“Another cave bone,” I sighed. “Looks kind of femur-y.” That’s how we had known the island’s underwater tunnels had collapsed after the apocalyptic meteor: The corpses had started washing up on shore. We were still finding them, almost three months later. I didn’t know if any of the bones had belonged to my mother or my half sister. How would I be able to tell?
“Not necessarily.” Fang’s lips pressed together.
I held it up: Though charred, it was totally a human femur.
Gazzy shook his head. “It’s burned. We don’t know how old it is. The lava would’ve done that if it had been a cave corpse or someone more recently, like…”
Yesterday.
I was having trouble swallowing, trouble breathing.
“Let’s go back to the cave,” Nudge said gently. “We can try another path—”
I whirled around. “Angel, try to tap into Dylan’s thoughts. He’s got to be somewhere. He’s just hiding. Or looking for us. I’m sure he’s nearby.”
Angel looked away.
“Ig? Can’t you smell him or something?”
Iggy leaned heavily against a rock. Flakes of ash fell from his white-blond hair when he shook his head. Though his eyes were unseeing, they were full of pity.
“It’s not him,” I insisted, kicking ash back over the bones.
“It’s like Dylan’s cognitive connection just stopped,” Angel said finally. “Like with your mom and Ella—”
“We never found their bodies.” My jaw tightened. “We don’t know what happened to them. Just like we don’t know what happened… here.”
It was getting harder to say his name.
“Everything is dead, Max.” Angel’s tone was firm. “Everything except us.”
“No.” I wanted to shake her.
“Guys.”
I looked down the beach. At first I couldn’t make out what Fang was holding, it was so black and warped. Then he turned it over, and I saw a tiny flash of color.
That spot of bright green—a shade Dylan loved, that none of us had seen since the last of the trees had died—was enough to buckle my knees, and enough to force out the awful, wounded sob that had been building in my chest all day.
Because that burned-to-cinders object Fang cradled in his hand was one of Dylan’s size-twelve sneakers.
5
I WATCHED THE shadow of our V moving across the water hundreds of feet below—one dog in a harness, one bird kid short on the right side—and clutched the charred sneaker tighter to my chest as my wings carried me. We couldn’t give Dylan a twelve-gun salute, or even a funeral. At least we could give him on
e last flight.
I banked left, and the flock fell into line behind me, following like an extension of my own body. Ahead of us, sunlight peeked through the eerie rainbow of color that had illuminated the sky since D-day. Below us, the water still churned with the rough waves left over from the tsunami, and a chain of volcanoes rose from the depths of the ocean. Their combined cloud of ash was racing to cover everything, from the pink cliffs of the islands to the white feathers of Angel’s wings.
I’d thought flying would make me feel better, like it always had. Wind rustling my hair and muting my thoughts as I soared into the open. No sounds, no obstacles—just the ocean before us and sky all around. Freedom.
Growing up in a cage makes you really appreciate open spaces.
But it had been a while since I’d seen the world this way, and taken stock of all we’d lost. Cities. People. The grief felt like a cold, hard knot in the center of me, pulling me down, down into all that gray water.
I felt a hand on my left shoulder and sensed Fang’s dark figure just outside my peripheral vision. “You okay?” I nodded and slowed down, realizing we’d been flying for probably half a day.
I’d just wanted to get ahead of the cloud, to lay Dylan to rest under a clear sky. But the ash was moving too fast.