James Patterson: Maximum Ride Forever

Dylan’s coming. He’s on his way. He’s fine.

I was pretty beat up, with serious burns on my arms and legs, singed feathers, and a lump the size of a goose egg growing out of my temple. I clenched my teeth and tried to focus on the pain, but even that didn’t distract me.

“Max, listen to me. You have to get in here,” Nudge pleaded from the mouth of a cave, where Fang was building a barricade. “It’s like a hurricane out there. You’ll get blown off the cliff!”

Unlike the now-toppled place where we’d made our home before the eruption, our new perch was high and safe from mudslides and lava. But from gale-force winds and acid rain? Not so much.

I’d already lost my footing more than once, but I shook my head. “Everything looks different from before. He probably just got turned around.”

Nudge’s curls got soaked immediately and stuck to her tan cheeks as she stepped out to survey the landscape. She frowned. “He would’ve found shelter by now, though. Dylan knows the rules.”

The members of my flock had survived because we looked out for the group first. If you went off on your own, you took your chances — there was no room for risk.

But this was different. Dylan would never, ever run away from me. That I knew.

“Come inside the cave,” Nudge urged, bending down to put her chin on my shoulder. We’re all tall and thin for our ages, but this past year twelve-year-old Nudge had shot past me and was now almost six feet tall — as tall as Fang. “We’ll crack one of the cans for dinner and—”

“Dylan!” I yelled suddenly, thinking I spotted movement on the horizon.

But it was just the charred trunk of a tree blowing around, and the only answer I got was the howl of the wind.

Nudge sighed, patted my back, and ducked back into the cave.

Gritty pellets of water whipped against my face. Who was I kidding? No one could fly in this weather. Well, almost no one.

Maybe I could just—

“No, you couldn’t. You’re not going anywhere,” a voice said from behind me.

I let out a breath. “Angel, just because you can read minds doesn’t mean you have permission to root around inside my head.”

Angel crossed her arms and studied me with a stern look, or at least as stern as a golden-haired, blue-eyed seven-year-old can look. We’d pretty much resolved our differences since she tried to overthrow me as leader of the flock, but she still had her moments. Right now, dirty-faced, wild-haired, and firm-chinned, the flock’s youngest member looked like a short, blonde dictator.

I narrowed my eyes. And who’s going to stop me? You know we need to find Dylan. We don’t abandon our own.

“Fang!” Angel shouted in response, her eyes never leaving mine.

Well. She’s not the only one with a firm chin around here. Without hesitation I turned on my heel and jumped off the edge. But before I could even unfurl my wings, I saw a flash of black out of the corner of my eye, and felt the breath knocked out of me as Fang’s body slammed into mine.

Together, we crashed back to the rocky ground, tumbling dangerously close to the edge. I kicked Fang’s shin, and pebbles skittered over the cliff. Fang wrapped his arms around mine, but I do not react well to being pinned. Bucking and writhing, I desperately tried to throw him off. Suddenly all that mattered was breaking free to go after Dylan.

“Max, calm down!” Fang snapped, and I pulled a fist free and punched him hard. “Whoa! What’s wrong with you?”

By now the others had come out to see what the commotion was.

“We. Need. To. Find. Dylan,” I ground out through clenched teeth. “Get off me!”

Cautiously Fang let me go, then jumped back out of my kicking range. He knows me so well.

“Max, we can’t go right now. It’s a toxic stew out there,” the Gasman explained. He should know. He’d earned his name when he was little, thanks to the toxic stew of odors he always produced. “I’m talking melt-your-face-off.”

“I can get through it. Dylan’s out there,” I spat. “Doesn’t anyone care about him?”

Gazzy chewed his lip and glanced away, and Nudge looked concerned. Of course they cared. Mr. Perfect had caused some strife in our flock at first, but he was one of us now, and even Fang looked grim as the reality of the situation set in.

“He’s not stupid,” Fang said. “He’s probably found high ground until the storm passes and the lava hardens. If he’s not back in the morning, we’ll go look.”

“I have to find him now !” It came out as a hysterical plea, which was such a shock that I stopped struggling. I’m not usually a sniveling weenie, but this was one of the most powerful calls to action I’d ever felt: I had to find Dylan.

Not we. I.

Fang blinked and sat back on his heels, looking at me strangely. “Tomorrow,” he repeated, and stood to go back to his barricade.

Slowly, acceptance replaced my unreasonable urge. Finally I nodded and tried to swallow my fear. As I stood up, sopping wet and filthy with ash, I asked myself a question — the question I had seen mirrored in Fang’s dark, brooding eyes:

Would I have reacted the same way for him, or for any of my flock?

Or does Dylan make me feel... something more?

We set out the next morning toward the lake where Dylan had gone for water. By then, the heat was unbelievable. It seeped up through the uneven mounds of already-hardening lava under our feet, and the ash cloud above us held it in like a blanket. Of course, heat rises, so flying was out of the question. The least-boiling place was on the ground. We were being slow-cooked like bird-kid stew, and I was the bitter onion, so mad at Dylan I could spit.

Most of us were doing okay regulating our body temperature — mutant genes, et cetera, et cetera — but poor Akila was looking a little rough. Her tongue hung out of the side of her mouth, but there was none of her signature drool, and she was panting super loud.

“Are you all right, my darling?” Total asked, trotting alongside her. Akila whined, and he jumped to lick her face a few times. That was just about the most real, doglike thing I’d ever seen Total do, and I’ll be honest, it kind of freaked me out.

“Once Dylan stops being an idiot and shows up with the water jugs, everything will be fine ,” I said loudly. Despite our inborn sense of direction, I had no idea where we were — all landmarks were gone. Even the forest of tree stumps had disappeared under the rivers of gray deposits.

Finally we stumbled on the lake, but it wasn’t the blue thermal pool we remembered. A thick gray film covered the surface, broken only by the hundreds or thousands of silvery dead fish bobbing through it. The cloud of black flies hovering over them was even thicker than the ash.

“Well, might as well eat ’em before they rot.” Gazzy grabbed a silvery floater, brushed off the ash as best he could, and bit into the side. Then he looked up in surprise, his face as dirty and gray as the water. “Hey! It’s cooked!”

One by one we grabbed a cooked fish right out of the still-warm water, brushed off the ash, and ate our fill. One downside of our avian genes was a lightning-fast metabolism that meant we were nearly always hungry.

A little farther on, we saw it: Our precious stockpile of water was untouched, the jugs covered with ash but intact. We weren’t going to die of thirst — at least not yet.

Luck loves Maximum Ride , I thought, cupping my hands so Akila could drink. But then my heart plummeted. If the jugs hadn’t been moved, it could only mean one thing:

Dylan hadn’t even made it this far.