Attack of the Alien Mole Invaders!

  The principal looked up from the book he was reading, which was called From Principal to President. He smiled. “Abducted? I can see you’ve been studying your vocabulary, young man. That’s a bonus word, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Jeff frowned. “Yes, Mr. Bell, but—”

  “But, nothing!” Mr. Bell put his hands on his hips and looked down at Jeff. “I can see you’re heading for a bright, shiny A on your report card!”

  “Really?” said Jeff.

  “Our friends, Mr. Bell!” sputtered Holly. “Our friends have—”

  “Words are our friends, Miss Vickers!” Mr. Bell interrupted, gazing toward the mountains in the distance. “Companions, playmates, chums, pals. Ah, the good clean fun of words!” Principal Bell chuckled to himself and strode off, his nose buried once again in his book.

  “Much help?” said Holly, glaring at Mr. Bell’s back. “I don’t think so.”

  “Straight up Main Street,” Jeff cried, pointing. “Then into the hills, to the shoe store.”

  As they tore under the huge Grover’s Mill water tower, and out by Usher’s House of Pancakes onto Main Street, the two kids nearly knocked down a woman carrying a stack of videos.

  “Mom!” cried Holly to her mother. “Aliens!” she blurted out. “Aliens have taken Sean!”

  Mrs. Vickers looked concerned. “Our Sean?”

  “Yes, Mrs. V.!” said Jeff, nearly shouting. “Aliens took him underground with our other friends. Down there in the dirt.”

  Mrs. Vickers looked at the ground. “Oh, I’m sure he’ll be all right, dear. I mean, you know Sean. He loves to get dirty.”

  “Well, yeah …” Jeff had to admit.

  Holly practically exploded. “But, Mom! You don’t understand! There’s some kind of huge alien invasion happening in Grover’s Mill. And they already have Sean! And Liz and Mike, too!”

  “Aliens?” said Mrs. Vickers. “But dear, you know what I’ve always told you. You must ask your father. He’s the alien man.” The woman paused. “Oh! That came out funny, didn’t it? But we love your father, don’t we, dear?”

  “And Sean too!” said Holly, storming off and pulling Jeff with her. “This is nuts. I mean, what’s with these people? It’s like they’re …”

  “Zoners?” Jeff offered, skating alongside. Zoners was the word Holly and Liz used to describe the weird people that lived in Grover’s Mill.

  A chilling wind swept in suddenly, and the air turned colder.

  Holly looked at the clouds gathering on the horizon. Big dark rain clouds. “Yeah, Zoners. Let’s keep going.”

  The two kids charged straight up Main Street, climbing higher and higher into the hills.

  “Hurry, Jeff,” urged Holly.

  “Oh, man!” he grunted. “Climbing in these skates is not the easiest, you know, and besides that they’re like two sizes too small and—”

  “Jeff! Look!” said Holly. She pointed to a long wire fence that cut across the hills in front of them. “Looks like somebody has something to hide,” she said.

  “Maybe,” said Jeff. “Let’s check it out anyway.” The two kids crept up to the fence, keeping their heads low. When they got closer they saw lights flashing behind the fence.

  Guard towers loomed up just beyond the fence. Bright beacons were scanning back and forth across the ground. “Hmm,” Jeff mumbled. “Lots of protection for just a shoe store.”

  Bong! The donut-shaped Donut Den clock chimed the hour.

  Sssss! A giant puff of steam rose softly from the pan on the top of Usher’s House of Pancakes.

  “Time is running out,” Holly said. “Let’s hurry.” She looked down at Grover’s Mill. A storm was sweeping in as the sky darkened.

  Jeff felt a lump move up his throat. “We’ll find my mom and go straight back. We’ll save our friends.”

  But what happened next shocked them.

  KRAKKK! KA-RAKKK!

  Jagged bolts of lightning shot from one big cloud to all the smaller ones. Suddenly, the clouds all changed direction at once. They all went left. Then they all went right.

  Then they all headed for Grover’s Mill.

  “That’s no storm,” cried Jeff. “It’s them! The alien invaders!”

  5

  Into the Fortress!

  The two kids raced along the wire fence until they came to a gate. A heavily armed guard in a military uniform stood in front of the gate.

  He stared straight ahead.

  “Excuse me, sir,” said Jeff. “I need to see my mother. She works here. Her name is—”

  “There is no one named General Margaret P. Ryan here,” the soldier snapped, still looking straight ahead.

  “General?” mumbled Jeff. “Mom’s a general?”

  “Wait a second,” Holly said to the guard. “How did you know his mother’s name is Margaret Ryan?”

  The guard frowned. “I … I made that up,” he said. “Besides there are no such things as aliens.”

  “Who said anything about aliens?” snapped Holly.

  Jeff read a patch on the soldier’s shoulder. “And why does your patch say Alien Patrol Squad?”

  The soldier looked down at the patch. “Uh … my … uh … grandmother sewed that for me. Yes, that’s right, my grandmother. Now you’d better go home and … play … or something.”

  “Look, an alien!” yelled Holly, pointing over the guard’s shoulder.

  “Green or blue?” the soldier cried, running off into the rocks with his gun lowered.

  Before he had a chance to look back, Holly and Jeff dashed through the gate and ducked down next to a large airplane hangar.

  What they saw was incredible. An army base full of tanks and trucks and Jeeps. Lots of soldiers marched here and there. But there was something else, too.

  A shiny black helicopter stood outside a large building built right into the hillside.

  Stenciled on the ground in front of the helicopter was a name. General Margaret P. Ryan.

  “Your mom’s parking spot,” said Holly.

  A moment later, they were in a hallway inside the large building. Dozens of other hallways shot off the main one like a spider’s web.

  “Just like some TV spy show,” Jeff huffed, looking left and right for some clue about which way to go.

  “I’m amazed we got this far,” Holly whispered. “They’re going to stop us before we ever get to your mom.” She tugged Jeff’s shirtsleeve. “And don’t you dare tell me she works in a shoe store.”

  Jeff nodded. “I guess I can’t believe that anymore.”

  Then he stopped. On the wall ahead of him was a sign that made him blink twice. “Holly? Does this say what I think it says?”

  Holly read the sign over his shoulder.

  Project S.H.O.E.S.T.O.R.E.

  Special Head Office for

  Extra-Super-Terrestrial

  Organisms to Research and Examine

  Jeff turned to Holly. A big smile spread across his face. “My mom doesn’t lie!”

  Holly rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well …”

  They turned the corner and stopped.

  There was a huge iron door blocking the hallway. It had no doorknob or handle. A small gray box was on the wall next to it.

  The box spoke in a robotic voice. “Password?”

  Jeff looked at Holly. She made a face and shrugged. “Say something passwordy.”

  “Um … shoe store?” Jeff said to the box.

  “Incorrect!” droned the voice. “Password?”

  “Try your name,” whispered Holly.

  “Um … um … um …” Jeff stammered.

  “Incorrect!” the box said. “Third and final try before alarm sequence begins. Password?”

  “Come on, think!” Holly whispered. “Remember the alien invasion! Hurry!”

  Jeff couldn’t think. No words came into his head. Not a single one, not even his own name. Time was running out. He was sweating. His breakfast began to churn in his stomach.

  “Password?” the voi
ce repeated.

  Holly jumped up and down and started to push him from behind.

  Jeff looked at her. He froze. His brain was a total blank.

  Holly’s eyes went wide. “Jeffffffffffff!”

  The word echoed down the shiny hallway.

  “Thank you!” said the little box.

  The door slid open.

  6

  Escape into Terror!

  Holly and Jeff stepped into a large round room. The door closed behind them.

  They were alone.

  In the middle of the room was a metal stand about four feet high. A bright light shone down on it from the ceiling.

  Lying on the stand, in the center of the spotlight, like a window display at the mall, were—

  “Sneakers?” said Holly, walking over. “Oh, great. We risked our lives for a couple of pairs of junky old sneakers. Some guards must have left them. They probably stink, too.”

  “No way,” said Jeff. But stinky sneakers are what they looked like to him, too. Purple ones with yellow stripes on the sides and black soles.

  “No way,” Jeff said again, not believing they could only be sneakers. He moved closer. “They must be some kind of top secret space shoes.”

  “Oh, sure, top secret shoes,” said Holly. “The secret is, why are they here? Come on, let’s find your mom. Those clouds, remember?”

  “Just a second.” Jeff plunked himself down on the floor and pulled off his skates. “Ahhhh!”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Changing,” Jeff said, rubbing his toes. “I can’t move another inch in these skates. Besides, the sneaks will help us on the way down the hill. We’ll get to town faster.”

  Holly looked at Jeff and shrugged. “I guess.”

  Jeff reached over and pulled both pairs of purple sneakers off the stand. He put one pair on.

  Holly put on the other. “They actually fit.”

  “Uh-oh,” mumbled Jeff. “I just remembered a movie where the guy takes something off a stand and the stand goes down and—”

  VRRRRR! The stand slid down and disappeared into the floor.

  “—and there were these loud alarms and—”

  Weeeeeep! Weeeeeep! Weeeeeep!

  “Alarms!” cried Holly. “Let’s get out of here!”

  “Wait,” cried Jeff. “The laces!”

  “Jeffffffffffff!” screamed Holly.

  “Thank you!” droned the voice at the door.

  Fwing! The door slid open and the two kids shot down the long hallway.

  Weeeeeep! Weeeeeep! The alarms howled loudly through the building.

  “My mom’s going to kill me for borrowing some super-top-secret stuff!” cried Jeff.

  But Holly pulled him through the main hallway and they jumped through the front doors just as they were sliding shut. A moment later, they were outside.

  Alarms whined wildly across the hill-side.

  Floodlights from the watchtowers whipped back and forth across the grounds. Armed guards scrambled everywhere.

  The two kids bolted along the building wall. When no one was looking, they leaped up over the fence and jumped down the other side.

  The gate flashed open and dozens of soldiers swept down the hillside in the other direction.

  “I think we lost them,” whispered Jeff, crouching with Holly behind a ridge of rocks. “We’re safe!”

  Holly poked her head up next to him. “Yeah, but big deal. All we got out of it is sneakers!”

  “I wonder what powers these things have,” Jeff mumbled, glancing down at the shiny yellow stripes running along the sides.

  “You wear them and you run faster,” Holly said. “And we’d better use them now. Look!”

  Jeff turned to see the sky filling with dark clouds. Lots of them. And they were moving into position overhead.

  Grover’s Mill was turning darker by the minute.

  “The alien invaders!” cried Jeff. “Under the ground and in the sky. It’s a total invasion sandwich!”

  The ground beneath their feet rumbled and quaked. The two kids slid and scrambled and tumbled all the way back to town.

  Jeff knew something big was going on under the ground. He also knew that in a few minutes they’d probably find out what it was.

  Within minutes they were at the back door of the pretty blue house on Mike’s street.

  Holly put her hand on the doorknob and turned it.

  The door creaked and they stepped in. Jeff felt shivers stab his back and neck. Slowly he opened the basement door and started down the steps. Holly was right behind him.

  The cellar was empty. The floor that they had seen open before was still shut tight.

  “Terrific!” groaned Holly. “Our friends are down there but we can’t get to them!”

  Jeff stepped up to the square plate on the wall. “That guy put his face on this thing and the floor opened. Maybe if you do that thing with the fingers on your nose? And then touch this?”

  Holly gave him a look. “I guess.” She brought her fingers together and held them in front of her nose. She pushed her fingertips against the plate.

  Eeeee! The floor silently slid aside. Before them was a set of steps curving down into the dirt beneath the house.

  Eerie red light shone from somewhere far below.

  Jeff took a deep breath. “Come on, Holly. We’re running out of time. Those clouds are getting closer every minute.”

  Holly looked at Jeff and nodded.

  Slowly, they walked down the steps.

  7

  When Moles Sing

  The steps curved down into a rough passageway. The walls were dimly lit with the red light flickering from up ahead.

  The passage seemed to go on forever.

  “I don’t think my house has this kind of tunnel thing under it,” said Jeff.

  “You hope it doesn’t,” said Holly. “But maybe it does now. Maybe all of our houses do. The way the ground has been shaking and quaking, who knows what these guys are doing down here?”

  Jeff didn’t like the thought of that. A word kept coming back to him. Invasion. What did it mean when aliens invaded? What exactly would happen? Would he know what to do? Would he get to keep his stuff?

  As they tiptoed along, the passage widened. Their steps took them further and further, winding downward from the surface.

  They could see plumbing and sewer pipes and underground wires dangling from above.

  Soon they began to hear strange sounds echoing up from below. Grinding and clanking. The rough walls hummed and rumbled.

  “I feel like we’re in some kind of giant blender,” said Holly, touching the shaking walls to keep her balance.

  “Yeah,” said Jeff. “I just hope we’re not, like, the stuff inside the blender that gets all goopy.”

  “Uh, right,” Holly agreed.

  They turned a corner and the sound was louder and clearer.

  Boom! Chank! Boom! Chank! The clunking rhythm pounded through the tunnels.

  And then, they heard something else.

  The sound of feet scraping the rocky floor of the passage. And the sound of voices, echoing.

  Holly yanked Jeff back into the shadows.

  About twenty hooded creatures marched through the tunnel. The chief mole guy, Exetor, was leading them through the passage.

  He was also leading them in song.

  Their song was perfectly in time with the clanking from below.

  Zoll! (boom-chank!)

  Zoll! (boom-chank!)

  Zoll! is zoomin’ to our base.

  He brings doom from outer space.

  He’ll entomb the human race.

  He wants room in this weird place.

  Zoll! (boom-chank!)

  Zoll! (boom-chank!)

  Zoll! He’s zoominnnnnnnnn’!

  Just as the creatures passed by the place where Jeff and Holly were hiding, they stopped. The creatures bobbed their heads here and there. Their little whiskers twitched in the air!

  “The
y’re sniffing!” Jeff hissed, pulling back.

  Holly flattened against the wall, cupping her hand on her mouth.

  Exetor peered into the darkness and sniffed. “Come, furry ones. Zoll will be here in the twitch of a whisker!”

  A moment later, the creatures thumped by, their robes swaying to the clanging from below.

  Zoll! (boom-chank!)

  Zoll! (boom-chank!)

  Then they were gone.

  “That was way too close,” Jeff finally said.

  Holly nodded. “You’re telling me? If they find us, they’ll shoot us and kill us!”

  “I don’t think so,” said Jeff, looking down the tunnel. “They’re aliens. So they’ll probably just vaporize us.”

  Holly made a face. “Oh, I feel a lot better, thanks.”

  “Let’s follow them,” Jeff said. “Down there.”

  Holly looked into the dim tunnel ahead of them. She breathed in deeply. “I am so not looking forward to this.”

  Jeff crept down the tunnel, hanging a left into another passage. The tunnel opened up onto a wide ledge. Jeff stopped at the end and looked down. Holly moved up next to him.

  The sound was incredible.

  Booming! Clanging!

  But more than that.

  Beneath them, in the rocks, was—

  “A city!” gasped Holly.

  Jeff nodded slowly. “Totally underground!”

  It was a city and it was underground. Cut out of the rock beneath Grover’s Mill were buildings and tunnels and towers. A city of many levels, circling around and around in a giant cavern.

  “Well, somebody’s been busy,” Holly said.

  Somebody was still busy. Dozens of hooded creatures scurried around on the different levels. And in what seemed like the center of the city was a flat area with a large X painted on it.

  Jeff looked up. He could see the underside of the blue house. It was exactly above the X.

  “Whoa!” gasped Jeff. “How much you want to bet that this guy Zoll is going to land his spaceship right there!” Jeff stared at the amazing scene. “What is this place?”

  “Zoll Base One?” grumbled a voice.

  “Good name!” mumbled Jeff, gazing down at the scene below. “But, why do you call it that, Holly?”

  “I … I … didn’t,” Holly answered. “He did.”