The Exposed

by K. A. Applegate

  Besides, who needed the extra firepower? Crooks might scare ordinary people, but not us. This was a quick, easy in and out. No biggie.

  Jake said.

  I spilled air from my wings, following him down into the bushy, overgrown backyard.

  We had about five minutes left before the raid. Maybe. Not even enough time to land, demorph, and morph again.

  These were bad odds, and yet …

  The rush!

  I landed in weeds and debris. I immediately began demorphing to human.

  My beak rolled into my face. My head bulged and grew. My legs stretched, shooting me up into the air as my feathers dissolved and slithered back into my human skin.

  I felt suddenly vulnerable. For the moment I was just a girl. A girl in a bad place. Time to morph again. Something big. Something dangerous. Something that didn’t care too much about steel doors and nine millimeters.

  Jake, Marco, and Cassie were beginning their own morphs. Jake was thinking like me: This was a bash job. Forget subtlety. The rhino horn was already growing from his forehead.

  Marco’s arms were long and covered with coarse, black hair. Cassie’s face had elongated into a sleek, wolf’s muzzle.

  I hate being last. I closed my eyes and began my next morph in a hurry.

  SPROOOOT!

  My nose unraveled like a fire hose.

  Morphing is never pretty. And it’s never predictable. It happens in ways that don’t quite kill you, but sometimes come pretty close. Things come popping out or disappearing in bizarre sequence.

  That had just happened. I had a one-third size elephant trunk sticking out of my otherwise normal face.

  My bones ground and shifted, expanding until my head was big enough for the trunk — the size of one of those cute little Volkswagens.

  My legs were thickening, huge as telephone poles. My skin darkened, toughened into leather.

  Then, in one dizzying spurt, my tree stump legs became tree trunk legs. I shot straight up! Thirteen feet up into the air, as my body swelled into a muscled, fourteen-thousand-pound blimp.

  I had good eyes and excellent ears the size of beach blankets.

  Suddenly, the sound of car doors slamming. Wham. Wham. Wham.

  “Police! Open the door!”

  Glass shattering. Wood splintering.

  Jake cursed. he yelled.

  “Down! Down!”

  “Down on the floor! Hands behind your head!”

  “I said down, don’t move!”

  There had to be a dozen cops, all yelling. How long before they found the Chee?

  And if the cop who was a Controller found her first …

  Heart pounding, I charged through brambles and bushes toward the house. The ground trembled beneath me. Literally.

  Jake was at my side, keeping pace, following me because with rhino eyes he couldn’t see well enough to know where he was going.

  The back door opened and a filthy, skinny guy stumbled out.

  “Eeeee-YEEEEE-uh!” I trumpeted.

  “Ahhhh!” he screamed, turned, and ran back inside.

  Then …

  BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

  Gunfire!

  Jake said.

  I acknowledged.

  WHAM! Jake slammed the back door and knocked it open, popping it loose from its hinges.

  He backed up. I hit the doorway. I muscled shoulders into it, twisting and snapping the wood frame. Lifted up and buckled the ceiling. My huge head was inside, inside in the dark.

  BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

  Bright gun flashes! Someone screamed. A dark shape rushed right in front of me. He was not wearing a uniform. I whipped my trunk and caught him in the belly.

  We went down hard. The gun skittered from his fingers.

  I pulled back and Marco and Cassie bounded through the hole Jake and I had made.

  People were yelling. The air echoed with confusion.

  “Freeze or I’ll shoot! Hey! Is that a rhinoceros?!”

  “Hhhhrroooaaar!” Marco bellowed.

  “Oh, man, I don’t need a drink this bad!”

  BLAM! BLAM!

  A sharp, high-pitched yelp.

  A wolf. Cassie.

  Someone had shot Cassie!

  Enraged, I put my shoulder against the backdoor frame and pushed, this time with all I had. Bricks slid. Mortar crumbled. I pushed harder. The bricks buckled and the entire wall collapsed. Bricks thudded down around me, on me, but I hardly felt them.

  “EEEEEYYEEE!” Trumpeting, I thundered through the wreckage. Dust clouded my vision. Clogged my lungs, making me sneeze.

  “HA-CHOOO!”

  The blast blew over a bony girl smoking a cigarette.

  “Holy crap, an elephant!” someone shouted.

  “Call for backup!” a cop shouted. “They got a whole circus in there!”

  I swung my trunk, scattering a few rickety chairs.

 

  I called desperately, bashing through a wall and searching the next room. The floor was lined with stained mattresses and reeked of stale pee and barf.

  A chalk-skinned, blank-eyed guy, too stoned to even move, just lay there, staring up at me.

  I picked him up by the ankle and tossed him out the hole in the wall. I didn’t want to accidentally step on the guy. Let the cops deal with him later.

  Cassie cried.

  A fierce, red bubble of anger popped deep inside my brain.

  I shouted, ramming through another wall.

  BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

  “Aaah! I’m hit!” a cop moaned from somewhere in the darkness.

  Marco called back.

  I said, swinging my head and pulverizing the remains of a door frame.

  Marco yelled.

  Jake reported from outside.

  This was insane! We were getting torn apart in the crossfire between the criminals and the cops.

  First things first. The guy with the gun. The guy who’d shot Cassie.

  I was mad. And I was big.

  Nothing could stop me.

  Wood, plaster, and paneling fell before me like confetti.

  I was gutting the house.

  I was on a rampage.

  I headed for the rooms at the front.

  Walls shook.

  The rotted, wooden floor bowed, cracked, and gave way.

  CRRREEEAAAKKK!

  I stumbled, my legs dropping into the crawl space beneath the house. Four feet deep. Big deal. I got up and plowed through the sharp, splintered wood like a kid pushing through the surf at the beach.

  Rusty nails and wood shards gouged my skin.

  Pinpricks of pain. They didn’t matter. I dug the floor up with my tusks.

  The guy with the gun. I wanted him and I would have him.

  And then, suddenly, there he was.

  Crouched in front of the closet door under the stairs.

  He was dirty. Skinny. Hollow-eyed.

  He saw me, too.

  Aimed his gun right at my head.

  “Andalite,” he sneered, and pulled the trigger.

  POW!

  A sharp, stinging sensation. Searing, brutal pain.

  Hot blood gushed from my head and blinded my right eye.

  “EEEEEYYYEE-uh!” I swung my trunk like a baseball bat.

  Felt it connect with his bony body.

  UMPH!


  “Aaarggh!” he howled, sailing across the room and crashing through the grimy, front window. He hit the ground and lay there, shattered glass raining down around him.

  Through the awful pulsing in my head, I heard disembodied voices from the street.

  “Hey, that’s Strake! That’s the guy we want. Quick, cuff him!” a cop shouted.

  “What about this rhino? He’s wrecking my squad car!”

  “Somebody grab that gorilla before he rips the bar lights off my patrol car!”

  “Don’t worry about them right now! We’ve got Animal Control and some vet from The Gardens’ wildlife park coming down. Let them deal with it! Just stay back!”

  What? I blinked to clear my eye of seeping blood.

  Some vet from The Gardens’ wildlife park? I thought. Oh, great. Cassie’s mother was the vet from The Gardens!

  And she was mighty handy with a tranquilizer gun.

  I called, as a wave of weakness washed over me.

  Marco said nervously.

  “Tseeeeeer!”

  “Geez, now a hawk, too?” a cop yelled. “What is this, When Animals Attack? Everybody hold your fire or we’ll end up shooting each other!”

  I called, squeezing my trunk around the closet door handle and yanking it open.

 

  That was the first good news I’d heard in a while.

  An android sat propped against the dirty wall. A Chee.

  A limp, panting wolf lay draped across her lap.

  They were both drenched in blood.

 

  “Hi. You must be Rachel. Erek’s told us all about you. Pleased to meet you.”

  I said, unsettled by the Chee’s omniscience. Then, I said.

  The wolf lifted its head and gazed at me through dark, tormented eyes.

  I said, wrapping my trunk around her and gently lifting her out of the closet.

  She laughed weakly.

  “Get back! Run! Quick!”

  Screams. Thuds. Pounding feet.

  Marco said, appearing beside me and taking Cassie in his arms. Blood oozed from a large wound in his neck and streaked his shoulder. Two nasty gashes ran down his right arm.

  I asked Marco, reaching back in and lifting Lourdes out of the closet with my trunk. Nothing to an elephant. Elephants can lift trees. An android was a feather.

 

 

 

  I said.

  Marco agreed.

  Stumbling, we turned in the tight space and came face-to-face with a cop. He was sweating, shaking. I couldn’t blame him.

  But his expression changed. I saw a new fear. And then, a familiar hatred.

  “Andalites,” he said.

  Sneering, the cop raised his pistol and pulled the trigger.

  BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

  Cassie yelped.

  Marco jerked, swayed, and pitched forward, disappearing down into the dark, dank crawl space.

  I blinked, too shocked to move.

  The sharp, acrid scent of gunpowder filled the air.

  The blast still rang in my ears.

  “Give me the android, Andalite,” the cop snarled.

  I barely heard him.

  Marco. Cassie.

  I looked down into the crawl space.

  They lay in a tangled, lifeless heap.

  Their dark blood pooled and inched across the hard-packed dirt floor, spreading in an ever-widening circle toward my feet.

  Thoughts skittered and blurred in my brain.

  I was pinned. Trapped.

  Backed up against the stairs to my right, Marco and Cassie to my left.

  I was caught between their bodies below and the human-Controller cop poised on the creaky slope of flooring in front of me.

  If I moved any way but forward, I’d crush Marco and Cassie.

  But if I moved forward, I’d be dead.

  I shouted frantically.

  Nothing.

  If they were dead, this guy had killed them.

  And now he was going to kill me and take Lourdes.

  And the Yeerks would brutalize the Chee.

  Grow stronger with their technology.

  Become even harder to beat.

  My muscles trembled and hate blackened my heart.

  He’d killed my best friend.

  He might even kill me. Fine. But he wouldn’t get the Chee. Because I’d kill him first.

  “Give me the android, Andalite,” he repeated, raising his pistol and centering it on my already damaged forehead. He stepped forward, closing the gap between us to five feet.

  I said.

  I lifted my trunk, hoisting Lourdes high over my head. I hoped this nonviolent Chee warrior would forgive me for using her as a bludgeon.

  “Give it to me and perhaps Visser Three will show you mercy!” he snapped. “You have no hope of escape,” the cop continued, inching closer. “Your friends are dead and you’re next.”

  I didn’t want to die.

  But better to die like a warrior.

  A stark black-and-white blur caught the corner of my eye.

  What?

  Suddenly, a tiny, furry, helpless-looking creature about the size of a house cat came waddling in.

  Harmless-looking, unless you knew what you were looking at. Unless you knew what that black-and-white striped tail meant.

  The skunk — Ax, I assumed — darted between my huge feet, turned, aimed its butt at the Controller, and fired without warning.

  The air filled with the thick, cloying stench of fresh, potent skunk.

  You think you know what skunks smell like because you’ve smelled dead ones on the highway? You know nothing about the sheer, awesome power of that chemical weapon disguised as a cute fuzzy kitty.

  “AAARGH!” the cop shrieked, clapping both hands over his eyes and falling back a step.

  I almost fell with him. Ax hadn’t hit me, but even a near miss is awful.

  Ax commanded, scampering out of reach.

  WHUMPF!

  C-r-r-r-r-UNCH!

  Flump!

  My trunk, weighted with the android, slammed down on the Controller, buckling his knees and smashing him through the rotted floor to the crawl space below.

  He twitched once and lay still. He was still breathing. I wasn’t sure if I was glad about that.

  Tobias swept in through the shattered front window and pulled up sharply.

  I said, laying Lourdes on a hunk of stable flooring and dipping my trunk down into the crawl space.

  Ax said.

  I said stubbornly, fishing around in the darkness until I located one of Marco’s hairy gorilla legs. I curled my trunk around it and hauled him up and out of the crawl space.

  He hung upside down from my trunk, his arms swinging slowly, his body battered and matted with blood and dirt.

  And then he opened his eyes.

  he said weakly.

  I shouted, so startled that I almost dropped him.

  he mumbled.

  The ground arou
nd us trembled. Chunks of plaster rained down from the ceiling and hairline fractures webbed what was left of the walls.

  Tobias said, skimming back through the broken front window.

  Ax warned as he waddled toward the front door.

  I swung Marco up over my head and dropped him on my broad, leathery back.

  I asked.

  he retorted, grabbing handfuls of the thin, wiry hair on my head and gripping me with his knees.

  Again I reached into the crawl space and curled my trunk around Cassie’s limp wolf body.

  It was still warm. Her heart was beating beneath her fur.

  I went weak with relief.

  I said. I held her up, my knees trembling, until Marco pulled her into his lap.

  I reached back down for Lourdes. I could hardly see. One of my eyes was blinded by blood. The other was strangely blurred. I swung the android up onto my back.

  Marco said.

  We bailed.

  I yelled, plowing a swath through the floor toward the front door.

  I lifted my trunk and blasted a high, enraged scream.

  Then I barreled through the doorway, tearing out an elephant-sized chunk of wall.

  WHUMPF! CRRRACK!

  “Whoa! Get out of the way! Move it!”

  “Back off, people! I need a clear shot! Back off!”

  Chaos. People darting everywhere.

  Tobias, still dive-bombing with a gun in his talons, was trying to keep Cassie’s mom from getting a clear shot with her dart gun.

  Pop!

  I said.

  I caught sight of Ax, planted squarely in the middle of the sidewalk, and scooped him up with my trunk as I thundered through the milling crowd.

  Ax said, lifting his tail.

  I said, surging forward and holding Ax out like a weapon.

  “Skunk! Oh, no! It’s spraying! Get out of the way!”

  The mob parted. I heard them shouting, saw their panicked bodies hurtling aside as I rocketed past.