I turned my head to look back up the stairs. The Hork-Bajir were a hundred feet away, pounding down on us. We were trapped. No time to morph, even. Trapped!
The stairway entered solid rock and earth just ten feet upward. The Visser's monster wouldn't be able to fly in there. But if we ascended that far, we'd run right into the Hork-Bajir.
I looked to Cassie, my best friend. I guess I wanted to say something meaningful.
And that's when it hit me. "Give me the Dracon beam!"
"It's not gonna stop that . . . that thing. It's armored all over.
Nothing will stop that thing."
I didn't have time to argue. I snatched the Dracon beam from Marco. I turned and plowed up the stairs, right for the Hork-Bajir.
"Follow me!"
"But-"
"Just come on!"
Up we ran. The distance between us and the Hork-Bajir closed at a startling rate. The monster was coming on fast.
"Everyone down! Cover your heads! Mole!" I screamed. "MOLE!" And I raised the Dracon beam straight up. Aimed it at point-blank range right up at the hanging rock and dirt roof.
I thumbed the power switch and squeezed the trigger.
And the entire world fell down on me.
I wasn't crushed by a rock. I was glad for that. I was smashed and banged up pretty good. And oh, was I scared.
Buried alive!
It had actually happened. I'd even made it happen. Buried alive under rock and dirt and struggling Hork-Bajir.
But what can you do when you're buried alive? You can either sit there screaming in blind, idiot panic. Or you can dig your way out. At least, if you're a mole you can.
I was worried about Cassie and Marco. They'd both still been in morph, so they had an extra phase to pass through before they could become moles again.
But wolves and gorillas aren't easy to kill. We all morphed and dug our lonely tunnels upward.
It took a long time. I had to stop and hollow out enough space to demorph to human so I didn't end up trapped in mole morph. Talk about wanting to scream.
But on the second round I emerged into the bat cave.
It took another hour for all of us to get there. We'd meet up in the absolute darkness, one by one, then in a small, edgy, worried group.
Tobias was the last to arrive.
"You scared us to death! Where have you been?" I yelled at him.
"I was worried about you, too, Rachel," he said, with a smile in his silent voice.
Finally we morphed into our bat shapes. Exhausted beyond all belief. I could have just lain down there in the eternal darkness and slept for a week.
And then, just as we were echolocating around, looking for the exit, the strangest thing happened. The entire cave came alive.
In a slow-motion rush all the bats began to drop their grip on the rock roof. They dropped, opened their wings, fired their echolocation sounds, and took off.
"Must be sundown," Cassie said.
"Yeah, but sundown of which day?" I muttered.
We exploded from the cave. Maybe a hundred thousand bats. Maybe a million. Who can count that many bats?
We headed for home, too exhausted even to make dumb jokes or laugh or be happy we had survived.
But as tired as I was, there was one thing I wanted to do.
Maybe I have a soft spot for lunatics. After all, if I ever told anyone what my life was like, I'd be in a rubber room so fast I'd get whiplash.
When I was done, I flew home and demorphed in my room.
I went downstairs as calmly as if I'd never left.
"Where EXACTLY have you been all day, young lady?" my mother demanded.
But just then the phone rang. My mom took the call. She listened and kept saying, "What?" She said "what?" about nine times, each time louder than the time before.
Then she sat down and stared at Sarah and Jordan and me.
"What is it?" I asked.
"It's my client. Poor Mr. Edelman." She shook her head like she was trying to clear something away. "He escaped from the institution."
"The nuthouse?" Jordan asked.
"He's gone. Ran away. But what's bizarre is how it happened. They're claiming a grizzly bear calmly walked in, knocked the doors down, and told the man ... in some kind of psychic way ... I mean, you have to envision a talking grizzly bear ... a psychic talking bear. . . told the man . . ." She checked the notes she'd written down. "Told him to leave, get out, but not to do anything dumb like trying to hurt himself because . . . the bear. . . had had a really lousy day and didn't want to have to save him again."
Jordan and Sarah stared at my mother like she was crazy.
"Hey, I'm not the one who claims to have seen all this," my mother said defensively.
I shrugged. "Bunch of nuts," I said dismis-sively. "I mean, come on. A grizzly bear. Right."
It wasn't much. I couldn't really help Mr. Edelman. No one could. But some of the time his own, human mind was in charge. And during those times, in between the mad ravings of the Yeerk, I wanted him to be free.
The doorbell rang.
"It's MAR-CO," Jordan sang. She thinks he's cute.
"Tell him to go away," I yelled back. "I'm tired."
Jordan reappeared a few moments later. She was carrying a huge stack of small boxes. "Your friend MAR-co says his dad is making him get rid of all this stuff."
She dumped the boxes of maple and ginger oatmeal all over the kitchen table.
That was the end of the first and only great battle ever to involve oatmeal.
And, by the way, if you ever see some poor, mad, deranged gentleman wandering the streets and raving away about things that live in his head . . . well, if you can handle it, give the man your spare change.