I took a deep b
reath, feeling like I was going to hurl, then slowly and painfully extended my wing just a bit, so Ella’s mom could see where I’d been shot.
Their eyes widened. And widened. And widened. Until I began to expect them to just pop out and land on the floor.
“Wha’ . . .” Ella began wonderingly.
Her mom leaned over and examined it more closely. Amazingly, she was trying to act casual, like, oh, okay, you have a wing. No biggie.
I was practically hyperventilating, feeling light-headed and kind of tunnel-visiony.
“Yeah, your wing got hit too,” Ella’s mom murmured, extending it ever so gently. “I think the shot nicked a bit of bone.” She sat back and looked at me.
I stared at the floor, feeling the weight of her gaze. I could not believe I was in this situation. Fang was going to kill me. And after I was dead, he would kill me again.
And I deserved it.
Ella’s mom took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay, Max,” she said in a calm, controlled voice. “First, we have to clean the wounds and stop the bleeding. When’s the last time you had a tetanus shot?”
I stared up into her eyes. Ella’s mom seemed no-nonsense and . . . incredibly caring. About me. I had become a huge crybaby in the last couple days, so I wasn’t surprised to feel tears haze my vision.
“Um, never?”
“Okay. I can take care of that too.”
32
“Come on, come on,” the Gasman breathed. He was holding on to the pine branch so hard that he could barely feel his fingers anymore.
“What’s happening?” Iggy demanded impatiently. “Tell me everything.”
It was early morning, and the two of them were perched near the top of an old-growth pine overlooking one of the abandoned logging roads. They had cased the situation, and the Gasman had been right: At least two Erasers, maybe more, had set up a rough camp not far from where the helicopter had landed. It seemed clear they were looking for the rest of the flock. It didn’t matter whether they wanted to kill them or only kidnap them: Capture was unthinkable.
The Gasman still had nightmares in which he found himself back at the School. He dreamed that whitecoats took blood, injected him with various drugs to see how he reacted, made him run and jump and then swallow radioactive dye so they could study his circulation. Days and endless weeks and years of feeling sick, hurting, vomiting, being exhausted, being stuck in a cage. The Gasman would die before he went back there. Angel would rather have died too, he knew—but she hadn’t had a choice.
“The Hummer’s coming,” the Gasman said under his breath.
“On the right road?”
“Uh-huh. And they’re driving too fast.” The Gasman gave a tight, worried smile.
“They’re not practicing safe driving habits. Tsk. What a shame.”
“Okay, they’re coming up,” the Gasman muttered. “Another quarter mile.”
“Can you see the tarp?”
“No.”
The Gasman watched tensely as the muddied black Humvee sped down the unpaved logging road. “Any second now,” he whispered to Iggy, who was practically vibrating with excitement.
“Hope they’re wearing their seat belts. Not!”
Then it happened.
It was like watching a movie. One second, the boxy black vehicle was tearing along the road, and the next second, it swerved violently to the left with an audible squealing of brakes. It began a slow, graceless series of jerky spins down the road, then gave an unexpected jump toward the trees on one side. It hit the trees at an angle and went airborne, sailing upside down about fifteen feet before landing with a heavy crunching sound.
“Whoa,” the Gasman said softly. “That was incredible.”