first prickles of tears starting in the backs of my eyes.

Go figure: I didn’t cry when I had my
ribs
broken, but the flock taking care of themselves made me weepy. Angel stared at me.

“Give me the list,” I said, trying not to rip it out of her hands. “I’ll deal with it. It’ll be faster, anyway.” Angel pushed the paper over to me. I poured a cup of coffee and sauntered out to the deck.

My chest constricted when I saw Jeb down below. He had a pickup truck with an open-bed trailer hitched to it. Fang was on the trailer, tying down all the ruined, sodden furniture.

Dylan was on the ground, shaking water off books and tossing them into the truck bed. He and Fang were careful not to look at each other.

“Get that lamp, Dylan,” Jeb commanded, checking the hitch of the trailer. Dylan nodded and placed a lamp on top of an armchair. “The dump said they’d take anything.” “Oh, really?” I called down to him. “Do they take reject mutants and scientists too?” It was mean, but Jeb and Dylan didn’t seem to be
getting
it.

They were not our family
.

I grabbed my jacket inside and jumped out the front door, over the canyon.

41

GAZZY WAS HOLDING HIS BREATH, cheeks puffed out, belly pushed out, arms at his sides.

“Puffer fish!” Angel guessed. Gazzy shook his head.

“Blister!” said Iggy, poking Gazzy’s cheeks. Gazzy shook his head.

“Knish?” suggested Total. Gazzy shook his head.

“We give up!” Nudge said. “What are you?”

Gazzy let his breath out in a rush. “A grain of rice, cooking!” he said. “
Obviously!
I started off all skinny, then got bigger and bigger!”

Dylan laughed. “Good one,” he said. “Never would have guessed —”

A high-pitched whistling noise interrupted him and filled the room. Just as everyone was registering the smoking ball on the floor, it exploded.

The explosion was small — a flash of blinding light, followed by a sickening stream of pink smoke. Everyone began coughing, practically retching from the noxious smell.

Then, in the next second, there was a huge crunching noise — from above.

“Scatter!” said Gazzy.

They all fanned out around the edges of the room. Angel motioned to Dylan to keep his back against the wall.

“Oh, God, what is that stuff?” Nudge moaned, coughing into her sleeve.

The shock of the gas cloud rendered them useless as the roof above them was ripped apart with loud splintering noises. Then an inhumanly large, hairy hand grabbed some Sheetrock from the ceiling and tore it away with long, ragged yellow claws.

“Oh, my God,” Nudge breathed. “Is that an
Eraser?
”

“Everyone, outside!” Angel ordered. It was always better to fight in the air than inside a building, and the smoke felt crippling. But as the flock raced for doors and windows, those doors and windows crashed inward, followed by the hulking, horribly familiar forms of Erasers.

It was like waking up into a nightmare of the past.

“Dinnertime!” one of the Erasers growled, and the others laughed — the same way the flock had heard so many times before. Their wolfish faces were split into ugly yellow-toothed grins, and their small mean eyes glittered with the excitement of the hunt. There were at least ten of them, and they easily weighed more than two hundred pounds each.

The dogs bravely leaped at the wolfmen first. Akila managed to clamp her jaws around one’s ankle and draw blood before he kicked her away. Total took to the air, flitting around like a big black mutant moth, snarling and snapping, occasionally getting a bite of Eraser flesh.

It was a good distraction. The kids had a second to catch their breath as the smoke began to dissipate. Then instinct kicked in, and in moments they had launched themselves at their attackers.

“They still smell like garbage!” Gazzy yelled, as the first blows were exchanged. He felt like he might barf.

“Okay, now I’m mad!” Iggy shouted.

Angel glanced over to see a thin trickle of blood coming from his nose.

An Eraser lunged at Angel, and she dodged, screaming bloody murder. She grabbed a floor lamp and connected with the Eraser’s heavily boned head, snapping it to one side.

Nearby, Dylan was coughing and gagging from the lingering smoke. And yet he was mercilessly pounding an Eraser, his fists flying almost supernaturally fast. The Eraser was doubled over, unsuccessfully trying to block the blows.

So, the new bird kid had been programmed to fight.

The rest of them were even better trained to fight Erasers, but with the desperate impulse to keep their arms in front of their noses and mouths, they started to lose ground.

One Eraser grabbed Nudge and held her in a death grip even though she screamed and kicked with all her might. A second jumped behind her and grasped her wings brutally.

He was getting ready to break them.

42

THE SUN BEAT DOWN on my shoulders. It felt heavenly to be out flying, my hair streaming back, silence all around. I gazed down at the earth beneath me, the winding streams carved through red canyons, the striated layers of rock revealed by millennia of erosion, my tiny shadow on the ground, barely visible —

And the dark shadow following me, so close, practically right on top of me.

I took a breath, folded my wings down, swung my feet so I was vertical, and snapped my fist up hard. With unerring timing, it connected solidly with a face.

I heard a surprised hiss of breath, felt skin split beneath the force, then dove down, did a somersault in midair, and angled myself to attack from below.

“What the hell is the matter with you!” Fang shouted. One hand was pressed to his face, below his right eye.

“Fang!” I evened myself out till I was flying close to him. Our wings kept us about eight feet apart. “I’m sorry — I didn’t know it was you. Why were you sneaking up on me?”

“Who else would it be?” He sounded cranky and kept rubbing his face.

“Anyone! An Eraser, or a Flyboy, or —”

“There aren’t any more Erasers,” he said, giving me a confused look. “And I don’t think there are any more Flyboys either. We haven’t seen any in ages. Who else is going to be flying after you except one of us?”

We both thought of Dylan at the same time. “Sorry,” I muttered again. “I just reacted.”

His cheek was pink and already swelling — he would have a helluva shiner by tomorrow. “Look, there’s a tree over there. Can we stop a minute?”

A huge pine stood at the edge of the tree line on the mountain. We swooped down, slowed, and landed on a large branch.

“Sorry about yesterday,” Fang said. He leaned his back against the broad, rough trunk. “I let Dylan get to me. It was stupid. I can’t believe I didn’t notice the house almost burning down.” He gave a brief, wry smile.

“It didn’t almost burn down,” I said. “Just the couch, really. Gazzy and Ig were making a new stash of detonators, and ‘something happened.’”

Fang shook his head and let out a breath, then looked deeply into my eyes. I got that hollow, fluttery feeling again. I wanted to melt into him and forget everything, but something still felt like it had changed.

For some reason, Dylan’s face popped into my mind, and it was as though the two of them were side by side: Fang and Dylan. They were night and day. Dylan’s face was more open, wanting to talk, to ask questions, to learn. Fang’s face was closed, secretive, strong, like the most interesting riddle I would ever find.

“Jeb said the others were complaining about us,” I told him. The fresh pine-scented breeze blew my hair around, and I tucked it behind my ear.

“We’re all getting used to the … changed dynamics,” said Fang. He reached out and took a strand of my hair, immediately getting caught in a tangle. “It’s pretty, in the sun,” he said, holding the strand out to catch the sun’s rays. It was mostly brown but had streaks of dark red and even a little blond.

“Still,” I pressed on, “we have to think —”

“No, we don’t,” Fang whispered, and he tilted his head. I barely had time to breathe in before his warm lips were on mine, for the first time in … days. He put his arms around me and angled his head more.

I was so familiar with him that I could feel how swollen his cheek was, right under his eye. I mean, I knew Fang. I’d always known him. Literally always, my whole life. He’d always been my best friend and my second-in-command. I didn’t really know when our feelings had changed. All I knew was that he was the best thing I had in my life.

He held me closer and closer until we were practically glued together. I don’t know how long we stayed there, kissing and murmuring to each other. Finally my stomach rumbled, making us both laugh and break apart, our foreheads still touching.

“I guess I better get to the store,” I said, feeling like everything would be all right again in my world. “You coming?”

Fang nodded, and then a low buzzing sound, like a swarm of bees, distracted me. We both looked up through the top of the tree. Very, very high, higher than helicopters usually go, were four black choppers. We could barely see them, barely hear them. Most humans wouldn’t have been able to spot them, wouldn’t have known they were there.

But they were. And they were headed in the direction of our house.

Without speaking, we let go of the tree and fell outward, then opened our wings as the ground rushed up to meet us.

Time for reality again.