Hawk - James Patterson Page 0,65
up to us. He handed me a small, heavy, vestlike backpack. “Put this on. You’re coming with us.”
CHAPTER 62
Five minutes later I was flying over the desert. The sun, just coming up, was radiating out amazing colors of red-peach-gold light. At home, dawn was gray—you just noticed that suddenly you could see more stuff, most of it pretty ugly.
This—this was so different I wanted to cry, but I’d take that secret to the grave. The greasy gray-green haze over the City of the Dead was completely gone. We were in a sky of blue, blue, blue—the bluest blue. It was so easy to breathe—I could gulp deep breaths of air and not cough, not have to swallow a bad taste.
Speaking of taste, the vest Gazzy had given me was full of pockets, all stuffed with food. There had been two more burritos, some filled with scrambled egg (maybe real?) and sausage that didn’t taste like cardboard. Every pocket had cool new food, all of it 1,000 percent better than anything I’d ever had.
It helped to know that the lab rats were getting the same food. Saying good-bye had been hard, especially since the more I wanted to leave, the guiltier I felt. In the end I had fled, jumping straight up and flying out of the cavern like the Flock.
“Don’t think about it,” I muttered, and unclipped the clear tube leading over my shoulder. Why was my vest heavy? Because I was carrying thirty liters of water on my back! Anytime I wanted I could just unclip the tube and drink! And it was all water from Tetra, which was amazing. Anything I’d drunk before now had been like—old laundry water or something. This was a totally new thing. It tasted like blue sky.
And the desert. I’d never seen it during the day. In the sunlight and clear air, the desert was beautiful, shades of colors I didn’t even know the name of, shadows playing in all the ridges of sand, almost making pictures below us.
Gazzy had told me this would be a long flight. He’d asked what was the longest I’d ever been up in the air, and I’d told him maybe an hour? I mean, I always took little breaks on top of buildings whenever I wanted, you know? Why worry about building up your stamina when you’ve got no place to go?
Now I noticed that my wings were getting tired. The Flock was getting ahead of me, little by little. I wondered when or if the Flock was going to take a rest stop, but there was no way I’d ask for one.
About two and a half hours out, I was definitely flagging. The desert was slowly giving way to swaths of trees, most of them I didn’t know the names of. The only time I’d seen any trees in one place was inside Pietro Pater’s walled garden. It had been green there, full of trees and vines and grass and the heavy scent of some tiny orange flowers growing on a trellis.
I took a sip of water to clear my head. Pietro was another thing I wasn’t going to think about.
Soon the ground below us was completely covered with trees no one was growing on purpose, like in a garden. They were just there: wild trees.
“Time for a break!” Gazzy yelled, and I thought, Thank god. Then I thought that this new sun was the most beautiful, most powerful thing I’d ever seen. So I thought, Thank the sun. The sun would be my goddess, like some people at home worshipped little statues.
It was such a relief to be able to slowly circle a small clearing and finally come to a still-graceless landing, this one caused by my total exhaustion. I flopped onto the grass, hearing the buzzing of insects and the calls of birds I’d never seen. I left my wings outstretched so they could cool and drank water for a long time.
When I finally sat up, the Flock was sitting on the grass, eating.
“Come on,” Iggy said to me. “Eat fast so we can get back up.”
“How much further is it?” I asked, then could have slapped myself.
Fang looked at me. “Are you wiped?”
Yes. “No, of course not,” I said stiffly. “I’m just curious, is all.”
“Better eat something,” Nudge said, her mouth full. “We have a way to go.”
“I… I’m out of food,” I said, and four pairs of eyes widened and looked at me.
“Did some, like, drop?” Gazzy asked. “Or did you actually