The Invasion by K. A. Applegate Read Free Book Online

world where human beings are nothingbut bodies to be used by murdering aliens.”
    Okay, when he put it
that
way it didn’t sound like a great option.
    “Come on,” Tobias urged.
    I swallowed hard. I closed my eyes. I thought of Homer. Of
being
Homer.
    I felt the itchiness again, and when I opened my eyes, there was fur growing on my arms. And fur growing out of my face. And fur curling up from under my collar. My legs itched and I realized they were growing fur, too.
    My bones … well, they didn’t exactly
hurt,
but they did feel very strange. You know when you go to the dentist and he gives you Novocain so the drill doesn’t
really
hurt, but you know it
should
hurt? I guess that’s what it’s like.
    My bones shortened. I could feel my backbone stretching as it extended out into a tail. There was a scraping sound as my hips suddenly folded in. I toppled forward, no longer able to walk upright.
    When my hands hit the floor they weren’t exactly hands anymore. The fingers were gone. All that was left were short, stubby nails.
    My face bulged out. My eyes drew closer together. Tobias got up and tilted the mirror down so I could see myself.
    I watched the final transformation as the last patches of my pink human flesh disappeared. And the tail—
my
tail—sprouted to its full length.
    I was a dog. It was insane. But just the same. I was a
dog.
    I knew I should be scared by all this, only I wasn’t. I was ecstatic. I was giddy. I was thrilled. Happiness just washed over me. Happiness filled me up.
    I breathed in through my ridiculously long nose and wow! Wow! The smells. Oh, man, you have no idea! I breathed in and right away I knew my mom was toasting a waffle in the kitchen. And I knew Tobias had walked through the territory of a big male dog. And I knew things I couldn’t even explain in human words. It was like being blind all your life and then suddenly you can see.
    I ran over to Tobias and sniffed his shoe. I wanted a better idea of who that big male dog was. From the scent of his urine picked up by Tobias’s shoe I got a sort of picture of him. See, Homer knew him. His owners called him Streak. He was neutered, like me. He spent most of his time in his yard, but he broke out sometimes by digging under his fence. He got a mix of canned and dry food. Purina. No table scraps, unlike me.
    All this information made me happy all over again, and I had to wag my tail. I looked up at Tobias. Helooked tall and strange and not very colorful. I wasn’t all that interested in
looking
at stuff. Smelling things was way better.
    INTRUDER!
    There was a noise in the yard. A dog! An unknown dog in MY yard. An INTRUDER!
    I ran to the window and perched against it and cut loose.
    “Rrrawf! Rrawf rrawf! Rrawfrrawfrrawfrrawf!”
    I barked as loud as I could. No WAY some unknown dog was just going to walk through MY yard.
    “Jake, get a grip,” Tobias said. “That’s Homer out there.”
    Homer? What? But
I
was …
    I tucked my tail between my legs. What was going on?
    “Jake, listen to me,” Tobias said. “It’s just what happened to me when I morphed into a cat. The dog brain is
part
of your brain now. You have to deal with it.”
    But … there’s a dog in MY yard.
    “That’s Homer, Jake. You are Jake. You’re just in a body copied from Homer’s DNA. That’s the
real
Homer out there. You put him out there. Focus.
You
are Jake. Jake.”
    I took several deep breaths. The smells! Oh, boy, there was this one smell I couldn’t quite—
    Focus, Jake!
I ordered myself.
Focus!
    Slowly I calmed the dog part of my mind.
    Let go of the smells. Let go of the sound of a dog out in your yard.
    It wasn’t easy, that first time. Being a dog is so completely amazing. For one thing, there’s nothing halfway about it. You’re never
sort of
happy. You’re HAPPY! You’re never sort of bummed. You’re totally, completely bummed. And boy, when you get hungry in dog form, you are nuts on the subject of food.
    There was a knock on my