As it turned out, Mother Nature helped us. Sort of. Sort of a half-helped / half-killed situation. When we were about seven feet from the doors, they blew open, their frames shattering around the massive locks. In an instant, we were airborne, without using our wings.
The wind coming through the windows and whipping out through the doors created a huge updraft that almost flattened us against the ceiling. Gozen hunkered down over the UD even as a large potted plant clocked him in the head, opening the skin to reveal tissue and wires. Yes. Gross.
There was only one thing to do.
“Go with the flow!” I shouted, remembering a long-ago lesson from the Voice. “Go with nature! Fang! Get Akila!” I grabbed Total and clutched him hard against my chest. I saw Fang grab Akila and knew she would be a struggle to hold.
Then, making sure that everyone was with me, I put my wings out just a bit, and whoosh! The wind grabbed me, and I shot down the hall like a jet.
“Ouch! Ouch! God —” I couldn’t aim, so I was scraping against exit signs and light fixtures. I checked behind me to make sure everyone had gotten out, and they had, with no sign of Gozen or the UD.
“Go with the flow!” I yelled again. Then I saw where the hallway led: directly to a balcony with floor-to-ceiling windows. Of hurricane-proof glass. That we’d probably smash against like mosquitoes against a windshield.
“Wait! I take it back! Don’t go with the flow!” I shrieked, trying desperately to backpedal.
But of course it was too late by then.
69
I HOPED THE UBER-DIRECTOR hadn’t paid his building contractor yet, because those so-called hurricane-proof windows were, in fact, not at all hurricane proof. Unless maybe for a baby hurricane. A widdle one. With no big winds. I thought he should have got his money back.
Instead of smashing against the balcony windows, we sailed through them, because they’d blown out by the time we reached them. Wastebaskets, plants, chairs, and even some desks flew out around us. Then it was like we’d been put into God’s washing machine, on the spin cycle. I held on to Total as tight as I could, and we were sucked away into winds stronger than anything I’d ever experienced. My breath was actually pulled from my lungs. Within seconds, Total and I were soaked. In addition to the rain, hailstones as hard as diamonds pelted me, feeling like needles being driven into my skin. I pulled my wings in almost all the way, leaving them out a tiny bit in the hopes that this would allow me to steer. If I’d put them out fully, they would have been torn off.
When I looked back, I counted five bird kids behind me, all struggling. Fang and Iggy were both holding on to Akila. Nudge, Gazzy, and Angel had tied themselves together, ropes looped around their waists, which was smart, but I bet it really hurt.
“This sucks!” Total yelled in my ear.
I didn’t think that needed a response. It was the understatement of the century. But come to think of it, I couldn’t believe we were still alive. We weren’t supposed to be able to survive this. No one could. Were we getting stronger? I started to wonder, then realized there was still time to be shredded to pieces.
Feeling almost half delirious from lack of breath, certain that my skin was being peeled slowly from my face and hands, I started expecting to see Dorothy’s house swirling by at any moment — and then suddenly it was much calmer, and I was being sucked downward, fast.
My ears rang with silence. My mouth dropped open in surprise. I looked up and saw . . . white clouds and blue sky. It wasn’t raining or hailing on me. I was still moving in a gigantic circle, but it was more like the fluff ’n’ dry cycle, not too bad.
“We’re falling,” Total told me.
Ah, yes, so we were. Cautiously I put my wings out more fully, feeling wind catch in them, expanding my feathers. I surged upward and saw my flock pop out of the wall of clouds one by one.
“We’re in the eye of the storm!” I shouted, and motioned downward. I didn’t know how big this eye was — maybe several miles across? But I wanted to take advantage of it. Controlling my descent, I headed earthward, landing on a broken section of highway overpass. At each end, the high-way dipped down into floodwaters — who knew how deep?
Shading my eyes, I looked up to see Nudge, Gazzy, and Angel, beat up and exhausted, land clumsily. Angel fell to her knees, trying to protect her broken arm.
I rushed over to them, untied their rope, and checked them all over.
Iggy landed, then Fang.
“Where’s —?” I began, then saw Fang’s face. I glanced at Iggy; he had the same tragic expression. Akila had been too heavy for them. They hadn’t been able to hold on to her.
My heart squeezed painfully. What would we tell Total? Right now he was flopped on his side, panting, but any second he would realize the love of his life was missing. . . . Oh, God.
“Gozen.”
My head whipped up and I looked where Fang was pointing. High, high above us, Gozen and, amazingly, the Uber-Director were flailing wildly by, close to the edge of the eye. Suddenly my fury overwhelmed me — at Akila’s death, at Angel’s broken arm, at their trying to sell us, and at every other bad thing that anyone had ever done to us, which, believe me, was a pretty long list. In seconds I was streaking upward as fast as I could.
70
GOZEN WAS WRAPPED around the Uber-Director, which was the only reason the UD hadn’t come apart by now. But even as I shot toward them, I could see that Gozen’s weight was working against him; they were both being dragged roughly around the eye wall of the storm.
I saw the UD shout, “Don’t let go!” though I couldn’t hear him. But Gozen’s enormous fingers were slipping, and his body and face bore signs of violent contact with a lot of debris.