Hawk - James Patterson Page 0,2
their tracks, some sinking to the ground, holding their ears. Ridley gave a high-pitched whine, and I clamped one hand around her silky head, shielding her ear holes as best I could. Then I closed my eyes and escaped within myself, away from the Voxvoce and the twisted, corrupt government who used it to control its people.
It ricocheted off buildings, filling the air and making my teeth ring. Even my eyeballs felt like they were vibrating in my skull as Ridley curled closer to me, looking for shelter from an enemy she couldn’t see and didn’t understand.
5:24. Finally, it ended—it had been about a minute and a half this time. Sometimes it was longer, sometimes shorter, but the sound always had the ability to make kids cry, terrify animals and make birds drop from the sky, make grown men sink to their knees and women cringe against buildings, silent tears streaking their cheeks.
It was super-effective. I pictured catching the bastards who’d come up with the idea of the Voxvoce, and the bastards who had created it, and locking them all in a room with it playing 24/7. They’d be writhing like worms within minutes, vomiting and crying and screaming for mercy. I would have no mercy.
They always killed it right when you thought you were about to lose your mind, go totally insane and shove something sharp into your ear just to make it stop. The bastards were smarter than that, though; they turned the noise off before you hit that point, and instead you were just thankful that it ended. I’d actually seen people thank them for stopping, like they forgot it’s the bastards that started it in the first place.
5:25. Everyone knew this was my corner—which was why so many thugs tried to take it from me. For a half hour every day, I people watched, usually with Ridley on my shoulder, which kept some of the rougher elements away. The smarter ones, anyway. There were certainly some dumb ones walking around with Ridley-induced scars on their faces. This city was a nightmare. What kind of parents would leave a little kid on her own in a nightmare place like this with only a raptor to protect her? I looked around. Every person here was packing, the outlines of their guns plain against their clothes. I’d seen kids as young as six with their own handguns, scaled down to fit their smaller hands and weaker grips.
5:27. Besides all the freaking gun-carriers, there were the Opes. Opes were scary, even to me, almost. Every once in a while you saw one who was a relatively cheerful addict, maybe someone with money and a sure supply. Much more often Opes were ragged, desperate, dirty, and lost. At a certain point they forgot to eat, forgot to do anything except find drugs. They were bony, with sharp cheekbones and elbows, scarred skin, rotted teeth, and hair that looked like it had been stapled to their heads in sad clumps.
An Ope was lurching toward me now, singing under her breath, dragging one foot, sticklike fingers twirling in hair dirtier and more tangled than mine, which is saying something. I carefully looked away, just another drug-free kid with a large hawk on her shoulder. She paused when she saw me, but I refused to meet her eyes, and finally she loped past, almost stumbling at the curb.
When she was gone, I grinned a little and rubbed Ridley’s head. The Ope had been wearing a Max T-shirt—filthy and full of holes, but still. I loved Maximum Ride, though I didn’t really know who or what she was. Maybe a comic book character? Maybe a movie star or something, I don’t know. Just every now and then I saw her picture on a T-shirt or a book cover or a billboard, and I liked the way she looked: god-awful fierce and determined as hell. No one to mess with. I’d named my bird after her: Ridley is like Ride, with an ly.
And it was 6:00. I was out.
CHAPTER 3
“Attention, citizens!” The familiar, oily voice boomed all around me. The huge vidscreens designed to reach every last corner of this city glowed with the image of the governor, McCallum. If he had a first name, I’d never heard it. All I knew was that he’d been yelling his word salad at us for as long as I could remember. The Voxvoce had been his idea, I was sure of it.
“Citizens!” he shouted again, his wide, fleshy