Note:
*This is NOT the official Nevermore book and I do not own Maximum Ride, Nevermore, or any of the characters mentioned. Mr. James Patterson does.
*I thought about doing Losing Fang in Fang's POV, but I kind of figured that it would be overkill since I used the basic theme of the end of the book already and I don't want to use the same lines again.
Review:
The first chapter was an alternate ending to Angel, but this what I guess you could call my rendition of Nevermore. Since I absolutely cannot wait until August for the story to continue, I decided to write my own. This is not what I think Nevermore will be or anything like that. Basically, this is an unofficial continuation of the series. Hope you guys enjoy it!
I was right. It did hurt.
The next morning, I woke up in a pine tree. I saw the pinecones and remembered learning about trees a little at the world's worst school back in Virginia. Since I wasn't quite sure how I'd gotten there, I did a quick head count. Gazzy, Nudge, Iggy, Dylan, Ang- oh. That hurt even worse. The tree branch I was nestled on cracked a little when I moved and I froze, hoping it wouldn't snap. Since I'm the leader, I always slept the highest up so I could keep an eye on everyone just in case. In our experience, people normally didn't expect to see si- five bird kids sleeping in a tree, so they were pretty safe. But, as I was perhaps the single most paranoid individual on the planet, I liked to be safe.
Next on the agenda was dealing with the loss of Angel it almost hurt to even think her name and Fang. To be completely honest with you, I wasn't as torn up about Fang as I was about Angel. Don't get me wrong, I still missed Fang a lot although I had come to the realization that we were better off apart. Even though she was sometimes really creepy when she invaded my thoughts, scary when she controlled the thoughts and actions of others, and infuriating when she tried to take over my flock, I still missed the heck out of Angel. I could hardly believe that we'd lost her a mere twelve hours ago (I guessed it was around twelve hours since the sun had just come up), yet it felt like it had been years since. My heart had a dull aching that I knew wasn't about "heal with time" or whatever the saying is.
My thoughts were interrupted by a cone hitting me on the head, seeming to have materialized out of nowhere. I gave a slight start, making a small squeaking noise yes, I, Maximum Ride, actually squeaked because of a pine cone and jerked my head toward the direction the cone had departed from. There, looking back at me with those stunningly beautiful crystal eyes of his, was Dylan. Confused, I looked at him for a second, wondering why he was higher up than me. It was a miniscule detail, but still a little unnerving.
"Morning," he greeted me simply, his voice soft in order to avoid waking the others who slept soundly on their own branches below us. Iggy was snoring softly, Nudge was sound asleep against the enormous trunk of the tree, and Total had curled up next to Gazzy on a branch barely big enough to accommodate the two of them. I groaned in response as I returned fire with a pine cone of my own. He looked like he was about to laugh, but seemed to have thought better of it since he saw my solemn expression. "You okay?" he wondered, seeming genuinely concerned.
What kind of stupid question was that? Of course I'm not okay! I lost one of the few people in the world I cared about more than anything, re-lost my best friend, and I still didn't know where my mom, Ella, or Jeb were. My mouth opened, about to say something smart and quippy, but I closed it and instead answered his question with a sad shake of my head. God, it wasn't even ten o'clock in the morning and I already felt like going back to sleep and not waking up. "Where are we?" the words sounded strange leaving my mouth. Here I was, supposedly the leader, and I didn't know where we were. The last thing I remembered was watching Fang fly off into the sky that had been painted red after the huge explosion that had snatched my Angel my baby away from me.
"A small forest just outside what's left of France," Dylan responded, stretching and flexing his muscles with a tired sigh. He avoided looking at me, knowing he screwed up when he mentioned France. On further examination of the rest of my flock, I concluded that they were all really tired, too. We'd just lost two members of the team and only very recently picked up the one sitting slightly above me, so I totally understood their exhaustion. I could tell that they were all running on empty since they were all almost deathly still. Usually, they all twitch or move somehow in their sleep. Gazzy was the worst about sleepwalking, yet he was the most corpse-like out of the three (four if you count Total). Hey, I didn't blame him. The poor kid had lost his sister the only blood relative he had that we knew about and didn't know if she was dead or alive.
"I'm hungry," I commented, trying not to think about Angel too much. I knew I would have to think about her sooner or later, but now wasn't a good time since my stomach was rumbling big time and I could feel a headache already brewing in my skull. "How about breakfast?" I asked and Dylan nodded, motioning to the rest of the flock with his hand. "Well, of course we're taking them," I assumed that's what his hand gesture meant. I noted a slight fall in his face and was a little irritated. Surely, he didn't think I was about to leave my flock after such a traumatizing day.
Picking up a pine cone, I nodded to it, then to Dylan. He smiled a somewhat mischievous smile and nodded in agreement. In just a few short seconds, it was raining pine cones on the sleeping flock. As a leader, I knew that they needed a good start to the day and I couldn't think of anything better than a good dose of nature given the circumstances. "C'mon, guys! Up and at 'em!" I urged them, unfurling my wings and fluttering down closer to them. Dylan laughed lightly as he dropped a pine cone down, not aiming at anyone in particular.
Nudge was the first to awake. At the slightest touch, she started awake, a habit that had formed from years of being on the run. Her eyes were wide with confusion for a moment before she figured out what was going on and, as expected, launched a pine cone straight at me. Of course, I easily dodged it, but I clutched my chest, yelling, "I'm hit, I'm hit! Man down, man down!" as I dropped a few feet. She laughed and threw a cone at Dylan.
Gazzy and Iggy both woke up at the same time, looked at each other, then at me. With a mysterious grin, Gazzy pulled something out of the bookbag Iggy had apparently snatched from the DG rally. He launched it at me when I wasn't looking and it was a direct hit. A water balloon burst on my back, soaking my feathers. Not again.
"Seriously, guys?" I rolled my eyes in fake annoyance. Really, I was somewhat annoyed, but not enough to chew them out. I knew I had to cut them some slack, so I just tossed a pine cone at Iggy. "Okay, hold your fire!" I yelled, hoping we weren't near a heavily-populated city. The echo of my voice assured me that we weren't. "Who's hungry?" I asked and, as I knew they would, the entire flock's hands all shot up at once. "Alright, where you guys wanna grab some grub?"
Nudge apathetically suggested we eat at a German restaurant, Iggy wanted to find a McDonald's, Dylan was all for whatever I wanted as usual, and Gazzy didn't weigh in. He seemed a little down, obviously over his momentary water-balloon-induced happiness. I caught myself waiting for Fang to shrug and Angel to agree with Nudge. I miss you, Max. Angel's voice startled me and it took me a second to figure out it was in my head. Usually, I could tell when she was sending thoughts to me and when I was just imagining things, so I knew this was only my mind playing a cruel, sick joke on me. My eyes burned with the pricking of tears that had become all too familiar lately. Now you see why I hate emotions?
"Gazzy?" I asked him, needing to get my mind off Angel and Fang. I planned on going to whatever restaurant he suggested since I guessed he felt the worst out of all of us. "Where do you wanna go?" I asked, landing on a branch not far from his.
"I don't care," he answered, turning away from me. I was by no means the touchy-feely, mushy-gushy kind of person, but I wished we were back at my mom's house so I could make him some hot chocolate and follow it up with some TV-watching on his part. He always loved TV... and explosives. Then again, the whole entire country of France being taken off the map might have cured him of that fetish.
"I have an idea," I said, looking at the flock for a second. Somewhat absentmindedly, I made a note to take the flock somewhere special sometime in the near future. God knew these kids deserved it. "How about we walk around town and see what we can find?" I finished, fishing my mom's debit card out of my pocket. Hey, a girl needed to survive, right? They all shrugged and looked various levels of enthusiastic.
Oh, boy. This was going to be harder than I thought.