We sat down low, by the middle of the field, about as far from any exit as we could be. I would have been much happier, or at least slightly less miserable, in the nosebleed section, close to the open sky. Down here, despite the lack of roof on the stadium, I felt hemmed in and trapped.
"Tell me again what we're doing here," I said, running a continuous scan of our surroundings.
Fang popped some Cracker Jack into his mouth. "We're here to watch manly men do manly things."
I followed Fang's line of sight: He was watching the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, who were not doing manly things, by any stretch of the imagination.
"What's going on?" Iggy asked. Unlike the others, he was as tense as I was. In a strange place, surrounded by loud, echoing noise, unable to get his bearings-I wondered how long it would take him to crack.
"If anything happens," I told him, "stand on your chair and do an up-and-away, ten yards out and straight up. Got it?"
"Yeah," he said, turning his head nervously, wiping his hands on his grubby jeans.
"I want to be a cheerleader," Nudge said wistfully.
"Oh, for God's sake," I snapped, but a look from Fang shut me up. It meant, don't rain on her parade. No matter how ill-conceived and sexist that parade might be. Inside, I was burning up. I never should have agreed to this. I was hugely miffed that Fang had insisted on it. Now, watching him practically salivate over the horrifically perky cheerleaders, I got even madder.
"They're wearing tiny little shorts. One of them has long red hair," he was murmuring to Iggy, who nodded, rapt.
And we all know how much you like long red hair, I thought, remembering how it had felt, seeing Fang kiss the Red-Haired Wonder back in Virginia. Acid started to burn a hole in my stomach.
"Max?" Angel looked up at me. I really had to get these kids into a bath soon, I realized, looking at her limp blond curls.
"Yes, honey? You hungry?" I started to wave down a hot-dog vendor.
"No. I mean, yeah, I'll take two hot dogs, and Total wants two too-but I meant, it's okay."
"What's okay?"
"Everything." She looked up at me earnestly. "Everything will be okay, Max. We've come this far-we're supposed to survive. We'll survive, and you'll save the world, like you're supposed to."
Well, reality just shows up sometimes, doesn't it?
"I'm not comfortable in this stadium," I explained, trying to look calm.
"I know. And you hate Fang looking at those girls. But we're still having fun, and Fang still loves you, and you'll still save the world. Okay?"
My mouth was agape, and my brain was frantically trying to process which statement to respond to first-Fang loves me?-when I heard someone whisper, "Is that one of those bird kids?"
7
Angel and I looked at each other, and I saw a world of comprehension in her gaze that made her seem much older than six.
It took only seconds for the rest of the flock to hear the whispers and to realize that the whispers were growing and spreading.
"Mom! I think that's those bird kids we saw in the newspaper!"
"Jason, look over there. Are they the kids in the pictures?"
"Oh, my goodness!"
"Rebecca, come here!"
And so on and so forth. I guess some photographer must have gotten picures of us flying away from Disney World and splashed them all over the newspapers. God forbid we should be able to watch a lousy football game with nothing extreme happening.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two blue-uniformed security men starting down the aisle toward us. A fast 360 revealed no one morphing into Erasers, but there were many eyes on us, many mouths wide open in surprise.
"Should we run?" Gazzy asked nervously, watching the crowd, mapping exit routes like he'd been taught.
"Running's too slow," I said.
"The game hasn't even started," Total said bitterly from under Iggy's seat. "I have money on the Bears!"
"You're welcome to stay here and see how the score ends up." I stood, began grabbing backpacks, counting flock members. The usual.
Total crawled out and jumped nimbly into Iggy's arms.
I tapped Iggy's hand twice. In an instant, we climbed onto our chairs. The muttering of voices was swelling, rising all around us, and the next thing I knew, our faces were twenty feet high, being projected onto the enormous stadium screens. Just like Fang had wanted. I hoped he was happy.
"Up and away on three," I said. Two more security guards were approaching fast from the right.
People were moving away from us, and I was glad the stadium had a namby-pamby no-weapons policy. Now even the cheerleaders' eyes were on us, though they didn't pause in their routine.
"One," I began, and we all leaped into the air, right over everyone's head.
Whoosh! I unfurled my wings hard and fast. My wingspan is almost thirteen feet, tip to tip, and Fang's and Iggy's are even wider.
I bet we looked like avenging angels, hovering over the astonished crowd. Kind of grungy avenging angels. Angels in need of a good scrub.
"Move it!" I ordered, still scanning the audience, checking for Erasers. The last batch of Erasers had been able to fly, but no one seemed to be taking to the air except us.
A couple of hard downstrokes and we were level with the open edge of the roof, looking down at the brightly lit field, the tiny faces all staring at us. Some people were smiling and punching the air. Most seemed shocked and scared. I saw some faces that looked angry.
But none were elongating, becoming furry, growing oversize canine fangs. They were all staying human.
As we shot off into the night, flying in perfect formation like navy jets, I wondered: Where have all the Erasers gone?
8
"It sucked, but it was way cool at the same time," Gazzy said. "I felt like the Blue Angels!"
"Yeah, except the Blue Angels are an extremely well funded, well equipped, well trained, well fed, and no doubt squeaky-clean group of crack navy pilots," I said. "And we're a bunch of unfunded, unequipped, semitrained, not nearly well fed enough, and filthy mongrel avian-human hybrids. But other than that, it's exactly the same."
I knew what he meant, though. As mad as I was about our being in that situation in the first place, and as much as I hated being on the run yet again, and as vulnerable as that last little stunt had made us, still-the feeling of flying in tight formation, all of us with wide, beautiful, awesome wings...it was just incredibly cool.
Gazzy gave a hesitant smile, picking up on my tension, not knowing if I was trying to be funny. I sat down, stuck a straw in a juice pouch, and sucked it dry, then tossed it aside and drained another one.
We were hiding in the Texas mountains, close to the border of Me-hi-co. We'd found a deep, very narrow canyon that protected us from the wind, and now we were settled on the bottom, in front of a small fire.
I hadn't been this mad at Fang for this long a period of time since-never. Sure, I'd agreed to his lame-butt idea, but actually, now that I thought about it, it was about six times stupider than I'd realized.
"Hmm," said Fang, looking at the laptop. "We're everywhere-TV news, papers, radio. Seems a lot of people got photos."
"There's a surprise," I said. "I bet that explains those helicopters we were hearing."
"Are you okay, Max?" Nudge asked timidly.
I gave Nudge an almost convincing smile. "Sure, sweetie. I'm just...tired."
I couldn't help shooting a glance at Fang.
He looked up. "I got a hundred and twenty-one thousand hits today."
"Whaaat? Really?" He had that kind of audience? He could barely spell!
"Yeah. People are organizing, actually trying to find out info for us."
Iggy frowned. "What if they get caught by whitecoats?"
"What are you writing about?" I admit I hadn't been reading his blog. Too busy trying to stay alive, etc.
"Us. Trying to get all the puzzle pieces out there, see if anyone can help us put the big picture together."