When the Wind Blows - James Patterson [54]
“Everything’s going to be okay,” I said. “We won’t hurt you. I’m a doctor. It’s okay.”
Either she didn’t understand me or she didn’t believe me, because she opened her mouth impossibly wide and screamed again. Her screaming was the most awful sound I’ve ever heard, like an animal shrillness but with a human undertone that made me think of the cries of mother seals, or maybe mother whales when their families are in danger.
I wondered if she had a human larynx, an avian syrinx, or both. The syrinx has no chords, just a sac at the bottom of the windpipe. It contracts to force air out. And maybe I had just heard it at full blast.
It hurt my ears to listen to her. My eyes, however, couldn’t get enough.
Just as I’d thought, almost everything about her was, well, human—but not in conventional proportions. Her eyes were round, and incredibly intense, and seemed intelligent, or at least very focused. Her hair was light blond, quite long, and hanging way below her shoulders. Some of her feathers were also blond, which made some sense, since both feathers and hair are made of the same material, keratin.
As I gorged on the vision of her, the girl was punching out at Kit.
I got a real good look at her mysterious, absolutely marvelous appendages. They were muscled and jointed as human arms are, but the forearms were shorter. Her fingers were elongated and cloaked in feathers out to the last joints of the digits.
Because they were made to fly, Frannie!
Jesus, Jesus. She was a miracle. She couldn’t be—and yet here she was. How could this have possibly happened? How could she be here? How could I?
Her beautiful wings were feathered in pure white, and in the early-morning light, I saw glints of blue and silver shining through. A strange feeling came over me then—I think I almost envied her. She was so beautiful, and she had such an amazing gift.
She could do what nearly all of us wish we could do—this little girl could fly. How in the name of God had it happened? Was she a miracle? An angel? No. Angels can disappear, get out of a net.
I snapped myself out of my trance, my inner thoughts. This was the wrong time and wrong place for it.
The girl was in a panic. She could damage her wings, and she could just as easily go into shock. I’d seen animals die of fright before. Their hearts just seemed to burst.
When Kit had tried to touch her, she’d been obviously threatened by his hand coming toward her. When I tried, she panicked, but not as fiercely. That showed me something—what, though? Had she been mishandled by men? Where? Who?
“Hang on to the net,” I said to Kit. “Hang on to her.”
Then I ran as fast as I could back to the camp. I was going to have to subdue the winged girl, but God only knew how I was going to get a needle into a vein. God only knew, because I sure didn’t.
When I returned moments later, the situation was exactly as I had left it; terror, hysteria, the child’s face was even brighter red. Her veins were bulging dangerously. I told Kit he was going to have to bring her down.
He said something about an “end run” and I’d seen just enough Sunday afternoon football to get his drift. I started talking to the girl again. Actually, I was making word music, soothing sounds, the kind you make when you’re trying to get close enough to a badly frightened, eye-rolling horse to grab its halter. I was the bird-whisperer, right.
Kit got behind the girl. Good, good. Now if only she kept looking at me.
I waited until the very last moment to take out my syringe.
The girl saw it and screamed again, flailed, and Kit made a quick, desperate dive for her. In a tackle that would have made one of the champion Green Bay Packers proud, he grabbed, then lifted her straight up off the ground. Then he rolled with the girl nestled in his arms, neatly cushioning her fall.
We had her! We had her!
Now what?
Chapter 54
IT WAS AS IF I were watching a terrifying and yet mesmerizing dream that I was a part of, but didn’t quite believe. The girl fought Kit as a full-sized man would.