Almost, Horseman reminded himself. Not impossible for you.
He had to keep Iggy talking, keep him interested enough to stay close.
“Or maybe you meant friends like the Gasman,” he taunted. “Did he call you Iggy?”
The movement above stopped.
“You killed him, didn’t you?” Iggy’s voice cracked in despair. “Gazzy said he was right behind me, but he’s dead, isn’t he?”
Iggy’s accusing voice seemed to come from a hundred different directions, and Horseman squinted up through the maze of twining branches, trying to locate his prey.
“You’ve got me all wrong,” he said, his voice earnest, persuasive. “Just stop for a minute, and we can talk.”
I’ll tell you about the doctor and his plans, Horseman thought. I’ll tell you the truth.
It didn’t matter. He knew Iggy would never stop. There was only one way this could end.
Horseman glimpsed movement to his left—far from where he’d been searching. He turned his head to see the swoop of a light-colored wing standing out against the brown bark.
He took off like a bullet.
Following little more than the quiver of branches as they snapped back into place, Horseman plowed through leaves. He snagged his wings on burrs and dodged between whiplike vines. He followed the bird kid doggedly, recklessly, gaining distance, gaining speed.…
And when Iggy turned and dipped sharply, Horseman slammed face-first into a thick tree and, almost a hundred feet in the air, momentarily blacked out.
His limp body started to plummet toward the forest floor.
Luckily—or really, unluckily—he slammed to a stop when his legs fell on either side of a stray branch. Horseman collapsed against the trunk, breathing heavily as waves of pain and nausea rolled through his body.
This mission has not gone as planned, he thought.
He’d hoped to find Gazzy and Iggy alone, and hadn’t thought it would be too difficult in the middle of the Appalachian wilderness. But he certainly hadn’t expected to be trapped underground with a community of rebel girls armed to the teeth when a chemical bomb went off.
Horseman’s palms started to sweat as he thought about all the witnesses, and whom they might be reporting to. The news about the Gasman would satisfy the Remedy momentarily, but if he found out the other target was on the loose, there would be serious repercussions.
“If you should fail,” the doctor had said, “it would be my pleasure to send the next Horseman along after you.”
Horseman had to get to Iggy fast, before things spiraled out of his control.
What he needed was a new strategy.
53
HORSEMAN COULDN’T SEE. That was his biggest problem.
Well, he could see, but everything was slightly blurry, his depth perception was off, and he was pretty sure he was seeing double. He didn’t know if the chemical damage was temporary or permanent, but he had to figure out a way around it.
He’d thought he had Iggy—twice—when really, the blind kid had better spatial accuracy than he did.
Would no vision actually be better than faulty vision?
At this point, anything was worth a shot. Horseman stripped off his shirt, rolled it over his eyes, and tied the sleeves around his head. The world went completely dark.
Just like it was for Iggy.
Horseman felt instant relief in his eyes. The burning lessened, and the flow of tears subsided.
The rest of his body seemed less sure about his decision. His boots teetered on the branch, and his stomach dropped sharply as he felt the nothingness all around him. Never in his life had he felt so completely vulnerable.
For a moment he grasped wildly at the air, his arms flailing desperately. Then, feeling his fingers touch bark, Horseman hugged himself tight to the trunk of the tree, trying to stop hyperventilating.
Maybe he should’ve tried this little experiment closer to the ground.
It was a stupid idea. For all he knew, Iggy might actually have been programmed with additional senses, and if not, he’d had his whole life to develop them. Horseman didn’t have years; he just had right now.
And if he didn’t do this, he wasn’t going to have a tomorrow.
Horseman exhaled against the tree. He just had to trust his instincts—they hadn’t failed him yet.
Slowly, Horseman edged back out onto the branch, keeping a light touch on the bark to steady himself. He took a long, deep breath, trying to open up some kind of latent third eye.
This time, when he let go, Horseman realized he could still sense the trunk to his left—the solidness of it, the heft.
Now or never, he thought, and he raised his heels, leaned forward, and took off.
He felt removed from his body and highly connected to it at once—almost like he was a pilot maneuvering a small plane instead of controlling his own muscles.
Horseman’s muscles were tense as he waited for the moment when he would smash into another tree, but it didn’t come. In one panicked moment, he felt branches rake lightly across his bare chest, but he quickly adjusted, and veered away from the tree in his path.
After that, his reflexes became faster each moment, and his other senses started to come alive.
The pores in his skin opened up to take in the information around him. Each time his wings flapped, he felt the air they moved bouncing off the objects around him, telling him how far away they were.
Horseman found it surprisingly easy to measure how high up he was flying. He smelled the tangy sap when he was low, near the exposed trunks. Near the treetops, the pine scent was more intense.
And his ears were attuned to every anomaly in the quiet forest. He heard the groan of trees as they swayed, and detected the distant sound of branches snapping.
Iggy.
Iggy had pulled far ahead of him, but Horseman knew he was faster, and he was no longer handicapped by sight. As he grew more confident and more comfortable, Horseman started to close in on his prey.
Below him and just ahead, he heard a slight whisper as something—maybe wings—brushed through the branches.
Horseman held his breath, folded his wings tight for speed, and shot through the forest. Seemingly striking at nothing, he punched his arm ahead of him and felt the crunch of bone.
Iggy screamed.
54
“ARE YOU KIDDING me?”
I stared at the cliffside nests the bird kids had built, at the bits of string and dried leaves. All of them were empty.
“Are they just out foraging? Why didn’t you go, too? Or—they haven’t really left, have they?”
Harry cocked his head at me curiously, his handsome face as innocent and blank as usual.
Oh, this is stellar.
He started picking affectionately at my wings again.
“Uh-uh.” I shook my head, smoothing my feathers back down. “I have to think.”
I watched him scuffing up dirt, relishing a dust bath.
I stopped moving and crossed my arms. “Harry, this has been great, but it’s time for me to move on.”
“Haaarrryy!” he cawed happily, and my face softened. After years spent on the run, I had a soft spot for strays, and the poor guy couldn’t help it if he’d been programmed with the intellectual capabilities of a Tickle Me Elmo.
He stared at me with a dopey, thrilled expression, like I was the most incredible thing he’d ever seen.
At least someone thinks so.
“Okay, look,” I said, knowing my words sounded like gibberish to him, as his language did to me. “Let’s go find your flock, and then I have to bounce, understand?”
“Maaaax Mummmm,” Harry cooed, and nuzzled against my shoulder.
“Right,” I said, and pointed. “You lead the way.”
We flew west, and again I marveled at Harry’s grace in the air. Every part of him was crafted to be as aerodynamic as possible—from the overdeveloped shoulder muscles that made his wings work almost effortlessly, to the incredible
core strength that held his whole body parallel to the ground.
I’d always been the top flier in the flock, but now I was aware of my legs dipping slightly below my upper body, causing drag. And while I was gulping air as I pumped my wings to gain speed, with feathers that cut through the air like blades, Harry barely had to flap.
On land we couldn’t understand a thing the other said, but in the sky, we spoke the same language. Harry slowed imperceptibly to coast beside me while I studied landmarks, and pulled ahead so I could ride his slipstream through turbulent patches. When I was just starting to notice a twinge of hunger in my stomach, Harry was already diving for prey. For hundreds of miles, we were in perfect synchronization.
Until we reached the Pacific Ocean.
Harry started to turn left, but something made me hang back… I had a weird feeling of retracing Fang’s steps—a sense of urgency.
North, my gut insisted.
Harry was cruising so fast, I had to shout over the wind. “Wait up!” I tapped his shoulder and pointed the other way, but with a quick shake of his head, Harry pulled harder to the left.
“I know we’re looking for your flock, but I’m looking for someone, too, okay?”
Harry’s brow was wrinkled with anxiety.
“What is it?”
“Pfft!” Harry’s eyes widened, and the way he flung his fingers open reminded me of one of Gazzy’s IEDs.
“A bomb?” I asked, grabbing his wrist. “A bomb went off, to the north?”
My breath caught in my chest as I thought of the charred remains of Tanzania and the watery grave of New York. The giant I’d fought had said the Remedy would punish the whole world, and the voices on the radio had been carrying out that mission.
They wanted no survivors.
“We have to check it out,” I decided, and as I started to turn, Harry shook his head in alarm. Of course the other bird kids would’ve avoided the place—birds and animals tended to be the first ones to flee during disasters.
I was already headed up the coast, though, scanning the northern landscape for smoke and steeling myself for whatever we might find.
Call me stubborn, but I always listened to my gut.
55
EVERYTHING WAS SO still. So quiet.
As we landed, the wind from our wings moved dust that seemed like it had blanketed the ruins for years, and when I coughed, the sound echoed even in the open, leveled space.
I’d say Seattle was a ghost town, except without the town part. There were just piles and piles of rubble as far as we could see. Exactly like the bombed city in Africa.
All desolation starts to look alike, I guess.
Or maybe I’m just jaded.
“Looks pretty bad, huh?” I said.
“Max Mum…” Harry pleaded.
“Yeah, yeah. We won’t stay too long,” I said. To be honest, I was ready to split the moment we landed, too. The place was giving me a major case of the heebie-jeebies, but since I’d dragged us here, we had to at least check it out.
We shuffled through the colorless haze, gaping around us like archaeologists digging up a lost city. We walked under archways that stood alone where buildings had fallen, and passed skeletons of cars that still smelled of gas. I saw a hard hat lying in the dirt and reached for it, but it crumbled on contact.
“There’s no one,” I whispered. No survivors, no bodies. Just ash.
Turns out, almost everything burns, and history is quick to turn to dust. Except for that smooth glint of metal over there…
What is that?
I cocked my head to stare at the large, disklike object. For a second, I thought that, on top of everything else, the world was being invaded by aliens.
Then I understood.
So that was what had happened to the famous Space Needle. The long white base was nowhere in sight, but somehow the UFO-shaped top had ended up over a mile from the coast. It was half submerged in a pile of debris, like it had skidded onto a dull gray planet.
“Come on!” I said, dragging a less-than-enthusiastic Harry behind me.
The windows that circled the perimeter had been blown out, and we had to climb over the twisted metal dividers to get in. The initial blast must’ve blown the aerodynamic disc inland before the mushroom cloud incinerated everything else, though. Because inside, apart from the white chairs that were overturned and piled everywhere, the objects in the restaurant were surprisingly intact.
There were even a couple of cracked dishes sitting on a table. And a small, black, rectangular object, just lying there, like it had been forgotten…
I snatched up the phone. No. It couldn’t be.… Impossible.
But true.
It was on, and working, and four full bars shone in the corner—the thing actually had service!
“Do you know what this is?” I laughed, shaking it at Harry.
“Harry!” he squawked, responding to my excitement.
“Communication!”
I held it in my hand, my heart thudding, and then realized that none of the flock had phones. An intact phone with full service, found in a city completely destroyed by a nuclear bomb, and I had no one to call. I did not smirk at the irony.
But if I could get on the Internet…
I tapped the smartphone’s screen and a browser opened. I typed in the address of Fang’s blog.
Maybe he has logged in.
Maybe he’s tried to get a message to me.
Maybe there’s something he wants me to know.
Harry peered over my shoulder as I scrolled through the comments. I didn’t find a single post from FangMod, but a thread with the subject “DEAD FLOCK” made me stop cold. I clicked to expand, but the stupid thing took forever to load.
“Come on. Come onnn,” I muttered, jabbing my finger at the screen.
Flockfan23: Rumors here that some of the flock have been murdered. My cuz said Angel told her and was crying. Any1 else have info?
I pictured Angel’s tear-streaked face, her blonde eyebrows knitted in grief. I held my breath.
There were half a dozen responses. PAtunnelratt, the commenter we’d been communicating with before, was the first to answer.
PAtunnelratt: The story around here is Gasman got blown up and one of the H-men grabbed Iggy in the woods. Heard they were looking for my silo, so I’d feel mad guilty if it’s true.
I shook my head. Lies. They had to be.
Yeah, the boys had said they were headed to find some green in the US, but Gazzy was a genius with explosives, and Iggy couldn’t be caught. I scrolled down for the next comment.
ImMargaretA: Nudge was drowned in an underground cave on some Pacific island. The dog, too. Skewered with a speargun.
My mouth went dry and I reread the lines several times, chewing the inside of my cheek. How did she know about the island? How would anyone know where Nudge and Total were? Or that they were alone?
That I’d left them.
Other commenters had already challenged Margaret A.’s sources, but she was defiant.
ImMargaretA: I’m on the inside. Got it from the Remedy himself. They’re taking out the bird kids one by one. Army meeting Fang in Alaska. You’ll see.
My hand was so sweaty the phone almost slipped out.
Alaska.
Was that what had pulled me so urgently west? What had made me turn north? It couldn’t be true, could it?
TeeniBikeeni: No way, not my Fang. He’d never let himself be captured. Please nooo.
Flockfan23: What about Max? Has anybody heard anything about Max?
My eyes were blurring and all I saw was smoke pouring out of an underground hole, the spearguns the fish kids had used, an army of giants waiting in the snow…
“No,” I said aloud, blinking my eyes clear again. I knew none of it was right. It had to be Doomsday kids infiltrating the blog—that was the only explanation. Or other killers who wanted to scare us, to make us think we didn’t have a chance.
Still, I couldn’t stop starin
g at the words at the bottom of the small screen.
ImMargaretA: Maximum Ride is next.
56
HARRY’S WINGS SHOT out, making me jump.
I let out my breath with a nervous laugh and looked up from those stupid words.
“Okay, okay. I know you’re ready to get out of this place.” I wanted to toss the phone and the lies I’d read with it, but I knew it might come in handy. Maybe I could throw it at the next person who attacked me. “I guess we’ve seen enough. Come on, Harry. Let’s g—”
Then I saw Harry’s eyes staring behind me and realized he hadn’t been nudging me to leave. The snap of his wings had been a flight instinct—Harry was scared. I turned quickly and glimpsed a flash of white through the windows. Something flitting between concrete pillars.
Something that was trying to ambush me.
No, Maximum Ride isn’t going to be next. Not today. Not ever.
“Hey!” I yelled. I stumbled over the chairs and took off after it—whatever it was.
I kicked through pieces of brick and sharp metal and skidded around collapsed buildings as I chased the hint of movement, something small and quick and just beyond my reach. When I lost the trail I took to the sky, searching, searching, and then—
There!
A tiny figure ducked into a hole, and I dropped down nearby. It was the opening to a cellar, but the house above was completely gone, ripped right off the foundation. As I peered down into the darkness, Harry landed softly behind me.
“This is a good idea, right?” I asked him, and though he cocked his head doubtfully, I crept down the stairs, gripping my now-rusty knife tightly.
Part of the room was blocked by beams that had fallen through the ceiling, but the rest of the cellar was clear. At first I thought I’d made a mistake and nothing was there, but then, behind a washing machine, I found her.
“Oh, my God,” I whispered. Over the years, I’ve seen more awful things than anyone should ever have to see. Horrible mutated experiments gone wrong, people injured, killed, tortured, animals mutated by toxic waste… and this poor kid was definitely on the list. The girl was probably around six years old. Even in the low light, I saw that her skin was pink and raw, the flesh bubbled. There were patterns in some places—spots where clothing seams or textures had burned right into her flesh.