Rachel argued.
Jake ordered.
Jake said woozily.
I felt a wave of sick dread. We were lost. Lost in pipes that stretched for miles. Jake out of commission. No one with an idea.
We rode. We had no concept of time. No idea where we were, how much time we had left in morph. We simply rode the current through blackness, swimming enough to keep control of our bodies.
Forever. It seemed like forever. Down. Up. Right. Left. With Jake quieter and quieter. Moving more slowly.
Then …
No pipe! I was hurtling through the air!
My eel eyes weren’t good for much, but they could see the fire.
The fire that was everywhere!
We were five eels. Blown from the end of a fire hose, arcing through the air toward a burning building.
Through the air!
Through a window.
Splat!
I hit, then skidded across a floor.
I didn’t need any encouragement. The rush of water shoved me up against a stove. I was demorphing, water hammering me.
But I didn’t mind the water. The alternative was fire.
My human eyes returned and instantly began to sting. I squinted, shielding my face with a slimy, vestigial hand. The others rose like horrible monsters from the swirling water.
We were in a kitchen. The main fire was in the living room. I saw stairs.
“Stairs,” Jake gasped. “Up.”
We staggered, a half-morphed bunch of nightmares, up the stairs, away from the fire. Other hoses must have been hammering through the upper windows because water came down the stairs like a waterfall.
We made it to the second floor. Jake leaned over the railing and threw up.
“I don’t see anyone up here,” Rachel gasped, choking on the smoke.
I nodded agreement. “Let’s …” Then I started coughing. It didn’t matter. We knew what to do.
I don’t think anyone noticed the birds of prey tearing out of a back window, singed and wet.
We flew only a short way. Jake was too weak to stay in the air.
We landed and demorphed.
“Well, that was fun,” Marco said. “Let’s do that again, real soon.”
“Must be this stupid yamphut,” Rachel said, helping me to hold Jake up. “Jake was sick in eel form. Sick in human form, too.”
“We’ll try again after school tomorrow,” Jake told us when he stepped off the ladder. “If I’m not better, you’ll have to go without me. I’m going home. Try to rest up.”
“Marco and I will walk you,” I volunteered.
“I’ll morph to owl and fly back to the barn,” Rachel told us. “Check on Ax. And I’ll ask him what he knows about how the yamphut affects humans, then call you at Jake’s.”
Jake wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “You go back to the barn, too, Tobias. And stay there,” he instructed. “Erek’s hologram is good. But it’s not enough. If Ax fights his way out of the stall, morph into something big and stop him. If his temperature gets close to —”
“Ninety-one point three,” I told him.
“Right. Okay. Wow. Man, my mind is gone. This sucks. Like the flu. That’s how it feels. Like I have to …”
He bent over and heaved.
“Like you have to chuck?” Marco suggested.
Marco and I each wrapped an arm around Jake’s waist and headed off. Fortunately the water tower was on the same side of town as Jake’s house. But it was still a long way.
Rachel and Tobias took off.
“You ever notice how many different ways there are to say ‘throwing up’?” Marco asked as we passed Dunkin’ Donuts, the first in the row of fast food places dotting the main street running through town. “There’s vomiting, of course. Hurling. Tossing your cookies. Puking, a classic. Ralphing.”
I was glad Marco was filling up the silence. Even though I thought he could have come up with a better topic.
“There’s cascading. But I prefer the terms that are more real. Like blowing chunks. Spewing your guts.”
Marco took a deep breath and kept on talking as we made our way past Taco Bell. “Tangoing with the toilet. That’s a good one,” he said reflectively. “Technicolor yawn.”
Jake broke away from us, staggered over to the curb, and — fill in your favorite term for puking here.
“I give that a four,” Marco told Jake. “Sorry, guy. But your projectile force was not where it should be.”
Jake started to straighten up. Then his knees buckled. Marco and I reached him just before he hit the pavement.
Marco wrapped one of Jake’s arms around his shoulders. I slid his other arm around me. Then Marco and I made a seat for Jake by linking hands underneath him.
Soon Marco and I were huffing and puffing too much to talk. We turned off the main street, heading deeper into the residential section. A few porch lights were on but it was pretty dark. And quiet, except for said huffing and puffing.
“Almost there,” Marco panted.
We turned onto Jake’s block. When we reached Jake’s porch, we gently lowered him to his feet. He wobbled a little, but managed to stay upright.
“Don’t let Tom see me. In case I morph,” Jake muttered.
I raised my hand to knock, but Jake’s mom opened the door before we even had time to knock.
“Jake has the flu,” I lied.
“I know. I’m on the phone with Rachel.” Jake’s mom held up the cordless. “She said you were on the way.”
“I think Jake’s about to blow again,” Marco exclaimed. He hustled Jake off down the hall toward the bathroom.
“Can I talk to Rachel for a sec?” I asked.
Jake’s mom handed me the phone.
“Rachel? It’s me,” I said.
“Jake’s lucky,” Rachel told me. “Our other friend has a much, much worse case of the flu. Our other friend says he thinks Jake will just get the usual flu. You know, fever, throwing up, headache. Our friend has some long, partially delirious explanation that you don’t want to hear.”
“Great. That’s a relief at least,” I said wearily.
“The bad news is that we’re probably all going to get sick, too. This strain of the flu is extremely contagious,” Rachel continued. “Got to go. I think I just heard your parents’ car.”
I stood there. Staring at the phone in my hand.
If we all got sick, who was going to save Aftran? And who was going to operate on Ax?
I scrubbed my hands with hot, soapy water. Then I used my elbow to open the operating room door.
“He’s at the crisis point,” Noah Wyle told me as I approached the pa
tient. He slapped a shiny scalpel into my hand.
“You’re going to be just fine,” I told the patient.
“I trust you, Cassie,” the patient answered.
It was my dad lying on the table under the green sheet.
“S-shouldn’t he be anesthetized?” I stammered.
Noah Wyle looked shocked. “Not for a yamphut operation.”
I took a deep breath, the disinfectant burning the inside of my nose. I placed the blade on my dad’s forehead.
Tap, tap, tap.
I looked up and saw Jake, Marco, Rachel, and Tobias behind the glass of the observation room. They tapped on the glass and waved to me.
I turned my attention back to my dad. But it wasn’t Dad on the table anymore. It was Ax. I didn’t know where to make the incision. Was the Tria gland in the front of the head? The back?
Tap, Tap, Tap.
Why were they tapping again? Didn’t they know this was a delicate operation? I needed to concentrate.
Tap, Tap, Tap.
The sound finally jerked me awake.
“Cassie, you’re going to be late for school,” my mom called. She gave another tap, tap on my door.
“I’m up!” I cried.
I stood and opened the middle drawer of my dresser. I pulled on the first pair of pants and top my fingers touched. Then I pulled on my socks and shoes, yelled good-bye to my parents, and grabbed a Pop-Tart on my way out.
I couldn’t stop yawning. I felt as if I’d only gotten about fifteen minutes of sleep. Marco and I had taken turns watching Jake last night. Marco was there now. He would be until Tom left for school. We thought in his fever Jake might start talking about something that would prove fatal if Tom overheard.
So I’d spent half the night as a fly on Jake’s wall. Buzzing outside to the bushes to do quick demorphs and remorphs.
Jake didn’t say anything at all suspicious. Sick as he was, I think there was some part of him that knew how dangerous the wrong words could be.
I rushed straight to the barn and over to Ax’s stall. I stuck my head inside. Ax blinked up at me with his lovely almond-shaped eyes.
“I think he feels bad that he’s sick when you need him,” Erek explained.
He handed me a chart with a notation of Ax’s temperature every hour. It had dropped during the night. But less than a degree. It was at ninety-four point four. We had to operate when it got to ninety-one point three. There was still some time.
I handed the chart back to Erek, and ran my hand down the soft fur on Ax’s neck. “Even warriors get sick sometimes,” I told him. “It’s not your fault.”
“I’ll be late if I don’t leave right now,” I told them. “Tobias, you know where I am if you need me.”
I turned and bolted outside.
I got to school about four minutes before the first bell. I headed straight to Rachel’s locker.
I waited for her to show until it was about one minute to the bell. Then I decided to check my locker. Maybe Rachel had been waiting over there for me.
I trotted over. No Rachel.
I hurried back to her locker. No Rachel.
The first bell rang. I stood by Rachel’s locker as the hallway started to thin out. When I was the last one there, I decided I had to head to class.
I slipped into my desk about one second before the second bell. I pulled out a notebook and a pencil, and tried to focus on what the teacher was saying.
But my mind was too full to take in any new information. I kept wondering how low Ax’s temperature was now. And how Jake was doing. And where Rachel was.
At least I could answer that last question for myself. I raised my hand and asked permission to go to the bathroom.
My teacher wasn’t too happy that I hadn’t gone before class started, but she handed over the pass anyway.
I rushed out the door, past the bathroom, and down to Rachel’s first class. I peered in the little square window.
Rachel was not inside.
I turned and headed to the pay phone outside the gym. When I got to the phone I punched in Rachel’s number. Rachel’s mom answered on the second ring.
“It’s Cassie. Is Rachel there?” I blurted.
“Rachel just fell asleep,” Rachel’s mom told me. “She was throwing up half the night.”
When it was finally time for lunch, I rushed straight to the cafeteria. I scanned the tables for Marco.
I felt a tap on my shoulder and figured Marco had found me. I turned around and saw Mr. Tidwell standing there.
“We need to talk about the Spanish Club party,” he said.
He was trying to sound calm. But I could hear the tension in his voice. That was okay, he was probably hearing tension in mine.
He led the way into an empty classroom and shut the door behind us. “Visser Three will be returning earlier than expected. Aftran’s interrogation may begin as early as eight tonight. You have to act quickly.”
As he spoke, I couldn’t stop myself from staring at his mouth. A Yeerk was moving his lips. Controlling his tongue.
Was the Yeerk tightening the muscles in Mr. Tidwell’s throat to create that sound of tension I’d picked up on? Was it all part of some plan to make me trust him? To make sure I convinced my friends to walk right into an ambush?
“Why did you come to me?” I asked suddenly. “You say you know all about us. So you must know Jake is our leader. Why not go to him?”
Mr. Tidwell sat down on the teacher’s desk. “Aftran trusts you. Only you. She said you had proven yourself to her,” Mr. Tidwell explained.
Illim, I mean. It was so hard to think of him as anything but Mr. Tidwell.
I wished Illim hadn’t singled me out of the group. We should all be here. At least all of us who could be.
The only thing I could do was try and make sure I asked everything the others would ask if they were here. It wasn’t hard to figure out what Marco would want to know.
“I have another question. What about Mr. Tidwell? The real, human Tidwell?”
“When I first entered Mr. Tidwell, I was not part of the peace movement,” Illim admitted. “He was an involuntary host. No. That is too nice a way to say it. He was my host, my slave.”
His eyes looked a little more watery than usual. Could the Yeerks control functions that were involuntary for humans? Could the Yeerk just push a neuron or something and stimulate a host’s tear ducts?
“It was partly experiencing Mr. Tidwell’s distress that led me to join the movement,” Illim continued. “His howls of fury and agony forced me to accept what I had done to him. At the same time I began to hear about a group of Yeerks who thought it was wrong to take an unwilling host.”
I nodded. It made sense to me. Hearing the endless cries of another sentient creature, knowing you had caused its pain. How could that fail to have an effect?
Then I remembered something Aftran had told me. To most Yeerks, humans are like pigs. Just meat. Oink, oink.
“It didn’t happen all at once,” Illim continued. “But gradually I realized that I did not want to inhabit Mr. Tidwell’s body if it meant sacrificing his freedom for mine.
“And now … now, Mr. Tidwell has something to say. I am repeating his thoughts as I hear them,” Illim said.
“Can’t you let him talk for himself?” I asked.
“I am speaking for myself,” Tidwell said.
“How can I know that?”
“You can’t.”
I hesitated. “Okay. What do you want to say?”
“Cassie, I invited Illim to stay in my body,” Mr. Tidwell explained. “I thought together we could do more for peace than he could do alone. He is within me now with my permission.”
There was no change in his voice or manner. But there wouldn’t be.
Tidwell swallowed hard. “My wife died a few years ago. For a long time, I didn’t care about anything. I
stumbled through my life. Getting myself to school. Getting home again.”
He leaned forward, his eyes locked on my face. “When Illim gave me my freedom back, I realized I wanted to do something with it. So I decided to join the fight. What could be more important?” he said. “And Illim and I, we’ve become friends. He’s actually very good company.”
I didn’t know if Marco and the others would believe that what I’d just heard was actually Mr. Tidwell and not some Yeerk trick. I wasn’t sure I did.
But I wanted to believe it.
“Look, I want to help you,” I told Mr. Tidwell/Illim. “But three members of the group are sick. Really sick. As in one requiring brain surgery. Isn’t there some way the Yeerk peace movement can rescue Aftran without our help?”
“Illim speaking now,” he told me. “The peace movement is growing. We now have nearly a hundred members. But not all the Yeerks in the movement have hosts. And not all the hosts the others have are suitable for battle.”
Illim gave Mr. Tidwell’s paunch a pat. “Can you imagine trying to fight Hork-Bajir in this?” he asked. “I’m sorry to hear that members of your group are ill. But when the Visser finishes with Aftran, he will know everything. And then every Yeerk in the peace movement will be dead. Their hosts as well. Everyone who has ever helped you will be rounded up and made Controllers,” Illim continued. “Everyone you care about will be made Controllers. It will all end, Cassie. The defeat will be total, and permanent.”
I sat down and just buried my face in my hands for a minute. I felt like my head was going to explode. This was hopeless! An impossible rescue with half our strength gone?
But there was no alternative.
“Okay,” I said at last. “If we can do it, we’ll do it.”
I pushed myself to my feet and started to the door on shaky legs. Then … then an idea …
I paused, and turned back.
“Illim, if you had to survive for a few hours outside Mr. Tidwell, could you? Without being in the Yeerk pool, I mean,” I asked.
“As long as I stayed in some kind of liquid environment,” he answered. He sounded a little puzzled.
But I wasn’t puzzled. Not anymore. I had a plan.
A totally terrifying plan.
But a plan.
The Sickness Page 4
