DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT own Maximum Ride or any of James Patterson's characters.
Wow we are screwed. I thought. Understatement of the century. Glancing around, I took in my surroundings. One, Two, Three… Eighty? Outnumbered; six to about eighty. Crap. Why couldn't the head honchos at the School ever play fair?
I coiled up my leg muscles and sprang into the air. I jumped a few feet over the heads of the snarling Erasers and unfurled my mottled brown wings. One powerful down stroke of my thirteen foot wingspan and I was twenty feet over their wolf-like heads. Soon enough I was putting distance between myself and the Erasers and flying into the horizon. We were pretty close to the ground at only about 500 feet up. I looked back and saw the rest of the flock trailing close behind me; all six faces wearing different levels of anger, surprise, and fear.
"Don't worry guys we are safe now," I assure them, "and besides, we got the food."
"Yeah but we nearly became dog food!" said Iggy. I shot a look but it was lost on him. Iggy is blind.
"I am rolling my eyes, Ig." I informed him.
"I can't wait to sink my teeth into that delicious chocolate bar." said the Gasman.
"Yeah and I can't wait to drink that Coke. Mmm, I love Coke." Nudge said enthusiastically.
"We nearly got killed, Max, but it might have been worth it considering you stole us some chocolate." Fang said.
We flew in silence for the next ten minutes or so enjoying the feeling of the wind whipping our hair and the thin air encompassing us. Free. That's how I can describe it.
Suddenly out of nowhere Angel screamed. I turned around to see Fang dropping like a rock, his eyes closed, blood dripping from his stomach. I had a split second to react before Fang became a bird-kid pancake.
"Iggy, help me!" I yelled to Iggy. We swooped down and caught Fang with about a hundred feet to spare and boy was he heavy. Iggy and I landed in the middle of a corn field and placed Fang on the ground. I put my head to his chest and listened for a heartbeat, my tears staining his dirty black windbreaker.
"Is he breathing?" Iggy asked as the rest of the flock landed.
"Barely." I said with tears streaming down my face, "Come on Fang. Why can't you just live?"
"He got shot," Angel said, "I heard the bullet."
"How could a gun shoot this high up though?" Asked Gazzy who was beginning to look extremely panicked.
"Long range sniper?" Nudge, who was on the verge of tears, suggested.
"Perhaps but I think it might be some new technology made by the school." I said. I listened again for a heartbeat, my head pressed against Fang's chest. I heard his heart, beating more rapidly this time.
"Don't worry he will be okay for now," said Iggy as he tied his windbreaker around Fang's stomach to stop the bleeding. He had already gotten the bullet out.
You may be wondering why we let the blind guy do all this stuff. Well Iggy has over-sensitive fingers and better hearing than all of us. We may be mutant freaks but we are more capable than the average human. We can run really fast (we heal a lot faster than humans too), we have raptor vision (except for Iggy) and great hearing. Oh and we have wings and can fly. All of this was a result of a bunch of cruel genetic experiments preformed on us as embryos in which the evil scientists we like to call whitecoats who grafted avian DNA onto our human DNA leaving us 98% human and 2% bird. Why am I explaining this when you can just read all of the earlier books yourselves if you need to be filled in?
Fang sat up and groaned.
"Wha happe'd?" he mumbled through a mouth full of blood.