Eric Campbell
The devastation was incredible. Shopping centres. Wal-marts. Half the mall. All of them looked like a sand castle at the beach after some mean kid decided to kick it over. All of us, human and Hork-Bajir, free and Controller, stared out the Bug Fighter's viewports as it flew over the wreckage. Emergency vehicles were all around the ring of what was left of downtown, beginning the work of going through the bodies.
"There must be thousands of them down there," someone whispered, a female voice. I turned my attention away from the scene below and glanced in the Fighter itself. There were about twenty of us crammed into it, with very little breathing room. Everyone looked ragged. The Hork-Bajir were particularly restless – I guess the taller you are, the harder it is to be cramped. The humans were mostly trying to keep away from any accidents that squirming Hork-Bajir blades might be able to cause.
«We're going to have to take charge of these people,» Ewell suggested. «They're all shaken up, not thinking. They're going to start going nuts soon if somebody doesn't.»
I nodded my agreement, which, of course, was dumb, since Ewell was in my head, not looking at me. "Everyone," I called out, and slowly, surely, all of their attention turned to me.
«May I?» Ewell asked, and, understanding, I relaxed slightly, and then "I" glanced around at the Fighter's interior as best I could, given my small height. My eyes locked briefly on the very small hatch in the back, the one that contained the miniature Yeerk pool.
"Listen," Ewell said, using my voice. "There's, ummm, there's probably enough Kandrona rays in the pool for two Yeerks. Are there any Yeerks here that didn't get the chance to feed before the explosion?"
"I hope so," an older gentleman grumbled near the back of the Fighter – obviously an uninfested human.
A young man in his twenties turned angrily to glare at the gentleman. "Hey, we didn't have to save your asses, you worthless cows. Show some gratitude."
"Gratitude?" the older man responded, his voice rising. "You slugs have taken my wife and my children from me and you want my fu--"
"Please," Ewell called out pointedly, raising my hands to silence the bickering. "If we start fighting, we're going to crash and die." He gestured towards the frustrated woman at the controls, glancing paranoid over her back to make sure nobody was going to start wrestling behind her.
Ewell surveyed the crowd for a moment. "We have to put everything aside right now. We need each other if we're going to survive this."
Again, the older gentleman grumbled. "You mean you need /us/ if you're going to survive, don't you, Yeerk? Only you're not going to survive no matter what you do. Can't feed anymore. Can't feed, can't live, good riddance." He took a step towards us, anger in his voice, when suddenly Chance stepped between us.
"Stop it," Chance insisted, his tone both angry and testy. He looked oddly funny, a fourteen year old boy in his pyjamas staring down a grown man, but he was also determined, and there was too little room for the man to really do anything. He glanced around at everyone. "Now, I don't know what the hell is going on here, I really don't, but I do know this kid saved me from that cage, he saved both of us, so whatever your problem with him, it's obviously bigger than it should be."
Ewell smiled at that thought, but all I could think about was that Chris was probably dead now. Only two Bug Fighters managed to launch before the explosion, and I knew Chris wasn't on either of them. I knew he was in the pool – how could he have survived?
«You don't know he's dead,» Ewell sofltly reminded me. But he's my Yeerk – he couldn't hide his emotions from me. And I knew he didn't really believe Chris had survived either. Out loud, he said, "I get that you're upset, sir, I really do." He glanced around at the others in the fighter. "I'm sure a lot of you are. What my people have done to you, your families… it's inexcusable. But we're not all like that." He brought my hand to my chest. "I reside within my host with his consent, as do many of my brother Yeerks. Many of us have no desire to see anyone taken unwillingly, would have gladly come to your planet in peace and friendship if it had been our choice." He tried to make sure he made eye contact with everyone, human and Hork-Bajir alike. "I don't know how many of my fellow Yeerks in here feel that way. Maybe some of you had no problem taking your hosts unwillingly, ignoring their cries for freedom because our leaders taught you that humans were inferior to us." He gestured towards the window, towards what was left of the Yeerk pool below. "Well they're obviously not, you know. They just proved that they can be just as ruthless. And by warning us, giving us a chance to escape, they proved they can be just as compassionate, too." He paused, waiting to see if anyone would have anything to say in reply to his words. No one did. So he glanced at the pilot. "Set us down just outside of town. We'll let everyone off who wants to get off. And any Yeerks on board with unwilling hosts will get out of them and get into the pool."
"And then what?" the younger guy protested. "There's no more Kandrona, we're going to die." Everyone took a few moments to think about that.
«Do we know where the Kandrona generator is?» asked a Controller in bat morph, hanging from the bug fighter's ceiling. «We could park the ship close to it, get the rays.»
"No," Ewell replied. "I never had enough clearance to find out."
It was the pilot who had the answer. "Oatmeal," she said, glancing back at the group. "We can fly a few towns over, get some of the instant maple and ginger oatmeal."
"Doesn't that stuff make you go insane?" the younger guy lamented.
"Better insane than dead," Ewell pointed out, glancing towards the pilot. "But I thought it took awhile to work? Would it be enough to keep us alive past the three-day mark if we started eating it now?"
The pilot shrugged. "Maybe. If we took strong enough doses. Lived on the stuff for the next however-long-it-takes until we find the Kandrona."
Ewell nodded solemnly. "Okay then," he said, more to himself than anyone else. "Land, drop off the people who want out, and then split into two teams. One team goes for oatmeal, one team tries to find a Kandrona generator."
«Or a Yeerk with high enough rank to tell us where a Kandrona generator is,» I piped up. «And that's Chris' Yeerk. We need to go down there and join the rescue teams, see if we can get to him.»
«We don't have time for that, Eric,» Ewell chided. «We saw him running around down there, so he obviously got away from Martin. He must have re-fed before the explosion, we'd have to wait three more days to starve him before we learned anything. And that's assuming he's alive.»
«So? Three days isn't a long time when you're all eating oatmeal, right?» I pointed out, in what had to be the most surreal statement I'd ever made in my entire life. Even with the gravity of the situation, it was really hard to take the whole oatmeal thing seriously.
"Ummm, we can't land just yet," the pilot warned, gesturing towards the monitors with her chin. I moved over there by my own will, Ewell fading into the background again, and I saw some blips on the monitor screen.
"The blade ship," I observed, after Ewell told me what it was. I glanced over to the pilot. "Stay in formation with it, we want to look like we're on their side."
"We /are/ on their side," the younger guy observed testily, earning him a few glares. "Listen, I'd much prefer a willing host, myself, and there's sure as hell more than enough humans to go around. But in case you people forgot, we need /mouths/ for this oatmeal plan, we can't just sprinkle it into the pool to get the good effects. And I'm not getting out of this body just to appease some last-minute friendship hug while I still need that mouth. And I'm not about to turn on Visser One no matter /who/ just saved me down there."
"So you'd go crazy inside the guy?" the older, free human growled, balling into fists again. "Selfish Yeerk piece of crap, of course you would. Well we can knock you out of him, I'd think." Again, Chance stepped in between them, but this time the older gentleman shoved the boy out of the way. The Yeerk in the younger man stood his ground, ready to take a pre-emptive swing. But Chance got back up and literally butted the old man out of the way.
"Let me get this straight," Chance said, breathing a little heavily as he looked in between the two, eyes finally settling on the younger. "You're, like, some alien thing living inside that guy?" The man nodded. Chance looked to the older man. "And you /used/ to have an alien thing, but it, like, didn't have time to get back in you or whatever."
"Yeah, that's right," the older man said, grinding his fist in his other hand. "He's dead down there, just like they /all/ should be." He shot a pointed glance at me, and said, "Nice sentiment, but that kid you're in can't consent to you violating his body like that, he's too young to even understand what you've done to him. You're just manipulating him. And trying to manipulate us with your fancy words."
"I can so consent," I objected angrily, and I felt Ewell's gratitude and affection for sticking up for him. "He's the best company I ever had."
I was about to say more, but the pilot barked in with, "Can you guys just keep it steady so the blade ship doesn't collide with us?"
That quelled everyone's arguments for a short while. We slipped into formation with a dozen other Bug Fighters, flying at all angles alongside the blade ship as it hovered over the town. It fired two controlled shots at emergency vehicles on the far side of the sinkhole before moving to touch down in that area. Visser One emerged, in the twenty-tentacled amphibious morph we had seen him in earlier, and scrambled towards the docking port, glancing around in fear of the skies as Bug Fighters patrolled them, keeping watch for Animorph assassins.
"All the Bug Fighters are getting orders," the pilot announced. "We're to touch down in the garage facilities on the outer perimeter, the ones out of town, and wait for further instructions."
"Well, let's do it, then," I suggested. "We need to land anyway, and we don't want to seem insubordinate." The fighter circled around the mall one more time before heading west, landing on top of an auto mechanic's shop next to a Subway. There were already people looting the nearby grocery store, stealing all kinds of foods in a panic as they started to evacuate the area. "It's going to be tough to walk around out there," I pointed out.
When the hatch opened, everyone scrambled out into the garage itself. Ewell took over, addressing the group again. "Everyone who's going, good luck." He waited for a minute, and seven of the twenty – six humans and a Hork-Bajir – strolled casually out the front door.
The angry older gentleman stayed with us, though, and gestured to the younger guy. "I want that Yeerk out of his host body," he demanded.
"No," the younger guy retorted. The two were about to come to blows again. Ewell nodded to a Hork-Bajir-Controller, who grabbed them both.
"Knock it off," Ewell insisted. He glanced at the younger. "What's your name?" he asked.
"Scott Ca-" the guy started, but Ewell cut him off.
"Your name," Ewell insisted.
"Maylis Three-Nine-Eight," the guy replied.
Ewell nodded. "Get out of your host body, Maylis," he commanded. When the Yeerk looked like it was beginning to protest, Ewell held up my hand and said, "Relax, you're not going to die. Eric here will host you, if he's willing, and I'll go into the pool."
«What? No,» I complained. «I don't want that Yeerk in me, he seems like a real jerk.»
«He's just trying to survive, Eric,» Ewell pointed out. «You might be doing the same if you were him. Won't you at least think about it for a minute?»
I didn't have to, though. Chance piped up instead. "What about me? Couldn't one of you go inside me?"
Ewell turned my head to regard Chance. "You'd be willing to do that for us?" he asked, surprised.
Chance shrugged. "Sure. I mean, as long as it doesn't hurt a lot or anything, I…"
"Is this the kind of 'consent' you got from your host?" the older guy interrupted, sneering at me. "This kid has no idea what he's volunteering for." He turned towards the younger guy. "Come to /me/, Yeerk. That way you can't get in this dumb kid and turn around in three days or six or whatever and say that he changed my mind and 'consented' to let you stay, cause I've /been/ a Controller before, and I'm telling everyone, right here, right now, that I want your slimy ass out of me as soon as it can be."
Chance gave the old guy an angry stare, clearly uncomfortable with being referred to as a dumb kid. But the terms seemed acceptable to Maylis, who began disengaging from young Scott's ear and sliding into the hands of the woman who'd been piloting the ship. Chance's anger gave way to amazement as he saw the Yeerk slug for the first time, watching it as she brought it up to the old man's ear and let it squirm it's way inside.
"Coooool," he murmured. Scott, now free, took one long glance around at us and then ran for the exit at top speed.
The rest split into two groups. Six of us – me, Chance, two Hork-Bajir, the pilot woman, and the now-infested old man – formed the team that would go back to the wreckage and search for Chris. On the way, we filled Chance in on exactly why Chris was so important.
"So… my brother has had one of your people living in his head from the beginning, and it was important enough to know where this hidden food thing is?" Chance summed up, when we were finished.
Ewell nodded my head. "Sub-Visser Twenty Nine," I said bitterly. "By all accounts, one of the most vicious bastards in the whole Yeerk species."
Chance clenched his fists. "God… I can't, I… and he was down there... do you think there's any chance that he's alive?" His voice was on the edge of tears.
"I don't know," I admitted, trying to keep my own voice even. If we started crying, we'd probably never stop. "I just don't know."