Page 13 of Birds of a Feather

“All right, thank you,” Lyla said dejectedly to the nurse, turning away from the station. She felt somewhat comforted when Gabby patted her shoulder, until a scream pierced the buzzing of the hospital wing.

“What’s going on?” she asked as staff and patients alike started to run in various directions.

“The hippos are loose,” someone shouted. “In the hospital! Everyone must return to their rooms and shut and lock your doors.”

She’d heard rumors of a marsh on campus filled with, hippos. She imagined they were usually confined to their ecosystem, but somehow, they were being shepherded into WANC. More specifically into the hospital wing. This couldn’t be an accident.

“Hurry,” the red-haired nurse urged, standing up from his chair.

Lyla and Gabby did as instructed, each fleeing in opposite directions, toward their own rooms. Lyla was glad the floor was smooth so her IV pole easily slid with her, not catching on anything in the panic.

The noise had barely faded when Lyla made it to her room and shut the door behind her. Not surprisingly, it sounded like a herd of hippos were stomping down the hall. The linoleumshook under her feet while the water in the glass on the table bounced around and the pebble next to it fell to the floor. Lyla opened her door a crack as a hippo bounded past. She shut the door and relocked it, pressing her back to it as her mind ran in various directions.

This was too convenient. And what timing. Right before she’d tried to get word to FUC and ASS about the strange worm she’d seen, disaster struck.

Suddenly, it occurred to her that she and Gabby should have stayed together. What if this was a distraction for the intruder—or the Dr. Grimm Gabby mentioned— to snatch her friend? Her heart pounded in her chest. They should have come to Lyla’s room together. She shouldn’t have risked leaving Gabby alone, especially after promising she’d keep her safe.

Well, that was a promise she intended to keep, so she’d have to do something about it now.

But how would she get down the hallway without being spotted by a hippo? The things were ginormous and dangerous. They could gulp her down in two bites. Maybe one, if it was a bigger hippo. Goodbye, Lyla.

Maybe there was a way she could make it to Gabby’s room without becoming a snack. She looked to her trusty IV bag. “I think it’s time we parted ways for a little bit.” She sighed. She was only permitted to shift under doctor supervision at the moment, and she hadn’t tried shifting more than once in any one day.

But if the loud ruckus outside her door was any indication of how well wrangling the hippos was going, she guessed things were pretty dire. Gabby needed her.

Lyla smiled at her IV bag. “Well, here goes nothing.” She disconnected the line. Lyla peeled off her clothes and threw them onto the hospital bed. She tiptoed to the door, afraid thehippos outside would sense her. She opened the door a few inches and stepped back.

It'd been a while since she shifted without supervision. Was her body replenished enough to be able to make the transition for the second time in one day? She’d find out.

She called forward the familiar sensation. First a tingling. Then an ache followed by goosebumps across her skin that slowly sprouted feathers. Like tiny saplings springing forth from the ground after planting a garden, her plumage sprang up from her skin. Her body began to shrink simultaneously. The ache in her bones grew as they became less dense. A bird couldn’t fly with human bones. Everything in her body had to change. Even her heartbeat sped up.

Exhaustion set it. It was the slowest shift of her life, but she did it. Lyla perched on the table next to her hospital bed. Now was the real test. Could she fly? Her wings flapped about eighty times per second. That’d put a strain on her new glucose reserves for sure. But Gabby was worth it. If Lyla made it there, that was. And that wasn’t even thinking about the chances of her becoming hippo lunch.

Lyla willed her tiny wings to flap. At first, it wasn’t enough to get her off the table. She sputtered around like a baby bird learning to take flight. A hop here, a hover there. As she kept at it, her wings settled into their usual rhythm. After liftoff, she tucked her little bird legs under her. If she could take it slow, she would’ve hovered a bit before heading out of her room, but there was no time. Gabby could be in danger. At the very least, she was alone and frightened.

She sped toward the open door, flying out into the hall. She narrowly escaped the jaws of a hippo eating dirty sheets and hospital gowns in the hamper of a nearby cart. It chomped away, swallowing the fabric whole, letting out a large burp aftersucking down the tie of a bathrobe like a spaghetti noodle. The scene was something from a B horror film.

She sped past that one, seeing the chaos behind. Equipment lay knocked over on the floor. A mess of knotted cords with gauze and syringes sprinkled on top, like a hospital supply sundae, sat in the corner by the nurses’ station. A nurse stood on the counter, swatting at a smaller hippo with a broom. The creature seemed to think it was a game, dodging the blows before getting bored and grabbing the broom with its massive jaws. The handle snapped in half as it chomped down. The nurse gave a high-pitched squeak before running away to take refuge in a nearby vacant room as the hippo continued to crunch the broom like it was a giant pretzel rod.

Lyla’s wings began to ache from the strain on her muscles to pump as fast as they needed to in order to float her down the hall. She stayed near the ceiling, not wanting another close call with the giant maws of a hippo. She realized belatedly that she wasn’t sure how she’d open the door to Gabby’s room, but she’d cross that bridge when she got there. Hopefully, it wasn’t locked—the door, not the proverbial bridge.

The cart filled with lunch was parked next to Gabby’s room. How unfortunate. She wasn’t sure what hippos ate in the wild, but the ones from FUCN’A seemed to enjoy grilled cheese sandwiches and pudding. If Lyla’s plan had been to turn back into a human to open the door, she certainly couldn’t safely do that with the hippo camped out, snacking on the patients’ lunches. What would lure a hippo away? Even more importantly, how could she do that as a hummingbird?

Lyla looked to the trays. Maybe if she disguised herself as a tasty snack, the beast would follow her. If hippos lived in the marsh, maybe they liked vegetation. It was worth a shot anyway. She spied a salad on the lower shelf of the cart. She zipped down on tiny wings, careful to avoid the snapping mouthof the hippo. She burrowed in the lettuce, hoping some of the leaves would stick to her. She grabbed a large piece in her beak. Flying with it proved difficult. The salad debris made her less aerodynamic, and her dropping energy levels wouldn’t manage the extra weight for long. She would have to make it work. She was determined to make it work.

She fluttered toward the nostril of the large hippo as it was about to taste the tomato soup. It lapped up a mouthful before grimacing. Apparently, that wasn’t to the liking of the creature. Hopefully the lettuce in her beak would be.

She waved the leaf in front of the beast’s nose. Its nostrils dilated as it sniffed after her. The inhalation nearly sucked Lyla into the face of the hippo. She quickly flapped away. The ground shook as it followed, its large paws stomping on overthrown trays of food and garbage, squishing the refuse between its toes.

Jaws snapped at Lyla as she lured the hippo down the hall. It moved faster than she intended. Or maybe that was because she was slowing down. She was no longer able to zip around like normal. Her energy reserves were burning up quickly. If she had a meter that showed how full her gas tank was, the needle would be hovering awfully close to E.

She dropped the lettuce from her beak as she spotted a metal rack of shelves up ahead against the wall. She flew toward it, soaring through the lowest level. After hiding behind a box of bandages and gauze, Lyla peeked around the corner to see where the hippo ended up. Its jaws snapped down on the opposite end of the broom the smaller hippo was munching on. The pair played tug-o-war with the pole.

Lyla took this as her cue to zoom as fast as her tired little wings could carry her to Gabby’s room. Midair, she transformed back into her naked human form. She landed on her feet with a thud. She didn’t judge the landing right. Her ankle made a nauseating popping sound, nearly giving out on her. She ignoredthe pain and twisted the door handle. With a click, the door swung open. Lyla rushed in, slamming the door behind her before she took in the state of the room.

She gasped at what she saw.

The overturned hospital bed lay on top of the scatter of word puzzle books on the floor. The fluorescent reading light over the bed flickered, the plastic cover now a spiderweb of cracks as if someone—or something—had crashed into it. This couldn’t have been the work of a hippo. They couldn’t open and close doors.

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