Angel

44

AND SO IT WAS that the Great White Spirit descended from the heavens and appeared to the lost pilgrims in the desert.

Iggy floated gently down through the smoke. With the firelight shining on him and smoke plumes wreathing around his head and wings, he did sort of look like a scruffy angel. You know, if God had a sense of humor about it.

Now, Iggy is nearly six feet tall and superskinny. He has really pale skin, reddish-blond hair, and practically colorless blue eyes (when he takes off his shades). Basically, he looks kind of freaky even without the fourteen-foot wings. So to see him coming down from the sky, out in the middle of nowhere, probably turned at least a couple of kids into budding evangelists.

The crowd scrambled to its feet and looked at Iggy as a beacon of hope. Which, considering the screwed-up mental place these kids were in, he was.

“Welcome back, Iggy. I was worried when your family kidnapped you,” the kid who seemed to be leading this little séance said. I recognized him as Josh, the guy who’d given Dylan and me the flyers at Ella’s school.

“They’re buttheads,” Iggy said, obviously having a little fun.

The rest of us were lurking in the shadows not far away. I made a face at Nudge, who clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing.

“Iggy, you’re the future of humankind,” Josh went on. “You’ve adapted to the requirements of a harsher New World. We’re the future too. Join us!”

The podkids gathered closer, Ella included, smiling and trying to touch Iggy.

“If Iggy’s the future, I guess we’re all going to need spray-on tans and sunglasses,” I muttered to Total.

“I am the answer!” Iggy’s voice boomed.

Total giggled. “That ham!” I poked him with my foot.

“He’s the answer! He’s the answer!” they chanted.

“Prove you cherish the One Light!” Iggy yelled, which I thought was a tad dramatic. “Do you want to be like the Igster?”

“Yes! Yes!” they said feverishly, and I shuddered, remembering how one of them had offered to gouge out his eyes back at the rally so he could be blind like Iggy.

Iggy crouched down and grabbed a handful of dusty dirt from the ground and spit into it. Then he walked over to Josh, who looked a little uncertain, and wrote his name on the guy’s face with his finger. One by one the brainwashed kids spit into their dirty hands and smeared “IG” on their own cheeks. It was freaky. And kind of amazing.

“And… this is why Iggy’s not the flock leader,” I whispered to Nudge.

The kids all started flapping their arms and shrieking, and since they looked a bit distracted, Iggy pulled Ella over to the side, near where the rest of us were hiding.

“Iggy?” Ella said, turning to look at him. “How did you find us?”

“Um… my heart… led me here,” Iggy said, thinking fast. “Now we just need to convince the rest of the flock to join the group. Gee, look—there they are!”

I took that as my cue and stepped out of the darkness toward Ella. She looked surprised to see me and even more surprised when Dylan sidled up next to her. But then her programming took over, and she needed to share the message with us.

“We must embrace the One Light.” Ella beamed.

“The One Light?” I asked. “Oh, yeah, the One Light. Remind me of its glory.”

“The One Light will show us how to become less and how to become more,” Ella said with conviction.

“What the heck does that mean?” I whispered to Dylan.

“Like, they’ll have genetic material stripped away and then replaced?” Dylan guessed quietly. I met his eyes and nodded, and then I remembered the last time I was out in the desert with him, at night. I turned away so he wouldn’t see me blush.

“Right, right,” said Iggy. “And when will this happen?”

“In five days,” Ella told him. “When the Doomsday Group calls us home, all across the world. The world will end, but we’ll go on living.”

My eyes widened. Not good news.

“You got it, El,” I said. “But first we’re just going to take a detour for a little therapeutic deprogramming session.”

“No,” Ella’s face darkened. “I want to stay here. Everyone needs to stay right here.”

But Dylan moved in quickly, grabbing her under one arm. Iggy got a grip under the other. They flew off into the night, with Ella shrieking between them and the Doomsdayers wildly flapping their arms down below.