Applegate, K A - Animorphs 01 - The Invasion Read online

  K.A. Applegate: The Invasion (Animorphs #1)

  CHAPTER 1

  My name is Jake. That's my first name, obviously. I can't tell you my last name. It would be too dangerous. The Controllers are everywhere. Everywhere. And if they knew my full name, they could find me and my friends, and then . . . well, let's just say I don't want them to find me. What they do to people who resist them is too horrible to think about. I won't even tell you where I live. You'll just have to trust me that it is a real place, a real town. It may even be your town. I'm writing this all down so that more people will learn the truth. Maybe then, somehow, the human race can survive until the Andalites return and rescue us, as they promised they would. Maybe. My life used to be pretty normal. Normal, that is, until one Friday night at the mall. I was there with Marco, my best friend. We were playing video games and hanging out at this cool store that sells comic books and stuff. The usual. Marco and I had run out of quarters for the games, right when he was ahead by a lot of points. Mostly, we're equally good at games. I have Sega at home so I get lots of practice time in, but Marco has this amazing ability to analyze games and figure out all the little tricks. So sometimes he beats me. Or maybe I just wasn't concentrating very well. I'd had kind of a bad day at school. I'd tried out for the basketball team and I didn't make the cut. It was like no big deal, really. Except that Tom — he's my big brother — he was this total legend on the junior high basketball team. Now he's the main scorer for the high school team. So everyone expected me to make the team easy. Only I didn't. Like I said, no big thing. But it was on my mind, just the same. Lately, Tom and I hadn't been hanging out as much. Not like we used to. So I figured, you know, if I got his old position on the team . . . Well, anyway, we were out of money and getting ready to head home when we ran into Tobias. Tobias was . . . I mean, I guess he still kind of a strange guy. He was new at school, and he wasn't the toughest kid around, so he got picked on a lot. I actually met Tobias when he had his head in a toilet. There were these two big guys holding him down and laughing while they flushed, sending Tobias's straggly blond hair swirling around the bowl. I told the two creeps to step off, and ever since then, Tobias figured I was his friend. "What's up?" Tobias asked. I shrugged. "Not much. We're heading home." "Out of quarters," Marco commented. "Certain people keep forgetting that the SleazeTroll shows up right after you cross the Nether Fjord. So certain people keep losing the game — and losing our quarter." Marco kept jerking his thumb at me, just in case Tobias couldn't figure out who he meant by "certain people." "So, like maybe I'll walk home with you guys," Tobias said. I said sure. Why not? We were heading for the exit when I spotted Rachel and Cassie. Rachel is kind of pretty, I guess. I mean, okay, she's very pretty, although, since she is my cousin, I don't really think about her that way. She has blond hair and blue eyes and that kind of very clean, very wholesome look. She's one of those people who always know the right clothes to wear and how to look like they just walked out of one of those fashion magazines girls like. She's also very graceful because she takes gymnastics, even though she says she's too tall to ever be really good at it. Cassie is sort of the opposite. For one thing, she's usually wearing jeans and a plaid shirt, or something else real casual. She's black and wears her hair very short most of the time. She had it longer for a while, but then she went back to short, which I like. Cassie is quieter than Rachel, more peaceful, like she always understands everything on some different, more mystical level. I guess you could say I kind of like Cassie. Sometimes we sit together on the bus, even though I never know what to say to her. "You guys going home?" I asked Rachel. "You shouldn't go through the construction site by yourselves. I mean, being girls and all." That was a mistake. I should never have suggested to Rachel that she's weak or helpless. Rachel may look like Little Miss Teen Model or whatever, but she thinks she's Storm from the X-Men. "Are you going to come and protect us, you big, strong m-a-a-a-n?" she said. "You think we're helpless just because — " "I'd appreciate it if they did walk with us," Cassie interrupted. "I know you're not afraid of anything, Rachel, but I guess I am." Rachel couldn't say much about that. That's the way Cassie is — she always has the right words to stop any argument without making anyone feel bad. So, there we were. The five of us — Marco, Tobias, Rachel, Cassie, and me. Five normal mall rats heading home. Sometimes I think about that one, last moment when we were still just normal kids. It's like it was a million years ago, like it was some totally different group of kids. You know what I was afraid of right then? I was afraid of admitting to Tom that I hadn't made the team. That was as scary as life got back then. Five minutes later, life got a lot scarier. To get home from the mall we could either go a long way around, which is the safe way, or we could cut through this abandoned construction site and hope there weren't any ax murderers hanging around there. My mom and dad have sworn to ground me until I'm twenty if they ever find out I've cut through the construction site. So anyway, we crossed the road and headed into the abandoned construction site. It was a big area, surrounded on two sides by trees, with the highway separating it from the mall area. There's a broad, open field between the construction site and the nearest houses. It's a very isolated place. Originally it was supposed to be this new shopping center. Now it was just all these half-finished buildings looking like a ghost town. There were huge piles of rusted steel beams; pyramids of giant concrete pipes; little mountains of dirt; deep pits that had filled up with black, muddy water; and a creaking, rusted construction crane that I had climbed once while Marco stayed below and told me I was being an idiot. It was a totally deserted place, full of shadows and sounds that made the hair on the back of your neck stand up. When Marco and I went there during the day, we always found all these beer cans and liquor bottles. Sometimes we found the ashes of little campfires back in the hidden nooks and crannies of the buildings. So we knew that people came there at night. All that was on my mind as we crept through the site. It was Tobias who saw it first. He had been walking along, gazing up at the sky. I guess he was looking at the stars or something. That's the way Tobias is sometimes — off in his own world. Suddenly Tobias stopped. He was pointing. Pointing almost straight up. "Look," he said. "What?" I didn't want to be distracted because I was pretty sure I'd heard the sound of a chain-saw killer creeping up behind us. "Just look," Tobias said. His voice was strange. Amazed-sounding, but serious at the same time. So I looked up. And there it was. A brilliant, blue-white light that scooted across the sky, going fast at first, too fast for it to be an airplane, then slower and slower. "What is it?" Tobias shook his head. "I don't know." I looked at Tobias and he looked back at me. We both knew what we thought it was, but we didn't want to say it. Marco and Rachel would have laughed, we figured. But Cassie just blurted it right out. "It's a flying saucer!"

  CHAPTER 2

  "A flying saucer?" Marco said. He'd laugh. That is, until he looked up. I could feel my own heart pounding in my chest. I felt weird and excited and afraid, all at once. "It's coming this way," Rachel said. "It's hard to be sure." I could barely whisper, my mouth was so dry. "No, it's coming this way," Rachel said. She has a very definite way of talking. Like she's totally sure of everything she says. Rachel was right. Whatever it was, it was coming closer. And it was slowing down. Now I could see pretty clearly what it looked like. "It's not exactly a flying saucer," I said. First of all, it wasn't all that big. It was about as long as a school bus. The front end was a pod, shaped almost like an egg. Extending from the back of the pod was a long, narrow shaft. There were two crooked, stubby winglike things, and on the end of each wing was a long tube that glowed bright blue on the back end. The little spaceship looked almost cut
e. You know, kind of harmless. Except that it had a sort of tail — a mean-looking tail that curved up and forward, corning to a point that looked as sharp as a needle. "That tail thing," I said. "It looks like a weapon." "Definitely," Marco agreed. The little ship kept coming nearer, going slower all the time. "It's stopping," Rachel said. She had the same strange, not-quite-real tone in her voice that I had. Like we couldn't believe what we were seeing. Like maybe we didn't want to believe. "I think it sees us," Marco said. "Should we run? Maybe we should run home and get a camera. Do you know how much money we could get for a video of a real UFO?" "If we run, they might . . . I don't know, zap us with phasers on full power," I said. I meant it as a joke. Kind of. "Phasers are only on Star Trek," Marco said, rolling his eyes the way he does when he thinks I'm being a dweeb. Like he was some kind of expert on alien spaceships. Right. The ship stopped and hovered almost directly over our heads, maybe a hundred feet in the air. I could feel the hair on my head standing on end. When I glanced at Rachel it was almost funny. She has this long blond hair and it was sticking straight out in every direction. Only Cassie looked normal. "What do you think it is?" Marco asked. He sounded a little shakier, not so laid-back now that the thing was so close. To be honest, I was a little scared, too. A little scared , as in so terrified I couldn't move. But at the same time, it was all cool beyond any coolness ever. I mean, it was a spaceship! Right there over my head. Tobias was actually grinning, but that's Tobias for you. He's never scared of weird stuff. It's the normal stuff he can't stands "I think it's going to land," he said, this huge smile on his face. His eyes were bright and excited, and his blond hair was standing up in clumps. The ship began to descend. "It's coming right at us!" I cried. I had to fight an urge to run yammering across the field all the way home, where I could crawl into my bed and pull the covers over my head. But I knew that this was an important, amazing thing. I knew f had to stay and see it all. I guess the others felt the same way, because we all just stood there, as the ship hummed and glowed and slowly settled down in an open space between piles of junk and tumbled walls. I noticed there were black burn marks along the top of the pod section. Some of the skin of the pod had been melted. It touched the ground and instantly the blue lights went off. Rachel's hair fell back down onto her neck. "It isn't very big, is it?" Rachel whispered. "It's about — " I tried to think — "about three or four times as big as our minivan." "We should tell someone," Marco said. "I mean, this is kind of major, you know? Spaceships don't just land in the construction site every day. We should call the cops or the army or the president or something. We'd be totally famous. We'd get to be on Letterman for sure." "Yeah, you're right," I agreed. "We should call someone." But none of us moved. None of us was just going to walk away from a spaceship, "I wonder if we should try and talk to it," Rachel suggested. She was standing there with her hands on her hips looking at the spaceship like it was a puzzle she had to figure out. "I mean, we should communicate. If that's even possible." Tobias nodded. He stepped forward and held out his hands. I guess he was showing whoever was in the ship that he wasn't carrying any kind of weapon or anything. "It's safe," he said in a loud, clear voice. "We won't hurt you." "Do you think they speak English?" I wondered. "Well, everyone speaks English on Star Trek" Cassie said with a nervous laugh. Tobias tried again. "Please, come out We won't hurt you." «I know.» I froze. Okay, I had definitely heard someone say "I know," only . . . there hadn't been any sound. I mean, I heard it, but I didn't really hear it. Maybe this was all a dream. I looked kind of sideways at Cassie. She looked back at me. Our eyes met. She had heard it, too. I looked at Rachel. She was turning her head back and forth, like she was looking for where that sound — that wasn't a sound — could have come from. I started to get a sick, twisty feeling in my stomach. "Did everyone hear that?" Tobias whispered. We all nodded at once, very slowly. "Can you come out?" Tobias asked in his loud, talking-to-aliens voice. «Yes. Do not be frightened.» "We won't be frightened," Tobias said. "Speak for yourself," I muttered. The others giggled nervously. A thin arc of light appeared, a doorway, opening slowly in the smooth side of the pod part of the ship. I stood there, totally hypnotized. I just stared, waiting. The opening grew, like a crescent moon at first, then a full, bright circle. And then he appeared. My first reaction was that someone had cloned a person and a deer together. The creature had a head and shoulders and arms that were more or less where they should have been, though the skin was a pale shade of blue. But below that he had fur, a mix of blue and tan, covering a four-legged body that really did look like it belonged to a deer, or maybe a small horse. He ducked his head out the doorway and I could see that even the fairly normal-looking parts of him weren't all that normal. For a start, he had no mouth, just three vertical slits. And then there were his eyes. Two of them were where they should have been, although they were a glittery green color that was kind of shocking. But the real shock was the other eyes. He had what seemed like horns, only on the top of each horn was an eye. The horns could move, twisting to point the eyes front and back or up and down. I thought the eyes were bad, until I saw the tail. It was like a scorpion's tail, thick and powerful-looking. On the end was a wickedly curved, very sharp-looking horn or stinger. It reminded me of the alien's spaceship. It had seemed kind of cute and harmless, till you noticed the tail. The alien seemed kind of harmless at first glance, too. Then you saw that tail of his and you thought, whoa, this guy could do some damage if he wanted. "Hello," Tobias said. His voice was gentle, like he was talking to a baby. He was grinning. I realized I was smiling, too. And at the same moment, I realized that there were tears in my eyes, I can't really describe how it felt, except that it seemed like the alien was someone I'd known forever. Like an old friend I hadn't seen in a long, longtime. «Hello,» the alien said, in that silent way that you only heard inside your head. "Hi," we all said back. To my surprise, the alien staggered. He fell out of the ship to the ground. Tobias tried to grab him and hold him up, but the alien slipped from his grasp and fell back to the dirt. "Look!" Cassie cried. She pointed at a burn that covered half the alien's right side. "He's hurt." «Yes. I am dying,» he said. "Can we help you? We can call an ambulance or something," Marco said. "We can bandage that wound," Cassie said. "Jake, give me your shirt. We can tear it up and make bandages." Cassie's parents are both veterinarians and she's totally into animals. Not that this was an animal. Not exactly, anyway. «No. I will die. The wound is fatal.» "NO!" I cried. "You can't die. You're the first alien ever to come to Earth. You can't die." I don't know why I was so upset. I just knew that way down deep inside, it hurt me to think of him dying. «I am not the first. There are many, many others.» "Other aliens? Like you?" Tobias demanded. The alien shook his big head slowly, side to side. «Not like me.» Then he cried out in pain, a silent sound that echoed horribly inside my mind. For a moment, I had actually felt him dying. «Not like me,» he repeated. «They are different» "Different? How?" I said. I will remember his answer forever. He said, «They have come to destroy you.»

  CHAPTER 3

  «They have come to destroy you.» It was strange, the way we all just knew he was telling the truth. No one said "no way" or "you're making it up." We all just knew. He was dying, and he was trying to warn us of something terrible. «They are called Yeerks. They are different from us. Different from you, as well.» "Are you telling us they're already here on Earth?" Rachel demanded. «Many are here. Hundreds. Maybe more.» "Why hasn't anybody noticed them?" Marco said reasonably. "I think someone would have mentioned it at school." «You do not understand. Yeerks are different. They have no body, like yours or mine. They live in the bodies of other species. They are . . . » I guess he couldn't think of a word to explain Yeerks, so he closed his eyes and seemed to concentrate. Suddenly a bright picture popped into my head. I saw a gray-green, slimy thing like a snail without its shell, only bigger, the size of a rat, maybe. It wasn't a pretty picture. "I'm guessing that was a Yeerk," Marco said. "Either that or a very big wad of slimy chewing gum." «They
are almost powerless without hosts. They — » Suddenly we felt that blast of pain, straight from the alien. I could also feel his sadness. He knew his time was almost up. «The Yeerks are parasites. They must have a host to live in. In this form they are known as Controllers. They enter the brain and are absorbed into it, taking over the host's thoughts and feelings. They try to get the host to accept them voluntarily. It is easier that way. Otherwise the host may be able to resist, at least a little.» "Are you saying they take over human beings?" Rachel asked. "People? These things take over their bodies?" "Look, this is serious stuff," I said. "You shouldn't be telling us. We're just kids, you know. This is like something the government should know about." «We had hoped to stop them,» the alien continued. «Swarms of their Bug fighters were waiting when our Dome ship came out of Z-Space. We knew of their mother ship and were ready for the Bug fighters, but the Yeerks surprised us — they had hidden a powerful Blade ship in a crater of your moon. We fought, but . . . we lost. They have tracked me here. They will be here soon to eliminate all traces of me and my ship.» "How can they do that?" Cassie wondered. The alien seemed to smile with his eyes. «Their Dracon beams will leave nothing behind but a few molecules of this ship, and . . . this body» he said. «I sent a message to my home world. We Andalites fight the Yeerks wherever they go throughout the universe. My people will send help, but it may take a year, even more, and by then the Yeerks will have control of this planet. After that, there is no hope. You must tell people. You must warn your people!» Another spasm of pain ripped through him, and we all knew he was nearly gone. "No one is ever going to believe us," Marco said hopelessly. He looked at me and shook his head. "No way." He was right. If these Yeerks were to wipe out the Andalite's ship, how on Earth would we ever convince people? They'd think we were either nuts or on drugs. "I don't care if he thinks he's going to die, we have to try and help him," Rachel said. "We can get him to a hospital. Or maybe Cassie's parents . . . " «There is no time. No time,» the Andalite said. Then his eyes brightened. «Perhaps . . . » "What?" «Go into my ship. You will see a small blue box, very plain. Bring it to me. Quickly! I have very little time, and the Yeerks will find me soon.» We all looked at each other. Who was going to be the one to go inside the ship? Somehow we all seemed to agree it would be me. Actually, I didn't agree, but everyone else did. "Go ahead," Tobias said. "I want to stay with him." He knelt beside the Andalite and placed a comforting hand on the alien's narrow shoulder, I looked at the doorway into the spacecraft. I glanced at Cassie. "Go ahead," she said, sending me a smile. "You're not scared." She was wrong; I was plenty scared. But the way she smiled at me, I wasn't about to weasel out. I walked over to the door of the ship and looked inside. It was surprisingly simple. It looked cozy, almost. Everything was a creamy color with rounded edges and shapes that tended to be oval. That was one of the things that helped me to spot the box so easily. It was sky blue and square, maybe four inches on each side. It seemed kind of heavy for being so small. I stepped up into the ship. There was no chair, just a sort of open space where I guess the Andalite stood on his four hooves while he worked the few controls. There weren't a lot of buttons or anything. I wondered if the Andalite controlled the ship with his thoughts. I quickly reached for the box and started to head back outside. But then something caught my eye. It was a small, three-dimensional picture — four Andalites, standing all together, looking like a strange gathering of deer with solemn faces. Two of them looked very small — kids. I realized that this-was a picture of the Andalite's family. It filled me with sadness to think that here he was, dying, a million miles from his family. Dying because he had tried to protect the people of Earth. I felt a small flame of anger against the Yeerks, or Controllers, or whatever they were, for causing this. I went back to the circle of my friends. "Here's the box," I told the Andalite. «Thank you.» "I, um . . . was that your family? That picture?" «Yes.» I'm real sorry," I said. What else could I say? «There is something I may be able to do to help you fight the Yeerks.» "What?" Rachel demanded. «I know that you are young. I know that you have no power with which to resist the Controllers. But I may be able to give you some small powers that may help.» We all looked at each other. All except Tobias, who never took his gaze off the alien. «If you wish, I can give you powers that no other human being has ever had.» "Powers?" What was that supposed to mean? «It is a piece of Andalite technology that the Yeerks do not have,» the Andalite explained. «A technology that enables us to pass unnoticed in many parts of the universe — the power to morph. We have never shared this power. But your need is great» "Morph? Morph how?" Rachel asked, her eyes narrowed. «To change your bodies,» the Andalite said. «To become any other species. Any animal.» Marco laughed derisively. "Become animals?" Marco isn't the most accepting person in the world, «You will only need to touch a creature, to acquire its DNA pattern, and you will be able to become that creature. It requires concentration and determination, but, if you are strong, you can do it. There are . . . limitations. Problems. Dangers, even. But there is no time to explain it all . . . no time. You will have to learn for yourselves. But first, do you wish to receive this power?» "He's kidding, right?" Marco asked me. "No," Tobias said softly. "He's not kidding." "This is nuts," Marco said. "This whole thing is nuts. Yeerks and spaceships and slugs taking over people's brains and Andalites and the power to change into animals? Give me a break." "Yeah, it is beyond weird," I agreed. "We're off the map of weirdness by this point," Rachel said. "But unless we're all just dreaming, I think we'd better deal with this." "He's dying," Tobias reminded us. "I'll do it," Cassie said. That surprised me. Cassie isn't usually so quick to decide. But I guess, like Tobias, she felt the truth of what the Andalite was saying. "I think we should all decide together," I suggested. "One way or the other." "What's that?" Rachel asked. She was looking up toward the stars. Far, far overhead, two pinpoints of bright red light were shooting across the sky. «Yeerks.» The Andalite said the word in our minds, and we could feel his hatred.