The hot part went okay. The hot part and the Gulp not moving her head with a dragon equivalent of "ugh" part. It was still a sensationally stupid thing to do. Like maybe telepathy works better with a conductor, like those tin-can telephones you maybe made (if you were poor, or lived out in the middle of nowhere, or both) when you were a kid. They don't really work very well, but that they work at all is weirdly exciting (if you're pathetic enough to have made them, then you'll probably find them exciting, okay?). I started thinking at her. I guess I started out thinking words, as if I was talking to her, but words aren't really all that good, you know, one picture is worth a thousand, etc., and especially if you don't speak the same language, and while maybe dragons had been keeping up their English since they spent all that time with Old Pete (and he says in his journals he used to talk to his dragons, although his never talked back), there's a limit, I guess, to what an insane whim will stretch to.
And there are so many times when words are nowhere near enough even when you're talking to an ordinary human person who speaks the same language. And that's even when you're talking to someone who knows you well and knows almost everything about you, like Dad or Billy or Kit or Katie or Martha knows me. I didn't deliberately shift over to pictures, talking (or whatever) to Gulp, but I did, since I was in my head anyway and could do what I liked and it was all either crazy or imaginary so who cared.
And then it really started getting weird. The pictures started like going through my head faster than I was thinking them, like they were getting sucked out of me; but as they went they were getting all distorted. Not like Dad suddenly had six legs or Billy was eight feet tall and green, just . . . I don't know. But you know how sometimes when two of you who were there start to tell a story to a third person who wasn't, and you keep laughing because it's like you're telling two different stories and one of you is crazy? It was a little like that. And if I wasn't imagining it, well, a dragon's point of view and attitude would be a lot different from a human's, wouldn't it?
But what was the dragon perspective doing to my story?
By the time I got to the guys in black with the machine guns and the helicopter — and why I was imagining guys in black with machine guns I don't know, too many TV shows at too young an age I suppose — I had a headache so bad I could hardly bear to keep thinking at all, and the pictures I was making seemed to rip at me as they were pulled away — a little like skinning a sunburned arm, only worse — and with every picture the Headache got even worse and worse and worse. I suppose that's why I didn't hear the two-way immediately. I might not have heard it at all except that I noticed that Lois had stopped humming. My brain (or my Headache) was thundering in my ears so hard I couldn't hear her either, but my legs had stopped vibrating — and my hip had started (vibrating). Even Gulp shifted her head very slightly — not enough to shake my tentative hand though. And there was the hiccupping brrrr that was the two-way asking for me to answer it.
I seemed to be paralyzed. My brain was doing or having done to it things it didn't understand, and it didn't have any neurons left over for telling my not-on-Gulp's-nose hand to reach down and flip the switch. There's an emergency override for talking when the other person doesn't pick up, if the two-way is at least turned on. I'd left mine turned on. But you'll never believe the voice that screamed out of it though. Eric.
"Jake, can you hear me? Your dad's been pretty well taken hostage, and I'm pretty sure they're monitoring unscheduled use of any two-way which means they'll he coming for me in a minute. They're on their way, and they know you're at Westcamp. I don't know when they left, so you may not have much time. Hell. I didn't expect them . . . I've still got to . . . Do what you have to do, Jake. Can you — " And there was a clatter and thump and that was all.
But there was something else too, which I could hear more clearly now that the two-way had gone silent — and after what it had said had sharpened my ears for anything that wasn't wind or dragons. Another sort of buzz or brrrrrr. Distant but coming closer. A sort of heavy, rapid whompwhompwhomp. Unless I was imagining that.
And I would have thought I was imagining it, if it wasn't for Eric. I would have thought I was just being paranoid. I was so used to being paranoid it wasn't even doing its job any more.
No. I wasn't imagining it.
The paralysis splintered like stomped ice and fell away. I shot to my feet, tumbling poor Lois off very roughly. I heard the two-way lose its grip on my belt and clunk to the ground. (The second two-way I'd killed in the business of saving Lois.) I stooped down and picked her up — heaved her up — I could only barely lift her any more, let alone hold her. She gave an anxious, protesting little grunt, but she didn't struggle. Gulp was sitting up by then too, her head stretched up at the end of her long neck — she'd rolled up away from us, so she was now like far away by being the distance of the length of her body, although she'd left most of her tail behind — looking as tall as the Devil's Tower, as if the hard blue of the Smokehill sky was something you could touch, and she was touching it. She was looking — or listening — hard.
When she looked down at me again, from twenty or so feet of neck, I took a step forward, and tried to hold Lois out to her, although my arms were shaking — maybe not only with Lois' weight.
Gulp didn't take Lois away from me though. She took us both.
This is pretty embarrassing, but the first thing I remember about that journey is throwing up. I guess Gulp didn't want to hang around for explanations — or maybe she'd seen helicopters before. We do have the occasional dramatic air rescue at Smokehill, and dragons live a long time. Or maybe my panic vibes were impressive. She scooped us up in her front claws, spread her wings, and left. Dragons are not graceful takers-off — or maybe that was just our weight. And my not being used to flying. Mostly a dragon carrying something as big as us would be carrying a kill, and kills don't care. Also since she didn't have her front feet she kind of bounced along on her hind ones till her wings took over, and her wings took over by going WHAM, WHAM, WHAM, which meant the dragon and any passengers were going JOLT, JOLT, JOLT, with her entire body doing a massive recoil jerk with every wing-beat. Riding in the backseat of a Smokehill jeep has nothing on flying with a dragon. And by the time we were thirty feet in the air I lost it. Breakfast all over the meadow. I wonder what the guys looking for us made of that, if they were doing the on-your-knees forensic-shuffle-for-evidence thing. They were probably looking for blood.
Between my head — which was still throbbing, make that THROBBING — and my stomach I was pretty miserable, but I closed my eyes for a while and the cold air began to help. Like her flying style wasn't ghastly enough, Gulp was corkscrewing around through the landscape — we, I mean us at the Institute, had always assumed that dragons must fly as low as possible sometimes or we'd have had sightings more often. Or more evidence of them walking. But guesses varied about whether this was about energy expenditure or desire to be as inconspicuous as possible for something that runs thirty to eighty feet long, and at the moment it sure felt like she was trying not to be seen. Also her twisting and jinking felt pretty high octane to me and the bigger the predator usually the more energy-conscious it is. (Bleeeeeaaauugh. It was a good thing I didn't have anything left to throw up after the first time or I'd've been leaving a trail.)