B20C25/26 - Outrun

We hauled like only a cockroach can haul: six legs scampering madly, like Wile E. Coyote loading up to chase Roadrunner.

Zoom! Off across the steel deck.

Zoom! Over a seam in the floor that was maybe an eighth of an inch but seemed like a wide ditch.

Zoom! My little compound eyes millimeters above the ground, my antennae waving, streaming out behind me.

Zoom! We were Vipers on the interstate! We were Porsches on the autobahn! We were like those crazy rocket cars out on the salt flats. We were moving at full, screaming, cockroach speed.

Which, unfortunately, is about walking speed for an average adult human.

<Step on them!> Visser Three cried triumphantly. <Crush them!>

But we had one other skill, in addition to looking disgusting: We were agile little bugs. Ever try and step on a roach going full out? Ever try and step on a roach armed with full human intelligence?

It isn't easy.

WHOOOOOOOSH! Down came something so big it blocked out the sky.

I stalled the legs on my left, motored the legs on my right, and did a Bat-turn that would have left the Batmobile skidding.

BOOOOOMMMMM! A Hork-Bajir clawed foot the size of Arkansas landed behind me. Hah! Too slow.

Too slow by about three millimeters. Next one might get me.

Then . . .

<Opening up ahead here!> Jake yelled.

Opening to where? I didn't care. I saw a dark, horizontal band stretching forever to my left and almost forever to my right. It was just a seam between one level of steel and another, but it was taller than a quarter was thick, and that's all I needed.

WHOOOOOSH!

BOOOOOMMM!

<Ahhh!> Suddenly I was running on five legs. One had been yanked out by the roots as the Hork-Bajir toe landed on it. The roach didn't care. It creeped me out, but the roach was indifferent.

We were in a two-dimensional universe. Below us, steel. Above us, pressing down on our backs, steel. We could go forward/back, and left/right. That was it. We were an Etch-A-Sketch drawing.

<Light ahead,> Ax reported.

We went for the light. But overhead was a pounding thunderstorm like nothing you've ever imagined. Dozens of humongous Hork-Bajir running above us, their massive impacts translating down through the steel. We might as well have been running around inside a drum.

BOOOM!BOOOM!BOOOM!BOOOM!

<See, isn't this fun, David?> I said, trying out a little humor. <Ah, yes, life as an Animorph. It's not a job. It's an adventure!>

All the while, the dim light ahead grew brighter. And suddenly, the pounding footsteps above us died off. We had passed beneath some kind of wall. Bulkhead, I guess it's called on a ship. Anyway, the thunder was behind us, the light ahead of us, and I was starting to experience a tiny ray of hope amidst the gibbering terror.

Say one thing for roaches: They don't wear out.

HSSSSSSSSSS.

<What's that sound?> David asked.

My whole body could feel that the hissing was behind us. And my antennae were already getting a sick, quivering feeling that they smelled something unpleasant.

I stopped. Spun toward my two-legged side and looked back. Through compound eyes I basically saw nothing. Nothing but a narrowness, a horizontal narrowness. And yet . . . something was coming nearer. I could feel it.

Something that smelled.

Something that . . .

<RAID!> I screamed. <They're gassing us!>

(...)

<The light!> Ax yelled. <Go to the light!>

<If that gas reaches us we'll not only go to the light, we'll be saying "hello" to all our dead relatives and explaining our impure thoughts to Saint Peter!> I cried.

<What?> Ax asked, puzzled.

<Just RUUUUUN!>

The gas. The light. The gas. The light.

A pole, heading upward into the light.

Zoooom! A roach shot up the pole.

Zoooom! Zoooom! Zooom!

And then me. The little roach brain, which wasn't bright enough to add two plus two, was a world-class expert at running away. I jumped, went vertical, hit that pole, and up I went. Zoooom!

The gas wave rolled by beneath me. I hauled straight up. Out into the light.

<Yeeeee-haaahhh!> I screamed in total, idiot glee at having survived. <Rachel is going to be so mad she missed this.>

We were in a very bright room. Steel floor all around, but just one distant pair of Hork-Bajir legs. And then, over my head I saw it: the Leaning Tower of Wing Tip. A gigantic shoe, cocked at an angle, totally still. It seemed so tall it was like it disappeared into the clouds. It may well have been a size thirteen.