James Patterson - Maximum Ride Forever

“We’re a flock of two now,” I finished, looking at him. “You and me.”

“Flaaaack,” Harry echoed wisely.

“Show me your flock, how you grew up.” I handed him the stick.

But Harry didn’t draw his friends or family. He drew a boy with huge wings and a square box with bars around him. Harry pointed to the boy’s frowning face, and then tapped his own chest.

The twinge of protectiveness I’d felt earlier in the Doomsday hall returned. Harry was strong and an exceptional flier, but he was still so vulnerable.

“That was scary today, huh? I’m sorry for not listening to your instincts before,” I said quietly. “Don’t worry, though. It’s all over now.”

Harry kept sketching with the stick. Outside the cage, he drew other figures — people with masks over their faces. Scientists, without a doubt.

I noticed that Harry had started shaking again, his down trembling.

“I understand,” I said, reaching for Harry’s hand. I squeezed it tight, trying to comfort him. “It happened to me, too.”

Then suddenly Harry leaned over and planted his lips on mine.

That kiss brought back every sweet memory of Fang — shy moments from the beginning when a kiss meant the whole world, and then that last night we spent together...

It made me think of Dylan, too, though, and my cheeks burned with confusion.

I pulled back abruptly. My eyes swam with tears — but my chest hurt like I’d been stabbed. The grief threatened to overflow. I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands and pressed my lips together.

Get it together.

“Max Mum?” Harry asked.

Harry lacked even the most basic communication skills. How could I explain that I still loved a boy who was dead, and another who had left me?

“Harry...” I started.

“Harry!” he crowed in response. He jerked his head forward again, but I was quicker to move this time.

“No, Harry,” I said. Looking at him, I drew an X through the Max stick figure on the ground. I slowly shook my head for emphasis.

“You must never. Do that. Again.”

Angel’s head throbbed. The visions were coming more and more frequently now, the flashes almost like electric shocks as they assaulted her consciousness.

She saw Nudge’s face underwater, her eyes wide open in terror. She heard Gazzy’s heart thundering, and then an explosion that drowned out everything else. She felt Iggy’s pain as his body was cracked like a whip.

Angel dug her fingernails into her palms. It didn’t have to be like this. She’d warned them. Why hadn’t they just come with her?

Because of Max. Max was used to running everything, but Angel understood something Max never had about being a leader: She couldn’t do everything all by herself.

So when the flock had bailed, she hadn’t gone to Russia. Not yet. Instead, she’d traveled all over the world, working her small, tired body to the bone, gathering survivors one by one for her cause, meeting people who would listen .

Now she was back in North America, about to cross what had once been the Canadian border. It was all coming together, just like she’d seen, and Angel had one final, awful task left.

It was the vision she couldn’t shake, the one that made her want to smash her head into one of the rusted-out boxcars of the train she was walking past.

Then Angel heard voices.

No, not voices. Thoughts.

She concentrated to hear them more clearly, and what she picked up were two boys who were cold, desperate, and afraid. As Angel focused on them, she learned that their names were Matthew and Lucas — Matthew and Lucas Morrissey. Why did those names sound familiar?

It hit Angel like a splash of cold water. Matthew and Lucas Morrissey: They were exceptional microbiologists who had made breakthroughs in the field when they were still in high school. Angel had glimpsed part of a TV special about them, years ago. But lately she’d heard from several different sources about the interesting things the brothers were up to.

Angel gripped the metal handle and slid open the boxcar door.

Two older teenage boys stood shivering inside. One had a slight build; the other was taller, with broad shoulders. But they definitely looked like brothers — their ebony faces had the same high cheekbones and the same wide, haunted eyes.

“One Light,” the bigger guy said in his best zombie voice.

The imitation was so bad, Angel actually giggled. “I wonder if the Remedy knows the boy geniuses who burned down his lab are pretending to be on his cleanup crew? Is that the best you can do, Lucas ?”

Fear came into their eyes.

“Please,” begged Lucas. “We were recruited to make an antidote. We thought the lab was helping people, but they were just making more people sick.”

Angel already knew this. She looked at his brother, who was maybe two years younger. He had one gangly arm hidden behind his back.

We’re dead if she tells anyone , Angel heard him think. If I swing fast enough...

“Before you try to split my skull open with that crowbar, Matthew,” Angel said, her face darkening, “I know why you ran. I know about Olivia.”

Lucas’s eyes flashed with anger and pain as he stepped in front of his little brother. “Don’t you speak her name.”

Poor Olivia , Angel thought sadly. “It’s okay. I know you thought you were saving her, giving her a vaccine.” Instead, the virus had taken her in two days.

“H-how do you know that?” Matthew stammered.

Angel heard Lucas’s mind whirring, imagining ways to escape. She felt sorry for them even as they were thinking of smothering her. These guys had been on the run for a long, long time.

“Yeah, how do you know us?” Lucas asked uneasily. “Who are you?”

Are you a Horseman? was what he was asking.

“I’m someone who will show you the truth.” Closing her eyes, Angel pushed her way into their minds, using her power to direct the information this time, instead of withdrawing it. She made them see .

“You can save the sick,” Lucas said in wonder.

Angel shook her head. “I’m not a healer, just a messenger. Do you want a chance to start over?” Lucas and Matthew both nodded, their brown eyes looking a bit more hopeful now. “Then I’m the one who will lead you.”

She gave everyone she met the same instructions.

“Go to Russia. Get there any way you can. Find Himmel. Bring your weapons.”

Just a little farther , Fang thought.

He sat cross-legged on a salt-crusted boulder that jutted out over the ocean and shoved handfuls of raw salmon into his mouth. The fish was so cold it made his hands ache, but Fang didn’t care — it tasted better than anything he could remember eating.

After traveling all the way up the west coast of the United States and Canada, Fang had arrived in the Gulf of Alaska last night. Once he finished his early-morning breakfast, he would head inland. He wished he could stay along the water — so did his stomach — but he knew that route would take extra time.

Time was something Fang just didn’t have.

He had to get to Russia, and if he wanted to make it to the Bering Strait anytime soon, he’d have to cut diagonally up through the middle of the state. He figured he could clear it in a couple of hours, cross over to Russia, and then join the flock by the end of the week — assuming Angel had convinced the rest of them to meet there.

The encounter with Star should have shaken him up, but the truth was, he felt calmer than he had in years.

Maybe it was because he finally had some information, some clue about what was going on that would help stop the massacres.