Maximum Ride Forever

40

Russia was out — for now, anyway.

The sorry piece of crap known as the Remedy seemed to be taking credit for at least some of the destruction that was happening in the world, and the giant had said there would be more Horsemen serving him — H-men, as they were known on Fang’s blog.

Okay, I had to think. Nudge was safe back at the caves. Angel was apparently in Russia, and God knew she could take care of herself. The boys were going to Pennsylvania, but at least they were together.

That left just me. And Fang. He’d headed to California, because someone had mentioned looters there — at least, other people. I was here, not really enjoying Africa as much as I would have liked to.

Among the cities the giant had mentioned, Paris was out — I was never going there again. Hong Kong was, I was pretty sure, a lump of rubble on the coast of China. That left New York. The fact that New York and California were on the same continent had nothing to do with my decision.

It was about seventy-five hundred miles to New York, as the bird kid flies, ha-ha. I have a top speed of over three hundred miles an hour, but I’d need a lot more calories to keep it up. So I gave myself two whole days to get there.

Oh, New York...

I almost fell out of the sky when I saw the city, or what was left of it. My mind couldn’t make sense of the images it was processing: The eastern coastline was completely flooded.

I don’t mean flooded like Sydney, with the waves lapping against the bottom of buildings.

I mean: New York City was completely underwater.

The island of Manhattan looked like hundreds of teensy different islands, with only the very tops of skyscrapers rising out of the sea. The water reached dozens of stories up, and still the tide bit at the windows, insisting on destruction.

The Brooklyn Bridge was now an underwater attraction, and as for the Statue of Liberty, only the tip of her torch broke the surface of the water.

There weren’t any real torches burning, either. The City That Never Sleeps had gone completely dark.

I didn’t know if it had been a tsunami or an earthquake or a sudden melting of all of the polar ice caps — I just knew what I saw, plain and simple: the end of the world.

But in a city this huge, there had to be some survivors, right? I searched the tops of high-rises for huddled groups of people but saw no one.

Where would all the people have gone? Or had whatever happened, happened too fast? I remembered the wall of water Fang and I had seen on the day the sky caught fire — hundreds of feet high, bulldozing everything.

I’d almost drowned that day. Without wings, most people couldn’t even try to fly away like we could. Unless...

The airport.

Given the state of Manhattan, I knew the New York airports would be gone. But inland — how far had the water gone? I flew to New Jersey — or the flooded space where I thought Jersey should be. The Hudson River no longer separated the two states. The river no longer existed at all.

I found my way to Newark Airport, though to this day I wish I hadn’t.

The floodwaters reached about twenty-five feet up, lapping at the cabins of the bigger aircraft. Some of the planes were partially burned or otherwise wrecked; others seemed perfectly preserved, waiting in line for the runway. I saw one jet whose entryway was open, and I dipped down to check it out. Maybe there were cookies or crackers or sodas.

The smell alerted me within twenty feet, as it had in Africa. But these weren’t animals. These were people. This jet was jam-packed with... corpses. Beating my wings hard, I swerved away, then did a slow cruise around the other planes. No matter the size of the aircraft, I could see that every seat was full, every aisle crammed with people. They’d been desperate, trying to escape any way they could.

Maybe a few had made it into the air — though from what I’d seen of the rest of the world, I couldn’t imagine where they’d be headed. But what was left here was grim.

I spotted the control tower globe sitting high above everything like a giant eye. If anything was still moving, I’d see it from up there, so I made straight for a hole in the windows. I thought I could hear voices as I approached, so I burst into the tower room, hardly taking notice of the shattering glass around me.

Could it be... survivors?

The circular room was empty, but the voices continued, cutting in and out with static. Someone was alive — I could hear them on the radio.

My heart pounding with hope, I fiddled with the knobs until I got a clear channel, but what I heard was more gruesome than anything I’d witnessed that day.

“The Remedy said to shoot anything that moves,” a young voice was saying.

“A clean slate means no survivors,” another answered.

I covered my mouth, inhaling sharply. The giant had said the Remedy was striking around the world indiscriminately, but I still didn’t know what the scope might be.

What do these kids mean, “No survivors?”

How many other places in the world resemble the destruction of New York?

What could this man’s motive possibly be, and why does he call himself the Remedy if all he wants is death?

I surfed through the stations for hours, desperate to find some information I could use, but I didn’t find any other signs of life. Finally I flicked off the switch. I couldn’t go back out into this awful world, though. Not yet. Not today.

Instead, I curled up on the thin carpet, and I let myself cry.

I wept for the billions of dead, and the thousands more still dying.

I wept for New York. I wept for Sydney. I wept for Dar es Salaam and for Jonny and Rizal on the island. I wept for Ella, and my mom, and Dylan, and Akila.

I wept for my lost flock, for Fang. I wept for myself.

I wept for the whole human race, because for the first time in my life, I really felt like a part of it, and I understood, finally, how much we had lost.

I cried until my throat was raw and my eyes were swollen shut, but even then, I couldn’t sleep.

41

Fang had no idea where to start.

He’d made it to the western United States, but that didn’t mean he had any idea how to find these so-called H-men. It wasn’t like he could just ask, either. LA was underwater, Vegas was a blackened ghost town, and anyone he did happen to see was so panicked and terrified that a productive conversation was impossible.

He’d taken to flying low along the coast, scanning for pockets of people among the destruction. But without friends to talk to, without Max, the days felt empty. And long.

Now that Fang had a death sentence, he felt like he had all the time in the world, and it was excruciating. The last thing he needed right now was an existential crisis, but it turned out that the more time you had, the more questions you started to ask. Like Why me? Why now? Until you couldn’t think around all the whys.

Until your whole existence was one big question mark.

When the heat from one of the prevalent forest fires got too hot for him, Fang rose high above the clouds. He saw a flock of seagulls in the distance ahead, and though such a routine sight should have comforted him, like everything else, it left him questioning.

He hadn’t seen a single other bird in weeks, so why were these gulls here? Why, instead of in a typical V, were they flying in a chaotic, swirling flurry? And why were there so many of them?

More and more birds joined the mass, rolling toward him like a snowball, gaining speed and power.

Fang had a brief flash of watching seagulls squabbling viciously over a potato chip at the beach. As hundreds of slate-gray eyes with their pinprick pupils honed in on him, he had a sudden realization: He was the potato chip.

Fang jerked back, but the gulls were already all over him. Dirty gray wings beat in his face, and they screeched and jabbed one another in their frenzy to get at his skin.

They went for the exposed parts of him first — his face, his neck, his hands — but soon dove at anything not covered by fabric. Sharp beaks tore out clumps of hair and gouged his cheeks.

Fang held one arm across his eyes and tried to gain altitude, but the gulls didn’t let up. On every inch of skin, exposed nerves sang in protest as the wind found the fresh wounds.

I’m one of you! Fang wanted to scream, but they were pecking at his lips, and he couldn’t open his mouth.

The squawking in his ears and the full-body attack made coherent thought impossible, and Fang kept trying to fly upward, unsure of what the gulls’ top altitude could be. This meant his wings were fully exposed, and with raucous cries the birds tore into his glossy black feathers. Fang felt the rawness in the spaces between them as whole rows were plucked away.

Looking over his shoulder, he found that his wings didn’t look like his own. They looked alive, and he couldn’t see a single glimpse of black through all the gray and white.

The weight of the seagulls’ bodies pulled down on him, and flying was getting tougher and tougher. The gulls pulled his right wing down, and he spun. He tried to force both wings up together, and he veered.

Fang felt the déjà vu sensation he’d had in Angel’s vision — his guts rock-heavy, panic mounting, wings useless. He didn’t feel invincible like he had with the Cryenas; he felt wracked with panic.

This is it. This is it. This is it, the seagulls seemed to shriek.

But Fang balked. This couldn’t be it — not out here, not like this.

He wasn’t ready yet.

He coaxed every bit of power he had into his torn-up body and slingshotted himself high into the sky at close to two hundred miles an hour.

The last-ditch effort worked and the birds were sucked off him, but it almost didn’t matter at that point.

Fang wasn’t sure how much of him was left.

42

I was flying west over what I thought was Kentucky when I spotted my lunch.

With its long, W-shaped wings, it had looked like a vulture, and my chest tightened at the thought of all the corpses that were piling up everywhere. The world was a scavenger’s feast.

But as I got closer and saw the white torpedo-shaped body, I realized it was a seagull. It was weird to see one this far from water, but it was probably starving, like everything else that was still alive.

My stomach grumbled pointedly.

I guess it’s a bird-kid-eat-bird world we’re living in.

The gull had good evasive maneuvers, but I was better, and it had been ages since the termite-fest in Tanzania. Afterward, my stomach seized in protest and I wondered if the bird had been ill or full of poisonous chemicals. I felt nauseous and dizzy for miles, concentrating on not puking up the only food I might see for days, and when I finally looked down, I realized I’d gotten completely off track.

I thought I’d been flying over the Midwest, but I didn’t recognize the landscape at all. The earth was as parched as a desert, with a deep, endless gash in the ground that I couldn’t identify. The snaking shape was like a mini Grand Canyon, so big that it was certainly a landmark I would’ve recognized.

Then it hit me: It was the Mississippi River. The gull had probably been trying to find water. The thing was, there wasn’t any. It was completely dried up.

As I continued westward, things got even weirder. The city of St. Louis seemed to have a big barricade around it, and between the windmills of the prairie states, the tall grasses fed whirling tornadoes of fire.

I didn’t buy everything Angel had said — I still thought it was better to gather information than follow a bossy kid wherever she commanded, for example. But after seeing the extent of the devastation, I knew she was right about one thing: Something bigger was building.

And if, as I’d overheard on the radio, there were people massacring whoever they found, then having the flock members separated and vulnerable was about the worst idea ever right now.

Which brought me to: I had to find Fang.

43

Fang had lost a lot of blood in the bird attack, and by the time he’d reached the edge of the Rocky Mountains in what was probably Wyoming, he’d been so exhausted and light-headed that all he could do was flop down in a dry creek bed.

Now all his wounds were covered with pus-filled scabs, he was so dehydrated that his lips were cracked and bloody, and he was near starvation. He thought he’d read that you could eat anything that smelled like mint, but the spiny purple flowers he’d found had made him hallucinate for three days.

So when he first heard the voices, he wasn’t sure they were real.

“I mean, I signed up for the cleanup crew to kill some freaks, you know?” a young male voice complained from shockingly nearby. “But everybody’s already dead.”

Fang had been so weak he hadn’t sought out proper shelter. Cursing his carelessness, he flattened himself against the dusty red earth.

He’d spent days trying to track down the H-men and hadn’t been able to catch even a whiff of their scent in the crackling desert air. Now that he was in such bad shape, the Remedy’s goons were the very last people he wanted to encounter.

That was the way the world worked, though: Life always managed to surprise you with child assassins at just the right moment. And find him they did.

“Well, look what we have here,” a stocky boy said with obvious delight when he almost stepped on Fang.

So much for hiding.

“Nice score, Chuck.” Another kid with bright yellow hair and a face erupting with acne stumbled into view.

The boys couldn’t be more than twelve or thirteen, but they already had the swagger of abusive power. Fang eyed the shotguns slung over their shoulders. They held the guns with casual affection, obviously used to handling them.

“You said the scavengers had picked these trails clean,” chubby Chuck said to his companion. He nodded at Fang’s wounds. “Looks like they got a taste and decided the meat was too tough.”

That’s not too far off base, Fang thought.

“Lucky for me, my Benelli doesn’t discriminate,” the blond one said, his hand caressing the gun.

Fang stared back at them from sunken eye sockets. Were these posturing preteens, who days earlier he could’ve knocked out cold with a flick of the wrist, really going to be his executioners? Fang actually started laughing at his sorry situation.

“Is something funny?” Chuck demanded, trying to sound tough but verging on a whine. “Keep laughing. We’ll shut you up by cutting out your tongue before we kill you.”

“Or we could just string you up in a dead tree,” the nameless pimpled punk offered. “Leave you for the vultures to polish off.”

“Go ahead, please prove your manhood by one-upping each other in acts of cruelty,” Fang said dryly. If they didn’t use the guns, he might stand a chance. Maybe.

Trying not to wince, Fang struggled to his feet. The boys immediately cocked their weapons, their faces twitching nervously, but neither shot.

“Who do you think you are?” the blond kid demanded, and Fang didn’t miss the slight quiver in his voice. He would take full advantage of it.

Fang unfurled his huge wings. With his black feathers framing his scabbed face and haunted eyes, he looked like the Angel of Death, and he knew it. He smiled, and the blond kid stumbled backward, suddenly pale.

“Renny, look at him,” Chuck chided, awestruck. “He’s obviously a Horseman. Idiot.”

Fang kept his poker face. He still had no idea what the H-men looked like, but if he could convince these twerps he was one of them, he’d take it.

“A Horseman?” Renny asked excitedly. “Maaan. Who did you fight?” He glanced at Fang’s scars and bruises.

“A whole bunch of... survivors,” Fang said, mildly amused. If he played along, maybe he could actually get some information out of these morons.

“Did you cut their heads off?” Chuck asked, his cruel eyes sparkling. “I heard they’re like zombies — if you don’t cut off the head, they’re not dead.”

Fang’s jaw twitched with fury as he imagined his flock’s necks stretched over chopping blocks.

“The weak must be rooted out,” Chuck recited. “The earth shall be cleansed so we may evolve.”

Pretty sure that’s not how evolution works.

Fang stared at these little monsters with black, unblinking eyes. “Who did you say you were with again?”

“We serve the One Light,” Renny said. He lowered his gun and sat on the rock across from Fang.

So the Doomsday Group is still alive, still wreaking destruction.

When the flock had run across the cult a year ago, its glassy-eyed members had a mission of global genocide. The flock had done a lot to break the cult up, but obviously not enough.

Since then, apparently someone had taken things to the next level.

“We’re hoping the Remedy will turn us into Horsemen one day,” the yellow-haired boy continued chattily. “They say you just have to kill fifty survivors. I’m only at seven so far, but Chuck’s already up to like twenty.”

“Twenty-two,” the bigger kid corrected.

Fang had no doubt that number was an exaggeration, but from the naked meanness in Chuck’s eyes, Fang was sure he’d killed at least a couple of helpless souls.

Fifty people, Fang thought disgustedly. The Remedy was convincing kids all over the world to kill at least fifty innocent people each.

“That’s just a rumor,” he said. “The Remedy values intelligence above all in his elite squad.” He raised a skeptical eyebrow at Chuck. “Guess that means you boys are out of luck. Sorry.”

“I could do anything the Remedy asked me to do,” Chuck said hotly, his round cheeks flushing with color.

“Maybe you could train us,” Renny suggested eagerly. “Teach us what it takes to be an elite soldier.”

“Maybe so,” Fang said. “My services aren’t free, though. You got any food?”

Renny nodded and fished some jerky from his pocket.

“Okay, then.” Fang’s dark irises glittered with contempt. “Class is now in session.”

44

“First lesson: murdering people to purify the population isn’t evolution,” Fang explained in his patient teacher voice. “That’s genocide.”

Chuck squinted at him, obviously weighing Fang’s words against what he’d been taught. He wasn’t quite ready to challenge Fang, though — not without the support of the other kid. And Renny was looking up at Fang with open adoration, his shotgun leaning against the rock pile.

“And second...” Fang walked slowly around the boys, noting the positions of cacti in his path as he gathered strength to make his move. “If you like to pick on the weak, you should remember that there’s always someone stronger than you.”

Moving fast, Fang kicked Renny’s gun away, then snap-kicked the kid’s knees before he could make a move. He spun around, lunging toward Chuck, but the bigger kid had already flipped his weapon to his hip.

“These make us strong,” he said, curling his lip as he pointed it at Fang. “Freak.”

And then he pulled the trigger.

Fang launched himself into a somersault right as he heard the first loud pop-pop-pop and saw the dust fly at his feet.

Then, when he grimly expected the next volley of bullets to rip into his flesh, Fang heard Renny squeal and Chuck groan instead.

Turning, he saw a blur of motion: a sneaker driving into Renny’s gut, pigtails flying as legs propelled in a windmill toward Chuck’s red face. All of this was at lightning speed, too — by the time the shells from the first round hit the ground, the acrobatic avenger had both boys on the ground, curled up, gun free, and moaning.

“Star?” Fang said, recognizing the preppy blonde who’d been a member of his mutant gang when he’d broken off from the flock. Star had supernatural speed, sometimes moving too fast to be seen. And even in this stifling heat, she hadn’t broken a sweat.

“Think you can handle them now?” she asked. Without waiting for an answer, she sped off.

“As I was saying...” Fang looped the rifle slings around his neck. “There’s always going to be someone more skilled than you, more powerful than you. Now, march.”

Fang hauled both boys up by their shirt collars and prodded them in the back with a rifle. Ideally he’d love to pick them up and fly around with them until they barfed, but he wasn’t up to that. Not in the shape he was in. He would have to improvise.

There was a rough outcropping of rock, maybe about three feet wide, that leaned far over a canyon. It was a little canyon, only a couple of hundred feet deep, but the boys would certainly go splat if they took a misstep.

“Keep going,” he said mildly, edging them onto the outcropping.

Frowning, the blond kid turned around to protest, but Fang pointed a rifle at him.

Carefully the boys took tiny sidesteps, holding on to each other. The blood drained from their faces as Fang urged them farther and farther over the canyon.

“So what have we learned, kids?” Fang asked when the boys were only inches from the edge.

“That you’re a big jerk,” Renny said, though his voice quavered.

Fang laughed, then said, “No. We’ve learned that what goes around, comes around. We’ve learned that if you target the weak, you’ll be targeted by someone who sees you as weak. We’ve learned that guns are a no-no.” With that, Fang unlooped the straps and tossed the rifles over the ledge.

The boys cried out in unison, lunging and grasping at air as the rifles disappeared over the cliff.

“You might as well have killed us!” Chuck said, his bravado failing him. “How are we supposed to protect ourselves without guns? Or hunt?”

Fang almost felt a twinge of guilt for leaving them like this — the boys weren’t much older than Gazzy or Angel. The only difference was, they’d bragged about killing dozens of people.

That was enough of a difference for Fang.

“Whatever you do, don’t eat the purple flowers,” Fang advised, backing away. “They might smell nice, but trust me, that’s not the kind of trip you want to take.”

“You can’t just leave us here!” the kids wailed.

“Sure I can,” Fang said, praying he had enough energy for his takeoff.

“We’ll get eaten by bears or something!”

“Survival of the fittest,” Fang called over his shoulder. “Now that’s evolution. Class dismissed.” With a running jump, he threw himself out over the canyon, snapping his wings out and feeling grateful that even in their sorry state they could still support him. Now he just had to find Star again.

45

Star was already more than five miles down the winding trail when Fang spotted her. He came to a somewhat clumsy landing right behind her and called her name, but she didn’t acknowledge him, and Fang felt anger flare in his chest.

Star had betrayed him, his gang, and the flock, and now she was ignoring him? Still, at this point, Fang badly needed any tips he could get. From anyone. He kicked up red dust as he trotted to keep up with what, for her, was no doubt a snail’s pace.

“I just wanted to say thanks,” he said, breathing heavily from the continued strain on his still-mending body.

“Yeah, well, I owed you one,” Star said curtly, and kept her gaze fixed straight ahead into the mountains. “Now we’re even.”

Star had a lot of pride, and that was probably about as close to an apology as Fang was going to get, but now that he was facing the girl who had caused him so much anguish, he couldn’t hide his disgust.

“Even?” he sneered. Star and her best friend Kate’s betrayals had resulted in the death of Maya, Max’s clone and another member of Fang’s gang. “I would say that you and Kate both are still pretty far from even.”

“Save the lecture,” Star said, whirling to face him. “I wasn’t trying to make up. I just thought it’d be pathetic to watch a former leader get slaughtered by stupid Doomsday kids.” She put her hands on her hips and smiled, her tone cutting. “I took pity on you, Fang. That’s all it was.”

“Well, you haven’t changed much,” Fang muttered.

Always a delight to be around.

In fact, Star had changed a lot. He’d known her as a rich boarding school priss who always had perfectly applied makeup, but now she was haggard, her cheeks sunken. The girl had always been rail thin, but now she was downright gaunt. Fang knew her metabolism ran as fast as the rest of her, which meant that if he was struggling to eat, she was, too.

Star turned from him, her pigtails swinging behind her, and took off again.

“Hey!” Fang yelled after her. This time, she was almost out of sight by the time he got the word out. “Do you want some food?”

Reappearing in just seconds, Star grabbed the jerky Fang held out and shoved it hungrily into her mouth. As hard as it was for Fang to watch his precious meal disappear, it was worth it if it would buy him some information.

“Have you seen any of these Horseman things?” he asked while she chewed. “What should I watch out for? What do they look like?”

“Like anyone,” Star said around a big bite, suddenly sounding a lot more amicable. “Like you. Like me.”

“What do you mean?”

“It depends on what they were before.” Star shrugged her slight shoulders. “That’s what I learned when Jeb promised me a way out. He tried to inject me with the serum, said it was just going to give me an upgrade.”

Blood rushed to Fang’s temples, and his whole body tensed.

“Relax, bird breath.” Star rolled her eyes, but she was clearly enjoying his discomfort. “You think I’d actually let them do that to me? I told them I didn’t need a Remedy, that I was perfect enough, thanks. Then I hightailed it outta that Siberian wasteland faster than you can say ‘Ah.’ ”

Siberia? “So Jeb’s the Remedy?” Fang felt sick. Once Jeb had been his surrogate father. Once Fang had thought he was capable of love and goodness. He knew better now, but was Jeb really capable of the ultimate act of evil?

“Jeb’s the manufacturer,” Star corrected. She propped her instep against a boulder and started to stretch, wincing. “I don’t know who’s pulling the strings at the top.”

Fang didn’t know whether to be relieved Jeb was just a pawn or frustrated that the Remedy’s identity was still a mystery. Either way, he had to find that lab.

“And this is all going down somewhere in Russia?”

Great. Another thing Angel can hold over us. Fang smiled to himself, though, feeling a surge of love for his bossy little sister.

Star nodded, massaging her knotted calf muscle. “That’s what I heard. I heard them call it Himmel.”

“Angel has people gathering in Russia already. I don’t know what she has planned, but I’ve got to get there a-sap. Join me?”

Star snapped her head up sharply at the suggestion. “Uh-uh. No way.” Fang could see the fear in her usually defiant ice-blue eyes. “Those people don’t want to make improvements — they want to replace all humankind with robots. I’m fine on my own.”

This time when she ran, she didn’t wait for him to catch up. The only evidence that she’d ever been there at all was the dust cloud disappearing over a distant ridge and the jerky wrapper on the ground at his feet.

46

By my calculations, I was somewhere in the Mojave Desert, and I hadn’t seen another person in twenty-seven and a half days.

Of course I was keeping track — what the heck else was there to do?

After my last two encounters with people and what I’d overheard in New Jersey, I chose the harshest routes and flew high in the clouds, avoiding cities for fear of running into prowling raiders.

Then, before I knew it, I didn’t really have to try anymore. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t anyone else alive. At first it was a relief — didn’t have to avoid anyone — and then it became really bleak. And really lonesome.

I resorted to having long, drawn-out arguments with myself, like, for example, did a lizard or a tarantula have a higher protein content?

(Probably the tarantula.)

If a bird kid screams in an empty desert, does she still make a sound?

(All signs point to yes.)

Yeah, my brain was mostly fried.

So when I saw the human silhouette with a giant wingspan soaring between the distant mountains, I was pretty sure I was hallucinating.

I flew toward it anyway, keeping my eyes trained on the graceful shadow diving and climbing, gliding and dipping. As I got closer, the mirage didn’t disappear, but instead multiplied, and I found myself holding my breath.

I knew my flock’s flight patterns like I did my own name, and it clearly wasn’t Fang, or anyone in the flock.

But the five shapes ahead of me were definitely bird kids, and man, could they fly! Their wings were larger than mine, and their movements were so natural, so graceful, that you saw the bird in them before you noticed their human bodies.

I’d planned to approach cautiously, but several of them were already flying close and playfully cutting under my slipstream.

For the first time in months, I didn’t feel the weight in my tired wings. I just felt the pure joy of being able to freaking fly with others of my kind, without having them suddenly turn on me. Also, maybe they had food — they looked in good shape, from what I could glimpse.

“You guys are amazing!” I called out. They didn’t seem to hear me, though — the wind was probably too gusty.

Taking a risk, I followed them back to their homes, which were... uh, nests balancing between mountain ledges. Okay, that was unusual. I dropped down carefully, and several of them turned to stare at me with curiosity.

“Hey! I’m Max. Have you guys seen any other bird kids?” I asked. As more of them landed, I was struck by the way they knelt on the ground, folding their wings behind them. “I’m missing part of my flock. A guy named Fang — he’s dark, with dark wings... or a tall blind guy, or a shorter blond boy?”

Then it hit me: They looked like the flock — tall and lean human bodies with wings attached behind the shoulders — but they behaved... differently. As I spoke, they cocked their heads in sharp little movements and made clicking sounds in the back of their throats.

And... they were naked. Not naked as in acres of skin, but naked as in without clothes. These kids were covered with feathers all over — thick, downy feathers, everywhere but their heads.

Between my cracked lips and matted hair, I’d been feeling pretty feral, but these kids were straight-up wild. They flew like birds because they actually were more like birds than humans.

As the possibility of communication dwindled, the giddiness I’d felt at finding another flock seeped away, to be replaced by disappointment. And when I felt someone nuzzling against my shoulder, I jumped.

His light brown hair was curling and tousled, and his bright smile was punctuated by two perfect dimples. He was about my age, with unusually large eyes that were a gorgeous shade of amber. He was adorable. In an avian-mutant kind of way.

“And who are you?”

“Huryu!” he repeated gleefully. “Huryu, Huryu!” He was like a parrot latching on to a new word. So they really didn’t talk like people. My disappointment turned into crushing despair with no warning. The first people I’d seen in twenty-seven and a half days...

My throat closed up and my eyes started to sting. I couldn’t believe it. Would it kill the universe to cut me a break once in a while? Turning away, I wiped my eyes and wondered what the heck to do now. Then I felt something tugging at my feathers.

I whipped around. “What are you doing?”

“Huryu?” he asked, wide-eyed, and combed his fingers through my hair. Of course he hit snarls immediately, and with a look of concentration, he carefully picked at them, easing them loose, stroking them with his feathers. He was grooming me, making little cooing, chirruping sounds.

Instinctively I wanted to push him away, but I’d been on my own for so long... and he was kind of like me, my flock. With tears running down my face, I sat there and let myself be groomed.

47

The sun went down, but no one made a fire. Mostly in pairs, sometimes in small groups, these bird kids began curling up in their nests, huddling together for warmth. I made camp a little ways away from them, on flatter ground, feeling desolate and somehow more alone than ever.

I was almost asleep when the velvety sound of sweeping feathers made me look up. It was my number one fan, and lo and behold, he came bearing gifts. He had brought me a seriously large rattlesnake, and as he fluttered down in front of me, he dropped it at my feet.

The snake had only been stunned, and it quickly wound itself into a deadly coil. Its tail rattled in warning — it was wide awake now, and definitely within striking distance.

“Jeezum!” I said, scrambling backward. “What are you doing?”

But he flashed his dimpled grin and picked the snake up by the end of its tail. He swung it overhead and whipped the head against the ground, then proudly presented it to me.

“Huryu!” he said softly, and patted the snake.

“Yeah, I get it...” I said. “Uh, good boy.”

Then he held the scaly body up to my lips, nodding eagerly. Did this count as flirting in the animal world?

“Cool. Let’s cook it first, though, okay?” After the raw fish, raw seagull, and raw termites, I was desperate to have something warm for once.

The bird kid looked shocked when I struck a flint and made a small fire, then appalled as I skinned and gutted the snake. He clearly thought those were the best parts, because he quickly gobbled them up as soon as I dropped them on the ground.

I skewered the long body on a stick, turning it over the fire, and I had to admit, it wasn’t bad and there was plenty of it. If you’re wondering, it tasted kind of like chicken.

My new pal ate with sharp little movements, jerking his head forward to peck off a chunk of meat, but he studied me the entire time with those wide eyes.

“What?” I said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t speak bird.”

Then, from who knows where, he took out a crumpled piece of paper and thrust it at me. And I suddenly understood why he was so drawn to me.

It was a folded, wrinkled page of magazine from about a year ago. I touched the picture with trembling fingertips, tracing over the faces: Nudge and Gazzy hamming it up for the camera, Angel looking sweet and defiant at the same time, Fang standing protectively just behind my shoulder.

“ ‘Maximum Ride and Flock Take On Congress.’ ” I read the headline aloud, choking up at the memory.

“Maaaaaaax,” said the bird kid, my name sounding odd and guttural.

I looked up at him.

“Maximum,” I said, pointing a thumb at my chest. “Maximum Ride. But you can just call me Max.”

“Maaaax Mum. Maaaaax Mum. Maaaaax Mum,” he repeated, and I sighed.

“Okay. Maximum it is.”

He touched his own chest. “Huryu.”

“Uh... that’s not actually a name,” I muttered, thinking quickly. “Harry,” I said firmly, and touched his chest. “Harry.”

He reached out and touched my chest and I tried not to scream. His gentle fingers stroked the cloth of my ratty sweatshirt carefully. “Maaaax,” he said softly.

I nodded again. “Max.” And for some reason I teared up.

48

“Get ready...” Gazzy said, lighting the waxed rope.

Iggy stuck his fingers in his ears.

There was a low, nervous clucking sound, and then a big bang. Feathers rained down, snagging on the pine trees, and when the smoke cleared, three wild turkeys were no longer very wild.

“Most excellent,” Gazzy said, beaming, his face covered in black film.

“Well, that’s one way to cook a turkey,” Iggy laughed.

It was hard not to be giddy. After the miles and miles of mass destruction they’d flown over these past couple of weeks, they’d found the forests of Appalachia somehow untouched. Now they were sitting on the cement platform of an old campsite, chowing down on the first hot meal they’d had in what felt like years.

“Ig, no kidding, this is the best thing I’ve ever tasted.” Juice ran down Gazzy’s chin as he devoured the meat. “You should have your own postapocalyptic cooking show or something.”

“Oh, totally. ‘Tune in next week for Seasoning the Squirrel, Blowing Up the Bird,’ ” Iggy said in an announcer voice. Then he pursed his lips. “I was actually thinking it tastes a little funky.”

Gazzy tore off another big hunk, considering. “Maybe you went a little overboard with the rosemary?” he suggested.

Iggy paused with a turkey leg halfway to his mouth. “Rosemary?” he repeated skeptically. “You don’t think it might have something to do with the fertilizer you used?”

“Hey, I got a fire going, didn’t I?” Gazzy pointed out. “I didn’t see any gunpowder or ice packs in that farmer’s shed, did you?”

Iggy shrugged. “Well, it’s definitely a step up from bugs and rats.”

“Are you kidding?” Gazzy said, poking the charred birds with a stick. “This is a regular Thanksgiving feast. Hey, maybe we should say what we’re thankful for!”

“I’m thankful I’m not currently eating bugs and rats,” Iggy said immediately.

Gazzy nodded. “I’m thankful for the stupidity of wild turkeys.”

“Since this is supposed to be Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for the memory of garlic mashed potatoes drenched in butter. Or yams with marshmallows.” Iggy sighed.

Gazzy’s eyes twinkled. “Oh, man. Remember when Nudge wanted us to celebrate Thanksgiving like normal people, and we went all out trying to cook, but the marshmallows caught on fire?”

Iggy chuckled, remembering. “We almost burned down Dr. Martinez’s kitchen!”

“And then Ella ate all the burned yams to make Nudge feel better, insisting that she just really liked the smoky flavor?”

At the mention of Ella, Iggy went silent and stopped eating. The lines around his mouth deepened in pain.

“Ig?” Gazzy whispered after a few minutes.

“Hmm?”

“I miss the flock,” Gazzy said even more quietly.

Iggy nodded, but his milky, blind eyes were like a concrete wall.

“But Ig?”

“Hmm?”

Gazzy reached a tentative hand out and squeezed Iggy’s shoulder. “I’m thankful I’ve still got you, though. And that we’re still alive.”

Iggy turned his head in Gazzy’s direction, his face softening. “Me too, little bro. Me too.”

And just as the moment started to feel a little too heavy, a low, hornlike sound rippled through the air. The fire flared up in response.

“Oh, God!” Iggy scooted away, holding his nose.

Gazzy was giggling like a maniac.

Iggy shook his head in disgust, but he was grinning. “Gasman, I knew I could count on you to keep it real.”

“Freeze, scumbags!” a gravelly female voice shouted from the woods.

Iggy and Gazzy leaped to their feet, sending burning pine needles flying.

But they were already surrounded.

49

At least A dozen heavily armed teenage girls circled Iggy and Gazzy just beyond the trees, holding crossbows.

“What didn’t you understand about the word ‘freeze’?” asked the leader, a girl with dreadlocks and sharp eyes, stepping closer. When she saw the burn marks on the ground, color rushed to her cheeks. “Did you actually try to blow up our silo?” she barked.

Silo?

“Are you kidding me?” Iggy said as Gazzy gaped at the cement circle they’d assumed was a camping platform.

The boys had been working their way north toward Pennsylvania to try to find the blog commenter and his silo. They never imagined they’d been sitting right on top of it.

“You Doomsday guys think you can come here with your cleanup crews, take whatever you want, kill whoever you want?” another girl with dark hair asked shrilly.

“No! We’re not—”

Dreadlocks narrowed her eyes. “We play by different rules.” She cocked her weapon, and the sound echoed around the circle as all the other girls followed suit, stepping out from behind the branches.

With the flock backing them up, the boys might’ve had a fighting chance, but with just the two of them, they were seriously outnumbered.

“We’re not armed!” Gazzy shrieked, putting his hands up.

“And we’re not with Doomsday,” Iggy, who had once been hypnotized by the cult, said more calmly. “We’re mutants, see?”

He unfurled his pale fifteen-foot wings over his head, and Gazzy did the same. As if that weren’t proof enough, they fluttered their feathers.

The leader stared at them, unimpressed. “The Remedy’s got plenty of mutants working for him,” she noted, and the crossbows stayed trained on Iggy and Gazzy.

“Not us. We came because we have a friend here,” Gazzy explained hurriedly. “From the Internet. We had this flock, and not bragging or anything, but we were kind of famous...” He knew he was babbling, but he was desperate to buy some time. “So he went on our website and said we were welcome to visit. He called himself PAtunnelratt? It was an avatar?”

He looked around with raised eyebrows, waiting for recognition, but Dreadlocks’ answer was flat and final: “Don’t know him.”

Iggy pressed. “Are you sure? He said his dad—”

“Must’ve been somewhere else,” she snapped. “The government built fallout shelters all through these mountains in the 1950s. Could be anywhere.”

“But—”

Another girl’s impatient voice cut in. “There aren’t any guys living here, period.”

Iggy’s eyebrow jumped with interest. “Just girls?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Just us.”

“Sweeeet.” Gazzy exhaled in wonder. From his dopey expression, he seemed to have forgotten about the threat and was convinced they’d landed in heaven. Iggy elbowed him.

The girls sighed in annoyance but seemed to understand that the bird kids didn’t pose much of a threat, and they relaxed their grip on their weapons.

“You still owe us for those turkeys,” Dreadlocks said, gesturing at the pile of feathers and charred meat. “The forests are almost picked clean of game, and we can’t afford to lose them.”

Iggy crouched down and ran his hands over their meager supplies. “We don’t really have anything to barter. Maybe we can pitch in?”

The leader regarded them coolly. “And what makes you think we need any help?”

“You know, with guy stuff.” Gazzy broadened his nine-year-old chest. “I know it can be hard without a man around. Any basic repairs you need done? Heavy lifting?”

Dreadlocks scowled, and her finger hovered over the trigger again, threatening to release the arrow.

“Jackie, don’t we have that thing we need done at the bottom level?” the dark-haired girl interrupted. “You know.” She wiggled her eyebrows at Gazzy and flashed a white, sharklike smile. “Men’s work.”

The leader frowned in confusion at first, but the other girls around the circle started to laugh. Iggy and the Gasman were definitely not in on it, but Gazzy grinned anyway, happy to have the attention of so many giggling girls at once.

Iggy’s expression was more uncertain. Without the benefit of sight, he was more attuned to the subtleties of sound, and he was pretty sure the laughter was at their expense.

Dreadlocked Jackie relaxed as she, too, understood what the dark-haired girl was implying. “Actually, come to think of it,” she answered, “there are some things we could use some muscle on. Thank God you showed up!”

50

“Nice going, doofus,” Iggy grumbled.

“I was just trying to be neighborly,” Gazzy said, his voice echoing around the small room. “What if they had really needed our help?”

The boys were on their hands and knees, scrubbing crusty cement walls with hard-bristled brushes and heavy-duty chemicals. Iggy sat back on his heels and nodded at the armed guard he heard pacing the scaffolding above them.

“Pro tip, macho man: When someone has a crossbow pointed at your head, they’re probably not all that vulnerable.”

“I said I was sorry!”

The room was at least a hundred feet underground, at the very bottom of the silo. The dim light made it hard to see — and though that didn’t make much difference to Iggy, Gazzy was grateful. He didn’t want to know what the walls looked like, or what they were scrubbing.

They could both smell it well enough.

“ ‘Men’s work,’ ” Iggy scoffed, shaking his head. “Oh, would Max get a kick out of this. I can almost hear her laughing from across the ocean.”

“At least Max never made us clean toilets,” Gazzy said, dunking his brush into a rusty metal pail of cleaner.

“We call it the dump tank,” the guard called from above them. “We figured since most guys are crap, you two would feel right at home.”

“I’m pretty sure that girl with the black hair has a thing for me,” Gazzy said wistfully as they worked.

Iggy shook his head. “That’s what you’re thinking about right now? Man, you sure have a one-track mind.”

“Hey, she totally wiggled her eyebrows in my direction. I think she was checking out my wings.” Gazzy spread his wings proudly in the darkness, as if the girl were watching right now.

But Iggy was skeptical. “She was, like, probably almost twice your age.”

“Women dig a younger man. When we get out of here, I’m gonna make some fireworks — you know, romance her the old-fashioned way.”

“I’m glad someone has motivation.”

Iggy’s mind was on something else, though. He was remembering what the leader, Jackie, had said — that the woods were almost picked clean of food. The guys had thought they’d finally found an untouched paradise among all the wreckage, but it sounded like they wouldn’t be able to survive here for long. And neither would these girls.

“Gasman? I’ve been thinking,” Iggy said in a more serious tone. He heard Gazzy stop scrubbing for a second, waiting for him to continue. “Maybe we should join up with the flock again. Somebody needs to stand up to this Remedy dude, and there are obviously some tough survivors left in the world.”

As nervous as Iggy had been when they were first surrounded, when he’d learned that this troupe of street-smart survivors was against the Remedy, his spirit had been buoyed with hope.

“If we met up with Angel, and convinced some of these girls to join us...” Iggy trailed off.

“Then we might just stand a chance,” Gazzy finished. Iggy couldn’t see, but Gazzy’s eyes were glistening.

“Let’s do it,” he said enthusiastically, and nudged Iggy’s shoulder. “Let me just go grab my girlfriend, and we can leave for Russia right now!”

They heard a gurgling sound, and then a pipe protruding from the wall started to spit. Fresh sludge surged onto the floor.

“Gross!”

The guard laughed as they scrambled away from the slime. “You missed a spot,” she taunted.

“It’s a regular comedy hour down here,” Iggy muttered, lifting his wet feet in disgust.

Gazzy watched the waste circling down the drain. “What’s the point of cleaning this place if it just keeps pumping down?”

Iggy pulled his shirt up over his nose to filter the fresh stink. “There is no point,” he said, his voice muffled. “That’s the point — we’re unnecessary.”

“Ugh, I just can’t take the smell,” Gazzy said, gagging.

Iggy chuckled to himself. “Oh, Gasman, I think that aroma’s called karma.”

Gazzy socked Iggy in the arm.

“Wait, I smell something else,” Iggy whispered suddenly. “There’s someone in here with us.”

51

Horseman stepped from the shadows and clamped a hand over the Gasman’s mouth before he could turn around.

“Don’t move,” Horseman whispered, keenly aware of the guard standing overhead. “Stay calm.”

But when you’ve spent your entire life running, someone telling you not to move seems pretty suspicious.

The Gasman bit down on Horseman’s fingers so hard that, even through the gloves, he almost cut through bone. Horseman cursed, hunching over his wounded hand, and everything dissolved into quick chaos.

“Get out of here, Iggy!” Gazzy screamed.

Iggy shook his head. “I won’t leave—”

“Go!” Gazzy insisted, pulling something from his pocket. “I’m right behind you!”

“What’s going on?” the guard demanded, waving her crossbow. “Who’s that down there?”

Iggy heard the snag of the match and dove for the ladder just as Gazzy tossed the small flame into the bucket of chemicals they’d been using for cleaning.

And then the blast drowned out everything.

It made the walls shudder and the floor disappear. It blew Gazzy, Iggy, and Horseman upward. Horseman shot his arm out to catch the ladder, dangling to the side. As smoke billowed up through the shaft, the dangerous mix of chemicals burned his eyes. He squeezed them shut, but the insides of his eyelids felt like they were lined with thorns.

He didn’t have time to worry about it, though — just kept his eyes shut and scrambled up the ladder as fast as he could, three rungs at a time. The fire alarm was wailing, and the army of girls was spilling out of the floors he’d been blown past.

“Breach!” they shouted when they saw Horseman on the ladder. “Stop him!”

Two arrows whizzed past his ears, and he heard the warriors climbing after him in fierce pursuit. He hadn’t heard the Gasman or Iggy since the explosion.

Horseman’s left hand felt nearly crippled, but the chute was too narrow to fly through, so he did the only thing he could do: He climbed as fast as possible.

His eyes still burned, and he tried opening them. Tears poured down his cheeks — everything was blurry and he couldn’t see through the smoke. The ladder seemed endless, but finally, after at least a hundred rungs of agony, Horseman burst out of the silo and blinked painfully in the light. His eyes were still tearing, but a quick glance showed him that the bird kids were nowhere to be seen. He turned quickly to screw down the heavy cement lid over the manhole, ignoring the loud bangs coming from beneath his feet — he’d deal with the group later.

He wiped his eyes with his sleeve and turned over his wrist, where he saw a number of impatient queries on the screen. The letters blurred — had the chemicals permanently damaged his vision? — but Horseman knew the gist of his master’s concerns. He tapped out a quick message to the Remedy: “The Gasman is dead. The kid blew himself up.”

Standing on top of the silo, Horseman turned in a slow circle.

Now, where is Iggy?

52

Horseman saw the flash out of the corner of his eye — a figure disappearing into the trees like a pale ghost.

“Iggy!” Horseman called, blazing after him on the trail through the pines. “Let’s not make this harder than it has to be.”

Horseman didn’t exactly enjoy this part of the job — the kids’ fear reminded him too much of how he felt around the doctor — but he knew his body was made for the hunt. His wings were longer, his body stronger, and he had the eyesight of a hawk.

Well, usually. Right now, he felt like he was looking through a milky lens.

But however clouded his vision, Horseman still had Iggy in his sights, and he could cruise as long as he needed to; his lungs were built to outlast Iggy’s twofold. It was only a matter of time.

“Iggy!” Horseman shouted again as he wove after him through the underbrush.

“Don’t call me that,” Iggy yelled over his shoulder. “Only my friends get to call me that.”

Iggy was distracted now, and Horseman was gaining on him with each breath. Closing in.

“You don’t want to be my friend?” Horseman asked with a smile as he darted forward.

Iggy laughed and veered up sharply, winding toward the clouds.

Horseman grasped at the air in frustration. He’d thought he had him.

He strained his neck to keep track of Iggy’s movements above, desperate not to lose him now. Though Iggy was blind, he was a magician in the air and seemed to possess a sixth sense that made him even better at navigation... and almost impossible to track.

Almost, Horseman reminded himself. Not impossible for you.

He had to keep Iggy talking, keep him interested enough to stay close.

“Or maybe you meant friends like the Gasman,” he taunted. “Did he call you Iggy?”

The movement above stopped.

“You killed him, didn’t you?” Iggy’s voice cracked in despair. “Gazzy said he was right behind me, but he’s dead, isn’t he?”

Iggy’s accusing voice seemed to come from a hundred different directions, and Horseman squinted up through the maze of twining branches, trying to locate his prey.

“You’ve got me all wrong,” he said, his voice earnest, persuasive. “Just stop for a minute, and we can talk.”

I’ll tell you about the doctor and his plans, Horseman thought. I’ll tell you the truth.

It didn’t matter. He knew Iggy would never stop. There was only one way this could end.

Horseman glimpsed movement to his left — far from where he’d been searching. He turned his head to see the swoop of a light-colored wing standing out against the brown bark.

He took off like a bullet.

Following little more than the quiver of branches as they snapped back into place, Horseman plowed through leaves. He snagged his wings on burrs and dodged between whiplike vines. He followed the bird kid doggedly, recklessly, gaining distance, gaining speed...

And when Iggy turned and dipped sharply, Horseman slammed face-first into a thick tree and, almost a hundred feet in the air, momentarily blacked out.

His limp body started to plummet toward the forest floor.

Luckily — or really, unluckily — he slammed to a stop when his legs fell on either side of a stray branch. Horseman collapsed against the trunk, breathing heavily as waves of pain and nausea rolled through his body.

This mission has not gone as planned, he thought.

He’d hoped to find Gazzy and Iggy alone, and hadn’t thought it would be too difficult in the middle of the Appalachian wilderness. But he certainly hadn’t expected to be trapped underground with a community of rebel girls armed to the teeth when a chemical bomb went off.

Horseman’s palms started to sweat as he thought about all the witnesses, and whom they might be reporting to. The news about the Gasman would satisfy the Remedy momentarily, but if he found out the other target was on the loose, there would be serious repercussions.

“If you should fail,” the doctor had said, “it would be my pleasure to send the next Horseman along after you.”

Horseman had to get to Iggy fast, before things spiraled out of his control.

What he needed was a new strategy.

53

Horseman couldn’t see. That was his biggest problem.

Well, he could see, but everything was slightly blurry, his depth perception was off, and he was pretty sure he was seeing double. He didn’t know if the chemical damage was temporary or permanent, but he had to figure out a way around it.

He’d thought he had Iggy — twice — when really, the blind kid had better spatial accuracy than he did.

Would no vision actually be better than faulty vision?

At this point, anything was worth a shot. Horseman stripped off his shirt, rolled it over his eyes, and tied the sleeves around his head. The world went completely dark.

Just like it was for Iggy.

Horseman felt instant relief in his eyes. The burning lessened, and the flow of tears subsided.

The rest of his body seemed less sure about his decision. His boots teetered on the branch, and his stomach dropped sharply as he felt the nothingness all around him. Never in his life had he felt so completely vulnerable.

For a moment he grasped wildly at the air, his arms flailing desperately. Then, feeling his fingers touch bark, Horseman hugged himself tight to the trunk of the tree, trying to stop hyperventilating.

Maybe he should’ve tried this little experiment closer to the ground.

It was a stupid idea. For all he knew, Iggy might actually have been programmed with additional senses, and if not, he’d had his whole life to develop them. Horseman didn’t have years; he just had right now.

And if he didn’t do this, he wasn’t going to have a tomorrow.

Horseman exhaled against the tree. He just had to trust his instincts — they hadn’t failed him yet.

Slowly, Horseman edged back out onto the branch, keeping a light touch on the bark to steady himself. He took a long, deep breath, trying to open up some kind of latent third eye.

This time, when he let go, Horseman realized he could still sense the trunk to his left — the solidness of it, the heft.

Now or never, he thought, and he raised his heels, leaned forward, and took off.

He felt removed from his body and highly connected to it at once — almost like he was a pilot maneuvering a small plane instead of controlling his own muscles.

Horseman’s muscles were tense as he waited for the moment when he would smash into another tree, but it didn’t come. In one panicked moment, he felt branches rake lightly across his bare chest, but he quickly adjusted, and veered away from the tree in his path.

After that, his reflexes became faster each moment, and his other senses started to come alive.

The pores in his skin opened up to take in the information around him. Each time his wings flapped, he felt the air they moved bouncing off the objects around him, telling him how far away they were.

Horseman found it surprisingly easy to measure how high up he was flying. He smelled the tangy sap when he was low, near the exposed trunks. Near the treetops, the pine scent was more intense.

And his ears were attuned to every anomaly in the quiet forest. He heard the groan of trees as they swayed, and detected the distant sound of branches snapping.

Iggy.

Iggy had pulled far ahead of him, but Horseman knew he was faster, and he was no longer handicapped by sight. As he grew more confident and more comfortable, Horseman started to close in on his prey.

Below him and just ahead, he heard a slight whisper as something — maybe wings — brushed through the branches.

Horseman held his breath, folded his wings tight for speed, and shot through the forest. Seemingly striking at nothing, he punched his arm ahead of him and felt the crunch of bone.

Iggy screamed.

54

“Are you kidding me?”

I stared at the cliffside nests the bird kids had built, at the bits of string and dried leaves. All of them were empty.

“Are they just out foraging? Why didn’t you go, too? Or — they haven’t really left, have they?”

Harry cocked his head at me curiously, his handsome face as innocent and blank as usual.

Oh, this is stellar.

He started picking affectionately at my wings again.

“Uh-uh.” I shook my head, smoothing my feathers back down. “I have to think.”

I watched him scuffing up dirt, relishing a dust bath.

I stopped moving and crossed my arms. “Harry, this has been great, but it’s time for me to move on.”

“Haaarrryy!” he cawed happily, and my face softened. After years spent on the run, I had a soft spot for strays, and the poor guy couldn’t help it if he’d been programmed with the intellectual capabilities of a Tickle Me Elmo.

He stared at me with a dopey, thrilled expression, like I was the most incredible thing he’d ever seen.

At least someone thinks so.

“Okay, look,” I said, knowing my words sounded like gibberish to him, as his language did to me. “Let’s go find your flock, and then I have to bounce, understand?”

“Maaaax Mummmm,” Harry cooed, and nuzzled against my shoulder.

“Right,” I said, and pointed. “You lead the way.”

We flew west, and again I marveled at Harry’s grace in the air. Every part of him was crafted to be as aerodynamic as possible — from the overdeveloped shoulder muscles that made his wings work almost effortlessly, to the incredible core strength that held his whole body parallel to the ground.

I’d always been the top flier in the flock, but now I was aware of my legs dipping slightly below my upper body, causing drag. And while I was gulping air as I pumped my wings to gain speed, with feathers that cut through the air like blades, Harry barely had to flap.

On land we couldn’t understand a thing the other said, but in the sky, we spoke the same language. Harry slowed imperceptibly to coast beside me while I studied landmarks, and pulled ahead so I could ride his slipstream through turbulent patches. When I was just starting to notice a twinge of hunger in my stomach, Harry was already diving for prey. For hundreds of miles, we were in perfect synchronization.

Until we reached the Pacific Ocean.

Harry started to turn left, but something made me hang back... I had a weird feeling of retracing Fang’s steps — a sense of urgency.

North, my gut insisted.

Harry was cruising so fast, I had to shout over the wind. “Wait up!” I tapped his shoulder and pointed the other way, but with a quick shake of his head, Harry pulled harder to the left.

“I know we’re looking for your flock, but I’m looking for someone, too, okay?”

Harry’s brow was wrinkled with anxiety.

“What is it?”

“Pfft!” Harry’s eyes widened, and the way he flung his fingers open reminded me of one of Gazzy’s IEDs.

“A bomb?” I asked, grabbing his wrist. “A bomb went off, to the north?”

My breath caught in my chest as I thought of the charred remains of Tanzania and the watery grave of New York. The giant I’d fought had said the Remedy would punish the whole world, and the voices on the radio had been carrying out that mission.

They wanted no survivors.

“We have to check it out,” I decided, and as I started to turn, Harry shook his head in alarm. Of course the other bird kids would’ve avoided the place — birds and animals tended to be the first ones to flee during disasters.

I was already headed up the coast, though, scanning the northern landscape for smoke and steeling myself for whatever we might find.

Call me stubborn, but I always listened to my gut.

55

Everything was so still. So quiet.

As we landed, the wind from our wings moved dust that seemed like it had blanketed the ruins for years, and when I coughed, the sound echoed even in the open, leveled space.

I’d say Seattle was a ghost town, except without the town part. There were just piles and piles of rubble as far as we could see. Exactly like the bombed city in Africa.

All desolation starts to look alike, I guess.

Or maybe I’m just jaded.

“Looks pretty bad, huh?” I said.

“Max Mum...” Harry pleaded.

“Yeah, yeah. We won’t stay too long,” I said. To be honest, I was ready to split the moment we landed, too. The place was giving me a major case of the heebie-jeebies, but since I’d dragged us here, we had to at least check it out.

We shuffled through the colorless haze, gaping around us like archaeologists digging up a lost city. We walked under archways that stood alone where buildings had fallen, and passed skeletons of cars that still smelled of gas. I saw a hard hat lying in the dirt and reached for it, but it crumbled on contact.

“There’s no one,” I whispered. No survivors, no bodies. Just ash.

Turns out, almost everything burns, and history is quick to turn to dust. Except for that smooth glint of metal over there...

What is that?

I cocked my head to stare at the large, disklike object. For a second, I thought that, on top of everything else, the world was being invaded by aliens.

Then I understood.

So that was what had happened to the famous Space Needle. The long white base was nowhere in sight, but somehow the UFO-shaped top had ended up over a mile from the coast. It was half submerged in a pile of debris, like it had skidded onto a dull gray planet.

“Come on!” I said, dragging a less-than-enthusiastic Harry behind me.

The windows that circled the perimeter had been blown out, and we had to climb over the twisted metal dividers to get in. The initial blast must’ve blown the aerodynamic disc inland before the mushroom cloud incinerated everything else, though. Because inside, apart from the white chairs that were overturned and piled everywhere, the objects in the restaurant were surprisingly intact.

There were even a couple of cracked dishes sitting on a table. And a small, black, rectangular object, just lying there, like it had been forgotten...

I snatched up the phone. No. It couldn’t be... Impossible.

But true.

It was on, and working, and four full bars shone in the corner — the thing actually had service!

“Do you know what this is?” I laughed, shaking it at Harry.

“Harry!” he squawked, responding to my excitement.

“Communication!”

I held it in my hand, my heart thudding, and then realized that none of the flock had phones. An intact phone with full service, found in a city completely destroyed by a nuclear bomb, and I had no one to call. I did not smirk at the irony.

But if I could get on the Internet...

I tapped the smartphone’s screen and a browser opened. I typed in the address of Fang’s blog.

Maybe he has logged in.

Maybe he’s tried to get a message to me.

Maybe there’s something he wants me to know.

Harry peered over my shoulder as I scrolled through the comments. I didn’t find a single post from FangMod, but a thread with the subject “DEAD FLOCK” made me stop cold. I clicked to expand, but the stupid thing took forever to load.

“Come on. Come onnn,” I muttered, jabbing my finger at the screen.

Flockfan23: Rumors here that some of the flock have been murdered. My cuz said Angel told her and was crying. Any1 else have info?

I pictured Angel’s tear-streaked face, her blonde eyebrows knitted in grief. I held my breath.

There were half a dozen responses. PAtunnelratt, the commenter we’d been communicating with before, was the first to answer.

PAtunnelratt: The story around here is Gasman got blown up and one of the H-men grabbed Iggy in the woods. Heard they were looking for my silo, so I’d feel mad guilty if it’s true.

I shook my head. Lies. They had to be.

Yeah, the boys had said they were headed to find some green in the US, but Gazzy was a genius with explosives, and Iggy couldn’t be caught. I scrolled down for the next comment.

ImMargaretA: Nudge was drowned in an underground cave on some Pacific island. The dog, too. Skewered with a speargun.

My mouth went dry and I reread the lines several times, chewing the inside of my cheek. How did she know about the island? How would anyone know where Nudge and Total were? Or that they were alone?

That I’d left them.

Other commenters had already challenged Margaret A.’s sources, but she was defiant.

ImMargaretA: I’m on the inside. Got it from the Remedy himself. They’re taking out the bird kids one by one. Army meeting Fang in Alaska. You’ll see.

My hand was so sweaty the phone almost slipped out.

Alaska.

Was that what had pulled me so urgently west? What had made me turn north? It couldn’t be true, could it?

TeeniBikeeni: No way, not my Fang. He’d never let himself be captured. Please nooo.

Flockfan23: What about Max? Has anybody heard anything about Max?

My eyes were blurring and all I saw was smoke pouring out of an underground hole, the spearguns the fish kids had used, an army of giants waiting in the snow...

“No,” I said aloud, blinking my eyes clear again. I knew none of it was right. It had to be Doomsday kids infiltrating the blog — that was the only explanation. Or other killers who wanted to scare us, to make us think we didn’t have a chance.

Still, I couldn’t stop staring at the words at the bottom of the small screen.

ImMargaretA: Maximum Ride is next.

56

Harry’s wings shot out, making me jump.

I let out my breath with a nervous laugh and looked up from those stupid words.

“Okay, okay. I know you’re ready to get out of this place.” I wanted to toss the phone and the lies I’d read with it, but I knew it might come in handy. Maybe I could throw it at the next person who attacked me. “I guess we’ve seen enough. Come on, Harry. Let’s g—”

Then I saw Harry’s eyes staring behind me and realized he hadn’t been nudging me to leave. The snap of his wings had been a flight instinct — Harry was scared. I turned quickly and glimpsed a flash of white through the windows. Something flitting between concrete pillars.

Something that was trying to ambush me.

No, Maximum Ride isn’t going to be next. Not today. Not ever.

“Hey!” I yelled. I stumbled over the chairs and took off after it — whatever it was.

I kicked through pieces of brick and sharp metal and skidded around collapsed buildings as I chased the hint of movement, something small and quick and just beyond my reach. When I lost the trail I took to the sky, searching, searching, and then—

There!

A tiny figure ducked into a hole, and I dropped down nearby. It was the opening to a cellar, but the house above was completely gone, ripped right off the foundation. As I peered down into the darkness, Harry landed softly behind me.

“This is a good idea, right?” I asked him, and though he cocked his head doubtfully, I crept down the stairs, gripping my now-rusty knife tightly.

Part of the room was blocked by beams that had fallen through the ceiling, but the rest of the cellar was clear. At first I thought I’d made a mistake and nothing was there, but then, behind a washing machine, I found her.

“Oh, my God,” I whispered. Over the years, I’ve seen more awful things than anyone should ever have to see. Horrible mutated experiments gone wrong, people injured, killed, tortured, animals mutated by toxic waste... and this poor kid was definitely on the list. The girl was probably around six years old. Even in the low light, I saw that her skin was pink and raw, the flesh bubbled. There were patterns in some places — spots where clothing seams or textures had burned right into her flesh.

How did she survive this?

I blinked hard as I thought of all the people who had been far enough away to avoid being incinerated into ashes, but not far enough to escape unscathed. The burns, the pain... oh, my God.

“Hey there,” I said, my voice hoarse. “It’s okay. You don’t have to be afraid.”

The girl stared up at me silently, and her strange gaze was unnerving. Her pupils were golden, like a small flashlight permanently shone on them. I wondered if she could see me, or if she was blind, like Iggy.

I just wanted to give this poor kid a hug. I stepped closer, and Harry made a chirpy sound in his throat — some kind of warning.

Glancing at him, I saw that his arms were crossed and his feathers were puffed up, making his wings appear about twice their usual size. Living with his flock high in remote mountain cliffs, Harry probably hadn’t had much contact with non-mutants, let alone burned, freaked-out little kids.

“It’s okay, Harry,” I reassured him. “Look, she’s just a little girl.”

But when he came closer, the girl ducked her head down, curling into herself. Between the curtains of her dark hair, there were bald patches visible on her scalp and darker burns on the back of her neck.

This is what nuclear war looks like, I thought angrily. I wanted to make someone pay for this girl’s unspeakable pain and loss. I wanted to pummel whoever had done this.

The Remedy.

“My phone...” the girl whispered.

That’s why she’s been spying on us — we stole her phone.

“You can have your phone,” I told her, and crouched down to her level. “Are you all by yourself? Where’s your mom? Your family?”

The girl was gripping something tightly in her hand. Maybe a memento, or a clue about who she was.

“Whatcha got there?” I asked.

She mumbled something into her fist.

“What’s that?” I asked, leaning close to hear her meek voice.

“One Light,” she said more loudly, and as she thrust her hands toward my face, a pale green gas spilled from her palm.

In my last flash of consciousness, I realized I’d been trapped.

And there was no way out.

57

The next day started in the absolute worst way possible: I woke up in a cage.

The light in the room felt like an attack. My eyes stung from the gas, and the back of my throat was raw. Moving an inch made my stomach churn with nausea.

“Where...” I mumbled, disoriented, and then heard a low whimper.

Harry was crouched next to me on the metal floor, his wings folded in and his head tucked down. I touched his back. He was shaking all over.

I squinted through the bars of the cage, expecting a dungeon or a lab, maybe — but we were in the middle of a lecture hall. Kids sat in the rows of seats rising up all around us.

Some of them were burned like the girl had been, and some had those weird golden cataracts in their eyes. Others’ eyes just looked glazed.

The words came back to me then: One Light. That was what the little girl had said right before she’d knocked us out with the gas.

They were Doomsday followers.

Iggy had been brainwashed by the cult once, so I knew how hard it was to get through to them. Still, I had to try.

“Yo, Children of the Corn!” I reached an arm out of the cage and waved. “Snap out of it! Let us out of here and I promise to return your brains in one piece.”

“Shh!” A girl in the front row glared at me.

“The Remedy is speaking,” another chided.

The name was like a bucket of ice water to the face, and I jerked my head around toward the front of the hall.

As I gripped the bars of our cage and gaped at the small man pacing the platform, the pain and devastation I’d felt in Africa and then New York flooded my heart, and for a second, I couldn’t breathe. This was the man who’d destroyed the world, the man who’d killed billions of people.

This was the man I’d been hunting.

As the mastermind of world devastation, he wasn’t much to look at. He wore a wrinkled suit and had a scraggly brown beard. His voice in the microphone was shaky and high-pitched, his manner feverish. He was short, balding, and giving some sort of lecture on Napoleon. Images flashed on a huge screen behind him.

“So you’re the piece of scum known as the Remedy!” I shouted. “You look more like the Problem!”

The man on the stage stopped pacing, startled to hear sounds coming from his zombified audience.

“Napoleon fanatic — go figure. I gotta be honest, I thought you’d be taller.”

The Remedy reached up to smooth his thinning hair and walked down the stairs, stopping far short of our cage.

“It can talk,” he observed, more to his pupils than to me. “I thought they’d bred that out by now. This mutant is definitely out of date and toward the end of its life span.”

The kids in the bleachers chorused their approval, gawking at us like we were zoo animals, and I stood fuming in front of Harry, who probably didn’t even know he should be offended right now.

“It can even form full sentences,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “And it is Maximum Ride, in case you want to memorize the name of the mutant who’s going to destroy you.”

The Remedy crossed his arms over his chest. It was supposed to look threatening, no doubt, but the way his shoulders hunched forward and his head ducked down made him look uncomfortable. Scared, even.

“Considering where you’re standing and where I’m standing, I think you might not get that chance, Maxine.”

He had actually inched back another foot.

“It’s Maximum,” I sneered. “And keeping the dangerous animals locked up is kind of cheating, isn’t it?”

The coward turned away, climbing back onto the stage to continue his lecture. He clicked open a slide titled “World Domination in a Historical Context.”

Context? Context? I have some context for him, all right.

“Did you tie up my family before you killed them?” I yelled after him, my voice shaking with fury. “When you silenced Nudge underwater, did you think she couldn’t talk, either? When you blew up Gazzy, did you have to look at his nine-year-old body parts? Or was that too much ‘context’ for you?”

“Napoleon’s downfall was ego,” he continued doggedly.

“What about your ego? Did you think you wouldn’t have to pay?” I shouted more loudly, rattling the cage. “Did you think I’d let you get away with it?”

“You might not get that chance.” His words echoed in my head, snagging on the last one: “Maxine.” Was it just a taunt, meant to infuriate me?

Or did he really not know me?

58

Something wasn’t adding up.

The giant had known me, and he’d said the Remedy had sent him. And the girl in the chat room, ImMargaretA, had claimed the Remedy was specifically hunting the flock. But even if they were both liars, something seemed off about this guy.

I quieted down and watched him carefully — his expressive face and breathless cadence, the way his eyes bulged with urgency.

“It was Goebbels, with his understanding that nothing human could be sacred, and the Hulk, with his appetite for complete and total destruction, who laid the foundation for our current revolution...”

Even I, with my sketchy grasp of history, could tell he was making no sense, but it didn’t matter. He rambled in circles until he had them eating up every word. He was a storyteller, for sure.

But a killer? A megalomaniac bent on world domination?

Uh-uh. This guy was a joke.

“It’s not him,” I whispered.

“Max Mum?” Harry said, looking at me.

“These kids all believe him, but I don’t. He’s not the Remedy.”

So why was he pretending to be?

Probably to save his own skin. If what I’d heard was true, the Remedy wanted to wipe the planet completely clean, sparing no survivors. No one was safe... except the Remedy himself.

So this guy had conned some cleanup crews, convinced them he was their revered leader. It probably hadn’t been too hard. Doomsday was a cult, after all, made up of vulnerable kids easily duped by smooth talkers.

And the man could talk, I’d give him that. He was so desperate to sell his story, it almost made me feel sorry for him.

Almost.

After all, he was still pretending to be the deadliest, most despicable man in the history of the world. And he’d put me in a freaking cage.

“He’s not the Remedy!” I yelled. “This man is lying!”

Finally some of the Doomsday kids heard me. I saw heads turning, heard whispers spreading.

“I’m sure some people in this room would beg to differ,” the impostor said, flashing a nervous smile at his dead-eyed groupies. “As well as some not-so-fortunate people outside of it.”

“Okay, Mr. Remedial, so how’d you do it, then?” I demanded. “Who developed the virus? Who are the Horsemen?”

“There are unsung heroes in every revolution,” he answered vaguely, his voice going up an octave. “Loyal soldiers who are tasked with doing the hard work.”

“Like the burned kids in this room, whose families you freaking bombed?”

“We all have to make sacrifices for the greater good...” His eyes flicked around the room at his disciples.

“One Light,” a few voices murmured, and I scoffed.

“Where’d you get the bombs?”

“I—” His face twitched.

“And how come you’re here babbling about history to a group of kids instead of, you know, ruling the world? Let me guess — you’re a failed actor, right? Or maybe one of those carnival guys — the grifters who are always trying to cheat people out of the big stuffed animals? Whatever you are, you’re just a Remedy fanboy,” I spat. “And that’s almost as disgusting as being the mass murderer himself.”

Fear flashed behind those eyes. Desperation. The man raced back down the steps and leaned close to my cage this time — almost within reach.

“Do you know why you’re here?” he hissed, just loud enough for me to hear. “Because if I make sure my students have someone to sacrifice to their ‘One Light’ every so often, they think I’m legit.”

Pink splotches appeared near his temples, and he was trembling, but his eyes were victorious. “Let me condense it for you, bird girl: As long as you die, I get to live.”

“Faker!” I shouted, swiping at his smug face. “Liar!”

I grabbed a fistful of tweed fabric through the bars of the cage, but he shrugged off the jacket, pivoting out of my grasp. He stumbled away from me with wide, terrified eyes.

“Kill them!” he yelled into the microphone. “Kill the mutants!”

59

Their feet sounded like thunder. Hundreds of kids streamed down from the stands, tripping over one another in their eagerness. They were smiling giddily and chanting, “One Light! One Light!”

But dark intentions flashed behind those grins.

Professor Phony wasn’t a legitimate dictator, but his followers were the real thing. They were Doomsday kids who idolized the Remedy and had done his dirty work picking off survivors.

Kids who had probably already murdered dozens of people and were now coming at us from all sides.

The reality of the situation set in: We were totally screwed.

Harry was in the corner, with his neck tucked in and his feathers all puffed out, rocking back and forth, banging his shoulders against the bars in desperation.

“Get in the middle!” I yelled, and yanked him close to me. “Crouch down. Quick!”

Harry and I huddled together as the lynch mob rocked the cage with frenzied bloodlust. For a brief moment, I was grateful for those thick metal bars holding us in — they were also keeping everyone else out. Then the kids started poking knives and sticks through the spaces.

So we’ll just die a little slower, then.

All the horrible deaths I’d read about on the blog had been true, and now there would be two more. Even if the Remedy wasn’t in this room, he’d gotten to me.

There had never been hope for any of us.

Harry leaned his head back and made a horrible, high-pitched sound, and though I’d only known him for a couple of days, his plaintive cry awoke a fierce maternal instinct in me.

I stood up, sheltering him from the blows like I would my own flock. In my mind I saw flashes of their faces twisted in pain — Fang’s anger, Iggy’s shock, and Nudge’s fear — and though I wanted to break down, I became a stone. I knew I was just delaying the inevitable, but if they wanted Harry, they’d have to go through me first.

The Doomsday kids pressed their hateful faces against the bars, leering as their arms swiped at me with knives and hangers, fingernails and pieces of glass.

At first I fought them. I broke fingers and tried to pry weapons from fists. I used every self-defense move I’d learned over the years, every honed skill. But I was locked in a box that made me vulnerable on all sides. If I wielded a knife, it was knocked from my hands. If I leaned back from a swinging fist, another ripped out a handful of my hair. They gouged and slashed, tore and pummeled. There were just too many of them.

Like the fake Remedy had said, I’d been brought here to die. My life was going to end like it had started — caged like an animal, being poked and prodded, with absolutely nowhere to run.

I clenched my fists together and stood stronger, prouder, even as my arms ached and I lost all hope. I wasn’t going to cry.

“You’re all cowards!” I snarled. “At least I didn’t give up! At least I didn’t—”

Something struck the side of my head and I fell, crumpling to the floor.

When I blinked and looked up, Harry’s wings were open, cramming the small space full of feathers.

“Harry, what are you...?” I asked, dazed with pain.

When Harry thrust his wings out through the bars, leaving them completely exposed to the murderous masses, I thought he was giving up. Until he started to flap.

Amazingly, the cage floor shifted below my feet and I tumbled sideways. Some of the Doomsday kids took advantage and beat me harder or gouged at Harry’s fluttering wings, but most were staring with open mouths and puzzled looks.

Incredibly, the cage was rising off the ground.

Harry’s face turned red, and veins popped out of his neck as he strained. Me, the metal cage, the kids gripping the bottom... Harry’s head was tilted forward and he was supporting the full weight of it on his shoulders as his wings flailed outside the bars.

He was that good of a flier.

I scrambled to my feet and joined him, shoving my wings out through the bars, pumping in rhythm with his so we wouldn’t collide. After just a few seconds, my strength was already starting to fail me.

But with the added power of my wings, the kids couldn’t hold us down anymore. The cage jerked us side to side, rebounding as, one by one, their hands fell away from the floor.

“We’re doing it!” I marveled as, untethered, we carried our small prison up and over the stadium seating. The cult members chased after us, shaking their fists and chanting their words of sacrifice, but we’d already flown high into the top of the dome.

We were actually getting away.

60

We smashed the cage against the ceiling, the impact jolting me down to my toes. Then Harry’s face grew even more determined and we rose again. And smashed again. My teeth snapped shut hard and I tasted blood.

“What are you doing?” I yelled. “Harry, stop!”

One last time, still trapped inside our metal box, we crashed smack into the ceiling. One last time the force ricocheted through my body, chattering my teeth and rattling my bones.

The heavy door of the cage sprang open just as the ceiling broke from the impact. Chunks of plaster rained down, we scrambled away as the cage dropped, and then we were bursting through the ceiling into the sky above. A huge clang and some screams of agony told me the cage had landed.

We didn’t have to talk — we just flew high, hard, and fast, until the building was out of sight. When I could finally speak without coughing, what came out was laughter. Rolling, uncontrollable giggles that almost sounded like sobs.

Somehow, once again, I’d made it out alive, and I felt so shaken, so insanely grateful, that I had to put the rest of my dark reality aside for the moment and just laugh it out.

Harry looked alarmed at the sounds I was making, so I tried to get my hiccupping snorts under control, and held up my hand for a high five.

“Good job, Harry!” I said. At the sound of his name, that dazzling smile was back, along with his dimples.

I choked out another laugh. “Well, that was a pretty epic escape, huh?” I said.

In response, Harry crowed and soared even higher. I knew exactly how he felt — man, it felt good to be free again.

Even this far from the city, you could see the explosion’s effects. Many trees were stripped of bark, others look singed, and many of them had simply been broken off right above the ground.

There was still some life, though, scampering through the underbrush, and Harry was already scanning the ground for prey. My stomach rumbled at the idea. We hadn’t eaten in almost two days — since the rattlesnake feast Harry had delivered.

Harry screeched like an owl as he swooped low to the ground, and when I followed suit, my voice came out like a war cry. It felt good to be loud and primal, to hunt our own dinner in the woods, to stretch my wings and know my speed and feel my power.

By the time the sun had completely set, we’d strung more than a dozen rodents up over the fire. For dinner, we had a mix of radiation rat, charred chipmunk, and nuclear squirrel. It was absolutely disgusting.

And absolutely delicious.

“This is just like the old days,” I reminisced, tearing into the gamey flesh. “When we were running from the whitecoats, me and the flock—”

I stopped, worried about letting those dark emotions in, but Harry was looking at me with wide, curious eyes, and I wanted to talk about my family. I needed to feel like they were still right here.

Or needed to believe they were still somewhere.

“Here, look.”

I licked squirrel juice off my fingers and grabbed a nearby twig. “Here’s me, Maximum,” I said, tracing a simple shape in the dirt — a stick figure with two triangles for wings. I added another next to it. And then five more. I even drew Total, but he came out more like a fuzzy sausage with a weird growth on his back.

I told Harry about Nudge’s love of fashion, about how Total had adored Akila, and how Iggy was the only one of us who could cook. I described the tree house Dylan had built me and how Fang had pulled me out of the swirling tsunami.

I missed them all desperately, and even if Harry didn’t understand, it just felt good to say their names.

“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.”

61

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.”

62

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.

Maybe it was the belief that he’d see Max again — if she hadn’t been bullheaded, if she had listened to Angel. Not a sure bet. But he hoped.

Or maybe it was Alaska itself. From his rock perch, Fang saw a humpback whale breaching, and every time it twisted its massive body out of the water, his spirit felt a little lighter. Just knowing it was alive, that not everything everywhere had been destroyed. This place seemed so separate from the mess of the rest of the world. It was still so wild. So green.

Fang twisted to look behind him. Green. Not just near the water, but up in the hills, too, and at the tops of the surrounding mountains. Even this far north, spring had come.

The snow had all melted.

So he was going to die one day. So what? That could be years from now, and he had to live his life in the meantime.

Which meant finding the flock so they could get back to doing what they’d always done: fighting for those who couldn’t defend themselves.

This time it just happened to be the whole human race.

He just had to get to Jeb. He and the flock had to stop the damage. Then maybe he could bring Max back here, where the world was still untouched. They could begin again.

Of course, Fang was enough of a cynic to know it was never that easy.

He had no idea if Jeb was the Remedy, or if he had help, and he knew Max was going to be unbelievably pissed at him. She’d look at him with that little smile, but her eyes would flash warnings of imminent violence. She might not take him back this time, not after the way he left her, the morning after—

But he had to try.

Licking his fingers, Fang tossed the fish bones aside. He inhaled the crisp, clean air, snapped open his wings, and took flight.

Little more than an hour later, he was soaring over a mirrored lake that reflected a towering white hunk of rock in the distance — what he assumed must be Mount McKinley. He’d made good time — he just needed to clear Denali, and then he’d take a little break.

But as he neared the mountain, the temperature dropped steadily, despite the greenness everywhere. The wind started to whirl, snow started to fall, and before he knew it, a ferocious blizzard closed in on him.

Fang lowered his head and clenched his teeth as ice particles stung his face. He tried to plow his way though, but the storm jerked him back and forth, tumbled him around and around, until he couldn’t see the mountain peak anymore, couldn’t see the lake or the trees, couldn’t even tell if he was flying toward his destination or away from it. All he saw was white. There was nothing around him that was recognizable.

Until there was.

There, on a now white-topped peak less than a hundred yards away, was something Fang was more than a little familiar with — something with fur, wings, and wolfish features.

Erasers.

With no warning, the wind released its grip, and Fang stopped in midair faster than if he’d hit a brick wall. Even in the extreme cold, he felt feverish, and his palms were slick with sweat. His peripheral vision fell away and it was like he was looking through a long tunnel.

At the end of that tunnel was the exact scene that Angel had put inside his head so many weeks ago. His death scene.

Only right here, right now, it wasn’t Fang that the Erasers were tearing apart.

It was Dylan.

63

Fang was struck by a sudden realization: He didn’t have to die.

Angel had made it seem like his death was inevitable, but maybe she was wrong. He could change his fate and turn around, right now. He could fly away from this place where he was supposed to die.

He had a choice.

At first, Fang didn’t move. He hovered there, watching Dylan fight. Fang had never realized how strong Dylan was — each of his punches seemed to land with the force of a sledgehammer, and even against five Erasers, he was holding his own.

When Dylan spotted Fang, the look of shock on his face was priceless. Despite the gory scene, Fang knew Dylan was having a “Fancy meeting you here” moment.

As Dylan’s head was turned, looking at Fang, a clawed hand sliced four parallel cuts across his cheek, but Dylan didn’t flinch. “Good to see you!” he shouted. “Now get out of here, Fang! This isn’t your fight!”

In that moment Fang realized what a coward he was being and shook himself into action. If Fate was coming to get him, he would look it in the face.

Besides, they were only Erasers. He’d taken them many times before.

Fang surged toward the fight, and two of the wolfmen broke away from Dylan to meet him in the air. Fang smiled menacingly — up here, he had the advantage. Sheer bulk made Erasers strong and dangerous, but they were clumsy fighters and even slower fliers.

“Ready to be reunited with your old pal, Ari?” Fang growled. The Erasers didn’t seem to hear him. And to his surprise, they zipped after him expertly and turned on a dime. They definitely didn’t have the awkward, grafted-on wings he’d seen in the past.

Their skill was a shock, too. With two against one, Fang was on the defensive from the start, blocking blows and spinning away from deadly jaws. Fang had fought dozens of Erasers in his lifetime, sometimes four or five at a time, but these weren’t like any he’d encountered before. They were stronger, faster, better.

Still, something about them seemed familiar. Maybe it was the way they fought — it was almost like looking in a mirror. They anticipated Fang’s moves and knew all of his tricks. They threw everything back at him with double the force. Fang knew he was a fierce fighter, yet he couldn’t seem to land a single hit.

What was wrong with him?

“They’re Horsemen!” Dylan warned from the peak below. He was only fighting two attackers now; the third lay off to the side in a fetal position. At least Dylan was making headway.

“What are you talking about?” Fang shouted as he dodged a roundhouse kick.

“They’re... enhanced. Upgraded.”

Star’s words came back to Fang. “Jeb promised me a way out,” she’d said. “An upgrade.”

Fang didn’t know anything about these so-called Horsemen. If they weren’t Erasers, he had no idea what he was up against.

They were a pack, but they didn’t seem to care about protecting each other. As Fang watched, the one who had the strongest grip on Dylan grabbed the second Horseman by the scruff of the neck. He smashed their heads together, and both Dylan and the unfortunate Horseman crumpled to the ground.

With Dylan out of the picture, the other Horseman joined the attack on Fang, and if fighting two was difficult, fighting three was almost impossible. Fang couldn’t dodge the blows anymore — there was always someone behind him now, kicking him forward toward the other brutes or tearing into his legs.

One wrenched Fang’s arms backward while another grabbed the sides of his face and slammed his head down against its knee. Fang’s forehead split, and blood from the gash streamed into his eyes, temporarily blinding him.

Then a hairy fist connected with his jaw and spun his head to the side so hard he swore his brain shook inside his skull. It felt like he had hunks of gravel in his mouth, and when he spat a blood-streaked loogie into the face of the guy who’d hit him, Fang saw two of his teeth fly out with it.

He looked down at Dylan’s sprawled body, not knowing if he was alive or dead, and felt utter desperation.

This wasn’t like with the Cryenas. Fang was exhausted, and no part of him felt invincible. He felt every scratch and bite, every broken bone. Every part of him hurt.

“You know it’s useless to fight, Fang,” a voice called from below. “This is your fate. It’s always been your fate.”

He glanced down to see the man standing on the cliff.

Was he hallucinating, or was it...

64

Jeb.

It was you all along, Fang thought. You destroyed everything.

This was the confrontation he’d been waiting for, and the sight of his nemesis sent a surge of adrenaline through him, giving his muscles an extra kick. He wrenched away from his attackers and raced toward the ground, concentrating the last of his speed and power on one goal: tearing out Jeb’s throat.

But he just wasn’t fast enough. He wasn’t powerful enough.

Fang was so close, only inches from that smiling mug, when the Horsemen caught him, slamming him to the ground at Jeb’s feet.

Fang roared in frustration as he wrestled against them. There were two on his back now, pinning his arms beneath him, and one kneeling in front of him, its fists raining down on Fang’s head.

“You can’t beat them,” Jeb said, calmly looking down on the bloody scene. “You’re a part of them, Fang. You’re what makes them strong. Stronger.”

“Stronger than what?” Fang slurred through swollen lips. Another punch landed with a thwack, and he felt like his eye sockets were caving in.

“They’re not quite invincible,” Jeb observed as the Horsemen pummeled Fang. “Not yet. But with the next generation, or the one after, we’ll get there — we’ll engineer the species that cannot die.”

Between blows, Fang squinted at the Horsemen, thinking about the familiarity he’d felt. Jeb had trained the flock in martial arts — that explained why they fought just like Fang. There was something else, though. The way they moved, appeared out of nowhere like shadows...

“You should be proud, Fang. You’re going to have a huge impact on the world for generations to come.”

Fang stopped struggling just for a second and looked up at Jeb with an expression of utter horror. Finally, he understood what Jeb was getting at.

When they had kidnapped Fang and run all those tests, when they’d taken his blood, it was to create something else. Something unspeakable.

They’d used his DNA.

“You bastard,” Fang spat. “You had no right.”

And in the midst of that brief distraction, Fang felt a sudden, excruciating rip, and one of the Horsemen tossed a strange object to the ground.

It landed next to him with a heavy sound of finality, and Fang stared at the dark, feathered mass for several seconds, unable to make the connection to his own throbbing pain.

Gritting his teeth, he gathered his energy and bucked the beast off his back. With an arm finally free, Fang was able to reach over his right shoulder. He touched wetness. A nub of jagged bone.

Nothing else.

Fang’s skin felt clammy and cold. He started to shake all over.

My wing, he thought vaguely as he went into shock. They took my wing.

Fang saw Angel’s face. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, but she was smiling at him. His heart broke in that moment — he knew what it meant.

“No,” he murmured. “Please.”

It’s almost over, Angel soothed him. Just let go.

65

Angel curled her body tighter into the nook of the fir tree, where one of the branches met the trunk, and wept.

She held her throbbing head in her hands, her fair hair twisting around her fingers as she gripped it. The images in her head played on a loop now, but they were often just glimpses, like small snippets of film. Close-ups of yellow eyes narrowing, yellow teeth flashing. Fists clenching, feathers falling. Snow stained dark with blood.

Angel wasn’t sure if what she was seeing was in the past or the future, and it was so hard sometimes to know what to do.

It was even harder to wait for the answer.

Angel had been waiting a long time. As the migraines had worsened, she’d sought out the quietest place she could find. Far north, in the middle of nowhere. She’d crawled inside this tree days ago, and the branches had grown heavy with snow, forming a cocoon around her small body.

She chewed a piece of bark to stave off her hunger, working the soggy wood methodically between her teeth. There wasn’t much else to eat — in this deep cold, most of the animals had gone into hibernation. Like the bears and the squirrels, Angel just wanted to sleep until things got a little easier.

Her mind wouldn’t let her rest, though. Her temples were electrified with each pulse of her blood as horrible scenes flashed behind her eyes, again and again.

Trust in yourself, she tried to remember. Nothing else matters.

But she was exhausted and hopeless, and sometimes she fantasized about smashing her forehead into the trunk of the tree, hitting it over and over until her skull caved and the pain stopped...

Angel.

It was a voice inside her head — a male voice, and Angel sat up.

She’d been Max’s voice, projecting her own thoughts to Max, trying to help her when she was struggling. Angel had never had anyone to guide her like that, but for a second, she thought that had changed.

Come on, Angel, where are you?

No. This wasn’t a voice. She was hearing someone’s thoughts — someone nearby.

Someone who knew her.

Angel separated the branches and looked out into a world coated in white. She blinked against the harsh brightness of the snow, feeling like a siren was screaming in her skull.

There. She saw a figure coming out of the blizzard, a fuzzy outline slowly taking shape.

Angel watched the heavy boots sinking in the snow. The broad shoulders looking a little stooped. The powerful wings sagging low behind him. It was something out of a dream — a dream she knew well.

Angel tensed. She had prepared herself for this moment for so long, steeled herself against it, but she was still surprised to feel the icy tears running down her face.

She saw how strong he was, how powerful, and knew her intuition had been right: He would always be the one to prevail.

“It’s you,” Angel whispered as the figure stopped in front of her. “I knew you’d come.”

66

Horseman peered through the branches of the fir tree and looked Angel in the eye. Her lashes were icy webs — she’d been crying — but unlike the others, Angel stared back at him with a wounded look of acceptance.

Of course she’d known. Angel had a different sort of power.

More power, even, than the Remedy, who had planned out the future he wanted. Angel saw that future. She knew the outcome of today, and all the days after that.

But could she change it?

Horseman was silent as they regarded each other warily. She was probably reading his mind, anyway. He curled his toes inside his boots, willing himself not to turn away from her relentless blue gaze.

For the first time in a long time, Horseman felt his vulnerability. His reflexes, his superior programming, none of it mattered. Angel was the only one in the world who was ready for whatever happened next, and he found himself waiting for her cue.

Sensing this, Angel swung her legs over the branch and jumped down from the tree, landing almost silently in the deep snow. She stood in front of him, tall for her age and malnourished, and for a moment neither of them moved.

Horseman eyed Angel’s white wings, almost disappearing in the all-white surroundings. Her skin was so pale it seemed translucent, and from the purplish circles under her eyes, he could tell she hadn’t been sleeping. She looked so frail.

Horseman knew better, though. He would not underestimate her.

Angel was studying him, too, and the tension seemed to mount with the falling snow. Could she see the blood on his dark coat? Did she wonder whose it was?

He caught her eyeing his scabbed knuckles, and then the scratches on his wrist, snaking toward the touch screen embedded there. She finally spoke.

“Is it done?” This time, the smallness, the meekness, was gone from Angel’s voice.

Horseman paused and nodded. “Fang is dead,” he said, and knelt at her feet.