The Journey Read online

  Cassie looked at me. “Something’s wrong.”

  Marco

  Hi, Marco here.

  You’re expecting some sort of glib remark. A joke, a witty comment. Well, I wasn’t in a Jim Carrey kind of space.

  The Helmacrons hadn’t exactly charmed me the first time around. Basically, I’d decided they were insane. Now they were inside my body.

  In there with little unimportant things like my heart and my lungs.

  And my friends.

  The truth: I was thinking about scribbling out a little note. Telling Jake to take my stereo after I was gone. Explaining to Dad what really happened to Mom. Telling Rachel about the dream where she begged me to marry her.

  Adding to the general creepiness factor was the fact that my friends weren’t talking to me.

  I heard Ax say, Then … nothing.

  Nothing for at least a minute.

  Then —

 

  “But you can hear me, right?”

  Another long pause. Then —

  Ax, of course.

  “Well, how annoying!” I said. “I mean, how am I supposed to keep up troop morale when nobody can even hear my comic genius?”

  Nothing.

  Oh. Right. They couldn’t hear me.

  Ax said.

  Sure. Except — big problem: How was I supposed to pick them up without squishing them? I had to squint just to see them. They were, like, the size of dandruff flakes.

  I leaned over and stared at the ground. Okay, second big problem: I’d lost them. Frantically, I scanned the dirt and hay. Nothing.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  I was ticked. We hadn’t thought of this. We should have arranged for everyone to hop on my hand when they got to about an inch high. Because finding my friends seemed totally impossible.

  Major feeling of dread.

  I’d faced death before. Each one of us had had at least one major close call. But this was different. This was everyone. As in, I would be the only Animorph left alive. Little me against all the bad guys.

  I felt like puking.

  Stress.

  Or … something else? Some strange little aliens marching through my … what? Nose? Lungs? Brain? Doing who knows what kind of damage.

  No time to freak out.

  Time to find my friends and stick them up my nose.

  Tobias suddenly screamed in my head.

  My stomach took a lurch.

  Definitely stress.

  Ax said.

  “Fine, fine,” I muttered. “Just tell me where you are!”

  Of course, they couldn’t hear me.

  Then I saw it. A black bug with a hard shell. Weird pincers in the front. Scary. Considering how panicked Tobias sounded, my friends were somewhere near that big, bad beetle.

  I dropped to my knees. At first nothing but dirt. Then —

  There!

  A few too-colorful grains of sand. I tried to count them. I couldn’t smash the beetle if he had one of my friends.

  One. Two. Three. Four … Five. Okay. I reached out and snatched up the beetle by a back leg. Flung him toward the freezer.

  Tobias said shakily.

  “You’re welcome,” I muttered, even though he wouldn’t hear me.

  Okay, I could see the colorful specks. But I still had no idea how to pick them up. And I was afraid to look away.

  Rachel

  Our little vacation in the hay forest was nice but I was ready to leave. Especially after the beetle episode.

  We could see Marco hovering overhead. His face was an entire landscape. Nose mountain. Cheek plains.

  He was a giant.

  “Why doesn’t he pick us up?” Cassie asked.

  Marco wasn’t doing anything except staring at us.

  “Maybe he’s waiting for Jake to tell him what to do,” I said nastily. Tiny is definitely not my thing.

  Ax looked at Jake.

  “Right,” Jake said. “Let’s tell him how to pick us up. Er — how should he pick us up?”

  “Easy,” I said. “We grab a piece of hay. He sticks it up his nose and we’re off.”

  Jake nodded. “That piece there.” He pointed to a piece of hay a few paces away.

  Climbing it was easy. At our size the hay looked rough, like someone had taken a cheese grater to its sides. I grabbed a couple of handholds and pulled myself up. No problem.

  “I feel like I could take on Schwarzenegger,” I said.

  Cassie nodded as she scrambled up beside me. “Something about being small makes you stronger.” We noticed it before. “Like ants lifting a thousand times their weight.”

  Once we were all aboard, Ax told Marco to pick up the hay. Two fingers the size of sequoia trunks lowered, pinched, and lifted.

  “Ahhhhh!” Cassie screamed.

  “Ahhhhh!” I yelled.

  We were being blasted into space! The G-force knocked me on my butt. I just managed to hang on. The wind was whipping. I could barely breath. I saw something flash by. Could have been Marco’s knee.

  Tobias shouted.

  The wind died down. The landscape beneath us shifted from jeans-color to T-shirt-color to chin-color.

  “Fantastic Voyage,” I said. “The voyage inside Marco.”

  Tobias said.

  We passed into shadow.

  Apparently into — can I just say EWWW — Marco’s nose.

  When my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I saw a widely spaced forest of rough, textured black hairs, sprouting out of what looked like a waxy, pink granite wall. The hairs were sapling-sized, long, criss-crossing high overhead. A shifting intermittent wind tossed them.

  “Okay, everybody off,” Jake said. He reached for a nearby hair.

  Tobias fluttered above my head.

  Ax said.

  “Do it.”

  I reached out for a hair and pulled myself onto it. The hair sagged under my weight. Below … the void. I could see a bright oval spot of light. I was looking straight out of Marco’s nostril. The ground was miles and miles away. I quickly scrambled toward the overhang.

  Ugh. The wall was oddly warm. Body temperature. There was something really weird about pressing myself into Marco’s skin. Gave me a massive case of the heebie-jeebies.

  “You know,” Jake said thoughtfully. “I think this is the most disgusting mission we’ve ever done. Something about being inside Marco makes me feel like a Yeerk.”

  “Check it out,” Cassie whispered. “You can feel Marco’s breath. In —”

  A cool breeze blew up from the opening below us.

  “And out —”

  Now a warmer moist breeze blew in the opposite direction.

  I clung, staring up. The wall arched over my head at a forty-five-degree angle. I couldn’t see the end of the overhang, but it went way, way up, disappearing into darkness.

  There was no sign of the Helmacrons. No footprints to tell us which way to go.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “Climb?” Cassie suggested.

  I watched as Ax completed his morph to northern harrier. As his stalk eyes withered and vanished.

  SLURP! His tail violently disappeared into his body like an electric cord into a vacuum. Tail feathers shot out.

  “Let’s all get wings,” I suggested. “Flying will be easier than trying to rock climb.”

  Hanging onto delicate nose hairs and the slick wall, we morphed. Tricky, but I felt much, much better as a bald eagle. Touching Marco’s insides was wigging me out. />
  Morphs complete, we put our backs to Marco’s nostril and flew. A red-tailed hawk, a peregrine falcon, a northern harrier, a bald eagle, an owl.

  On and on. Like flying into a cave. Darker and darker the deeper we got.

  Flying was easier than climbing, but it was still hard work. Each time Marco exhaled, we lost ground. A bald eagle can hover for hours on a nice updraft. But there were no updrafts here. Soon I was exhausted from flapping my wings, up and down.

  Before long, a flat plain opened up beneath us. My raptor ears started to pick up sounds.

  Tobias said.

  They sounded angry. As if they were arguing.

  Finally, I could make out their forms.

  I asked.

  Jake said.

  I hesitated, uncertain. Bald eagles see well during the day. They can spot a salmon swimming upstream from a mile up. But it was dark now, and I was practically blind.

  Tobias said.

  Kind of big. As in — enormous. Huge. Gargantuan. They were the size of giraffes. No — bigger. Twice as big. As big as air traffic control towers. I could morph elephant and still only come up to their calves.

  Another thing. These were some seriously ugly aliens. Heads: wide and perfectly flat on top. Eyes rolled around up there like big green marbles. Faces: upside-down pyramids. Chins: barbed. Teeth gnashed in from either side of their mouths. And an extra set of legs made them look like walking tables.

  Ax said calmly.

  Jake wondered.

 

  Ax? Make a simple mathematical error? No.

  I said.

  Jake said.

  Cassie said.

  O Great One, Most Courageous of all Leaders, we have bravely marched into a breathing hole of the giant alien! Triumph was within our grasp until one of the treasonable females wallowed into a sticky body excretion! But we, the noble knights of Helmacron, shall overcome this hardship and find the strength to silence the giant forever!

  — From the log of the Helmacron Males

  The Helmacrons didn’t seem to notice us as we flapped overhead. They were absorbed in themselves. As usual.

  Tobias said. The Helmacrons were standing in a circle like Boy Scouts around a fire. Only there was a Helmacron where the fire belonged.

  Cassie suggested.

 

  Jake ordered.

  one of the Helmacrons demanded of the others.

  I heard what sounded like the rattle of swords. several Helmacron voices chanted.

  another voice said.

  Jake said.

  Tobias said.

  one of the Helmacrons shouted.

  said the other.

  More rattling of swords. I was beginning to think the Helmacrons were going to take each other out and save us a lot of trouble.

  Which kind of annoyed me. I mean, I was big-time bugged with the Helmacrons for double-crossing us. It was their fault I was no bigger than a gnat. I wanted revenge! I wanted to launch an attack before there was no one left to attack.

  I said.

  Cassie said.

  Jake said. Then,

  Cassie said.

  I don’t know why she sounded so happy. This whole thing was just so far beyond gross.

  Ax said loudly. You wouldn’t expect it, but trying to hear thought-speak over the huge debating Helmacrons and the wind was becoming difficult.

  I said.

  Tobias pointed out.

  He was right. Now that I focused my dim eyesight on the walls and floors and ceilings ahead of us, I could see the snot. Oozing. Dripping. Pooling. Collecting like wax under a candle. Must not have been as thick as wax, though. The wind was blowing up whitecaps on the surface of the pools.

  Whitecaps?

  I shouted.

  It happened suddenly. Gusts of cool, incoming wind. In a totally different rhythm than before.

  With my excellent eagle hearing I heard a distant roar. My eagle brain panicked. Wanted to fly. Wanted out of the way of whatever was coming.

  Louder!

  Now the Helmacrons had noticed.

  They were all shouting at once.

 

  LOUDER!

  The human part of me felt a bit jittery, too. The sound was like a freight train closing in on us.

  Jake yelled.

 

  Jake was already flapping toward the deepest pool. he hollered.

  I flew. But it was practically impossible to make progress in the rushing wind. Like flying into the eye of a hurricane. I used all of my strength, pressed my wing muscles to the bone-popping point.

  THUMP! And landed in a snot puddle. Stuck.

  THUMP! Tobias came in for a wet landing on my right. Stuck.

  THUMP! Cassie, farther up on the wall.

  THUMP! Ax.

  The wind hit me like a brick wall. Knocked me off my talons. I landed beak-first in the sticky sea and then started to slide toward Marco’s nostril.

  Tobias grabbed my talon with his beak.

  I stopped just in time for me to see something tumbling toward us. Something big.

  A Helmacron!

  He, she, it — whatever — was bouncing head over foot like a tumbleweed.

  the Helmacron shouted as the wind tossed him/her into somersaults.

  Then he/she was gone.

  And so was the wind.

  Marco

  I stood in Cassie’s barn holding a piece of hay up my nose for about five minutes. Naturally, I felt like a complete idiot. As soon as Ax said it was okay to lose the hay, I dropped it, hid the Helmacron ship, and hauled butt out of there.

  I’d ridden my bike over to Cassie’s earlier, so I grabbed it and started to pedal toward home.

  The weather was depressing, gray and overcast and misty. I knew I should probably just go home and hang out in my room. Wait for a message from Ax or Tobias. Mission accomplished. We’re heading out.

  If Jake and the others didn’t show up by dinnertime, I’d slip out and contact the Chee. Check on the camera situation. Arrange for some of them to play my friends while my friends were … away.

  I felt strangely abandoned. Weird when you consider three people, a Bird-boy, an Andalite, and a bunch of Helmacrons were holding a convention in my sinuses.

  I peddled on. My mind wandered.

  Have you ever seen Fantastic Voyage?

  Dad and I caught it on the late-night movie once. Raquel Welch. Very hot. Anyway, in the flick this team travels into the bloodstream of some old dude. The doctors h
ave him knocked out on drugs and lying perfectly still. Supposedly to make Raquel and her posse safer.

  Maybe, I thought, I should go home and lie perfectly still.

  On the other hand, I thought, if I’m going to kick, I don’t want to go staring at the ceiling of my bedroom.

  I changed directions. Headed toward the industrial outskirts of town, toward the photographer kid’s apartment. I had no idea how I was going to get the film. I couldn’t morph. Jake and Ax had made that perfectly clear. No unnecessary risks. But I had promised Jake I’d keep tabs on the kid.

  I decided a direct approach would be best. Nothing was stopping me from climbing the fire escape, crawling in the kid’s window, and taking what I wanted. Burglars do it all the time. How hard could it be?

  I dropped my bike against the wall of an adjacent building, crumbling and abandoned. Spoke quietly to the filthy homeless man — a Chee — who was watching the front door of the building. Made my way around to the back.

  The kid’s apartment building was kind of seedy. Peeling paint on the door. Dirty windows. Graffiti. Nobody lived in that part of town because they wanted to. I knew that firsthand.

  Maybe the kid was just a kid. Some bored guy who wanted to be a photographer. Well, if that was true it was time someone taught him to stay out of alleyways late at night.

  The fire escape descended into an abandoned lot full of broken concrete, weeds, and blowing trash. A chain-link fence surrounded the lot, but someone had knocked down one of the poles. Maybe hit it with a car. Anyway, the fence was sagging. I walked right over it and stood staring up at the building.

  I kept expecting someone to ask what I was doing. To challenge me. But the whole block was deserted. Deserted at 11:00 on a Saturday morning. The windows on the next building were bricked over.

  I picked my way over the crumbling concrete to the fire escape. It had a handle, maybe four feet above my head. I jumped up six or seven times. Finally caught it. Pulled it down.

  CLANKclickCLANKCLANKCLANK!

  The rusty fire escape made an incredible noise as it unfolded toward the ground. Okay, maybe breaking and entering in broad daylight wasn’t the brightest idea.

  I got ready to run. Thought I saw a curtain on the third floor move. But nobody stuck a head out a window. Nobody yelled.