The Sickness Read online

  What if my plan didn’t work? What if I got sick before I could save Aftran?

  What if I screwed up?

  What if? What if? What if?

  What if I had killed Aftran when I had the chance?

  I slowed down as I thought about that one.

  I’d been alone when I faced that moment, too. Alone, I had made the choice to let Aftran live.

  It had turned out to be the right choice.

  Aftran hadn’t betrayed me or the other Animorphs. She’d gone on to do important work in the Yeerk peace movement.

  If I got Aftran out of the Yeerk pool before the Visser interrogated her, the peace movement would continue. The Animorphs would continue to fight.

  If I failed …

  I rode my bike up Mr. Tidwell’s driveway and parked it. Then I hurried to his front door. He swung it open before I had the chance to ring the bell.

  “Where are the others?” he demanded.

  “Sick.”

  “It’s just you?”

  “Yes. Me. Me or no one.”

  He hesitated only a moment, then he drew me inside.

  “So where should we do this?” he blurted the second I was inside. “Bathroom? Kitchen? Where?”

  He kept touching his ear, rubbing his finger around the edge. He seemed totally freaked by what we were about to do.

  I felt like telling him to join the club. But I figured that would only make things worse.

  “Kitchen’s fine,” I answered. I led the way, even though it was his house. Even though he was a teacher and I was a kid. There wasn’t time to waste on all that.

  I sat down at the kitchen table and waved Mr. Tidwell down into the chair next to me. “Now?” he asked.

  “Let’s do it!” I said.

  It was Rachel’s line. But Rachel wasn’t there.

  Maybe it would bring us luck. All of us.

  Mr. Tidwell tilted his right ear toward the table.

  I leaned down. My eyes locked themselves on the hole at the ear’s center. I couldn’t look away.

  The opening to the hole began to glisten. Then a pencil-thin wand of wet gray flesh slid out. It wiggled this way and that. Almost as if it were tasting the air.

  Shh-lop. Shh-lop. Shh-lop.

  More of the gray flesh squeezed itself out of Mr. Tidwell’s ear.

  Plop!

  The Yeerk fell the few inches to the table. Its body had been stretched and flattened by crawling out the ear canal.

  As I watched, the Yeerk’s gray flesh contracted, like a hand closing into a fist. Forming its slug-like body.

  I jerked back. The legs of my chair squealed against the kitchen floor.

  It’s Illim, I told myself, trying to control my revulsion.

  Mr. Tidwell grabbed a dishtowel from the table and scrubbed at his ear. “It always makes me feel … I don’t know. Empty.”

  I didn’t answer. I wanted to move. I didn’t want to have too much time to think about what I was about to do.

  I reached out and gently rested my fingertips on Illim’s squishy flesh. I closed my eyes. Focused. And the DNA of the Yeerk became a part of me.

  The Yeerk. The Yeerk became part of me.

  I pulled my fingers away from Illim. Mr. Tidwell filled a Ziploc bag with water and slipped Illim inside. Then he closed the top almost all the way and carefully placed the bag in the big patch pocket of his corduroy jacket.

  “You know if something goes wrong, Visser Three could find out I’m the one who brought you in,” he said. “If that happens, he’ll kill us.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s been trying to do that for a long time, but here I am,” I said. Then I laughed at my own bravado.

  Mr. Tidwell smiled. “You were always a good student. Unlike Jake, who never completely applies himself.”

  I sighed. “Well, I wish Jake were here now. It’s time. I have to do this. It’s kind of gross to watch.”

  “I think I can handle it.”

  I focused my mind. The changes began.

  Any morph is frightening. Any new morph doubly so.

  This morph … this was the enemy. This was a parasite. This was a slug.

  My skin turned slick with a thin coat of mucus. It covered my entire body, oozing from the pores.

  My eyelids.

  The spaces between my fingers and my toes.

  My neck, my legs, my stomach.

  The mucus thickened into a goo like half-set Jell-O. It seeped into my ears. My nose. My mouth.

  I gagged as the mucus swelled in my mouth. My teeth began to dissolve, as if the mucus was an acid.

  My lips melted together, closing my mouth on vanishing teeth and swelling goo.

  Ax always says I’m the best morpher. But it was hard not to resist this morph.

  I tried to relax. To give myself over to the changes.

  My body turned cold as the thick slime slid down my throat, packing my esophagus. Somehow I was still breathing. Maybe through my skin.

  A wave of nausea rolled through me as the cold, thick mucus hit my stomach and intestines. I felt them shrivel up and disappear.

  The mucus wrapped itself around my heart. And my heart withered and stopped beating.

  Slime stuck my arms to my sides and glued my legs together. I felt it seep through my flesh until it hit bone. The cold slime turned my bones to ice. Then they shattered into a zillion pieces.

  The floor rushed up to meet me as I fell off the chair. I hadn’t begun to shrink yet, and I lay there, the world’s largest slug. My entire body made up of slick, squishy flesh.

  Only my eyes remained unchanged. They stared straight up at the ceiling.

  Mr. Tidwell appeared above me. His face contorted in horror. I think he was screaming. I couldn’t hear him.

  His face became cloudy as mucus coated my eyes. His face disappeared as my eyes dissolved completely.

  Then my body curled in on itself. Tightening, tightening. Becoming smaller and smaller.

  Falling … Falling …

  And it was over. The transformation complete.

  I was a Yeerk.

  I lay on Mr. Tidwell’s kitchen floor. Deaf, blind, capable of only the slowest movement.

  How would I even be able to find Mr. Tidwell’s ear? I had no idea, but the Yeerk would know. I tried to open myself up to the Yeerk instincts and let them guide me.

  I realized that I could do something kind of like a bat’s echolocation. Or like sonar. The Yeerk threw out some kind of electrical waves, then analyzed the way they were bounced back at it. That gave it an idea of the size and shape of things.

  My sonar picked up an object, bigger than I was, moving in. I felt warmth surround me, and I was lifted up, up, up.

  My sonar picked up a new shape. My Yeerk instincts kicked in. Hard. I stuck out two little protrusions. Felt around until I targeted the small opening.

  Then I was moving in. Slithering right into Mr. Tidwell’s ear canal. It was a tight fit. I squirted out some kind of painkiller to deaden the canal and squirmed, stretched, pushed bones and tissue aside with surprising strength.

  I penetrated. Deeper. Puncturing flesh now. Deeper inside.

  I inched along until I felt the faint tingle of electricity.

  Yes! This was what I was looking for.

  The brain!

  The neurons fired microvolts around me as I stretched. I was paper-thin. Spread like hammered-down Silly Putty.

  I pressed myself into the cracks and crevices of the brain.

  Ah! Now I could feel it. The neurons were connecting to me. Making me a part of this strange, wondrous new body.

  I felt the Yeerk’s jolt of awe and pleasure at its new mobility. At its new size, and strength, and power. It was a visceral, nonconscious, nonintellectual, animal pleasure.

  I touched the brain’s center of hearing.

  Ahhhh! It was like being alive again. The sound of water dripping into the sink sounded beautiful.

  Then, I touched the centers for sight.

  It
was lights-on after being forever in a mine shaft. Overwhelming! Joyful! It was dazzling, dizzying delirium.

  Aftran was so right when she told me humans live amidst splendor and magnificence. Mr. Tidwell’s red-and-white-checked tablecloth was a sight to be relished and lingered over. The —

  I heard a voice call.

  Mr. Tidwell. Speaking only in thought.

  he asked, sounding panicked.

  I could have stood in Mr. Tidwell’s kitchen all night. Allowing myself to feel the Yeerk’s joy at every new sensation.

  But I had a job to do. And not much time. I clamped down on my Yeerk desire to explore the new world.

  I wasn’t sure how to use the connections between me and Mr. Tidwell to control him. But the Yeerk knew.

  I allowed it to open sections of Mr. Tidwell’s brain. Some sections controlled physical functions like moving muscles. But some held memories.

  As I tapped into these areas I was flooded with images from Mr. Tidwell’s life.

  Mr. Tidwell sitting in this kitchen, the sink overflowing with dirty dishes. The counters spattered with food stains. The smell of garbage heavy in the air.

  A younger, thinner Mr. Tidwell in this same kitchen, but now sparkling clean and cheerful, standing next to his wife, flicking soapsuds at her.

  Mr. Tidwell walking into a classroom on his first day as a teacher. Feeling proud and nervous as he wrote his name on the board and turned to face the class.

  Mr. Tidwell climbing into his bed last night, and carefully placing his wife’s picture on the pillow beside him.

  I didn’t want to see that. I didn’t want to go pawing through Mr. Tidwell’s memories. I wished I could apologize to him, but even though I could hear his thoughts, I didn’t know how to send him my thoughts back.

  I continued searching his brain, backing away any time I hit memory. But memory was everywhere. I was invading every secret, destroying all privacy.

  I felt ashamed.

  I tried to move a hand. It moved.

  I tried to form speech. It was easy.

  “Okay, I think I’ve got it,” I muttered in Mr. Tidwell’s voice.

  I took a step — and bumped into the table.

  Mr. Tidwell said.

  I appreciated him trying to joke.

  I took another step. Didn’t hit anything.

  I slowly headed out the front door, feeling more at ease in my new body with every motion. I climbed into Mr. Tidwell’s car. I didn’t know how to drive, but Mr. Tidwell did. And anything he knew how to do, I now knew how to do.

  I pulled the keys out of Mr. Tidwell’s pocket, turned on the ignition, and pulled out onto the street.

  It was pretty cool driving by myself. I was kind of sorry when we pulled into the McDonald’s parking lot. For more reasons than one.

  Usually I’d be listening to Jake give last-minute instructions right now. I’d be laughing at the jokes Marco tells right before we do something insanely dangerous.

  Tobias would probably be flying overhead, giving his version of an aerial traffic report. Rachel would be getting all macho, her bravery bolstering mine.

  I was hit again by how alone I was. I missed them. I missed them so much.

  I climbed out of the car and made my way into McDonald’s. I was aware of how the new smells and colors and sounds interested the Yeerk part of me but I didn’t allow myself to get distracted.

  I got in the line closest to the bathrooms. When the girl behind the register asked for my order I told her I wanted a Happy Meal with extra happy.

  The girl gave a fake laugh, like she’d heard the joke a billion times. Which I knew she had. Asking for extra happy was the password to the Yeerk pool.

  I guess Yeerks have a sense of humor.

  Mr. Tidwell had the drill down pat. That meant I did, too. I walked past the bathroom and opened the next door, which led into the kitchen. I went straight into the walk-in refrigerator.

  WHOOSH! The back of the fridge split and slid open.

  I knew the Gleet BioFilter was just inside. I took a deep breath and stepped through.

  The BioFilter didn’t make a single BrrrrEEEET. All it detected was human and Yeerk. Both authorized life-forms.

  It had no way of sensing the Animorph who was also making her way through the entrance to the Yeerk pool.

  I started down the long staircase leading to the Yeerk pool. The air felt moist against my face. Almost oily.

  Mr. Tidwell’s glasses clouded up. I pulled them off and everything went soft and blurry. I quickly wiped them on the hem of my shirt and stuck them back on. I couldn’t see without them.

  It was so strange to be in someone else’s human body. To have it feel so different. Even the sound his body’s footsteps made sounded strange. Too loud and heavy.

  I descended the stairs down to the Yeerk pool.

  I found myself wishing my steps made even more noise. I wanted to drown out the sounds drifting up from below me. The screams of fury. The howls of agony. And underneath them all, the low sobs of pure despair.

  I knew exactly who was making those horrifying, soul-slashing sounds. Around the edge of the Yeerk pool are cages filled with the involuntary hosts, human and Hork-Bajir.

  They screamed, threatened, howled, and sobbed because they could. For a few hours their voices were their own again as their Yeerks swam in the pool, soaking in Kandrona rays and other nutrients. Soaking up life.

  I forced myself to continue down the stairs. The earth walls around me changed to rock. And the purple glow at the bottom of the staircase grew stronger.

  Down, down, down.

  The cries of the hosts grew louder. And I began to hear the sound of the sludge swooshing against the shore of the pool.

  The rock walls widened. I was almost there.

  Down, down, down.

  I took the last few steps, and entered the huge cavern. It was like a small city. Humans, Taxxons, Hork-Bajir everywhere. Buildings and sheds in a ring around the outside. Bright yellow Caterpillar earthmovers and tall cranes ready to continue the underground expansion.

  Expansion. The idea made my stomach cramp.

  Mr. Tidwell instructed.

  As I started toward the pier, I heard the most horrifying sound yet. The sound of laughter. I scanned the cavern, looking for the source.

  A group of humans was watching a Full House rerun in a room along the back wall.

  They were the voluntary hosts. The ones who had chosen to allow Yeerks to control them. They were just hanging out watching TV while their Yeerks swam in the pool. Somehow they managed to tune out the screams and cries from the cages.

  I turned away from them and continued to the pier. I took my place in line. There were three humans and one Hork-Bajir ahead of me.

  How long would this take? I had to get Aftran out before the Visser returned.

  The first human, a boy who looked about five, stepped to the end of the pier. He calmly knelt down and the two Hork-Bajir-Controllers helped him lower his head into the iron-gray sludge of the Yeerk pool.

  I knew the moment the Yeerk slid out of the boy’s ear. His feet started to kick against the metal pier. Wham! Wham! Wham!

  The Hork-Bajir-Controllers yanked him up. The boy opened his mouth wide. “Mommeeee!” he screamed.

  The horrible high-pitched call made the hair on the back of my — Mr. Tidwell’s — neck stand on end. The hair on my arms, too.

  Two more Hork-Bajir-Controllers marched down to the end of the pier. They took the boy away from the first two, and escorted him back toward the cages.

  When they passed me, I wanted to reach out and snatch the little boy away from them. He should be whooshing down the slide at the playground. He should be learning the names of all the Crayola crayons in the big box.

  �
��Mommeeee!” the boy screeched again. “Mommeeee!”

  I struggled to keep Mr. Tidwell’s face expressionless as I heard a cage door clang shut behind me, locking the boy inside. If a flicker of concern crossed my face, we risked getting caught.

  Illim must go through this all the time, I realized. He had to make sure he acted like a regular Yeerk. And that meant acting like his host’s feeling meant nothing to him.

  The next human in line, a tall, neatly dressed woman, knelt at the edge of the pier and lowered her head into the pool. She gave only the smallest twitch to indicate that the Yeerk had slithered out of her ear.

  Then she stood up, straight and tall. Her eyes burned with hatred as the Hork-Bajir-Controllers marched her back to the cages. But she didn’t make a sound.

  The Hork-Bajir was next in line. As I watched it lower its head into the water, I couldn’t help thinking of the tiny colony of free Hork-Bajir living in their secret valley.

  The Hork-Bajir gave an anguished bellow as it raised its head. The gray sludge dripped into its open mouth.

  I’m getting Aftran out of here, I promised myself. There was only one person left ahead of me in line. A short dark-haired man. He knelt. Submerged his head.

  Then like the woman, he stood up without crying out or struggling. The two Hork-Bajir-Controllers took him by the arms. The man walked two steps, then fell to his knees.

  He must have surprised the Hork-Bajir-Controllers, because he managed to break free of them. He shoved himself to his feet and ran past me down the pier.

  Go, go, go! I thought. But I was careful not to let the words escape my lips.

  One of the Hork-Bajir-Controllers pulled out a Dracon beam. TSEEEWWWW! TSEEEWWWW!

  I shot a glance over my shoulder in time to see the man fall to the ground, his singed clothes smoking. He let out a low groan of pain, and I realized his skin had been singed, too.

  The Hork-Bajir-Controllers roughly hauled him to his feet and shoved him toward the cages.

  “Why couldn’t you kill me?” the man shouted. “Why couldn’t you just kill me?”

  I knew why they hadn’t killed him. They hadn’t wanted to destroy a good host body.

  I reached into my pocket and slid open the Ziploc bag all the way. I guided Illim up the sleeve of my jacket. I would stick my hands into the pool when I lowered myself down. That way he could wriggle free and be ready to reenter Mr. Tidwell.