James Patterson - The Final Warning

I stood nearby, breathing hard, barely able to take in the fact thatGozen and theUber -Director were no more. PoorAkila. Poor Total. I shook my head, feeling terrible for him.

Angel looked up. “Akila,” she said, frowning.

I nodded. “I know, sweetie. I’m so sorry.”

“No- Akila, ” said Angel, pointing at the sky.

“Huh?” was all I had time to say before an eighty-pound Malamute plummeted out of the sky, smashing right into me and knocking me onto my not-nearly-padded-enough butt.

“Oh, God,” I wheezed,Akila’s body lying heavily on top of me. For the second or third time that day- it was hard to keep track- I had to slowly suck in breath, looking like a largemouth bass. “Akila!”

The others rushed over, and Fang pried openAkila’s eyelids and put his head on her side to listen for a heartbeat.

“She’s alive,” he said, just as the mud-spattered dog blinked weakly.

“Uh, can you get her off me?” I said, my voice muffled. I felt as though I’d been hit with a warm, sopping-wet, furry sack of cement.

“Akila!” Total cried, now that the shock was wearing off. “Akila! I thought we had lost you forever!” Eagerly he licked her face. I was thinking bleah, butAkila seemed to like it, turning her head so Total could get her other side.

And there we were. Together again.

WE MANAGED TO STAY inside the eye of the hurricane, moving with it until the storm had weakened enough for us to fly out. As we flew over the devastation, I realized at last the full implications of what global warming could mean for our world.

“You were right,” I said quietly to Fang as we flew. “Global warming is something we have to help stop.”

“What was that?” Fang said loudly, cupping one hand around his ear. “What did you say? Could you repeat that?”

I looked at him sourly. “So what now, hot stuff? I have to tell you, I’m not loving the idea of going back to Antarctica. That place was like living inside a big fridge.”

“I was thinking we’d get something to eat, then call Dr. Martinez,” he suggested.

I smiled at him, my first real smile in… I didn’t know how long. “An excellent notion.”

Washington DC

“I’mgonna barf,” I whispered to Fang, wiping my sweaty hands on my jeans.

“You’ll be fine,” he whispered back. “You always are.”

“I’mgonna die,” I moaned.

“You can’t die,” he said, a hint of a smile in his voice. “You’re the indestructible Max.”

“I’ve never faced anything this hard before.” Yes, I sounded like a pathetic weenie. I prefer to think of it as showing my softer side.

“Max?” My mom stood at the door, smiling at me. She was all dressed up and looked fabulous. I would be lucky if I grew up to look like her. Which I guess would be hindered by my refusal togirlify myself. I looked down at my clean T-shirt and jeans. Mom had thoughtfully supplied me with a nice actual dress, but when I’d tried it on, I felt- I don’t know. Vulnerable? Like I couldn’t move, couldn’t fight.

Well, we all have issues.

At least my clothes were totally clean, though my T-shirt advertisedGьero’s Taco Bar in Austin, Texas. On top of that I wore my traditional oversize, loose Windbreaker, because why would I want Congress staring at my wings?

Yes. Congress. There, in a nutshell, was mywhoopsy -daisy life: Many evil people wanted to kill me, or sell me, or use me for evil purposes, and on the other hand, there I was, testifying about global warming to the Congress of the United States. Sometimes the lines got a little blurry.

“Okay, do you have your notes?”Brigid Dwyer came up and brushed some lint off my jacket, as if that would help.

“Yep.” I held up my sheaf of paper.Brigid, Michael, and the other scientists from the Wendy K. had helped me come up with what to say. All except Brian. He’d turned out to be another mole for the UD. He was in jail. There’s always one- or in this case two- in every crowd.

“I think they’re ready for you,” my mom said, gesturing at the open door. I could hear the buzzing of voices inside and wished fervently that the Capitol Building had an open ceiling that I could escape through if necessary.

“This is your mission,” saidJeb, smiling at me. “You’re fulfilling your mission right now, right here.”

I nodded, took a deep breath, and gave one last look at my flock. They were lined up, scrubbed clean, looking awed and a little freaked. Angel waved at me, and I waved back.

Showtime, folks.

MY HANDS SHOOK. The microphone in front of me seemed too big, and I’d made it squeak by getting too close. I wished I could just beat someone up and get the heck out of here.

I cleared my throat and looked down at my speech.

“Thank you for inviting me here today,” I said, my voice sounding nothing like me. “I’m here to testify about things I’ve seen and experienced myself. I’m here because the human race has become more powerful than ever. We’ve gone to the moon. Our crops resist diseases and pests. We can stop and restart a human heart. And we’ve harvested vast amounts of energy for everything from night-lights to enormoussuperjets. We’ve even created new kinds of people, like me.

“But everything mankind”- I frowned- “personkindhas accomplished has had a price. One that we’re allgonna have to pay.”

I heard coughing and shifting in the audience. I looked down at my notes, and all the little black words blurred together on the page. I just could not get through this.

I put the speech down, picked up the microphone, and came out from behind the podium.

“Look,” I said. “There’s a lot of official stuff I could quote and put up on the screen with PowerPoint. But what you need to know, what the world needs to know, is that we’re really destroying the earth in a bigger and more catastrophic way than anyone has ever imagined.

“I mean, I’ve seen a lot of the world, the only world we have. There are so many awesome, beautiful things in it. Waterfalls and mountains, thermal pools surrounded by ice and snow as far as you can see. Beautiful beaches with sand like white sugar. Fields and fields of wildflowers. Places where the ocean crashes up against a mountainside, like it’s done for hundreds of thousands of years.

“I’ve also seen concrete cities with hardly any green. And rivers whose pretty rainbow surfaces came from an oil leak upstream. Animals are becoming extinct right now, in my lifetime. Just recently, I went through one of the worst hurricanes ever recorded. It was a whole lot worse because of huge, worldwide climatic changes caused by… us. We, the people.”

I suddenly remembered a catchy (if annoying) song I’d heard over and over in a Saturday morning cartoon- the one that was supposed to teach kids about the Constitution. The words of the preamble, which were quoted in the song, came flooding back to me. “ ‘We the People of the United States,’ ” I began, “ ‘in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the commondefence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.’ ”

The room was silent. I looked around at all the faces. “A more perfect union? While huge corporations do whatever they want to whoever they want, and other people live in subway tunnels? Where’s the justice of that? Kids right here in America go to bed hungry every night, while other people get four-hundred-dollar haircuts. Promote the general welfare? Where’s the general welfare of strip-mining, toxic pesticides, industrial solvents being dumped into rivers, killing everything? Domestic tranquility? Ever sleep in a forest that’s being clear-cut? You’d be hearing chain saws in your head for weeks. The blessings of liberty? Yes. I’m using one of the blessings of liberty right now, my freedom of speech, to tell you guys, who make the laws, that the very ground you stand on, the house you live in, the children you tuck in at night, are all in immediate, catastrophic danger.”