Maximum Ride Fan Fiction ❯ After Armageddon ❯ Chapter Four: Mom's House ( Chapter 4 )

After Armageddon

 

 

Chapter Four: Mom's House

 

Charlie

 

A few days later, I woke to the sound of birds, normal birds, singing outside my window as sunlight streamed through a gap in the curtains.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, I'm at Mom's house. Really Dr. Valencia Martinez is my grandmother, but `mother' was still part of the word as far as I could tell. But then again, I've never gotten anything resembling a real education, so I could be wrong. Besides, since my parents died, Grandma has been looking after Cal and me.

“Charlie, breakfast is ready!”

“Speak of the devil.” I thought as Cal called from the kitchen. Calina (Ride) Martinez is my 20 year old older sister. She's a bossy know-it-all who's lived with our Grandma since she was born. She looks almost exactly like Mom with her blonde hair and tan skin. The only thing that doesn't make her another clone of Mom is her eyes. She (like me, I might add) has Dad's dark eyes. I actually look more like Dad, dark hair, dark eyes, and dark wings that, I've been told, are just like his. Sometimes, I've wonder what Cal's wings would've looked liked if genetics had given her any. You see, somehow, (probably due to the fact that our parents were 90% human) Cal was born looking like a completely normal person on the outside. She's not too tall, she has no wings, and she actually has no feathers anywhere on her body. On the inside however, she's just like me and Will. She's extremely light because her bones are hollow and she's extraordinarily strong. She can literally run like the wind and she's an amazing acrobat. Plus, since she doesn't have wings, she can actually live in normal society. You see, the Dictator learned her lesson after my parents, aunts, and uncles escaped the School and royally messed up their `take over the world' plans. After that, any and all human-avian hybrids were “built” without wings. Basically, she “clipped” them.

But of course they adapted, especially those that were against the Dictator to begin with. Like Cal and Taylor, arrogant brat that he is, he's still on our side. How do I know? Well, it seems that he likes my sister. He likes her a lot. And for some strange reason I can't even begin to understand, she likes him too.

I, on the other hand, can barely stand him, which is why I groaned as I entered the kitchen when I saw him sitting at the table that morning. What can I say? He bugs me for no apparent reason.

“Good morning to you too squirt.” He told me over his cup of coffee.

Okay so there is an apparent reason, but let's not think about that right now.

Anyway, he seemed unusually happy (more like “cheerful”) that morning, which made me very suspicious. Usually, if he liked it, I didn't.

“Good morning Charlie.” Cal said as she put breakfast in front of me. I looked at it like it was going to bite me, probably because it would if I gave it a chance because Cal didn't cook. It was one of those things she had gotten from Mom.

Then I saw that she was wearing a diamond ring on her left ring finger.

For a moment I think I sat there gawking. I had had a feeling that this would happen for a long time now, but it still shocked me. After a few minutes of award silence, (that I was oblivious to) I noticed that Cal was staring at me nervously.

I finally made my mouth work and did my best to smile at them. After all, Cal was my sister and I knew that she and Taylor did seriously care about teach other, no matter how much he annoyed me personally.

“That's great!” I said, still surprised by the whole thing. Fortunately, Aaron shuffled in just about them and saved me from another awkward silence.

“What's great?” He asked through a yawn. He never had been a morning person.

“We're getting married!” Cal yelled out excitedly.

Aaron looked confused. “You and Charlie?”

Like I said, the rabbit was never a morning person.

“Gross, no! Me and Taylor.” She said beaming in spite of the wrongness of his assumption.

“Oh,” Aaron said blandly. Then the announcement sunk into his sleep fogged brain and he gave Cal a hug. Unlike me, Aaron actually liked Taylor. Plus he was Cal's brother as much as I was, seeing how he had been basically adopted into my family after he and I escaped from the School when we were five.

A few moments later, the kitchen had turned into one giant hug fest as Grandma and Aunt Ella joined us.

“Hey Mom?” called a voice from the kitchen's second doorway that led to Aunt Ella's room.

“Yes Will?” Aunt Ella answered her son, who was about six months younger then me. At thirteen, almost fourteen, William Martinez was his dad's mini clone. Even as far as bird kids went he was tall; his hair was a bright shade of blonde that reminded me of electricity. His blue eyes had the same electric quality, like he was plugged into a light socket. I always think that if I touch him I'll get shocked. The weird thing is that sometimes I do.

But despite his electric look, Will was usually very calm, almost to the pint of that he appeared indifferent to everything. Right now though, I was that my cousin was jumpy, no matter how hard he tried to hide it behind his usual composed exterior.

“She's awake.” He said gesturing to the room behind him where Aunt Ella and Grandma had put the girl. I had feeling that the reason Will was nervous was because they had put a complete, and possibly dangerous, stranger in his mother's room.

Grandma immediately let Cal out of her hug and went to see how, and hopefully who, our mystery girl was. Aaron and I were right behind her, but we hung back near the doorway while she went and sat next to the patient.

The girl looked scared, but then again, if I woke up in a semi-dark room with a bunch of strangers gawking at me, I would be a lot less cool then she was now.

Before we came in, the blonde girl had been gazing around the room, taking everything in, but she quickly switched her attention to us once the door opened. Grandma quickly and quietly crossed the small room and sat gently on the bed next to the stranger. She quietly began to talk to her, calmly trying to explain what had happened to her since she had met Aaron and me in the forest.

Or rather, she tried to explain what had happened. It didn't take anyone long to see that she didn't know any English, especially after she started asking question that no one could answer. It wasn't that we didn't know the answer; they just didn't know what she was asking.

Grandma tried Spanish briefly, but the girl just shook her head and repeated her, “Ich sprache Enlgisch night.” stuff. But eventually we figured out she was trying to tell us, `I don't speak English.' in German.

German, great, too bad our computer doesn't have a multi-lingual word processor.

Fortunately for us, Will seemed to have one in his head, or at least he had decided to take German as his foreign language credit in school.

“Her name's Liela and she lives on the outskirts of Munich.” Will translated Liela's words as the poured out in a steady stream from her mouth. He went on to say, or rather Liela said it and Will made it understandable, that someone had kidnapped her as she was walking to go hang out with her friends at an old strip mall. She didn't know how long it had been from then until now, but Grandma told us later that from the state she was in, it must have been a month at the very least.

However, while she remembered nothing of who had kidnapped her, she did remember foggy dreamlike memories of the room that she had escaped from a few days ago. Always there was at least one shadowy silhouette standing over her, although a few times there were two of them and one was much smaller and thinner then they other.

“Well,” Aaron said as everybody was shooed out of the room by Grandma who stayed to take care of Liela. “That was interesting.” He grabbed his glass from the table then sat down to stare at the rest of us from his seat. “So what are we going to do about this?” He asked as everybody else took their seat or made themselves comfortable somewhere else.

“If you mean the renegade Whitecoats,” Taylor said pressing a hand to his temple as he did so. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Aaron asked confused.

“Nothing,” Taylor reaffirmed. “We have no way of finding out who they are, much less where they are or what they're doing. It would be pointless to tell the Order anything,” He said with more force as Aaron opened his mouth to suggest telling the secret order that was largely behind every rebel movement against the Dictator. “Since we have nothing that would help them.”

“No,” Aunt Ella said from her spot against the tiled wall. “The order will want to know about Liela, especially since it seems like the School didn't create her in the first place.”

“They'll also want to know about the existence of Rouge Whitecoats.” Cal said as she bit her nails out of nervous habit.

Aunt Ella nodded in agreement. “Okay then, I'll see if I can contact them tomorrow and-“

She stopped abruptly as the sound of the front door closing and opening in an almost calm succession. Equally calm were the footsteps that came towards us in to the kitchen in slow measured steps.

We all waited tensely as one by one we realized who's measured steps were bringing him closer to us. No of us were surprised when Jeb, wrinkled and grey haired, came into the room.

“What do you want?” I ground out through my teeth.

The old bastard only smiled at me like I was a child that didn't understand his complicated adult reasoning for everything he'd done.

I didn't, but that wasn't the problem.

“Your grandmother invited me Charlie.” He said in what was supposed to be a soothing tone, but I only heard the condescension ringing through it. “She needs my help to finish the experiment.”

“She has a name you know.” Aaron said seemingly calm as he propped his feet up on the table. Cal quickly pushed them off again, but that only reinforced his calm and fairly happy disposition as he faced down one of the worst traitors in our time.

Jeb stared at the white haired geek, his face almost to the point of anger, but Grandma walked in before things could get out of hand.

“She's in here, Batchelder.” Grandma's tone revealed her dislike of her peer, although her face and body didn't let any other emotion through.

My breath hissed through my teeth as Jeb followed Grandma into the other room, but aside from that small noise, it was scary quiet. None of us ever could play nice when that vile thing was nearby and we had all found that it was better to stay quiet unless we wanted Grandma's wrath to descend on us. But Jeb had used up to many second chances for us to stop thinking badly of him, even though we couldn't voice our thoughts.

A scream suddenly jerked our hate-thoughts to a stop. I jumped up off the counter I had been using as a chair and rushed towards Aunt Ella's bedroom door just as Liela ran out and hid behind Cal and Aaron. I stood nearby as Jeb walked out the dark to meet our silent accusations.

“I suggest you start explaining things Batchelder.” Grandma said icily from the doorway behind him with her arms crossed and we all waited for the undoubtedly half lie that we were about to hear.