#50 – If

Jake

It's funny, the things that keep me up at night.

The Yeerks don't, not anymore. Mostly I'm too tired to let them. But I think I've also been conditioned to just accept the bloody battles and the fear of being found out. Ax comments all the time at how adaptable humans are, and I guess it's true. Sometimes, when I'm lying in bed, I replay our encounters with the Yeerks in my head. And sometimes, when my brain is able to wrap itself around the concept of how much power the Yeerks hold and how little myself and my friends have, I feel a twinge of fear…but usually, all I get out of my replays is insight. What I did right, what I did wrong, and how to do better next time.

I think that's mostly why my brain doesn't torment me about the mighty Yeerk Empire's stranglehold on Earth – I know I'm doing all I can, and what'll be will be. Que sera, sera, as the French say. There's peace in knowing you're doing your best, the most anyone could ever expect of you.

That's why I was a little surprised to find out how conflicted I was about some everyday event. Yeah, it's horrible, but it happens all the time. Every day. I guess most people never have to see it firsthand, but I would have thought that it wouldn't even register on my Horrible Shit-o-Meter. As I lay in bed, staring at my dark ceiling, my brain replayed the scene for me in vivid clarity.

My dad is driving down the interstate. I'm in the passenger seat. The radio is screeching out Tom Petty's 'Free Falling.' My dad is singing along in a low voice, which is good, because he's horribly off-pitch. I'm trying to anticipate the next time Tom is going to snake his hand forward around the headrest and flick my ear from the back seat, but he's doing it at random intervals and I can't get the timing down. I'm frustrated beyond belief, because out of all the things I have to put up with from the Yeerks, one of them flicking my earlobe on a car ride to the optometrist should not be one of those things.

I forget all about Tom as I'm thrown forward against the seatbelt. My dad has stood on the brake, bringing the car from eighty MPH to about thirty-five in the space of a second. "Oh, no," he says, almost conversationally, and I follow his eyes. I see the beginning of the end for the red car in front of us; its driver has decided to switch lanes, never realizing there's already an eighteen wheeler in the piece of road the red car meant to occupy.

It's like a slow, gruesome ballet, the way my adrenaline spikes seems to make everything slow down. I see the rear bumper of the red car kiss the front grille of the truck – it doesn't seem like much contact, but at the speeds the vehicles are going, the reaction is instantaneous. Smoke rises from the red car's tires as they begin to slide in a direction they were never meant to go. I see the driver of the truck's left arm snap up and yank at something; a split second later, an insanely loud air horn blows. 'Too late for that,' I remember thinking clearly.

I was right. The red car was already sliding forward at a forty-five degree angle, and that angle was rapidly growing. It hit the place where physics took control of the situation, and the tires on the right side left the ground. I don't know if Yeerks feel shock, but I have to assume they do, because Tom's made him whisper, "Oh, shit."

The car, now sideways but still travelling at a good seventy MPH, began to roll. After its first revolution, I saw broken safety glass pinwheeling away from the already-smashed car. After the second roll over, I clearly saw a paper McDonald's cup fly out through the busted out windshield. Time seemed to right itself again after that, seemed to speed back up to its normal pace, and I was horrified at the brutality of the scene.

WHAM! SCREE! WHAM! SCREE! The two sounds alternated as the car smashed and slid down the interstate, leaving debris, glass, and metal in its wake. I could see that gravity was starting to win the battle with momentum, and finally the car stopped flipping and settled for sliding. It was on its roof, the metal guts (what was left of them) of the machine sticking up into the air. The car looked like a turtle that had been disemboweled. As it came to a sliding stop half on the interstate and half in the median, my dad brought our own car to a stop. I belatedly realized we were jouncing up and down a little, and I realized that we must have run over a piece of debris and gotten a flat.

We came to a bouncing stop about sixty yards behind the wreck. Looking at it, I didn't see how anyone could have survived, but I meant to find out. It wasn't even a decision, it was instinct. I was out of the car and five running steps toward the wreck when I heard my dad scream – not yell, scream – "Jake, NO! Gas! STOP!"

I've been programmed to obey my father since the day I was born. Even though this was a completely new situation, the hardwired programming took over and I stopped. As I did, I saw and smelled what he was talking about – the car's fuel tank had ruptured and was gushing its contents all over the wreck. Logically, I knew that it was only a matter of time before some of that gas got to a friction-heated piece of steel or a still-firing spark plug, and then it was going to be Game Over.

I almost went to the car, anyway; I was the closest available person, and maybe I could get the driver out before that inevitable explosion happened. The way the car had accordionized and smushed the doors together made me realize that was a joke; the car had started out as a vehicle. It was now a metal casket with no way in or out.

'Morph,' an unknown voice whispered inside my own head. 'Your Rhino could have that can opened in two seconds.' Wildly, I actually considered it; my fastest morph had been completed in well under a minute, and I felt I could match that record, here and now. Hell, maybe even beat it. As I began to focus on the image of the Rhinoceros who's DNA was swimming inside of me, another random brain-voice answered the first.

'Can't. Tom.' That was all it took for me to understand that if I couldn't save the driver as a human, I would have to let them go. I had the power to save them, but not the ability. I began to cry as the unfairness of the situation hit me. I was aware that I was talking, but I didn't know what I was saying. Later, my dad would tell me I'd been repeating, "Bullshit, this is bullshit." The next thing I knew, an arm was around my shoulder. I looked up and saw my dad through blurry eyes, and he steered my face into his side, not wanting me to see what was happening. I chickened out and let him. A second later, I felt a big hand on my other shoulder and I knew it was Tom. Even though I'm more than aware that Tom was not the one to put his hand there, I took comfort in it anyway. Because he would have if he'd been himself, and that was enough. Then and there, that was enough.

Because my face was pressed into my dad's armpit, I didn't see the explosion. I felt a wave of heat push at me, and then the pressure was gone. The heat stayed, though, and my dad backed the three of us away as a single unit. I felt his chest hitch up and down a few times, and I realized that my dad was crying, too.

I don't remember anything after that. I vaguely remember hearing sirens, but I don't remember seeing any emergency response vehicles. I don't remember my dad changing the tire, and I don't remember the ride home. When I came to, I was at my kitchen table, staring at a Golf Digest. I guess, when my mind realized I wasn't going to be able to help the situation, it had simply switched off to protect me from it.

Now, lying in bed, I just felt shell-shocked and angry. I know I couldn't have done any differently, but I was still mad. Because the older brother I'd taken comfort from at the scene of the accident was the very being who'd prevented me from morphing and saving a life. I knew there likely had been other controllers on the scene, and Tom's presence had probably actually prevented a catastrophe, but he was easy to blame. His Yeerk was easy to blame, so I blamed him.