Max shook his head, trying to clear the heaviness. He’d been half hoping Mr. Sanpedro’s would be open and he could get a dougie, but now, crossing the deserted plaza, he saw all the shops were locked up. He grumbled to himself, accelerating up the face of the cliff. It was going to be a long couple of months.
He powered down his boots at the edge of the tunnel and heaved himself in. This was where Yala always came to think. She would sneak off late at night, probably thinking Max didn’t notice, and spend hours on end in here by herself. Max never really understood it, but now he stood there panting and staring into the inky blackness and he felt some kind of peace come over him. It was an emptiness even more profound than the deserted city, and for no reason Max could explain, it was comforting. He walked forward, the clang-clang of his jetboots echoing up and down the tunnel around him. He’d have to ask Yala about this place, if he ever had a chance to talk to her again. Max smiled crookedly to himself and then tripped over a dead body and fell flat on his face.
For a full minute, Max lay perfectly still in the darkness. He wanted to move. He wanted to jet out of there as quickly as possible, in fact, but between the terror and the ickiness of it all, his body simply would not respond to even the most frantic attempts to rouse it. So instead he just lay there wondering what ridiculousness had caused him to walk through the tunnel instead of jet and why this had been the most endless day of his life and who might’ve met their lonely, dark end in the tunnel, of all places. He sincerely hoped it was no one he knew. He’d had just about enough of death for the moment.
His body still wouldn’t let him move, but his breathing was finally slowing down. He wondered how the person had died. Maybe they were murdered. And maybe the killer was still around, lurking in the darkness. That thought had Max squirming to get himself up and running, but then the dead body rolled over and growled. Max yelled, scrambled to his feet, and ran.
He didn’t stop till he was out of breath and could see the faint light from the other end of the tunnel. Then he threw himself against the wall and tried to listen over his own heavy panting for the sound of the zombie creature chasing him. He didn’t hear anything but the echo of his breaths and the memory of the growl. It was more of a moan really. In fact, now that Max thought about it, it almost sounded like a word. And zombies didn’t speak words, from what he knew about them; they just made horrible guttural noises while they gnashed their dead teeth on people’s brains. Anyway, the noise the dead body made might’ve been a moan, and it might’ve been a word. And if it had been a word, it would’ve been something like erp or emp or … Max gazed back into the darkness.
Or help.
Okay. Max’s breathing was getting fast, which he took to mean that his body had realized that his mind was about to send it back into the place of utter terror once again. And it didn’t want to go. But if it had been a word that the now maybe-not-dead body had spoken, and that word had been help, well … he couldn’t just leave. He would never be able to get rid of the thought of some dying person wasting away in the tunnel, and that moaning plea would haunt him for the rest of his life.
Which would suck.
He scrunched up his face, told his breathing to Cool it please, and took a step back into the darkness. The clang of his jetboot sent fading echoes bouncing away from him. He took another step. Nothing ate him. No dead teeth sank into his brains. He started walking. This is what Mom would do, he told himself. This is what Yala would do. But they would have a plan too. And something to fight with in case they were wrong. Max had no plan and nothing to fight with. He didn’t want to jet because he was afraid he’d either miss the body or singe it with the flame from his boots. That was about as much strategy as he had to work with so far; that and Don’t run away screaming.
He was just thinking maybe the body had gotten up and walked away when he stepped on it again.
“Oof,” said the body.
Max froze, his heart beating away like it thought it could break out of his chest if it went fast enough. “Hello?” he said. That seemed like a pretty useless conversation starter given the circumstances, but it would have to do. He reached down, felt fabric, flesh, hair.
“Help …” the body said, scaring Max half to death. But still … it was definitely a word this time. He had been right. He breathed a tiny sigh of relief and crouched down, trying to figure out what he was dealing with.
“Okay,” Max said. It seemed to be a boy about his age maybe. Skinnier than Max, but then most boys his age were. Also, the boy seemed to have all his extremities intact, no blood-squirting stumps or gaping holes. That was a good thing. “Where does it hurt?”
“Everywhere” came the moaned response.
“Uh … where does it hurt the most?”
“Head.”
Max touched what felt like dried blood on the boy’s scalp. At least it was dry. “Okay,” he said again. Amazing conversationalist, he thought. Just amazing. “I’m going to try to lift you. Somehow.”
The boy just groaned.
Max slid his arms underneath him and tried to lift. The boy howled in pain, and Max put him back down. “Sorry.” This would be harder than he’d thought. He walked around to the other side of him and crouched. Grabbed the boy under his left arm and by the pants leg and heaved him. The boy screamed again, but Max managed to get him awkwardly slung over his shoulder. He apologized again, felt silly for apologizing to someone whose life he was saving, felt even sillier for thinking so hard about it, and then started walking, trying to ignore the boy’s moans of pain.
Sweat poured down Max’s body by the time he reached the edge of the tunnel. The boy had gone unnervingly quiet during the last couple of minutes, and Max didn’t want to put him down for fear he wouldn’t be able to get him up again. An early morning downpour was covering Flood City in sheets of rain, and gusts of wind swooshed between the buildings like angry spirits. Max stared across the chasm to his family’s twentieth-floor apartment. It was the same chasm he’d almost tumbled to his death into twenty-four hours earlier, and here he was about to maybe tumble to his death again. And this time he would be bringing someone with him.
Surely the boots will hold both of us, he thought. Surely. But he recognized the voice of trying-to-convince-himself. It was the same voice he used when he told himself that Djinna might be into him. Usually, after that voice came another one that always said the same thing: Yeah right. Still … Djinna had seemed kind of happy to see him, and if anything, the craziness of the night before had brought them closer together. ENOUGH! yelled the voice of reason. You’ve got a half-dead kid on your shoulder and a plunge of death between you and safety. Stop thinking about the girl.
Right. That voice always had a point. Max felt like he was in one of those annoying riddles that Mr. Essner would give them in school—the ones that always involved a catastrophic situation, a few disagreeable people, and not quite enough resources to deal with it. Now solve it, Mr. Essner would say, and the answer would always make people groan and slap their foreheads with its obviousness. Max never got the right answer.
In this situation, there were no resources except his jetboots, and Max was too exhausted to think of any clever way to get across. Plus he wasn’t sure how much longer the kid would last, if he wasn’t dead already. So Max powered up his jetboots as high as he could and launched out into the emptiness.
At first Max really thought he was going to make it. The jetboots carried him two-thirds of the way across the chasm before they faltered. Two people is too much weight, Max thought as the ignition jets sputtered and he started slowly descending. He pushed hard with his heels, sparking a little climb, but nowhere near enough to get him to the twentieth floor. Then his fall gathered speed as the boots began to fail entirely. Soon he would be in a full-on plummet.
“Uhhgg,” moaned the boy, perhaps sensing his imminent shattering on the craggy rocks below. At least he wasn’t dead yet. Max was close enough to his building that he could see into the apartments.
They were falling faster now, but Max thought maybe, just maybe, he could grab one of the balcony banisters. He reached out, trying to edge himself closer, but couldn’t quite make purchase.
“Oy,” he said, shaking the boy on his shoulder. “I know you’re in a bad way, but, um … I might need a hand here.”
The boy stirred. “Urg,” he mumbled, seeming, at least, to grasp what was being asked of him.
“I know everything hurts,” Max said. There were precious few floors left before they began a free fall into the chasm depths. “But if I turn and you crawl forward, you might be able to tip us toward the building and grab a rail.”
The boy didn’t say anything for a second and Max almost lost his cool completely. Then the boy stirred. “Okay,” he said.
Max threw his empty shoulder forward, setting them into a slow spin. There were only three balconies left. The boy shifted his weight, which seemed to send them spiraling down faster, and then howled with pain. This is not good, Max thought. But the boy was still moving, and then, Max realized, he was edging his body out across the emptiness. Max held tight.
Two more floors. They weren’t going to make it. The rain smacked against Max’s face as he looked up into the sky, maybe for the last time. Then he felt a sudden jerk and almost let go of the boy from shock. “You did it!” Max yelled. “You did it!”
“Yes,” the boy said. “Now could you please climb up before you pull us both to our deaths?” He was grasping the railing of the last floor with one hand, barely hanging on. Max clambered past him, heaved himself onto the balcony, and then pulled the boy up. They lay there panting for a few minutes on the balcony, staring up at the falling rain, making sure they really were alive. Then Max looked over at the boy whose life he’d just saved.
“Oh,” he said. “You’re a Chemical Baron.”
They both burst out laughing.
What, Dr. Sarita wondered as she raced down a corridor between two brick apartment buildings, could Max possibly have done now? She sped across the plaza, noticing the first few Flood City folks beginning their days. It was raining again. Yala was gone. The jet fuel and smoke stench of the previous night’s carnage still lingered in the air like a bad dream that wouldn’t go away. Dr. Sarita sighed. And now Max wanted her to come home immediately and not ask any questions, just come home. Now.
“But you’re okay?” Dr. Sarita had asked her son.
His face got all exasperated on the holodeck. “Mom! I said I’m fine. I’ll explain when you get here.” And with a blip he was gone.
Fine. Dr. Sarita was exhausted and worried, hadn’t had time to process that her daughter was gone for who knew how long, and now Max wanted to act out. Fine. She sped up the cliff wall, through the tunnel, and up into their apartment.
Max stood up when his mom flew in from the balcony.
“Now, what,” Dr. Sarita demanded, taking off her jetboots and rain jacket, “is oh-so-important that you—”
There was a boy lying on the couch. His hair was caked with blood and he was paler than most people on Flood City. And he was wearing Max’s clothes, which were much too big for him. “Max?”
“Mom!” Max said in his don’t-freak-out voice. “Lemme explain.”
“Please do.”
“He was injured in the crash last night. I found him unconscious in the tunnel.” That all sounded true so far. “I don’t know who he is.” Less true. “He must not have a home. Or maybe he caught amnesia.” And that was blatantly false and misleading; Dr. Sarita knew her son.
But he clearly knew her too, and now she was too busy being a doctor to pry more. Max had definitely counted on this. “That’s odd,” she said, kneeling beside the boy and inspecting his wounds. “Has he woken at all?”
“Just a little. He was pretty out of it though.”
“Max, you carried him here? On your jetboots? That must’ve been … difficult.”
Max nodded. “You have no idea, Mom.”
“We need to get him to the hospital now.”
“No!” He said it so suddenly that Dr. Sarita looked up at him in surprise.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Why not?”
“Because he said he hates hospitals.”
Dr. Sarita stood. “Max. Talk to me. C’mon.”
Max looked like he was trying to come up with a hundred different explanations and all of them were just as terrible as the ones he’d already used. “Shoot,” he finally said, collapsing in a heap on the old easy chair and covering his face with his hands.
“Max?”
“Okay, Mom, okay!”
“Why is he wearing your clothes?”
“Because … when I found him he was wearing these.” Max reached under the chair and pulled out Ato’s Baron uniform.
Dr. Sarita gasped. “He’s …”
“A Chemical Baron, yes. But he’s cool. I mean, he seems cool, and he’s really hurt and I just couldn’t leave him there, dying in the tunnel. It didn’t seem right, so I just put him over my shoulder, even though it was dark and I couldn’t see who he was, you know, and took him with me and we almost died getting here ’cause the weight was too much for my jetboots, but he grabbed the railing right before we slid down into the chasm, so technically he saved my life too, if you know what I mean.”
Dr. Sarita stared at her son. Her eyes had gone from wide to narrow to wide again and finally settled on weary acceptance. It was an incredible story, but she was very familiar with Max’s ramblings and kind heart and knew a true Max adventure when she heard one. “I do,” she finally said. “I know what you mean.”
“You do?”
“You did well, Max.”
“I did?”
“Yes. You saved someone’s life. You’re right, he probably would’ve died if you’d left him there. Especially considering he’s”—she had to pause to let the reality of it set in—“a Baron.”
“Because most people woulda locked him up before they took care of him?”
“Well, I don’t know about most people, but … yes, a lot of us have good cause to be angry with the Barons, especially after last night.”
“He said he didn’t know how bad it was gonna be last night,” Max said. “He said—”
“Mmmmggghhh,” Ato moaned.
Max shut up and looked at him. Dr. Sarita crouched back down and ran her hand along his head. It came back bloody. She looked at Max. “His wound opened up again. We need to do something now.”
“Wha-what do we do?” stammered Max. “If we take him to the …”
“I know, I know,” Dr. Sarita growled. She was pressing a towel against Ato’s head to stop the bleeding. “Go in my bedroom and get my medical kit. Quickly.”
Max ran into his mom’s room and hurried back with the white box she kept under her bed.
“Get out the suture kit.”
Max’s hands were shaking. “You’re going to stitch him up? Right here?”
“Max, now!”
Beneath a collection of shears and scalpels was a small plastic kit with thread and a needle in it. Max passed it to his mom, trying to steady his hand so she wouldn’t notice the tremble.
“And one of those saline bottles. And some disinfectant. No, the other kind. Right.”
Max peered over at his mom’s perfectly steady hands as she poured saline over Ato’s scalp. The gash spread in a red smile along the back of his head. Dr. Sarita dabbed it with orange disinfectant gel and then picked up a needle.
“Ugh,” Max said before he could stop himself.
“Hush your mouth and glove up.”
“What?”
“Put some gloves on. I need a hand.”
Max did as he was told, trying to suppress the urge to run out of the room.
“Hold the wound the way I am and don’t let go.”
Max put his gloved fingers on either side of the gash along Ato’s head. A trickle of blood slid out and Max closed his eyes. “He’s not gonna wake up?”
“Not for a while, no.
I gave him some sleeper meds.”
A few moments later, it was all over. Dr. Sarita had slid the needle in and out easily, like she was jotting down a note. The bleeding had stopped and Ato had an ugly black caterpillar of knots running along the back of his head.
Max went into the bathroom and puked his guts out.
Piece by foggy piece, the world slid back into focus. The shapes that had been dancing in front of Ato’s face resolved themselves into objects. Objects with names and uses. Meaning. Yes. Then the past twenty-four hours trickled back into his mind.
He was in Flood City.
On Earth.
The cloud cruiser had crashed. Mephim. The nuke. The iguanagull. So much had happened! He sat up, felt dizzy, and slid back down.
Where was he? Someone’s bedroom. Max. Yes. The boy who had dragged him out of that tunnel and almost fallen into a chasm with him. He was in Max’s bedroom. The rain pitter-pattered against the window. The sky was gray and dim in a way that could mean early morning or maybe nightfall. Ato had grown up on a spacecraft and wasn’t familiar enough with planet living to know the difference.
A middle-aged woman with brown skin walked into the room. “Ah, you’re up!” She had a thick halo of black hair and a sad smile. She sat beside the bed and put a warm hand over his. “I’m Sarita, Max’s mom. I’m a doctor. How are you feeling?”
Flood City Page 9
