Animorphs: 2010 - Chapter 3
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Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine (18+)I slept on Marco’s couch that night, despite the fact that it was far too short for me. I didn’t get up until late in the morning, almost 9 am. After getting my truck and Marco’s motorcycle from the mall parking lot, we’d checked on the others in person rather than risk phone calls. No sense giving away a hidden friend by making their cell start ringing. But everyone had escaped, and they didn’t want to talk. At least not that night.
Neither did I. I followed Marco back to his tiny apartment, fell over on the couch, and slept poorly the entire night. Every sound made me jump to my feet, a baseball bat in my hands, ready to find one of the aliens from the office building kicking in the door. By the time I finally rolled off the couch for good, I was bleary and grumpy and still unaware of the time. I stumbled into the kitchen for coffee and had to search through all the cabinets to find any. Marco mostly had half-full boxes of sugary cereal and enough ramen to survive the apocalypse. I suspected he just disliked grocery shopping and cooking, since I knew he wasn’t too poor to afford real food.
I found the bag of coffee in the freezer and had to wash out the pot before I could make a fresh batch. Marco stumbled in just as I was pouring the first cup. “The hell are you doing up so early?” he asked as I handed him the mug.
“It’s late for me,” I pointed out. “Half the morning’s gone. I’ll get yelled at when I get back on base.”
I glanced side-long at Marco, wondering if he would pick up on what I’d just said. We hadn’t really talked about the night before, about what we would do with what we now knew.
Marco just sipped on his coffee, scowling at the morning in general. “What are you going to tell them? ‘Sorry, Sir, I was up all night pissing my pants after a bunch of aliens tried to kill me.’”
“Basically.”
Marco put his cup down so fast that coffee spilled over the sides and onto his hands. He didn’t seem to notice. “Come again? I did not just hear you say you’re going to try and sell this whole story to the army.”
“Do you have any better ideas?”
“Here’s one: how about we play hooky for the day and try our damndest to pretend that last night didn’t happen?” He finally noticed the coffee on his hands and got a rag from the sink to clean it up. “What makes you think they’d believe you anyway?”
I was about to ask Why wouldn’t they? when I thought better of it. He had a point that people who claimed to be visited by aliens didn’t fare well. “I’ll figure something out. I’ll tell them something else to get them out here to see the site and then they’ll...”
And then what? Unless there was something leftover at the office building, I had nothing that would convince my superiors that aliens were really among us.
Really among us. I tried not to think of Corporal Cleever. Anytime I did, I refused to even think of him as Cleever. It turned my stomach to think of the boy as having one of those things in his head.
“Jake, wake up. Those guys we saw last night? They knew what they were doing. Fuck, man, they had invisible ships. You think they left anything there for someone to find? What, you’re going to show up and...and trip over an invisible manifold or something? We’ve got nothing. Not even pictures on your cell phone, unless you snapped some while I wasn’t looking.”
I glared at him, not willing to admit that he had a point. “So that’s it, then? You find out there’s aliens invading the planet and you want to sit back on your ass and do nothing?”
“Yeah. I want to do nothing. Because this?” He made a motion with one hand, indicating the entire situation. “This is a little bit beyond just riding the crazy train, man. This is the crazy train crashing head-on with the insanity express smack in the middle of Locotown. And there ain’t nothing we can do about it.”
“Nothing? You really believe that?”
“Did you SEE those aliens last night? Seven feet tall, covered in knives? If you want to tangle with those then go ahead, but I think I’d rather stay all nice and not-mutilated.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My best friend, who I’d known for my entire life, was turning his back on what we’d seen last night. On what we knew, on what we had to do now. We were, if not the only people in the world, then among the very few who knew this invasion was going on. And he wanted to just run away from all that? All because it was going to be a little difficult?
I dumped the rest of my coffee in the sink. “Fine. You stay inside and lock the doors, then. I’ve got to go.”
Marco grabbed my arm to stop me before I could get out of the kitchen. “What are you going to tell them?”
I jerked my arm out of his grip. “I don’t know yet, alright? I’ll figure something out before I get there.”
“You’re going to leave the rest of us out of it, right?” When I just looked at him, confused, he grabbed my sleeve again. “I’m serious, Jake. If you want to go be a martyr, then that’s your own head, but by god, you’d better tell them were there alone last night.”
“Afraid someone will come put you in a loony bin, as well?” I still couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“Still going to be so cocky if they end up putting one of those things in my head? In Rachel’s? In Cassie’s? Did you notice all those humans out there? You don’t know how many more of them are around, and if you start blabbing your mouth off to anyone who listens, then the only people who are going to actually believe you are going to be the ones who really want you to shut up. And maybe that’s a chance you’re willing to take, but I’m not.”
I pulled away from him again and stalked out of the room. “Don’t worry. I’ll leave you out of it.” I didn’t wait for his indignant protest before I slammed the front door shut behind me.
I could barely think about what I would tell my superiors during the drive back to base. I was too wrapped up in being furious at Marco. Anger was a very convenient emotion. It let me seethe and fume and not think about the final dying screams of a shipwrecked alien Prince.
I’ve heard a lot of screaming in my life, and I’ve hated all of it. You hear something like that, feel something like that, and it tears at you. Sometimes I could deal with it. Sometimes I couldn’t. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to deal with Elfangor’s scream.
Fortunately, he’d given me a lot of other stuff I couldn’t deal with as well. But that, at least, I could lay at the feet of someone who could deal with it. I would start with my First Sergeant. 1SG Polk had been with my unit as long as I had; we’d arrived within a month of each other. He’d led us through our last deployment, and he knew I was solid. He knew he could trust me to get a job done and take care of my men, and I knew I would follow him into a burning building without hesitation. With something as incredible as this, it would take some convincing, but I knew Polk would hear me out. Once I had him on my side, we could tackle the brass together. I couldn’t head to the top of the chain of command with a story like this, but I could work my way up it.
I arrived on base just before 10 am, a full four hours after the start of the duty day. Most of the company was in the in the supply room, inventorying their rigging and getting ready for our quarterly inspection. A few of them called out to me as I walked past, but I ignored them, heading for 1SG Polk’s office.
The door was closed when I arrived. Polk only ever closed his door when he was discussing something private with someone, usually some disciplinary matter. What I had to say was more important than Private Snuffy’s latest overdue bill. I was about to barge in anyway when I saw through the window who was with him.
Polk and the company commander, Captain Hash, where both having a lively argument with Corporal Cleever. All three of them were standing, gesticulating wildly, talking intensely. I couldn’t hear the words, but I backed off immediately so they wouldn’t see me through the window.
I stood flat against the wall next to the door, hardly able to process what I’d just seen. That was not an argument between leaders and their soldier. If Cleever had been talking to me like that, I would have dropped him where he stood, and I knew Polk and Hash were even less tolerant of disrespect. In that office, I’d witnessed a fight between peers.
And the only way for that to be possible was if the fight was not between Cleever, Polk, and Hash, but between three completely different people.
“Hey, Sergeant.” I looked over to see one of my platoon members, Specialist Rose, walking down the hall toward me. He held a stack of manila folders. “Why are you in civvies?”
I looked down at the rumpled jeans and t-shirt I’d worn the day before. It hadn’t occurred to me to go home and change first. “Been a long morning,” I said evasively. “What’s going on with Cleever?”
Rose shrugged. “Don’t know. They called him in there like an hour ago.”
I watched Rose walk past, heading for the orderly room, uneasy suspicion building in my chest. How much did Rose know? Was he part of this, too? The Yeerks were in my company, they had taken my commanders, but how far did they spread?
I couldn’t tell them about Elfangor. I couldn’t even lie to them. Marco was right, that bastard, if they even suspected what I knew they’d be very interested in making me shut up about it. I realized with a start that I couldn’t even jump over them to someone else, to the IG or the battalion leaders or anyone else. The first thing they would do would be to call my company commander, unless I accused them of something, and then there would be an investigation. You can’t run an investigation on someone without their knowing, so Polk and Hash would have plenty of warning before the truth ever came out. And that would be the end of Jake Berenson.
The door opened suddenly, making me jump. Polk was hanging out doorway, looking at me with one eyebrow raised. “Berenson, what the hell are you doing? You’re four hours late.”
“Trouble at home, First Sergeant,” I lied. I tried frantically to come up with something that would be believed, although it was unlikely I’d find something that would get me out of trouble. “My parents. They had to take my Dad to the hospital early this morning. He’s okay, though.”
Everyone knew I’d grown up nearby, and that my parents still lived there. Even so, it was a weak excuse.
“And you didn’t think it was important to call back here and let us know what was going on?”
“Slipped my mind, First Sergeant.”
Polk gave me a long, hard look. He clearly didn’t believe me, but he looked like he was trying to decide if I was up to something sinister, or just covering a normal gaffe. Finally, he just scowled. “Go home and get changed. Be in my office first thing after lunch. Don’t think you’re going to get away with this.”
“Yes, First Sergeant.”
I turned on my heel and walked as quickly as I could out of the building. I didn’t stop until I reached my truck again, and then I simply sat behind the wheel, staring at nothing. How could it be? How could a bunch of body-snatching aliens straight out of a B-movie premise take over my company and all without my even noticing?
I tried to convince myself that it wasn’t true. That it couldn’t be true. Surely I would have noticed, and what I’d seen with Cleever in the office was just a coincidence. There had to be some other explanation for that argument, any other explanation.
But no matter how many times I tried to tell myself that, it wasn’t enough to make me get out of the truck and go find out. I sat frozen to the spot, numb with shock, unable to cope with the fact that I couldn’t trust my command.
The ringing of my cell phone jerked me back to the present. It was Marco. “They got my first sergeant,” I said in lieu of a greeting.
“What? Fuck, man, you to- What?”
“I didn’t tell them anything.”
“I told you not to go back there. I told you this would happen. They don’t suspect anything, do they?”
“Polk does, but I think he just thinks I was playing hookie.”
“I swear, if you get me killed, I’m going to haunt your ass for the rest of your life.”
“What if they kill me first?”
“Then I’ll haunt you in the afterlife. That’s not really the point. Look, can you get out of there anytime soon?”
“Not without a really good lie.” I remembered the argument I’d seen, and the way Cleever had looked defensive. Had they been arguing about his performance the night before? “I think I need to stay here and show my innocent, unsuspecting face for a while.”
“Alright, well I just got off the phone with Tobias. He wants to know if we can all meet somewhere.”
“Yeah, okay. Sometime after dinner. I’ll call back when I know I’m getting out of here.”
“Right. Watch your back, okay? I’ve played poker with you, and you kind of suck at bluffing.”
“Jee, thanks for the encouragement.” I hung up the phone and tossed it on the passenger seat. As annoying as Marco was, at least he’d shaken me out of my shock enough to drive home. I took a deep breath and reminded myself that I would need to stay calm if I wanted to get through the day with my head still attached and unoccupied.
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