Animorphs: 2010 - Chapter 8
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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+)Silently, I motioned for the others to stick together and head back to a patch of denser brush. The voices we’d heard were faint, still far away. It was impossible to tell just how far away, and how long we had before they found us.
Add to that, Aximili was almost impossible to hide. While the rest of us crouched in the middle of some bushes, he stuck out like a sore thumb. Nothing in the forest was large enough to hide a bright-blue alien the size of a horse.
“What do we do now?” Marco hissed, his voice barely audible.
“We’ll have to punch through their line.” I scratched at the patch on my neck as I thought. We still had the three tranq rifles and a few more doses. Aximili had the Yeerk weapon I’d taken from the downed man before. I didn’t know if his bag of tricks had anything useful, so I didn’t count them.
“Dude, you know if any of them see us hanging out with this guy, even if we get away we’ll still be dead.”
I did know. “So we’ll have to not be seen.” I looked from one face to the next, trying to judge who would be best at what. I felt a sharp pang of guilt as I wished for my own platoon, my own men who I knew inside and out. But I couldn’t trust those men, and I’d have to instead rely on my friends, civilians who should never be put in this situation, and to top it all off I wasn’t entirely sure what they were capable of.
Finally I rested on Tobias. He looked recovered from his run earlier, and I knew he could be quiet. “Try and see what they’re up to,” I told him. As he nodded and started to stand up, I grabbed him by the sleeve. “If you can. If you can’t do it without being seen, then just get back here.”
“Right.” Tobias ran off easily, almost silent.
“Jake, you-” Marco cut himself off and glared at the ground, looking like he was debating with himself. I could guess well enough what about. As much as he didn’t want to rush head-long into a fight, he was pragmatic enough to realize we didn’t have a choice.
“We only need to take out one or two of them, probably. Then we get through the hole in the line with no one else the wiser and book it back to the farm.”
“Use blue boy here as bait?” Marco asked.
Aximili visibly bristled at the comment, but I cut in before a fight could start. “No. We don’t give them a chance to yell for help. This will only work if we’re quiet and if they don’t see a thing coming.” I looked up at Rachel and held her gaze with my own. “We’ll have to get personal for this.”
She nodded. I knew she would. Rachel, out of everyone gathered, would be the one most willing to go along with me. And that’s what I needed at the moment - someone who wouldn’t hesitate. Skill meant nothing if the person paused at the wrong second.
{Surely you don’t mean to use these people for an attack? I think I-}
“I’m sure you could take all these guys on single-handed, but that would draw attention.” I didn’t even think about it before cutting down Aximili. “Right now we need to make sure that you aren’t seen so that they don’t call for back-up.”
{Preposterous. A Warrior does not hide from battle.}
“This time, he does.” I turned to Aximili, trying to look as authoritative as possible. I didn’t have time to argue with him on the point, and we wouldn’t survive if he tried to act on his own. The fact that I was practically insulting him would have to wait until later to get sorted out. I could apologize when we were all safe and sound, but for now I needed him to follow me and not question it.
Aximili puffed out his chest like he was about to argue, but he didn’t say anything. For a long moment we stayed like that, both silently trying to assert dominance. He cracked first; he didn’t look away, but the shift in his stance was noticeable and he deflated slightly.
Tobias returned at that moment, providing a welcome relief from the tense moment. “There’s not that many of them,” he said. “Ten, maybe fifteen yards apart each. Everyone’s kind of zig-zagging back and forth, so they’re going pretty slow. I couldn’t see how far out the line went.”
Someone on the other side knew their stuff. The searchers were far enough apart that they wouldn’t foul each other, but close enough to be in sight of each other. Too close to slip through unseen, which had been my unvoiced hope.
“Alright, here’s how it goes. Cassie, Marco, you two stay here with Axmil- Axim- With Ax.” I reached in my pocket and pulled out the tranq doses I still had left, kept two for myself, and handed the rest over to Marco along with my rifle. “Stay hidden and don’t move if you don’t have to. Rachel and Tobias are with me.”
I took off Ax’s pack and gave that to Marco as well, but not before I retrieved the firearm and stuck that in my waistband again. I would have sold my left foot for a holster right then.
Rachel hugged Cassie briefly, then joined Tobias and me as we crept away from the hiding place. Tobias led the way until I could see the line of searchers for myself.
I tried to use hand-signals to tell the other two where to go, and when that didn’t work I resorted to pantomime. They got the message and left at a trot as I prayed they would be okay.
After they left, I picked my own hiding spot carefully. I could see the closest searcher through the trees, coming steadily closer, and I positioned myself in his path, crouched in a thick clump of bushes. Then it was just a waiting game, staying tense and on alert as I listened to him getting closer and closer. I let him pull even with me, held my breath as he wandered closer to my hiding spot, but he didn’t inspect anything very carefully. Why should he? He thought he was looking for Andalites, not a human in a cammo jacket.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t shoot him with the darts. We knew that it took a couple seconds for the men to pass out after being shot, plenty of time to sound an alarm. My target moved slightly past me, looking every way but behind him, and as silently as I could I stood up. I timed it so the noise of his own movements would cover mine, until I was close enough to grab him.
I flung my arm around his neck and pulled tight, cutting off any chance he had at calling for help. With my other hand, I plunged the ballistic syringe of tranquilizer into his thigh. The man fought me, but I didn’t let him turn his head or even relent enough for him to breathe. After a few seconds he went limp, either from being chocked or being doped, and I lowered him carefully to the ground.
I crouched next to him and waited, tense, on alert for any sign that the move had been noticed. But no one came to investigate and no shouts were called. The sounds of the other searchers moved on past us. They’d notice their downed comrade soon enough, but we probably had several minutes until then.
Off to my left, I heard the muffled sounds of a struggle. Rachel and Tobias, taking out their target. But if I could hear them, so could others. I rolled my man under a bush and ran for the others. They had flung a jacket over his head and Rachel had her hand over his mouth, but he wasn’t going down. I saw the problem immediately. The tranq they’d stabbed him with was still full; being a ballistic syringe, it wouldn’t empty unless it hit with enough force. I pointed to it and made a violent stabbing motion, both of them were occupied with keeping the man from escaping enough to yell for help. I darted in, grabbed the syringe from his thigh, and jabbed him in the other thigh with all the force I could muster.
No doubt he’d wake up with a brutal bruise there, but it did the trick. After a few seconds, he slumped to the ground as well. Rachel unwound her jacket from around his head and started running back to the others without a word; Tobias and I followed.
The commotion had drawn attention. All up and down the line of searchers, people were yelling back and forth to each other. Calls of ‘what was that’ and ‘are you okay’ and ‘did you hear something’ rang out. It would only be a matter of seconds before they discovered there was a hole in their line and went to investigate.
The other three were already out of their hiding spot and running toward us when we arrived. Even better. We reversed direction and all ran for the farm. We had to be out of sight before they noticed the two downed men or the whole plan fell apart.
Ax raced ahead of us, faster than anyone now that silence wasn’t the biggest priority. He stayed just head of us, a scout, careful not leave us behind.
We weren’t fast enough. I heard the sound of another person crashing through the brush behind us, catching up fast. I signaled for Ax to keep going and for the others to hide, but too slow. To slow to avoid being seen.
It was Bull, the enormous man who was in charge. I saw him about the same time he saw me, as I paused to try and look for a hiding spot where there were none. His eyes went wide with shock as he realized that he’d been chasing a group of humans and, rather than call for help, he simply made an incoherently furious noise and charged at me.
I ignored Marco tugging at my arm and turned to face him head on. He out-classed me in weight, but I had height and reach on him. I figured I could take him.
He must have figured the same thing, too, because instead of finishing his charge he pulled out another of the dark red alien guns and fired at me. I ducked, but even so it was only his bad aim that saved me from being fried. I smelled charred wood behind me, but didn’t dare turn to look. Stupid, stupid of me to forget that he was likely to be armed. I rolled the side and came up in a crouch, feeling for my own weapon and fumbling as I got it out. The grip of it had been modified. It wasn’t just like a pistol grip. It was a pistol grip, fused right onto the alien metal. The trigger and safety catch were right where they should have been.
Bull changed direction and headed for Cassie, who was closest to him. I raised the weapon and fired.
There was no kick, which threw me off. I didn’t see anything come out of the gun, no bullet or light or laser. Just a slight distortion, like a heat wave, and over Bull’s shoulder a tree branch snapped off and fell with a crash, the ends charred black. Bull turned and aimed at me again, but I didn’t give him a chance to fire. I shot again, caught him on the arm. Again, hit him in the chest. Again, missed completely. It didn’t matter; after the chest shot he fell.
I stood there for a long, impossibly long silent moment, just staring at the spot where Bull’s head had been. He didn’t get up again, didn’t move, didn’t groan or make any sound. I smelled the sickeningly sweet, slightly metallic odor of burned flesh.
“Jake, come on.” Marco pulled the gun out of my hand and bodily shoved me into action again.
I couldn’t tear my eyes off that prone body, lying in a heap on the forest floor. He was clearly dead. Part of me thought I should go over and look at him, face the man I’d just killed, but most of me wanted to hurl at the thought. I kept watching it as we ran around it, but I gave it a wide berth. Marco stayed behind me, prodding me forward, pulling Cassie along as well. I didn’t notice until that moment that she’d been staring, too.
“Run, you idiots.”
Run. Right. More were coming, and we had to escape. After a few fumbling steps I pulled myself together and started running on my own. In a few seconds, we caught up to the others, and all together we raced for the farm.
We reached it without further mishap. We overshot the farm on purpose, running wide of it to the north and then doubling back to arrive from the other side, just in case we were still being followed. If anyone had followed us after Bull, though, they were absolutely silent about it.
Cassie took Ax into one of the barns and promised to hide him there. Then Marco insisted that we all split up. If anyone came to investigate the farm, it would look pretty suspicious to have us all hanging around for no reason. I didn’t like it, but Cassie assured me that she would be fine.
Even still, I was reluctant to leave. As the others headed to their cars, I hung back and took Cassie’s hand. “If they come here-”
“If they show up I’ll give them a run around. They won’t find him.”
“But if they don’t bother to ask before they-”
“Jake, get out of here. I’ll be fine. They’ve been doing a secret invasion so far. They’re not going to risk all that by assaulting people.”
She had a point. For all we called it a ‘farm’ still, The Center was really just the farmhouse and last few acres remaining from an actual farm. It sat at the edge of the forest, but in the other direction was a developed area, close enough to be in sight and earshot if anything violent went down.
“You’ll call?” I asked. “You’ll call me and tell me you’re okay?”
“Promise. Now go.”
“Don’t go anywhere alone. Stay in the house with your parents, or with Josh or Ari.” The two part-time employees who worked at the Center with Cassie and her dad.
“I will. Now please, Jake, you have to go.”
I hugged her on impulse and hurried to Marco and my rented car. He made an impatient ‘let’s move’ motion as I approached.
The whole way back to Marco’s apartment, we were both silent. A few times he tried to say something, but I cut him off until he got the hint that I didn’t want to talk. As we approached the apartment, he invited me to stay the night and I agreed with a grunt.
My head felt so full I thought it might split. The whole day was too much to take in at once. Part of me knew I would have to process it eventually. The half-made plans we’d overheard at Chuck E Cheese, the fact that the Yeerks were taking children, the confirmation about my commander, Ax’s arrival, the police. The hundred-million things that each one of those things implied, the options they represented. The demand clamoring in my conscience that something be done about all of it.
All that paled next to the memory of that scent of charred skin.
I’d accepted in the past that I’d probably killed before. I was a soldier, an infantryman. I’d been part of firefights, I’d been involved in raids and assaults. There was a wonderful, handy loophole to many acts of combat, though. In the confusion, in the mess of noise and smoke and orders, it was always easy to lose track of which shot went where. There was a huge difference between knowing, unequivocally, than your bullet had killed a man and knowing that someone’s bullet had killed them. That ability to share blame, to fool myself into thinking it might not have been me, that had kept me on even ground for years.
Now my even ground was gone. I didn’t have any illusions this time. I didn’t have anyone to share my guilt with. All I had was the crushing memory of that smell and of that body lying in a crumpled heap. It was too much to even think about, so I just numbly followed Marco into the apartment after we parked.
Once inside, Marco headed straight to the fridge and pulled out two beers. He gave me a challenging look as he passed one off to me, but I wasn’t about to complain about drinking after a day like that.
I was on my third beer before either of us said anything.
“There wasn’t anything you could have done different,” Marco told me.
“I know.”
“He saw us. He saw our faces. If he’d-”
“For fuck’s sake, I know. Doesn’t make it any better anyway.”
In fact, it made it worse. The knowledge that, if it had to happen all over again, I still would have shot him. Letting him live would have been too big a risk. He’d be able to identify us to the rest of the Yeerks if we left him alive, and taking him captive would have slowed us down too much to escape. The moment he’d seen me, it had become a matter of his life or ours.
And the cold, heartless part of me that knew that made me physically ill.
“Do you get like this after every fight?” Marco asked. I reached for the closest thing, a magazine, and tossed it at him. “No, I mean really?”
“Not all of them.”
Just the really bad ones. I didn’t feel like explaining at that moment the myriad of ways I reacted to a battle. Or the fact that what we’d just come out of wasn’t actually a battle. There was a world of difference between running one step ahead of death and lighting up a bit of shock-and-awe.
“Wasn’t even really a fight,” I pointed out. “Don’t you have anything harder than beer?”
An hour later, Cassie called to say she and Ax were fine. A police officer had shown up to ask if they’d seen anything usual, feeding out some story and teenagers pulling some prank with firecrackers. Fortunately, he’d talked to her father, who told the officer with a straight face that he knew nothing about it. We agreed to meet the next day and discuss things, provided things looked safe enough on her end.
Marco managed to distract me the rest of the day with a combination of tequila and wild speculation about what everything we’d learned actually meant. Without access to Ax, without enough information, and with far too much alcohol, nothing we came up with made any sense, but it did at least keep me from thinking about any bodies left in a pile in the forest.
If I’d been the type, I would have hugged Marco for that. The last thing I needed was to dwell on what I’d done. I knew that much about myself, at least.
Unfortunately, we’d started drinking pretty early in the day. Even at a relatively moderate pace, Marco passed out in his Laz-E-Boy shortly before it turned dark. I took over his bed and did the same. Or tried to. Every time I closed my eyes, I pictured Bull right at the moment I’d shot him. I played it over and over again in my mind, unable to turn off the constant playback. Nothing I did could stop it, nothing I told myself could make it end. Again and again I watched myself take aim and fire the alien weapon, four times, no hesitation. I told myself that he was gunning for Cassie, that I had to protect the others, that if I hadn’t done it we all would have died, and still it did nothing to halt that never-ending replay.
I must have fallen asleep. The sound of a phone woke me from a dream that was no different from my waking thoughts. I fumbled around in the dark until I realized my phone was still in my pants and pulled it out. “’Lo?”
“Jake?”
“Cassie?” I squinted at the beside clock. 12:14 am. “Is something wrong?”
“No. I mean, not...not really. I just...um, never mind. I’m sorry I woke you up.”
“Cassie, wait.” I couldn’t let her hang up the phone, not sounding like she did. I could almost hear the tears. “Can...can I come over?”
“Please.”
Boys and their Toys
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