"The School moved a few times while I was growing up. I know it was in the state of Massachusetts, then out in California before we moved here. I went to classes every day, and it was okay at first. My teacher was Mrs. Beattie. She was a doctor, too, but she said we didn't have to say "Doctor' before her name. She really loved Matthew and me, and we loved her. We're geniuses on the Stanford-Binet tests. We were told to take no credit for being smart, though, or being able to fly. We were made that way. We were just lab specimens after all."
I heard Max's breathing intensify. She was clutching my hand so hard it nearly went numb. Even though she had told us to turn back, I knew she hadn't totally meant it. She was too frightened to do this alone.
"Let me out," she said, suddenly grabbing higher on my arm. "I have to get out. I have to! Please, Kit? Right now! I promise not to fly away. I swear I won't."
I reached over and pressed Kit's arm. He braked the car on the narrow shoulder of the road.
We were in the middle of nowhere - surrounded by nothing but tall fir trees and sharp outcroppings of rock, and the loud buzzing of cicadas.
I opened the Jeep's door, and Max scampered over me and out.
She was quick and athletic, and so strong for her age. Almost everything she did was amazing to observe. I prayed she wouldn't fly and leave us.
Max climbed up to the roof of the Jeep. We heard her footsteps pounding above us. Then a furious whooshing sound as she beat her wings.
"What's she doing?" we said, almost in unison.
Then she stepped off the Jeep and took to the air. Just like that.
"Oh, Jesus," Kit whispered. He took the words right out of my mouth.
"Just look at her. Look at that. I hope we can keep up with her."
"We have to. Move this thing."
He revved the engine. Stepped on the gas. The Jeep lurched off the shoulder of the road and then found its center, climbed steeply up the mountain. We followed Max's flight, at least we tried.
I stuck my head out of the side window like a kid. So did Pip. I couldn't take my eyes off her white and silver-blue wings as she flew before us. Cool air flowed past my face. I almost felt that I was flying, too.
I was certainly having an out-of-body experience.
The Jeep bore into a long tunnel of darkness created by overhanging pines and towering fir trees. Max veered to the left, up another side road.
This one was all dirt and deeply rutted.
We were following Max home. We were trusting her with our lives.
Chapter 74
THE SCHOOL WAS CLOSE. She could taste it on her tongue - bitter and nasty as could be. She could feel it, like a deadly poison pumping through her bloodstream.
Max suddenly came swooping down to the ground. The Jeep screeched to a stop close behind her. Frannie and Kit scampered out in a hurry. Pip was running around in circles. Normally, he would have made her smile, giggle happily. Not now, though.
"What is it, honey?" Frannie called. She was always so concerned, and never bossy.
Max felt as if a rope were tied around her waist and she was being firmly, inexorably, reeled in. She could feel extreme tension in her neck and shoulders, right down into her chest plate. She was going home. She was voluntarily returning to the School. Then maybe all the secrets would be out - and she could be free.
And maybe not!
She decided to stay on the ground for a while. Walking was probably safer. Frannie and Kit walked hurriedly right behind her.
She didn't look back, didn't have to. She could hear the struggling for breath in their lungs, the blood pumping through their hearts. She sensed their fear was growing. Finally, they would see the truth. See it for themselves. She prayed they were ready for this.
Suddenly, Max stopped!
She saw the physical boundary between her new freedom and her old life the barbed-wire fence. The powerful sight chilled her, brought back a flood of terrifying memories, She could picture Uncle Thomas, the other creepy guards, and it made her retch. She almost lost it right then and there.
The School was close. She was almost there. It was as if the School were watching her approach, waiting for her, laughing because she'd come back.
The chain-link fence was ten feet high and topped with razor sharp concertina wire. Behind it was everything she knew, loved, and hated with all of her heart. She had seen men parking trucks at the School.
Maybe they were all gone by now.
A white metal sign read: ABSOLUTELY NO ADMITTANCE. THIS IS A GOVERNMENT INSTALLATION. TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT.
She turned to Frannie and Kit. "We're here."
Chapter 75
MAX WAS STARING back at us, her bright green eyes wide with fear.
"They're not kidding," she said. "Trespassers have been shot, believe me. You can still go back. I think you should."
"We won't leave you," Kit said.
Pip was barking and twirling in tight circles outside the fence. Suddenly two Dobermans came loping forward on the far side. They bared their teeth, barked and growled.
Kit pulled me away from the fence as spit and fury flew from the mouths of the Dobermans.
I felt the hackles rise on the back of my neck. And it wasn't just because of the dogs. Actually, the dogs didn't bother me so much.
Chain link and concertina wire and guard dogs in the middle of the woods were scary enough, but to see the words "U.S. Government" attached to "Trespassers Will Be Shot" made me ill. Kit and I were close to being trespassers, and illegal trespassing was definitely on our minds.
"Is this the School?" I asked, but Max wasn't listening. She was busy with the Dobermans.
"Bandit, Gomer, it's me!" she called out crisply to the dogs. "Stop it.
Stop it now! Heel, you two!"
Amazingly, the growling and barking trailed off and then stopped completely. Suspicious sniffs followed. Then happy woofing as the dogs seemed to recognize Max.
"Don't worry," she said to us. "They're my friends. Their bark's much worse than their bite," she grinned.
"Can we get over this fence anywhere?" I asked Kit.
He started to answer when Max interrupted.
"Frannie!" she was pulling at my arm. "There's something wrong with Bandit and Gomer. Something is really wrong with the dogs! Please, come look at them."
I moved closer but I didn't need to examine Bandit and Gomer to see what had happened to them. Their black coats were dull. Their rib cages were standing out sharply, the skin stretched taut over the bones.
"They're pretty hungry," I said to Max.
It was an understatement. The dogs were suffering from malnutrition.
Some cruel bastard was starving them.
Kit returned from a trip down the fence. "I couldn't find a break or access point in the wire," he said. "Maybe around the other way."
"I think I can fly you both over," Max said. It was such an unexpected statement, I nearly laughed.
"I know I can do it. I'm stronger than I look," she insisted. She was dead serious.
"No way," Kit told her. He was right. There was no way an eightypound little girl could lift an adult twice her weight against the pull of gravity.
"Yes, I can." Max was firm. "You don't know what you're talking about. I know what I'm capable of."
I listened to Max and reconsidered. I wasn't figuring in the stress factor. Stress produces adrenaline. And also, who knew what kind of strength Max actually did have?
"Let me try you first," she said to me.
"I don't think it's a great idea, Max."
She shrugged. "Fine. Then I'll fly over by myself."
I grabbed on to the chain link. I climbed a few feet and clung there.
Then Max gripped me around my midsection with her strong legs. She was definitely powerful. God, this was the strangest thing.
Holding me from behind, Max's wings almost could have been mine.
She flapped hard, then we took off. Suddenly we were suspended in the air. Th
en we started upward.
I could feel a breeze rushing around me. It was cold up in these hills, and getting chillier by the minute. For a moment I forgot everything, so focused was I on the sensation of being airborne in this unusual manner.
For just the briefest instant I could imagine that I had wings myself.
We lifted. We hovered for a second or two. And then we flew.
Not very far, but, dear God in heaven, I was definitely flying.
Chapter 76
MAX SET me DOWN inside the fenced perimeter. I stared up at the grotesque and depressing rows of concertina wire. I gripped the fence, clawed the wire with my fingers, and waited for my heart to slow. I glanced around and Max was gone.
She was already back on the other side of the fence. She was straining to lift Kit. Her legs just barely encircled him. Her breathing was a stuttering whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. It didn't seem possible that she could get him airborne, but I hadn't believed she could lift me either.
I had no idea what she could tolerate, even for a few seconds. Her wings were displacing air, but she couldn't seem to budge Kit up and over.
"Max, please stop. He's too heavy for you," I called to her. "You'll hurt yourself "
"No, he isn't too heavy. I'm superstrong. You have no idea how strong I am, Frannie. I was made that way."
On my side of the fence, the two dogs were edging up to me. Actually, they were a little too close for comfort. The female was cutting half circles in the dust, wheeling and dancing her anxiety. The male had small, runny eyes and was rooted to the ground about three feet away from me.
A warning rattled in his throat. His lips were peeled away from his gums, showing a pristine rack of teeth.
"Oh stop," I told him. "Get a life." Dogs that showed their teeth and growled, I could handle.
My eyes darted back to Max and Kit, where they were still balanced on the perimeter fence. She finally pulled away, leaving him holding on to the wire, clinging there, trying to climb over. Finally he safely dropped back down to the ground.
"Nice try, sweetie," I called to Max. But I could see she was upset. She didn't like to fail. Had "they" made her that way, too?
She immediately flew back over the fence and joined me. She said "stay" and "good doggies" to the Dobermans. She was friendly but firm with them, and I wondered if that had anything to do with her recent escape.
Then Max was moving north away from the fence, picking up speed, heading somewhere.
I was almost jogging to keep up with her. The woods began to close around the narrow road. As each thick clump of trees was put behind us, another came and blocked my view.
A wall of firs opened onto a copse of birch that gave way to a grove of aspens shimmering like a curtain of glass beads. My heart was pounding, and it sounded louder to my ears than our footsteps. Without warning, the winding road opened into a sunlit clearing.
Before us sprawled a turn-of-the-century hunting lodge, or maybe a spa resort. There were countless windows cut into the stone face. White columns stood at the entrance. Thick vines covered the building and spilled onto the aged roof.
I looked at Max. Her pupils were the tiniest pinpoints. The irises were translucent gray disks fixed in a stare. I remembered that birds will often contract their pupils under duress.
"What is this?" I asked.
"It's the Central Colorado Induced Mutant Lab," she said. "The School of Genetic Research. I live here."
Chapter 77
THERE WAS NO SOUND coming from the strange, eerie lodge, the place where Max had been kept, and God knows what else had happened to her.
There were no security guards, no parked cars or trucks. No immediate threat to us. Nothing that I could see, anyway.
"It's too quiet. Way too quiet," Max said in a whisper. "There should be guards somewhere. We should have been able to see them from the woods."
"What does it mean, Max?"
"I don't know. It's never been like this before."
Max and I skulked along the fringes of the clearing, We crossed quickly to one side of the building, then edged along the stone wall to an Oak door halfway down the eastern side. There wasn't any shifting of shapes or shadows behind the many windows. No one seemed to be around.
My confidence was growing a little bit. I took a breath, then I reached forward and groped the metal knob in my hand. The door opened easily.
We entered the strange building and the heavy door swung shut behind us.
A dank, powerful smell of decay hit me. I knew what it was and I was repulsed.
"Something's dead," Max said.
She was right. Something was dead for sure. Something was decomposing inside the building and the odor was acrid and strong. We covered our noses and mouths with our hands. We continued to walk away from the front door.
Max said, "The fan must not be working." She didn't seem overly upset by the smell - by death.
I scanned the room for security cameras. I was certain they were there, somewhere, but I couldn't find them. Was somebody watching us now?
I suspected that the small room we were standing in was used for decontamination. Bright yellow scrubs were piled in a large trash can near the door. Lab coats were hung from hooks. People worked here, didn't they? Scientists, if they could call themselves that. Doctors. Researchers.
They were conducting illegal experiments of some kind.
There was an open metal closet filled with clean scrubs, and shelves lined with rubber-soled shoes stood next to a bank of lockers. The lockers were empty, cleaned out.
Jesus God, what had we come to? What kind of place was this?
Max pointed to an interior door leading from the room and beckoned to me to follow her. I had the thought that this building was like a Nazi extermination camp. They put people to sleep here. They experimented on human beings.
We followed a wide main corridor. Max's ballet slippers were quiet, but my shoes squeaked. A long fluorescent tube flickered above us in the ceiling. The beige-and-blue linoleum corridor unfurled in front of us and was crossed with transversing hallways.
We arrived in an open space, about fifty feet square. It was some kind of workplace. Where were we now?
"Max? What's this?"
"It's just offices. For business stuff. No big deal. Pretty boring."
"What kind of business?"
She shrugged. "The boring kind. You know, business."
Whatever old fixtures had once been in this part of the building were long gone. There was no wood paneling, no fireplace, no dentil moldings, just a warren of free-standing office-style cubes. Computers squatted on desktops of dull gray steel. A coffee pot on a file cabinet caught my eye.
The pot was cracked, and a thick black gum coated the bottom.
I picked up a mug from a desk. O.B.9 Coffee, I read. The floating blue circle of mold told me the cup had been here at least a couple of days. Where is O.B.9 Who is O.B.?
And what was dead and putrefying in the building? What had happened at this so-called School? What kind of business was conducted in this awful place?
I glanced at Max, but she was moving again. She was home sweet home. She obviously accepted-all this horror and madness as normal. It was so quiet that even my normal breathing sounded loud. I held my breath and listened for a moment. I had a four-color expectation that as soon as my back was turned, someone would jump out of a closed room.
But no one did.
Max pushed open another door. There was a soft, clicking sound.
Were they photographing us? My heart was still pounding. I felt tired.
Things were getting a little blurry. Where was Kit? Was he okay?
"This is where I work," Max announced. "It's usually full of doctors."
Chapter 78
WE ENTERED a cavernous room that must have been sixty feet long and about half as wide. My eyes swept the workroom, quickly took everything in. It was a standard-issue laboratory, but a good one, with top-of-the-line, very expensive equipmen
t. Who had funded this? Who was subsidizing this business?
There were a dozen fancy workstations. Slides were scattered everywhere on table and counter surfaces. Expensive microscopes were stacked on shelves.
I noted a scale/beam balance and several hydrometers. There were laser spectrographs, cell culture hoods, high-speed centrifuges. Obviously, no expense had been spared on the equipment.
James Patterson - When the Wind Blows Page 18