Invasion

by Jon S. Lewis

  Grandpa McAlister walked to the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee. “You’re too young to get involved in this mess.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Apparently so.”

  Colt sat down, and neither one of them spoke for a long while. “Why do they want to get rid of Oz’s dad?” Colt finally asked.

  “It’s complicated, but you can bet that Lobo has his own opinions about how to run the program, and they aren’t working.”

  “Lobo?”

  “That’s what the men called Romero. He’s cunning and strong, like a wolf.”

  “You said you don’t want me to get involved.”

  Grandpa McAlister nodded. “That’s right.”

  “I think it’s too late.”

  “How’s that?”

  Colt described the bizarre twist that his life had taken thanks to Albert Van Cleve’s phone call.

  “I don’t know why I’m surprised,” Grandpa said. He sat there staring at his coffee cup.

  Colt didn’t say a word.

  “Did you know that I was your age when I enlisted?” Grandpa said.

  “I thought that you had to be eighteen to join the army.”

  “Back then it didn’t take much to forge documents. I was living in Sanborn, Iowa, and I ran around with a couple of guys named Dale and Hank. Dale’s brother had already been through basic, and he was getting ready to ship over to London.

  “We decided that we couldn’t wait any longer, but the nearest recruiter was twenty miles away. He probably thought we were a band of idiots when we showed up on that old tractor, but by the time we left the office we were enlisted in the United States Army.”

  “You took a tractor?”

  “If we’d tried to borrow a car, our parents would have known what we were up to.”

  “Weren’t you scared?”

  “We were too young and stupid to be scared,” Grandpa said. “I suppose that’s why we volunteered for an experimental unit. Well, that and the fact that they offered double the pay. A month later we were shipped off to the Military Intelligence Training Center at Camp Ritchie for something called the CHAOS program.”

  “So you really are the Phantom Flyer.”

  Grandpa McAlister laughed. “I’m no superhero, if that’s what you’re asking. But from what I’ve been told, the artist may have used my picture as a model for his drawings.”

  Colt sat there caught between euphoria, disbelief, and awe. “Did Dad know?”

  “He joined the program after he graduated from the Naval Academy,” McAlister said.

  “Dad was a CHAOS agent?”

  “For a time, but he got out at the first chance. It was the smartest thing he ever did.”

  “So everything that happened in the Phantom Flyer comics was real?”

  Grandpa McAlister didn’t say anything for a moment. “I suppose it’s real enough, but they took liberties when it suited their needs.”

  “Did you wear a jet pack?”

  “It’s not as glorious as it sounds, but yes.”

  “I don’t get it,” Colt said. “If CHAOS was supposed to be classified, why did they make comic books about it?”

  “It was all part of the propaganda machine,” McAlister said. “The revenue helped support the war effort, and President Roosevelt knew that a comic book would keep young men enthusiastic about the war. He was right. The Phantom Flyer became the face of the United States military to anyone who wasn’t old enough to enlist yet.”

  “Or sneaky enough to forge his own documents.”

  “I suppose that’s fair,” Grandpa McAlister said with a wink.

  Colt reached into his backpack and pulled out a comic book. It was the issue where soldiers with red eyes were swarmed around the Phantom Flyer. “Did you see anything like this?”

  Grandpa McAlister turned the comic book facedown on the table with a shaking hand. “I prayed that my children would never face the horrors that we did, but it looks like we’ve come full circle.” His voice faltered. “They’ve taken my son, and now they’re coming after you.”

  Grandpa McAlister retreated to the backyard under the auspices of watering his plants, but Colt watched him pull out a handkerchief to wipe his eyes and blow his nose. Not wanting his grandfather to think that he was spying, Colt went to the refrigerator to pull out a root beer. It cracked open with a hiss, and the cold liquid burned as it went down his throat.

  As he sat down at the kitchen table, Colt thought about his dad working as a CHAOS agent, and wondered whether he had ever fought against alien life forms or investigated Bigfoot sightings. Then his mind drifted to his mom. He wondered if she understood the dangers involved with investigating Trident, and if she did, why she thought it was important enough to put her life at risk. Colt wasn’t sure anything was worth that.

  When the phone rang, his heart started pounding. Then he realized it wasn’t Van Cleve’s phone. The ringtone was different, and besides, that phone’s battery had died. Colt reached into his front pocket to check the display before he answered.

  “Let me guess,” Colt said. “You found a way to reprogram the injector drones.”

  “That’s easy,” Oz said. “I was thinking about sending one after Mr. Pfeffer. Not to kill him or anything, but I’d love to see what he would do if it crawled up his pant leg.”

  “You’re cruel.”

  “His lectures are cruel.”

  “You have a point.”

  “What are you doing right now?”

  “I should be doing my homework.”

  “Can you blow it off?”

  “I guess, why? What’s going on?”

  “Meet me out front.”

  “You’re already here?” Colt stood up.

  “Why don’t you come outside and check for yourself?”

  When Colt opened the front door he found Oz standing at attention. His arms were stiff, his knees locked, and he was looking straight ahead. Then Colt saw his eyes. They were glowing red.

  : : CHAPTER 26 : :

  Colt nearly swallowed his tongue before he tried to slam the door shut, but Oz’s arm shot out. The door flung back open, hitting Colt in the shoulder.

  Colt tripped over himself as he tried to back away. The floor mat in the entryway slid out from under him as he tumbled to the ground.

  “Got you!” Oz was laughing as he reached up to remove a tinted contact from one eye. “See? It’s a fake.”

  Colt’s breathing slowed a bit as he tried to wrap his mind around what had happened.

  “I saw them at the drugstore and couldn’t resist,” Oz said.

  “I’m going to kill you.” Colt stood up and shoved Oz in the chest.

  Oz laughed harder. “You really thought I was one of them?”

  “I don’t know,” Colt said as he ran his hand through his hair. “What was I supposed to think?”

  “Come on,” Oz said as he removed the second contact.

  Colt looked at him sideways.

  “Look, McAlister. So far you’ve been lucky, but Trident isn’t just watching you. They’re coming after you, and they aren’t going to stop until the job’s done. Somebody has to teach you how to defend yourself before you end up six feet under. Besides, Lily would kill me if anything happened to you.”

  “She said that?”

  “See, I knew you had a thing for her.”

  Colt shook his head and went to tell his grandpa that he was going over to Oz’s house for a while.

  The Romeros lived a few miles south of Chandler High. The city planners hadn’t anticipated the population boom, so the streets were torn apart as construction crews widened the roads to keep up with all the new housing developments in the area.

  “This isn’t a house, it’s a compound,” Colt said as Oz pulled into his driveway. “I thought you said your dad was in the army.”

  “He was,” Oz said as he clicked a button on the remote. The front gate opened. “A few years ago CHAOS branched out. Now it’
s a private agency, which means instead of answering to the president of the United States, my dad answers to a board of directors. It’s not as glamorous, but it pays a lot better.”

  “I can see that.”

  The Romeros’ drive was made out of brick pavers that led to an enormous Tuscan house constructed of stone and plaster. There was a fountain wreathed by colorful flowers just outside the front door, with stone archways that stretched across the length of the porch.

  Colt watched as Oz lifted his hand to a sensor next to the door. It flashed green, and the front door clicked open.

  “You have a biometric scanner at your house?”

  “Doesn’t everybody?” Oz smiled as he walked in. He threw his keys into a bowl that sat on a table in the foyer, then led Colt past rooms with opulent furnishings before he came to a set of double doors. Oz placed his hand on another sensor, and it lit green just like the first. He opened the door and flipped some switches. The lights hummed to life.

  Inside was a full-fledged gymnasium complete with hoops, a hardwood floor, and the works. A glass wall separated the gym from a weight room that was better than any health club Colt had seen. There were free weights, stair steppers, treadmills, and elliptical machines.

  “This is incredible,” Colt said.

  “Just wait.” Oz walked across the gym to a door that looked like it led to a utility closet. Instead, it was a circular room with a wall covered in Venetian plaster. Twelve monitors stacked in three rows covered one section. One showed a busy cityscape where flying cars zipped along invisible highways, while another had images of a world with lakes of molten lava. Fire burned over the surface as strange creatures flew overhead. They looked like winged frogs covered in red scales.

  “Are those screen savers?” Colt asked.

  “They’re windows into other worlds,” Oz said. “See the one with the trees? That’s Nemus.”

  “The planet Bigfoot is supposed to come from?”

  “That’s the one,” Oz said as he continued the tour of the windows. “The underwater city is on Undar, and those ruins that look like they were swallowed by the jungle? That’s Gathmara.”

  “Was there a nuclear war there or something?” Colt asked as he looked at the wreckage. Skyscrapers crawling with vines had been knocked over, while others were charred and riddled with gaping holes, the windows knocked out. The city, if that’s what it still was, didn’t look inhabitable, and yet there was movement in the streets as humanoids, some with two arms and some with six, walked beneath the shadows of destruction.

  “Something like that,” Oz said as he shut the door.

  Colt lifted his hand to the moving images, trying to reach inside though he couldn’t.

  “They aren’t portals,” Oz said. “They’re more like windows. We use them for surveillance so we can see what’s happening in the other worlds.”

  “Oh.” Colt watched as the ground inside the frame started to shake. Then a machine came into view as it lumbered down the street. It resembled a robot, but it was at least thirty feet tall and had six arms instead of two.

  The exoskeleton of the machine looked like it was made from the scrap of decommissioned tanks. Camouflaged plating was thick with heavy rivets protruding like metal gooseflesh. A black cross outlined in white was painted on its dented breastplate, and the barrel from a gun turret on its shoulder scanned back and forth as though looking for a target.

  There was a shout, followed by a trail of smoke that erupted from a window in one of the buildings. A missile screamed as it tore through the air. Then it slammed against the head of the machine.

  “Whoa! Did you see that?” Colt asked as fire erupted in the frame.

  : : CHAPTER 27 : :

  Oz didn’t seem concerned by Colt’s panicked tone. Instead, he sat down at the table.

  “Are you ignoring me or something?” Colt said. “There’s a war going on inside this one.” He watched another missile slam into the giant machine. When the smoke cleared it looked like the only damage it left was a scorch mark.

  “What?” Oz said, reaching under the table. He looked up to catch a glimpse of the footage that had Colt worked up and smiled. “That’s nothing.”

  “Nothing? Are you kidding me?”

  The robot turned toward the building where the missiles were coming from. Then Colt watched as the gun turret adjusted before a rocket burst from the barrel. There was an eruption of light and smoke as it exploded against the wall. Brick was turned to dust as a cloud of debris fell to the street. The hole left by the rocket was bigger than a subway tunnel. Colt knew that whoever was inside those rooms was probably dead.

  “That big thing? It’s called a Vanquisher,” Oz said as the machine bent down to pick up a car in one of its six hands. The Vanquisher hurled it toward the gaping hole. “The Thule use them to round up refugees and terrorists.”

  “Terrorists?”

  “Yeah—pretty much anyone who stands up against them. They’ve basically destroyed their planet trying to conquer every living creature. That’s why they want to break through into our world. As far as they’re concerned, Earth is prime real estate once they exterminate all the humans.”

  “That’s not going to happen, though, right?” The idea of being exterminated was just shy of terrifying as far as Colt was concerned, but the Thule didn’t have a way to cross over from their world to Earth—at least not yet—so there wasn’t much to worry about. He hoped.

  “It’s already happening,” Oz said.

  That wasn’t the response that Colt was looking for.

  “What do you think all those lights over South Mountain are? And the stuff that’s happening in San Diego? We’re gearing up for war, McAlister. The Thule are everywhere, and there are more coming every day.”

  “I thought the gateway to Gathmara was shut down?”

  “It was,” Oz said. “Well, at least the one we could find. Small ones pop up all the time. Something wacky is going on.”

  “Like what?”

  “Think of it this way. The membrane that separates our world from others is getting thin in spots, and if our teams don’t catch where they rip, things slip through.”

  “I thought that’s been happening forever. I mean, that’s how stuff like the Loch Ness monster got here, right?”

  “Yeah, except it’s been happening more often. There’re so many weak spots we can’t keep up.”

  “Is there going to be an invasion?” Colt asked. From the way Oz looked at him, Colt thought he must have said something wrong.

  “It’s already started,” Oz said. “Look, all of this is classified, so if you tell anyone, you’re going to end up in a mental institution hopped up on so many drugs that you won’t remember your own name . . . either that, or they’ll send you to a work camp in Siberia for the rest of your life.”

  “Funny.”

  “I’m serious,” Oz said. “Some of the gateways are still open. We have embassies on seven of the planets, and there are alien embassies here.”

  “In Arizona?”

  Oz flipped a switch, and a panel opened, revealing a keyboard and a controller.

  “New York,” he said, and entered a code into the keypad. The tabletop flickered, and a three-dimensional hologram of a grassy field appeared.

  After another series of commands, a tiny army of CHAOS agents appeared on the field next to Colt. They wore camouflaged battle suits with matching ski masks covered by helmets, goggles, and oxygen masks.

  “What is that?” Colt asked, but Oz didn’t answer. Some of the soldiers hovered over the long grass in jet packs, but most were ground troops. There were hover tanks, soldiers inside of armored battle suits, troop transports that walked on six mechanical legs instead of rolling on tires or treads, and a variety of other vehicles that Colt had never seen before.

  There were even robots scattered among the troops. Some had hands that were flamethrowers, others had Gatling guns fixed to their shoulders, but all looked intimidating.

&n
bsp; “How did you do that?” Colt asked.

  “You remember the game Risk?”

  “Yeah, I used to play it with my dad.”

  “It’s kind of like that, only the game board has animated holograms instead of little plastic pieces.”

  “Wait, this is a game?”

  Oz entered another code. The board flickered again, and a second army appeared on the other side of the table. A cluster of battleships shaped like manta rays hovered over armored land vehicles that looked like scorpions. They had treaded wheels in the place of their legs, and their claws opened up to shoot what looked like crackling balls of energy. Gigantic mechanical spiders crept through the tall grass, each with a turret that held a cannon on top of its thorax.

  “What are those?” Colt asked, pointing to enormous robots that looked like binoculars on two legs.

  “Trackers,” Oz said. “The Thule used them during the war to hunt escapees from Nazi internment camps.”

  “What about those?” Colt pointed to a robot that was a bit taller than a man, with a wide chest and a narrow head.

  “That’s a Sentry, but people used to call them bunker busters. They were part of the first wave of any German attack. Their exoskeletons were as strong as tanks, but they were more mobile. Imagine sitting in a bunker with one of those coming at you with guns blazing.”

  “No, thanks,” Colt said. He turned his attention to a squad of lizard men with six arms.

  “Those, my friend, are the Thule.” Oz stood up, but not before reaching over to touch one of the lizard men with his finger. He dragged it off the table and into the air. As he expanded his thumb and forefinger, the figure started to grow until it was bigger than Oz.

  Somehow, a full-size Thule soldier was standing between Colt and Oz. If it weren’t for the fact that the lizard man was slightly transparent, Colt would have assumed it was real. The monster’s eyes glowed with an amber light, and its chest heaved up and down as though it were breathing. It had three sets of arms, each ending in black claws that could rip through human flesh. Its tail swished back and forth.