I sucked in oxygen like you do when you pop out of the deep end of a swimming pool after you’ve been sitting on the bottom, trying to set a new personal record for how long you can hold your breath.
My eyes were still blinded by the light.
But I realized it was only because I was facing due east, staring straight into Earth’s blazing sun.
I was back among the living. I was standing on the surface of the earth breathing fresh, delicious, absolutely amazing air.
I looked to my left and right.
I was holding hands with Joe and Willy. Willy was hanging on to Emma’s hand, too.
I had brought my friends back to life with me.
And my friends were all totally real. I could tell. Don’t ask me exactly how, I just could. My three friends, standing by my side in the newly mown lawn of my rebuilt Kansas home, were more real than any hyper-real copy of them I had ever called forth using mentally rearranged molecules.
“Mmm,” said Emma, taking in her own deep breath of fresh air. “It smells amazing. Flowers, grass, honeysuckle. Terra Firma has incredible scents.”
“This is absolutely awesome, you guys!” said Willy, shaking loose from our handhold so he could slap me a finger-tingling high-five. “Feels awesome, too!” He flexed and stretched out his digits, marveling at how incredible it was to be alive again, to be inside a fully functional body.
While I laughed at Willy’s admiration for his own fingers, I heard Joe chomping on something behind me. I also smelled a meatball hero smothered in marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese.
“So, Daniel,” said Joe, his mouth full of mashed meat and bread, “you know that amazingly fantastic thing you do where you whip up a whole meal out of thin air?”
“Yeah?” I said with a smile because I knew where he was going.
“I’m right behind you, bro. I can already do main courses. Just need to concentrate on side dishes.”
Now I smelled deep-fried onion rings.
“There we go!” said Joe.
“How about teleporting?”
I couldn’t believe my eyes. Mel came bopping out the front door of the farmhouse to stand on the porch.
“Can any of you guys do that one?”
“You can?” I stammered.
Mel shrugged. “Well, after we did it together last night, I went ahead and tried it myself.”
“You picked it up after watching me do it once?”
Okay. I was slightly annoyed. Teleporting took me like forever to learn.
“I had a good teacher,” said Mel, with a wink and a smile.
A smile that disappeared in a nanosecond.
“Daniel!” she cried, pointing into the distance. “Behind you!”
Chapter 68
I WHIPPED AROUND.
The earth shook.
A giant monster, a hideous beast at least 150 feet tall, was marching across the flat Kansas plains, heading straight for the farmhouse.
Number 1 was back. And it was definitely bigger and badder than ever, too. Its splayed feet, which were the size of a train car, looked like they belonged on a colossal three-toed raptor. Its body was all bumpy bone and slimy, gelatinous muscle, with no flesh to cover up all the rippling tendons and gristle. It had the curled, stinging tail of a scorpion, the serrated claws of a lobster, and the carbuncle-covered spine of a hunchback demon. As the nightmarish giant lurched forward, its lobster-claw hands dragged across the open fields, slicing deep furrows in the black soil.
But its head was the most hideous part of all.
It was nothing but an exposed brain made up of swirled, spongy globs of purple goo and pus-dripping boils. Some sort of gaseous cloud wavered in the air just above the rear of its curdled brain blob. Every now and then, the gas would erupt into bursts of blue flame.
Up front, burrowed into the brow of the jiggly mound of gray matter, were two hollow goggle holes instead of eyeballs. The thing had no snout, just a gas mask–shaped mouth hole filled with a pair of fleshy, flickering tongues—each one at least twenty feet long and tipped with a deadly stinger.
“What is that thing?” said Joe, who had quickly morphed his meatball sandwich into a supercharged laser-burst bazooka.
“Number 1,” I said, sizing up the situation and running through all the new defensive strategies and classic battle strategies recently downloaded into my brain.
“I thought Number 1 was a big bug,” said Emma. “A praying mantis.”
“That was just the form it took. Until now…”
“Well,” said Willy, “this new model is even uglier. Daniel? Joe? Can one of you guys materialize me a weapon and a ton of ammo?”
We both did. Simultaneously.
“Thanks,” said Willy, balancing and leveling the two blasters. “I have a clean shot at those two frontal blow holes that might be its eyes.”
“Impossible,” said Joe. “The thing has to be two miles away.”
Willy grinned. “Looks like I came back with laser guided vision.”
“Cool.”
The brain-headed beast kept pounding across the prairie on its skeletal stilts, tearing down power lines with its bony shins, flaring fireballs out of the back of its wet and wormy brain head.
“We should surround it,” suggested Mel. “Have Willy aim for the knee joints. Its limbs are so spindly, if Willy knee-caps it, the whole teetering scaffold of bones will just topple to the ground.”
“I like it,” I said, glad to have my best friends since forever in the battle with me once again
“And I like our odds,” said Willy. “The five of us against one Bony Moronie monster with a bad case of brain acne? Piece of cake.”
And right about then is when a dark, undulating line appeared on the horizon.
The giant beast raised one of its arms high in the air like a Roman centurion.
“Charge!” it growled.
The line at the horizon swarmed forward. The new Number 1 had brought its legions with it. Millions and millions and millions of its dark followers carpeted the Kansas plains as far as my eyes could see.
And the whole stampeding horde was gunning straight for me and my friends.
Chapter 69
“OKAY,” SAID WILLY. “The odds have changed. Slightly. But, hey—I still think we have a shot at winning this thing.”
“Um, not to sound pessimistic,” said Joe, “but when was the last time five teenagers beat a million evil minions led by a Godzilla-sized exoskeletal creep with a scorpion tail and lobster-claw hands?”
“The last time doesn’t matter,” I said. “All that counts is this time. We don’t back down.”
“No retreat,” said Willy.
“No surrender,” added Joe.
We all charged up our weapons.
“Aim for the brain,” I said.
“Roger that,” said Willy,
“Wait, you guys,” said Emma, pointing at something behind us. “It looks like the cavalry just arrived.”
We all spun around. There was a golden line on the opposite horizon.
A million and more warriors—many riding horses, elephants, and camels; all bathed in the warm glow of a massive sunbeam that followed their every move—came charging across the prairie. Trumpets and bugles blared.
Suddenly we had legions, too!
In the lead was a brilliant white steed ridden by a helmetless warrior in shimmering golden armor. Her wildly curled, dazzling hair swirled in the breeze as she galloped across the open fields like Joan of Arc with two glowing swords crossed above her head.
“It’s Xanthos!” shouted Mel.
“And Mikaela!” I added.
“Who’s she?”
“A friend of my father’s.”
Could this be the backup my dad had urged me to find? I wondered.
It sure looked and felt like it. Just like that, we were evenly matched. The Legions of the Light galloping past us were as numerous as the forces of darkness swarming across the open plains to do battle for
Evil.
As Xanthos and Mikaela led the cavalry charge, my spiritual advisor’s jolly voice reached out to my mind once more: Remember, Daniel: You cannot fight hate with hate. You cannot eliminate darkness with something darker still. You can only destroy the evil with goodness and light.
Millions of golden warriors, all armed with shining swords, streamed past us to do just that.
In an instant, they collided with Zeboul’s massive army of disgustingly scuzzy creatures.
The battle was joined.
At stake was the future of Earth.
Maybe the entire universe.
Chapter 70
A SEVEN-DAY BATTLE commenced.
The fight raged on, day and night, for a full week.
We would send in a battalion of golden warriors armed with shimmering broadswords. Zeboul would counter with a brigade of skittering black creatures carrying three-pronged tridents.
Warrior after warrior evaporated into eternity.
Zeboul stayed back, beyond the fray. When we materialized guided missiles to take the monster down, it countered with anti-missile missiles.
The rockets, like our soldiers, canceled each other out, leaving the air above the battlefield thick with clouds of black and white smoke that mingled together to become dull and ominous gray thunderheads.
“This will never end,” said Mel.
“There’s no tipping point,” added Emma. “Good and evil remain in constant balance. A surge on one side is countered by a surge on the other.”
“It’s a lose-lose situation,” said Joe.
“But we can’t give up!” urged Willy. “The battle between good and evil may never end, but it’s still worth fighting!”
“Willy’s right,” I said. “In fact, it’s the only battle worth fighting.”
And so it went.
On the fifth day, Zeboul’s mind reached out to mine to mock me.
“Remember what your mommy told you, Danny Boy? You are not immortal. You were foolish to return to this realm. At the end of every day, darkness always vanquishes the light.”
“Until the light returns the next morning,” I taunted back. “You can’t win. Not here. Not on any planet where good creatures stand up and refuse to let you rule over them.”
“Your soul is in grave danger, Danny Boy. If you die again, it will be as if your spirit never existed.”
“You’re the bigger fool,” I shot back. “Every time you try to kill me, you just make me stronger. Strong enough to fix that black hole you poked through the Milky Way.”
“Ha! You will never be strong enough to counter my creative destruction.”
“Just watch me!”
But I couldn’t just zoom off to do a quick black-hole repair job. Not while the battle dragged on.
I was needed to counter any move or sneak attack Zeboul’s bloated brain cooked up.
Meanwhile, Mikaela was our field commander; Xanthos the bravest of our extremely brave warriors.
Wave after wave of legionnaires entered the fray. All of them disappeared, taking an equal number of enemy combatants off the board with them.
Light pierced shadow.
Shadow covered light.
On the seventh day, Mikaela herself vaporized as she took down Zeboul’s top general.
“Mikaela!” became the battle cry of Xanthos and our few remaining troops.
My trusted advisor led our final charge.
He and our warriors raced at full speed into the last line still standing for the forces of darkness. Our last surviving soldiers erased their last surviving soldiers. Both sides melted into a mist and instantly disappeared.
The plains of Kansas were smoldering and black for miles in every direction. My old farmhouse was, once again, a heap of charred rubble.
“It’s just us,” said Willy.
My four friends were still at my side.
I stepped forward and laid down my weapon.
“No,” I said. “This time, it’s just me.”
Chapter 71
“NO, DANIEL.”
Mel grabbed me by the arm.
“I have to do this,” I said. “If I fail, if I fall… promise me you guys will take over for me and keep Terra Firma safe.”
Willy nodded. Joe and Emma, too. Finally, Mel let go of my arm.
“Be careful,” she whispered. “I think I’m only allowed one soul mate. So don’t go and do anything stupid.”
“I’ll try.”
Willy powered up his blaster. “Just in case that creep has a sniper hidden somewhere because it’s too chicken to go mano a mano with you.”
“I think it is part chicken,” cracked Joe. “Have you seen that thing’s feet? Bock-bock-BOCK.”
As always, Joe made me smile.
“Daniel?” said Emma.
Usually, before any kind of combat she’s the one who urges me to show mercy on my opponent, no matter how foul or monstrous the creature might be.
Today, not so much.
“Take that ugly sucker down!”
“I’ll do my best,” I said. “Hang here, you guys. When I’m done with Zeboul, we have a black hole in the middle of the Milky Way to patch up or else we’ll be goners in a couple of weeks, anyway.”
I marched across the empty, scorched earth.
After a seven-day battle, there were no mountains of corpses or wounded warriors to be carted off the field. The millions of combatants on both sides who had bravely or blindly given up their life forces in this final showdown had all evaporated into nothingness.
As if they were never even here.
I figured this was the fate that awaited me if I couldn’t find some way to eliminate Zeboul. Some way to overwhelm its staggering size and strength. At least, if I were vaporized when I took out Zeboul, my friends—fully loaded with their newfound powers—would live on after me to do the job I had been sent here to do: protect Earth from whatever new evil came its way.
The ground under my feet trembled.
I looked up to see Zeboul marching forward on its ginormous, bony legs. Its lobster claws were snapping open and shut like crazed, jumbo-sized crocodiles. The thing was so big it blocked out the sun and cast a cold shadow across my entire body.
I remembered the story of David and Goliath and thought about materializing a slingshot.
Because, for what had to be our final confrontation, Number 1 had turned itself into an indestructible, earth-shaking giant.
I, on the other hand, looked human. And small.
I was a tiny teenager going up against a colossal incarnation of the enemy that had plagued the universe since the dawn of creation.
I was a kid. It was a mammoth monster.
But, like Joe said, at least I didn’t have big, honking chicken feet.
I narrowed my eyes and peered up at the 150-foot-tall monster.
“To destroy me, boy,” the horrid creature bellowed, “you must be willing to obliterate yourself. To be vaporized like all your foolish foot soldiers and my mindless minions. Are you ready to end your existence, Daniel X?”
I nodded slowly. “If that’s what it takes to end yours—Shorty!”
I could tell that calling IT “Shorty” puzzled the beast. It furrowed the brain ridges around its eye sockets.
Until, in a flash, I rearranged my molecules and imagined myself as huge as Zeboul. Then I tacked on ten extra feet so the slobbering giant would have to look up at me.
“Bring it on, pipsqueak,” I cried out in a voice so big, it made those tongue things dangling out Zeboul’s mouth hole flutter like wet towels in a wind tunnel.
“PREPARE TO DISAPPEAR, DANIEL!” it screamed.
“Only if you disappear first!” I hollered back.
Then both of its clasping claws shot up from the sides, aiming for a huge and easy target: my newly gigantic neck.
Chapter 72
I DUCKED DOWN into a squat the instant the double pincers were half a foot from my throat.
Zeboul screamed in pain wh
en his snappers found nothing to bite into but each other. I tucked and rolled, crushing a couple of torched apple trees in the process.
Yeah, when titans tangle, there’s going to be all sorts of collateral damage on the ground. In a way, it was good that the seven-day battle had left these Kansas plains a barren wasteland of shriveled and charred debris. Otherwise, we would have knocked it all down with our wrestling moves.
I remembered what Mel had said about the giant beast’s knees being its weak spot. They were nothing but a clanking collection of meatless bones. If I kicked it in its knobby knees I was certain the whole skeleton would come crashing down.
So I morphed my sneakers into steel-toed work boots, leaped up, and sent out a roundhouse kick straight at the gangly creature’s brittle legs.
Half a second before steel met kneecap, Zeboul clamped my ankle in the vise grip of a lobster claw.
Then it swung me around and around like I was a shotput and he was on the Giants’ Olympics Team, and hurled me up into the sky.
I was thrown halfway up to Alpar Nok and back. I came crashing back to Earth, traveling at twice the speed of light. So when I reentered the atmosphere and made impact with the hard Kansas prairie ground, my mind went blank.
I was so stunned, I let the big beast stomp on my head with its hook-toed raptor feet. Pumping its leg like a pile driver, Zeboul pummeled me a couple of miles down into the ground. Then, quickly extending the length of its bony arms, it reached down into my silo-sized wormhole and plucked me out.
It held me up in front of those hollow eyeholes and flicked its double tongues in and out of its slimy, sideways-opening mandibles.
I remembered the scorpion stingers at the tip of its tongues.
“Prepare for nothingness, Daniel. Now I will send you into the black void of nonexistence.”
Double stingers poked up out of the tongues.
I tried to imagine myself free from the beast’s grip.
I tried to imagine that I was the size of a tick.
I tried to imagine I had an Opus 24/24 aimed at its head.
But its mind read my mind and countered every one of my desperate ideas.
It was hopeless. This thing was too powerful.