CHAPTER FOUR: I Accidently Glued The Keys In The Ignition
Roger, though not too pleased with it, headed back down to the ground to retrieve Ralph's car. It's a good thing Ralph had left it behind today; the school was within walking distance, and so was the grocery. It's also a good thing, at least in this instance, that Roger happened to be a master pick-pocket. I couldn't think of any situation other than this one where I'd praised Roger for swiping Ralph's keys.
We kept a close eye on the used, silver Jetta as it cruised below us. We dove around the buildings, trying to keep out of sight. Luckily, no one on the ground or in the many apartment complexes noticed us. It was hard to believe people were so ignorant of the things going on around them.
Suddenly, my pocket beeped. I fished around for my cell phone and pulled it out mid-flight, pushing the green button that let me talk and holding it to my ear without checking the caller ID.
"Hello, this is Jack." I announced.
"JACK-YOU ARE—WHAT'S GOING—I'M GOING TO KILL YOU!" I recognized it as Ralph's voice immediately, even through all the wind and the static.
"Hold on, Ralph." I laughed, "We'll have to talk in person. You're breaking up pretty bad."
"WHAT? I COULDN'T HEAR YOU!" I held the receiver away from my ear and dropped back in our formation a bit. Boy, he was loud! I bet Roger was throwing a fit right now.
"Just wait, okay? We'll talk when we stop!" I shouted back. Then, to avoid further argument, I hung up and switched the phone off, throwing it back in my pocket. I rolled my eyes and caught up with Max at the head of the line again. It was difficult to avoid getting whipped in the face by her wings at first. She was clearly enjoying having her wings back to full health; I could tell she missed flying, even when she was at our apartment. The way she glanced out the window, even when the TV was on, and the way she stayed up late just to go out on the balcony and feel the wind at night, told all.
"What's up?" Max sharply asked when I got close enough, trying to steer clear of her eagle feathers.
"Roger has Ralph. You're in the lead now." I told her.
"Oh." She said back, "Thanks. We just keep going, I guess. Can they follow us from down there?"
"I think so."
"Alright. Let's keep going."
So, we followed Max. I'm not sure what lead us out of the apartment in the first place actually, and it hit me suddenly in that single moment. Certainly, it wasn't only because Simon and Maurice would miss her…I WAS tempted by the adventure of it; lured out of the confines of our safe house by promises I wasn't even sure would be fulfilled. There was that age-old question though, that bit out the back of my mind. No matter how much I denied it, I was curious about where I'd come from. If I found out who created us, I felt as if everything would make sense again. It would be like flying…maybe better. It's not like I wanted parents though. They would just hold me back.
"Hey, Jack." Simon said as the skyscrapers faded behind us and the Jetta below became fully visible for the first time. We were able to fly over it now without worries. "What do you think of the country? I've never seen so much grass…"
"It's okay, I guess." I verbally shrugged. "Flying is more exciting though."
"That's true." Simon smiled, "You know, I've never really flown before. Last time, when I was younger, you guys just held me by my shirt collar in the air. Those experiences gave my bad vibes about it ever since…It's much better than that."
"Oh yeah." I laughed, "You were three then. Wouldn't stop crying for the life of you…I sometimes miss those days."
"Me too."
Things went like that for some time. We just flew, not thinking about it really, the volkswagon marking a little trail beneath our hands and feet as the pavement turned over to dirt and gravel, maybe making the occasional small-talk. I didn't mark the exact passing of time, but before I knew it the sun was sinking below the horizon, and the sky we surfed on had been tinted pink.
"We should probably stop soon!" Max shouted above the roar of the wind in our ears, "Just as soon as we find a good patch of trees! Keep your eyes opened!"
"…Did she say trees?" Maurice muttered, "Why trees?"
"You sleep in them, dumbass." Roger remarked from the side. He'd left Ralph to driving the car since we hit the countryside, and seemed to be enjoying himself. His wings, I noticed for the first time, had a stranger curve to them than the rest of ours did, and they whistled whereas ours were quiet. I turned my ear slightly to his direction and listened carefully. It sounded like a hawk, screaming faintly before descending on its prey.
"What?! You sleep in trees?!" Maurice exclaimed, almost falling out of the air. I stifled a laugh. That didn't mean I was any less alarmed.
"Get used to it." Max shot at him.
"I like sleeping outside." Roger scoffed, "It's better than those sorry excuses for beds we have back home at least." Without waiting for a smart reply, he banked sharply to the right and put the formation out of his way. His wings were motionless as he flew. That's when I realized what he was doing; Roger was riding the air currents. That took a lot of talent. Maybe those evenings of sneaking out of the apartment hadn't been in vain after all. The whistling still bothered me though. I'd have to ask him about that.
"Up ahead." Max suddenly announced, "There's a copse over there that will do." I followed her gaze and could just make out the patchy forest in the distance and fading light. "Someone phone Ralph and tell him we're stopping."
"Got it." Maurice offered. He whipped out his phone, nearly dropped it, then hurriedly texted our follower below. He updated a moment later: "Alright, he'll follow us into the grass. He says he doesn't mind. His tires are shredded to hell now anyway."
"Good." Max motioned with her finger quickly. Simon and I exchanged a confused glance. Then, Max spiraled down in front of us and aimed for the ground. We all just watched in amazement, trying to figure out what in the high heavens Maximum Ride was doing.
"You guys plan on sleeping in the air?" Roger sighed, suddenly back with the group.
"N-no!" I stammered.
"Then, land already, retard."
"…"
"Oh, you gotta be joking!" He laughed, like we'd left a pleasant surprise on his doorstep. "You forgot how to land! Watch and learn."
I'm not quite sure, to this very day, that I've ever seen any of us land like Roger does. I don't know if it's because he's the only one who can pull it off, or he's just stupid and dangerous like that, but either way…
He completely folded his wings in and tore through the air. I thought he was going to crash at first, and the whistling in his wings had turned to screaming, but just as he came within touch of the ground, he unfolded his wings again and stopped himself, touching down on the grass with a single foot. I gawked in amazement. He met my gaze proudly.
"Don't do that!" Max yelled up at us, "You'll tear your wings right off! Do it like I did!"
"Okay." I said uneasily, mostly to myself.
I could tell this was going to be a long journey.
…..
The night was fitful, to say the least. I couldn't really ever imagine myself sleeping in the branches of a tree, of all places. It was terribly uncomfortable, and the cold never seemed to leave me alone. Maybe, someday, after enough of this, I would get used to it. That is, if I ever made it that far.
"sigh."
Nobody answered. I shifted against the rough bark of the evergreen and rustled my feathers around me. I didn't think it could any colder. Even my breath protested against the drop in temperature, billowing out in puffy plumes. I shivered and squinted my eyes; night vision had never been my thing. Roger and Simon had a knack for it though, and apparently Max and all of her flock did too. From what I was able to gather, my whole 'family' was created way before Max's was. That's probably why all of us were so much more…unstable? Unfounded? I'm not sure what wording you would use in this situation. It's not like we were insane, we had just always felt a little too comfortable around humans, a little too fuzzy in the mind.
Now that I think about it, I didn't even remember anything before my twelfth birthday. That was the day I broke out of the School, four years ago.
With that in my mind, I tried to settle in and get some shut eye. It took a while, but with a warmth of re-assurance, I felt myself slipping away.
….
I woke up.
I was fresh, new, yet I ached. Who am I? What am I? I stretched out my hands, my legs, my wings, strapped against my back and unable to go any farther than a few centimeters. My breaths were ragged, my eyes were hollow. I felt the darkness in front of me with curious fingers, gripped the metal bars of my confines. Rage built me up. Why I felt this way, I did not know.
But, I wanted to be free.
"AAAGH!" I cried out, furious. Words flowed into my mind, freshening the hatred into tangible thoughts. "LET ME OUT!"
"Jack, shut the hell up." A tiny, yet hissing, voice demanded, "S-some of us are tr-trying to get-t some ss-sleep here!"
"Roger, he's gone mad." A different voice, even smaller, piped up, "What are we going to do now!? He's gone mad, Roger, mad as a fox!"
"You d-don't ev-ven know-w what a f-fox is-s." The first speaker, the one with the awful stutter, shot back, "S-so yo-ou need-d t-to sh-shut up too."
"uh?" A young child's voice questioned.
"Nothing, Simon." The second voice, Maurice, cooed, "Go back to sleep. We're just having an argument."
The third voice didn't speak up again. Instead, the first took up its plaintive whines.
"Jack, y-you ass-s-hole! Wh-why can't you-u j-just-t go to slee…ee…"
"What's wrong, Roger?" Maurice asked curiously. I turned an ear, curious as to what exactly was going on here. These people sounded familiar, and I knew their names, as well as excepted that they were… 'friends'… but, as to what they were like, I couldn't remember. So, I'd just have to figure it out by listening.
"…I…"
"What?"
"ah…I…AAAAAAAAAAUUUUIGHHH!" He let out a cry so shrill it cut through my ears. I clasped my head in pain as the boy in the cage next to me continued to scream bloody murder. It truly sounded like someone was killing him.
"Roger!" Maurice tried to calm, "Roger, stop it! What's happening!? Roger, what are they doing to you!? ROGER!"
"Roger?!" I called, though I'm not quite sure what good it would do if I couldn't reach him, "Roger? Are you okay?"
The screaming continued.
"Mo!" The third voice came back into the picture once more, calling on Maurice with a toddler's squeal, "Kinoo de ting!"
"What?!" Maurice yelled back, "Oh, wait…yeah, yeah, gotcha!"
An overwhelming calm dropped down on me like a curtain made of lead. I slumped against the cage bars and my hands found each other. What the…what just happened? In the adjacent cage, the screaming faded. It broke down into heavy panting, then, a thump as Roger fell.
"Are you okay?" I repeated, more for the sake of saying something than anything else.
"…no."
"What happened?" Maurice asked quietly. His concentration was obviously somewhere else, probably in whatever the young Simon had him do.
"Just another thing." Roger muttered.
"Oh…" Maurice sighed, "Wait, Roger! Your stutter is gone!"
"d-damn it-t!" Roger shouted back, "Y-you know-w ev-very time you ment-tion it th-the st-stutter comes-s back-ck!"
"Yeah. I think it's cool." Maurice admitted.
"It's-s-s n-not-t!"
"Hey, whatever fun we can have here is up for grabs." Maurice said, "Ain't that right, Jack?"
"Sure?" I answered, not too confident in anything I had to say at the moment.
"It's something you told me!" Maurice accused, "Remember, when we killed that eraser together? It's the first time we met, I don't know how you could forget it. I certainly haven't!"
"No." Simon muttered, downtrodden.
"Hey, don't pretend like you didn't have fun watching."
"What are we doing?!" I asked no one in particular for no exact reason. This friendly banter in the shadows was making me upset. I rattled at my cage bars violently, pushing against them with my feet. I tried persistently, arrogantly, to stretch and break the straps around my torso, binding my feathers. It seemed so rational that they'd be there, I didn't think twice about their strangeness. "Just sitting around here, talking, when we should be escaping!"
"You have gone batty." Maurice moaned.
"Mad." Simon agreed.
"I-I th-think it's-s a go-od ide-a." Roger affirmed my position, the only one who would. I stopped my struggle in surprise, and just managed to make him out in the darkness as he got back on his knees, having to crouch to fit. His wings were dark and missable, and it seemed that everything about him was just the same. Except for his eyes; they were unmistakably scarlet. "If-f you-u h-h-have a p-lan, I'm-m game."
"…okay. Let me think." I muttered.
The silence after my words seemed to say that everyone agreed with me. I took the time to mull my accumulated thoughts into a bundle, to sort them out. Considering I couldn't remember anything past just a few minutes ago, aside from snippets, it wasn't very much. I tested the strength of my wings against the straps that held them once more. I bet I could break that.
"What happens if our restraints break?" I asked absent-mindedly.
"Then the doctors come in and replace them." Maurice responded, "Why"
"Will they open the cage doors?"
"Most likely."
"Hehehe." Roger chuckled grimly, "I s-see. I like it-t."
"Everyone, try to break your wings free!" I commanded, letting authority seep into my tones, "Then, when they come to replace them, we're breaking out of here! Can Simon manage?" I finally asked. I figured he couldn't, by the size of his voice.
"Maybe. I dunno." Maurice responded for him.
"Well, if he can't, then we'll have to be creative. Nobody gets left behind, got that?"
"G-got it-t."
"Cool."
…...
I came to suddenly, sent gasping out of my dreams. With a start, I realized I had fallen from my perch and landed on the ground. I looked towards the branches above, sitting myself up on an elbow. Seemed as if everyone else had the brains to stay put. I sighed. I always hated memory-dreams. They gave me the jitters.
Well, I thought, I'm certainly not getting any more sleep tonight. Not after that freak show. I vaulted up, using my wings for balance, and started walking through the border of the small wood. There was nothing else to do' plus, it made it seem like I hadn't fallen out of the tree after all. If anyone woke up and saw me, they would just assume I was restless. I didn't want to look lame in front of my flock.
I started humming into the chilly, almost-dawn air. I experimented with different wing positions, walked back to the tree, walked to the car, only to find Ralph missing. He was probably doing the same thing I was, just in a different part of the forest. I decided to go look for him, just giving myself one more small task to complete; something to keep my mind busy and the thoughts and misgivings at bay.
"Hey!" I whispered, testing, "Hey, anyone here?"
"No." Came a teasing reply.
"Ralph?"
"Who else, stupid." He scoffed. I looked around for the source of the voice. It didn't sound too far away, but was still a ways off. "I'm over here." He hinted. I glanced up and laughed. He had gone and climbed a stubby, twisted pine with balding needles. His blonde hair, messy and spiked up some, was a dead give-away in the night.
"What's up?" I asked, leaning against the hood of the car. He looked at me through the arcing wood.
"Me, obviously." Ralph shot back, "Seeing as how I'm kind of stuck in this freaking tree."
"Do you want me to come get you?" I asked.
"No." He insisted, "I can get down myself, when I'm good and ready. Don't worry yourself over it, Jack. Plus, if we're going to be on the run from now on, I might as well learn how to do things myself."
"Fine." I laughed, "But, just what were you doing in said 'freaking tree'?"
"…I don't know." He said, faintly. I could still hear it though.
"That's no answer." I scoffed.
"Well, maybe I just…" He flushed red, and went on, trying to find foot-holds in the rotting, dank bark. "…maybe I wanted to see what it was like."
"You weren't honestly going to sleep in that tree, were you?" I asked skeptically. After a few moments with no response, I asked again, "Were you?"
"So what if I was!?" Ralph replied indignantly.
"Oh, come on, Ralph!" I complained, "You're ridiculous! It's not very comfortable up there, so there's really no reason to make a big fuss over it! Why would you even want to sleep in a damned tree anyway? Hell, I don't even want to."
"Then don't!" He yelled. I could tell he was joking again, but he was still being irrational. I rolled my eyes and frowned.
"One more smart remark and I'll pull you out of that tree by your toes." I told him sternly.
"Come and get me!" He dared. I snorted skeptically. But then: "No, seriously, I'm stuck. I could really use some of that help now, Jack."
I sighed and took off, still not very confident with my landing skills. But, that was a mountain I would climb later, about five minutes to be exact, and now was…well, now. I reached the top of the tree and clung unsteadily to the uppermost branch, sending the whole thing swaying to and fro. Ralph clung on for dear life.
"You just had to do that!" He accused peevishly.
"I didn't know how else to get up here." I stated.
"Geez, just get me down."
"Well," I started, slowly and easily, "I'm not sure…exactly how to do that either…"
"Oh, for the love of…I'll find my own way, then!"
"Didn't you already try that?"
"I might have. I've tried a lot of things." Ralph chuckled, "Sometimes, you just need to try one more time for something to work."
