Chapter 8
FURTHER PROOF THAT your nurse is actually an alien in disguise?
She whips out a Fearflash Stun Thumper—a wireless electroshock projectile cannon which is standard riot gear on the planet Cohlanghoo.
This happened maybe ten seconds after I kick-started my heart back into the average teenage Alpar Nokian range, leaped off the rolling stretcher, and raced (with my hospital gown flapping open in the back) toward the nearest tree line.
Nurse O’Hara fired a stun blast that missed me by a mile. I figured the eyeholes on her human mask had slipped sideways and obstructed her view.
I dug down deep and jacked up my speed.
I was nowhere near my personal best, a sneaker-sizzling pace of 438 miles per hour, but even in my bare feet I was doing a one-minute mile. I raced for the dark edge of the forest ringing the extraterrestrial’s makeshift POW camp.
“Stop him!” shouted the deep, rumbling voice of the creature that had been pretending to be my angel of mercy. “Incapacitate him immediately!”
An interesting choice of words, I thought. Incapacitate: to deprive of ability, qualification, or strength; make incapable or unfit; disable.
She (or it) wanted to disable me, not destroy me.
An army of guards swarmed out of the prison buildings. They were loaded down with jangling weapons, the kind you can’t buy on Earth—even in Texas.
Lithium battery–powered electroshock charges were exploding in white-hot bursts all around me. A couple of Nurse O’Hara’s hench-goons were firing old-fashioned Earth Tasers at me, too. I could hear their wire-tethered electrodes whizzing through the air and ripping through the foliage around me. Some of the barbed darts thunked into tree trunks. One needle-nosed projectile nicked the side of my knee, delivering a quick jolt of what the Taser folks call “neuromuscular incapacitation.” The sharp shock of fifty thousand volts delivering maybe half an amp of raw, electrical power momentarily interrupted my brain’s ability to control my muscles.
My knees buckled.
Momentarily. Because I’ve studied enough physics to know it was the amperes and not the megavolts I had to worry about. Amps are what can blow circuit breakers or short-circuit your brain.
My nervous system quickly rerouted the excess amperage, sending the electrical energy rippling through my body’s circuitry to recharge what, for simplicity’s sake, I’ll call “my batteries.” In other words, the Taser hit was helping me regain power the way jumper cables help a car battery bolt back to life, or the way Red Bull “gives you wings.”
“Thanks for the boost, boys,” I said over my shoulder as I ran even faster through the thick trees.
A Fearflash Stun charge detonated maybe ten feet to my left. I quickly juked right.
Where another stun blast flared.
I dodged back to the left.
That’s when I realized: Nurse O’Hara and her riot-squad goons were trying to prod me toward wherever it was they wanted me to go.
They were herding me the way cowboys herd cattle.
“Do not kill the boy!” the nurse creature screamed again. “His death has already been claimed by our Lord and Master!”
More explosions rocked the woods. I instinctively reacted to each one, changing my course to avoid the blowback.
Which suddenly stopped.
There were no more electrical eruptions. No more flash-boom explosions. All I could hear was my own rapid breathing.
Was the cattle drive over? Was I cornered in some kind of invisible corral?
I soon had my answer.
“RELEASE THE HOUNDS!” screeched the all-too-familiar voice of my mortal enemy. “Let the hunt begin!”
The Prayer.
Number 1, Nurse O’Hara’s so-called Lord and Master, had come to claim his kill.
Chapter 9
I STARTED RUNNING again.
Out of the woods.
Down an embankment.
To a deserted highway.
Sharp chunks of gravel and shards of broken glass bit into the soles of my bare feet.
But I kept running.
I had no idea where I was headed except away from IT. Away from Number 1—the monster that so desperately wanted to finish what he had started all those years ago back in Kansas. He had wanted to kill me when I was three. He clearly wanted to kill me now.
“LET THE HUNT BEGIN!”
His battle cry rang in my ears.
Fortunately, whatever drugs the quack doctors had pumped into my Alpar Nokian system were starting to wear off. I realized what the “hospital” actually was: not exactly a POW camp but a high-end hunting club for the most twisted extraterrestrial ever to set his crooked foot on planet Earth.
Some earthling hunt clubs like to fatten up pheasants, geese, and ducks and then release them into their private game preserves. Doing so guarantees their high-paying guests a quality kill, not to mention a delicious dinner.
Nurse O’Hara and her minions seemed to be in the same business.
Fattening me up for the kill and warping my mind so their Lord and Master would be guaranteed a quality—as in easy—kill.
Forget hunting him. He was coming after me.
I ran a little faster.
A reflective green road sign up ahead told me the empty highway was I-94 and “Bismarck” was sixty miles dead ahead.
I was in North Dakota.
How did that happen?
That last highway I was walking along, right before the Mack truck rumbled over me, was in Kentucky.
I ducked into a rest area. Made my way from the parking lot across a patch of weedy grass to a picnic area.
I stopped running. And listened.
For The Prayer.
I scurried under a picnic table to hide. The way I hid back in Kansas.
I had been in the basement playing with my toys when the beast burst into our home. I fell to the floor when I heard a string of deafening explosions. “We love you, Daniel,” my father had called out. “Always!”
And then I heard nothing except the clanging echo of the shots that had just killed both my parents.
Terrified, I knew the beast would come down into the cellar to kill me next.
So I squeezed my tiny body behind an old water heater. I tried to hide. Then I tried not to breathe.
“I know you’re down here, boy,” the giant insect said as his muscular legs clomped down the wooden steps. I saw him make a slow, horrifying roll of his stalk-like neck. “If you make me play this silly game of hide and seek, you are going to learn the meaning of the word punishment!”
Now, cowering underneath this old picnic table, I pulled my knees to my chest.
Was this it? My last hiding place? My final redoubt? Was our “silly game” about to come to very bad end?
I waited. My whole body trembled with adrenaline-induced palsy. And fear.
It was Kansas all over again.
Chapter 10
THANK GOODNESS FOR open-back hospital gowns that leave your butt hanging out in the breeze.
A sudden gust of cold air spanked my rear end so hard it shook me out of the little pity party I’d been throwing myself underneath the picnic table.
Snap out of it, Daniel! I said to myself, because—hey, somebody sure needed to say it. You are Daniel X. The Alien Hunter. You’re not a three-year-old kid hiding from monsters in the cellar anymore.
And even when I was three, I wasn’t a total wimp. I remember tricking The Prayer out of his third victim that day by turning into a tiny tick.
The memory made me smile for the first time in what seemed like hours.
Hadn’t I been planning to take the fight to Number 1? Maybe his desire to hunt me down would turn out to be a good thing. It would definitely save me all sorts of time doing recon and gathering intelligence. I wouldn’t need to track down The Prayer because I already had the perfect bait to lure him into whatever trap I set: me!
I quickly tested my external transformative powers by whipping
myself up a new set of clothes, including shoes and a proper pair of jeans.
The jeans weren’t perfect, a little baggy in the seat and totally not this year’s hot style, but it was a start. My powers weren’t functioning at the peak of perfection, but they were definitely on the mend.
I might still be vulnerable, but I was no longer completely defenseless.
I flashed back to when I was dealing with Number 2, a demonic alien who turned out to be the same creature earthlings have called Satan or Beelzebub. I remember asking my dad, “If Number 2 is the devil, what’s Number 1?”
His answer still gave me chills: “Something much worse. He is a deity, Daniel. A god.”
So, to summarize, I—Daniel X—was currently being hunted by some sort of giant, all-powerful, omnipotent, insect-like god. One that clearly wanted to use some of its omnipotence to slay me and then destroy the adopted planet that I loved.
I was going to need backup.
Serious backup.
It was time to summon the real (and by real I mean imaginary) Willy, Dana, Joe, and Emma.
I focused on their spiritual essences.
Nothing happened.
So I focused again.
Nothing. Nada. Zip. I was still completely alone.
But not for long.
A big truck came rumbling down the highway. Its twin headlights cut across the darkness as it swung off the road and onto the rest area exit ramp.
I zoomed in on its front grille. Caught the glint of a sharply angled bulldog hood ornament.
It was another Mack truck.
The kind that nearly killed me in Kentucky.
And it wasn’t alone.
Chapter 11
A CONVOY OF two dozen tractor-trailer trucks came rumbling off the interstate.
Pumping their hissing air brakes, they pulled into the parking lot ringing the grassy patch, which was dotted with picnic tables.
All twenty-four were Macks. All twenty-four had the same shiny chrome hood ornament: the tough, muscular bulldog poised to pounce.
I backed up a foot or two. I needed time to assess my situation.
The idling trucks, lined up in parking slots, more or less formed a semicircle of hot, thrumming steel in front of me. Behind me, I could hear a small stream gurgling through a ravine. If I ran across the open field and into the woods (again), the enormous trucks wouldn’t be able to chase after me. They weren’t what you might call “off road vehicles.” They couldn’t roll over me and crush my bones like that Mack truck back in Kentucky had.
I was about to make a beeline for the tree line when I heard The Prayer’s disembodied, high-pitched voice echoing through the night. The beast was roaring louder than the thundering din of twenty-four diesel-powered engines.
“RELEASE THE DOGS!”
I expected rear cargo doors to roll up so twenty-four packs of braying, barking bloodhounds could come storming out of the big rigs.
I wasn’t expecting a total transformation.
Every single trailer jackknifed up on its front and rear axles and morphed into a giant, muscle-rippled metal bulldog. The twenty-four trucks were turning themselves into twenty-four ginormous hood ornaments. Each powerful chrome beast had to weigh forty tons. They were forty feet long, fifteen feet wide, maybe twenty feet tall. Thick folds of shiny skin drooping down around their snubbed muzzles made them look angry at the world—or maybe just at me.
And these giant bulldogs had teeth.
Pointy steel bulldog teeth.
“SIC HIM!” screeched Number 1.
The giant dogs sprang up from their haunches and charged after me, their jagged metal paws clawing huge divots into the asphalt and chewing up sod like the teeth on a backhoe bucket.
I raced for the ravine.
Little known fact: Bulldogs were first used in Jolly Olde England for a bloody sport called bull baiting. A bull would be staked in the center of a ring. Bulldogs would be sent in to seize the bull by the nose (a bull’s most tender part) and not let go.
Guess I was supposed to play the part of the bull.
Four of the gargantuan dogs broke off from the pack and leaped across the ravine in one easy stride on my right. Another four did the same on my left.
The Earth quaked when they landed.
The other sixteen beasts were snarling behind me. Silvery drool slobbered out of their jowls like liquid mercury from a shattered thermometer. Their job, clearly, was to run me through the brambles and bushes, and send me skidding down a slippery slope to the bottom of the ravine.
I was being hunted. Driven to ground, as they say in the fox and hound set.
I splashed across the shallow, rock-strewn creek at the bottom of the gulley and scrambled up the far side.
When I reached the top, the eight wide-shouldered brutes that had broken off from the pack were waiting for me.
The sixteen behind me bellowed and howled.
“TAKE HIM DOWN!” screeched The Prayer.
Eager to please its master, the leader of the Mack pack snarled in reply and leaped right at me.
Chapter 12
THE DINOSAUR-SIZED BULLDOG locked its jaws of steel around my body like I was its favorite tug toy.
When I wiggled inside its box-shaped muzzle, trying to work my way free, the giant dog shook its huge head back and forth to stun me into submission.
It more or less worked. I quit squirming. Made my body go limp.
Fortunately, the metallic dog’s droopy jowls had flapped inward to blanket its sharp teeth so I didn’t end up ripped to shreds with my stuffing strewn all over the ground. But the pressure clamping down on my body was excruciating. I felt like I was being squeezed inside an oversized vise grip. I could barely breathe.
“Bring him to me!” I heard Number 1 cry, his voice muffled by the jiggly walls of the giant bulldog’s flabby cheeks. “Bring me Danny Boy, the little Alien Hunter!”
We were on the move. I heard the bulldog sniggering and snortling through its smooshed-in snout. I could feel its stubby front legs pounding down the ravine slope, through the creek, up the other side. Every step the forty-ton beast took rattled my brain.
I wondered if this slobbering silver hood ornament was part golden retriever. The obedient brute was bringing me back basically unharmed to its master, so Number 1 could have all the pleasure of killing me himself.
I thought about kicking out a few of my canine captor’s teeth. But I knew I wasn’t strong enough to take on a riled-up dog the size of a tractor trailer. Not yet, anyway. Chances were, if I lashed out I’d end up as kibble and bits. Lots and lots of bits.
I decided to go with Plan B.
Teleporting.
If I totally concentrate on where I want to be, I can send my body to all sorts of places just by using my mind.
Usually.
I wasn’t sure it would work, if I had the juice to pull it off. But I had to give it a shot. Otherwise, Number 1 would be giving me a shot, and most likely it would be a plasma blast from an Opus 24/24, an alien weapon so heinous and cruel it’s been banned across most of the civilized universe. The thing has a built-in molecular resonator that causes its victims to expire from pure, unadulterated pain.
It more or less tortures you to death.
Number 1 had used an Opus 24/24 on my parents. I figured he’d probably use one on me, too. Watching me die in a prolonged spasm of absolute agony would definitely give him the quality kill he so desperately desired.
I had to escape Fido’s grip. Fast!
So I imagined myself safe and sound on a white sandy beach. I blocked out the stringy dog saliva sloshing around my ears and concentrated on waves lapping up against a sunny shoreline. Instead of smelling rancid chunks of Pup-Peroni rotting between the dog’s teeth, I imagined palm trees gently swaying in a fragrant tropical breeze. The coconuts…
“Drop him!” commanded The Prayer.
The mammoth bulldog opened its mouth.
I slid down its slimy tongue and over the ri
dge of its teeth.
Tumbling to the dirt, twenty feet below, I rolled over on my back, closed my eyes, and focused hard on that distant beach. I imagined I was lying on a blanket, soaking up the rays, smelling bougainvillea blossoms.
I had to get there fast. I had to be there, now!
Because when I opened my eyes, I saw a giant praying mantis with blood-red dreadlocks standing over me. His eyes were glowing with satisfaction as he aimed the saw-toothed muzzle of an Opus 24/24 straight at my gut.
A squealing whine told me the weapon was fully charged.
Chapter 13
SUDDENLY I WASN’T lying on a beach or on the ground beneath Number 1’s spiky feet.
I was standing in the middle of Times Square in New York City. Taxicabs honked their horns. Double-decker tour buses swerved sideways so they wouldn’t run over me.
Because I was standing in the middle of Times Square—right on the dotted line between traffic lanes at Seventh Avenue and Forty-Second Street.
This was no day at the beach.
It was a night in bedlam.
I was stranded in a river of rushing traffic at the bottom of a canyon of towering skyscrapers, their sides cloaked in giant TV screens and blazing displays of neon light.
Yeah—my teleportation powers were definitely rusty.
They didn’t take me where I wanted to go, but at least they saved me from a sure death back in North Dakota. Plus, I love New York City. The energy. The excitement. The spectacular light show that blazes across the skyline every night. It may not be the center of the universe as many New Yorkers claim, but it comes pretty close.
Suddenly a Mack truck, its chrome hood ornament glistening beneath Times Square’s glare, came barreling down the avenue at me. My eyes zoomed in on the blocky, square-chested bulldog.
Would Number 1 really turn loose another of his forty-ton gigantor hunting dogs in the middle of New York City?
I wasn’t about to stick around to find out.
I dove to the side, and landed on a traffic island crowded with pedestrians.