The Call - Michael Grant [31]
Mack’s mouth cried, “No!” but his legs and feet said, “Let’s go!”
Risky leaned close to him, her face just inches from his. She smelled like dark woods at night, and like the perfume counter at Macy’s, and a little like Mack’s aunt Holly, who lived in a converted school bus on a communal farm in Mendocino.
It was an intoxicating smell.
“Poor Mack,” Risky said. “Did you really think you could be one of the Magnifica? Did you think you would rush around heroically and stop my mother from retaking all that is hers?”
Mack didn’t really have a good answer to that. Because he wasn’t really listening. He was marching his lead feet toward the open door, and now he was so close he could reach out a hand and try to grab the frame and try to stop himself, but he couldn’t, he couldn’t, and his fingers were slipping, and OMG, he could look straight down and see moonlight sparkling off the waves miles and miles below.
“Odaz,” Risky whispered. Then, in a shout of triumph, “Odaz-ma!”
And Mack was now in the doorway itself, hands gripping the sides, toes already hanging, like a surfer hanging ten. The wind was beating him up, making his cheeks vibrate, his hair froth, his eyes water.
Risky was behind him now. He felt her hand against his back.
“No way!” Stefan yelled, although his voice sounded as squeaky as Mack’s had. Mack glanced back and saw Stefan swinging something big and black.
Stefan hit Risky in the back of the head with someone’s carry-on bag.
Risky staggered forward, nearly pushing Mack out of the door. But Mack moved fast. He detached one hand, swung around, grabbed Risky by her wondrous red hair, and tripped her over his leg and out the door.
Risky fell through the door.
But even as she fell, she struck out with one arm, one arm that was now the branched, tentacled arm of the monster.
The tentacles completely imprisoned Mack’s free arm. The pressure of the five-hundred-mile-per-hour wind dragged at Risky, and she dragged at Mack. Stefan wrapped his strong arms around Mack and tried to hold on, but it was no good, no good at all.
Mack lost his grip. He flew out of the door.
The wing flashed by beneath him, the tail flashed by, a huge scythe. It barely missed him, and then Mack was tumbling and spinning and screaming as he fell through the night.
Stefan had released his grip, but it was too late to save himself. Now as Mack spun crazily through the air, he saw flashes of Stefan, his arms windmilling: a crazy windblown action figure twirling out of control.
And Risky fell, too, her clothing billowing comically, her red hair a tornado. She laughed as she fell. Mack couldn’t hear it over the hurricane howl of wind, but he could see her mouth.
They were all three close, within a few dozen feet of each other.
The jet, on the other hand, was already far away and far above. Rushing away from them at five hundred miles per hour.
Mack saw moonlit sky and silvery clouds. He saw dappled ocean far below. In the east the sun was peeking up over the curve of the earth. And in the other direction he could just make out what must be a city’s lights—Sydney, no doubt.
The ocean that he had feared for so long was now rushing up to crush him like a windshield hitting a bug.
Sharks would eat whatever was left.
Seventeen
“Nooooooooo!” Mack screamed, but the wind tore the words right out of his mouth.
The plane had been cruising about seven miles up. It had dropped since losing pressure, but when Mack was yanked from the jet, it was still four miles up.
Mack recalled reading once that the fastest something could fall was about 120 meters per second. Which was pretty fast. In fact, it was about 268 miles per hour.
If he’d had access to his computer so he could use Wolfram|Alpha, Mack might have figured out that he didn’t have a lot of time.
But of course he had a more immediate problem: very little air.
Just as Mack lost consciousness, he saw the smaller craft, Risky’s weird flying seedpod, come sweeping