James Patterson - Fang: A Maximum Ride Novel

Copyright 2010 by James Patterson

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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First eBook Edition: March 2010

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

ISBN: 978-0-316-07228-1

Books by James Patterson
for Readers of All Ages

Witch & Wizard (with Gabrielle Charbonnet)

The Maximum Ride Novels

The Angel Experiment

Schools OutForever

Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

The Final Warning

MAX

FANG

The Daniel X Novels

The Dangerous Days of Daniel X (with Michael Ledwidge)

Watch the Skies (with Ned Rust)

Demons & Druids (and Adam Sadler)

Illustrated Novels

Daniel X: Alien Hunter (graphic novel; with Leopoldo Gout)

Maximum Ride: The Manga 1 (with NaRae Lee)

Maximum Ride: The Manga 2 (with NaRae Lee)

For previews of upcoming books in these series and other
information, visit www.MaximumRide.com, www.Daniel-X.com, and
www.WitchAndWizard.com.

For more information about the author, visit www.JamesPatterson.com.

Many thanks to Gabrielle Charbonnet,
my conspirator, who flies high and cracks wise.

And to Mary Jordan, for brave assistance
and research at every twist and turn.

THE IDEA FOR the Maximum Ride series comes from earlier books of mine called When the Wind Blows and The Lake House, which also feature a character named Max who escapes from a quite despicable School. Most of the similarities end there. Max and the other kids in the Maximum Ride books are not the same Max and kids featured in those two books. Nor do Frannie and Kit play any part in the series. I hope you enjoy the ride anyway.

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.

Henry David Thoreau

IM A GIRL OF EXTREMES. When I love something, Im like a puppy dog (without all the licking). When Im cranky, Im a wasp (like, a whole hive of em). And when Im angry, Im a mother bear with a predator after her cubs: dangerous.

I say this because lately my life seemed to be all about extremes. Like right now, for instance. I was soaring twenty thousand feet in the air with the five people I loved most in the worldand no, we werent on a plane, hang-gliding, or hot air ballooning. We preferred to use good old-fashioned wings. The technologys been around for eons.

If youve ever dreamed you could fly, I can confirm that its all that and better. Even if youre desperately flying through a subway tunnel to save your life, its still off the charts. But today, flying over Africa it was as good as it ever gets. Maybe the best part was that for the first time in a dogs age, we werent on the run from madmen. We were on a missionto do good.

Max! Iggy called over to me. Why did they name themselves Chad? I mean, Chad. Its like naming a whole country Biff or Trey. I dont get it.

Ig, dont be ignorant, I scoffed. Its not like all the people there named themselves.

Why not? We named ourselves, Nudge noted, as if I needed to be reminded that we were raised in a lab under the supervision of science geeks.

Only cause were special. I gestured to her twelve-foot wingspan. Hey, check that out! I pointed to a Martian-like rock formation in the distance.

Fang turned his head and gave me one of his classic half smilesyou know, like the kind of smile Mona Lisa would have had if she were a guy. A teenage guy with longish scruffy hair, dark eyes, and a leather jacket. Mmmmm.

The whole trip had been as exhilarating as one of Fangs killer smiles. Even the hundreds of miles of shifting, mysterious desert dunes had been amazing. Were world travelers and allweve lived in wilds as extreme as Death Valley and Antarcticabut there was something downright otherworldly about what Id seen below as we crossed overoh, crap, Id forgotten the names of all of the different countries.

Mauritania, Algeria, Mali, Niger, and Chad together are about sixty-eight percent desert, Angel recited, reading my mind. Literally. Shes powerful like that.

Whatever. Its too much freaking desert, Angels brother, Gazzy, complained. I wouldnt mind seeing a few cows chomping away on some grass right about now.

A-plus-plus on the geography quiz, Angel. Gazzy, Iggy, extra credit when you check your attitudes at the door. Even without parents, somehow Id picked up the language. Seems to work when youre the leader. Listen, I know some of you are a little cranky from the long flight, but this is our chance to finally help people. Real people, I emphasized, as if wed grown up in a plastic bubble or something. Well, we kind of had. Do dog crates in labs count?

Real people, Fang clarified. As in, not just a bunch of wack-job scientists.

Yup. Did it ever occur to you guys, I continued grandly, that when we were told we had to save the world, it might have actually meant saving peoplelike, one at a time? Sending a message around the world about people in need is great and all, but actually feeding people, giving people medical help and stuff? Weve never done that before. I mean, this could be it, guys. Our destiny.

Max is right, Angel agreed, in a very un-Angel-like manner. We didnt see eye-to-eye on much these days.

Word on the street is that you have to save the world, Max, Iggy reminded me. The rest of us? Not so much.

Twit. Always trying to take the easy way out.

Not Fang, though. Hey, Max, wherever you go to save the worldI will follow He did the killer half-smile thing. Mother Teresa.

My stomach flip-flopped as if Id folded my wings and plunged into free fall. Hello, Max the Puppy.

I had exactly five seconds to enjoy sainthood before I caught sight of three black dots in the distanceand they appeared to be moving straight toward us.

Looked like Mama Bears cubs were in danger. And you know what that meant:

Bye-bye, Saint Max. Time to be a hellion again.

INCOMING! I SHOUTED to my flock. Down, down, down!

Fast-moving objects directed at the flock usually belong to one of three categories: bullets, mutant beings with a taste for bird kid, or vehicles hired by an evil megalomaniac wanting to kidnap us and use our powers. Which might explain why I was working on the assumption that the three black dots meant one thing and one thing only: imminent death.

Max! Relax! Fang managed to stop me before I could execute my dive. I think those are the CSM cargo planes.

It was the Coalition to Stop the Madness (CSM), the activist group my nonwinged mom was involved with, that had asked us to go on this humanitarian relief mission to Chad and to help publicize the work they were doing there. And what with our previous adventures helping them combat global warming and ocean pollution, we were slowly being turned from feral, scavenging outlaws on the lam into Robin Hoody do-gooders. Meanwhile, I was still supposed to save the world at some point. My calendar was full, full, full.