The Familiar by K. A. Applegate
Well, there I was, stepping out into the wasteland of Times Square. The desolate ground zero of some neutron bomb. A stage set, minus the cast of characters. The whole place coated in menacing silence.
Sure, five hundred feet overhead roared a Yeerk metropolis. But down here, down at street level … no taxis clanking over manhole covers. No kamikaze bike messengers daring traffic. No giddy groups of camera-toting tourists. No sharply dressed natives surging like lemmings in and out of high-rises.
The only life was the buzz of giant, electrified billboards a hundred feet overhead. You know, those big, bold ads that make Times Square famous? I scanned. Not even close to the endorsements for Coca-Cola or JVC or Calvin Klein I remembered.
“You can go home again.” The words flickered like an electrical storm above the image of a darkened planet. What looked like thick, headless cattle roamed beneath the words against a puke-green sky. Sickly, low-lying trees grew horizontally, like lengthy fingers of barbed wire. “Tired of the city?” another billboard read. “Make the Yeerk home world your home, too. Transports leaving noon and midnight, first of each cycle, Yeerk Empire State Building.”
And at the bottom, in smaller print, were the words “High Council Division for the Relocation of Unfit and Insurrectionist Hosts.” These words were sprayed over by the graffiti tag “EF.”
I stopped in my tracks. The tagger’s letters weren’t some preconquest relic. They were new. They were fresh. They were angry.
Unfit and Insurrectionist Hosts?
A tinge of hope swelled against the well-anchored caution and fear in my mind. Was there a rebellion going on here? A resistance group somewhere? If I had allies in this town, I had to find them.
But I needed to find the others first. They had to be here, too, right? Only where? In normal NYC, Marco could be in any video arcade in Manhattan, Rachel in any Express from Midtown to SoHo. I looked at the busted-up storefronts and littered streets. Were there parts of the ground-city that still functioned normally? I wasn’t ready to bet on it.
All at once I realized Cassie would be easiest to find. A park. She’d be in a park and I’d seen one of those. She’d be feeding the pigeons and …
BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!
I hit the ground.
BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!
Machine-gun fire. I rolled behind a kiosk and searched for the source.
TSEEEW! TSEEEW!
Dracon fire return, followed by a piercing human cry. A shoot-out at the other end of Times Square? The echo of weapon fire died away and was replaced by a clacking. A clicking. Clawed feet scratching over concrete. Weird, half-whistled words …
“Ssssssnit waaanaaa!” The loud, arrogant rasping drew snickering agreement from slobbering mouths.
I edged around the kiosk, and sure enough …
Taxxons.
A gang of them. Six or eight. Swaggering up from Forty-Second Street, straight toward me. Bandoliers of energy ammo and handheld Draconbeams crisscrossed their massive centipede bodies. Horrific scars striped their bloated chests.
I fought the urge to sprint. I needed to play the part of a Controller, and a Controller wouldn’t run. But I had to get away! I was out of place at ground level. As far as I could see, I was the only human on the street and it didn’t take long to guess why that might be. No Taxxon encounter had ever ended well. Why expect something new?
Where to go?
The McDonald’s on the corner was a burned-out shell. The golden arches lay crushed and dim on the sidewalk. I’d be a sitting duck.
The high-rise lobby was all glass. No cover.
Suddenly.
“TSSEEERRR!”
A raptor’s cry. A swishing of wings. Out of nowhere! A red-tailed hawk buzzed my head. He looked ancient. Thin, with feathers missing and skin taut around the eyes. He sailed into the steam cloud over a subway grate.
I blinked …
Gone. He was gone!
“Tobias?”
No answer. A mirage?
“Ssssreee sreeenaaaa!”
I jerked back. I’d stepped out from behind the kiosk. The Taxxon gang leader had spotted me. Claw arms skittered. His speed increased to an all-out lumber.
Steam. The subway. Go!
I ran for the subway entrance and took the steps three at a time. Wham! I burst through the rusted-out gate.
“Ugh!” A horrible stench. A humid rot. The foul scent of … Taxxons.
I gasped for breath in the hot stink of the cavern.
“Who are you?”
“Yahh!” I almost had another heart attack. My head slammed the scissored turnstile in surprise.
A guy, a human, only three feet tall but an adult, looked up at me quizzically. He whipped the stack of flyers he was carrying behind his back. I thought I saw the letters “EF,” but I wasn’t sure.
“What’d you do to get sent down here?” The way he said it freaked me out. Like some jury had sentenced me to a horrible fate.
I was still struggling for breath.
The guy shrugged and continued. “You won’t last long down here. No one does.”
I heard the gate bang open one flight up. The sound of skittering Taxxon feet. The little guy’s eyes widened. He turned and ran.
I followed.
Down a white-tiled tunnel that narrowed and narrowed until my shoulders scraped the sides. Then into a still smaller channel that brought me to my knees. I crawled wildly through dampness. The Taxxon war cries grew fainter. Then, a new sound. Weak moans and muffled cries that filled the almost total darkness.
We emerged into a wide, domed hall with a stagnant, toxic puddle at its center. Clustered around this shallow, filthy water — cramped and miserable — was a sampling of human and alien life.
A horrific sampling.
Clumsy Gedds loped along at a snail’s pace. Battered Hork-Bajir, missing arms or legs or both, huddled around a glowing pit. Human children, and maimed or disabled adults, lay on thin, soiled mats. Battle-scarred Andalites, some minus tail blades and others without stalk eyes, milled restlessly. The stench was profound. The moans were heartrending.
It was the eyes that told the story, though. Defeated, dejected. Living death.
At the sound of our abrupt entrance, most turned and tensed. Weak as they were, they were ready to run. Not fight. That was clear.
“What is this?” I gasped. “Who are you?” The fumes made me light-headed.
The little guy interrupted his whispers of reassurance to a group of human kids. “Depends who you ask,” he said. “The Emperor calls us fugitives. The EF calls us refugees. I call us casualties. Casualties of the Fitness Policy. But it doesn’t really matter, does it? We’re all prey.” He smiled. “Your body is strong. You must suffer mental illness?”
I could hardly argue. “I must.”
“Ah.” His tone turned gentler, more condescending. “Take heart, friend. At least with your strong body you stand a chance against the Taxxon Special Force. With our help, you may last a month. Perhaps even two.”
My vision was wigging out. The little guy’s face seemed to approach and recede. The stench was eating away my brain. I moved back toward the tunnel and began to scrabble through.
“No,” he cried, alarmed. “You must stay with us. Alone you won’t last two hours!”
I had to get above ground. I was desperate for air. I was going to pass out.
Back down the tunnel. Left turn, left again. Onto the platform of a subway station. The light was dim and reddish.
Suddenly …
Massive suction!
I was being pulled toward the rails by an intense, all-consuming suction! I had to fight against it!
I ran for the exit, but I was barely moving forward. Like that horrible nightmare where your legs feel like fifty-pound weights. Or you’re running through water.
I looked down at the rails ten feet below. They were covered in a dirt-packed ooze, seething and twisting with Taxxons!
It was a living st
This was Taxxon Mass Transit.
And I was six feet from being sucked in with them!
“Ahh!”
THWAP! thaap!
THWAP!
Two Taxxons rolled out of the suction stream. Lumbered onto the platform! Mouths full of razor-sharp teeth snapped for me. Hundreds of clawed feet powered toward me.
Noooo!
I grabbed for a bench and pulled myself closer to it, fighting the intense suction. Then past it. I grabbed for the trash can bolted to the floor, pulled myself past. Column! Bench! Sign! Trash can!
I looked over my shoulder. The Taxxons were struggling against the suction, too, but they were bigger and they knew something I didn’t. They had dropped to the floor and were slinking along. Racing like salamanders.
Bench! Column! Column! Pull!
They would overtake me.
Gate!
I flung it open. The exit stairs! I strained. I reached.
“Ahhhhhhhhhh!”
Something cut into my leg. I twisted. Jammed a fist into an airbag chest. Slammed the gate on gaping jaws and a probing tongue.
Then I clambered toward daylight. Up, up, up. Sweating. Gasping. Leg nearly crippled with pain. Head throbbing from running into the turnstile.
The street! The pavement!
Gasping breath after breath of fresh air, I collapsed.
Rolled onto my back. And froze.
I wasn’t alone.
“Gehhhtuupoorraanjjsoooot!”
Words like a waterfall of syllables, strung tightly together.
Totally incomprehensible.
“Wutryoodooingindtheaghetoo?”
Okay. This was a dream. That was the only possible explanation. But what felt like very real pain from the Taxxon bite shot up what felt like my very real leg.
Right then I decided that this was a world I might never be able to figure out. And if I didn’t stop trying to, I’d crack up. Effective immediately, my goal would be simpler: Just get out of this place alive, body and soul intact.
I tried not to let the two forms in front of me, roughly human in outline except for a third leg and a seriously long neck, freak me too much. But it was hard.
See, each of them had only one eye, a big, internally lit thing that fixed on me like a follow spot. At the center of the eye was an iris, roughly like ours except for the faint amber and gray glow.
But you know how our pupils are in the middle of our irises? Not the case here. I was looking at pupils that orbited the iris like slow, optical satellites. These eyes studied me with all the suspicion of secret service agents at a presidential appearance. They seemed to stare right through me.
Though it’s more accurate to say I stared through them.
Because I was looking at blue lungs that filled and deflated with speech. And two bright green hearts pumping pale yellow blood through crystal clear veins. Miles of intestines coiled tightly near a swath of faintly reddish muscle.
Their skin was as clear as glass or water. Clearer, since there was next to no distortion as I stared at the organs beneath.
Specimens a biology teacher would die for. Although on whatever planet they were from, survival of the fittest was obviously not an issue. I mean, I was staring right at a beating heart. A perfect target.
Amber Eye stepped forward and yanked me to my feet. He repeated his question. All of a sudden, the rhythm in the speech, the slightly different note that filled each word … The pattern. It all made sense. It clicked.
“Get-up-Orange-Suit!” he said. “What-are-you-doing-in-the-ghetto? Work-truancy-is-a-crime! Why-aren’t-you-at-your-work-site?” A nearly invisible finger flicked something pinned to my chest. Then he looked up, way up, at the Chrysler Building with its Mylar sheath whipping with the wind.
There was a badge on my jumpsuit that hadn’t been there before. At least, I hadn’t noticed it. There was a hologram of me, and my Yeerk name written out. There were numbers corresponding to housing, work site, and work sector. Under the words “job title” was the term “Planetary Engineer.”
I gaped like an idiot. These guys were some street-level security force? I worked in the Chrysler Building?
“Maybe this is the place for this mute,” Silver Eye sneered. “Looks like he’s had a breakdown. Can you tell us where you live, Orange Suit?” He growled patronizingly while fingering a pair of red-tinted handcuffs. “Or can’t you remember?”
They could see where I lived. But I guess they just wanted me to say. I looked at my badge and tried to read the numbers upside down. “I, uh …”
RrrrrrrrrBoomBoom … RrrrrrrrrBoooooom …
The earth shook and a deafening boom thundered through the street. Amber Eye spun around, then spun back and grabbed me. Dragged me with him as he moved with startling speed toward the sound of the explosion. Silver Eye followed.
“Floor eighty-eight,” I said, faking an answer. “I live in the, uh, the Empire Towers.” I thought that sounded pretty good.
“Don’t be sarcastic, Orange Suit.” He reached forward and slid the cuffs over my wrists. “You think I don’t know that floors eighty-seven to ninety-two are a docking port? You’re coming with us.”
“Under whose authority?”
I struggled, but the cuffs were some living, organic material. The more I resisted, the tighter they squeezed.
The creatures laughed heartily, a sound like a trilling trumpet. “We’re the Orff, fool. Security agents to the High Council. We’re our own authority.”
RrrrrrrrBoooooooooommmmm!
Another massive boom and cloud of dust.
The Orff turned away from me.
I made a break for it.
“Hey!”
Silver Eye grabbed for me. I wrestled free from him and shot around the corner, limping from my Taxxon bite, moving toward a billowing dust cloud. But the Orff followed me. His tripod legs moved like quicksilver. Then he was on me. We struggled as the chaos grew around us.
I heard the distant sirens of approaching hover ships. The whistled lisps of Taxxon as they burst onto the street, spilling from three-hundred-foot earthen hives built up between buildings along the block, surging like beastly commandos.
What was this? What was happening?
Could I morph? I tried to focus. Tried to think …
And then everything flashed a blinding yellow-white, like I was a bug inside some flashbulb. All was noiseless, but only for a second. Then —
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM!
The pavement heaved and thumped as deafening pressure waves threw everyone in the street to the ground. All down the block, entire building fronts were instantly reduced to lethal waterfalls of shattering glass and stone.
I raised my head toward what appeared to be the source of the explosion. A tremendous skyscraper, towering hundreds of feet, a fireball at its base, teetered hesitatingly, like a circus performer on a tightrope.
My mouth opened in disbelief as the building’s graceful, tentative sway gave way to decisive instability. As the lowest ten or twenty stories disintegrated in a cloud of dust.
Then the entire structure sailed toward Earth. Faster … faster … toppling in a single rigid section. Falling … falling … then —
A thunderous concussion as the building ruptured and broke in two, missing the Chrysler Building by what seemed like a hair.
Concussion after concussion battered the Manhattan bedrock. I should have taken the chance to disappear.
But it was all I could do to crawl to a doorway and lie there, as a choking cloud of white dust engulfed me and a spattering of small debris rained down from the sky.
Then heavier particles, chunks of steel and concrete, were pummeling the street. And then everything went black.
Sirens blared. A splitting pain numbed my head.
I opened my eyes to piles of rubble. Spewi
The Orff were gone. The cuffs, somehow, vanished. Apparently, when you’re in Yeerk Land and you hear sirens and they’re coming to get you, you don’t wait around. You move.
I sprinted from the doorway.
“Ahhrgh!”
And slammed smack into a purple suit. Before I could regain balance, I was looking down the barrel of a handheld Dracon.
Yeerk Land definitely had it in for me.
I looked past the barrel, past the arm. Into the eyes of a dark female figure covered head-to-foot in dust. Blood dripped from even features. As our eyes met, her expression changed. It flashed from ruthless hatred to a mysterious mix of confusion, disbelief, tenderness, and anger.
My chest heaved involuntarily because this woman …
This woman … my memory …
“Ah!”
Without warning she shoved me out of the way.
TSEEEW!
Whumph.
Taxxon guts spilled onto the pavement as the bloated worm, teeth bared, skidded to a halt just shy of my legs. Three seconds more and my butt would have been nothing more than a pleasant Taxxon aftertaste.
The woman darted ahead. I sprinted after her.
She’d saved my life.
But it was for more than that that I followed.
With the agility of a triathlete, she scampered down a narrow alley mounded with discarded remnants of human society. A broken piano. Couch carcasses. Some rusting motorcycles. All of it covered over now in a fresh mountain of concrete, rebar, and fragments of still-steaming sheet metal.
I called to her. “Hey, wait.” She paused and turned back.
I rushed eagerly forward and her face turned strange again like she was searching her mind, searching …
TSEEEW!
“Hey! What the …”
She’d fired at me, igniting the air over my head. Then she disappeared through a large metal door opening off the alley, a side entrance to a tall brick building.