Reaper's Legacy: Book Two (Toxic City)(17)
“Pull it up!” Jack shouted, but his words were stolen away.
Jenna was hugging the strut, eyes squeezed shut, strap twisted around her arm and biting into her skin so hard that blood dribbled, whipped away by the wind.
Jack leaned in towards Sparky, not daring to let go, and shouted again. “Sparky!”
Sparky turned to look at Jack, eyes wide and his spiked blond hair pressed flat across his head.
“Pull…up!”
Sparky nodded and grabbed the control handles. They were linked via wires and metal connectors to the wing above them, and though Jack had no idea how it worked, there must have been some element of control. Sparky pulled the handles, and immediately their nose rose, almost flipping them up onto their back.
If that happens we'll stall and then just fall, Jack thought, and he risked letting go of the strut. He fell forward across Sparky's arm and grabbed one controller, easing back and feeling Sparky's immediate understanding. The hang glider levelled…and then they were drifting, and flying.
“Yeaaaahhhh!” Sparky screamed.
Jenna's eyes opened a crack, then squeezed shut again.
As if finding its own level, the aircraft suddenly stopped shaking, and the breeze pressing against Jack's face lessened. He still gripped tight, but for a moment he felt safer. Safe enough at least to glance around, see where they were heading, and spot a hundred dangers in their path.
They'd dropped at least half the building's height before levelling out, and now other buildings loomed, and aerials on lower structures reached for them.
Jack looked back, but they were already too far away from Breezer's skyscraper to make out any details.
“Got to make some distance!” Jack shouted. Sparky nodded once, all his concentration on the control handles. Jack could see his friend tweaking the handles here and there, muscles in his arms flexing and his brow furrowed as he slowly got the feel of the aircraft. The glider dipped and rose, and then as they drifted to the left and approached a bland grey concrete and glass monolith, they rose and barely passed above it.
Sparky beamed in delight. Jenna opened her eyes once more, then closed them again.
“We're okay!” Jack shouted to her, but she merely pressed her lips tighter together.
They passed over a green square with several bombed-out buildings marring its northern side. Jack wondered at their story. Shapes moved across the square's overgrown lawns, pale faces looking up, and he tried to make out what they were wearing—royal blue Choppers, or the more rag-tag clothing of London's survivors—but they passed overhead too quickly. If there were voices or gunshots, the wind swallowed them.
Jack closed his eyes and tried to sense back the way they had come, but he could not grasp any power that enabled him to do so. The potential within him was staggering, but much of his fear came from his erratic ability to source it at will.
“We're flying!” Sparky shouted. He let his natural exuberance loose, whooping and shouting, but always maintaining gentle control.
Jack could not help grinning. Ask nine out of ten people what their secret power would be, and they'd say flying. He'd not yet seen or heard of anyone in London who could do this unaided—and he doubted he ever would, because Evolve seemed to have worked more on minds than on bodies—but this was as near as it could be. They were flying, and for the first time since entering London through tunnels and sewers, Jack felt completely free.
And yet…
He looked down at the roofs and streets passing below, and the parks and squares, abandoned vehicles, gardens, storage units, and factories, and then the River Thames…and all the while he felt watched.
But these were not Nomad's eyes.
“Let's put it down!” Jack shouted.
“Er…” Sparky said. “Right. Yeah. Down.”
Jenna kept her eyes squeezed shut and maintained the same position, and Jack thought it best to leave her until they had landed.
He scanned ahead and below them, trying to spot a safe landing site, trying also not to think about their combined weight this thing was not meant to carry and the impact they might suffer on striking the ground.
As if responding to his doubts the hang glider dropped suddenly, Jack's stomach turning, Sparky shouting, and from his right Jack heard Jenna's low, pained groan.
Sparky fought with the controls, tongue sticking from the corner of his mouth as he concentrated on steering them away from the face of a department store, then edging them to the left again as a tall aerial loomed atop an office building. The aerial slapped the aircraft a foot from Jack's leg, smashing a strut into fibreglass shards. They lurched, then started banking to the left.
“Going down on the road,” Sparky shouted.
“Watch out for the bus!”
Sparky did not reply, too busy concentrating. Jack held on tight. He had brief visions of the wheels disintegrating, the aircraft coming apart, and the three of them rolling and scraping across the tarmac, slamming against vehicles or buildings, their broken, dead bodies eventually rotting where they came to rest. He did not believe they were destined for such a pointless ending, and yet he was only too aware of the vagaries of fate.
The wheels struck the ground and they bounced, twisting to the left, striking again, and during the second bounce Sparky twisted them to the right, ensuring that the next impact took them past a bus slewed across the road. The front wheel struck the kerb, but by then their speed had drastically lessened.