Invasion a-1

by Katherine Alice Applegate

  "It could have been anyone," Tom said. "But it might be the one who's my brother, Jake. I know he goes through the construction site sometimes. That's why I brought him here tonight. So we could either make him ours… or kill him."

  CHAPTER 15

  Either make him ours… or kill him.

  I felt like someone had punched me.

  I told myself that Tom was a Human-Controller. Some slimy, snotty slug from another planet was in his brain controlling him. When he talked to me it wasn't even Tom, not really. It was a Yeerk. My brother… one of them. Chapman… one of them.

  They were everywhere. Everywhere! How were we going to stop them? How could we even try? If they could take my own brother from me, if they could take Torn, then how was I going to be able to stop them? It was insane. Marco was right.

  I think if I had been fully human right then, despair would have just overpowered me. But dogs don't know about despair. It was Homer's simple, happy, hopeful mind that saved me. For a while I just sort of let go and drifted into dog consciousness. I didn't want to think. I didn't want to be a human being. For a while I just wandered around the dunes and smelled things.

  But I knew I had a job to do. After a while I let go of the simple happiness of the dog and forced myself back into painful reality.

  I waited and listened some more to the meeting. But I was still so upset I didn't really track on a lot of what was being said. I just kept hearing it over and over in my head — "Make him ours… or kill him."

  The one other thing that did stick in my mind was Tom discussing with some other guy — some other Controller — the schedule for going to the Yeerk pool. He'd just been and was feeling good, he said. He'd be heading back on Monday night.

  That was the slug in his head talking. The Yeerk that controlled Tom needed to return to the Yeerk pool.

  Then I heard another voice. Cassie!

  I slunk quickly around the back of a dune to get closer. But I could hear clearly. Cassie's voice, and another voice it took me a minute to recognize.

  It was the policeman. The same policeman.

  "Hey, what are you doing back here?" the policeman demanded.

  "I was just looking for shells," Cassie said.

  "This is just for full members," the policeman said gruffly. "Private business. You understand?"

  "Yes, sir," Cassie said in her most humble voice.

  I got to where I could see them, although I have to tell you, dog sight is not exactly great. Everything is like an old TV with bad color and all blurry.

  The policeman was staring hard at Cassie. Cassie was trying to be brave, but I could smell the fact that she was afraid.

  "Okay, take off," the policeman said at last. "But I have my eye on you. Get back with the others."

  Cassie turned and headed away as fast as she could walk. I caught up with her. I guess seeing a dog come bounding out of nowhere startled her, because she jumped.

  "Oh, it's you," she said.

 

  She shrugged. "Just wanted to make sure you were okay."

  I pointed out.

  We got back to the spot where Rachel, Marco, and Tobias were waiting. I didn't even want to morph back into my human body. I knew that I could just let myself go again, and in a few minutes my dog brain would forget why my human brain was sad. If someone would just throw a stick out into the surf I could go after it. The water would make me happy. The chasing would make me happy.

  Now I knew why Tobias was so reluctant to leave his hawk's body. Being an animal could be a nice way to escape from all your troubles.

  I began to morph back into my own body. Cassie and Rachel turned and looked out toward the water.

  When I was completely myself again, I said, "Marco, you were right. Tom is a Controller," Marco did not look pleased about being right.

  I told them what Tom had said to Chapman about bringing me to the meeting to either use me or kill me.

  "Wait a minute. Chapman is one of them, too?" Rachel asked. "Our Chapman? Mr. Chapman the assistant principal?"

  "I think he's some kind of a leader," I said. "It was him the other night at the construction site. He was the one who told the Hork-Bajir just to keep the head."

  "That is so Chapman," Marco said.

  "I suggest we get the heck out of here," Tobias said.

  "No, it's okay," I said. "Chapman told Tom there was not to be any killing at a Sharing meeting. They don't want any suspicious activities. He also said they couldn't just go around killing every kid who might have been at the construction site. They needed to be sure."

  "That's decent of them," Rachel said dryly.

  "Not really. Chapman just said that for a while longer they still have to avoid attracting too much attention. A bunch of kids start turning up dead and people will definitely notice. He said they should just wait — kids can't keep quiet for long about seeing aliens. When the kids talk, the Controllers will find them and get rid of them."

  "Except that we aren't going to talk about what we saw," Rachel said.

  "You got that right," Marco agreed. "We aren't saying anything. We are forgetting everything we saw. We are getting on with our normal lives."

  "And leave Tom the way he is?" I demanded. "No way. Never. He's my brother. I'm going to save him."

  "Just how do you figure you'll do that?" Marco asked sarcastically. "Let's see, it's you versus Chapman, the cops, a bunch of Hork-Bajir and Taxxons, and, worst of all, that creep, Visser Three. All you can do to fight them is turn into a dog and bite their ankles. It's like being stuck in the most impossible video game ever invented."

  I grinned. Or at least I showed my teeth. "Yeah, it is, kind of. But I'm pretty good at video games."

  "And he won't be alone," Rachel said. "I'm in this, too."

  "And me," Tobias said.

  "Me, too," Cassie agreed.

  "Swell," Marco said. "So suddenly you're the Fantastic Four. This isn't a comic book. This is real."

  We heard the sound of people coming through the dunes. The meeting of the full members had broken up.

  "Everyone, quiet," I said. "We'll let this ride… for now."

  I said that to calm Marco down. I had no intention of letting it ride.

  I pulled Cassie aside. "Listen, Cassie, I need an animal morph that will let me watch Chapman without him seeing me. What do you have at the farm?"

  Cassie got quiet for a moment. "Let me think. We have a lot of injured birds, of course. We have the wolf with the broken leg. We have the wildcat with one eye."

  I waited while she went down a list of all the animals in the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic.

  Suddenly Cassie snapped her fingers. "I wonder… How small an animal do you think we can morph?"

  I shrugged. I had no idea.

  "I may have something in mind," she said. "It's not really in the clinic as a patient. It just sort of lives there. It's small. It can crawl up walls. It's fast, if you need to get away. And I guess it can hear and see okay."

  Which is how I ended up in Cassie's barn later that night, crawling beneath cages full of sick buzzards and between a pair of jumpy deer, looking for lizards.

  CHAPTER 16

  I did it Monday morning in my locker at school. I turned into a lizard.

  A green anole, to be exact. It's a member of the iguana family. Like you care.

  I waited till the bell rang for first period, which was English class. When everyone else was out of the hallway, I just climbed into my locker. I tried to act cool about it, just in case anyone was watching.

  The locker was about two inches shorter than me, so I had to crouch. And it was so tight I couldn't move. The only light was from the three small ventilation slits. I could hear my heart pounding in the cramped, dark space. I was afraid.

  It was one thing to turn into a dog. I mean, it's weird, it's strange, but it's also kind of cool. Dogs are cool animals. But lizards?

&n
bsp; "I should have practiced," I muttered under my breath. "I really should have practiced like Cassie said."

  I started to focus for the morphing. I remembered the way we had caught the lizard the night before last. We'd spotted it with a flashlight, and Cassie had put a bucket over it so it couldn't get away.

  It had been fairly creepy, just touching it to acquire its DNA pattern. Now I was going to de-come it.

  The first thing I noticed was that I suddenly had more room inside the locker. I didn't have to crouch down. And my shoulders weren't scrunched up anymore.

  I touched my face with one hand. My skin was looser than it should have been. And pebbly to the touch.

  I ran my hand over my head. My hair was almost all gone.

  Things began to happen very fast. The locker grew and grew around me. It was big as a barn. Big as a stadium!

  It was like falling. Like falling off a skyscraper and taking forever to hit the ground.

  I was standing on something sticky, as large as a boulder. How had a boulder gotten into my locker? But then I realized — it was a wad of gum! An old, chewed wad of gum stuck to the bottom of my locker.

  Gigantic drapes as big as the sails of a ship were falling all around me. They were my clothes. In the dim light I could see two monstrous, misshapen things on either side of me. I could just make out the Nike swoosh, and realized they were my shoes. They were the size of houses.

  And then the lizard brain kicked in. Fear! Trapped! Run! Run! Rruunrunrun!

  I shot left. A wall! I scampered up, feeling my feet stick to it. Trapped! I jumped back. Another hard surface. Trapped! Runrunrunrun!

  I fought to get control, but the lizard brain was panicked. It didn't know where it was. It wanted out. OUT!

  Go toward the light! I ordered my new body. The ventilation slits. That was the way out. But the body was afraid of the light. It was terrified.

  I was still bouncing off the walls. I could not overcome the panic instincts of the lizard body.

  Go to the light! I screamed inside my head. And suddenly I was there. I poked my head out, and my body slithered after me. My tongue flicked out and I got a weird kind of input from it. Like smell, only not quite. It kept flicking. I could see it shoot out of my mouth and lick the air.

  In the bright light I realized how bad the lizard eyes were. I couldn't make sense of what I was seeing. Everything was shattered and twisted around. Down was up and up was down. Colors weren't even close to right.

  I tried to think. Come on, Jake. You have eyes on the side of your head now. They don't focus together. They see different things. Deal with it.

  I tried to make sense of the pictures, using this knowledge, but they were still a mess. It seemed to take me forever to figure it out. One eye was looking down the hall to the left. The other was looking down the halt to the right. I was upside down, gripping the side of the locker, which was like a long, gray field that wouldn't end.

  And all the time the green anole brain was fighting me. Now that it was out of the dark locker, it desperately wanted to go back in.

  Chapman's office, I reminded myself. But where was it?

  Left. That way.

  Suddenly I was off and running. Straight down the wall. Zoom! Then on level floor. Zoom! Around a scrap of paper twice as big as I was. The ground flew past. It was like being strapped onto a crazy, out-of-control missile.

  Then my lizard brain sensed the spider. It was a strange thing, like I wasn't sure if I saw the spider, or heard it, or smelled it, or tasted it on my flicking lizard tongue, or just suddenly knew it was there.

  I took off after it, racing at a million miles an hour before I could even think about stopping. My legs were a blur, they moved so fast.

  It probably wasn't a huge spider. Not if you were a great big human being. But to my lizard eyes it looked as big as a small child. It was huge. I could see the compound eyes. I could see the individual joints in its eight legs. I could see the clicking, awful mandibles.

  The spider ran. I ran after it. I was faster.

  Noooooooooooo! I screamed inside my head. But too late. My head jerked forward, fast as a striking snake. My jaws snapped. And suddenly the spider was in my mouth.

  I could feel it fighting. I could feel the spider's legs squirming and fighting to get out of my mouth.

  I tried to spit it out, but I couldn't. The lizard's hunger for that spider was too great.

  I swallowed the spider. It was like swallowing a whole canned ham. A canned ham that was fighting all the way down.

  No, no, no! my brain cried in horror and disgust. But at the same time, the lizard brain was pleased. I could feel it become slightly calmer.

  That does it! I told myself. I am out of this morph!

  I wanted out of that horrible little body. I didn't care who saw me, I was going to morph back to human shape. Marco was right. It was insane to get involved in this. Insane!

  I heard the ground shake. It was a noise like a giant stomping across the land.

  It was a giant.

  There was a huge shadow in the sky. It was like someone was trying to crush me by dropping an entire building on my head.

  The shoe came down!

  I scampered left.

  Another shoe.

  My tail! The shoe was on my tail! I was trapped!

  CHAPTER 17

  In panic, I tried to run. But my tail was caught. Suddenly I was free! How had that…

  I realized what had happened. My tail had snapped off. Looking back, I saw it, still trapped by the giant shoe. It squirmed as if it were still alive. It wiggled like a worm on a hook.

  The shoe lifted and flew through the air again.

  I shot up the side of the wall and froze in place.

  The giant had not seen me. It had not tried to stomp me. It had been an accident. And now my tail… no, the lizard's tail…

  The giant walked on, shaking the ground as it went.

  I focused one lizard eye on the figure. It was like trying to make sense out of one of those carnival fun mirrors. But even so, I was pretty sure it was Chapman.

  I watched him head down the hall. And with all my power, I ordered my lizard body to follow him.

  I tried not to think about the spider in my stomach, or the fact that it was still not completely dead. I tried not to think about the fact that part of my body was back on the floor, jerking like it was still alive. I just raced along after Chapman.

  Because Chapman might reveal something that would help Tom.

  I planned to follow Chapman to his office. I'd hide under his desk and listen to him make phone calls. I figured sooner or later he might let something slip about the location of the Yeerk pool.

  Cassie and I had talked about it. She'd said it could take days of hiding in Chapman's office before we learned anything. Besides, we could only stay in a morph for two hours. And meanwhile, I would be skipping class. Sooner or later, I'd get in trouble over that.

  And the really funny thing is, when they catch you skipping class, you get sent to the assistant principal.

  Mr. Chapman.

  I could just imagine that scene… Sorry I skipped class, Mr. Chapman, but I've been in this lizard body, watching you because I know you're a Controller and part of a giant alien conspiracy to take over the earth.

  I would have laughed, only lizards can't laugh. So I just followed Chapman as he marched down the hall.

  Suddenly he stopped. Were we at his office?

  I looked around as well as I could, ft didn't look like the office. The spider gave a kick in my stomach.

  He opened a door. It swung right over me with a big rush of air. It went just above my head as I hugged the floor.

  I concentrated on making sense of the sights. Wait a minute! This was the janitor's closet, a mess of mops and buckets and cleaning solutions. What was Chapman doing…?

  He went inside. I followed, careful to stay away from the high leather walls that were his shoes.

  I heard a loud clic
k. He had locked the door behind him.

  It was a long way up from the floor, but I could more or less see him doing things to the sink faucet. I thought he grabbed one of the hooks they used to hang up the dirty mop heads. I was pretty sure he twisted it because I could hear a squeaking sound.

  And to my total and complete amazement, the wall opened.

  There was a doorway where the wall had been. Strange smells and stranger sounds wafted up from inside the doorway.

  Chapman stepped through. There were stairs just inside, heading down into a purple-lit pit. From far away, as if it came from a hundred miles down, I heard a faint sound.

  It was a scream. A scream of fear and despair. A human voice, crying out in the darkness of that horrible place.

  "Noooo!" the voice moaned. "Noooo!"

  I knew what the scream meant. I knew what was happening. Somewhere down there, a human being was feeling the Yeerk slug slither inside its brain. Somewhere down there, a human being was being turned into a mindless slave of the Yeerks.

  Chapman headed down the stairs.

  The door closed behind him.

  I had found the Yeerk pool.

  It was right under my school.

  CHAPTER 18

  "Screams," I said. "Human screams. They sounded far off, but that's what they were."

  My friends looked at me. All but Marco, who looked away. It was that same afternoon, right after school. We'd gone to the mall. We figured it was the best way not to look suspicious. No one thinks there's anything weird about kids hanging together at the mall.

  We were at a table in the food court, sharing some nachos. Ever since eating the spider, I'd had a desire to consume lots of junk food to help me forget.

  "You were a lizard at the time," Marco pointed out. "Who knows what you heard?"

  "I know," I said.

  "I can't stand the thought of what's happening to people down there," Cassie said. She shuddered. "It's sickening."

  "We have to do something," Rachel said.

  "Yeah, let's rush right down there," Marco said. "Then it can be us screaming."