Let’s go back, then. Our journey starts on an island somewhere in the South Pacific, not long after the sky first caught fire. You’ll want to make sure your seat is in a locked, upright position, and prepare for some turbulence.
After all, we’re talking about the end of the world.
Book One
APOCALYPSE
1
BREATHE, MAX. FORCE the air in and out.
The air was heavy, and the rotten-egg stench burned the inside of my nose, but I focused on inhaling and exhaling as I ran. The earth shook violently and my feet slid over loose rocks as I raced down the slope. Red-hot coals pelted the earth around us as volcanic ash set our hair on fire and ate tiny, stinging holes in our clothes.
“Our backpacks!” I yelled, stumbling to a stop. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten them. “They’re all we have left. Tools, knives—the crossbow!”
“We left them in the field!” Nudge cried.
I shaded my eyes and looked up—the air was thick with spewing magma, ash, and glowing rock belched up from deep beneath the earth. “I’m going for them,” I decided. As the leader of the flock, responsible for everyone’s survival, I didn’t have much choice. “You guys get to that rock outcropping by the southern beach. It’s the only protection we’ll find.”
“You have five minutes, tops,” warned Gazzy, our nine-year-old explosives expert. “This whole part of the island’s gonna blow.”
“Right,” I said, but I was already sprinting up the hill through the hailstorm of fiery pebbles. I might have flown faster, but I couldn’t risk singeing my flight feathers right now. I grabbed the backpacks and raced back.
The ground shuddered again—a churning quake this time that felt like it was shifting my organs around. I lost my balance and catapulted forward, the provisions we needed torn from my arms as I face-planted hard.
Sprawled in the dirt, I focused through the dizziness just in time to see a smoking boulder the size of a refrigerator bouncing toward my head. I tucked my chin and rolled, saying a silent prayer.
Then I heard the sound—BOOM! It was like a rocket had been set off inside my brain. I may have blacked out, I don’t know.
Shaking my head, I opened my eyes and gasped. The boulder had obliterated the space where I had just been lying, but beyond that, the top of the volcano was now shooting off a thousand-foot column of liquid fire and smoke.
I gaped, mesmerized, as bright orange lava oozed over the cliff we’d called home for the last three months. Then the sky started to rain blazing rocks, big ones, and I snapped back to attention.
Craaaaap.
I leaped to my feet, frantically grabbing backpacks and scooping up the scattered tools that were all we had left. The ground around me was being covered with hot ash, and as I reached for Gazzy’s pack, it went up in flames. I snatched my burned hand back, swearing as the nerves convulsed with pain.
“Max, hurry!” My ears were ringing, but Angel’s voice was clear inside my head. Ordinarily, I would be annoyed at being bossed around by a mind-reading seven-year-old, but the terror behind her words made my throat dry up.
I looked back at the volcano. Considering the size of the boulders it was hurling out of its crater, conditions could be even deadlier farther down the mountain.
What was I thinking, leaving my family? Forget the tools—I had to run!
My mouth filled with the taste of deadly sulfurous gas, and as it tore at my lungs I wheezed, choking on my own phlegm while glowing bombs fell all around me. I stumbled through the ash and rubble, tripping again and again, but I kept going.
I had to get back to my flock.
Another hundred yards and I would be at the meeting place. Pumping my legs, I took the turn onto the rock outcropping at top speed…
/>
And sailed toward a river of boiling lava.
2
WHOAAA—
I windmilled my arms as momentum propelled me out into midair, with nothing but red-hot death below. As gravity took hold and I felt myself starting to drop, my avian survival instinct kicked in automatically. A pair of huge speckled wings snapped out from my back and caught the air, swooping me aloft on a hot, acrid updraft. I quickly wheeled back to the outcropping and closed my highly flammable wings.