That's when I noticed an Andalite had emerged, though he kept himself beyond the range of the cameras. And he carefully stayed there. It was Ax!
"What does it take to stop this thing?" Cassie asked me desperately, as she tried to rake over the croc's eyes.
"More than any of us has," I said grimly.
Suddenly, the crocodile jerked its entire body
with incredible violence. I was in grizzly bear morph, and I never would have believed anything was that much stronger than a grizzly. But when the crocodile thrashed, we all knew it.
Cassie had been thrown. Much farther than Marco. I lost sight of her as she was flying through the air, squirrel tail flapping like the tail on a kite.
And now there was nothing between me and the crocodile.
This was an animal that fed by dragging full-grown wildebeests and impalas into the river. I was bigger than its normal meals. But this crocodile had a grudge against me. It had started to chow down and I'd gotten away. And it didn't like that.
It came for me. And let me tell you something: You do not ever, ever, ever want a crocodile looking at you for dinner.
Was I scared? Oh, yes. If I stood and fought, I'd lose. Period.
"Okay, that does it," Jake said. "We are out of here!"
Jake. He'd caught up to us. And he didn't sound happy.
Then in my head I heard Cassie's thought-speak voice. "I'm at the light switches! I think I can turn off the lights! Get ready to run!"
"What?"
"When the lights go down, everyone bail!" Cassie cried.
"I'm ready," Marco said.
And that's when fate intervened. Marco was climbing to his llama feet.
His hooves splayed suddenly on the waxed floor and he plowed into the back of Jeremy Jason's seat.
The actor - or the Yeerk in his head - was still frozen in horror. And he stayed frozen as he fell from the chair and landed directly in front of the crocodile.
The audience screamed in renewed horror.
Cindy Sue finally broke and ran.
Barry was yelling ridiculous directions in total panic. "Get a stapler!
Get a stapler!"
I think that's what he was saying, anyway. I was a little distracted.
Jeremy Jason was no longer frozen. "Ahhhhh! Ahhhhh! Save me! Save me!
Get it off me!"
And with my dim bear vision, I could have sworn I saw something slimy and gray come crawling out of Jeremy Jason's ear.
And that's when the lights went out.
"Okay, run for it!" Cassie cried.
Sudden darkness! Not pitch-black, but too dark for cameras or the audience to see.
Total pandemonium in the audience. It's one thing to see wild animals up on a set. It's a whole different feeling, sitting in the dark and not knowing whether those wild animals are going to come rampaging into the audience.
The entire studio was nothing but screams. Screams and animal roars. And above it all, the shrill, horrified scream of Jeremy Jason.
"Save me! Save me!"
I saw a rush of movement from offstage.
Suddenly an Andalite was leaping through the air. It landed directly on the crocodile's back. The Andalite tail flashed.
Flashed!
Flashed!
Flashed!
And suddenly the crocodile let go of Jeremy Jason.
"Ax?" I asked.
"Yes," he said, sounding grim.
I knew Andalites are tougher than they look. I'd fought alongside Ax before. But nothing ever impressed me as much as that. That crocodile was a tank. It was unstoppable!
And now it was stopped.
"Where's the Yeerk?" I asked Ax.
"l saw the Yeerk leave this human a few seconds ago."
So I had seen a slug crawling out of Jeremy
Jason! The Yeerk had panicked. It didn't want to be swallowed up along with its host body.
It was crawling around on the dark stage like a snail without its shell.
"Everyone okay?" Jake asked.
"Yeah," I answered.
"Alive," Marco said. "Not happy, but alive."
"Then let's get out of here!" Jake yelled.
"Definitely," I agreed fervently. I looked down at the stilled crocodile head. You know, even dead, it just scared the pee out of me.
Possibly because it was still very close to a yelling, screaming, cursing, hysterical Jeremy Jason McCole.
I bailed. I ran for the far side of the stage. But as I ran, I felt one of my massive bear paws step on something.
Something warm and squishy.
Something that felt like a slug.
"l don't think the Yeerk made it too far," I said.
We demorphed in the ladies' room. Ax did the opposite, morphing into his human form.
But we had lost Cassie.
"I'll find her," I said. "You guys get out of here. I'm supposed to be here. But we can't explain why you're here."
I headed back toward the set area. It was still dark. Whatever Cassie had done to the lights, it was taking a while to fix them.
There was an awful lot of shouting going on. A lot of unpleasant language was being used.
I turned a corner and practically plowed into the back of a man who was standing there. He didn't even turn around. He was staring intently at a person standing just in front of him.
I heard a voice say, "Yeah, can you believe my luck?"
The voice seemed strange and familiar at the same time. Like I had heard it before, but not quite this way.
Then I realized.
"I mean, I fall in a crocodile pit, my house falls down on me, and now this."
I raised up on tiptoes and looked over the man's shoulder. What I saw was me. Me.