“Excellent. You will not be disappointed.” Scratchull got out his bullhorn. “WALK SLOWLY FORWARD AND GO UP THE RAMP. SOMEONE ON BOARD THE SHIP WILL SHOW YOU TO YOUR QUARTERS.” As the line lurched into action, Scratchull added, “AND THANK YOU FOR FLYING ARSLAGGIAN AIRLINES.”
I felt all hope drain out of me as the residents of Forest Grove staggered toward the gigantic dark orb. Amy gripped my hand, hard, her fingernails digging into my skin. Grandma started to sob and shake.
There was no one to call for help. As soon as the humans were on board, the ship would lift off and be gone, and no one from Forest Grove would ever be seen again.
I watched the zombie in front, the guy with the overalls and John Deere cap. Only it wasn’t just a zombie, of course. He was a real person. I even thought I recognized him from around town. When his leather work boot hit the spaceship’s ramp with a metallic clang, something broke inside me. I jumped up and ran toward Scratchull and the Arslaggian captain.
“Stop!” I screamed at the zombies. “All of you! Stop!”
The lead zombie halted abruptly, and the rest of the line accordion-squeezed together. The Arslaggian captain pointed his staff at me. The swirling red lights merged together to form a glowing ball on the end of the club. My chest got hot. I looked down and saw a laser sight centered on the front of my T-shirt, big as a cannonball.
The big alien glared at Scratchull. “What this? You said no trouble.”
A look of surprise flashed across Scratchull’s face, but he quickly masked it. “Oh, this one won’t be any trouble at all.” He hurried over, arms outstretched and long white fingers gnarled up, ready to grab me. “In fact, he will be quite useful. If any human gives you trouble on the ride home, you can torture this one to send a message.”
I ducked away from Scratchull and ran right over to the Arslaggian captain. I had to crane my neck to look up into his face. I only had one card up my sleeve and it sure wasn’t an ace—more like a deuce or maybe even the joker—but I had to play it.
“You better leave these people alone, get back in that ship, and fly away in a hurry,” I said. “I have made an emergency call to the Intergalactic Police Force. Directly to Commander Rezzlurr himself. Ever heard of him?”
I could tell by the way all of his black eyes got a little wider that he had.
“He’ll be here any minute. And even if you load up and get out of here before he arrives, he’ll be able to track you down. It’s a straight shot from here to Arslag, and his police ship can go a lot faster than this thing. What do you think he’ll do when he boards and finds all of your illegal cargo?” There were a lot of details in there I wasn’t too sure about, obviously, but if you’re going to bluff, then you better bluff big.
The Arslag captain looked at Scratchull standing behind me. “No good. Trouble with police not part of deal.”
Oh, man. Was this actually going to work?
“You better just get back on that ship and get out of here right now,” I added. “It’s the only way you’re getting out of this.”
Scratchull stepped in front of me and pulled a slip of paper out of the pocket of his coveralls while the captain watched. “Pardon the intrusion, but is this the urgent message to which you were referring?” He unfolded it and held it up for both of us to see. It was the note to Rezzlurr, in my own handwriting. I was suddenly so deflated that I could hardly stand anymore.
“The first thing I did was rig the transporters up so that any emergency messages sent to the police would be rerouted directly to my room.” Scratchull waved the sheet of paper in my face. “Did you honestly believe that I wouldn’t figure out how to do something like that? I practically invented the transporter system!”
“So…Rezzlurr not coming?” the Arslaggian captain said.
I was close enough to hear Scratchull mutter under his breath, “Nice detective work, chief. You’re about as quick as the humans.”
But then he flashed that winning grimace at the captain and said, much louder this time, “That is correct. I suggest we begin boarding immediately.” His hands clamped around my biceps like iron bars, pinning my arms to my sides. “I would be more than happy to deliver this young human to your dungeon facilities myself.”
Scratchull hoisted me into the air and marched toward the spaceship. The open hatch loomed bigger and bigger, the gaping mouth of a space beast ready for the kill.
“Let him go!” Oh no. It was Amy, running up to us, with Grandma right behind her.
“Run away!” I shouted. “Save yourselves!”
“I’m not letting them take you!” yelled Amy. “And they’re not getting my dad, either!”
Amy reached down and scooped up half of a broken brick, then cocked her arm back and fired it right at the Arslaggian captain. It plinked harmlessly off the plate covering his stomach.
The big alien looked down at the brick and then growled at Scratchull. “More human trouble?”
Scratchull sniffed. “A girl throwing rocks and a feeble old woman? I hardly think so.” He inclined his skull head to indicate the circle of henchmen. “Have your colleagues escort them to the dungeon. I personally guarantee that this will be the last nuisance requiring your attention.”
Amy and Grandma tried to run, but they had no chance. With just a few loping steps, a pair of Arslaggian guards was on top of them. They were thrown over broad shoulders like sacks of potatoes and marched toward the spaceship.
“I am so glad you returned,” Scratchull whispered in my ear. His breath was freezing. “If you survive the ride with the Arslaggians—which I highly doubt, by the way—I believe I’ll take you with me when I depart at my home planet. There are so many pain-tolerance experiments I have been meaning to perform. Just how much physical misery can one being endure before death takes over? I’m delighted the field of science will have a thoroughly well-tested answer.”
I struggled and swore and bit and kicked and threatened and spit. Scratchull laughed.
The open hatch got closer.
Scratchull dragged me right up to the spaceship. The realization that I would never see Earth again hit me so suddenly, and with such finality, that it knocked the wind out of me.
The Arslaggian guards carrying Grandma and Amy were ahead of us, just a few steps away from the ramp. Our new lives were about to begin.
“Aahhhhh!”
Three Arslag warriors screamed and ran past us toward the ship, elbowing zombies out of the way in their rush to race up the ramp. Two of them dropped their staffs and didn’t even bother to stop and pick them up; they just dashed into the ship and out of sight.
When the two guards holding Grandma and Amy turned to look at something behind us, their arms went limp, sending their prisoners tumbling to the ground. The Arslaggians’ black eyes tripled in diameter while those fang-filled mouths dropped open. One of them let out a terrified squeak that I might have found funny under less dire circumstances.
Amy helped Grandma to her feet and they backed away from the ramp. The guard that had dropped Amy pointed at something but remained rooted to the spot. His partner grabbed his arm and tugged at him in the direction of the ship, but he remained paralyzed.
Finally the partner backhanded the frozen one across the face, hard, until black blood poured down his forehead. The trance was broken and both guards dashed up the ramp.
“What is it now?” Scratchull growled. He turned us both around.
Oh, no. Snarffle was tearing along a side street, headed straight for the common. How had he gotten out?
“Go home, boy!” I called. “Turn around. Get out of here!” No use in his getting captured, too.
But he kept racing right toward us. The Arslaggian captain staggered backward several steps and leveled his staff right at Scratchull. “You trick us. This is trap!”
“What are you talking about?” Scratchull had dropped the fake politeness, and his words came out in an angry screech.
“Lure us here. Unleash monster. Bad trap.” The clu
b at the end of his staff lit up, and Scratchull’s gleaming white face glowed an eerie red.
Scratchull let go of me and held up his hands, trying to calm the captain. “That thing? A monster? Not at all, my good fellow. That is only a snarffle. A common house pet. Surely no cause for alarm.”
The captain continued to back up toward the ship. He kept the laser sight on the white alien but pointed to Snarffle with his free hand. “House pet? Do you not see markings on back? Can you not count legs? That is the Monstrous Mouth of Morglarz! Everyone know that!”
Snarffle ran right up to me. I dropped down and scooped him up in my arms. He whistled happily and licked me all over.
The Arslaggian captain stopped in his tracks. His mouth dropped open so wide I thought maybe he had unhinged his jaw. “A child?” It came out in a choked whisper. “A child commands the Monstrous Mouth of Morglarz?”
“What in the galaxy are you talking about?” Scratchull shouted. “He doesn’t command anything. He walks that stupid thing around on a leash and gives it treats.”
Snarffle hopped down off my lap and whistle-growled at Scratchull.
“Do not anger it!” the captain cried. The half-dozen guards who hadn’t run back onto the spaceship moved to huddle behind their leader, staffs poised at the ready in two-handed grips.
“What are you afraid it might do?” Scratchull said. “Lick you to death?”
“You crazy?” said the captain. “Is most destructive beast in cosmos! Used in many wars. Could eat entire spaceship!”
The first spiderweb lines, faint and gray, spread across Scratchull’s throat and jaw. He was losing it. I winked at Grandma and Amy, huddled together near the hatch.
“Well, well, well,” I said, walking casually over to the white alien, followed by Snarffle. “Have we found something that the wise and all-knowing Scratchull has never heard of before?”
The spiderweb lines crept past his jaw to cover his cheeks. “Nonsense.” He whispered so only I could hear. “That is a simple house pet, and you know it. These Arslags have just spent too much time drinking fermented zandeen juice while they listen to space legends. As soon as I—”
“Maybe I’ll give them a little demonstration,” I said. The spiderweb lines stretched to his forehead and burned black. I turned to Snarffle. “Hey, boy! You hungry?” The purple alien wriggled in joyous anticipation. I pointed to a line of cars parked near the common. “Snack time, buddy. Go nuts.” Snarffle’s little tale twirled and he raced over to the cars.
A pickup truck, an SUV, and a convertible vanished beneath a purple blur in just a few moments. The huddled group of Arslaggians took several shuffling steps backward. One of them was shaking so hard that his staff rattled against the bricks.
“Snarffle! That’s enough!” I called. The blur stopped instantly, and Snarffle sat calmly on the sidewalk, half of a tire sticking out of his mouth. “All right, you can finish that up, but then come back over here, please.” Snarffle gulped down the rest of the tire, then trotted over to me. I picked him up and he panted heavily.
An Arslag guard grabbed the captain’s shoulder and pointed at us. “He give orders! To Monstrous Mouth of Morglarz!”
“And Monstrous Mouth of Morglarz obey!” said another.
Snarffle burped happily and licked me on the cheek. I carried him in the crook of one arm and approached the group of Arslaggians. They started to shrink away. “Stay where you are. I will not let him harm you.” I tried to make my voice a little deeper and sound all official and stuff. I think I did a pretty good job, too, because they all froze up and stared at me.
I marched until I was standing directly in front of the Arslaggian captain in the shadow of his spaceship. “Should we talk about you getting back in that ship and flying far away from here?” I said.
I didn’t get a chance to say anything more, though, because Scratchull wormed his way in between us. “Do not listen to anything he says,” the white alien screeched. “He’s a mere child, just a stupid, prattling human boy who—”
“Stop talking.” The captain stuck the glowing end of his staff against Scratchull’s chest and pushed him out of the way. Then he pointed at me. “I negotiate with him now.”
I smiled at Scratchull, then cleared my throat and addressed the Arslaggian captain. “As I was saying, I think it’s time for you to leave now.”
“What we get? In return?”
I shifted my stance so that Snarffle was closer to the Arslaggians. The guards backed away, but the captain held his ground. “Well, you get to keep your ship. How about that?”
The captain shook his head. “If he eat ship, we stuck here. Then we make war. Is Arslag way.”
Then he extended his club so that it was pointed at the line of cars that Snarffle had started devouring. A laser shot out the end of the club, and three nearby vehicles were encompassed in a circle of red light.
The captain jerked his arm upward, pointing the staff in the air. The cars shot a hundred feet above the road, tethered to the staff by a ray of red light. The captain flicked his wrist this way and that and the cars zigzagged all over the sky. Finally, he brought his arm down, fast, and the cars plummeted back to Earth and shattered. A millions bits of twisted metal exploded into the air and then rained down all over the street, and you couldn’t even tell they had once been cars at all.
The captain looked back at me. “Ten thousand Arslag soldiers on ship. All have weapon. Mouth of Morglarz mighty, but not get all. You want war?”
“Ummm…no.” It looked like we had hit a stalemate.
The captain sneered. “So what we get? In return?”
Good question. What did we have that these guys could possibly want?
The Arslag guards, bolstered by their captain’s confidence, closed in on us in a rough semicircle. Snarffle whistle-growled and I patted him to calm him down. The air was electrified by pre-fight tension.
“Perhaps I could make a suggestion?” Grandma said. She and Amy walked over to join our little group. She looked perfectly comfortable, just like she was serving brunch to a family of alien Tourists back at her inn.
The Arslag captain looked at me. You know, because I was in charge. I nodded. “Go ahead, Grandma.”
“How about you take this fellow right here?” She smiled sweetly and pointed at Scratchull. “He wanted to go along with you anyway. This way you just keep him.”
Scratchull’s spiderweb lines smoldered darkly. He stepped toward Grandma. “How dare you—”
“Shut mouth,” the captain said. He slammed the club into Scratchull’s chest this time, knocking the white alien backward until he fell, sprawling, across the bricks. “Keep it shut.”
The captain looked back at me. “We come far. For thousand slaves.” He made a dismissive gesture at Scratchull. “He just one. Not fair. No deal.”
“Actually, that’s not quite true, sir.” Amy stepped forward and pulled the baby monitor out of her pocket. “If you don’t believe us, just listen to what Scratchull himself has to say about his own trade value.”
She fiddled with the buttons on the monitor until Scratchull’s voice came booming out of the speaker. His words had made me so angry the first time I heard them, crouching in his closet, but they sounded pretty sweet right now: “Having the humans die so that I may continue my valuable work is a small price to pay. If you spent any time here at all it would be plain enough for even you to see: A single one of me is worth billions of these earthlings. Indeed, an entire planet of them.”
Amy flicked off the monitor with a satisfied smile. How did I get lucky enough to meet the coolest girl in the universe?
“I would take his word for it if I were you,” I told the captain. “He’s extremely intelligent. Just ask him.”
“Yeah,” Amy said. “There’s so much he can do for you. Tell me, do you ever have any trouble with the technology on your ship?”
The captain shrugged. “Sure. Sometimes. Everybody does.”
“Well he can fix it
for you, no problem,” Amy said.
“Right. You heard him a few minutes ago: I practically invented the transporter system!” I did a pretty fair Scratchull imitation, if I do say so myself.
“And he’s a wonderful cook,” Grandma chimed in. “I’m sure it’s a long flight home. Scratchull could bake your entire crew all sorts of wonderful treats. He has a real knack for serving large crowds.”
The captain tilted his head and looked a question at his guards. The guards glared at us. The decision hung in the balance.
“Oh, and he doesn’t have to sleep, so he can work around the clock for you without ever taking a break. He’s very efficient that way.”
“Hmmmm.” The captain mulled everything over, scratching at his hideous face with a thick talon of a fingernail. He looked at Scratchull, then at the line of zombies, then back at the rest of us. “Hmmmm.”
I whispered into Snarffle’s ear. “Give him something to think about, buddy. Scare ’em a little.”
Snarffle whistle-growled deep in his throat and wriggled as if trying to work his way out of my grip. Then he looked up at the ship and licked his lips greedily.
“Deal,” the Arslag captain said abruptly. He turned and walked up the ramp. The biggest guard grabbed Scratchull by the back of his coveralls and pulled him toward the ship. The white alien was dragged heavily across the bricks of the common.
I expected screaming and swearing and threatening. But Scratchull had finally lost his words. The spiderweb lines drained from his face, leaving it not just white but blank. His eyes were dull and his jaw was slack. I realized that he looked just like one of the zombies.
And then he was hauled up the ramp and out of sight. The hatch closed, the tripod unfolded itself to become wings again, and the dark globe shot straight up in the air, so fast it was out of sight in just a few seconds.
“That was the coolest Pioneer Day Festival ever,” Amy said.
I set Snarffle down and scratched at his sweet spot. He wriggled all over and twirled his tail. “Nice job, buddy. Yes, that’s a good boy, Snarffle.”
Alien on a Rampage Page 22