Thanks go to all of those who reviewed! This is definitely the most successful of my stories so far. Or the most well-liked. Same thing, I think. You guys are so awesome. Honestly. :D
Disclaimer: I own Maximum Ride about as much as I own a million dollars…which I'm nowhere near having. Believe me, if I had a million dollars, I'd be typing this up on a computer screen as big as my bedroom wall.
Quote isn't mine either. randomperson, your review reply is at the bottom. :)
In Reverence
Chapter Five
Devastation, obliteration
Are all in a part of exacerbation
There's no explaining my situation
Now why does this keep happening to me?
— The Curse
Once, when he was very little, Iggy had insulted an Eraser. He had been angry and scared, and in his little-boy mind all he'd wanted was to show the wolf-monsters how horrid they were.
About three hours before, an older boy had been brought in and his cramped cage placed next to Iggy's own. The boy had been covered with some sort of putrid fur that he later found out was mold. His clumpy skin had literally been falling off his bones. But he could speak, and he was nice to Iggy in the three hours they were together, and so Iggy made his very first friend.
Maybe an hour after they'd met, the boy had started choking on the blood that welled up through his throat. Iggy had been too scared to help him and could only watch for the next two hours as his new friend struggled to stay awake. Then, the Erasers had come in. They saw the boy drowning in a puddle of his own blood and had laughed. And laughed. And laughed, all through Iggy's desperate, furious little-boy shouts, all the way up until the boy's gurgling died away and he lay still and decaying in the cage next to Iggy.
It took a moment for reality to sink in. And then he realized: his friend wasn't going to come back to him.
In a rage, he'd shouted. He'd called the Erasers names, using words he'd only heard them spit out when an experiment tried to retaliate. It didn't matter to him if his shouts did not make sense. He only wanted to let them know that they were awful.
The Erasers hadn't liked that one bit. If he tried to call back the memory, Iggy could still feel their grasping hands around his throat, their heavy boots leaving imprints on his stomach and chest. And all the while they would laugh, and laugh, and laugh.
He hated their laughter more than anything else in the world.
Now, pinned to a hospital bed and having the life squeezed out of him, Iggy couldn't help but get the feeling that he was about to relive one of his worst memories all over again.
"Hey, birdie," the Eraser hissed into Iggy's face. Iggy grimaced and tried to turn his head away. The monster's breath smelled of death.
"How're those wings doing?"
And the laughter would not stop.
Iggy lifted his leg. He lashed out with his foot where he thought the Eraser's chest was and was rewarded with a short oomph of pain. The grip around his throat tightened, making his head spin and his lungs scream for air.
"Not that easy to get rid of me, kiddo," admonished the Eraser. "You'll have to try harder than that."
"Let him go!"
The Eraser froze at the sound of Angel's voice. Her words were thick and mottled with what was probably blood, and Iggy felt a hot flash of anger.
"I said," Angel ground out, all six-year-old fury and menace, "you're gonna let him go."
The Eraser made a confused sound in the back of its throat and Iggy felt its thick, hairy fingers falling away from his neck. He immediately pushed the hand away and scrambled back onto the bed, gasping and coughing.
"Stay there," Angel said, still using her odd, low voice. "Don't move. Iggy."
"Wh-what?" he croaked, wincing at the pain.
"Let's go. We have to find — no, wait — Iggy, run!"
Iggy heard the Eraser roar and instinctively ducked. The air whistled above his head as the Eraser's fist swept over him and he rolled off the bed. Wires and suction cups tore away as he moved. The slick floor met his shoulder with enough force to make it feel like every inch of his tattered wings had been shattered. For one disorienting, agony-filled moment, all he could hear was the high-pitched ringing in his head.
He felt Angel's hands clutching his arm and heard her shrieking orders at the Eraser. Angel tugged at his arm, pulling him to his feet where he swayed, dizzy.
"Come on, Iggy, come on! Please!"
"Trying," he managed to growl, and stilled his head. The floor stopped rolling beneath his feet.
"I said don't move!" Angel said, and it took him a moment to realize that she wasn't talking to him. He could hear the Eraser's labored, angry breathing. Hot gusts of the monster's stench blasted him every time the Eraser exhaled, making Iggy's hair stand on end. The Eraser was so close, if he reached out and leaned forward a little, he'd be able to touch it.
"Come on, Iggy. We have to get back to the others."
Iggy nodded and shuffled forward. The floor stole the remaining warmth from his bare feet and the air that shifted through the thin hospital gown he wore lifted goose bumps on his skin. He kept all of his senses attuned directly on the Eraser. If it broke free of Angel's control and charged, he would have to grab her and run as fast as he could…he didn't know the layout of the hospital but he was sure if he kept running, he'd reach Max and the others eventually…
He was so focused on the Eraser that he didn't register the clipped footfalls heading towards them until they reached the door and their owner pushed through.
Iggy spun with Angel, instincts bred of a hundred nights of pain screaming at him to run. The person had stopped in his tracks and Iggy heard his mouth opening and closing wetly.
"Wh…what on Earth?"
Human. Not Eraser. The doctor Dr. Martinez had spoken about.
The Eraser's resulting roar nearly shattered his eardrums. Iggy grabbed Angel around the waist, hoisted her into the air, and pushed past the terrified doctor to stagger outside the room. He heard the doctor scream once back inside, sharp and high, but the shriek was cut off almost immediately. Something crashed to the floor and broke noisily. Iggy spun around, the blood throbbing in his ears, and darted to his right.
"Where are we?" he asked Angel frantically.
"Keep going," she replied, clutching onto his forearm. "It's a long hallway, and there's a left turn at the end —"
"Get back here, freak!" The Eraser bellowed. It was so close Iggy's pounding heart froze a split second in his chest.
"Keep running!" Angel cried. "We're almost there. Someone! Help us!"
"Angel!"
"Max!"
Iggy's heart soared at the sound of Max's voice. He could hear the flock pounding down the hallway towards them, a rumbling swell of what could only be more Erasers hounding their every sprint. He swallowed the pain in his throat and forced his anesthetic-weakened, burning legs to go faster, faster, almost there —
The Eraser grabbed the base of his mutilated wing and pulled back so hard Iggy was jerked off his feet. He let go of Angel; he dimly heard her shriek in surprise and fear, but the white-hot pain that ripped through his shoulders and back quickly deadened him to the world. He barely even felt himself hit the floor.
Breathe, breathe! Iggy reminded himself, forcing his heaving lungs to take in more air. He lay sprawled on the floor, head rolling limply, feeling himself slipping off the sharp edge of consciousness.
No. Stay awake, he ordered himself. He heard someone, something, laughing maniacally above him. The grating sounds were familiar: an Eraser. The Eraser was laughing again, and it wasn't alone. Its brethren cackled and growled with glee, a rising cacophony of wolfish malevolence.
Iggy flinched. Phantom talons grasped at his bruised neck.
I hate it when they laugh, hate it, hate it, hate it…
"Don't move, freaks," the Eraser snarled. Iggy heard something click — gun — and Max let out a feral growl.
"Iggy?" Angel's voice came weakly through the fog surrounding him. "Iggy?"
"Shut up!"
The Eraser jerked on Iggy's wing again and he heard someone scream.
Oh…that was…was that me?
"Stop it!" He had never heard Fang sound so angry before. "If you're going to try and kill us, do it already! But leave him alone!"
"Why? Because he's the weakest one in your pathetic little group? I guess you're right. You've all been slated for termination, and the weakest are always the first to go…"
The laughter…it scalded his ears. Iggy tried to lift his hands to cover them, but his arms were so heavy…
"Iggy's not weak!" Nudge said furiously. "He's stronger than any of your thugs!"
"Really?" The Eraser's tone danced with the beginnings of an incredulous chuckle. Iggy tried to brace himself. He knew that tone and what it meant. It was the same tone this Eraser had taken when he'd told it he would kill it if it hurt his friends.
The Eraser had promptly dug its claws into his wings.
The grip on the base of his wing shifted and he was lifted to his unsteady feet. His head buzzed as if filled to the brim with furious bees.
"Should I show your friends just how strong you are?" The Eraser hissed into his ear. Gathering what little control over his limbs he had, Iggy lashed out with his elbow and struck the monster deep in its abdomen.
A gargantuan fist drove itself into his stomach in reply. Iggy gasped and doubled over, arms encircling his middle. The sharp movement pulled at the suspended muscles in his back and the base of his wings. Heat seared the back of his head. He knelt on the cold floor, shaking and gasping for breath.
"Don't look now," the Eraser said in a taunting whisper only he could hear, "but your so-called friends are just standing there with queasy expressions on their faces. You call them your family? They just stand by while I hit you over and over again!"
Twice the Eraser repeated the word, and twice its unforgiving fist came bearing down on Iggy's bowed back. He clumsily tried to move away and was rewarded with a vicious kick to the side of his head. His head snapped to the side. Blood dripped from his split bottom lip.
Someone let out an agonized sob.
"Please, stop it!" Angel pleaded. "Stop hurting him!"
Iggy swallowed a clump of blood and lifted his ringing head. His sightless eyes searched frantically for Max. Max would help him. She would make everything better. She always did.
"M-Max," he said, his leader's name garbled by the crimson fluid in his mouth. "Max, help…"
Please...do something!
"Pathetic." The Eraser's hateful comment mirrored Iggy's own silent acknowledgment. He felt the light brush of air as something lifted past his face, and then there was a faint pressure on his most undamaged wing.
"No," he heard Nudge breathe.
His heart sped in his chest at the terror in her voice. "Nudge?" he questioned, forgetting to wince at the fear in his own tone. "What…?"
The object pressed harder into his wing. Ice burst in his chest as Iggy realized what it was. He'd felt the sharp, circular shape jammed against his flesh too many times not to recognize it.
The Eraser was holding a gun to his crippled wing.
No. No, please, don't!
He tried to form the plea on blood-drenched lips, but all his panic-stricken throat could muster was a weak, "No…"
"No!" The gun dug so hard into his wing that Iggy instinctively flinched, half expecting to feel a hole being torn in what was left of the limb. There was no sharp bang in his ears. The Eraser had only been so shaken with the force of its laughter that it had moved the gun deeper against his wing.
"No!" The Eraser repeated. It almost choked on its laughter. Iggy raised a shaking hand to his ears.
Make it stop, make the laughter stop…
"Well, aren't we the most pathetic freak the world's ever seen? You know, there's a reason I hate your kind so much. Other than instinct, of course. You think you're so special. You escaped the School and lived to tell the tale for years. No one's ever done that before. You're extraordinary! That's what you think! Except you're not."
The gun bit so hard into Iggy's maimed wing that he had to clench his jaw to keep a whimper from falling out. The Eraser's words were so filled with hate that Iggy was surprised the creature didn't burst with the force of its loathing.
"You're not, because you're a failure. All of you are failures, but you birdie, you're the most useless of them all. You're blind. You need someone to guide you every step of the way. Because you can't see, you're a liability in fights. You're always getting in the way. And now you can't even perform the most basic of requirements. You can't even fly. If any of your group deserves death, it's you."
It was like the Eraser had read his mind, reached deep beneath the surface and clutched at the black thoughts that circled in his thoughts like a persistent plague. To hear those thoughts spill from that putrid mouth, and said with such hatred…
Iggy gritted his teeth, anger brought on in the face of devastation. "Then why can't you just leave me alone? You yourself said that without my wings, I'm useless. I can't fight anymore. So why do you keep coming after me?"
The gun clicked ominously against his threadbare feathers. "I've been ordered to kill you," the Eraser replied coldly. "And if I want to do it slowly, then I will. So I'm going to. I'm going to kill you, bit by bit, and make your little family watch. And for starters…I'm going to destroy your wings."
"NO!"
Looking back on it later, Iggy couldn't be sure whether it had been him who shouted or someone else in the flock. All he knew was that at that moment, the Erasers had screamed in rage and surprise, and his family had finally begun to fight again.
Strong footsteps broke away from the mess of battle cries and hurtling fists and pounded towards him. He heard Max calling his name. Her beloved voice neared him at a demonic speed.
The Eraser howled its fury. Iggy lifted his hands in defense. Max crashed into him.
The gun fired.
A/N: Please leave a review on your way out. It would make this authoress very, very happy.
And yes, I realize that I am being unbelievably evil. Sorry, Iggy. Sorry, flock. Sorry, readers. (Or is the evil cliffhanger appealing to you? ;D)
randomperson: What's longish to you? Seven, eight chapters? Ten? I don't know if I'll be able to go that high with this story, but we'll see. Erasers follow the flock wherever they go. It's okay, though. Their annoying bloodlust makes them the perfect henchmen-like villains.
Thanks for reading!
-Kimsa
