I looked at myself in the mirror. “Great. I look like I just stepped out of a B horror movie with a very bad makeup job.”
“Why should you care what you look like?” Dana said without smiling, not expecting an answer. That was my first sign that she wasn’t too pleased about Phoebe.
Afterward I treated everyone to pizza, but I made the mistake of letting Joe order.
“No, not one with everything,” I heard him tell the phone person at Domino’s. “One of everything. I’d like the entire menu. In fact, make it two entire menus.”
“Domino’s?” Emma said in shock. “If you want to kill yourself, fine, but I don’t do processed flour. Hello? This is California. There has to be a Whole Foods around here somewhere.”
She was already searching the Yellow Pages when the phone rang. I figured it was the pizza place, confirming Joe’s insane order.
“Hello?” I said.
“Hello, indeed,” a cultured voice said.
It was Seth. Don’t ask me how I knew for sure, I just did. Just like I knew he was the one who’d trashed my place with his crazy felines.
“Who’s this?” I said, playing dumb.
“Who’s this?” the voice repeated almost sorrowfully. “Now is that remotely proper etiquette? Wouldn’t ‘May I help you?’ be a tad more polite? Bad enough they send a boy for me, but a crude American one with no manners? Nonetheless, to answer your impolite question, I think you know who I am. Though I daresay, if you don’t follow my advice very, very soon, you’re going to wish you did not.”
“Um, sorry?” I said, still stunned. I’d never spoken to a gas before, let alone one that sounded like it had trained with the Royal Shakespeare Company. “I really think you have the wrong number.”
“Better the wrong number,” the confident British voice said, “than the wrong city, Daniel. By the way, I heard you had a little problem today—with kitty cats. Or should I say kitty litter?”
Panic rose at the mention of my name. And the cats.
Ergent Seth not only knew where I was, he knew who I was!
Chapter 29
“OH, YES,” Seth leisurely continued. “I know who you are, Dan. In fact, I’ve been patiently waiting for you ever since that unfortunate accident with that silly Arbilitorarian pretender in the sewers of Portland.
“Perhaps you are under the impression that there is some similar business to take care of between you and me. But there is not. Because of your youth, I am paying you this final courtesy. You can’t say I didn’t give you fair warning. First the dream. Then the visit from my feline friends. Now an actual phone call.
“Move on! Skip me and go on to the next on your List, if that is your foolish desire. To each his own, or, as my American friends so charmingly say, it’s a free country. But if you value your life, then you do not wish to meet with me, little boy—for I am death its very self. Nothing that has ever encountered me has lived to tell the tale.”
Seth was more like a gasbag than a gas, I thought. He sure seemed to love the sound of his own voice. Too bad I didn’t.
“Okay. That’s interesting. But my name’s not Daniel, and I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, still playing dumb. “You have a good day.”
I hung up on him.
Then I nearly jumped out of my skin as the phone rang again.
I bent down immediately and ripped the cord out of the wall.
But as I stood there, something happened that shook my confidence a little. The phone, with its tattered cord dangling beside it, rang again.
Cold beads of sweat were rolling down my spinal column. My heart was pounding.
The answering machine beside the phone picked up after the second ring. Was that even possible?
“Dan? Hello? I do believe we’ve become disconnected,” the clipped British voice said from the speaker. “Never say I didn’t give you a chance, dear boy. The kid gloves are now officially off. You are now Dead Boy Walking.”
Seth began to chuckle softly. The chuckle morphed into a bloodcurdling kind of clicking sound. Like a cricket, a thousand-pound one.
All of a sudden, my lungs and face were burning. Then I started gagging. I opened my mouth to tell my friends that I was choking, but nothing came out. I fell to my knees.
That’s when Willy dove to the floor. He lifted the answering machine by its cord and smashed it to pieces.
My breath returned in a sweet, life-preserving rush.
“Seth isn’t your regular, garden-variety slimer, is he?” Willy said.
“I’m beginning to think,” I said between greedy gulps of air, “maybe not.”
At this I heard a horrifying noise outside. Cats! Hundreds of them, shrieking in the night, calling out my name.
They knew who I was too.
Chapter 30
I GOT TO SCHOOL EARLY the next day. Why school? Maybe because I’d learned my lesson in Portland. Or maybe it was because Phoebe Cook would be there. Honestly? I’d say five percent the lesson in Portland, ninety-five percent Phoebe.
My first class was history with Mr. Marshman, and he was right on time, looking sappier and happier than I’d ever seen him. Why was he so giddy and joyful?
“Pop quiz time!” he announced.
I noticed how I was the only one in the class who didn’t groan like it was the end of the world. Look on the bright side, I wanted to tell them as I took the handout. At least we’re not all on the floor sucking alien nerve gas and incapable of breathing.
Yet.
And fortunately, the quiz wasn’t all that hard.
What are the names of the two oldest, most complete hominid skeletons? Duh, Lucy and Little Foot, maybe. What was the first known great civilization? Depends on your point of view, I thought, mentally flipping through the origin dates of thousands of major alien tribes, some who made it to Earth long before anything in our history textbook. But I wrote the answer Marshman wanted: The Sumerians. These people had no idea . . .
I was breezing along okay when I suddenly dropped my pen. Hold up! It wasn’t too smart for me to show off, was it? I erased what I’d written so far and started scribbling wrong answers one after the other.
I handed my test in first, and Marshman graded it in about half a minute flat.
“Wow!” he exclaimed. “Just to let everyone know, Linus and Cujo were not the oldest hominid skeletons. Las Vegas is not the first known great civilization, and Sauron was not the Babylonian king who kept the Jews in captivity. Daniel, I really want to thank you. You’ve provided a perfect example of what not to do in my class.”
I felt my face flush as everyone in the room laughed at me. I kept my head down as I walked up and got my test. A big red 0 was written across the top, which actually kind of hurt my feelings.
Ground control to Daniel, I thought. Maybe you’re playing this dumb game a little too well.
Chapter 31
“STEP BACK, EVERYBODY. Give him room. Here comes Albert Daniel Einstein,” some wise guy said as I came out of history class.
One of the school tough guys was talking to his buddies in the hall. I was trying to walk around him when he grabbed my shirt and shoved me hard against a locker.
“Guys, feast your eyes on Daniel Hopper, the mindless new kid. Stand back! I speak brain-dead.”
“Me Jake,” another kid said, patting his Abercrombie & Fitch polo shirt. He poked me hard in the chest with his finger. “You halfwit.”
My instinct was to deal with bullies the way all pathetic, attention-seeking, disturbed individuals need to be dealt with—by ignoring them. But I was on edge that morning, and he was picking at a nerve.
I stared at his index finger, debating whether I should snap it at the first knuckle or the second.
A janitor’s mop bucket across the hall solved my dilemma. At a speed approximating that of sound, I shot my left leg behind Jake’s and shoved the six-foot, two-hundred-something-pounder with my right palm. He actually went airborne before he landed, butt down, in
the slop bucket.
“Watch those wet floors, and have a super day,” I said before I disappeared around the corner.
Only to barely avoid a head-on collision with Phoebe Cook coming out the door of the bio lab. She looked incredible again today.
“I was hoping to bump into you, Daniel,” Phoebe said. “Well, not literally, I guess, but do you have a free period now? I was wondering if we could talk. Please?”
I actually had geometry class, but why bring up pesky details? “Of course,” I said. “I finally figured out where the library is.”
Which made her laugh.
Which made me kind of goofily happy.
Chapter 32
PHOEBE AND I SAT on a couple of footstools in a far corner of the library stacks. Our knees were almost touching, and mine were knocking a little. No one else was anywhere around.
For about a minute, she stayed there staring at me while she gnawed on her lower lip. Then her eyes welled up with tears.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“I can’t fake it anymore,” Phoebe said in a shaky voice. “I lied to you about my dad moving us because of his job. We relocated because something awful, really awful, happened to our family.
“Last July, my little sister, Allison, went out to chalk on the driveway after swimming lessons and . . . she never came back. She was abducted. Somebody took her, Daniel. She was six years old. She’d be seven now.”
I sat there stunned into silence. I hadn’t known what Phoebe was going to say, but I definitely wasn’t expecting this kind of revelation.
Phoebe started to sob. She balled her fists in my shirt, and I could feel her shuddering against my chest.
“I’m sorry,” I finally managed. “I’m so sorry, Phoebe.”
As I wiped away her tears, I felt the worst kind of sadness inside myself. This was what was so different about Phoebe, I realized. It was our connection. We’d both lost people, people we’d loved.
“I know what you’re feeling,” I said. “I lost a sister too.”
Her name was Pork Chop.
Chapter 33
I LEFT PHOEBE at the doorway of her next class and immediately headed for the nearest exit. I was too wired to be in school right now. I needed to figure some things out. Maybe her sister’s disappearance wasn’t a coincidence. According to The List, Ergent Seth abducted kids. Was it possible that he had Allison? Of course it was. Keep this in mind: there are no coincidences.
I was coming across the teachers’ parking lot when I heard a low, whooshing sound, like a bottle rocket or something. The side window of the BMW in front of me vaporized in a shower of flying glass.
There were two more barely audible whooshes as I flipped and somersaulted along the asphalt between two parked cars, trying not to be hit. A couple of deep gouges blew out of the concrete where my head had been.
So this is what Seth meant when he said the gloves were off.
I poked my head up and spotted a muzzle flash at the top of the football equipment shed. Another projectile zipped past my ear, close enough for me to hear the air pop. This craziness had to stop right now, before somebody got hurt. The problem was that a whole football field stood between me and the enemy with a rocket launcher.
I closed my eyes and concentrated hard. When I opened them again, Willy was crouched there beside me.
“Whoa! What’s going on, dude?” he said. “I was sleepin’ in, y’know?”
“I’m getting shot at. The shells are about the size of bowling balls.”
“Cool!” Willy said.
“Not cool,” I said.
He glanced at the car we were crouched behind. A third-generation Chevy Cavalier. “This will do,” he said. Then Willy punched a hole in the window. He yanked open the driver’s door. “I’m in. Nice interior.”
He kicked at the steering column until he cracked the plastic.
“Damn! Ignition wires are supposed to be red. This looks like colored spaghetti. Daniel—color of ignition wires for a ’97 Chevy Cavalier?”
I went through pictures and pages of the car manual—yes, in my head, there’s lots stored in there, trust me—till I found what I was looking for.
“Pink!” I said.
“MacGyver, eat your heart out!” Willy giggled, then yanked the two pink wires out. He touched their sparking ends together. There was a chug-chugging sound and then the engine turned over.
“Willy, you kick butt,” I said, and crawled into the driver’s seat. I ripped the transmission into reverse, then pounded down on the accelerator.
Last but not least, I disappeared Willy again. “Thanks, dude! Catch you later.”
I hope.
Chapter 34
THE CAVALIER’S BACK WINDSHIELD got blown away as I gunned it through the chain-link fence of the football field. No, I don’t have a license in any state. Yes, I’m a pretty good driver anyway.
My fiendish opponent wised up when I was at the ten-yard line and closing on him. Talk about a touchdown dance! I flattened the uprights before I hit the corrugated steel equipment shed at about fifty.
It sounded like a bomb had gone off on the athletic field. The air was filled with shoulder pads and tackling dummies and helmets sporting big blue G’s for Glendale.
I threw the Cavalier into park and jumped out just as the sniper landed loudly on the car’s hood.
The first thing I noticed was his gun. It was definitely an off-world weapon, a notorious Opus 24/24. The kind of gun that killed my mom and dad. I really didn’t like them, so I snapped it in half over my knee.
The gunman was moaning as I picked him up over my head.
“You. Are. Toast. Unless you tell me where Seth —” I started to say as a steel chain swung around my throat. Alien-hunting lesson number thirty-seven, I thought. Save the wisecracks until you’re sure your opponent is working alone.
This really muscular walking tattoo parlor was trying to strangle me. I gave the gunman a heave and rammed myself and, more important, Mr. Muscles back against the remaining equipment shed wall. Once! Twice! But the third time was the charm. Now he was out for the count too.
I dragged the two of them together and placed my hands on their heads. What to do, what to do? I took a deep, centering breath, and all my power was there.
There was nothing, nothing like the feeling. Think of the best you’ve ever felt physically, lying down after a long run, dropping yourself into a favorite chair after a long day at school, plunging into a pool on a hot day.
Now, times it by a million or so.
My power was everything good and bright and alive absorbed and condensed into pure energy. I was its portal. I felt it bubble up like molten metal from my chest, through my arms, into my hands.
“I now pronounce you . . . elephant turds,” I told my attackers. “And yes, I’m serious about that.”
Both morons curled into fetal positions. They lay on the grass with their eyes open, limp and motionless. Like, well, elephant turds.
How do you like that? My mighty mastodon obsession had finally paid off big-time. Maybe my friends wouldn’t be teasing me about it anymore.
By the way, I’m not crazy for thinking elephants are completely amazing. You will too when you know this true story: Elephants were brought to Earth about three million years ago. From my planet. It was my people’s gift to Terra Firma.
How’s that for an FYI?
Elephants are aliens too!
Chapter 35
I HURRIED HOME and took two emergency reconnaissance jogs around the house. Everything seemed okay, but I came in through the backyard anyway. Just in case another Seth killer or two were watching my front door.
I almost snapped my key off in the lock when the door suddenly opened.
I jumped back, zigzagging, and dove behind an elm tree, waiting for Opus Magnum gunfire.
What came instead was soft laughter and the unmistakable smell of bacon. I peeked very carefully around the side of the tree trunk.
?
??Mom?”
She stood in the open doorway, wiping her hands on the homiest flowered apron you might see in the entire state of Kansas.
“There you are, Daniel,” she said. “How would you like your eggs, sweetie?”
What? I thought, following her inside. How could Mom appear when I hadn’t actively created her? That hadn’t happened before. Suddenly I was a little nervous that maybe Seth was controlling my mind—and her. He’d already shown me what he could do through the telephone.
I decided I better do a little security check here, but if this wasn’t my mom, I knew I’d start screaming. “What’s Dad’s name?” I asked.
She tilted her head my way. “Graff. Sometimes it’s Harold Hopper. One time it was Robert Zimmerman. Do I pass?”
“You pass, Mom.”
A plate was set for me on the kitchen island. It was piled high: bacon, on top of eggs, on top of hash browns, on top of pancakes. I could feel my mouth water as my mom poured warm maple syrup all over everything.
Breakfast in the afternoon was definitely breakfast my way!
Chapter 36
HEY, WHO CARES how she got here? I decided as I clutched a knife and fork and dug in.
Besides, these were definitely my mom’s pancakes—no one else could whip ’em up like her—not even Seth, I was certain.
“What’s that all about?” my mom said as I mopped up the last bit of syrup. She was referring to my ripped-up face plus the recent addition of a large, jagged cut on my elbow.
“This little scratch? This little nothing? C’mon. I’m an Alien Hunter.”
She wasn’t having any of it. “Okay, upstairs. March!” she said. “Hut, one, two . . .”
I sat on the edge of the tub with my eyes closed as she peroxided and bacitracined and bandaged my arm. I finally told her what was going on. The news about Phoebe’s sister. The attack in the school parking lot. How I’d gotten away.
She shook her head. “Elephant turds? Daniel, that is completely beneath you.”
I stared at her with an exaggerated expression of outrage—until she finally grinned. “Okay, okay. Beneath you and more than a little funny,” she said, ruffling my hair. “You and your elephants.”