"One of them managed to clip me with some shot, if you can believe that," I said, inching closer.
Ella gasped and put her hand over her mouth. "Oh, no! Why didn"t you tell me? You"re hurt? Why didn"t you go to the hospital? Oh, my gosh, come on in!"
She stepped back to give me room and urged Magnolia, who had lumbered over and started sniffing my wet clothes with interest, away from me.
Guess what. I hesitated. Here was the moment of decision. Until I stepped into that house, I could still turn and run, escape. Once I was in that house, it would be much harder. Call it a little quirk of my personality, but I tend to freak out if I feel trapped anywhere. We all do-the flock, I mean. Living in a cage during your formative years can do that.
But I was honest enough with myself to know that I really couldn"t go on like this-wet, cold, starving, and a little wonky from loss of blood. I had to suck it up and accept help. From strangers.
"Are your parents home?" I asked.
"There"s just my mom," said Ella. "No dad. Come on, let"s get you inside. My mom can help. Magnolia, here, girl." Ella turned and strode toward the house. She clomped up wooden steps, then turned and looked for me. "Can you walk okay?"
"Uh-huh." Slowly, I headed toward Ella"s small house, which was glowing with warmth and light. I felt light-headed and panicky. This could be the last huge mistake in a long line of huge mistakes I had already made today.
I cradled my hurt arm with my good one.
"Oh, my G.o.d-is that blood?" Ella said, staring at my pale blue sweatshirt. "Oh, no, come on, we have to get you inside quick!" She shoved the door open with her shoulder, almost tripping on Magnolia, who trotted in quickly. "Mom! Mom! This girl needs help!"
I felt frozen. Stay or run. Stay or run. Stay?
30.
"You think that wire will hold?" the Gasman whispered.
Iggy nodded, frowning as he twisted the two cable ends together with pliers. He leaned against a pine tree for leverage, and when the wire was tight, he snapped on a cable clamp and pinched it shut. "That"ll hold a bit," he whispered back. "Until a certain Hummer hits it at top speed."
The Gasman nodded grimly. What a night. They had gotten so much done-Max couldn"t have done better herself. He hoped Max had already rescued Angel by now. He hoped nothing had gone wrong. If the whitecoats had gotten hold of Angel . . . For just an instant he saw her, white and lifeless, laid on a cold steel slab while whitecoats lectured about her unusual bone structure. He swallowed and shook the dreadful image off. Once more, he glanced around, listening.
"Back home?" Iggy whispered.
"Yeah." Standing up, the Gasman pushed off from the ground, staying close to the trees. He followed Iggy"s dark shadow as he braked and headed back west, toward home. From up here, the Gasman couldn"t see any of their handiwork-which was a good thing. They didn"t want the Erasers" chopper to be able to pick out the tarp or the trip wire until it was too late.
"We covered the ways in and out," he said to Iggy once they were at cruising height. "Oil slick, nails in the road, trip wire. That should do it."
Iggy nodded. "I"m b.u.mmed we couldn"t use Big Boy," he said. "But I don"t want to waste it. We have to actually see them first. I mean, you you do." do."
"Maybe tomorrow," the Gasman said encouragingly. "We"ll go out and see what havoc we"ve wreaked."
"Wrought," said Iggy.
"Whatever," said the Gasman, breathing deeply in the cool night air. Wait till Max found out how cool they had been.
31.
A dark-haired woman with worried eyes opened the door wider. "What is it, Ella? What"s wrong?"
"Mom, this is-" Ella stopped, her hand in midair.
"Max," I said. Why didn"t I give a fake name? Because I didn"t think think of it. of it.
"My friend Max. She"s the girl I told you about, the one who saved me from Jose and Dwayne and them. She saved me. But they shot her."
"Oh, no!" exclaimed Ella"s mother. "Please, Max, come in. Do you want me to call your parents?"
I stood on the doormat, reluctant to drip rain, and blood, on their floor. "Um . . ."
Then Ella"s mom saw my bloodstained sweatshirt, and her eyes flew to my face. My cheek was scratched, one eye was black. The whole situation changed in that instant.
"Let me get my stuff," she said gently. "Take off your shoes and go with Ella to the bathroom."
I sloshed down the hallway in my wet socks. "What stuff is she going to get?" I whispered.
Ella turned on a light and ushered me into an old-fashioned bathroom with green tiles and a rust ring around the sink drain.
"Her doctor stuff," Ella whispered back. "She"s a vet, so she"s good with injuries. Even on people."
A vet! I started laughing weakly and had to sit down on the edge of the tub. A vet. Wait till they found out how appropriate that was.
Ella"s mom came in with a plastic box of first aid supplies. "Ella, maybe you could get Max some juice or something. She probably needs some sugar and fluids."
"Juice would be great, great," I said with feeling.
Ella nodded and hurried down the hall.
"I take it you don"t want me to call your parents?" Ella"s mom said softly, starting to cut away the neck of my sweatshirt.
"Uh, no." h.e.l.lo, lab? May I speak to a test tube, please? h.e.l.lo, lab? May I speak to a test tube, please?
"Or the police, either, right?"
"No need to get them involved," I agreed, then I sucked in my breath as her gentle fingers found the wound on my upper arm. "I think the bullet only grazed me."
"Yes, I think you"re right, but it"s pretty deep and messy. And over here-" I sat frozen, staring straight ahead, as all my senses tensed. I was taking a huge risk here. You have no idea how huge. I had never, ever let someone outside the flock see my wings. But this was one situation I couldn"t fix by myself. I hated hated that. that.
Ella"s mom frowned slightly. She finished cutting the neck and then stretched the shirt off, leaving me in my tank top. I sat there like a statue, feeling a chilled coldness inside that had nothing to do with being wet.
"Here." Ella handed me a big gla.s.s of orange juice. I practically choked, trying to drink it down as fast as possible. Oh, my G.o.d, it was so good.
"What"s-" Ella"s mom said, her fingers skimming along the edge of my wing where it folded and tucked into an indentation next to my spine, between my shoulder and my waist. She leaned over to see better.
I stared at my wet socks, my toes clenching.
She turned me slightly, and I let her.
"Max." Her dark brown eyes were concerned, tired, and upset, all at once. "Max, what is this?" she asked gently, touching the feathers that were just barely visible.
I swallowed hard, knowing that I had just lost any hope for a normal connection with Ella and her mom. In my mind I reviewed the house layout: a right down the hall, a quick left, and through the front door. It would take only a few seconds. I could do it. I could probably grab my boots on the way out too.
"It"s a . . . wing," I whispered. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ella frown. "My, um, wing." Silence. "It got hurt too."
I took a deep breath, 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. wing. No biggie. 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 teta.n.u.s 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, 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! 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. incredible."
"You have two seconds to give me the picture," Iggy said irritably.
"It hit the oil, all right. It spun, hit the trees, and did a flip," the Gasman told him. "Now it"s on its back, like a big, ugly, dead beetle."
"Yes!" Iggy punched the air, making their branch sway. "Signs of life?"
"Uh . . . oh, yeah. Yeah, one of them just punched out a window. Now they"re climbing out. They look pretty dang mad. They"re walking, so they"re not that hurt." The Gasman wanted the Erasers out of the picture, so he wouldn"t have to worry about them anymore. At the same time, he wasn"t sure how he would feel if they had actually died.
Then he remembered that they had taken Angel.
He decided he was probably okay with them suffering a life-threatening accident.
"Shoot." Iggy sounded disappointed. "Any point in dropping Big Boy on them right now?"
The Gasman shook his head, remembered Iggy couldn"t see it, and said, "I don"t think so. They"re talking on walkie-talkies. Now they"re heading straight into the woods. We"d probably cause a huge forest fire or something."
"Hmm." Iggy frowned. "Okay. We need to regroup, come up with Phase Two. How about we hang at the old cabin for a minute?"
"Cool," said the Gasman. "Let"s go. We"ve done enough good for one day."