Maximum Ride Forever

One

I’ll bet when you cracked open my first book, you didn’t know you’d signed up for New World History 101, huh?

Or Her-story, if we’re getting technical.

It’s hard to document exactly how it happened — hard to do it right — but there needs to be a record, so we don’t end up here again, repeating the same mistakes. So someone can see the warning signs, and take a stand.

So you can save the world, if it ever needs saving again. And I’m betting it will.

Right now, all I can do is tell my own truth.

Fang was really alive.

Kate found an envelope addressed to me, from Dylan. It said: “I knew you would choose him, and I accept that. If I can’t live with you, then please believe I’m happy to die for you, my love. Forever yours, Dylan.”

I cried for like three days over that, over Dylan’s unbelievable sacrifice — for me.

Fang was confused at first, having lost months of his life, and had to train his body to work again after being in stasis for so long. But, being Fang, he was soon himself again, and even got used to his new wing faster than I’d expected. It wasn’t long before we were taking one of the last outside flights we could take, before the nuclear winter really hit and we’d have to go underground.

And Dylan was really dead. It took years for me to make peace with that, to not feel guilty, to know he had chosen to do that, and that I hadn’t killed him. But it wasn’t easy. And... I missed him. I missed his smile, his dependability, his sweetness and honesty. I would always miss him. There would always be a Dylan-shaped hole in my heart. But I was thankful every single freaking day that I didn’t have a Fang-shaped hole in my heart. ’Cause I wasn’t sure I’d survive that.

Anyway, it was on that last flight that I gave Fang the big news.

“A what?” he said, staring at me.

“A baby,” I repeated.

He forgot to fly and started dropping out of the sky. I just waited for him, and he soon joined me again.

“Like, a baby?”

“I believe that’s what they’re called, yes,” I said primly.

“Are you sure?” he asked, and I rolled my eyes.

“It’s kicking me,” I said. “From the inside.”

As you know, Fang is fairly expressionless. But the look on his face when he finally got that he was going to be a dad was... pure exhilaration. The most joy I’d ever seen on anyone. It filled me with a warm glow that kept me going, long after we had to move underground.

But living like a termite (ugh, don’t remind me) was harder than I’d imagined it could be. It felt like being buried alive. Some of the illusion technology kept functioning and projected city streets or starry skies, but every time I tried to fly, I crashed into the low ceilings.

When you’re a claustrophobic bird kid, an underground compound really is the definition of hell. No matter what blissed-out German word you choose to name it.

Our only window to the outside world was a tiny camera that poked aboveground. We watched the screen for months as rain started to fall, and then snow. Then the temperature dropped and the ice came, and all we saw out of the lens were thick, blue-white crystals.

“Trust me,” Angel said. “Not yet.”

Not yet.

So we lived like moles, navigating tunnels in near darkness, turning pale in artificially lit rooms. Once I ended up in Dylan’s former room by mistake. Several kids had moved in there; it was big enough, and none of its belongings reminded me of Dylan. But still, I saw his face silhouetted against the silk wallpaper, imagined him sleeping on the round waterbed that now held two smaller mutants. My heart ached for him, and all he had wanted, and all he had done for me. It probably always would, and that seems fitting, somehow.

We all dreamed of the sun and breathing fresh air.

It wasn’t all bad, though. In the room I shared with Fang, I swore through a much-too-long childbirth and may have punched Fang and ripped a pillow in half, but I ended up with a wrinkled, utterly perfect nugget of joy as a souvenir.

A baby girl. With wings.

I wish I could have taken a picture of Fang holding his daughter, just to capture that expression of wonder and terror on his face. And while she learned to wail and projectile vomit and say “No” to everything I asked (karma), we made some pretty amazing progress in other ways.

Star used her talent for making annoying high-pitched sounds to shock the rest of the Doomsday prisoners back to their senses.

Our little seedlings grew into a thriving plant nursery, which meant never having to eat a freezer-burned Salisbury steak again. And, okay, it also meant avoiding extinction as a species.

The Morrissey brothers, Matthew and Lucas, had worked on developing the original vaccine for the H8E virus, and were able to replicate it in the lab using splices of Fang’s DNA. Jeb was right — Fang really would have a huge impact on generations to come. Because though the virus was endemic in most of the world, now everyone, mutant or man, would be protected when we returned to the surface.

And one day, after almost four years, we did exactly that.

A sliver of sun peeked through the camera lens, and the ash was finally starting to clear. And when, after days of staring at a clear blue sky, Angel finally nodded yes, there was no better feeling than leaving behind our earthworm existence to emerge, blinking, into the light, and become birds again.

Even if the world wasn’t exactly as we’d left it.

Though the sun was shining again, the Russian wilderness was still completely encased in ice. The trees in the surrounding forest looked more like stooped snow people, and the cold was bone-breaking. We could not survive there.

For months more, we all made plans. Everyone who could fly had the best chance of getting far enough south. Others carefully gathered provisions so they could attempt overland journeys — we still had hopes that more people had survived.

Finally the day came when the original six of our flock, plus Fang’s and my daughter, and Total, of course, and fifteen other bird kids left the home that had kept us alive through the devastation that people came to call Earth 2.

As we flew south, we found that ash and ice had buried cities and hidden landmarks. It was hard to tell where we were, but we knew the blue-white shimmer stretched over a whole lot of the planet.

Until it gave way to just ash.

The sky was clear, but the earth’s surface was now gray. And when we flew near the impact site of the biggest crater, the drifting ash had formed dunelike waves that were a hundred, sometimes two hundred feet high.

I don’t know how to even explain how massive this meteor was.

It left a crater so wide that we could barely see across it. When we stood at its edge, we were looking into a hole that went down for almost a mile.

It was the literal expression of “awesome”—every one of us was struck speechless with shock, wonder, and reverence at the extreme power of nature.

Finally, Total managed to articulate what all of us were feeling.

“How is it remotely possible that we survived this?” he asked, and we all chuckled, breaking the tension.

“The human spirit,” Angel said with a good-natured shrug. “Turns out it’s actually pretty tough to kill.”

“And the canine spirit,” Total said quickly, and we all agreed.

“Mama, what are we going to do now?” my daughter asked, ever curious.

I squeezed her hand and smiled.

“We’re going to begin again.”

We’re living in the Southern Hemisphere now, somewhere in what used to be Peru. The rain forest shriveled up along with everything else, so I’ll have to wait awhile to build another tree house, but plants are starting to grow back, bit by bit. I come out to this hillside every afternoon and sit cross-legged among the Incan ruins, where the boulders are still standing, even after the end of the world. I take my feather pen — an old memento — and I write with ink made from ash and stone.

I try to record the past.

Right now, I exhale and lean back against a five-hundred-year-old stone wall, relishing the feel of the sun on my face again. I study this page, and the many pages before it, and wonder if someone will read these words in another five hundred years.

I trace the silky black feather pen across my skin, down my cheek, and close my eyes, remembering.

Two

Fang follows my gaze across the rocky slope to watch our girl playing with her flock family, and his face softens. It seems crazy that she’s already almost five now — almost as old as Angel was when she was first kidnapped by Erasers, what seems like several lifetimes ago.

The whole flock is helping to raise her, with Total insisting on French lessons and Nudge making sure she doesn’t look like a cave girl (even though we pretty much live in caves). But it’s only Fang who spends as much time with her as I do, Fang who patiently teaches the fascinating facts his photographic brain remembers from all those fat books I shunned in school. Fang, because he’s her father.

“Watch!” she yells when she sees us looking her way. “Mama, watch me!” Her light brown eyes widen as she tears down the hill on long, gangly legs.

It’s always surprising to see those eyes looking back at me. They narrow at the first sign of danger, and confidently hold my gaze when she knows she’s right. When I tell her “No,” they are defiant, and when I cuddle her, they melt like honey. They take in everything, all the time.

They’re my eyes.

She looks like Fang in almost every other way. When she takes off after Star’s blur of speed, her wings trail behind her, the same color as her silky hair — a deep blue-black. Just before she crashes into Harry, he flings her a few dozen feet up in the air. Kate and Harry toss her between them, back and forth, and her wing muscles slide along her back and make her wings flutter. They’re still growing, but her primary feathers are all in now, and strong.

When she lands, her mouth twists into a familiar lopsided smirk, asking the same question it always does: Is it time yet, Mama?

I turn to the love of my life. My first love, and my last love. The love I accepted a dear friend’s sacrifice for. “Do you think...?”

Fang nods before I finish the question.

“You don’t think we’re rushing it?”

“It’s time.” He grins good-naturedly. “Like I’ve been saying for a week.”

“Phoenix!” I shout across the hilltop. “Ready for a lesson?”

Her face is maniacal with glee as she races Gazzy — now a tall, lanky fourteen-year-old — back up the slope.

When she was born, the name seemed to suit her — my little Phoenix, helping us all rise from the ashes. She’s Fifi to Total and Nudge, Ninja Nix to the boys. But I’ll let her pick her own name when she’s ready, of course.

Just as I once chose Maximum Ride.

Three

“Take your cues from the wind, watch for smaller birds in your path,” I repeat for the hundredth time. “And absolutely no dive-bombs without me!”

“Never, ever,” Phoenix repeats, and then proceeds to walk on her hands near the rocky edge. Gazzy cackles and tumbles forward, matching her trick for trick. While the rest of the flock hoots and hollers, cheering them on, naturally, I’m over here inventing new swear words and trying not to swallow my bottom lip.

Can you tell I’m way more nervous about my girl’s first flight than she is?

“Would you relax?” Iggy scolds me. “Did you forget how easy flying is? Besides, the kid’s got invincible DNA, so this should be no biggie. Ooof!” he groans as I elbow him in the ribs.

Next to me, Fang chuckles as he watches his daughter give poor, protesting Total a very undignified belly rub. It’s hard to remember that there was once a Fang who rarely laughed or smiled. Tiny Phoenix has completely changed him. She’s changed all of us.

My fear grows as she picks her way to the edge of the cliff and looks down. I know she’s tough. I make sure she gets up again every time she falls down, and I tell her she can do anything.

Even when life throws you a flaming curveball almost big enough to kick the earth out of orbit. Learn how to do what’s right, because it takes a lot more guts.

If there’s one thing my baby’s got, it’s guts.

The flock crowds around Phoenix before the group flight, giving pointers.

“Think about using all your senses at once,” Ratchet says. “Remember what I taught you, baby girl — be the ninja.”

“Flap as fast as you can, little Fifi,” Total warns. “It’s important to gain altitude fast when your wings are so small.”

“But don’t think about anything!” Nudge chimes in. “That’ll ruin it.”

Phoenix nods solemnly, eyes wide. You can see her mentally calculating as her eyes flit from face to face.

We face the sprawled green landscape of the rain forest. The sun is a huge eye hanging in front of us, warming our skin. The sky is endless.

One by one, the rest of the flock members take off, their powerful wings pulling them higher and higher into the air. Our V is longer these days as our flock grows, but Angel flies at the center, steering us into the wind, and there are still three spaces at the end, waiting for us to join them.

Phoenix nudges her little feet toward the edge. She takes a breath, and for the first time, when she looks up at me, I see a bit of fear in her eyes. “What if I can’t remember it all?”

“Just do what feels right, sweetie,” I coach, firmly suppressing my worry.

“You know I would never let you fall,” Fang whispers to her with his crooked smile, putting a lump in my throat. “Your mom and I will always be there to catch you.”

It’s scary at first, but I believe we’ve all got it in us to soar. Look at me. Like the Remedy once said, I’m really pretty ordinary — just a normal girl slash bird kid slash recombinant life-form who wanted to save the world.

It could’ve been any of us. Aren’t we all just along for the ride?

“Ready?” I ask, squeezing my daughter’s hand, while Fang reaches for the other.

“Ready!” Phoenix echoes.

“Now jump!”