James Patterson: Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment

I still missed Jeb so much it made my throat close.

Suddenly, I froze, because my bedroom door was opening very, very slowly and quietly.

Run! my mind screamed as my hands curled into claws against the sheets. Fly!

Ella’s brown eyes, curious and eager, peered around the door. She spoke softly over her shoulder. “I think she’s awake.”

Ella’s mom appeared. “Morning, Max. You hungry? Do you like pancakes?”

“And little breakfast sausages?” Ella added. “And fruit and stuff?”

I hoped it only felt like I was drooling on my nightshirt. I nodded. They smiled and left, and then I saw the clothes on my bed. My own jeans and socks had been washed, and there was a lavender sweatshirt with large slits newly cut into the back.

Ella’s mom was taking care of me, like Jeb had. I didn’t know how to act, what to say.

A girl could get used to this.

No matter how quickly the Erasers killed them, the Gasman was sure it would feel like forever.

“Up and away,” Iggy breathed, inching slightly closer to him.

Up and away? The Gasman frowned. Iggy had to be kidding. Straight up?

Crash! The Gasman jumped as the window behind him shattered with a shower of glass and broken wood. An Eraser pushed through the ragged opening with a silent grin.

“Guess what?” the first Eraser asked with a pleasant smile. “We got the little one-they don’t need you two alive.” They laughed, the sound like deep bells ringing, and then their faces began to change. The Gasman couldn’t help grimacing as they morphed, becoming more wolflike, their muzzles extending, their teeth protruding until it looked like they had a mouthful of knives.

“Boys, boys,” one almost purred. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you? You can run, but you can’t hide.” His shiny dark hair was becoming thicker, and more hair sprouted grotesquely on his arms and hands. He literally licked his chops and rubbed his huge, hairy hands together, as if he’d learned how to be a bad guy from cartoons.

“Ready?”

Iggy’s voice was so faint, his lips so still that the Gasman wasn’t sure he’d heard anything. Every second seemed oddly stretched out. His hands closed into fists by his sides. He was ready. Sure.

“This freak’s blind,” one Eraser said, gesturing toward Iggy. “Don’t worry, kid. It’ll all be over soon, and you won’t have to worry about being blind anymore. But it’s a shame they didn’t give you one of their new eyes-like mine.”

The Gasman looked up at him, and a feeling of revulsion rose in his throat as he saw what the Eraser meant. Set deep into one orbital socket was a stainless steel ball. A red laserlike glow made it look as though it was filled with blood. The Eraser grinned and turned his eye to the Gasman. A red dot appeared on the Gasman’s shirt and, as he watched, it slowly began to burn a small hole in the fabric.

The Erasers laughed.

“You left before they could fix you up with the latest technology,” one said. “Your loss.”

Yeah, right, the Gasman thought in disgust.

“How about it, piggies?” the first Eraser asked. “Do you want to try to run? Who knows-you might get lucky. For a little while.”

Grinning with anticipation, the Eraser drew closer.

“On three.”

Once again, the Gasman wasn’t sure if he’d heard Iggy or if he was imagining it.

“One.”

The Gasman’s toes clenched inside his sneakers.

“Two.”

When Iggy shouted, “Three!” the Gasman leaped straight into the air, unfurling his wings with a huge whoosh. With a roar of anger, one Eraser grabbed the Gasman’s foot and yanked. Above him, Iggy burst through the rotting roof of the cabin, out into the sky. The Gasman broke free of the Eraser’s grip.

Then he was pushing through the shattered roof, tucking his wings in tight to get through the hole. Outside, he lost altitude too fast and landed clumsily on a rickety roof beam. He slid sideways, grabbing roof shingles that came off in his hands.

Iggy yelled from twenty feet above him, “Gasser! Move!”

Just as he slid over the edge of the roof, the Gasman spread his wings. He pushed down hard with all his strength, then pulled his wings up and pushed them down again. As he surged up to meet Iggy, Iggy threw a package down into the cabin.

“Move, move, move!” Iggy yelled, flapping like crazy. Within seconds, they were a hundred yards away.

Boom! Only it was more like ba-ba-boooooom!

The two boys recoiled from the blast, tumbling backward in the air from the shock wave. The Gasman righted himself, eyes wide, as a fireball ten yards in diameter rose from where the cabin had been.

He was speechless.

After the fireball from Big Boy disintegrated, the cabin burned brightly, its old, rotted wood consumed as instantly as kindling. Flames reached for the sky, licking at the green trees nearby, snaking along the ground as brittle brown pine needles caught fire.

God, it was beautiful.

“Well,” Iggy said after a long while, “that takes care of them.”

The Gasman nodded, feeling sick. One dark body had flown upward in the blast, falling back to earth as a glowing coal. The other Eraser had crawled a few feet away from the cabin, a burning silhouette that had collapsed, its outlines blurred by flame.

“Unless they escaped,” Iggy added.

Of course Iggy hadn’t seen anything. The Gasman cleared his throat. “No,” he said. “They’re dead.” He felt slightly queasy, guilty, and dirty. Then he remembered Angel, how she’d shared the last of the ice cream with him three nights ago. She was so small, and God only knew what horrible things they were doing to her. His jaw hardened.

“Take that,” he muttered. ‘That was for my sister, for Angel, you scum-sucking jerks.“

Then he saw the black Hummer, its hood crumpled, driving fast toward the burning cabin. An Eraser was leaning out the passenger window, looking through binoculars.

“Come on, Iggy,” said the Gasman. “Let’s get out of here.”

The bell clanged jarringly, and rough hands pushed Angel forward. She stumbled, catching herself at the last second before falling onto coils of razor wire.

Angel wanted to cry. She’d been doing this all day-it was late afternoon by now.

She was starving and light-headed and every muscle ached-and still they made her run.

It was a maze, Angel knew that.

They had made it in a huge gymlike room in the School’s main building. They rang a bell and pushed her forward, and then she had to run as fast as she could to find the exit. Each time, the maze was different, the exit in a different place. If she slowed down, she got an electric shock so strong it scrambled her brain, or red-hot wires under her feet burned her. So, eyes blurry with tears, Angel ran forward blindly, taking this turn and that until she finally stumbled out the exit.

Then she would get a sip of water and a five-minute rest while they redid the maze.

Angel sniffled, trying to keep quiet. She hated this! If only she knew beforehand-if only she knew, she could run through fast and not get shocked or burned.

Angel sat up, a tingle of excitement running down her spine. She closed her eyes and tried to listen to what the whitecoats were thinking.

One of them wanted to let an Eraser loose in the maze, have it fight with her, see how strong she really was. One of them thought they should increase the heated wires so she always had to run on them, whether she was slowing down or not. Then he could study the effect of stress on her adrenaline levels.