Into the Dorkness

by John Kloepfer

  “Umm, what are you doing?” she asked.

  “I thought we were going to put our heads together?” TJ said. “Kidding!”

  “Ba-dum ching!” Warner played an imaginary drumbeat for the punch line.

  “TJ, now’s not the time for practicing your stand-up routine,” Kevin said, gesturing back to the task at hand.

  Tara made sure the camera was mounted properly. TJ tested the sound levels on the microphone. Then they turned on the motor of the toy car to make sure the mufflers were still working. They had silenced the noisy clattering whir of the battery-operated engine, coating it with memory foam. Now the drone car barely made a sound. Warner flicked the power switch for the transmitter while Kevin checked the wireless video receiver. Something was still wrong. The receiver wouldn’t turn on.

  “I told you that thing is busted,” Warner said.

  “Did you switch out the batteries?” Kevin asked.

  “Yeah, I checked them twice,” Warner said.

  Kevin opened the battery pack and inspected the double As. He looked up and glared at his friend.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” Warner said. “I put in brand-new batteries last week, I swear!”

  “Yes, you did.” Kevin nodded. “But how do you expect the batteries to work if they’re going in the wrong direction?” Kevin flipped the batteries around and popped the case back into place.

  “Oops . . . ,” Warner mumbled.

  “Tsk-tsk.” TJ made a cross with his index fingers and rubbed them at Warner. “What kind of science camper are you?”

  “The cool kind,” Warner protested. TJ just shrugged.

  “Being a big ole dummy isn’t cool, Warner,” Tara added.

  Kevin sat down at the video monitor with the homemade drone car. A few clicks later and the remote surveillance vehicle was up and running. Tara picked up the toy car and aimed the camera lens in front of her face like she was taking a selfie. Tara pouted her lips and batted her eyelashes, making a glamorous face like a supermodel.

  They could see the video feed transmitting from the wireless camera to the computer monitor.

  “Very nice, Tara—the camera loves you,” Kevin said matter-of-factly. “Now it’s time to send this bad boy out.”

  Tara took the truck to the open lab door and set it just outside on the freeze-ray-stiffened grass.

  Warner used the remote control to steer it toward the center of camp.

  “Warner, slow down!” Kevin said as they watched the monitor. “You’re getting too close. They’re gonna spot us!”

  “Chill out, man,” Warner snapped back. “I’m trying to get within audio range. Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Whoa!” TJ and Tara said, jinxing each other.

  On the video monitor, they could see two alien ringleaders standing in the middle of their legion of reptilian henchmen at the center of the camp.

  The larger of the two was long and lean, standing nearly seven feet tall. Its skin had a translucent sheen, so that its internal organs were nearly visible. Its slug-like face split off into two lobes, each housing one of its eye sockets. Its nose was nothing but two nostrils situated above a mouth with scaly lips that wrapped 180 degrees around its face.

  The smaller alien wasn’t much of anything at all, just a brain sheltered in a glass case. Its body was purely robotic, with four bionic legs and two protracting metallic arms. A hologram of a semi-human-looking face was projected on the curved surface of the glass case.

  “Who are those dudes?” Tara asked.

  “More like what are those dudes?” said Warner.

  “Zouric and Nuzz.” Klyk gulped. Even the tough-guy alien bounty hunter had a note of worry in his voice. “Zouric is a Gastropod,” their little alien friend told them.

  “You mean like a giant slug worm?” TJ asked.

  “Basically,” Klyk said; then continued, “Nuzz used to be a different type of Gastropod, but more humanlike. He was killed in the Quasar Wars of 1011011001, but somehow they salvaged his brain and preserved his consciousness in that machine he walks around in.” Klyk paused for a beat and shook his head. “These guys have been bad since before bad existed. Take a look.”

  Kevin, Warner, Tara, and TJ huddled around the mini alien cyborg as he pulled out his 3D holographic dossier. Klyk filled them in on the second and third most wanted criminals in the known universe.

  “You ever run into them before?” Warner asked.

  “Never face-to-face,” the mini cyborg space cop said. “But my old partner squared off against the Gastropods during the Quasar Wars. Not a good time for the galaxy. . . . Clurg—that was my partner’s name—and Zouric were fighting on opposite sides. He told me that Zouric was one of the Gastropods’ finest warriors.”

  The kids looked back to the screen showing two of the galaxy’s most wanted aliens in real time.

  Zouric, the lanky seven-foot slug man, and Nuzz, the brain bot, strolled through the freeze-rayed camp with their army of Kamilions following behind them. They strode past the fallen arachnopod Poobah. After accidentally supersizing the alien creature, Kevin and the gang had finally taken it down by pelting the thing with tennis balls covered in Mim’s fur, causing an allergic reaction in the mondo beast. Poobah was now lying on its side, frozen in a slumped heap of tentacles and hairy spider legs. Kevin wasn’t even sure if the poor thing was still alive.

  Zouric and Nuzz moved past the massive arachnopod and strolled into the field of human statues.

  Warner adjusted the camera angle on the drone car to follow them and zoomed in.

  The two aliens spoke in some extraterrestrial language indecipherable to Kevin and his friends.

  “What are they saying?” Tara asked Klyk.

  “Just give me a minute,” Klyk said, listening to the conversation intently over the video feed. Then he began to translate:

  Zouric: Where’s Mim?

  Nuzz (angrily): He said the planet would be ready by now!

  Zouric: Something must have gone wrong.

  Nuzz: Of course something went wrong, you imbecile! There are still people on this planet.

  Zouric: It’s not my fault. I told you we shouldn’t trust that little ball of fur.

  Nuzz: I want answers!

  Zouric: Should I have the Kamilions begin preparation for our contingency plan?

  Nuzz: Yes, immediately. . . .

  On the video screen Zouric squawked orders at the reptilians, who instantly filed out and marched toward the mother ship.

  Klyk turned back to the kids, a look of confusion crossing over his face. “I just don’t understand it.”

  “What don’t you get?” Tara’s eyebrows furrowed into a V.

  “There’s no way the Kamilion forces would ever work for Zouric and Nuzz. The Kamilions and the Gastropods have been fighting for two millennia,” Klyk said. “Something is definitely wrong.”

  “What did they just tell the Kamilions to do?” TJ asked.

  “I couldn’t hear what he said,” Klyk told them. “Something about getting the bugs ready, but I don’t know what that means. . . .”

  “I think it means we’re in way over our heads,” Tara said. “Guys, we should probably get out of here.”

  “Wait,” Kevin said, looking at the monitor. “They’re talking again.”

  They all listened intently as Klyk translated.

  Nuzz: We need to find out what happened to Mim. One of these earthlings must know.

  The alien brainiac scanned the mob of stone-still campers.

  Zouric: How about that one over there? He looks like a real know-it-all. Nuzz’s mechanical legs skittered through the crowd before stopping in front of none other than Alexander Russ, Kevin’s longtime science camp nemesis.

  Kevin watched the screen as Zouric and Nuzz paused, looking at the nerd bully. Nuzz aimed one of its robotic limbs at Alexander and zapped him with a reverse freeze-ray.

  In a flash Alexander unfroze in
a state of utter panic. “Run for your lives! They’re here! They’re here! Run for your lives!” His voice cracked on the last word.

  Nuzz’s hologram face studied Alexander curiously.

  Alexander caught a glimpse of the robotic brain alien standing in front of him and flinched back. He screamed like a terrified cheerleader in a horror movie.

  Zouric squawked like a banshee, cutting Alexander off. The alien’s mouth opened up and released a leechlike tongue that extended to about an inch from Alexander’s face. The leech tongue probed the air in front of Alexander’s nose. Alexander’s entire body went rigid with fear, and a dark wet spot appeared around the crotch of his pants. Kevin choked back a chuckle, realizing that his nemesis had just peed himself.

  Nuzz’s arm recoiled and tapped a button on its mechanical exoskeleton. “Little tiny piece of nothingness!” Nuzz shouted at Alexander in perfect English. He must have activated some sort of neuro-lingual chip. “Tell us everything you know, or my friend Zouric here will turn your insides into your outsides. Am I making myself perfectly clear? I’d be happy to go into the gory details if you’d like. . . .”

  “Uhhh, n-n-n-no.” Alexander trembled. “That’s okay. I’ll tell you whatever you want. Just keep the big guy away from me.”

  The hologram of Nuzz’s “face” faded out and a picture of Mim appeared on the glass display case protecting the brain inside. “Where is he?”

  “Oh, that guy!” Alexander said, sounding a bit more like himself now. “I had nothing to do with that. I swear on my grandmother’s grave, it was those other idiots.”

  “What other idiots?” Nuzz asked.

  “Kevin Brewer, Warner Reed, TJ Boyd, and Tara Swift,” Alexander named names. “I don’t know that much. Everything happened real fast. He was eating up half the town like some kind of Tasmanian devil. But Kevin and the others, they’re the ones you want. They zapped your friend with some kind of wormhole portal ray.”

  “What do these ‘others’ look like?” Nuzz asked.

  “Here, I’ll show you,” Alexander said, pulling out his smartphone. “I have some pictures from when they were sneaking around at night, probably with this Mim guy. But that’s all I really know, okay? So don’t hurt me, all right?” He scrolled through his phone and then handed it to Nuzz.

  “That little snitch!” Tara gasped, watching this all from the screen in the lab. “Why does he have pics of us on his phone?”

  “Shhhh!” Warner shushed her.

  “Don’t shush me!” Tara said, crinkling her face up. “I’m so not the girl you want to shush. . . .”

  “Both of you shush,” Kevin said, focusing on the monitor. Nuzz was studying the photos and scanning them into his glass helmet’s video display.

  “Where are their sleeping quarters located?” Nuzz asked, and Alexander pointed to the cabin belonging to Kevin, Warner, and TJ.

  “What are you doing here on Earth?” Alexander asked meekly.

  Nuzz looked at Alexander coldly and said very matter-of-factly, “We’re taking over your planet and enslaving every last one of you disgusting human vermin. What else would we be doing here?”

  Nuzz then aimed his freeze-ray-equipped arm at Alexander and zapped him back into a human statue once again.

  Suddenly, the toy car’s video camera lifted off the ground, and the kids were immediately face-to-face with Zouric’s ugly alien mug sneering out from the computer monitor.

  It glared into the lens and its voice squawked and gabbled something incoherent. “Grlyhfrztz harctewn prlykttnstz?” Zouric’s voice sounded like a person trying to talk while gargling mouthwash.

  “What did he just say?” TJ asked.

  Klyk translated for them once again. “He said that enemy spies will be fed to the reptilians when captured. . . .”

  A few seconds later Nuzz’s digital face appeared in the camera lens, his expression a mixture of anger and confusion.

  Kevin and the gang paused in breathless silence.

  “Whoever is listening,” Nuzz said. “Do us a favor and tell Kevin Brewer, Warner Reed, TJ Boyd, and Tara Swift that we are coming for them.”

  Kevin swallowed hard, gulping down his fear.

  “They can run and they can hide, but we will find them.” The camera then tilted toward the sky and crashed to the ground. The video feed cut out and the screen went fuzzy with black-and-white static.

  “Aw, man,” TJ said. “They just trashed our drone car!”

  “Who cares about the car?” Tara said. “Those things are gonna turn us inside out!”

  “I know,” said TJ. “It’s just a bummer the car’s destroyed, that’s all.”

  “Okay, kids,” Klyk said. “Playtime’s over. We have to get out of here.”

  “Where are we supposed to go?” Tara asked, freaking out a little. “I’m really bad at hide-and-seek, you guys, and I’m probably gonna be even worse at hide-and-get-seeked-by-a-bunch-of-alien-lunatics!”

  “Calm down, Tara,” TJ said. “I’ll protect you.”

  “No offense, Teej,” Tara said, “but that doesn’t exactly make me feel better.”

  “We’re going to head back to the girls’ soccer camp,” Kevin said. “We’ll stand a better chance over there. The freeze-ray bomb didn’t reach them.”

  “Now you’re speakin’ my language,” Warner said.

  “Kevin, I really don’t think this is the time for you guys to go gaga for some short-shorts-wearing soccer chicks,” Tara said. “Even if the world is ending.”

  “What are you talking about?” Kevin said, looking at her funny. “We have to get away from here. And we need to warn them about what’s going on! Maybe they can help.”

  “Yeah, you know . . . ,” said Warner. “Like with our footwork and stuff.”

  “That’s a good point,” TJ said innocently. “I could use some help on my foot-eye coordination. My feet don’t have any arches.”

  “Good story, Teej,” Tara said. “Hashtag: not so much.”

  “Hashtag: why don’t you shush up?” TJ responded.

  “Hashtag: why don’t you make me?” Tara said.

  “Five bucks on Tara if they start fighting,” Warner said. “Hashtag: sorry, TJ.”

  “Everybody just chill down,” Kevin said. “And stop saying ‘hashtag’ before everything. It’s super annoying.”

  “Are you four hashtags about ready to roll out?” Klyk asked, looking a wee bit agitated.

  They hurried across the lab trailer and scurried out through the door to make a break for the woods and leave their alien-infested science camp behind.

  Kevin led the pack behind the cocooned mess hall and peered around the corner, making sure to stay hidden behind the thick strands of knotted arachnopod silk. The Kamilions were gathered way on the other side of camp, near the ramp of the mother ship. Zouric and Nuzz stood before their reptilian army, barking orders at them.

  Kevin noticed one of the Kamilions walking out of their bunk. The alien reptile carried some laundry baskets under his strong, scaly arm. The Kamilion minion plopped their dirty laundry down at Zouric’s feet and rejoined the ranks of the reptilian army.

  Nuzz plucked a T-shirt out of a basket and tossed it into the crowd of Kamilions. “Hey, that’s my favorite shirt!” Warner said as they all watched the reptilian aliens sniff their unwashed clothes.

  “Ick!” Tara clamped her hand over her mouth to stifle a squeal as Nuzz pulled out a pair of Kevin’s boxer shorts. “They’re smelling you guys’ underwear! What a bunch of sickos!”

  “They’re giving them your scent so they can better hunt you down,” Klyk said.

  Kevin didn’t like the sound of a bunch of Kamilions knowing his scent.

  A small lens on the waist of Nuzz’s robotic body flickered and flashed. The air in front of him lit up with a hologram. Perfect three-dimensional images of the four of them floated in the air. The reptilians studied the holograms of the kids closely, memorizing their faces before breaking off in search parties.

/>   Kevin, Warner, Tara, and TJ were officially the most wanted humans in the galaxy.

  “Quick, get down!” Klyk ordered them back behind the corner of the mess hall and out of sight. Their mini alien friend pointed to a crawl space between the outer wall of the mess hall and the web of arachnopod silk. The four of them dropped down and huddled together under the cover of the arachnopod’s webbing.

  “What are you freaking out about?” Warner asked as he stooped down last to hide from view. “They can’t see us from here.”

  “Hurry, get in!” Klyk shouted at them. “They’re coming!”

  “Klyk, I don’t see anyone coming,” Tara said, looking out through the space between the strands of the arachnopod’s cocoon.

  Kevin peered through the alien web, too, and suddenly saw what Klyk was talking about.

  Two reptilian figures were indeed moving toward them. Only they didn’t look quite like themselves. It was as if the Kamilions walking toward them were made up of light particles that camouflaged their reptilian skin against whatever environment surrounded them.

  “That’s their natural camouflage,” Klyk whispered to them.

  The reptilian duo blended into the blue-green tint of the freeze-rayed forest.

  Kevin looked across the terrain. The pine forest was only a short distance away. They had to make a run for it right now.

  “Everybody, go-go-go!” Klyk shouted, and they all scurried out from under the fort of arachnopod silk. Running as fast as they could, the five of them disappeared into the forest, zigzagging through the pine trees.

  On the other side of the woods, they all dashed out again onto the soccer fields, unseen by the prowling reptilian guard. They slowed to a halt in front of the all-girls sports camp’s large field house. The sports facility seemed out of place in the middle of the wilderness, more like a building on a high school campus. The double doors had been propped open, and Kevin poked his head into the gym.