The Stranger (8 page)

W
e all met up later that afternoon at Cassie's barn.

Inside her barn there are rows of cages in all shapes and sizes, mostly full. Birds are in one area, with mammals separated from them by a partition wall. I guess it makes the birds nervous to be in the same room with foxes and raccoons. Nervous birds hurt themselves, banging around the cages.

When I showed up at the meeting barefoot and in my morphing outfit, everyone immediately knew I hadn't exactly taken the bus to get there.

Jake and Marco were lolling on bales of hay.

Tobias was perched on a crossbeam a few feet over our heads. I felt a stab of pain, seeing him that way again.

Ax did not come to these meetings, usually. He would have had to assume his human morph, and he preferred to remain in Andalite form as much as possible.

“Hi, Rachel,” Marco said, looking amused, but also a little wary. “What have you been up to? Or maybe I should ask, what have you
been
?”

Cassie was busy changing the bandage on the wing of a sad-looking kestrel.

“Hey, Rachel,” Cassie said. “Give me a hand here, will you? I didn't see you at school today.”

I went and held the struggling bird as well as I could. Kestrels are small falcons. This kestrel tried to take a bite out of me, but he was too weak to do any damage.

“I felt kind of sick this morning,” I told Cassie. “So I stayed home.”

“But you felt better this afternoon, huh?” Jake said. “So much better that you decided to morph? How did you get here, just out of curiosity?”

Cassie was done and took the kestrel from me. I turned to look Jake in the eye. “I flew. Is that okay with you?”

He glanced at Cassie. Then at Marco. “That bear you morphed yesterday … you went to The Gardens and acquired that all on your own, didn't you?”

“No,” I said, “I met that bear at the mall.”

“Okay,” Jake said. “And today you ditch school and end up morphing … whatever you morphed.”

Tobias said.

“It's so nice knowing I have privacy,” I said sarcastically.

Tobias said.

Jake looked at me sharply. “You spent the whole afternoon in morph?”

“Yes,
Mother
,” I said.

Jake jumped up and stood right in front of me, his face just inches from mine. “Don't give me your sarcasm, Rachel. You are acting really weird. That's everyone's business, because if you do something stupid, we could all end up paying the price. You go and acquire a grizzly? Without backup? You could have been killed.”

“So what?” I shot back. “You heard the Ellimist. We're doomed. It's going to be Yeerks one, humans zero. We lose. So who cares about anything? Who cares if I skip school to go flying?”

Suddenly Jake just sagged. “I don't know, Rachel. I don't have any answers. I'm sick of trying to have answers. You decide. I don't want to argue with you. I don't know what your problem is, but you know what?
You
deal with it.”

I've never seen Jake look so tired. One minute he was being strong, sensible Jake, leader of the Animorphs. And the next minute he looked exhausted. His eyes were red. He was blinking constantly. He looked like he was worn out just from breathing.

“My dad wants me to move out of state with him,” I said.

Everyone just kind of stared at me. They all had blank, tired eyes, not much different from Jake's.

“What are you going to do?” Cassie asked.

I threw up my hands. “How can I even think about something that unimportant? I mean, like we don't have bigger things to worry about? The fate of planet Earth and the human race?”

“Different things bother different people,” Cassie said. “I know how you feel about your dad.”

“He's a jerk for dumping this on me!” I said loudly. “I mean … you know … I mean …”

It was weird. All of a sudden I felt like I was choking. Like I was ready to explode. Like my brain was spinning out of control.

“It's like … what am I supposed to do?!” I yelled. “After what happened last night … after all that, I have to decide who I want to hurt — my mom or my dad? And you guys? And —”

“Come on, Rachel,” Marco said kindly. “Take it easy. Come on, you're Xena —”

“NO! No, I'm not some stupid, old TV character. I'm not some comic book, Marco. I'm scared, okay?! Just like all the rest of you. I'm scared of what almost happened to me last night. I'm scared just knowing that place exists down there. I'm scared about what happens to
me
. I just wanted to run away but I didn't think I could, so I was brave because that's the way I'm supposed to be. But now everyone's going, ‘Oh, just come live with me and we'll go to ball games,' and ‘Hey, forget moving to another state, we have a whole other planet for you.' And the more exits I see, the more scared I get, all right?”

For a long time no one said anything.

Marco sighed heavily. “I've been thinking. I'm changing my vote. If the Ellimist asks again, I'm going to vote yes.”

“
What?
” Jake demanded. “Why?”

Marco shrugged. “Rachel's losing it. If she loses it, how long are the rest of us going to last?”

“Shut up, Marco, I'm not in the mood for your jokes,” I said.

“Me neither,” Marco said flatly. “You know how much sleep I got last night? About an hour. Nightmares. I was a zombie in school today. I feel like … like my skin has all been rubbed with sandpaper. I'm jumpy. I'm scared. I'm stressed.”

“It's gonna happen,” Jake said.

“This was always insane, right from the start,” Marco said. “A handful of kids fighting an alien invasion? Look what's happening. Tobias is trapped in a morph. Rachel is starting to use morphing to get away from her problems. The other night I woke up in bed, and I didn't know
what
I was. I didn't know if I had hands or fins or claws or talons. Maybe you and Cassie are immune, Jake. But I doubt it.”

“We can't give up,” Jake argued stubbornly.

“All we ever do is lose,” Marco said. “We annoy the Yeerks. Maybe we blow up a ship, or have some little success. But the invasion marches on. And all we ever do is barely escape with our lives. We're like some baseball team that never wins a game. And now, according to the Ellimist, we know it's going to be a whole losing season. We aren't going to the play-offs.”

“I don't care,” Jake said. “I'm not giving up.”

“Jake,” Cassie said. “See this?” She held up her left arm and pointed to a scar above her wrist. “I got this from a raccoon. The raccoon had been caught in a trap. Its leg was broken. I was trying to free it so I could save it. It bit me.”

“We're not raccoons,” Jake said.

“Aren't we? Compared to the Ellimist?” Cassie said. “Isn't it just possible he's right? That what he's trying to do is save at least a part of the human race? That he's just trying to get us out of the trap and fix our broken bones?”

“Cassie's right,” Marco said. “If the Ellimist wanted to hurt us, he could just destroy us. You know it as well as I do. Fine. I'm going to let him get my leg out of the trap. But I have some conditions first. There are some people going with me. But if the Ellimist can save those people along with me, then I have to say yes.”

Marco looked at me. Then Jake and Cassie and Tobias all looked at me. The vote was now two against two. I was the deciding vote.

It would mean no more battles. It would mean that somewhere, wherever the Ellimist took us, there would be no job in another state for my dad. There would be no more painful decisions for me to make.

I opened my mouth. I started to speak.

I PROMISED I WOULD ASK YOU AGAIN
.

“Uh-oh,” Marco said.

I WILL SHOW YOU WHAT YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND
.

I
WILL SHOW YOU WHAT YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND
.

In an instant, we were gone from the barn. The five of us and Ax stood side by side in the middle of an empty field of scruffy, unkempt grass. There was a long, low, tumbledown building a hundred yards away.

The Ellimist was nowhere to be seen. We were the only people around: five humans and one Andalite. Five real humans.

“Tobias!” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, looking down at his hands. “This routine again.”

Jake looked angry. Cassie marveled. Marco tried to smirk nonchalantly, but wasn't succeeding. No one looked tired anymore.

Ax skittered nervously on his dainty hooves and stretched his tail, as if preparing to use it.

“The Ellimist again,” I said. “Did you guys hear —”

“Yeah, we heard,” Jake said. “So we get another chance to change our minds.”

“Where are we?” Cassie wondered. “I mean, something about this looks familiar. But I can't quite place it.”

I had the same feeling. Like this empty, dusty, blasted landscape was familiar. It was Tobias who saw it first.

“The school,” he said.

“What?” I said. “No way.” But he was right. I looked again and realized that I knew each of those tumbledown, destroyed buildings.

“Okay, I don't like this,” Marco said. “I don't even halfway like this. I mean, normally I'm all for seeing the school blown up, but I
really
don't like this.”

“When did this happen?” I wondered aloud. “I skip one day and the place burns down?”

“I don't think so,” Cassie said in a strange, distracted voice. “I don't think this is something that's happened, past tense. I think we're talking future tense.”

“Or just tense,” Marco muttered.

I looked over at Cassie, wondering what she was talking about. She was staring intently up at the sky overhead. Then off toward the horizon.

“The sky,” she said. “Have you ever seen it that color before?”

“It does seem slightly yellowish,” Jake said.

“And the air. Doesn't it smell funny? And look, over there. The trees over behind the gym. They're dying.”

“The Ellimist said he would show us something,” I muttered. “So what's he showing us? Ax? You understand any of this?”

“It's the future,” Cassie said.

A chill crawled up my spine. I wanted to think Cassie was losing it. But I sensed the truth of what she said.

“Okaaaaay,” Marco said. “So, what are we supposed to do now? Stand around here until the Ellimist comes back for us?”

Jake shrugged. “I guess we look around. The mall's just a quarter mile or so. It should be open.”

So we walked. Across the scruffy field. Beneath a sky that seemed to add yellow to blue and make patches and wisps of green, unlike any sky I had ever seen. We passed the school and looked morbidly through the blast holes to see if we could recognize anything.

“YAAAAHHH!” Marco yelled.

He reeled back from one of the dark holes. I ran to look inside. It was a classroom. There was a skeleton lying crumpled across the teacher's desk.

“Oh my God,” Cassie whispered. “The body was just left here.”

“That's Paloma's classroom,” I said. “History class.”

It took a few seconds for the significance of that to sink in. The body had been left there to rot. It must have taken years for it to be reduced to nothing but bones.

“Cassie's right. We're in the future,” Marco said. “But that's impossible.”

Ax said.

“Oh, I get it,” I said angrily. “It's a little lesson. The Ellimist is showing us what happens in the future. How cute. How clever. But how do we know this is really the future, and not just some little show he's putting on?”

“Let's try the mall,” Jake said. “Although I don't have a good feeling about this.”

We left the school behind us. I tried not to think about who that skeleton might have been. Some teacher? Some student? Some person who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?

“Maybe we can check the bookstore at the mall,” Marco said. “Find a
World Almanac
for whatever year this is. See who won all the Super Bowls. Then when we go back to our own time, we can bet on the games. Make a fortune.”

I forced a laugh that came out like a grunt. We needed to keep our spirits up. Marco was trying.

We reached the highway. Eight lanes of concrete, dead silent. Not a car. Not a truck. Empty.

On the far side of the highway was a rusted wreck of a car. Bony white hands clutched the steering wheel. We stayed away from it.

I saw something that gleamed brightly, off to the east. It seemed to run in a straight line from the far horizon to a point much closer. I squinted to see what it was.

“Too bad we don't have your hawk eyes now,” I whispered to Tobias.

“It's a tube, I think. Like a long, long glass tube. There! Something is moving down it.”

Ax said. He had turned all four of his eyes toward it.

“They're everyone's miles,” Marco said. “You're on Earth, Ax. We all have the same miles.”

Ax asked smugly.

“Some kind of very high-speed train system,” Jake said. “That's why no one is on the highway.”

“The question is, who built the system?” I pointed out. A few minutes later, we reached the mall. But it had changed. It had changed quite a bit.

“Oh, man,” Marco said. “Look at that! Oh, man.”

The mall was still standing. Even the sign that said “Sears” could still be seen. But holes, perfectly round and about six feet across, had been drilled into the sides of the four big department stores. There were six or eight holes in the JCPenney. The same with Sears. And from the holes emerged Taxxons.

They crawled in and out of the holes. They slithered down to the ground and up to the roof. Some were carrying boxes from a squat, bulky spacecraft that sat in the parking lot. They were unloading it like a truck, carrying silvery packages in through several of the holes.

“It's a hive,” Cassie said. “It's like a beehive. Or an ant colony. They've taken it over. The mall is a Taxxon hive.”