James Patterson - Maximum Ride Forever

The ground under me shook violently. Like everyone else on the front lines, I couldn’t see anything through the smoke, but it sounded like the world was breaking open.

Our whole army was bunched in a tight cluster in the center of the field. It was obvious we were in an extremely vulnerable position, but we had to hold back the ranks upon ranks of Doomsday psychos who kept pushing out of the entryway.

Right now, I was in a hair-pulling battle with a surprisingly vicious pigtailed eight-year-old and standing on an older boy’s windpipe as I tried to pry his fingers off his homemade scythe. I thought that was more important than worrying about an earthquake... until I realized it wasn’t an earthquake.

It was another army, shooting up out of holes in the ground all around us.

An army of M-Geeks.

At least that’s what I thought they were. They sure looked like the flying robots that had annoyed us since the days of Mr. Chu — right down to the weapons grafted onto their arms in place of hands.

RAT-A-TAT-TAT! came the sound of machine-gun fire.

The field became a tangle of chaos and panic. I knew how to fight these villains, though. I’d done it before.

Leaving behind the Doomsday kids I’d pinned, I shot into the air. I flew erratically, hearing the pop of bullets and trying to find a clear view of one of the robots.

“Watch it!” Ratchet smashed into my side, knocking me off balance.

“Hey!” I scowled. “You watch it!”

“You were about to fly into the path of a bullet,” Ratchet explained testily. Only someone with crazy heightened senses like his could’ve seen that. “You’re welcome.”

Looking down, I saw that most of our army was scattering for cover, but Holden and the bug boys were running full speed toward the M-Geeks. Bullets ricocheted off the armored mutants, and though Holden should’ve been full of holes, his elastic cells regenerated at such a high frequency that they barely slowed him down.

Closer to me, Gazzy teetered on the shoulders of another M-Geek, determinedly slamming a big rock on its head. But the head didn’t split like an orange as before — they’d evolved. Instead, the gloved hand reached for Gazzy, grabbed him by his messy blond hair, and slammed him forward onto the ground, where Harry was already mewling in pain. The robot pointed his gun arm, execution style, at my wounded friends.

I got ready to dive.

Time for a reunion, Geeky.

But before I could drop, Dylan shot past me. He reached the M-Geek first, tearing him off Gazzy and smashing the armored face until the metal actually dented.

I started to look for another M-Geek, but I saw we had bigger problems to worry about.

Beyond the bodies fighting on the field around me, I saw something else charging out of the forest. My mouth hung slack.

It was a parade of enemies past come back to haunt me. Some had the snarling, wolfish snouts of Erasers. Some were cyborg Flyboys. Others looked like something entirely new: droids made of metal or giants whose hands could easily snap bodies in half.

I spotted a huge man with a slick bald head and cruel eyes — a carbon copy of the giant I’d met in Africa, who’d told me his buddies would be back to rip me apart. I narrowed my eyes.

This one’s mine.

Dropping fast, I snap-kicked the backs of his knees, and when the big oaf buckled, I jumped up and jammed my fingers into his eyes, following with a quick uppercut to the chin.

Now I’d made him mad.

Roaring with pain and anger, he lunged toward me. Suddenly a powerful kick exploded against his left side — right to the kidney — and the giant collapsed in agony.

Kate.

“What are you doing?” I groaned, clenching my fists.

“Helping,” Kate grunted as she heaved the whimpering giant up onto her shoulders. The giant had to outweigh Kate by about three hundred pounds, but she lifted him over her head as if he were a toy. She spun around and hurled him across the field, where he crashed against a tree and slid to the ground.

“I don’t need help,” I insisted.

This was a battle. A battle in which, with the Horsemen and the Doomsday kids together, we were vastly outnumbered. Kids were injured all around us, putting their lives on the line, and I should be pulling my weight, fighting alongside them. I wanted to fight, more than anything.

But no one would freaking let me!

I felt a dull blade trying to hack into the back of my thigh and whipped around just as I felt it scratch my skin. It was a Doomsday kid with fierce eyes, and I grinned. At last!

I drew my arm back for a sucker punch, but right then there was a head-shattering noise that made my ears feel like they were bleeding and my brain feel like it was liquidating. I gritted my teeth, working through the pain of the audio assault, but I noticed the Doomsday kids weren’t faring so well. Not just the kid in front of me, but all across the field, they were blinking in confusion, and their weapons clattered to the ground.

The sound was breaking their hypnosis.

A tornado-like blur whirled across the field. When it finally stopped spinning, the sound cut out, and Star, the last member of Fang’s gang, stood there smirking. “I remembered I had some unfinished business,” she explained with a shrug.

With the Doomsdayers no longer a threat, I realized we might just have a chance at winning this thing. I looked around, quickly taking stock. The Horsemen had been unfazed by Star’s brain-melting noise. Our kids were ganging up on them now, but even against ten of our soldiers, the new mutants were fierce, clearly made to be killing machines.

My heart beat faster as I scanned the muddied mess for my flock.

There were Nudge and Total, getting their revenge against a Cryena with the help of the silo girls.

Iggy, Ratchet, and Star were using their collective supersenses to make a metal mutant shake all over, until sparks shot out of its fingertips.

I inhaled the distinctive stink of greasy canine fur. An Eraser on steroids was making a beeline for me, and I took to the air and assumed an offensive stance. My muscles quivered with readiness, waiting for the ballet of an aerial fight stacked way against me.

That didn’t happen, though, because Dylan slammed into the Eraser first, again , getting between us and snapping its jaw with a well-aimed kick.

“You can’t take on everyone!” I yelled angrily as Boy Wonder finished off Teen Wolf. “I have dibs on that Eraser over there,” I said, pointing. “OKAY?!”

“Max, wait!” Dylan grabbed for my arm. “You can’t fight right now — don’t be stupid.”

My eyes almost bugged out of my head. If there was ever a time that I was going to actually rip someone’s head off, it was then. I was many things, but I was not stupid.

“Wh-what I mean is,” Dylan stuttered, seeing the rage in my eyes, “now that the Doomsday kids are down, the entrance is clear.” He pointed, and I saw it was true. “I think our soldiers can handle the rest of the Horsemen... So do you want to meet the Remedy, or not?”

I didn’t hesitate. “Now you’re talking.”

Not that finding the Remedy was so easy. Underground, I followed Dylan through the dank tunnels filled with stale air, and I was pretty sure we were going in circles.

“It didn’t look like this before,” Dylan explained. “It was a huge city, with skyscrapers and neon lights.”

“Uh-huh. And what is this, the subway station?” In every direction, all I saw were damp, sloped walls lit by faint tracking lights.

“I mean they were three-D projections,” Dylan said irritably. “And my eyesight isn’t so great after Gazzy’s explosion in the silo, okay? Here. I think this is the door to the lab.”