When the Wind Blows - James Patterson [110]
He keyed the intercom. “Randi, she’s coming at us at three o’clock. I’m gonna rudder pedal around so you can get a better look.” Of course, he knew Randi was already shooting film. If this was real, she was getting it for the morning news.
So he slammed the cyclic hard right and the copter slid thirty degrees of bank. He slowed the Jet Ranger back around so he could see the UFO again himself. There she was. She was pulling ahead of him now. Jesus, she was a pretty little girl. With wings. Beautiful goddamn wings.
This had to be a prank. But what the hell? Who could pull this son of a bitch off?
“We’re rolling tape! Lots of tape!” Randi let him know. “I’m getting all of it, every amazing flap of her mind-blowing wings. Feeding it to home base. This should wake everybody up this morning! Wake Denver the hell up! Isn’t she beautiful?”
Yes, she certainly was beautiful. She was a mindblower.
Friedfeld was literally afraid to blink his eyes. The little bird-girl with the golden-yellow hair did a few pretty amazing turns and rolls.
She almost looked as if she were writing in the air. Was she writing? Was it some kind of message? What message, though?
He thumbed the toggle that patched him into production at the studio. “Shadow Nine to studio. You getting this? Come back to me right now, Stephanie. Do you see this amazing shit? Or am I dead and on my way to heaven. Am I looking at an angel?”
He heard a voice in his earphones. “What is this, Eddy? Is this a joke? What the hell are these pictures you’re sending us?” Stephanie Apt’s voice crackled loudly in his headset. Steph was usually a realist, a cynical, no-nonsense newswoman. Friedfeld figured her mind was already blown to smithereens. Join the party. His mind certainly was gone.
“You’re lookin’ at exactly what I’m lookin’ at,” he said. “Get the state troopers and EMS, and anybody else you can think of…. We’re maybe three miles north of the Hoover Road cutoff. I repeat—what you see is what we see. She’s heading due north now. We’re following her lead! She is definitely flying!”
“I make her out to be eleven or twelve years of age. Looks like a regular Denver or Boulder or Pueblo grade-schooler—but with wings. And she is flying.
“On the soul of my dear deceased grandmother, this is really happening. The girl has beautiful white and silver-blue wings. Believe me. She’s leading us somewhere, and frankly, I’d follow her anywhere. This is a News Four Special Report. And this is history. A girl is flying!”
Chapter 118
MAX BELIEVED in the thinking-feeling place in her heart that she was about to crash and burn and die, that she had to die soon. Too bad, but it was her assigned fate in life. It was the way the universe wanted it. She had known it since the day she escaped. Matthew had probably known it, too.
The keepers couldn’t allow her to live. She was a witness to everything they had done, all of the terrible murders and other crimes. She was Tinkerbell, “Stinky Tinky.” Just another lab specimen. They were the stinky ones, though. She knew all of their dirty little secrets.
At least she had seen what the real world was like—some nasty, ugly things, but so much that was unbelievably beautiful, too. The outside world was way beyond her ability to imagine it at the School. It was a hundred times better than in books, or on TV, or even in the movies.
So here goes nothing! Or here goes everything! Same thing, right?
She was getting closer and closer to the big house, Gillian’s place. She saw lots of people way down there, running around like tiny stick figures.
Max lowered her head and dived toward the men with guns. She realized she had no choice in the matter. This was her fate. They were trying to shoot at Oz and Icarus, who were flying away so beautifully and bravely. The other kids were flying to safety. God bless them.
Some of the guards were threatening Frannie near the main house. Frannie seemed to be doing okay by herself.