Maximum Ride Forever (Maximum Ride 9)

It was time to gather the very last dregs of my energy and head to Russia, thousands of miles north-northeast. The very thought made me want to cry. But first I had to—

“Gah!” I yelled, leaping up and flailing my arms and legs like a maniac. I whipped off my sweatshirt, tore off the undershirt beneath that, and scrambled out of my torn and worn-out jeans. Then I did a chaotic, herky-jerky shivering dance all across the dirt.

The mound I had been sitting on was a termite colony. And those little suckers had survived and were swarming all over me like

white on rice.

“Gross, gross, gross!” I screamed, since no one was around to hear. I whirled and jumped and shook my hair out and rubbed my arms and legs until I seemed to be mostly termite free.

Then, panting, I looked back at my clothes, which were now a living carpet of pale white bugs. I was in my underwear and sports bra. I would not be going anywhere like this. I had a bit of mirror—I could maybe set the bugs on fire? That mirror was… safely in the front pocket of my jeans.

I stomped a couple of times and shouted every swear word I knew, which took almost ten minutes. Then, seething, I glared at the termites. Would they eat my clothes? I stared at the sweatshirt Nudge had given me until my eyes swam with tears and my vision blurred. Once my vision blurred, those stupid bugs looked just like… rice. I remembered that many animals, including humans, ate termites. The flock and I had eaten bugs before. Not termites, but big crickets, locusts, et cetera.

My stomach felt so hollow you could practically see my spine through it.

Time to suck it up, Maximum.

I lunged for my sweatshirt, grabbed it up, and started scarfing termites.

37

TWO HOURS LATER I felt practically cheerful. That termite mound, once huge, was almost flat. I’d found termite nurseries where I could scoop up handfuls of pupae and wolf them down. Once I’d gotten used to the little feet and antennas tickling my throat, I’d started to appreciate their delicate, nutty flavor.

Now I lay flat on the ground, my belly full, my body surging to life with nourishment. “Yes, the African termite,” I murmured sleepily. “A bit tart, piquant, slightly reminiscent of quinoa…

“Ugh, get up, Max. You can rest later. You’re on a mission: You have to find out if whatever happened here is connected to something bigger.” Had anything Nuru and Azizi told me been true, or had they deceived me from the beginning?

So before I went to Russia, I journeyed south, figuring that Tanzania’s biggest city, Dar es Salaam, should be within a couple of hours’ flight.

And it was. Or at least, what I assumed was Dar es Salaam. Basically what I found was a city of ashes.

A large, circular area had been completely razed, with every single building leveled. I didn’t see any people. No corpses, either. Just shadows where everything had been incinerated—buildings, cars, and citizens, all together.

Away from the center, a few buildings were still partially standing—mostly the ones made of concrete. I flew to the top of one of them to get a better view, and I saw that its roof tiles had bubbled and blistered.

On the next block, a high-rise hotel looked like it had buckled at the knees—the lower floors had collapsed into a pile of rubble, with the untouched penthouse now balancing on top of it.

What happened here?

I was almost positive it wasn’t a natural disaster. It looked more like pictures of Hiroshima after World War II.

“But who would do this?” I wondered aloud. As far as I knew, Tanzania hadn’t been any kind of global threat. “Why here?”

“The Remedy does not discriminate.”

I whipped around at the sound of the deep voice and almost gasped: A giant of a man stood watching me. I have extra-good hearing—how had he gotten so close?

“Paris, Hong Kong, New York, here… All the world’s people must answer for crimes against the earth.”

“Who are you?” I asked sharply. And, more important, “Who is the Remedy?”

I remembered the word from the conversation on Fang’s blog. We’d thought it was a vaccine, maybe for the H8E virus. But this guy talked about it like it was a person, or some other kind of entity.

“Maximum Ride,” the broad-faced man said, ignoring my questions. “You seem to have lost your flock. The Remedy doesn’t like loose ends.”

“I’m starting to think me and this Remedy dude wouldn’t really get along.”

The giant may have been freakishly huge, but he couldn’t fly. I started to spring, but he was amazingly fast, and he batted me back down to the broken tiles with his massive fist as if I were a fly.