The Encounter

by K. A. Applegate

  Everyone laughed, because we all knew why Cassie had birdcages. Her father and mother are both veterinarians. Her mom works for The Gardens, which is this huge zoo and amusement park.

  Her dad runs the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic in the barn on their family farm. The Clinic takes in wild animals that are sick or hurt and cares for them.

  The cages Cassie had to get home to clean were filled with sparrows with broken wings and eagles who’d been shot and seagulls who’d gotten tangled in trash.

  Cassie is our expert on animals. She also gets us access to animals to morph. She’s a gentle person. She can also morph better than any of us.

  Everyone stood up and started to go.

  “You coming, Tobias?” Jake asked me.

 

  “Cool,” he said. “I’ll put some food up in the attic for you in case you get home late. I don’t want anything getting at it, though. Can you open one of those Rubbermaid things?”

  I saw the way the others kind of looked away when Jake mentioned the attic. They feel sorry for me.

  I said.

  Tom is Jake’s big brother. Tom is one of them.

  Everyone said good night. I saw Cassie and Jake touch their hands together in a way that could almost have been accidental. Then they were all gone. All but me and Rachel.

  “I don’t like thinking of you living in a cold attic,” Rachel said.

  I said. I wondered if I should tell her what I had seen, the darkness within darkness, the hole in the sky. But the truth was, even I didn’t know what it was.

  It would just worry her. And she worried about me too much.

  I said.

  “Yeah. Take care of yourself, Tobias.”

  I flew out through her window into the night. Rachel’s sad eyes seemed to follow me. I hated the way they all felt sorry for me. All they could see was that I was not what I used to be. All they saw was that I had no home.

  But they didn’t really understand. I hadn’t had a real home since my parents died. I was used to being alone.

  And I had the sky.

  CHAPTER 4

  The next day I decided to go back to where I had seen—or not seen—the big thing in the sky.

  I had a feeling about it. A bad feeling.

  I flew up over the same area, rising as high as I could on the thermals.

  Hawks are not quite as good at soaring as eagles or some buzzards are. (Man, you should see the way a turkey buzzard can work those thermals! Awesome.) And actually, the red-tailed hawk in my head would be just as happy perched patiently on the branch of a tree, waiting to see its next meal go scurrying past.

  But I didn’t eat like a hawk. I ate food that Jake gave me. I didn’t hunt. Although sometimes the urge to hunt was pretty strong.

  I could just hear Marco making some smart crack about me eating mice. Or roadkill.

  When you’re in a morph, it’s hard to resist the animal’s instincts. Jake found that out when he became a lizard. He glomped down a live spider before he’d gotten control of the lizard’s instincts.

  I hadn’t done that. Yet. I was afraid if I did it once, I’d never be able to stop.

  I soared high above the city, over the area I’d been through the day before. But nothing. Nothing moved in the air above me.

  Then it occurred to me: Whatever it was, maybe it only happened at certain times of day. It had been almost sunset when I’d felt its presence last.

  I decided to come back around sunset. Which meant I had the whole day ahead of me with nothing special to do. This did not make me happy. See, the fact is, a hawk spends almost all its time hunting food.

  As for me, Tobias, when I hadn’t been in school, I used to spend most of my free time watching TV, hanging out at the mall, doing homework, reading … all things that were difficult for me to do now.

  I missed school. Even though I had constantly been picked on by bullies. I didn’t really miss my home, though. See, when my parents died, there was no one who really wanted me. I ended up getting shunted back and forth between an uncle here and an aunt across the country.

  Neither of them really cared about me. I don’t think they even missed me. I had arranged for Jake to leave a message with my uncle. We told him I had gone to stay with my aunt. Each of them, my uncle and my aunt, thought I was staying with the other.

  I had no idea how long that trick would hold up before one of them figured out I wasn’t in either place.

  I guess when they realize it they’ll call the cops and report me as a runaway. Or maybe they won’t even bother.

  So. What was I going to do with my day? I’d been floating up here in the high air, just below the clouds, for a couple of hours. It was time to give it up and try again another time.

  I tilted my wings and adjusted my tail, turning toward Rachel’s house. Maybe she would be hanging around the house, bored.

  Then it happened.

  A mile or more above me, the ripple passed through the air. An emptiness, a hole where no hole could be.

  I reacted instantly. I had to get closer.

  I flapped till my chest and shoulders were sore. But it was moving too fast, and it was too high.

  It pulled away from me, a wave of air, a rippling of the fabric of the sky. It was moving in a different direction, though. It was moving toward the mountains.

  Then … a flight of geese on the move in a tight V-formation.

  There were maybe a dozen of the big, determined geese, moving along at an amazing rate, powering their way through the air like they always do. Geese always seem to be on a mission. Like, “Get out of our way; we’re geese and we’re coming through.”

  The geese were aimed straight for the disturbance.

  Suddenly, the lead goose folded like it had been hit by a truck. Its wings collapsed. But it did not fall.

  The crippled goose slid through the air. It slid horizontally, rolling and flopping like it was passing over the top of a racing train.

  Most of the other geese suffered the same fate. One or two peeled away in time, but geese are not real agile.

  The invisible wave smacked into the flight, and the geese were crushed. They were rolling and sliding along some unseen but solid surface.

  And everywhere the geese hit, I could catch little glimpses of steel-gray metal.

  The wave passed by. The geese fell in its wake, dead or crippled.

  It flew on, unconcerned. But then, why should the Yeerks care about a handful of geese?

  And that’s what they were, I was certain. Yeerks.

  What I had seen, or not quite seen, was a Yeerk ship.

  CHAPTER 5

  It figures,” Marco said thoughtfully. “The Yeerks would have to have some kind of cloaking ability. Like ‘stealth’ technology, only much better.”

  We were all in Cassie’s barn. Her dad was away for the afternoon. And it’s one of the few spots where I can go and not look out of place.

  It’s a regular old-fashioned barn, but with rows of clean cages and fluorescent lights. There are partitions keeping the birds away from the horses, and more partitions keeping the raccoons and opossums and the occasional coyote away from the skittish horses. The floor of the barn is usually strewn with hoses and buckets and scattered hay. There are charts on each cage showing the condition of the animal and what treatment it’s getting.

  It’s usually a pretty noisy place, what with various birds chirping or cooing, horses snuffling, and raccoons fussing with their food.

  I looked over a little nervously at a pair of wolves, one male, one female. One had been shot. The other had eaten poison left out by a farmer. Wolves were new in the area. Wildlife experts had brought some back to the nearby forest.

  Wolves make hawks a little edgy.

  “We were always able to see Yeerk ships,” Rachel pointed out. “We saw the Bug fighters and the Blade shi
p.” She was leaning against a cage that housed an injured mourning dove. The dove was watching me suspiciously.

  “Yeah, but every Yeerk ship we’ve ever dealt with has been either on the ground or about to land,” Jake said. “Maybe the cloaking ability doesn’t work when they get close to land. But if you think about it, Marco is right. They would have to be able to avoid being picked up by radar. Maybe they also have the ability to avoid being seen.”

  I said flatly.

  “How can you be so sure?” Cassie asked. She was working as we talked, cleaning an empty cage with a brush and a bucket of sudsy water.

  I said stubbornly. >I … I just got this feeling from it. Also, it seemed huge. Far bigger than even the biggest jet. This was huge. More like a real ship, you know, like an ocean liner.>

  “The question is, what do we do about it?” Jake asked. Of course, I knew he’d already made up his mind to do something. But Jake doesn’t like to act like the one in charge, even though that’s how I think of him. He lets everyone have their say first.

  I said.

  Rachel nodded. “That makes sense.”

  Marco rolled his eyes. “The mountains? Have you suburb-dwellers ever been to the mountains? We’re talking about a large area. No matter how big this ship is, it could hide in a thousand places in the mountains.”

  “Then we’d better start looking right away,” Rachel said brightly.

  Jake looked at Cassie. “Cass? What do you think?”

  Cassie shrugged. “I halfway feel like we’ve done enough. You know? We attacked the Yeerk pool. We barely got out alive. We infiltrated Chapman’s house and Rachel was captured. Again, we barely got out alive. I guess the question is, how many risks are we going to take? How many more times are we going to barely escape?”

  I could see that Marco was surprised. Suddenly it sounded like Cassie was on his side. “Exactly! Exactly! Just what I’ve been saying. Why is it our job to get killed?”

  But then Cassie went and blew it all for him.

  “I mean, as far as I’m concerned, I can’t just do nothing while people are enslaved by the Yeerks,” Cassie said. “Maybe it’s just me… .” She shrugged. “The thing is, I have these powers.” She shrugged again. “I can’t just do nothing.”

  “Look, these aren’t people we know,” Marco argued. “They aren’t my friends. Or my family.” He shot a guilty look at Jake. “And we did everything we could for Tom. So why should I get killed for strangers? We can’t stay lucky forever. Don’t you people understand that? Sooner or later, we’ll slip up. Sooner or later, we’ll be standing around here crying because Jake or Rachel or Cassie or Tobias is gone.”

  “You know something?” Rachel exploded. “I’m tired of trying to talk you into this, Marco. You want out? Fine, you’re OUT!”

  “Hey, Rachel, you’re not just doing this to help save the human race,” Marco yelled back. “You get off on the danger. That’s why you went with Tobias to free that bird. That wasn’t about saving the world. That was about rescuing some stupid bird.”

  Marco realized he’d gone too far. He fell silent. The others all looked guiltily at me. Rachel shot Marco a look of pure anger.

  I said,

  “I’ll be with you,” Rachel said instantly.

  Cassie nodded.

  Jake made a wry smile. “You say you’re not a leader, but I’ll go with you.”

  Marco shook his head. “No,” he said.

  “Your choice,” Rachel said.

  “That’s not what I meant,” Marco said angrily. “I meant no, not in the morning. Tomorrow’s a school day. If all of us skip school on the same day and later there’s some trouble with the Yeerks, don’t you think Chapman might put two and two together?”

  Jake raised an eyebrow. “Marco’s right. After school.” He looked at the others and nodded.

  It bothered me that Marco was right. But he was. Marco might be a pain in the butt. But he’s a very smart guy.

  It worried me a little. It made me wonder. Was he right about other things as well?

  How many risks could we take before we lost? How long till the five of us were four? Or two?

  Or none?

  CHAPTER 6

  Jake had a peregrine falcon morph we’d used before. Marco and Cassie had morphed ospreys. Rachel had been a bald eagle. So we all should have been able to fly up to the mountains.

  But there are millions of bird-watchers in this country. They’re very cool people because they never hurt a bird. They don’t hunt. They just get pleasure out of watching birds fly or nest.

  Bird-watchers would think it was very, very weird if they saw a red-tailed hawk, a bald eagle, a falcon, and two ospreys all flying together as if they were on a mission.

  And some of those gentle bird-watchers might be not-so-gentle Controllers.

  “Bird-watchers!” Marco snorted as he tramped over the carpet of pine needles deeper into the woods. “We could fly, but no. No, we have to walk. Twenty miles, probably!”

  Cassie’s farm has a lot of open grass areas, and it borders on a national forest. The national forest goes on forever. It stretches from the edge of town all the way up into the mountains. It’s all pines and oaks and elms and birches. Wilderness, really. Thousands of square acres of it.

  “Oh, come on, Marco,” Cassie chided gently. “It’s an opportunity to try out a new morph! “

  “Yeah,” Jake chided. “Instead of being home doing math homework, you get to turn into a wolf. Are you going to tell me you’d rather be doing equations?”

  “Let’s see,” Marco considered. “Math? Or becoming a wolf and going off to find aliens? Maybe I should ask the school counselor what she thinks. It’s such a common problem. I’m sure she’d have some good advice.”

  Since it wasn’t a good idea for us all to travel to the mountains as birds, the others needed a morph that could travel far and fast through woods. And there were the two injured wolves in Cassie’s barn….

  Jake stopped, looked around, and announced, “This is good.” We were a few hundred yards into the woods. I came to rest on a low branch of a huge oak tree. The hawk in me took note of a squirrel a few branches up. He started chittering and shrieking his little squirrel warning: Danger! Danger!

  Hawk! Hawk!

  I gave him a look. He twitched, stuck the acorn he was holding into his cheek, and took off at full speed.

  “What I don’t get is why I have to be a girl wolf,” Marco grumbled.

  “We had one male and one female,” Cassie explained for the tenth time. “If two of us morphed into the male, we’d have two males. Two male wolves might decide they had to fight for dominance.”

  “I could control it,” Marco said.

  “Marco, you and Jake already fight for dominance, and you’re just ordinary guys,” Rachel pointed out.

  “She’s right,” Cassie said sadly. “I’m afraid your primitive male behavior might slow us down.”

  “Hey, when I morphed into a gorilla, I handled that gorilla brain okay, didn’t I?” Marco demanded.

  “Sure, Marco,” Rachel said. She batted her eyes. “But that was different. You and the gorilla were already so much alike.”

  Cassie and Rachel gave each other discreet high fives.

  “Hugely funny,” Marco said.

  “We flipped a coin, fair and square,” Jake said. “I got to be the male. You’re one of the females. Get over it.”

  “Let me see that coin again,” Marco said suspiciously.

  Jake s
miled. “Let’s just do this. Cassie, you want to go first, to see what it’s like?”

  We had learned from hard experience that morphing can be extremely disturbing. Jake had morphed into a lizard and been almost overpowered by the animal’s fearful brain. The same had happened to Rachel when she’d morphed a shrew. She still had nightmares about the shrew experience— its fear and, worse, its hunger for bugs and rotting flesh.

  On the other hand, Jake had morphed into a flea, and according to him it was kind of a big nothing. Like being trapped inside a very old, very bad video game where you could barely see anything. The flea brain had been too simple to make trouble.

  “Okay. I’ll let you know.” Cassie closed her eyes and concentrated. Then she opened them again. “Wait. Let me get down to my morph suit first. I don’t want to get tangled up in my clothes.”

  She removed everything but a leotard, kicked off her shoes, and stood barefoot on the pine needles.

  The first change was her hair. It went from very short black to shaggy silver in just a few seconds. It traveled down from her head, down her neck, over her shoulders, around her neck. Long, shaggy fur.

  Then her nose bulged out.

  I shuddered. You never really get used to seeing people morph. It is something straight out of a nightmare. Even though Cassie seems to have some kind of talent for it. She’s never quite as gross as the others. I guess it’s because she’s so close to so many animals. Maybe she just has a special feel for them.

  Still, as the wolf snout began to push out from her face, it was not a pleasant sight.

  Her ears grew furry and pointed. Then they slid straight up the side of her head till they almost touched on top.

  Her eyes went from brown-black to golden brown.

  All over her body, the fur replaced the bright pinks and greens of her leotard. A tail suddenly shot out from behind. I could hear the grinding of her bones as they rearranged. Her upper arms shortened. Her lower arms grew longer. Fingers shriveled and disappeared, leaving behind only stubby black nails.