GAZZY WAS HOLDING HIS BREATH, cheeks puffed out, belly pushed out, arms at his sides.
“Puffer fish!” Angel guessed. Gazzy shook his head.
“Blister!” said Iggy, poking Gazzy’s cheeks. Gazzy shook his head.
“Knish?” suggested Total. Gazzy shook his head.
“We give up!” Nudge said. “What are you?”
Gazzy let his breath out in a rush. “A grain of rice, cooking!” he said. “Obviously! I started off all skinny, then got bigger and bigger!”
Dylan laughed. “Good one,” he said. “Never would have guessed —”
A high-pitched whistling noise interrupted him and filled the room. Just as everyone was registering the smoking ball on the floor, it exploded.
The explosion was small — a flash of blinding light, followed by a sickening stream of pink smoke. Everyone began coughing, practically retching from the noxious smell.
Then, in the next second, there was a huge crunching noise — from above.
“Scatter!” said Gazzy.
They all fanned out around the edges of the room. Angel motioned to Dylan to keep his back against the wall.
“Oh, God, what is that stuff?” Nudge moaned, coughing into her sleeve.
The shock of the gas cloud rendered them useless as the roof above them was ripped apart with loud splintering noises. Then an inhumanly large, hairy hand grabbed some Sheetrock from the ceiling and tore it away with long, ragged yellow claws.
“Oh, my God,” Nudge breathed. “Is that an Eraser?”
“Everyone, outside!” Angel ordered. It was always better to fight in the air than inside a building, and the smoke felt crippling. But as the flock raced for doors and windows, those doors and windows crashed inward, followed by the hulking, horribly familiar forms of Erasers.
It was like waking up into a nightmare of the past.
“Dinnertime!” one of the Erasers growled, and the others laughed — the same way the flock had heard so many times before. Their wolfish faces were split into ugly yellow-toothed grins, and their small mean eyes glittered with the excitement of the hunt. There were at least ten of them, and they easily weighed more than two hundred pounds each.
The dogs bravely leaped at the wolfmen first. Akila managed to clamp her jaws around one’s ankle and draw blood before he kicked her away. Total took to the air, flitting around like a big black mutant moth, snarling and snapping, occasionally getting a bite of Eraser flesh.
It was a good distraction. The kids had a second to catch their breath as the smoke began to dissipate. Then instinct kicked in, and in moments they had launched themselves at their attackers.
“They still smell like garbage!” Gazzy yelled, as the first blows were exchanged. He felt like he might barf.
“Okay, now I’m mad!” Iggy shouted.
Angel glanced over to see a thin trickle of blood coming from his nose.
An Eraser lunged at Angel, and she dodged, screaming bloody murder. She grabbed a floor lamp and connected with the Eraser’s heavily boned head, snapping it to one side.
Nearby, Dylan was coughing and gagging from the lingering smoke. And yet he was mercilessly pounding an Eraser, his fists flying almost supernaturally fast. The Eraser was doubled over, unsuccessfully trying to block the blows.
So, the new bird kid had been programmed to fight.
The rest of them were even better trained to fight Erasers, but with the desperate impulse to keep their arms in front of their noses and mouths, they started to lose ground.
One Eraser grabbed Nudge and held her in a death grip even though she screamed and kicked with all her might. A second jumped behind her and grasped her wings brutally.
He was getting ready to break them.
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