The Call - Michael Grant [30]
Mack had to use the legs of the seats almost as a ladder, straddling the aisle, climbing up the steep incline as his lungs sucked on nothing and his vision went red.
He climbed to the mother and, with his consciousness fading, and with it the last of his strength, Mack handed the baby over.
He clambered over the back of a seat—now almost a ledge beneath him—reached, and snagged one of the oxygen masks.
Oxygen was flowing freely. He filled his lungs gratefully and searched for Stefan. Stefan had managed to grab on to a seat in first class and was also sucking oxygen as the plane plunged.
And it was then that the wing monster stepped through the door, tentacle fingers grabbing bulkheads.
It hauled itself all the way in. It bowed its creepy upside-down head but still scraped its slobbery, broken-toothed mouth along the ceiling.
And then the creature did something very strange (like up until this point it had been normal). It began to melt. To change. A sort of black vapor formed a wreath around it, a swirling veil that hid it from sight.
When the smoke cleared, the monster was no more. In its place stood the most beautiful girl Mack had ever seen or ever even imagined.
She had luscious red hair and eyes greener than Mack would have thought possible. Her skin was pale and perfect. Her lips were a dark, dark red.
She stood easily, as though the tilted deck was not even an issue.
She smiled, and it was as if a sun had appeared in the middle of a storm and that sun shone just for Mack, for Mack alone.
“Hello,” she said in a laughing, musical voice. “You must be Mack.”
Mack sucked on his oxygen mask and wondered in some distant corner of his mind how she could breathe and how she could speak and how the sound waves propagated across a relative vacuum. Because he had learned in science class that sound waves needed air. In fact, he had done an experiment that…But that wasn’t really important just then because the most beautiful girl in the history of the world was talking to him, just him.
“Hi,” he mumbled into his plastic mask. “I’m Mack.”
“It’s good to meet you, Mack. My name is Ereskigal. My friends call me Risky.”
“I’ll bet,” Mack said.
“Come on, Mack,” she said. She held out one perfect, pale, red-nailed hand. “Let’s get out of here.”
* * *
DEAR MACK,
I HAD AN EXCELLENT DAY AT SCHOOL. THE WOMAN CALLED MS. CHAPMAN ASKED ME IF I WAS STILL DEVOURING BOOKS. SHE SMILED SO I KNEW THIS WAS A GOOD THING. I SAID THAT I WAS. I DEVOURED ONE FOR HER AND SHE STOPPED SMILING. THEN I MET THE MAN CALLED ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL FURMAN, WHO ASKED ME WHAT MY MAJOR MALFUNCTION WAS. I EXPLAINED TO HIM THAT I CANNOT MALFUNCTION BECAUSE I AM A SUPERNATURAL CREATURE MADE OF MUD. HE TOLD ME TO GO AWAY.
YOUR FRIEND,
GOLEM
* * *
Sixteen
“I’m good right here,” Mack said.
“He’s good right here,” Stefan said, coming as close as he could while keeping his oxygen mask on.
Risky smiled. It was a dazzling smile. But not really friendly.
The temperature in the plane had dropped like a rock. Mack could see his breath steam around the mask as he exhaled.
“Eng Ereskigal, Arbast,” Risky said. “Eng-ma!”
And suddenly Mack was up out of his seat and walking like a zombie. Like an old-fashioned zombie, not like one of the cooler 28 Days Later or I Am Legend kind of zombies who mostly ran really fast.
He walked on stiff legs that were not under his control.
Mack knew his legs were not under his control because taking off his oxygen mask and walking into the howling, freezing wind that came in through that awful open door were not things he really wanted to do.
Really, really did not want to do.
But his legs were moving just the same.
And Risky was grinning.
Mack gasped at thin air. More air than before—it wasn’t completely airless now that the plane had dropped somewhat—but it was like trying to fill your lungs after a long run while breathing through a straw.
“No!” Mack yelled, not that his voice carried very far. Somehow