The two swaddled figures turned toward each other in silent communication.
“Do you know why all these animals died?” I interrupted.
“Come,” the woman said, walking away. “Come with us to our home and we will talk.”
Exhausted, starving, and desperate for answers, I followed.
34
“THERE WAS A very bright flash of light, and then heat all around.” Azizi was an animated storyteller, and his breath made the candle jump.
Once inside the mud-packed hut, my hosts had pulled their cloaks down around their shoulders, and I saw that Azizi and his sister, Nuru, had albinism. “We have to cover our skin,” Nuru explained. “Or the sun cooks it.”
They reminded me of Angel and Gazzy, and it wasn’t just their fair hair and skin. Nuru was measured and unreadable, while Azizi could be goofy, filling the spaces between his sister’s silences.
“A Jeep from one of the travel groups, its windows, pfft.” Azizi made a fist and shot his fingers out to signify the explosion of glass.
The travel groups were safaris—I learned that I was in eastern Africa, in the Ngorongoro Crater. I’d gotten pretty turned around in that storm.
“And then the animals, they sink to their knees and lie down, one by one,” Azizi went on. “They raise their voices and beg for Death to come to them! And Death, he comes.”
Nuru was boiling the bones she’d collected earlier for their marrow, and she looked over to where we sat cross-legged on the mat.
“At first it was very good fortune, you can imagine. So much meat that we didn’t have to hunt. But now, as you see, the meat rots, and we are very hungry.”
“After the animals, every person we see is a burned man,” Azizi continued. “Until you.”
I leaned closer. “And what did the burn victims say?”
“One man saw a smoking tree rising into the sky, its branches full. Another said it was a pale woman standing tall with a basket on her head. My sister, she says it is God they saw in the sky.”
I chewed my lip, thinking. Dead animals, burned men. Another seemingly huge disaster, but what did it have to do with a virus in Asia, or a betrayal in Russia?
“So none of these people were actually in the center? Was everyone else killed? You didn’t wonder what happened?”
The siblings looked at each other—that silent understanding I’d seen earlier. Nuru’s voice was soft when she spoke. “Yes. We wondered. But we cannot go back to the city.”
“Why not?”
Azizi got quiet for the first time all evening. He shrugged the bright purple cloak aside, and when he unwrapped his arm, I saw that his left hand was gone at the wrist.
“In our country, albinos are said to be good fortune. Witch doctors like to lie to the people to line their pockets. So there have been attacks…”
“Someone cut your hand off?” I gasped.
“Bad fortune for me,” Azizi said, somehow able to laugh about something so horrible.
“We came to the caldera because the Masai tribe thinks we are better luck alive than dead,” Nuru said. “Many times, they bring us their cattle blood milk.” She held out a cup to me.
I didn’t particularly love the idea of the vampire diet, but I wasn’t too picky these days. I also didn’t want to be rude, so I took a long swig.
“Mmm.” The mixture was thick, closer to pudding than milk, and wonderfully warm as it went down my throat. It was salty, with a sharp, coppery tang, but it wasn’t half bad.
“Yes, it is nourishing.” Nuru nodded as I tipped the clay cup back again. “This is the last of it now, so soon we will die.”
I sputtered, choking on the dregs—I couldn’t believe I’d just gulped down the last of their stash! “I’ll help you find food,” I promised, taking Nuru’s hand.
“There is nothing.” Azizi shook his head sadly. “We have searched as far as our feet can carry us. There are only bones.”
“I can search farther than you. And I can go into the city.” I pulled the sweatshirt over my head and shrugged it off my shoulders, stretching my wings long.
Azizi fell backward in the dirt, scrambling away in terror, but Nuru was grinning at me.
“You are a gift to us!” she exclaimed.
I had to smile. In the rest of the world, mutants were old news, but here, I was still a novelty. Here, people still thought I could help.
35
I STRETCHED MY limbs out on the woven rug. I felt the dried grasses poking through my sweatshirt, but I didn’t mind.
The earthy scent of the walls filled my nostrils, along with the musk of bodies packed close and old cooking spices—the smells of community.
I’d always thought of myself as so independent, but as I listened to Nuru’s and Azizi’s slow, steady breathing across the room, I realized just how terribly I’d missed my flock, and I finally felt some comfort.
In the moment before I drifted to sleep, the peaceful snoring stopped. Instead, I heard a ragged, nervous inhale, and my peripheral vision caught the arc of the blade swinging down behind my left shoulder.
My wings exploded outward, and I burst up through the mud roof before the knife could find its mark.
From twenty feet up in the air, still bewildered, I stared down through the wide, crumbling hole I’d torn in the hut. Nuru was on her feet, looking up at me, slack-jawed.
She was holding a machete.
I swooped back through the hole and tore it away from her, then glided out the door with it before my feet had ever touched the ground.
Nuru ran out of the hut, her brother trailing close behind.
I held the weapon in front of my face and plucked a cleanly halved feather off the blade. I exhaled a shaky breath.
So. Close.
When I looked back at Nuru and Azizi, the brother and sister I’d talked and laughed with, my temper exploded. “What were you doing with this thing?” I demanded, gesturing wildly.
“We are sorry,” Azizi said quickly, trying to smooth it over. “It is a mistake, you understand, a misunderstanding, that is all. Do not be angry with my sister.”
“We were only hungry, you see,” Nuru explained.
“You were going to eat me?” I asked, incredulous.
“Of course not!” Azizi answered. “We are not cannibals.”
“Just your wings,” Nuru admitted.
Call me crazy, but I didn’t find that very comforting.
“I told you I would help you find food,” I said sadly, turning away from the little bit of warmth I’d yearned for.
Obviously hoping my offer was still good, Azizi called, “Come back! We are sorry!”
“No doubt,” I answered, but I was already halfway across the desert by then.
36
NOW WHAT?
I had flown long enough for the cannibal creepshow to be far, far behind me, but my strength was giving out. I hadn’t seen anybody or anything for miles—no trees, no water, and definitely no food. I landed on a big pile of hard-packed dirt and thought. I was hungry and dehydrated, on the wrong continent, and completely alone. No flock, no Fang, no Dylan, no nobody.
Our island in the Pacific had been destroyed, apparently Australia had been destroyed, and now here I was in eastern Africa, which seemed extra destroyed.
That was a hefty chunk of the world. What in the heck had happened, to cause so much destruction on such a huge scale? Could any one being mastermind such a thing?
It was time to gather the very last dregs of my energy and head to Russia, thousands of miles north-northeast. The very thought made me want to cry. But first I had to—
“Gah!” I yelled, leaping up and flailing my arms and legs like a maniac. I whipped off my sweatshirt, tore off the undershirt beneath that, and scrambled out of my torn and worn-out jeans. Then I did a chaotic, herky-jerky shivering dance all across the dirt.
The mound I had been sitting on was a termite colony. And those little suckers had survived and were swarming all over me like
white on rice.
“Gross, gross, gross!” I screamed, since no one was around to hear. I whirled and jumped and shook my hair out and rubbed my arms and legs until I seemed to be mostly termite free.
Then, panting, I looked back at my clothes, which were now a living carpet of pale white bugs. I was in my underwear and sports bra. I would not be going anywhere like this. I had a bit of mirror—I could maybe set the bugs on fire? That mirror was… safely in the front pocket of my jeans.
I stomped a couple of times and shouted every swear word I knew, which took almost ten minutes. Then, seething, I glared at the termites. Would they eat my clothes? I stared at the sweatshirt Nudge had given me until my eyes swam with tears and my vision blurred. Once my vision blurred, those stupid bugs looked just like… rice. I remembered that many animals, including humans, ate termites. The flock and I had eaten bugs before. Not termites, but big crickets, locusts, et cetera.
My stomach felt so hollow you could practically see my spine through it.
Time to suck it up, Maximum.
I lunged for my sweatshirt, grabbed it up, and started scarfing termites.
37
TWO HOURS LATER I felt practically cheerful. That termite mound, once huge, was almost flat. I’d found termite nurseries where I could scoop up handfuls of pupae and wolf them down. Once I’d gotten used to the little feet and antennas tickling my throat, I’d started to appreciate their delicate, nutty flavor.
Now I lay flat on the ground, my belly full, my body surging to life with nourishment. “Yes, the African termite,” I murmured sleepily. “A bit tart, piquant, slightly reminiscent of quinoa…
“Ugh, get up, Max. You can rest later. You’re on a mission: You have to find out if whatever happened here is connected to something bigger.” Had anything Nuru and Azizi told me been true, or had they deceived me from the beginning?
So before I went to Russia, I journeyed south, figuring that Tanzania’s biggest city, Dar es Salaam, should be within a couple of hours’ flight.
And it was. Or at least, what I assumed was Dar es Salaam. Basically what I found was a city of ashes.
A large, circular area had been completely razed, with every single building leveled. I didn’t see any people. No corpses, either. Just shadows where everything had been incinerated—buildings, cars, and citizens, all together.
Away from the center, a few buildings were still partially standing—mostly the ones made of concrete. I flew to the top of one of them to get a better view, and I saw that its roof tiles had bubbled and blistered.
On the next block, a high-rise hotel looked like it had buckled at the knees—the lower floors had collapsed into a pile of rubble, with the untouched penthouse now balancing on top of it.
What happened here?
I was almost positive it wasn’t a natural disaster. It looked more like pictures of Hiroshima after World War II.
“But who would do this?” I wondered aloud. As far as I knew, Tanzania hadn’t been any kind of global threat. “Why here?”
“The Remedy does not discriminate.”
I whipped around at the sound of the deep voice and almost gasped: A giant of a man stood watching me. I have extra-good hearing—how had he gotten so close?
“Paris, Hong Kong, New York, here… All the world’s people must answer for crimes against the earth.”
“Who are you?” I asked sharply. And, more important, “Who is the Remedy?”
I remembered the word from the conversation on Fang’s blog. We’d thought it was a vaccine, maybe for the H8E virus. But this guy talked about it like it was a person, or some other kind of entity.
“Maximum Ride,” the broad-faced man said, ignoring my questions. “You seem to have lost your flock. The Remedy doesn’t like loose ends.”
“I’m starting to think me and this Remedy dude wouldn’t really get along.”
The giant may have been freakishly huge, but he couldn’t fly. I started to spring, but he was amazingly fast, and he batted me back down to the broken tiles with his massive fist as if I were a fly.
I’m stronger than most grown men, and I’ve been fighting for my life since I was barely able to walk. I’m lethal, and I know it. Now I fell back on the hand-to-hand combat I’d relied on so many times, dodging and weaving and getting a jab in when I could. But this guy was much stronger than most men, and stronger than me, and my hits didn’t seem to faze him.
He gave me a hard left to the head, smashing my cheek and whipping my head sideways. The sudden, awful pain made me want to throw up, and my reflexes slowed.
Swallowing down bile, I lunged across his right side for a kidney jab, but he caught my neck in a headlock. We stumbled around in a strange waltz as I tore at his arm. The giant flexed his muscles, crushing my windpipe more and more.…
A euphoric feeling flooded my system as the blistered roof tiles beneath my feet started to blur and my legs turned to rubber. My vision went swimmy and it suddenly seemed so easy to just give up.
No!
With my last bit of breath, I fumbled for a steak knife I’d tucked into my belt.
I chopped down hard, burying the knife in the giant’s thigh. He grunted and his grip slackened a tiny bit, but it was enough. I dropped down, deadweight, and slipped out of his grasp. As he reached to pull out the knife, I seized a shard of broken tile and gouged at his eyes.
It was so, so horrible and gross. But effective.
He shrieked and lurched backward, stumbling blindly close to the edge. His huge ham hands covered his eyes, blood running through his fingers. There was a length of broken, rusty rebar sticking up out of the tiles, and I snatched it up and pointed it at his chest. If he lunged forward, he would impale himself. And I would help him.
“Let’s try this again,” I snarled. “Who is the Remedy?”
The giant began to laugh, his blood running into his mouth. “You believe you can escape him?” he asked. He laughed and laughed, until I was sure that grating sound would live on in my dreams. “I have failed, but more will follow, and you cannot escape us all. The Horsemen will ride on,” the man said, and then leaped to his death.
38
NUDGE’S HANDS BROKE the surface of the cool, dark water as she dove. The cold made her gasp at first, but as she swam her body temperature adjusted and her skin tingled with pleasure.
The lake was Nudge’s favorite place in the caves, and she came here in the early mornings while the Aquatics were out hunting. The limestone walls reflected the light through small openings, making the shadowy water glow green. It was eerie and beautiful, like a place where fairies would live. Plus, no huge, kid-eating lampreys. A definite plus.
The other kids didn’t know what to make of her, so they kept their distance. She had gills, but no fins or webbed feet. But Nudge was strong, and by swimming lap after lap every day, she was getting stronger.
Her arms cut into the lake again and again with smooth, confident strokes. Her wings were folded tightly behind her. She stayed just below the surface of the water and opened her mouth like she’d seen the Aquatics do, letting in a little water so she could focus on filtering the oxygen through her gills instead of relying on her lungs.
They would call her the Flying Fish by the end of the summer.
She kept her eyes open and watched the fish swimming below her. It was so calm here, undisturbed by all the nightmares that were happening outside the caves. No snapping Cryenas, lampreys, Flyboys, or Erasers. She hated Erasers.
Nudge cherished the calm, even if it meant she got lonely. Even if it meant she would never see beyond these walls again.
“Don’t you want to know?” The memory of Max’s question nagged at her, and Nudge felt the smallest flicker of doubt.
She pushed it down as she always did, and got lost in the rhythm of her strokes until somewhere, as if in a distant world, she heard the barking.
Then a splash sent the whole lake rippling, and Nudge saw leather-booted feet wading toward her. She took
in everything at once: Something was off.
The Aquatics don’t wear boots.
They don’t wade—they swim.
Nudge flipped, kicking hard against the wall, shooting away from those boots like a torpedo.
Her swimming had gotten quick, but he was quicker.
A gloved hand clamped around her foot, yanking her back. She felt the leather against her skin and thought of the scientists who’d tested and poked her—people always wore gloves to do dirty work.
That was when her panic really set in—the understanding of what might happen. What was about to.
No! Nudge’s brain railed against the possibility. I’m stronger than that!
She twisted in his grasp, thrashing fiercely, but iron hands closed around her throat. A heavy booted foot pushed her down, pinning her against the lake floor.
Don’t give up! a panicked part of her said. You’re the Flying Fish, and fish don’t drown!
But even flying fish need to breathe… and the hands were cutting off her gills and her windpipe. Her arms and legs felt weightless. The hands felt like an iron vise.
“Don’t you want to know?” Max’s words throbbed in her head.
As her eyes started to bulge in their sockets, the last thing Nudge saw was the strange look on the young man’s face, looking down at her through the rippling water.
Now I know, Max, she thought. Now I know the truth.
39
HORSEMAN TRUDGED OUT of the water of the lake. His pants clung to his legs, and he was breathing heavily after the struggle.
He had expected the whole thing to be easier and was surprised at how emotional he felt. That definitely wasn’t what the doctor had had in mind when he’d programmed his soldiers.
He waited several minutes, studying the rhythms of the ripples until he was sure his voice would be steady. Then Horseman pressed the call button implanted in his wrist.
A middle-aged face appeared on the screen: the Remedy.
“A10103!” he exclaimed.
Maximum Ride Forever Page 9
