Maximum Ride 02

by James Patterson

  Please, I begged silently, please do not let my last moments on earth be me crammed into a tiny boat in the dark, surrounded by mechanical singing pirates.

  Yes, that would be cruel, my Voice said snidely.

  I ignored it.

  114

  I want my own treehouse like that,” Gazzy said around a mouthful of cotton candy. “I mean, for all of us. Wouldn’t that be so cool?”

  “So, so cool,” Angel agreed, ice cream dripping down her wrist. “Can we do the Swiss Family Treehouse again?”

  I handed her a napkin. “Maybe after lunch.” Biting off a piece of my ice-cream sandwich, I did another 360 sweep. No Erasers. I couldn’t say for sure we were the only mutants here because, you know, Disney World. But so far no one had morphed right in front of us.

  “We could make one,” Iggy said. “Find a humongous tree and build our own treehouse.”

  “Yeah!” said Gazzy, pushing another wad of cotton candy into his mouth. “We could do it! I know we could.”

  I rubbed his shoulder. “Okay. I’ll put that on our list of things to do. Try not to eat too much junk, huh, Gazzy? I don’t want you hurling on Splash Mountain.” He grinned at me, a lighthearted child’s grin that tugged at my heart. Yeah, yeah, if only.

  “This way to Frontierland,” Fang said, pointing to a sign.

  I scanned the crowd again, then looked down at my map. “First Frontierland, and then—looks like the only good thing in Liberty Square is the Haunted Mansion.”

  “I want to see Mickey’s Country House,” Angel said.

  “That’s in the Toontown Fair place,” I told her. “We need to go through some other stuff first. But we’ll go.”

  She shot me a beautiful, innocent smile, and I tried to put all thoughts of our country’s government out of my head.

  “You know what’s creepy?” Nudge said, eating caramel popcorn. “A chipmunk that big.” She pointed at an adult-sized costumed chipmunk who was waving and strolling around.

  “Who is that?” Total asked. “Chip? Or Dale?”

  “Don’t know,” I said. “As long as he doesn’t turn into a huge, chipmunky Eraser, I’m good. Yo—look. There’s Splash Mountain. Line doesn’t seem too bad.”

  “Is your dog talking?”

  I turned around. A sunburned child was looking at Total suspiciously.

  I laughed. “Our dog? No. Why? Does your dog talk?” I gave her a patronizing smile.

  “I thought he was talking,” she muttered, still staring at Total.

  I said to Gazzy, “Jason, have you been practicing your ventriloquism again?”

  Gazzy shrugged with the perfect amount of bashfulness and nodded.

  “Oh,” said the girl, and looked away.

  I narrowed my eyes at Total, who pulled his lips back over his teeth in an embarrassed, ingratiating grin.

  Not amused, I glanced over at Fang. He smiled, lighting up our immediate area, and offered me some Cracker Jack.

  115

  He had them. Ari took a bite of his ice cream bar, feeling the thin chocolate crunch between his teeth.

  He’d seen them go into Splash Mountain. Now he was sitting on a bench at the exit, waiting for them to come out. It had taken a long time to find them in this place. He couldn’t fly here, and he couldn’t unleash a huge crowd of Erasers to sweep the joint. Too much commotion.

  But now he had them. They would be out any minute. He had radioed six backup teams, which were less than five minutes away. Ari smiled. The sun was shining, the weather was great, he was eating ice cream, and all his dreams were about to come true.

  A small crowd of people momentarily passed between him and the ride’s exit, and Ari moved so he could see around them. He knew that people were staring at him. He looked different. Even different from other Erasers. He wasn’t as—seamless. He didn’t look as human as the rest of them did when they weren’t morphed. He kind of looked morphy all the time. He hadn’t seen his plain real face in—a long time.

  “I know who you are.”

  Ari almost jumped—he hadn’t noticed the boy slide onto the bench next to him.

  He frowned down at the small, open face. “What?” he growled. This was when the little boy would get scared and probably turn and run. It always happened.

  The boy smiled. “I know who you are,” he said, pointing at Ari happily.

  Ari just snarled at him.

  The boy wiggled with excitement. “You’re Wolverine!”

  Ari stared at him.

  “You look awesome, dude,” said the boy. “You’re totally my favorite. You’re the strongest one of all of them and the coolest too. I wish I was like you.”

  Ari almost gagged. No one had ever, ever said anything like that to him. His whole life, he’d been the dregs in everyone’s coffee pot. When he was really little, he’d idolized the bird kids and they’d ignored him. He’d loved Max, and she’d barely known he was alive. It would have been great when they disappeared, except his father had disappeared too. Ari still tasted ashes when he remembered realizing that his own father had chosen them over him. Ari had been left behind, with strangers.

  Then they’d started augmenting him. At first Ari had been glad—he would be an Eraser, be one of them. But he wasn’t. He was too different, too patchworky. The others had all been made Erasers as infants, as embryos. When they were human they looked really human. When they were wolves they looked really wolfy. Not Ari. He was stuck in a partially morphed state, never all human and still less than wolf. He looked weird. Ugly. He didn’t fit in anywhere.

  “You’re, like, a total celebrity,” the boy chattered on. “I mean, who cares about SpongeBob SquarePants? I’m sitting here with Wolverine!”

  Ari gave him a tentative smile. It didn’t matter that the kid had mistaken him for somebody else. This kid thought he was cool. He wanted to be like Ari. He was impressed.

  It felt so good. It felt amazing.

  “Gosh, could I have your autograph?” the kid went on, starting to look for a piece of paper. “My mom wanted me to get Goofy’s autograph. Like, I’m so sure. Goofy! But you—here, can you sign my shirt?”

  He held out a black marker and pulled on his T-shirt to make it taut.

  Ari hesitated.

  The boy looked uncertain. “I mean—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bug you. I know you’re famous, and I’m just a little kid.” His face fell.

  “No, that’s okay, kid. Hope your mom doesn’t mind,” Ari growled. He took the marker in one pawlike hand and signed “Wolverine” with a flourish.

  The kid looked awed and thrilled. “Gosh, thanks, mister. I’ll never wash this shirt again. You’re the best. I can’t wait till I get back to school and tell everyone I met Wolverine and he signed my shirt! This is the best day of my life!”

  Ari’s throat ached and his nose twitched. He swiped one hand across his eyes. “No prob. You better get on back to your folks.”

  “Okay. Thanks again! You rock!” The boy pumped a fist into the air and ran off.

  Ari sat for a moment, dazed with emotion. Suddenly he straightened. The flock! Max! Where were they? His eyes raked the trickle of people passing through the exit. The bird kids were nowhere to be seen. Six minutes had gone by—they must have come out. He’d missed them!

  For God’s sake! That dumb little kid!

  You need to stay focused, Ari, said his Voice. Keep your eyes on the prize.

  Ari strode off to meet his backup teams, which were now in sight. Yeah, he knew he needed to stay focused. He was all business.

  But inside, part of him still smiled and held on tight to that warm, wanted feeling.

  116

  God, I’m soaked,” I moaned, pulling my wet sweatshirt away from my skin. I shook my hair out of my eyes, sending drops flying.

  “That was so great,” the Gasman said happily.

  “Splash Mountain really lives up to its name,” Nudge said, bouncing a little.

  “I hated that ride.” Total sounded grum
py. And he’d hardly gotten wet at all.

  “Let’s go again!” Gazzy said.

  We were almost all the way through the exit when I saw him: Ari, sitting on a bench. A little kid was talking to him excitedly. I froze, and the others bumped into me.

  “Turn around,” I said under my breath. “Bandada—nayshapay.”

  “No—oh, no,” Gazzy whispered. “I can’t believe it. Not now.”

  But I was already pushing them back through the exiting crowd.

  “Sorry, kids,” the attendant said. “You have to exit out that way only.”

  “No, no,” I said urgently. “We left our digital camera in the log! Mom will kill us! We just need to run back and check. . . .”

  The attendant paused for a moment, and in that moment I forced us all past him. “Excuse us, excuse us, coming through!”

  Then we were back inside the ride. A walkway, almost concealed by false boulders, ran along one wall. We zipped down it, hearing the attendant calling after us.

  “Here!” Fang said, stopping suddenly. I’d almost passed the door completely—it was practically invisible. Quickly we shot through it and found ourselves in a long, dimly lit corridor. Child’s play. In seconds we had raced to the end of it and out its exit. We found ourselves behind some large shrubs.

  “Come on,” I said grimly. “Over to that fake mountain and then an up-and-away.”

  Three minutes later we were airborne, fading into the setting sun, leaving Disney World far behind. Nudge had tears running down her cheeks, and Gazzy and Angel both looked bitterly disappointed.

  “I—,” the Gasman began.

  “What?” I angled one wing slightly and pulled closer to him.

  “I wish we could have gone into the Haunted Mansion,” he said. “It’s supposed to be awesome.”

  I sighed. “I know, guys.” Everyone was flying steadily, but each face was a mask of disappointment and frustration. “There were a bunch of things I’d been hoping to do too.” All involving seeing mouse ears in my rearview mirror. If I had one. “But you know we had to go.” Flock, one. Ari, zip.

  “I hate stupid Ari!” Gazzy said. He punched and kicked the air in front of him. “He always ruins everything! Why does he hate us? It’s not our fault they turned him into an Eraser!”

  “It’s not that simple, sweetie,” I said.

  “His dad left him,” said Iggy bitterly. “Just like all of ours. Then they Eraserfied him. He’s a walking time bomb.”

  “How does he track us so easily?” Angel asked. When she’d seen Cinderella’s Castle, her face had looked as though it were made of sunlight. She was still young enough to really get caught up in the magic of an enormous, all-powerful marketing juggernaut.

  “I don’t know, Ange,” I said. That was the ten-thousand-dollar question, in fact.

  Below, the landscape was a spongy green, with nothing but a carpet of treetops to look down on. The trees ended abruptly, and beyond them we could see huge refineries or some kind of water-treatment plants or something.

  I heard a faint buzz only a split second before a buglike helicopter popped up from behind the trees. It was pointed a bit away from us but almost immediately turned and headed in our direction, like a curious insect.

  “Okay, guys, scatter and zoom,” I instructed quickly. “Meet up in fifteen minutes, same heading.” I angled my wings sharply and peeled off to one side. From a corner of my eye I saw the rest of the flock split up, zipping off in all directions.

  The chopper hesitated. It had News 14 Florida painted on the side. So maybe not an Eraser chopper, maybe just a news cam tracking traffic.

  But they’d seen us. I arched my back, pointing downward, then dropped into a screamingly fast descent. I rocketed toward the ground at two hundred miles an hour, which meant in less than a minute I had to angle out of it and swoop up again so I didn’t squish like a mosquito on the windshield of the world.

  Who said poetry was dead?

  When I finally looked back, the chopper was nowhere in sight. A few minutes later, I saw various-sized dark specks coming at me. My flock.

  Fang arrived first.

  “We need to get out of the air,” I told him.

  117

  Black Ranger to Feather One,” Total said softly. “Coast is clear. Come in, Feather One.”

  “Total, I’m right here,” I whispered. “We don’t even have walkie-talkies.”

  “No, but we should,” Total whispered back. “I should have one, and it could—”

  I put my hand over his mouth, looking at the mountains of rusted metal, ancient appliances, and empty car husks that stretched for acres around us. I signaled over my shoulder, and Fang, Gazzy, and Nudge scampered past me and crouched next to a bunch of doorless refrigerators.

  There had been only one guard, who looked as if he couldn’t guard his way out of a paper bag. We’d left him in front of his oil-drum fire clear on the other side of this enormous junkyard-chop shop. Or at least I assumed it was a chop shop, given the suspicious number of relatively late-model cars that were tucked away in an airport hangar-sized building.

  Which was where we were heading.

  “Okay, now, the last time we were in a car . . . ,” Fang whispered in my ear.

  “That was different,” I said impatiently. “Anyway, we’re not going to steal a van.”

  “What are we going to steal this time?” Iggy whispered. “Can I have a turn driving?”

  “Oh, ha ha,” I said drily, and he smothered a snicker.

  “That one,” I whispered, pointing to a low, sleek, sporty number.

  Which turned out to have no engine.

  In fact, every one of these stupid cars had some huge problem with it: no steering wheel, or no wheels, or no dashboard, or no seats. An hour later I was ready to smack something in frustration.

  “What now?” Fang asked in a low voice, crouching next to me. “Public transportation?”

  I gave him a sour look.

  “Max?” Nudge’s voice was uncharacteristically quiet. She brushed some long curls out of her face. “I’ve been thinking.”

  Oh, here we go, I thought tiredly.

  “If we take the seats out of the Camry, and the wheels off the Bug, and the battery out of the Caddy, and then we get the steering wheel from the Accord, and we drop that engine back into the Echo and hook up a new air filter, we could just take the Echo and be good to go.” Her big brown eyes looked at me anxiously. “Don’tcha think?”

  “Whoa,” said Total, sitting down.

  “Uh,” I said.

  “There’s its air filter right on that table,” she added helpfully.

  “Since when do you know all this?” I asked, flabbergasted.

  “I like cars. I always used to read Jeb’s annual car issue from Consumer Reports. Remember?”

  “Huh. Well, I guess that sounds like a plan, then,” I said. “Everyone clear on what to do?”

  Even the loser guard would have heard an engine starting, so we had to push the Frankenstein car out through the junkyard gate and a couple blocks away before we could even see if any of this worked.

  When we were far enough away, Fang slid behind the steering wheel, and I applied my talent to hot-wiring the car.

  The engine actually fired! True, it sounded rough, and the car backfired several times like rifle shots, but we were running, baby.

  “Everybody in!” I said.

  Which was when we discovered the final problem.

  Little Echos aren’t designed to hold six, count them six, larger-than-average-sized children.

  And their wings.

  And a dog.

  “This is like a clown car,” Total grumbled from my lap in the front seat.

  “Why does the dog get to sit in your lap?” Gazzy asked plaintively, as we rattled and banged down the dark streets. “How about a kid?”

  “Oh. ‘The dog.’ Very nice,” said Total.

  “Because you’re not allowed to have people on your lap in the
front seats,” I explained. “It’s not safe. If a cop saw us, we’d be stopped for sure. You want Total back there?”

  Everyone in the back screamed no at the same time.

  “Let’s just deal, people,” I said. “Only for a little while. We’re going to stop as soon as we find a place to sleep.”

  “‘The dog,’” Total muttered, still mad.

  “Shh,” I told him.

  “Are you saying you’re not a dog?” the Gasman asked. He was tired. We were all tired and hungry and cranky.

  “Okay, you two,” I said sternly. “Enough! Everyone quiet, okay? We’re looking for a place to sleep. Just chill.”

  Fang glanced back in the rearview mirror. “Does anyone want to sing ‘Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall’?”

  We all screamed no at the same time.

  118

  That night we hid the car in some overgrown brush on an abandoned farm and slept in the trees, swaying gently in the pleasant breeze. We weren’t attacked or ratted on, so it was an up night for us.

  In the morning we got back into our little car—emphasis on the little.

  “There aren’t enough seat belts,” Gazzy complained from the backseat. The four of them looked like sardines back there.

  “And God knows we live our lives totally paranoid about safety measures,” I said, looking at a map.

  “I’m just saying,” said Gazzy. “Yow! Fang!”

  Even Fang had winced at that last gear-grinding. I bit my lip so I wouldn’t smirk and gave Fang a wide-eyed innocent look. Yes, I swallowed down all the snide comments I could make about his driving, unlike Fang, who had gone ahead and made snide comments when I drove. That’s because I’m a better person, frankly. I am a freaking princess when it comes to other people’s feelings.