On the way, we listened to the CD player. That was the only thing my dad liked about the new truck. He was playing some old jazz or something.

We reached the spot the highway patrol had told my dad about. We pulled over and put on the hazard lights.

"Careful. People drive like maniacs through here," he warned me as we climbed out.

Cars were blowing past at seventy miles an hour with their high beams on. The black forest pressed in around the road on both sides. I shone a flashlight around the edge of the trees.

Normally, the forest doesn't bother me. But I knew that we were actually within a quarter mile of the Yeerk logging camp. It was beyond strange to be practically going back to the place where, just an hour before, I'd nearly been killed.

It took us at least twenty minutes, walking up and down the grassy shoulder of the road, before my flashlight beam landed on a shock of black and white.

"Dad! Here!"

He came trotting over and added his light to mine.

"Yep," he commented. "I'll get the cage.Don't forget your gloves. You know skunks are a major vector for rabies."

"Dad, I have had the shot."

"No vaccine is a hundred percent," he said.

29 I walked toward the skunk. It saw me and turned tiny, glittering black eyes on me.

"Don't be afraid," I said, pitching my voice high. "It's okay. We're here to help you. It's going to be just fine."

Here's the thing about skunks: They are the sweetest animals alive. They don't have a mean bone in their bodies. But that's because they don't have to be mean. They possess the ultimate weapon.

Even so, they will always warn you. If they turn their backs on you, that's a warning. If they raise their tails with the tips down, that's a very serious warning. If they raise the tips of their tails ... you are in a very bad situation.

If you're dealing with a skunk who has turned buttward and raised its tail all the way, you would want to freeze. Trust me. Every wild animal knows this. Dogs, unfortunately, don't understand about skunks, but bears, raccoons, wolves, and most birds of prey know that you just don't mess with that skunk tail.

Maybe you think you know how bad skunk musk is because you've driven by skunk roadkill.

That's nothing. Up close and personal, it's a whole different level of stench. If you imagine the most horrible smell possible, then multiply it by a thousand, you still won't be close.

"It's okay, sweetie," I cooed. "Don't spray me. I'm your friend, so please don't spray me."

I moved closer and crouched lower, making myself small. I wanted to look nonthreatening. I moved very slowly, a step at a time, always cooing and baby-talking like I was going to grab a little kid armed with a shotgun.

The skunk moved! I froze.

The skunk settled back down. I breathed again.

"Please don't spray me," I said. I reached into my pocket and took out a bit of mouse meat.

We keep frozen mice for the raptors we handle. Skunks also enjoy a nice mouse or grasshopper as part of their diets.

"Here you go. Dinner."

I held the meat out for the skunk. The skunk didn't seem to be hungry, but it did accept the fact that I must be okay if I was offering dinner.

I crouched beside the skunk and set my flashlight on the ground. Carefully, with my gloved hand, I reached out to touch the animal.

It was shaking. Shivering. And, at that very moment, I could see why.

There was a burn right across the skunk's back. A perfectly semicircular burn, as if someone had simply sliced a scoop out of it.

"Dracon beam," I whispered. "You were there, weren't you? Poor baby."

30 Aiming at me and Marco, the Yeerks had hit this skunk instead. A completely innocent animal caught in the cross fire of the war between Yeerks and humans.

The Yeerks would destroy all the forest and all its animals to get at us.

"Sorry," I whispered to the skunk.

I lifted it slowly, carefully, up into my arms.

31 Chapter Eight

We met at the mall. It was a Saturday, so it was a normal place we might be.

When you live in a world where you're surrounded by possible enemies, it's important not to do anything too unusual. You don't want to draw attention.

Not even from your own family and school friends. You just never know who can be trusted and who can't.

The Yeerks believed we were Andalites. We wanted them to go on believing that. If they ever figured out we were humans, let alone kids, we were toast.

So we left no clues. We tried not to act like we were a group. We didn't want some Controller teacher or whatever thinking, "Hey, you know what? Those same kids are always hanging out together, acting like they're planning something."

We had to look and act and seem normal. Rachel still went to gymnastics classes and shopped. Jake and Marco still shot hoops in Jake's driveway or played video games. I took care of animals at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic.

There was nothing we could do to make Tobias seem normal. He was way past being normal.

But Tobias came from a terrible, messed-up background, shuttling from one indifferent aunt or uncle to another. He'd never really been part of a family or a structure, and sadly, no one seemed to notice when he simply disappeared.

I spent an hour wandering along behind Rachel as she moved like a professional through the racks at The Limited and Banana Republic and The Gap and the various department stores.

Rachel has some bizarre, supernatural instinct for when and where sales will happen. She doesn't need the advertising. She just "knows."

We were cruising through a series of tables piled with sweaters at Express. Rachel was looking for a particular shade of green that probably didn't exist.

"What do you think we're going to do?" I asked her.

She looked up from fondling a sweater. "What? Oh. I guess we'll probably go in. If we can find a way."

"That's what I was wondering. What way? How do we get inside that place? I mean, I know we're thinking insect morph. But if anyone is planning on doing ants again, I'll tell you right now, I'm not doing it."

Rachel gave a little shudder. "I'm sure no one wants to do ants again."

We'd had some really bad experiences morphing. But morphing ants was the worst. We ended up being the wrong species and tribe of ants in the middle of enemy ant territory.

You would not believe the nightmares that came out of that one. The tunnels pressing in all around, and then hundreds of vicious ant soldiers exploded all around us, attacking, attacking ...

32 "No ants," I said. I looked at Rachel, trying to catch her eye. "Right?"

Rachel shrugged. Then she glanced at her watch. "It's time. Ax is coming with them, so let's not keep them waiting."

"Ax? Uh-oh."

Jake, Marco, and a strikingly handsome boy were all sitting in the food court. They seemed to be arguing loudly about who had won some video game in the arcade.

"Hey! Rachel!" Marco called out as we passed by. "What are you guys doing here?"

I really didn't like this kind of acting. It seemed silly to me. But it had to look like an accident that we all ended up together in the same place at the same time.

"We're shopping," I muttered. "You know how I love shopping."

"Why don't you guys hang out with us. Have some of our nachos," Jake said, smiling brightly.

I looked at the paper plate of nachos. They were completely gone. There was nothing left but a paper plate with a slight orange stain from the cheese. There was a matching orange stain on the chin of the very handsome boy between Marco and Jake.