Maximum Ride Fan Fiction ❯ After Armageddon ❯ Chapter Eleven: March 22, 2032 - Day Three ( Chapter 11 )

 

After Armageddon

 

Chapter Eleven: March 22, 2032 - Day Three

 

*******

 

“Charlie?”

“Yeah Liela?”

“I think we should both write this one.”

“That might get confusing.”

“Please?”

…

“Yeah, okay.”

 

*******

 

Charlie and Liela

 

 

The next morning, instead of an alarm clock someone thought shaking me would be a good wake up call.

Really? All I got was a swift kick to the shins. Seems to me someone missed out on all the fun.

Well we can't all pull off the bruised and battered look as well as you can Charlie.

Anyway.

“Guys, get up!” Aaron said trying to shout at us as quietly as he could.

“Whaaaaaat?” I moaned not wanting to wake up yet seeing as I was pretty sure it was still dark.

“What happened to sleeping?” I asked.

“Sleeping went out the window when Flyboys decided to crash the party.”

“Wha-?”

“You heard me.” Aaron said as he pulled me up and started throwing stuff into the bags.

I was already on my feet and helping him. Between the two of us we managed to get Liela moving away from the smoldering embers of last nights, or I guess it was still this night's fire; she had never been easy to wake, especially before dawn.

“We need to fly.” I told Aaron before we were out of the safe enclosed space were we had been sleeping. “So you need to change now.”

“Little problem.” He told me.

“Oh no.”

“I can't change.”

I tripped when they both stopped so suddenly.

“What?!”

“Yeah, I noticed about the time Liela started screaming about the barcode. She kicked in the startle effect but nothing happened.” When we were eight years old, Taylor was still the incredible brat that he is now, and he thought it would be funny if he dressed up as one of the meaner Whitecoats we knew. Of course it was around Halloween so when Aaron, Will, and I stepped outside in our costumes to go trick-or-treating (yes I've been trick-or-treating, I'm not a complete Neanderthal) Taylor jumped out of no where and Will and I both screamed for Mom. Mom punished him real good, which was a plus, but Aaron had involuntary changed into a rabbit after Taylor jumped out of his hiding place and he did not change back until the next morning. This involuntary change came to be known as the startle effect, because now whenever Aaron gets too freaked out, he changes into a ball of white fur with a nose.

“So you can't change at all?” I asked in disbelief.

Aaron shrugged a yes.

I swore.

I finally managed to get my feet under me.

“Come on Liela we have to run.” I told her.

“Run?” I asked wishing my ears were clogged or something, because I was not looking forward to running when I could fly. Still Charlie and Aaron pulled me up and started pulling me forward.

“I can run by myself guys!” I shouted at them.

The shout was enough to attract the attention of the lead heads. We sped up the pace to a nice sprint when we heard one of them crash into a boulder about fifty feet behind us. When they got themselves together, literally, they started the chase in earnest and we sped it up to a mad dash.

Aaron laughed out loud. “Wow I forgot how much fun this is!” He said as he scrambled over a bunch of rocks and pits in the hard dirt.

“Forgot? We did this just the other day!”

“What can I say? I've got memory issues!”

“This would explain why you think everyone else's birthday is your birthday!” I shouted as I first gained on the boys and then passed them. “Come on guys you can do better than this!” I shouted back at them, truly awake by now.

A loud bang nearly made me trip again.

“They're actually shooting at us!” I yelled slightly surprised. They did not shoot at us. We were too important.

Wow, that did not sound pompous at all.

“I guess we're not worth keeping around anymore.” Aaron said as he tried to push himself faster.

“At least it isn't nets again! That was downright insulting.”

“I think I'll take insulting over dead.” I said glancing behind me as another bullet splintered a rock as I ran passed. “They're gaining on us!”

“Scrap!” I yelled back pedaling to avoid a broken nose. “We've got bigger problems.”

It was then that I saw the hundred foot cliff that was looming in front of us. You might think that all cliffs loom over people if they're big enough, but let me tell you that I have seem much bigger cliffs and only a few of them have ever loomed.

Yes we get the point, the cliff was looming over us, get on with it.

Thanks Liela.

So we had a looming cliff in front of us and trigger happy idiots behind us. The situation was like sucking rotten eggs; disturbing and nauseating at the same time. We could fly, but since Aaron could not change Liela or I would have to carry him and then it would be near impossible to fly up fast enough.

Although if the trigger happy idiots cornered us than it would be impossible to go up at all, at least not without getting shot half a dozen times in important places anyway.

This left us with basically three options.

We could run to the left.

We could run to the right.

We could not run at all and beat the idiots into little silver, fur filled shards.

Of course we chose option three.

“Makes the most sense.” Aaron said as we got ready to fight off a mess of Flyboys.

“So you think we can win?” I asked as the three of us got ready to face who knew how many morons.

Charlie and Aaron both snorted.

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Maybe.”

“No idea.”

“Great.” I said recognizing their just-guess-and-don't-bother-asking-us-cause-we're-really-not-sure routine. “We're about to be trampled by who knows how many morons and neither of you even have a clue of what to do!”

“Well do you have any bright ideas Miss Smartyfeathers?” I asked just a little stressed out by the present situation. “No? I didn't think so, so quit blaming us.”

“Shut up the both of you.” Aaron told us as he watched for moving objects around and between the rocks that made up most of the landscape in front of us. The sun was just beginning to rise, brightening the gray-brown landscape.

“Hey Charlie,” I asked suddenly remembering something that might be important, like save our sorry hides important. “Isn't there a Fire Cave near here? Can't we hide there until the idiots are gone?”

Fire Cave's were small hideouts that the Phoenix used to, well, hide things. And though our knowledge of the Phoenix rebel organization was limited seeing as we were not full fledged members (ha ha, feather jokes); they did trust us enough to let us know where small things like their Fire Caves were located.

“Yeah.” I answered remembering the rough `x' on a map that Aunt Ella had shown us once a year or so back. If I was remembering right, which was a fairly big `if' giving how long it had been since any of us had seen that map, than the Fire Cave was a little ways to our left, somewhere along the wall that was blocking out path.

“Change of plans,” I yelled. “Go left!”

The sunlight was strong enough to see small, fast moving pieces of metal below us among the rocks as we started to run, but since the three of us were next to the base of the cliff, we were still covered in shadow. I don't think the thick grayness made it harder for the Flyboys to see us since they did not have normal eyes and their limitations, but I think it must have helped somewhat because it took a few minutes for the lead heads to realize we were moving again.

Given the tremendous speed that Itex's non-living experiments usually have, it was not long before the Flyboys had caught up to us.

Not that they really needed to catch up seeing as we were well within range of their weaponry even before they noticed we had started running again.

“Stupid cretins,” I muttered as another rock shattered over my head with the force of the bullet that had rocked into it. “What do they think they are? Cats?”

“Naw,” Aaron said having heard me. “If they were cats we would have outsmarted them already.”

“How does that make sense?” I asked him raising my voice.

“Haven't you ever watched Sylvester and Tweety cartoons? The bird always outsmarts the cat.”

“Sadly the cat always lives too,” I added, “even if you drop a piano on `em.”

“Well you can't have everything now can you?” Aaron said glancing over his shoulder. “There gaining on us.” He told us gravely. “Are we close yet?”

I looked up, hoping to see a black spot on the cave wall that meant safety was near, but of course that would have been too easy.

“There!” I yelled pointing forward. “Keep going.”

Ahead of us was a thin break in the cliff. Most likely it was some sort of ravine or rift or whatever you want to call it that had been carved out of the rock by moving water.
“In there!” I told the boys shoving Aaron when he looked the other way.

`In there' was even darker than out there. The walls of the rift went straight up with little variation such as openings or pathways that might lead us to our Fire Cave. Not to mention they were set close together so we were forced to run in a single file line, making me feel claustrophobic as well as five years old.

I was last in line, so when the Flyboys appeared behind us and started shooting again, naturally I was a little more worried than Aaron and Liela.

“Move!” I yelled as rock dust started showering down on my head. Liela, who was in front, started pushing herself faster, but not near as fast as I expected her to go.

I was looking for the Fire Cave while I was running, not as easy as you think.

I thought girls were supposed to be better at the whole multitasking thing?

Not when it comes to highly stressful situations where we're running for our lives and trying to find an itty bitty hole in the middle of a skinny trench where robots are shooting at us.

Shooting at you? You were at the front of the line. They were shooting at me!

Speaking of shooting. “Can't you move any faster?” Aaron yelled behind me as a droning whine filled the air around us. “They're taking off!” I suddenly wished that there was a ceiling above me even if it would have meant that we would have to crawl. Since the Flyboys could fly, my guess was that they were planning to basically dive bomb us.

The group of trigger happy Flyboys behind us had shrunk, but they were still there. Of course I only realized this after a bullet went through my shoulder.

I know I stumbled because I almost knocked Aaron over. Somehow the rabbit-wonder managed to keep us both upright and switched places, putting me in the middle of our line. I was not really aware of this at the time, it just seemed like magic to me, since my shoulder felt like it was on freaking fire.

I suddenly smiled unaware that Charlie had been shot. “There it is!” I yelled and pointed to a short bump in the rock wall far above the airborne idiots and our own heads.

Despite the fuzziness that was brought on by the pain, I distinctly remember swearing. “That is a long way up.”

“We need to get above the line of Flyboys before they get close enough to see where the Fire Cave is.” Aaron said starting to breathe hard.

“Got it,” I said stopping hard and unfurling my wings as I jumped off the ground to give myself some kind of lift. I twisted back and grabbed Aaron's upheld hands and pushed off the closest wall and started flying as quickly as I could towards the Fire Cave.

It took me a second to realize that Charlie was not behind me.

He was still under us, running to keep a safe distance between him and the Flyboys. I did not know that there was a bullet buried in his shoulder; much less that it had put a nice dime sized hole through his right wing. All I know was that he was clutching his shoulder and he was not flying.

“Put me down!” Aaron ordered when I froze. “Grab Charlie and get to the cave!”

“What about you?” I asked even as I tucked my wings in to land near Charlie.

Aaron smiled at me in an unusually sad fashion. “You're going to have to trust me. I'll be okay.”

I did not trust him actually, but somehow I could not bring myself to contradict him.

“Come on Charlie,” I yelled grabbing him whether he liked it or not and yanking him upward. I moved faster than before since the line of flying Flyboys was closer than before.

I whooshed past the line with more than enough time to spare and then tucked my wings in and for all intents and purposes, disappeared.

Really I had fallen onto the slight ledge that the cave opening rested on. The slight bump I had mentioned before had a hole in it that led to the actual Fire Cave. I was planning to leave Charlie there and go back for Aaron, but before I could jump back down, Charlie grabbed the back of my shirt and hauled me into the crawl space that lay beyond the hole.

“What are you doing?” I hissed at Charlie.

“They'll see you!” I hissed back. I made sure to keep a good grip on her seeing as she still looked like she was about to jump off the little ledge that sat outside the safety of the opening. “And we can't help him if they shoot us.”

That seemed to calm her down, or at least restart the more rational part of her brain, because she relaxed and nodded. I let go but did not turn away until I was sure she was not going to jump. Then when I was, I nodded myself and scurried deeper into the Fire Cave.

“Does this one have a peep hole?” I asked still mad that Aaron was alone outside with a bunch of gun toting morons.

I nodded. I could feel blood starting to run down my back from the bullet wound. I was pretty sure the adrenaline rush from being chased, shot at, shot, and hiding, was wearing off, because I was starting to wear down, like some sort of wind up toy. The loss of adrenaline plus the loss of blood was making me tired and just a little unsteady.

This was not a good thing since Aaron was still outside and so were a mess of murderous robots.

Still, the two of us managed to climb down to the actual Fire Cave and opened the peep hole.

Peep hole is probably a really bad description for the window sized two way mirror that was set in the side of the cave wall. There was a normal bed sheet that usually hung in front of it to act as a kind of blind, but I quickly ripped it away so we could see what was happening.

“They've caught Aaron.” I said hearing my flat excuse for a voice.

I managed to make my way to the mirror.

“Turn on the voice…thing.” I said forgetting the name of radio like device that would let us hear what Aaron and the Flyboys were saying. Leila flipped it on and we listened and watched as one of the Flyboys started to interrogate Aaron.

“So,” A snide voice filtered through the squawk box that was supposed to be the Fire Cave's one way radio. “Where did your friends go wabbit?” The voice sounded worse than usual not only because it was coming through the dilapidated old brown box sitting next to me, but because it was also being filtered through the lead Flyboy's radio as someone spoke through it, making it even statickier than it would have been normally.

I thought it sounded worse because I recognized it.

“Oh no.” I whispered afraid someone besides Charlie would hear me despite the old squawk box's one way listening limitations. “Charlie,” I turned toward him horrified, “it's that psycho guy from the New York Institute.”

That psycho guy was actually the one and only, at least I surely hope there was only one of him, Dr. Bradley Akins.

But of course, we never called him by his name, it was too nice.

“I don't know Elmer Fudd why don't you tell me?” Aaron said using a nicer name than psycho. Than again, it probably pays to be nice to people that pretty much have your life in their hands. “Aren't you supposed to be the hunter anyway?” Aaron shot back.

Okay, so maybe not that nice, but still.

The psycho kept talking unaware that Charlie and I were even here.

“Mm-hm-hm,” the psycho's usually muffled humming laugh was even worse because of the screwy radios, “It's nice to know you haven't changed wabbit.”

“Yeah too bad I can't say the same for you.” Aaron said looking pointedly at the Flyboy the psycho was talking through. “What in the world are you wearing?”

More muffled laughter.

“I had forgotten how funny you could be wabbit.” The psycho said cheerfully. “It's too bad about you dying and all. You always could make me laugh somehow.”

Aaron plastered a look of false shock on his face. “Dying? Me? Well that sure ruins my plans for Christmas. What am I ever going to tell the others?”

“I don't know.” Psycho said in such a way that I could practically picture him leaning back in his chair and swinging his feet up on top of some poor table or another. “Why don't you ask them to come out and you can ask?”

Aaron tilted his head to the side in pretend thought. “Naw,” He said. “They're busy trying to find a way to save me, so I think its best to leave them alone.”

The `save me' brought me back to reality. “Charlie,” I whispered turning to where my other friend was leaning wearily against the rock wall. “What do we do?”

I did not have the faintest clue, but I figured I could not tell Liela that. She would hit me for sure.

So I opted for a cookie cutter plan that would hopefully lead to something more specific to our nasty situation. “We need a distraction.”

I rolled my eyes at the vagueness. “Like what?” I snapped. Aaron and the Psycho were still chatting, seemingly harmlessly although I knew Aaron well enough to hear the biting edge beneath his words.

“You know I could fix that for you.” The psycho said coolly and I found myself drawn back into the conversation as Charlie tried to think of a better plan.

Really I was trying to think of why everything was looking so gray, but then I figured we were in a cave at the bottom of a huge cliff where sunlight really could not visit, so I dismissed it and tried to pay attention to what was going on.

“Fix what?” Aaron asked shifting his weight and crossing his arms over his chest.

“You actually.” The psycho said still very cryptic. “You're starting to break wabbit. In a few days your body will begin to shut down. I can stop it if you like.”

I think I felt my heart stop when the psycho said that. It meant there was still a way to save Aaron.

I latched onto the thought that we, and when I say we I really mean Mom, still had a few days to figure out how to stop the barcode from killing Aaron just as I latched onto the nearby wall so I could stand up fairly straight.

“Fix me huh?” Aaron said looking at his arms and legs. “I didn't realize I was broken.”

It was weird hearing a sigh come through a Flyboy's radio, especially since the Flyboy stayed just as stoic as ever. “We've already been over this wabbit,” Psycho man said. “You're dying. Get used to it.”

Aaron's laugh was short. “I see your bedside manner has improved and who said dead meant broken?”

The psycho's humming laugh registered even in my poor hearing. I tell you this whole being injured stuff just really stinks. First my sight and now this; it was terrible.

“I said, that's who.”

Aaron snorted. “Right, because everything you say is 100% correct.”

“You're catching on wabbit, now what do you say? Do you want my help or not?”

I very nearly missed Aaron's answer. I was so confident that I already knew what he was going to say, what was going to happen, that I did not pay attention like I should have.

Aaron waggled his head back and forth. “Eh,” He said sounding much too much like Bugs Bunny than usual. “No.”

I barely heard the Flyboy sigh again as I slid down to the floor with my back against the wall so I could still see outside the window. “Oh I had hoped you would take my help.” Psycho said sounding almost disappointed. “The Director, I'm afraid, is only interested in your bird friends and really doesn't care if we bring you back breathing or not.”

Aaron was nodding like this was no news to him. “That would be why she set off the chip in my brain. I kinda figured that much. Why did you want to save me?”
“Oh, personal reasons really. The rabbit hybrids were my idea you know and you happen to be one of the few remaining ones.”

I could picture one of Aaron's white eyebrows rising like they always did when he wanted to know more information. “Few remaining?”

“Yeah,” The psycho said more regretfully. “The Director doesn't, or didn't really, see a need for wabbits like you. She stopped the project shortly after it was started.”

“Huh,” Aaron said thoughtfully. “That would explain why I have never met a cute Lola Bunny.” The psycho hummed a laugh again. The sound grated on my poor muted ears.

Even with my slowing senses, I thought it was strange that the conversation had taken such a slow and ordinary pace. Usually it was shoot first and have nice long chats later.

“Oh well.” The psycho sighed again. “It was nice getting to talk with you at least wabbit.”

Aaron shrugged. “Can't say I feel the same Fudd.”

The psycho laughed as the Flyboy he was speaking through raised his left arm as a sign to his followers.

“NO!” I heard Liela scream as an awful fear settled over me.

“Fire.” The psycho ordered calmly.

I don't remember screaming. All I remember is that there was a loud crack, like thunder and lightening striking at the same time, and my world shattered.