The Call - Michael Grant [26]
“How am I going to do this?” Mack wondered aloud. “I’m not exactly a hero.”
“Huh,” Stefan agreed.
“Once we get to Australia, I’m turning around and going home.”
“Back over the ocean?”
“Good point,” Mack said miserably.
“I watched a movie,” Stefan said. “Put something on, it will distract you.”
So Mack watched several movies while clutching the armrests until his fingers were numb and his arms were aching. He also ate a little. The buttered roll was nice.
He slept a little more. And this time he didn’t moan about dying. He moaned, but without prophecies of imminent doom.
He woke when Stefan yelled, “Hey!” in his ear.
“What? What? What?”
Mack instantly noticed that something was wrong. Everyone on his side of the plane was staring out of the windows, pointing, murmuring.
“Whoa,” Stefan said.
Mack didn’t want to look out of the window because if he did, he might see the black ocean, or at least a blackness where the ocean was. But he had to look. Everyone else was, and they didn’t sound too happy about what they were seeing.
So Mack looked.
Just beyond the tip of the plane’s wing was a small, sleek aircraft like nothing Mack had ever seen or imagined.
It wasn’t a jet, that was clear. It had a bulbous front that looked like it was made out of black glass. The bulb was wreathed in what might be steel ivy—like vines, the kind that climb up your porch, but glinting metallically. The vines swept back, twisted into a sort of thick cable, and then swept up to grow around and over something that could arguably be an engine. The engine, if that’s what it was, glowed all over with red light that burned bright as a small red sun at the back end.
Taken all together, there was something about the craft that suggested a poisonous plant with a swollen seed on one end and a radioactive root on the other.
The jumbo jet banked sharply left, veering away from the much smaller pursuer. The floor tilted, the flight attendants yelled, “Seat belts, seat belts!” and one of them pitched over sideways to land in the laps of a couple with a child.
There were screams. There would be more.
Outside, the craft kept pace effortlessly.
The plane righted, steadied. Then, without warning, the floor fell away from Mack as the pilot sent them into a dive. Mack’s stomach was in his throat. It was like the first big drop of a roller coaster. And for just a few seconds he was sure he was weightless.
At this point there was more screaming—some of it from Mack.
Meals went flying, drinks toppled, one of the overhead luggage bins popped open and spilled bags.
Outside, the red flower was still right on their wingtip.
As Mack stared in amazement and horror, the door of the pursuer opened, an oval of deep red light in the dark pod. And an inhuman figure appeared, framed there.
And then, despite the fact that both aircraft were flying faster than five hundred miles per hour and were six miles up, the creature leaped.
It landed on the jet’s wing, wobbled, then steadied itself.
And it grinned right directly at Mack.
* * *
DEAR MACK,
TODAY I ATE PIZZA. BUT I REALIZED THAT I DO NOT HAVE A STOMACH AND HAD TO SPIT IT OUT ON THE TABLE. LATER I USED A SPOON TO REACH INSIDE MY MOUTH AND DIG OUT A STOMACH. I PLACED THE MUD CAREFULLY IN THE TOILET AND FLUSHED MANY TIMES. NOW THERE IS WATER ON THE FLOOR AND ALSO ON THE STAIRS. I THINK MOM NOTICED.
YOUR FRIEND,
GOLEM
* * *
Fourteen
A REALLY, REALLY LONG TIME AGO…
From the high, crenellated walls of Castle Etruk, Grimluk could gaze down at the endless sea of green trees and fields and see the advance of the Pale Queen’s forces. Wherever they went, they burned.
The endless forest was dotted with dozens of small villages. These her forces burned to the ground. They killed and ate the farm animals, killed and didn’t eat the men, and enslaved the women and children.
All across the many miles that Grimluk could see, there rose plumes of smoke. The enemy seemed to be advancing from every direction at once. Castle Etruk, which Grimluk had gotten to like over the last couple of weeks,