When the Wind Blows - James Patterson [69]
Tell us your secrets, Max. We trusted you. Now you trust us a little.
After a while I asked, “What are the people like at your school? Just tell a little bit. Are they scientists? Doctors? Are they teachers?”
“Sort of,” she said. “They taught me to read slides. Mostly science, but I could read what I liked on my own time. They put me to work. Most of them are scientists. They’re doctors.”
Kit was pacing back and forth in the room, staring at the floor. When he heard the word “slides,” he stopped moving. “What do you mean, ‘slides’? What kind of slides, Max?”
“That you look at with a microscope. In the labs. I was allowed to work there. I was supposed to match alleles.”
The incredible tension kept building inside me. Chaos and confusion reigned in my mind. Alleles were alternative forms of a gene. What Max had said about the School so far was unbelievably scary and wrong.
“The doctors are working with chromosomes?” I asked. “Why are they doing that? Do you know?”
“Of course I do. To improve the stock,” she said, and shrugged her shoulders.
“What kind of stock?” Kit asked. This had evolved into a kind of question and answer. I felt like a police officer.
Max’s face went pale white. “I could get people in trouble if I talk,” she said. “I’ve been warned. Talking is absolutely forbidden,” she murmured.
Max covered her eyes and sobbed hard. I gathered her into my arms. “Please trust us, Max. You have to trust somebody. You know that you do, honey.”
I rocked the child, the beautiful little bird-girl. I felt like I was back at the Inn-Patient, taking care of sick and injured animals. That’s where I wanted to be.
Max spoke softly into the side of my neck. I could barely hear the words, but I did.
“Take me home,” she whispered.
Book Four
THE FLIGHT SCHOOL
Chapter 72
TAKE ME HOME.
It had obviously been hard for Max to say the words. It sounded so innocent coming out of her mouth, but I knew it wasn’t. We couldn’t get out of the Motel Six fast enough.
We zoomed down the Interstate at eighty miles an hour and then some, hoping a highway patrolman wouldn’t stop us for speeding.
We were going to the School, weren’t we?
I was in the back with Max. She was clearly scared, so I held her tightly. I could feel her heart beating against my arm way too fast. Poor Max. Just a little girl. Caught up in something much larger than any of us could comprehend.
I stroked her as I talked, hoping it would soothe and calm the eleven-year-old. I told Max I’d grown up on a dairy farm in northern Wisconsin and asked her if she’d ever seen a real cow.
“We don’t have any cows at the School,” she said. “I’ve seen lots of them on TV, though.”
I told her about our small herd of Holsteins, with their gooey tongues and liquid eyes. I even remembered their names and personalities. Max couldn’t disguise her curiosity as I described Blossom Dearie and Nellie Foot-Foot and Please Louise and our spotted bull, Kool Kat.
I told her how my sister, Carole Anne and I got up at five in the morning to help my dad; and how we washed the cows in the summer and turned on the electric fan so they’d stay cool. But it was how we got milk from them that really fascinated her.
She hooted out loud as I described the joys of early-morning milkings. I loved to hear her laugh. It was infectious and always made me smile. Max took such delight in the world she hadn’t been able to experience until now. And besides, laughing kept our minds off everything else that was going on.
I made up a goofy story about chocolate cows giving chocolate milk. Kit tossed in a thought. “Tell her about the peppermint cows,” he said and winked.
“You two are crazy,” Max told us. “It’s nice, though. I like it. I love being here with you.”
“We love being with you, too,” I said.
“Me three,” Kit nodded agreement.
The Jeep sped through the early-morning dark. I was thinking, pretending, Hey, maybe it was justaroad trip, after all—when Max stiffened. She strained forward toward the front seat and the windshield.
Then she pointed to a narrow side road that slipped