Animorphs #6: The Capture
Page 8
The Yeerk was telling the truth. That was what made it so terrible. It was true. I could feel Tom’s complete, utter despair.
I could feel that he had accepted defeat.
I knew that all he wished for now was an end.
And I knew, also, that I was no stronger than Tom.
But still, one hope lingered in me.
I found out very late that first night why the Yeerk was so confident.
Rachel was keeping guard. Tobias was nearby in a tree.
They had brought food — some sandwiches and some juice, which “I” had eaten. Then, as Rachel sat nearby, reading a book by the light of a flashlight, the Yeerk pretended to sleep.
I guess in a way I did actually sleep. I was mentally exhausted. I was weary and depressed. More tired than I have ever been in my life. And yet afraid that if I dreamed, the Yeerk would watch my dreams.
My fear was justified. I did dream. The same dream I’d had before.
I was the tiger. Tom was my prey.
We were in the dark, deep woods, and I was hunting him with all my tiger skill. He was stumbling and noisy and weak.
I knew I would take him.
At last, too tired to run any farther, Tom fell. He waited, helpless, while I gathered the power of my tiger body and prepared to leap….
And then, I was no longer the tiger. I was my own prey. I watched through eyes wide with terror as the tiger sprang.
I woke up. My eyes were already open.
I looked out through the eyes the Yeerk had opened. Rachel was still sitting back against the wall. Her book was open on her lap. But her breathing was heavy and regular. Her eyes were closed.
She had fallen asleep!
Her flashlight was still on. It shone across the rough wood floor. It illuminated my right arm and leg.
My arm … my leg … they had changed! My arms were thicker, more powerful, and growing larger still. My hands had swollen and become huge. The fingers were disappearing, replaced by curved claws as sharp as stilettos.
Orange and black striped fur appeared, a rippling wave that grew to cover me.
I was becoming the tiger!
The realization hit me like a jolt of electricity. I was morphing!
The Yeerk was morphing!
How could I have been so stupid? Of course! The Yeerk controlled my hands and feet and voice, he controlled my very mind. Of course he had my morphing power, too!
The others … they didn’t realize. They didn’t understand. They had tied me up, but it was useless. The Yeerk had access to every one of my morphs.
The ropes around my hands were painfully tight as my wrists swelled to become powerful forepaws.
The Yeerk raised the rope and used the tiger’s teeth to tear the rope apart.
I wanted to warn Rachel. She was still asleep. I had to warn her. The Yeerk would escape. He might even kill her.
But try as I might, I could not reach my own body any longer. I could not reach my own body.
the Yeerk said.
I now saw the world through tiger’s eyes. The night was brighter. And I heard with tiger’s ears.
Ears that caught any sound that might be made by a predator.
The tiger sniffed the air. But the breeze was slight, and carried no warnings.
The forest was dark and quiet, but for the rustling of leaves in the trees above. Absolute silence, as the tiger crept away. No sound as the tiger melted into the shadows. And Rachel still slept.
Soon the shack could no longer be seen. The beam of Rachel’s flashlight was swallowed by black night.
But the Yeerk was uncertain now. He did not know where we were. He did not know which way to go.
And then … a sound. A smell.
Humans!
The Yeerk moved away from the human scent. They might be hunters. They might be Park Rangers. Those were the possibilities he had pulled from my own brain.
The Yeerk sent the tiger body into a loping run. But after just ten minutes, the tiger tired and he had to slow down. Tigers are not distance runners.
And then … once again. Human scent. Human sounds.
I looked through the tiger’s eyes and saw nothing. The Yeerk once more turned from the human scent.
The Yeerk searched my memory.
I said. The first thing I had said to the Yeerk in a long time.
But the Yeerk knew time was passing. He had to morph back to my normal human shape.
Moments later, I was watching the world through human senses. The night vision was less acute. The ears heard too little. The human nose could scarcely smell a thing.
The Yeerk walked, pushing on as fast as my human body could move with no shoes.
the Yeerk snapped. Then he stopped.
I watched like it was a TV program. Like I was far away from my own body. I watched with interest as the body shrank. As wings sprouted. As talons appeared. As —
WHAM!
The half-bird, half-human body went rolling, end over end across the ground.
He looked around frantically. But falcon eyes are for daytime hunting. They are stunningly good in sunlight. In the dark, they are nothing special.
The Yeerk continued to morph. Falcon feathers grew, the wings became more fully formed.
WHAM!
A shadow within shadows. A sense of something dark that disappeared before the Yeerk could turn the falcon’s head. From far away I realized the falcon body had been injured. There was a deep, bloody gash in the right shoulder.
The Yeerk was beginning to be afraid.
WHAM!
A hammer blow! A ripping of flesh and tendon.
The invisible enemy had struck again. The falcon would not be able to take wing. Not now. The falcon was crippled. Disabled by a silent, invisible enemy.
And then I felt hope come alive in me again.
Because even as the Yeerk, crying in pain, demorphed and returned to human form, I saw the enemy.
It landed on a branch. It was outlined against faint moonlight and infrequent stars. The two little tufts on its head inspired its name.
the Yeerk snapped.
Then, to my amazement, Cassie’s thought-speak was in my head. A voiceless voice that seemed to belong
in a different life.
The humans the tiger had smelled … my friends.
Then I felt it again. The sensation that filled me with a grim sort of pleasure. I felt the Yeerk’s fear.
It was good to know that he was afraid.
It was very good.
I could feel the Yeerk opening my memory like a book again. He was checking through the list of all the morphs I had ever done.
Dog. Fish. Flea. Seagull. Dolphin. Ant. Wolf.
I knew what he must be thinking. Which could he use to evade the watchful owl in the tree above us? The owl who saw through the night like it was day, and heard the sounds no human could hear.
I reveled in his anger. It meant he was scared. It also meant something else. I could not control my arms or legs. I could not even keep my mind closed from him. But he could not stop my thoughts. He could not stop me from talking to him.
And I had the power to annoy him. To distract him when he should be focused on escaping.
He began morphing. The wolf form was one I had enjoyed. Wolves are not subject to much fear. And their instincts are easily manipulated. Not like ants. Or the lizard that was one of my earliest morphs.
I watched as my body sprouted gray fur. As my face bulged out to become a long snout. As my ears slid up the side of my head to rest on top.
the Yeerk said.
He set out at a fast trot. Unlike tigers, wolves are long-distance travelers. They can cover amazing distances at a run. And worse, the wolf brain seemed to have some interior sense of direction. It knew which way was deeper into woods, and which way led to the city.
We ran through woods, through a night as dark as night can be. Clouds hung low over the forest, allowing only the palest glow from the moon.
the Yeerk said.
I wondered who he was trying to convince. Me, or himself?
He stopped moving and pricked up his wolf’s ears. There came a distinct howling sound. Loud and not very far away, it rose and warbled and rose again before dying away.
A second wolf voice howled.
A notice. A warning to any other wolves that we are here. Don’t come around, unless you want to risk a fight.
Suddenly I realized what it meant. I laughed.
The Yeerk began running all out, pushing the wolf body for all the speed and endurance it had.
The dark tree trunks were a blur as we ran through the night, followed by the howls of wolves who were not wolves.
Then, a smell on the wind. The smell of another wolf. A male wolf.
I said, laughing.
The Yeerk stopped running.
Ahead, through the trees, a pair of glittering yellow eyes glared at us. Other eyes appeared. Five wolves — five real wolves — waited for us to try to move forward.
I could sense the Yeerk’s hesitation. His uncertainty.
Just then, a human voice. “So. You about done playing games? Ready to come back to the shack?”
It was Marco. He was shoeless and wearing his morphing outfit. He had been one of the wolves who’d led us straight into the enemy pack.
Marco shivered. “Look, Mr. Yeerk, it’s cold and I’m freezing. I always knew this situation with the morphing outfits was going to be trouble someday. So come on. Let’s go back to the shack.”
For a moment the Yeerk was so enraged he was ready to leap at Marco and tear out his throat.
But then, lumbering up behind Marco came Rachel. The very large version of Rachel with the trunk, the big leathery ears, and the two huge tusks.
Marco seemed to guess what had gone through the Yeerk’s mind. “Go ahead. Try something. A wolf pack ahead. A very large, surprisingly fast African elephant behind you. And more surprises in the woods all around you. Oh, and one more thing … Cassie is nestled down in your fur. Sucking your blood, I imagine. She did the flea thing.”
I realized then that there is a very basic difference between Yeerks and humans.
A human will fight even when he knows he can’t win. Maybe our species is just a little crazy. But human history is full of cases where a handful of guys would fight an entire army. They’d get stomped, but they’d fight anyway.
That’s not the way it is for Yeerks. They are ruthless. They will do anything, absolutely anything to win. But when the situation is impossible, totally impossible, they stop fighting. They figure that other Yeerks will carry on the fight for them.
Different ways of looking at your world.
The Yeerk demorphed and returned to human form. My human form.
Marco walked
away into the woods. Rachel rumbled off. And a few minutes later, an owl appeared to lead the way back to the shack.
The next morning, when it seemed like no one was watching, the Yeerk tried again. He morphed into an ant. He got three feet before running into a group of ants from a different colony. About forty of them attacked. They were ripping the ant body apart when the Yeerk demorphed and returned to human form.
It was around nine in the morning on Saturday that the Yeerk first took over my body and brain. By Monday evening, when the sun went down, he was growing distracted, unable to concentrate clearly.
By the time the moon rose in a newly clear, starry sky, he was weak with hunger. His slug body cried out for Kandrona rays the way a human would cry for food or water.
I could feel his arrogance evaporate. I could feel his despair.
He still had fantasies of being rescued. But he couldn’t make those fantasies end very well. Even if he was rescued, he would no longer be the big hero who had destroyed the Animorphs.
He would try to think of clever ways to outwit my friends, but he could never be sure who was in the woods around us. Or what form they might have taken.
He tried to take on a bird shape again, re-forming the peregrine falcon. The DNA had not been affected by the injuries Cassie had caused to the earlier morph, of course. The falcon was fine. But it was daylight this time, and Tobias landed while the falcon was still half-morphed. He grabbed the falcon head in his talon and simply explained that if the Yeerk did not demorph, he would be killed.
For the first time, the Yeerk broke his silence with the others and spoke as a Yeerk.