“Wait! I take it back!Don’t go with the flow! ” I shrieked, trying desperately to backpedal.
But of course it was too late by then.
69
I HOPED THE UBER-DIRECTOR hadn’t paid his building contractor yet, because those so-called hurricane-proof windows were, in fact, not at all hurricane proof. Unless maybe for a baby hurricane. Awiddle one. With no big winds. I thought he should have got his money back.
Instead of smashing against the balcony windows, we sailedthrough them, because they’d blown out by the time we reached them. Wastebaskets, plants, chairs, and even some desks flew out around us. Then it was like we’d been put into God’s washing machine, on the spin cycle. I held on to Total as tight as I could, and we were sucked away into winds stronger than anything I’d ever experienced. My breath was actually pulled from my lungs. Within seconds, Total and I were soaked. In addition to the rain, hailstones as hard as diamonds pelted me, feeling like needles being driven into my skin. I pulled my wings in almost all the way, leaving them out a tiny bit in the hopes that this would allow me to steer. If I’d put them out fully, they would have been torn off.
When I looked back, I counted five bird kids behind me, all struggling. Fang andIggy were both holding on toAkila. Nudge,Gazzy, and Angel had tied themselves together, ropes looped around their waists, which was smart, but I bet it really hurt.
“This sucks!” Total yelled in my ear.
I didn’t think that needed a response. It was the understatement of the century. But come to think of it, I couldn’t believe we were still alive. We weren’t supposed to be able to survive this. No one could. Were we getting stronger? I started to wonder, then realized there was still time to be shredded to pieces.
Feeling almost half delirious from lack of breath, certain that my skin was being peeled slowly from my face and hands, I started expecting to see Dorothy’s house swirling by at any moment- and then suddenly it was much calmer, and I was being sucked downward, fast.
My ears rang with silence. My mouth dropped open in surprise. I looked up and saw… white clouds and blue sky. It wasn’t raining or hailing on me. I was still moving in a gigantic circle, but it was more like the fluff ’n’ dry cycle, not too bad.
“We’re falling,” Total told me.
Ah, yes, so we were. Cautiously I put my wings out more fully, feeling wind catch in them, expanding my feathers. I surged upward and saw my flock pop out of the wall of clouds one by one.
“We’re in the eye of the storm!” I shouted, and motioned downward. I didn’t know how big this eye was- maybe several miles across? But I wanted to take advantage of it. Controlling my descent, I headed earthward, landing on a broken section of highway overpass. At each end, the high-way dipped down into floodwaters- who knew how deep?
Shading my eyes, I looked up to see Nudge,Gazzy, and Angel, beat up and exhausted, land clumsily. Angel fell to her knees, trying to protect her broken arm.
I rushed over to them, untied their rope, and checked them all over.
Iggylanded, then Fang.
“Where’s-?” I began, then saw Fang’s face. I glanced atIggy; he had the same tragic expression.Akila had been too heavy for them. They hadn’t been able to hold on to her.
My heart squeezed painfully. What would we tell Total? Right now he was flopped on his side, panting, but any second he would realize the love of his life was missing… Oh, God.
“Gozen.”
My head whipped up and I looked where Fang was pointing. High, high above us,Gozen and, amazingly, theUber -Director were flailing wildly by, close to the edge of the eye. Suddenly my fury overwhelmed me- atAkila’s death, at Angel’s broken arm, at their trying to sell us, and at every other bad thing that anyone had ever done to us, which, believe me, was a pretty long list. In seconds I was streaking upward as fast as I could.
70
GOZEN WAS WRAPPED around theUber -Director, which was the only reason the UD hadn’t come apart by now. But even as I shot toward them, I could see thatGozen’s weight was working against him; they were both being dragged roughly around the eye wall of the storm.
I saw the UD shout, “Don’t let go!” though I couldn’t hear him. ButGozen’s enormous fingers were slipping, and his body and face bore signs of violent contact with a lot of debris.
Gozen’seyes met mine as I got close, blue lasers into brown. “Help me,” he rumbled.
“I don’t think so,” I said, kicking at his arm. That was all it took- me kicking his arm in retaliation for his breaking Angel’s- and his hold on the UD collapsed andGozen spun away, falling heavily downward, his face assuming the only expression he was capable of: horror.
I held on to theUD’s wheelchair. Fluid was leaking from his boxes; his human eyes in his human face were terrified.
“I control more than you could ever realize,” he gasped. “I can make you rich beyond your wildest dreams. I can protect you for the rest of your life. Just save me now.”
If he’d been a real person, I would have hesitated. I’m not a killer. I mean, not on purpose, anyway. But he was a machine, someone’s consciousness hooked up to a bio-mechanical body.
Plus, he was a complete and total jerk.
“You need to not be in this world,” I told him, and let go.
I didn’t watch, but I’m sure the boxes snapped grotesquely apart in the next instants, and that he whirled around in the storm in pieces for a while. I never saw any part of him again.
I negotiated my way out of the eye wall, glad to be free of the rain and hail again, and flew downward until I saw the flock a mile or so away. We needed to escape this hurricane before the next eye wall hit us. As I came to a landing, I could see them huddled around Total, who had collapsed, sobbing, on the ground. Angel had tears in her eyes as she stroked him with her good arm. His small black wings, still unusable but getting bigger every day, were fluttering pathetically.
I stood nearby, breathing hard, barely able to take in the fact thatGozen and theUber -Director were no more. PoorAkila. Poor Total. I shook my head, feeling terrible for him.
Angel looked up. “Akila,” she said, frowning.
I nodded. “I know, sweetie. I’m so sorry.”
“No-Akila, ” said Angel, pointing at the sky.
“Huh?” was all I had time to say before an eighty-pound Malamute plummeted out of the sky, smashing right into me and knocking me onto my not-nearly-padded-enough butt.
“Oh, God,” I wheezed,Akila’s body lying heavily on top of me. For the second or third time that day- it was hard to keep track- I had to slowly suck in breath, looking like a largemouth bass. “Akila!”
The others rushed over, and Fang pried openAkila’s eyelids and put his head on her side to listen for a heartbeat.
“She’s alive,” he said, just as the mud-spattered dog blinked weakly.
“Uh, can you get her off me?” I said, my voice muffled. I felt as though I’d been hit with a warm, sopping-wet, furry sack of cement.
“Akila!” Total cried, now that the shock was wearing off. “Akila! I thought we had lost you forever!” Eagerly he licked her face. I was thinkingbleah, butAkila seemed to like it, turning her head so Total could get her other side.
And there we were. Together again.
71
WE MANAGED TO STAY inside the eye of the hurricane, moving with it until the storm had weakened enough for us to fly out. As we flew over the devastation, I realized at last the full implications of what global warming could mean for our world.
“You were right,” I said quietly to Fang as we flew. “Global warming is something we have to help stop.”