James Patterson: Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment

Irritated, I punched my pillow into a better shape, then started sneezing hysterically as clouds of dust sailed up my nose.

“Wah, ah, ah, choo!” I grabbed my nose in an attempt to keep some of my brains inside my head, but the sudden movement caused me to lose my balance, and with no warning I fell hard to the floor. Crash!

“Ouch! Son of a gu-” I scrambled to get up. My hands hit rough upholstery and the edge of a table. Okay, now I was lost. Prying open my bleary eyes, I peered around. “What the…”

Where was I? I looked around wildly. I was in a… cabin. A cabin! Ohhh. A cabin. Right, right.

It was oh-dark-thirty-not yet dawn.

I leaped to my feet, scanned the room, and saw nothing to be alarmedabout.Except for the fact that obviously, Fang, Nudge, and I had just wasted precious hours sleeping!

Oh, my God. I hurried over to Nudge, who was sprawled across a recliner. “Nudge! Nudge! Wake up! Oh, man…”

I turned to Fang, to find him swinging his feet over the edge of a couch. He sneezed and shook his head.

“What time is it?” he asked calmly.

“Almost morning!” I said, terribly upset. “Of the next day!”

He was already moving toward the kitchen cupboards. He’d found an ancient, stained backpack in a closet, and now he methodically started to fill it with cans of tuna, sealed bags of crackers, zip-locked bags of trail mix.

“Wha’s happ’nin‘?” Nudge asked, blinking groggily.

“We fell asleep!” I told her, grabbing her hands and pulling her upright. “Come on! We’ve gotta go!”

Dropping to all fours, I raked my shoes out from under the couch and blew dust bunnies off them. “Fang, you can’t carry all that,” I said. “It’ll weigh you down. Nothing’s heavier than cans.”

Fang shrugged and pulled the backpack on. Stubborn kind of fella. He moved soundlessly across the room and slipped through the window like a shadow.

Now I was jamming Nudge’s shoes onto her feet, rubbing her back, trying to wake her up. Nudge was always a reaaallly slow waker. Usually I appreciated the lack of word-spew, which would begin when she was fully functioning, but right now we needed to move, move, move!

I practically threw Nudge through the window, slithered out myself, then propped the screen back in place as best I could.

A quick run down a country road and we were off, stroking hard, pushing to get airborne.

Sorry, Angel. Sorry, sorry, sorry, my baby.

Okay. Despite the imminent sunrise, I felt better once we were flying above the treetops.

But still! How stupid was that? What kind of a loser was I, to let us fall asleep in the middle of a freaking rescue! I thought about Angel waiting for us, and my heart clenched. With a sense of dread, I banked and set us going about ten, twelve degrees southwest. Anxiety fueled my wings, and I had to remember to find good air currents, set my wings at an angle, and coast when I could.

“We had to rest,” Fang said, coming up beside me.

I shot him an upset glance. “For ten hours?”

“Today we’ve got another four hours to go, maybe a bit more,” he said. “We couldn’t have done it in one shot. It was late when we left. We’re going to have to stop again anyway, right before we get there, and refuel.”

There’s nothing more annoying than cold logic and reason when you’ve got a good fit going.

Fang was right, of course-sigh-and of course we’d have to stop again. We hadn’t even hit the California border yet. Far from it.

“We going to storm the place or what?” Fang asked an hour later.

“Yeah, Max, I was wondering what your plan was,” said Nudge, coming up alongside. “I mean, there’s only three of us, and a whole bunch of them. And the Erasers have guns. Could we, like, drive a truck through the gates? Or even into a building? Or maybe we could wait till nightfall, sneak in, and sneak out with Angel before anyone notices us.”

That crazy thought cheered her up. I kept silent-I didn’t have the heart to tell her we had about as much chance of that as we did of flying to the moon. But if worse came to worst, I had a secret Plan C.

If it worked, everyone would escape and get free.

Except me. But that was okay.

Despite my growing anxiety, it was glorious up here. Not many birds flew this high-some falcons, hawks, other raptors. Every once in a while some of them would come check us out, probably thinking, Man, those are some dang ugly birds.

This high up, the land below took on a checkerboard effect of Robin Hoodsy greens and browns. Cars looked like busy ants moving purposefully down their trails. Every once in a while I picked something small down below and focused on it. It was cool how some little tiny thing, like a swimming pool, a tractor, whatever, would ratchet into focus. At least those maniacs at the School hadn’t had time to “improve” my vision like they improved Iggy’s.

“Gosh, I wonder what Iggy and the Gasman are doing now?” Nudge babbled. “Maybe they got the TV working again. I hope they don’t feel too bad. It would have-I mean, I guess it’s kind of easier for them to be home. But I bet they’re not cleaning up or getting wood or doing any of their chores.”

I bet they’re cursing my name from dawn to dusk. But at least they’re safe. Absently, I chose a flickering shape below and focused on it, watching a small blob become people, take on features, clothing, individuality. It was a group of kids, maybe my age, maybe older. Who couldn’t be more unlike me.

Well, so what? I thought. They were just boring kids, stuck on the ground, doing homework. With bedtimes and a million grown-ups telling them what to do, how to do everything, all the time. Alarm clocks and school and afternoon jobs. Those poor saps. While we were, free, free, free. Soaring through the air like rockets. Being cradled by breezes. Doing whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted.

Pretty good, huh? I almost convinced myself.

I glanced down again and refocused. Then I scowled. What had, at first glance, looked like just a bunch of boring, earthbound kids schlepping to school together now turned, upon closer examination, into what looked like several big kids surrounding a much smaller kid. Okay, maybe I’m paranoid, danger everywhere, but I could swear the bigger kids looked really threatening.

The bigger kids were boys. The smaller kid in the middle was a girl.

Coincidence? I think not.

Don’t even get me started about the whole Y chromosome thing. I live with three guys, remember? They’re three of the good ones, and they’re still obnoxious as all get-out.

I made one of my famous snap decisions, the kind that everyone remembers later for being either the stupidest dumb-butt thing they ever saw or else the miraculous saving of the day. 1 seemed to hear more about the first kind. That’s gratitude for you.

I turned to Fang and barely opened my mouth.

“No,” he said.

My eyes narrowed…I opened my mouth again.

“No.”

“Meet me at the northernmost point of Lake Mead,” I said.

“What? What are you talking about?” Nudge asked. “Are we stopping? I’m hungry again.”

“Max wants to go be Supergirl, defender of the weak,” Fang said, sounding irritated.

“Oh.” Nudge looked down, frowning at the ground as if it would all become clear soon.

I had started a wide circle that would take me back toward the girl below. I kept thinking, What if that girl was in trouble, like Angel, and no one stopped to help her?