"Holy cra-," the Gasman began, but I said, "Gazzy!"
"Would someone please tell me what the heck is going on?" Iggy said.
"Angel just made a shark wave its fin at us," Nudge told him breathlessly.
"Uh-wha...?"
Then three more sharks appeared in the shallow water around Angel. Together, the four sharks turned on their sides and waved their fins.
Angel was laughing. "Isn't that so great?"
Total trotted up next to me, his little feet kicking sand. "That's awesome! Make them do it again!"
My knees felt weak. I needed to sit down. "That was neat, sweetie," I said, trying to sound calm. "Now please ask the sharks to leave, okay?"
Angel shrugged and talked to the sharks again. Slowly they turned and headed back out to sea.
"That was so awesome," Total said, as Angel splashed toward shore. He licked Angel's leg, then spit. "Ugh! Salt."
"So, Angel talks to fish, is that right?" Iggy said carefully. "And this is useful how?"
106
We had to keep on the move. It was going to be dark soon, and we needed shelter. Most kids my age would be bummed about their next math test or that their parents cut their phone calls short. I was more concerned with shelter, food, water. The little luxuries of life.
We were over northern Florida now. All along the coast we saw a million twinkling lights of homes and stores and cars moving in threads like blood cells in a vein. If blood cells had, you know, weensy little headlights.
But there was a huge unlit area below us. In general, dark = no people. I looked over at Fang, and he nodded. We started to descend.
A few minutes' reconnaissance informed us that this was the Ocala National Forest. It looked like a good place, and we dropped down out of the twilight and aimed ourselves carefully through small gaps in the umbrella of treetops. And landed in water.
"Yuck!" I was calf-deep in muddy water, surrounded by cypress knees and towering pines. Looking around, I saw land a couple yards away and slogged over to it. "To the left!" I called, as Nudge and Iggy swooped in.
"This is good," I said, looking around in what was rapidly becoming the pitch-darkness. "Easy to get out of, straight up through the trees, but almost impossible for anyone to track us overland."
"Home, sweet swamp," said the Gasman, and I smiled.
An hour later we had a small fire going and were roasting things on sticks. I was so used to eating this way that even if I were, like, a grown-up making breakfast for my 2.4 children, I would probably be impaling Pop-Tarts on the ends of sticks and holding them over a fire.
Now Fang pulled a smoking, meaty chunk off a stick and dropped it onto an empty Baggie, which was Nudge's plate.
"Want some more raccoon?" he asked.
Nudge paused in midbite. "It is not! You went to the store. Didn't you? There's no way this is raccoon." She examined the meat critically.
Fang shrugged. I rolled my eyes at him.
"Oh, maybe you're right," he said seriously. "Maybe this is the raccoon, and I gave you the possum."
Nudge choked and started coughing.
"Stop it," I told Fang, reaching over to pat Nudge's back. He looked at me innocently.
"He's just kidding, Nudge," said the Gasman. "Last time I checked, Oscar Mayer wasn't making squirrel dogs." He held up an empty package, and Nudge wheezed a bit and swallowed.
I was trying not to laugh, and then I felt the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. I glanced around-we were all here. But I felt like someone was watching us. I see incredibly well in the dark, but the fire was too bright to see much beyond it. Maybe I was imagining it.
Next to me, Angel straightened up. "Someone's here," she whispered.
Or maybe not.
107
Well, it had been a whole day without an Eraser crashing-literally-our party.
I snapped my fingers softly twice, and five heads turned toward me, alert and tense.
"Someone's here," Angel repeated softly.
Fang kept turning things in the fire, but his back was taut and straight, and I knew he was reviewing escape plans.
"What are you getting?" I asked Angel out of the side of my mouth.
She frowned, her blond curls glinting in the firelight. "Not Erasers." She cocked her head to one side, concentrating. "Kids?" She looked puzzled.
I got slowly to my feet, scanning the darkness around the fire. Moving to the edge of our little circle, I peered intently into the woods. Then I saw them. Two small, skinny forms, inching toward our fire. Much too small to be Erasers. And human, not animal.
"Who's there?" I said strongly. I stood tall and put my shoulders back, making myself look bigger. Fang got up and came to stand next to me.
The two little forms slunk nearer, more quickly.
"Who are you?" I asked, sounding mean. "Come closer, where I can see you."
They crawled into our small area, two dirty, skinny, big-eyed children. I mean, all of us bird kids looked really long and slender compared to other kids our ages, but our bones didn't really stick out. Theirs did.
They gave us all wary glances but seemed riveted by the fire and the smell of food cooking. One of them actually licked her lips-they were a boy and a girl.
Hmm. They didn't seem like the biggest threat I'd ever seen. I leaned over, put some hot dogs onto a paper bag, and placed it in front of them.
Yo. I thought Gazzy and Iggy were repulsive eaters. I made a mental note to not ever let them get this close to starving. Those two kids fell on the hot dogs and virtually shoved them whole into their mouths. It made me think of a TV special I'd seen that showed hyenas ripping apart their prey.
I put two slices of bread in front of them, then two more, then two more, then two more hot dogs. They all disappeared in instants. After that I gave them candy bars, and their eyes widened as if I'd just handed them-uh... candy bars when they were starving. Finally their chewing slowed. Now they seemed to savor every bite. Fang passed them a canteen of water. They drained it.
They crawled closer to the fire and sat in front of it, looking sleepy and unafraid, as if it would be fine if we killed them now, because they weren't hungry anymore.
"So-what's your story?" I asked, wanting some answers before they nodded off.
"We got kidnapped," said the girl, her dark eyes reflecting the flames.
Well, okay, I hadn't seen that coming. "Kidnapped?"
The boy nodded tiredly. "In south Jersey. From two different places-we're not related."
"We just ended up in the same place," said the girl, yawning.
"And where was that?" I asked.
"Here," said the boy. "We escaped a couple times. Even made it to the police station."
"But both times our kidnappers were already there, like, filing missing-kid notices. They just found us again, real easy." The girl sighed heavily and lay down on the ground, curling into a bony clump. We weren't going to get any good answers out of them tonight.
"So, who were your kidnappers?" Fang tried.
"They were, like, doctors," the boy said sleepily, lying down too. "In white coats."
He closed his eyes, and within seconds both he and the girl were asleep.
Which left the rest of us wide-awake, frozen in terror, staring at them as if they carried the plague.
108
Fang took the first watch, so I hunkered down close to the fire and tried to relax. Which was about as likely as Florida freezing over. Angel snuggled up to me on one side, and Total curled up next to her.
"So, what are you picking up from them?" I whispered to her, rubbing her back.
"Weird images," she whispered back. "Not like regular kids, like the ones at school. Like, flashes of grown-ups and darkness and water."
"Which I guess makes sense if they were kidnapped and experimented on by whitecoats," I said softly. I raised myself up on one elbow and caught Fang's eye. Using sign language, I reminded him to keep an eye on the strange kids. He used sign language to say "No freaking duh." I shot him the bird. He grinned.