Maximum Ride Saves Us All

Dive-Bomb

Max POV

                What was he thinking? He knew he didn’t have the strength, the training. Seriously? What had happened while I was under? Did the whole world just…oh yeah…

                How could I be so insensitive? I’m Maximum Ride, I’m the flock leader and I’m supposed to be strong for everyone. I can’t keep letting my emotions get the best of me, I need to get a grip and get everything back under control. This coma took me off guard and put us way off schedule. I need to set Dylan straight and focus on rescuing my babies.

                My wings were carrying me as fast as they possibly could. I was speeding past all of the foliage that surrounded me. I had to make it to the clearing and out to the water where the caves were. I was whizzing past everything in a blurred craze at over 200 mph. I could hear Fang and Angel screaming at me, trying to keep up but I shook my head and kept going. I pulsed my wings up and down as hard and fast as I possibly could. It hurt like hell but I knew I couldn’t stop. I needed to save Dylan from making a huge mistake. I couldn’t let him and I couldn’t figure out why I felt so strongly about it, as far as I knew, I hated him and refused to be his lab rat mate in Germany…not that that was a thing anymore, given the whole world had been flooded over...wow…I’m really insensitive after coming out of a coma.

                I could feel my hair whipping at my shoulders and my face. The crisp air was burning my cheeks and it felt like a million shards of glass were flying straight into my face. I knew I had to keep going for the more time I wasted, I could be losing a bird kid and I knew that was not an option. Maybe I just figured out why I cared so much. I needed all of the help I could get to rescue my real family and I was just about willing to do anything for them in that moment because I had grown desperate over time. Too many things had led to this feeling, this strong and determined feeling inside of me. I was willing to use Dylan to rescue my family from hundreds of miles below sea level and in that very moment I had now shame.

                I tried to speed up and get there faster. Who knew that the clearing of the forest had been so far from the first tree house that I and Fang had been…well you know? I passed many tree animals, nearly crashing into a flying squirrel or two. I had been dropping altitude every now and then to avoid stray branches as well as sharp swerving to avoid other branches and tree trunks. I had been flying so fast through the great foliage I needed the reflexes to keep up and keep me from losing even more time. The last swerve brought me up into the air in a sort of bob motion and brought me to a different type of clearing. I took a sharp lean upwards and soared up a tree trunk to the clearing of the tops of the trees out into the open sky. As I used my excellent bird vision to peer out and over the trees I could see it! There was the great body of water, the salty mass of ocean.

                Then I saw a speck of movement. It dropped from the open sky like a bomb. It was the shape of a human in mid-air but this shape had two objects attached to the sides, two curled up objects that came to points at the end. Wings.

                Shit. He was hurling himself at the water.

                “NO!” I screeched with an outstretched arm. I threw my self forward with a lurch and forced my wings to move faster and harder than they had ever gone. The pain seared through my shoulders and down my spine. I could feel the growing physical pain pulse through my entire body as I flew faster and faster and faster. Everything around me was one big blob of paled colors and fuzzy noises. The wind whistled against and through my ears. I couldn’t stop now, even with the searing pain causing me to grimace. I couldn’t let Dylan to this to himself, to us…to me.

                I grew increasingly closer to the shape every seconds and within about a minute I was roughly a hundred feet from his body that was about to dive bomb the water, face first from three hundred feet above the sea.

                I kept screaming and screaming at him but it seemed like he was ignoring me or maybe he thought it was a hallucination because as far as he knew, I was still out cold wasting time in the cabin with Fang my one true love and apparent body guard at my bedside. I needed him to know it was me, just to look at me, see my face and unfurl his wings to lift up and keep himself from dying. Yes, it would hurt like hell, it had happened to me before but it was healable and we bird kids healed much faster. I needed him! I needed my babies back and he was one of my only hopes at them returning safely to their nest.

                “PULL UP IDIOT! UNFURL YOUR WINGS! IF YOU HIT THE WATER YOU WILL DIE UPON IMPACT! PULL UP! PULL UP! PULL UP!” I kept screaming but he shook me off, literally. He shook his head as if he was hearing things.

                I was maybe fifty feet from him now.

                Forty.

                Thirty.

                Twenty.

                Ten.

                This was going to hurt. A lot.

                Five. Here we go, brace yourself Max, this won’t be so bad. You will save Dylan, be the hero and keep your spotless record of zero flock deaths at your expense and you will get your family back.