The Extreme

by K. A. Applegate

  I dropped to the ground. And then I noticed I was on the ground. I had a sudden urge to stay there. Sitting on the frozen ground.

  "Marco!" Jake yelled. "What are you doing?"

  Everything was turning kind of gray.

  68 "Marco, you have to keep moving," Rachel shouted.

  "What's happening?" Tobias asked from somewhere on Rachel's body.

  "He's going into shock," Cassie said, strangely calm.

  "Marco!" Rachel yelled. She grabbed me with her big bear paws and shook me. "You've got to stand up!"

  "Stop," I mumbled. Angry. She's always angry.

  "Marco, morph out!" Jake yelled at me. "Morph out!"

  "Yeah." I tried to nod.

  Rachel shook me harder. "Come on, Marco! Don't lose it!"

  But I wasn't listening. I didn't care. I was floating through space.

  No, not floating. Flying. Just like an osprey. Through empty space.

  Wait! A light up ahead. Calling to me. Drawing me to it. Very bright. Like ... like the lights around the bathroom mirror.

  I tried to flap my wings, but I didn't have any. I didn't need them. Not anymore.

  69 "I'm coming," I whispered.

  Almost there. Then everything would be perfect.

  "Marco!"

  "Okay, okay ... oooookay."

  WHAM!

  Something bashed me in the face. Blinding pain. I felt some teeth drop onto my tongue.

  "Marco! Wake up!"

  I opened my eyes. Jake, Cassie, and Rachel were standing over me. Rachel had blood on her big hairy paw. My blood. From my flat gorilla nose. Now somewhat flatter. Her paw was raised, ready to smack me again.

  70 "Hey, hey, hey!" I yelled, gently touching my crushed face with a frozen hand. "What is your problem?"

  "I'm trying to save your life, you idiot," Rachel said. "Don't know why, but I am."

  "Well, try a kinder, gentler method next time," I whined, spitting out something that felt an awful lot like bloody teeth.

  "We were losing you. You have to demorph, Marco," Jake said. "Then remorph as a wolf. It's the best morph we've got for this climate. Rachel, you too, if you think it's best. I'll take Ax and Tobias while you go first."

  "They can stay on me," she said.

  "Um, Rachel?" Jake said. "You have to pass through human on the way to wolf."

  "Like we'd see anything?" Tobias said with a laugh. "We're fleas!"

  I began to demorph. Slowly at first. Everything very slow. Brain not thinking too good.

  I began to change, shrinking back to my normal size. My frozen, swollen fingers thinned. My black fur sucked itself back into my body, leaving me even more vulnerable to the cold.

  A few seconds later I was back in my human form, with nothing on but a pair of black cycling pants and a white T-shirt. Not a good body for the weather. I morphed swiftly to wolf.

  Relief!

  71 Not total relief. The wind still sliced through me with its cold steel edge. But I had fur that was at least designed for fairly cold weather. And feet that were evolved for something other than padding around on heat-rotted vegetation.

  Cassie demorphed and remorphed as a wolf. Rachel was right with her. Jake morphed as well. I know he'd suffered in his tiger morph. But Jake, being Jake, wouldn't complain till everyone else was safe.

  "I think this is the best morph we have," Cassie said thoughtfully. "Unless we get to open water. Then my whale morph would be good. I don't know about dolphin or shark. I think they're both more warm water. Still, these wolf bodies are not equipped for the Arctic or Antarctic or wherever we are. We might be able to survive for a few hours at a time, long enough to remorph and regenerate, but we're still vulnerable. Too vulnerable to be fighting."

  "Point taken," Jake said. "We stay out of fights, if we can."

  I stuck my head out of the alcove to see what was going on back down the slope. With this slight elevation I could see the base clearly, if not in detail.

  But it wasn't the far-off base that got my attention. There was very little alive anywhere near us, and thus almost nothing to smell. So when

  72 the new scent drifted our way, all our wolf heads perked up.

  You probably know how well a dog can smell and hear. Well, a wolf is to a dog what a Ferrari is to a Hyundai.

  Smell! Sound! Sight! All locked on like some computerized targeting system.

  "What the heck are those things?" I cried.

  There were two of them. About eight feet tall. Humanoid. Torso, head, and limbs in the usual places. Only their heads were shaped kind of like a hammerhead shark's, oblong with big, dark globs on each side that must have been eyes. Each creature had two thick upper arms growing out of broad shoulders. The upper arms split at the elbows to make two forearms.

  Big, burly, nasty-looking beasts. Silver, with flashes of blood-red and midnight-blue along their flanks, along their shoulders, and converging in their faces.

  I'd seen that color scheme before.

  They were sliding toward us on long, ski-like feet. They used two of their forearms, one right and one left, to propel themselves forward.

  And they glistened in the light like diamonds or crystals.

  With their third and fourth forearms, each carried a chunky black tube of some kind.

  "Ax, we've got aliens coming," Jake said.

  73 "I think they're the ones we saw in those cylinders."

  Jake described them.

  "I do not believe it," Ax cried. "A perfect description of a Venber."

  "Venber? What happened to them being extinct?" I cried.

  "Reports of their extinction may have been exaggerated."

  "Ax, are you developing a sense of humor? If so, stop it, okay?"

  "Well, whatever they are, they're coming this way in a hurry," Rachel said. "And judging by those big guns in their hands, I don't think they're welcoming us to the neighborhoods."

  "Yeah," Jake said. "Let's get out of here."

  The Venber kept coming, making strange, crunching noises. Regular, repeated sounds that seemed to ricochet off the rocks behind us in a weird, distorted echo.

  Crinch! Crinch!

  Sproing! Sproing!

  They seemed to know exactly where they were going. Or at least they knew exactly where we had gone.

  "They're echolocating," Cassie said. "Pinging us with those sounds."

  "Into the rocks," Jake said. "They can't echolocate in there, can they?"

  74 "They should not be able to now," Ax pointed out. "We are already in the shadow of the rocks. This must be a very sophisticated sense to pick us out of the clutter. Very impressive."

  "Swell, you can ask one out on a date, Ax, you like them so much. Do you have anything useful to tell us?"

  "Yes. They would have difficulty dealing with temperatures above freezing. Liquid water, for example."

  "Well, then we have nothing to worry about. We offer them a vacation in Florida and we're home free!"

  "Marco, why didn't I just let you freeze?" Rachel wondered.

  The Venber were about fifty yards away from us when they stopped. Then they raised those big tubes and pointed them our way.

  They didn't look like cameras.

  "I'm thinking we should duck," I said.

  75 We crouched low, skulking wolves.

  TSEEEEEEW! The horizon filled with a blinding green light.

  About fou r tons of rock upslope from us became four tons of gravel.

  Ka-BOOOOM!

  It was gravel rain! Rock hail.

  I've been shot at by Dracon beams before. They're plenty scary. These things were about ten stages past scary.

  "Holy!" Jake yelled. "What are those things?"

  "Dracon assault cannons," Ax replied. "They are used for attacking hardened ground facilities from orbit."

  "I am so out of here!" I cried.

  76 "Forget the rocks, hug the shoreline," Jake said. "They want a chase, we'll give them a chase."

  We took off along the dead ro
ck and slush shoreline.

  The Venber followed. Sliding along on their ski feet, pushing themselves forward with those massive forearms, they followed. Every few minutes one of them would stop and take a shot with its assault cannon, blasting the already lifeless scenery.

  "Spread out," Jake said. "One well-aimed shot could kill us all."

  We ran and ran down that shoreline. One good thing about being a wolf is the ability to run for hours without having to stop. A wolf can run all day and all night.

  The Venber kept after us. They were bigger, they were stronger. We were faster. And they couldn't match our endurance.

  But unlike the six of us, the two alien ice monsters didn't have to demorph every two hours.

  "This makes no sense," Ax said as we ran. "The Yeerks could not possibly infest the Venber. The Yeerks would freeze. They must be controlled by some other means. Unless, of course, the Yeerks managed to find a method of keeping

  77 themselves from freezing inside the Venber's body."

  "Whatever," Rachel said. "Point is, we're out front. I don't even see them anymore. Maybe they've given up."

  I turned to look over my shaggy gray shoulder. I couldn't see the Venber. Couldn't smell them, either, despite the wind blowing from behind us.

  "No way they gave up," Tobias said. "We have to keep moving."

  "So says the flea all nice and warm in his honey's back fur," I muttered.

  "What did you say?" Rachel demanded. I guess she was shocked that I'd dare to make any remark suggesting she and Tobias were more than just friends and Animorphs. Like that was some big secret.

  We slowed our pace a little. My footpads were numb and swollen. Frostbite. Again. I couldn't feel the tips of my ears.

  "We need to find somewhere to demorph and remorph," Jake said. "What's our time?"

  "We have twenty of your minutes left," Ax replied.

  I swear he emphasized "your" minutes. We trotted back over to the rocks that continued to follow the shoreline all the way to eternity.

  We ran on till we found a deep, steep-walled

  78 alcove. It was still cold as the dark side of the moon. But at least the wind was left behind to howl and moan impotently.

  We huddled around Cassie, trying to keep her warm as she demorphed first. Then we took turns demorphing and remorphing, huddling together like a litter of newborn puppies.

  Weird. A bunch of wolves pressing flank to flank. It was a strange and kind of wonderful experience.

  It brought back memories I didn't know I had. From when I was very little. Sitting on the couch with my mom, snuggled up against her, watching TV and sucking my thumb.

  Corny. Probably the cold was getting to me. Or maybe it's just that in the cold, in an environment that is ready to kill you without thought or mercy, simple animal warmth, body and body, breath and breath, seems to touch something deep inside you. Millions of years of Homo Sapiens, huddled together, body and body against the killing wind.

  Until at last humans learned to make fire. Of course, that involved matches. Or at least stick.

  "So now what?" Rachel asked when we'd all remorphed. Ax and Tobias had remorphed as fleas and were hiding in Jake's fur. I guess my undiplomatic remark about Tobias and Rachel had made them self-conscious.

  "We have to keep moving," Jake said. "I'm

  79 sure the Venber are still tracking us. But we also have to find somewhere to hide for the night. No way we'll survive this cold without shelter."

  "Maybe we can find a cave," Cassie said. "Or a snowdrift and dig a hole in it for a lair."

  "Or a McDonald's," I suggested. "I thought they were everywhere."

  "What we really need to do is find some cold-weather animals to morph," Rachel added.

  "I'll second that motion," Tobias said.

  When we were semi-thawed, our frostbite all replaced with healthy flesh in the new morphing, we moved on. It was getting dark. According to Ax it was only two o'clock - you know, in our hours. But the sun was already disappearing. That could only mean it was going to get colder.

  80 We trotted along the shoreline in the fading light. Sometimes we ran. Every once in a while I'd look back in the direction of the Yeerk station. I couldn't see anything. But now and then I caught a smell that I was pretty sure I recognized.

  Venber. Still hunting us.

  The ice along the shore was more solid here. It extended in a lumpy sheet from about a quarter-mile to several miles from the shore. Beyond that, the water was thick with chunks of white.

  Ax had said that water might be dangerous to the Venber, so we considered going right out onto the ice and closer to its outer edge. But

  81 if we stayed out in the open, the Venber might be better able to track us with their echolocation.

  And out on the ice there was no shelter at all from the terrible wind. We decided to stay closer to the slope of the ridge beside us. There, too, we'd be able to find cover in the rocks if it came down to combat.

  The sun started to disappear on the horizon, giving the ice an orange glow. As the sun dropped, the wind shifted direction.

  A sudden scent! Like a flashing neon sign to my wolf nostrils. Everyone caught the scent at the same time. We all stopped.

  I sniffed again, concentrating, letting the wolf mind that existed beside my own provide a rough translation: a scent similar to Rachel's grizzly bear morph, but not quite the same.

  I turned my ears toward the wind, toward the scent. Yes, just barely, I heard something. A steady, easy, confident gait. Ice and snow crunched by enormous weight. Four feet.

  "Let me guess," I said. "The Abominable Snowman."

  "Abominable something," Rachel agreed. "Might be our dinner. Even a wolf needs to eat."

  We quickened our pace and began to turn in a wide arc toward the unseen creature. Cassie

  82 spotted him first as he emerged from the shadow of an ice heave.

  "Over there," she said.

  My wolf's eyes locked onto a spot of black.

  His nose.

  Then two black dots above it.

  His eyes.

  The nose and eyes moved. And in the near darkness, the rest of him began to take shape. A humongous mass of off-white fur.

  "Polar bear!" Cassie said delightedly. "I guess that means we're Arctic and not Antarctica."

  "I did tell you our direction was north," Ax sniffed from down deep in Jake's fur.

  It was weird. This creature you only saw on TV or at the zoo: a polar bear. Sitting on the ice, scratching himself.

  We stood there and stared at him. He stopped scratching and seemed to be staring back. He sniffed at the air, and then lifted his big bear butt and started lumbering toward us on four thick legs.

  "I'm thinking that this guy is not going to be our dinner," Rachel said.

  "Two-to-one odds we end up being his," I agreed. "Let's run away. Fast."

  "Uh-huh," Jake said, starting into a trot.

  83 "What is this polar bear?" Ax asked from Flea World.

  "Polar bear," Cassie said. "The largest land predator in the world."

  "What do you mean largest predator?" Rachel protested, as if Cassie had just insulted her. "I thought grizzly bears were the largest!"

  "Grizzlies aren't true predators. Let's face it: You'll eat berries, given a chance," Cassie answered. "Anyway, polar bears can actually be heavier, if they've really packed on the blubber. Although grizzlies are normally built thicker."

  "Just how much public television do you watch, Cassie?" I asked. "No, I really don't want to know."

  "I could take him," Rachel muttered. But she didn't sound too sure.

  "Predators?" Jake said. "I thought bears just ate fish and berries."

  "Not polar bears," Cassie replied, breaking into a full run now. "But this might actually be good news for us. Where there are predators, there are prey."

  The bear kept after us, lumbering along the ice in a casual way.

  "What do polar bears eat?" Jake asked.


  "Dumb kids playing hero," I muttered.

  84 "Seals, usually," Cassie said. "Other things, too. But mostly seals."

  "I haven't seen any seals," I said. We were running at full speed now. I looked back and saw the bear had slowed down. Apparently, we were not his main concern.

  "Of course you don't see any," Rachel said. "They're hiding from the polar bear!"

  "Now that we're on this topic," Jake said, "what exactly are we supposed to eat?"

  "We could try fishing," I suggested.

  "I could use my grizzly morph," Rachel said. "Grizzlies fish, right?"

  "I doubt that'll work," Cassie said. "Grizzly bears fish in streams. I don't think fish come anywhere near the surface in this part of the world."

  "Great," I said, "so I guess we just go ahead and starve. Why not? Everything else is going so well."

  Things were looking pretty hopeless: polar bear to the right of us, Venber behind us, and cold all around. And now it was almost completely dark. The temperature was beginning to drop from shockingly cold to hideously cold. And the wind was howling off the water.

  "We'd better find somewhere to hide for the night," Jake said.

  "I'm just glad the Chee are covering for us back home," Cassie said.

  85 Usually Cassie knows the right thing to say. Not this time. The last thing I wanted to think about right then was my home, my warm home with my warm bed and my warm TV.

  I've been hurled sixty million years into the past, and been trappe d on alien planets, but I'd never felt so far from home.

  86 We dug a lair in a snowdrift on top of some rocks looking out over the ice. And by "lair" I mean a big hole. A big, wet snow hole.

  "I get the bedroom with the separate bath," I said. No one laughed.

  For what felt like the tenth time that day, we demorphed, one by one. We shivered in our human bodies for just long enough to turn blue (all except Ax, who was already blue), then remorphed.

  The temperature continued to fall. We heard the ice cracking and groaning like a never-ending thunderstorm echoing through the darkness. It was an amazing sound.

  You know how they say all the continents used

  87 to be one big continent, and that over millions of years they broke up and drifted apart? That's what it sounded like. The continents leaving each other behind.

  We spent the night huddled together in our makeshift cave, trying to keep each other from freezing to death. Each of us took turns standing guard, which basically consisted of sticking a nose out in the frozen air every couple of minutes to catch wind of anyone or anything dangerous.