Angel’s eyes were big as we hovered there.
The glass is way too thick to break, I thought, and Angel nodded.
If we use a torpedo, it would probably kill my mom. Angel nodded again.
Maybe I could borrow some kind of big drill from the sub? Maybe we could storm in through an air lock? Angel frowned, unsure.
Then I noticed something weird. Okay, I mean, something weirder. There were no fish anywhere close to the dome. No nothing. This deep, it isn’t exactly teeming with the circle of sea life anyway, but there were still plenty of freakish, scary things swimming around, not necessarily related to the oozing radiation. But none would come close to the dome, and no barnacles, sea stars, or tube worms attached themselves to it either.
Almost as soon as I realized that, the mystery was solved for us: an eel-like thing swam close and passed us. Then, zap! Some sort of invisible force field suddenly electrified it, killing it instantly. It sparked, twitched, then sank silently down into the depths to the ocean bottom.
Angel and I backed up several yards.
So much for attacking through the sub’s air locks, I thought. My mom was right there! But I couldn’t get to her. She was lying there so limp, unmoving — surely she was still alive. They couldn’t have killed her yet, could they?
Angel looked perplexed, then turned her head and peered out into the darkness. Way off, using raptor vision, I could just barely make out the looming dark pickle shapes of the Krelp. Angel stared at them, cocking her head, as if she were listening. After a minute, she nodded.
The Krelp say they want to help, she thought at me.
But how? I asked.
I don’t know, she answered.
I felt a swell of icy water push against me, and then the largest Krelp, the one Angel called Gor, surged past us, almost tumbling us head over heels. It neared the dome, got zapped over and over again, but steamrollered right through the force field.
Follow it! Angel commanded. It’s shorted out the electric net!
We rushed after it, trying to trace its exact path. I braced myself for a horrible electrocution, but nothing happened. I swam as fast as I could to the window leading into my mom’s cell. I rapped on it hard, but she didn’t move.
Gor pressed itself against the glass, and I could only imagine what it looked like from the inside. Someone inside the dome noticed it and started screaming. I saw people starting to race around, saw someone outside the room that housed all the sleeping ’bots. Still, my mom lay motionless.
My stomach got a cold, clenched feeling. Maybe, after all this, we were too late.
People were still staring up at the enormous creature pressed against the glass, and now I noticed a thick slime seeping out from under its body. This thing was the size of a 747. I mean, the word eew doesn’t even come close.
“Watch,” Angel said out loud.
Where the slime was touching the glass, wisps of smoke were twisting away into the water.
“Oh, my God,” I said. “It’s melting the glass with its… uh, body snot.”
“Gazzy will be so jealous,” Angel bubbled. “He’d give anything to be able to do that.”
“Please do not tell him about it.”
The glass continued to melt, and then something clicked in my brain, and I realized what would happen once the glass failed: water would seep in, then it would flood in, then it would crush the dome, and everything inside with its unimaginable weight.
If my mom wasn’t dead now, she would be, really soon.
75
“ANGEL!” I yelled. Her head whipped around, floating gold curls wreathing her face. “We need the sub here, now! With its air lock open!”
Looking scared, Angel nodded. Her eyes unfocused as she compelled the crew back on the sub to come get us. I could almost feel its superquiet engines as they powered up.
Angel pressed her fingers to her temples as if she had a headache. Just as the first small trickle of ocean water began to seep into the dome, I was suddenly surrounded by Krelp.
Inside the dome, people were running and screaming. They didn’t exactly have the navy’s precise protocols of emergency preparedness. I looked for Mr. Chu, wanting to personally take him apart, but didn’t see him anywhere.
The Krelp, ranging in sizes from baby whale to semitrailer to jet plane, pressed closer to me. I hoped they had a plan. I hoped they could see me. I hoped they liked me as much as they liked Angel.
The dome cracked. The freezing ocean water rushed in in torrents, quickly filling one room after another. Just as someone activated the M-Geeks, readying them for battle, their quarters were flooded, water smashing them against the ceiling and sweeping them down hallways.
The section of dome over my mom’s room started to split. I tensed, not really having a plan beyond “Get Mom, dead or alive.” Water splashed in, dousing my mom’s body. She moved.
She was alive!
The next moment, the ceiling above her broke open, and her room was instantly flooded. She got swept up against what was left of the ceiling, smashing against it hard. I heard her cry out with pain as I rushed in with the water, grabbing her shoulders and pulling her free. She was unconscious.
The Krelp hovered over us, and I realized they were creating a really big… snot bubble, sort of attached to several of them. Almost as if several kids were blowing bubbles, and the bubbles touched and poofed into a bigger, combined bubble. But with snot. Angel grabbed on to me, and before I had time to think, Oh, man, I’m gonna barf, the Krelp had dropped down beside the three of us. The bubble oozed around us, encasing us. There was air inside, and it kept the crushing ocean at bay.
Yes. I owed my life, Angel’s life, and my mother’s life to a mutant’s ability to create industrial-strength snot.
The Krelp floated upward to where our sub was waiting, its air-lock doors open, and gently pushed us in. Immediately alarms sounded, the hatch doors started to close, and I felt pressurized air being pumped into the room.
Thirty seconds later, the air popped the bubble, the hatches were shut, and the inner doors swooshed open.
“Help my mom!” I cried to the medic who was already rushing in.
Fang ran in and knelt next to me, and then I was surrounded by the flock.
A few more seconds, and my mom started coughing and gagging, spitting salt water out. I patted her hand, praying that she would be all right. She looked thin, pale, weak, and beaten up, and a wildfire of rage swept through me as I thought of what they had put her through.
“Mom! It’s me!” I said. “You’re safe now. You’re on a sub, and we’re headed back to Hawaii.” I couldn’t believe we were together again at last, that she was alive, that we had reached her before it was too late.
Her brown eyes blinked groggily several times, and she winced as the medic started an IV in her arm. “Max?” she croaked.
“I’m right here,” I said, holding her hand. My eyes felt hot, and I blinked several times.
Blearily, she looked up at me, tried to focus. “I knew… you’d come,” she said.
My throat threatened to close, but I managed to say, “I’ll always, always come, Mom. You can count on it.”
My mom smiled faintly, then closed her eyes again.
Fang put his arm around me. “You did it. You saved her.”
That was when I should have jumped up and done a victory dance, whooping my way down the corridor to the bathroom, where I could change into dry clothes.
Instead, I burst into unexpected tears, covering my eyes and gulping in breaths like a big baby. Fang put his arms around me.
Sometimes I just don’t understand myself.
76
AS YOU MIGHT IMAGINE, I was thrilled to get off that submarine once and for all. We docked, the top hatch opened, and after the medics took my mom out on a stretcher, I was the next one off. I rushed up the ladder, over the gangplank to the dock, and then —
On the dock I wobbled, couldn’t walk straight, and ended up falling
over, feeling like I was going to hurl. I watched the medics hurrying away with my mom, and I would have to crawl to follow them.
Captain Perry knelt next to me. “You’ll get your land legs back in no time,” he said kindly.
Irony sort of reaches up and slaps you in the face sometimes, doesn’t it?
Anyway, let’s just resume our scene with me already sitting at a table, sucking down Fanta.
My mom was in the infirmary, where they had found she was way dehydrated, really banged up, and needed IV fluids and rest. Every time I realized she was back and alive, a new rush of warmth went through me.
And here I was with my flock, Fang’s hand in mine beneath the table. Dejected because of his many failed attempts to create huge snot bubbles, Gazzy slumped in his seat. Nudge, Iggy, and Angel were on their fourth round of ice cream.
“Max!” Total raced up and jumped on a chair next to me. He enthusiastically licked my face, which, after being encased in a snot bubble, frankly didn’t seem so bad. “Dude, I missed you guys so much! I’m so glad your mom is okay, Max. God knows the loss of a veterinarian would be a terrible thing. Ooh, Fanta!”
We got him his own Fanta and stuck a straw in it. He slurped it up delicately. “So much has happened,” he said, wagging his short tail. “There’s so much to tell you!”
I blinked. Total thought a lot had happened on his end? I felt like catching him up on our shenanigans would take about three weeks!
Akila ran up, leading John and Brigid to our table. She gave several short, happy barks, and Total turned to grin at me.
“Gotta go. Timmy’s in the well. If you know what I mean.” He winked and trotted off with Akila while we all tried very hard not to think too much about his last statement.
“Max! Max Max Max Max Max!!”
“Ella!” I got up and managed to run to my half sister without disgracing myself. We hugged each other, doing the weird rocking and patting motion that people do when they hug.
“Hello, Max.”
I stopped rocking and patting. I would know that voice anywhere. I separated myself from Ella. “Jeb.”
“Where’s Mom?” Ella pleaded.
“Come on. I’ll take you to her.” Ignoring Jeb, I led Ella down the hallway toward the infirmary. I stopped outside her door, unable to resist looking through the glass to make sure she was still there and still all right. Ella and Jeb hurried in, and I hung back. Ella, at least, deserved some time alone with Mom. Already they were crying.
Smiling, feeling warm, dry, happy, and relatively safe, I headed back to the cafeteria. A dark, quick movement caught my eye, and I saw Brigid hurrying around a corner, her face tense.
I know spying on people is wrong and an invasion of their privacy, but fortunately I’ve never had a problem with that. I walked silently down the hall until I was close enough to the corner to peer around it at my nemesis.
Brigid was talking to some suits, gesturing earnestly with her hands. I pulled back. Suits always make me nervous.
I couldn’t hear what they were saying, so I started to leave — but then someone else walked up to them and shook everyone’s hands. Brigid greeted him, and the suits smiled and nodded.
It was Mr. Chu.
Beware of Mr. Chu, the Voice commanded like a foghorn booming inside my head. And maybe Brigid.
Maybe? I asked the Voice, incredulous. I would say, definitely.
Wouldn’t you?
Epilogue
JUST LIKE HEAVEN
THE WIND SWEPT THROUGH my hair, and I closed my eyes, coasting on a thermal current, feeling the sun warming my face and my feathers.
Fang was above me, moving his wings in perfect unison with mine. We were holding hands: his was reaching down, and mine was reaching up.
Most of the flock was swimming in the ocean below us, in the shallow bay off the coast of Oahu. Some dolphins had joined them, no doubt lured by Angel. I could hear the flock’s laughter, hear the cheerful chirping of the dolphins as they leaped out of the water.
“I’m glad Mom and Ella are home again safe. And I guess Jeb is — somewhere else.” I didn’t know whether Jeb was evil or not. He was totally confusing. Maybe I would never know.
“And I hear Total’s off planning his and Akila’s upcoming wedding,” Fang added with a slight grin. “Guess what? You’re maid of honor. Can’t wait to see you in a poufy dress.”
I ignored the jab. “Here’s a more interesting piece of information: Brigid’s at a news conference,” I said. “I confronted her after I spotted her earlier. She said she was going to expose Mr. Chu.”
“We’ll see,” said Fang, sounding somewhat disinterested, to my surprise and delight. “I guess we’re finally alone” — a tiny smile curved his lips — “for the immediate future.”
“Huh,” I said, my heart kicking into high gear. “Huh. That’s… nice.”
Very, very carefully, Fang lowered himself even closer to me. I could almost feel his breath in my ear. We’d never flown this close to each other before. A delicate electric quiver ran down my spine.
Below us, a small golden head bobbed up and down in the water. I loved seeing Angel so happy, so carefree, not doing anything particularly evil at the moment.
“She really is special, isn’t she?” I mused.
“Yes,” he said. Fang switched hands, and I shook mine, trying to get some blood back into it.
“Maybe she really is the key to everything,” I said, “whatever everything is. She keeps saying it’s all about her. Maybe it really is.”
“Max.” Fang let go of my hand. “Right now, it’s really all about — us.”
He swooped down to the right in a big semicircle, ending facing me. Slowly we climbed upward, until we were almost vertical, flying straight up to the sun.
While carefully synchronizing our wings — they almost touched — Fang leaned in, gently put one hand behind my neck, and kissed me. It was just about as close to heaven as I’ll ever get, I guess. I closed my eyes, lost in the feeling of flying and kissing and being with the one person in the world I completely, utterly trusted.
When we finally broke apart, we looked down at the others, who were way far below us now. Angel was shading her eyes, looking up at us with a big smile. She was sitting on a dolphin’s back, and I hoped soon someone would explain to the dolphin that he shouldn’t let Angel take advantage of his good nature.
Still looking up at us, Angel gave us a big thumbs-up.
“She approves,” Fang said with a hint of amusement.
“Jeez,” I wondered aloud. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
Turn the page for a sneak preview of the hottest new James Patterson Pageturner series — a heart-stopping adventure featuring his most amazing characters yet…
Witch
&
Wizard
Coming December 2009
1
IT’S OVERWHELMING. A city’s worth of angry faces staring at me like I’m a wicked criminal — which, I promise you, I’m not. The stadium is filled to capacity — past capacity. People are standing in the aisles, the stairwells, on the concrete ramparts, and a few extra thousand are camped out on the playing field. There are no football teams here today. They wouldn’t be able to get out of the locker-room tunnels if they tried.
This total abomination is being broadcast on TV and on the Internet too. All the useless magazines are here, and the useless newspapers. Yep, I see cameramen in elevated roosts at intervals around the stadium.
There’s even one of those remote-controlled cameras that runs around on wires above the field. There it is — hovering just in front of the stage, bobbing slightly in the breeze.
So, there are undoubtedly millions more eyes watching than I can see. But it’s the ones here in the stadium that are breaking my heart. To be confronted with tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands of curious, uncaring, or at least indifferent, faces… talk about frightening.
And there are no moist eyes, never mind tears.
No words of protest.
No stomping feet.
No fists raised in solidarity.
No inkling that anybody’s even thinking of surging forward, breaking through the security cordon, and carrying my family and me to safety.
Clearly, this is not a good day for us Allgoods.
In fact, as the countdown ticker flashes on the JumboTron displays at either end of the stadium, it’s looking like this will be our last day.
It’s a point driven home by the very tall, bald man up in the tower they’ve erected midfield — he looks like a cross between a Supreme Court chief justice and Ming the Merciless. I know who he is. I’ve actually met him. He’s The One Who Is The One.
Directly behind his Oneness is a huge N.O. banner — the New Order.
And then the crowd begins to chant, almost sing, “The One Who Is The One! The One Who Is The One!”
Imperiously, The One raises his hand, and his hooded lackeys on the stage push us forward, at least as far as the ropes around our necks will allow.
I see my brother, Whit, handsome and brave, looking down at the platform mechanism. Calculating if there’s any way to jam it, some way to keep it from unlatching and dropping us to our neck-snapping deaths. Wondering if there’s some last-minute way out of this.
I see my mother crying quietly. Not for herself, of course, but for Whit and me.
I see my father, his tall frame stooped with resignation, but smiling at me and my brother — trying to keep our spirits up, reminding us that there’s no point in being miserable in our last moments on Earth.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m supposed to be providing an introduction here, not the details of our public execution.
So let’s go back a bit….
Waterwings Page 18