Maximum Ride Forever Read Free Page A

being an
idiot
and shows up with the water jugs, everything will be
fine
,” I said loudly. Despite our inborn sense of direction, I had no idea where we were—all landmarks were gone. Even the forest of tree stumps had disappeared under the rivers of gray deposits.
    Finally we stumbled on the lake, but it wasn’t the blue thermal pool we remembered. A thick gray film covered the surface, broken only by the hundreds or thousands of silvery dead fish bobbing through it. The cloud of black flies hovering over them was even thicker than the ash.
    “Well, might as well eat ’em before they rot.” Gazzy grabbed a silvery floater, brushed off the ash as best he could, and bit into the side. Then he looked up in surprise, his face as dirty and gray as the water. “Hey! It’s cooked!”
    One by one we grabbed a cooked fish right out of the still-warm water, brushed off the ash, and ate our fill. One downside of our avian genes was a lightning-fast metabolism that meant we were nearly always hungry.
    A little farther on, we saw it: Our precious stockpile of water was untouched, the jugs covered with ash but intact. We weren’t going to die of thirst—at least not yet.
    Luck loves Maximum Ride
, I thought, cupping my hands so Akila could drink. But then my heart plummeted. If the jugs hadn’t been moved, it could only mean one thing:
    Dylan hadn’t even made it this far.
    For hours we stayed close to the shore where the ash was less dense, and took turns flying through the debris to search the cliffs. But the volcano was still pumping black smoke, and the air was getting harder to breathe.
    I was bent over after one of these missions, hacking up some blood and wondering if my fast-healing ability included my guts, when I spotted a charred gray knob poking out of the rubble.
    “Another cave bone,” I sighed. “Looks kind of femur-y.” That’s how we had known the island’s underwater tunnels had collapsed after the apocalyptic meteor: The corpses had started washing up on shore. We were still finding them, almost three months later. I didn’t know if any of the bones had belonged to my mother or my half sister. How would I be able to tell?
    “Not necessarily.” Fang’s lips pressed together.
    I held it up: Though charred, it was totally a human femur.
    Gazzy shook his head. “It’s burned. We don’t know how old it is. The lava would’ve done that if it had been a cave corpse or someone more recently, like…”
    Yesterday.
    I was having trouble swallowing, trouble breathing.
    “Let’s go back to the cave,” Nudge said gently. “We can try another path—”
    I whirled around. “Angel, try to tap into Dylan’s thoughts. He’s got to be somewhere. He’s just hiding. Or looking for us. I’m sure he’s nearby.”
    Angel looked away.
    “Ig? Can’t you smell him or something?”
    Iggy leaned heavily against a rock. Flakes of ash fell from his white-blond hair when he shook his head. Though his eyes were unseeing, they were full of pity.
    “It’s not him,” I insisted, kicking ash back over the bones.
    “It’s like Dylan’s cognitive connection just stopped,” Angel said finally. “Like with your mom and Ella—”
    “We never found their bodies.” My jaw tightened. “We don’t know what happened to them. Just like we don’t know what happened… here.”
    It was getting harder to say his name.
    “Everything is dead, Max.” Angel’s tone was firm. “Everything except us.”
    “No.”
I wanted to shake her.
    “Guys.”
    I looked down the beach. At first I couldn’t make out what Fang was holding, it was so black and warped. Then he turned it over, and I saw a tiny flash of color.
    That spot of bright green—a shade Dylan loved, that none of us had seen since the last of the trees had died—was enough to buckle my knees, and enough to force out the awful, wounded sob that had been building in my chest all day.
    Because that burned-to-cinders object Fang cradled in his hand was one of