The Lake House

by James Patterson

  “God, I feel so good!” he exclaimed.

  But something was missing, wasn’t it?

  Imagine that!

  His day of days—and something was still missing. Well, he supposed that it went with the territory—being a perfectionist.

  He took a handful of M&M’s into his mouth, and while good for what they were, the chocolate candies didn’t do the trick.

  He looked over at the couch in his office. The lovely Juliette sat there in an expensive blue pin-striped suit, creamy white blouse, heels. As always, his “wife” was stunningly perfect. She was at the Hospital to assist him in saying good-bye to some of the chosen. The more family-oriented ones liked that he had a loving wife. It made them comfortable.

  He went over and turned the lovely and talented Juliette on.

  “It’s a glorious day for you, isn’t it?” she spoke almost immediately. “You’re amazing, darling. I adore you.”

  “So do me,” he said in a thick whisper. “Right here, right now.”

  Looking incredibly proper in her pin-striped business suit, Juliette knelt before the doctor. She used her perfect white teeth to pull down his zipper.

  “It would be an honor,” she said, and did the work she had been created for.

  98

  A SAYING, A TRUISM, played in Max’s head: Fear is not the answer. Fear is not the answer.

  She woke up and realized she’d been knocked out cold for a while—maybe as much as half a day.

  But then she knew it had to be longer than that. Maybe even a couple of days. Man! What had she missed? Her body seemed almost repaired from the gunshot wound suffered when she’d escaped.

  Her left leg stung like crazy, but her anger had reduced the pain to something manageable. The bullet had gone through her thigh. She’d wrapped a strip from her shirt around it to stop the bleeding.

  She studied it now. The wound seemed okay.

  This is nothing, she kept telling herself, compared to what happened to Ozymandias.

  Get a move on, Max. Time is wasting. Go.

  She had quite a struggle working her way through the air ducts, crawling on her elbows and knees. After a few minutes, she shimmied down a chute to the third subbasement floor, pushed out an air vent, and dropped into a five-sided room.

  The room was like an aquarium. For people.

  It actually had glass walls, which looked hurricane strength.

  Behind the glass was a long, dimly lit room with rows of people who seemed to be . . . sleeping? Maybe thirty of them.

  Max jumped as doors swung open on the far side of the room. Her wings rustled. Then two female nurses entered, chatting in whispers.

  The nurses calmly read the monitors at the side of the beds, and checked several of the patients’ vitals.

  Who were these men in the beds? What had happened to them? If she’d been knocked out for a day or so in the air-conditioning chutes, how long had they been here? More important—where were the other kids? And Frannie, Kit?

  One of the men began to stir. Max could hear clearly through a speaker in the ceiling.

  “Thirsty,” he whispered in a raspy voice. “Please. A little water?”

  One of the nurses went right to him. She poured liquid into a cup, then tilted his head so that he could drink comfortably.

  “There you are,” she said, “Mr. President.”

  Oh.

  My.

  God.

  With his head tilted like that, Max could see the man’s face. It wasn’t the current U.S. president—it was the one two back.

  She shook her head and almost started to gasp. He had to be close to eighty now, but he looked no older than fifty. How could that be?

  None of the men in the room looked older than that.

  Is this Resurrection? What is it?

  Then more doctors and nurses began to enter the room. They were waking the patients.

  Something was going on.

  Something important.

  Something very bad.

  “Wake up, Prime Minister . . .”

  “Wake up, Mr. Chairman . . .”

  “Wake up, Your Excellency . . .”

  “It’s a brand new day. You look fantastic. All of you do. Congratulations.”

  99

  GET HELP GET HELP get help get help get help.

  Get out get out get out get out.

  It was an alarm going off in her head. Blood roared in her ears.

  The important men in here are being given their wake-up calls. But what are they waking up to? Or are they resurrecting? Who are they?

  Near the entrance to the room was a peculiar set of sliding doors that looked like doors to an elevator. Max rushed to them.

  Panting with anxiety, she pressed the call button. C’mon c’mon c’mon. The doors finally slid open. No one was inside. Score one for the good guys!

  Now what? Now where? Max ducked inside and rode the car up one story to the second subbasement. If she remembered correctly, the Animal Room was there. Hopefully, the other kids were, too. Maybe Kit and Frannie.

  She got off and saw no one in the hallway. Then she heard voices, someone coming. She needed to get out of there.

  Max spotted the Animal Room straight ahead. She raced to the door and pulled it open. She could have a heart attack any second now. That was exactly how she felt.

  She heard someone inside the room! Busted!

  “Max! You’re back!” Wendy called out. Then there were more familiar voices calling her name, welcoming her, and asking questions at the same time.

  “Shhhh. Shhhh. Quiet down now. I said quiet! All hell is breaking loose outside. Something gigantic is going on. And it’s bad.”

  Max hurried to open the latches on the cages. She took a few seconds to hug them all: Peter, Matthew, Wendy, and Ic. All except Ozymandias, of course.

  “Where were you, Max?” Matthew wanted to know.

  “In the air ducts. Getting better. I got shot. Enough questions for now.”

  “What’s going on outside?”

  “Stop with the questions, Matty!”

  The kids looked terrible—dirty, anxious, afraid—but especially poor Icarus, who pushed her away as she tried to carry him out of his cage. “Go away,” he hissed. “Let me be, Max. Let me die here.”

  “Ic, it’s time to go, and you’re going!”

  “Leave me, please. I can’t take it anymore. Leave the blind boy. I can’t go on like this.”

  “We need you, Ic. Now shape up, little buddy. Shape up now!” Max finally had to raise her voice.

  Icarus looked startled, but then he grinned. “That’s the Max I know and love.”

  Damn right it was. She was in charge again. Without a map, without a weapon, without a real plan. And without Kit and Frannie. She had to hurry and find them.

  “Matthew, you help out Ic. Peter and Wendy, stay with me,” she said. “Stay close, you two.”

  “I’m letting the lab animals out,” Matthew said. “No arguments. I have to do it, Max. They’re as scared as we are. They’re our pals now.”

  “Yeah! Release the skitters,” said Peter. “Release the hounds!”

  Max rolled her eyes, but she had to say yes. She couldn’t bear to leave them in the cages, either. “Let ’em out. The extra confusion might help.”

  The two younger boys opened the chimp cages first, clowning and jabbering as if they had all the time in the world. Then Wendy let Pip out of his cage and the beagles, too.

  Max opened the outside door and peered up and down the hallway. This was fricking crazy; it was the worst yet. Cold white fluorescent light illuminated every corner.

  Soon the hallway filled with monkeys, rabbits, lab rats, and hounds! Maybe the chaos would be helpful! Their vocal cords had been severed, but their harsh breathy bays were still audible as, noses to the ground, they seemed to pursue some mystical quarry.

  It was total chaos. What a mess. Insanity.

  But that mess was probably the best chance they wer
e going to get right now.

  Max heard high-pitched female squeals as the rodents and monkeys arrived at the nurses’ station. She stopped searching for Frannie and Kit for the moment. She quickly herded the kids into the elevator. It was a tight squeeze and Pip seemed dead set against it, barking and yipping.

  “Shape up, dog!” Max commanded, and the annoying barking stopped instantly.

  There were half a dozen illuminated buttons on the panel. “Damn this place. I hate everything about it.”

  She pressed the button marked U and the elevator started to ascend, thank God.

  “Up is good,” said little Peter.

  “Up is always good,” said Max.

  100

  U MUST STAND for unbelievably lucky, Max thought, but kept the notion to herself. She had other preoccupations right now. Frannie and Kit. The mystery men down in the recovery room. Getting out of this snake pit alive. At least getting up out of the basement where Dr. Kane did all his nasty work.

  She reminded herself: Fear is not the answer. Not ever!

  The elevator doors opened into a long passageway, concrete on all four sides, an exit door at one end, lighting strips along the sides of the ceiling.

  Max didn’t know where the tunnel went, but this was what she’d chosen. Or had it chosen for her by fate.

  It could be an escape route.

  “Let’s go!” she yelled. “I said—move it, or lose it, guys! Hustle your buns. Now!”

  The kids and one small, yapping terrier ran toward the far doorway, the only direction that seemed to make any sense.

  She had to get the kids out first, then she’d go look for Frannie and Kit, and tell them about what she’d seen—an ex-president and twenty or so of his closest friends in a postoperative state.

  “Please stay together and keep up! Once we’re outside and I give the order, you fly as fast as your wings will take you! Fly to safety. You hear me?”

  “Yeah,” shouted Peter. “We fly to safety!”

  She heard the distinctive hum of the elevator moving downward and stopping, but then the hum began again. It was coming back to their floor. Shit. Who was inside the elevator?

  “Faster, faster,” she yelled as they hurried down the tunnel. “Don’t fly—yet!”

  Max lunged for the exit door. Please, open.

  The door swung out into the blinding daylight, and it seemed so long since Max had seen the sun! A day? Two days? There was a gray galvanized metal building off to their right—an airplane hangar—and tarmac leading to a runway.

  An awful lot of private planes were down there!

  Max sought her bearings. That way was Washington, D.C. Maybe they could get help there. Maybe, maybe not. Who were the good guys in this hopeless mess? And how could she know for sure? She needed Frannie and Kit. Right now, right this instant. All right, you two guys, show your faces!

  But it didn’t happen. No Frannie and Kit.

  Her bewildering thoughts were interrupted by the sputtering sound of an engine starting outside the airplane hangar. As she watched, a small cream-colored airplane with a red stripe along its side rolled forward, sending a flock of doves airborne.

  The airplane stopped and two men in blue jumpsuits rolled a staircase up to the plane. A couple of the other small planes were being started up, too. A flurry of activity.

  Off to the left, a tunnel door opened and two doctors came out, each rolling a patient in a wheelchair. Then came bodyguards. Who was the patient?

  Two more mysterious patients in wheelchairs were pushed out of another door. Then two more.

  All in wheelchairs.

  All males.

  Was this what the wake-up call was all about? Time to go home? To do what?

  One of the guards spotted Max. “Hey!” he yelled. “On the roof!” Then he was talking into his headphone.

  The doctors stared at her briefly, then one of them helped his important patient onto the staircase leading to his jet. He looked familiar. Where had she seen him? The guard drew his gun—and the bastard fired at her! At all of them!

  “Get down!” Max ordered. Goddamn them to hell. They shoot children, the cowardly bastards.

  Max peered over the edge and watched as the two doctors followed their patient into the plane. The door swung closed and the jet began to taxi.

  Max was furious. At the guards, the doctors, the patient, Dr. Ethan Kane, the whole goddamn shitty world that she and the other kids—all kids, actually—had been thrown into.

  They will not get away with Resurrection, whatever it is.

  They will not! Will not!

  She couldn’t let them get away. She wouldn’t. Not even one stinking plane should get airborne.

  “Get ready to fly out of here,” she told the kids. “Those planes aren’t going up! We own the sky.”

  Then it hit her. She knew who the important patient was. Miguel Hijueras!

  He was supposedly one of the richest men in the world. He owned communications companies all over Central and South America. He was supposed to be a real prick, too. An awful, awful bastard.

  He was the patient.

  One of them.

  Who were all the rest—and what had been done to them in the operating rooms downstairs?

  101

  MAX REALIZED she was beyond coherent rational thought at the present time. Her fury and outrage about the death of Oz, his murder, were making up for the lack of food; her anger filled her with a kind of heady bravery.

  Or stupidity.

  She stretched out her magnificent wings as far as they would go. Ten feet four inches. The wind passed over the leading edges and pulled her upward.

  Max flew, and so did the others. They followed her—anywhere. No matter what side you were on, devil or angel, it was a beautiful, amazing thing to see.

  “The flock!” Peter and Wendy howled.

  “Pay attention!” Max yelled at them.

  She beat her wings furiously and rose even as Mr. Hijueras’s private airplane still taxied on the ground. It had to travel along a runway before turning south and beginning its takeoff in the direction of Washington. What had happened to Hijueras at the Hospital? Why had all of these important men come here?

  Some of the other private planes were being boarded now. More famous patients? For sure! What the hell had happened to them?

  Max had a bit of a head start. The wind gusted suddenly, so when the airplane’s nose lifted, she was there ahead of it.

  She whipped across, right in front of the cockpit. She saw a pair of totally surprised pilots. The small plane tipped back onto its left landing wheel, then quickly righted itself.

  Get down! She signaled to the pilots. Down!

  She heard yells behind her; the other kids were cheering her on, cheering for themselves as well.

  Then they were in a tight formation of five, with Max in the lead.

  Matthew was on her left; he assumed poor, murdered Oz’s position, calling out directions and commands to Ic. Wendy and Peter flew to her right. None of them were afraid—not anymore.

  They dropped down near the plane, swooping and crisscrossing in front of the cockpit. Now the pilot and copilot looked scared. Their eyes bulged.

  Max signaled for them to put the plane down again.

  “Get down, you bastards! Don’t try to take this plane up!” she yelled into the wind.

  Max looped over and back. She saw the pilot struggle to keep the plane’s nose in the air. He was speaking into his radio. Then she heard spits of gunfire from behind.

  “Look out! Look out! Break formation!” she screamed at the kids.

  Down on the ground armed guards had burst out of the hangar and onto the small airfield. They were shooting at them! Rifles.

  Her keen eyesight picked out a few of the bastards who’d been chasing them since Colorado. What kind of secrets were they guarding here? What horrors? These rich bastards sure aren’t here for their six-month physicals.

  “Keep the plane between us and
the ground,” Max shouted. “Follow me, guys. Keep it tight.”

  The small plane was gathering speed and gaining altitude. Bursts of semiautomatic gunfire creased the air—and then something went wrong! Something even Max hadn’t expected. Something unthinkable.

  “Oh God, Max—look!” Matthew shrieked. “They’re hit! It’s bad!”

  “Who’s hit?” Max moaned, and turned to check the flock.

  But it wasn’t one of the kids. Bullets had pierced the right wing. Red and orange flames and black smoke spewed from the damaged plane. There was a loud bang, an explosion, and the engine was on fire. The cream-white plane seemed to hang in place for a sliver of a second. Then it started to plummet toward the tarmac.

  “Oh, be careful. Be careful,” Max called out. “Level off! Level off! Oh jeez, don’t crash.”

  She saw the pilot talking frantically into his headset, but the plane was nosing down.

  Too fast! Way too fast! Then it smashed down on the airstrip. The right wing ripped entirely from the slender body, the plane shrieking like a dying animal. It cartwheeled four times, rolling over and over, parts flying in all directions, then came to a rest belly-up.

  Suddenly it burst into flames. Black, oily smoke billowed from the mangled plane. A second bright explosion bloomed.

  Max could feel the searing heat of the fire high up in the sky. Oh God, what had she done? Mr. Hijueras and his doctors had to be dead, blown up or cooked.

  She and the other children dropped closer to the ground and watched as a bright orange truck sped out from a maintenance shed.

  Almost simultaneously, doors opened from the south wing of the Hospital. Personnel streamed toward the fallen aircraft from the other private planes.

  Matthew saw him first and pointed! “There! Max, over there!”

  Dr. Ethan Kane stood alone behind the crowd, staring at the catastrophe. He wore a black windbreaker over a white shirt. And a long-billed baseball hat with the words PEBBLE BEACH on the front—the same one he’d had on when he’d abducted them from Alma’s Valley Rest.

  It was the first time Max had seen the prideful doctor without his nasty smile of superiority. He was shaking his head in disbelief.