Into the Dorkness

by John Kloepfer

  “Kevin, calm down,” TJ said. “Don’t hurt yourself. Everything’s going to be okay!”

  “Is it, TJ?” Kevin yelled, letting his emotions get the best of him. “Or are we all doomed to become slaves to that psychopathic brain alien?”

  “Hey, man!” TJ said. “Snap out of it. It’s up to us now. Just me and you. You’re always telling us to never give up, so now’s your chance to practice what you preach!”

  Kevin breathed deeply and let his rational thinking take over. “You’re right. We can do this,” he said. “We’ve just got to be smarter than them, right?”

  “That’s right, man,” said TJ.

  “Only me and you now,” Kevin said, calming down a little.

  “Just the two of us,” TJ said.

  “We can do this,” Kevin said, almost believing what he’d just said.

  “Let’s get these suckers,” TJ said, balling up his fist.

  “For real,” said Kevin, fist bumping his pal. “Nobody messes with the Extraordinary Terrestrials!”

  “Wait a minute, though,” TJ said. “Don’t we need a plan?”

  “We’ve got the map. We’ve got the shrink ray and we have the freeze ray,” Kevin said. “We’ve got to get you to the control room first. And while you’re hacking into their network, I’m going to supersize Klyk and break him out of jail.”

  Kevin and TJ backtracked through the mother ship and hustled past the closed ramp entrance. Jogging side by side, they paused for a moment and glanced at the ship’s blueprint, trying to figure out the best way to go. “Hang a left,” Kevin said, and then folded up the map, tucking it into his back pocket. They headed through another identical corridor and turned the corner. Kevin gazed down the spaceship corridor. At the far end of the hallway, two reptilian henchmen appeared and halted at the sight of Kevin and TJ.

  The two boys put on the brakes and skidded to a stop.

  “This is what happens when you mess with my science camp!” Kevin pulled out the freeze ray and fired a plasma blast that nailed one of the two Kamilions square in the chest. The alien lizard went rigid, crouched on one knee with his space laser pistol aimed at them.

  Kevin fired again, but the second Kamilion dove behind his paralyzed partner. The reptilian henchman fired off two rounds of photon laser beams. The shots went low and made Kevin and TJ dance in place while the laser blasts missed their feet and scorched the floor.

  “Whoa!” TJ yelped and backed up.

  Kevin fired once more, but the freeze ray only struck the Kamilion who was already frozen. “He’s using him as a shield,” Kevin shouted to TJ. “Hit him with the shrink ray!”

  TJ lifted the shrink ray, resting it in the palm of his hand. The touch screen flipped open and TJ selected his target, aiming right at the statue-still Kamilion.

  Before he could shoot, two more reptilian henchmen appeared in the door frame. They opened fire on Kevin and TJ, and the boys juked and dodged the flurry of laser beams.

  TJ pulled the trigger on the shrink ray and ducked away from the laser beams at the same time. The shrink-ray beam went high and missed, hitting the ceiling. The metal panel shrunk down to the size of a textbook and landed on one of the Kamilions, knocking him unconscious.

  ZAP! ZAP! ZAP! The three Kamilions fired again from behind their frozen comrade.

  “Retreat!” Kevin shouted. As they rushed away from the Kamilions, a barrage of photon beams zinged by their heads. Reptilian footsteps clomped after them, echoing through the steel hallways of the alien mother ship.

  The two boys flew through a doorway, and Kevin stopped to look around. They were in some kind of a boiler room with a bunch of pipes and a generator. Steam wafted around the small, cramped room. All sorts of odd-looking machines blipped and bleeped.

  “Dead end,” Kevin said.

  TJ ran out into the hallway and came right back inside as the brainwashed Kamilions rounded the corner. “Really dead end,” TJ said, realizing the Kamilions had corralled them into a room with no exits.

  Kevin spotted a button on the inside wall next to the door. He pressed it with the heel of his hand, and the door descended with a clank.

  Kevin and TJ scanned the room. Their eyes both went toward one of the ventilation shafts near the ceiling.

  Kevin pulled out the blueprint of the ship once again.

  “Look here,” TJ said. “This is where we are. And those air vents probably run through this whole place.”

  “If we pay attention,” Kevin said, liking the idea, “we can get access to any room we want.”

  BANG! BANG! A reptilian guard pounded on the door from the hallway. Two photon blasts exploded right outside the door as the boys climbed on top of a large square machine with blinking lights. Kevin used his Swiss Army knife to unscrew the grate over the vent as the two Kamilions busted through the thick metal door.

  Kevin gave TJ a boost first and got him up and in. Kevin then pushed off a valve on the wall and hoisted himself up into the vent.

  “Hurry up, TJ.” Kevin’s voice echoed through the tinny crawl space.

  The two friends slithered through the vents on their knees and elbows, shimmying their hips as they went. They were going as fast as they could, but Kevin got a knot in his chest when he heard a reptilian cackle behind them.

  The Kamilion was much too big to squeeze in and give them chase, but Kevin was still right in the line of fire. The Kamilion trained his laser blaster down the vent right at Kevin’s rump.

  Kevin stopped crawling and turned around, aiming the freeze ray back behind him. He hit the trigger button just as the Kamilion fired his ray gun.

  The plasma blast and photon beam collided—BOOM!—right in front of the Kamilion’s face.

  “Growrgh!” The reptilian yowled and fell to the ground.

  Kevin whooped at the happy accident and followed TJ through the air vent as they turned a corner, now out of range.

  TJ stopped in the claustrophobic space for a moment. His mini pocket flashlight clicked on, and he studied the blueprint.

  He passed the map and flashlight back to Kevin and motioned to the left, where the ventilation shaft opened up into a room beneath it.

  “This is my stop,” TJ said.

  The boys put their heads together to get a simultaneous view through the grate.

  Through the metallic slats, Kevin peeped a bird’s-eye view of the ship’s control room. Two Kamilions were stationed in seats down below.

  “I’ll try to jam the mind-control mainframe from here. I’ll trade you the shrink ray for the freeze ray,” TJ whispered as they exchanged alien technology. “You’re on your own until you find Klyk. Use the reverse shrink ray to supersize him, then come back here and find me. With any luck, I’ll be done.”

  “I like the way you think,” Kevin whispered back.

  TJ skillfully undid the bottom screws on the grate and lifted it noiselessly.

  He steadied the freeze ray on the two reptilians manning the control room.

  “Wait,” said TJ. “Let me see the shrink ray real quick. I don’t want those big old lizard dudes frozen in my seat. . . .” Kevin handed TJ back the shrink ray.

  “Make sure it’s on shrink and not supersize?” Kevin asked.

  “Who do you think you’re dealing with?” TJ pressed the trigger button, and the shrink ray zapped one of the reptilians down to fun size. The other reptilian made a confused sound and craned his neck up to the air vent.

  Zap! TJ pressed the trigger button again and shrank the second yellow-eyed lizard beast in his seat.

  “Good work!” Kevin said. He took the shrink ray back from his friend and traded him the freeze ray.

  “Check you on the flip side.” TJ dropped down out of the vent and into the control room. He scooped up the mini reptilians and put them in a drawer before sitting down in front of the alien computer system. TJ smiled and cracked his knuckles. “Time to get to work,” he said. Kevin gave his buddy a thumbs-up and pressed on through the ventilation shaft wit
h the blueprints in hand.

  Kevin shimmied a little farther down the dark air vent. He squirmed carefully through the narrow crawl space, trying not to let the extraterrestrial steel rumble with his movements. He stopped for a second and checked the blueprint. He was almost there. Up ahead, he could see the light shining through the slats in the grate. He went toward the light and paused right above the spaceship’s slammer. Rows of jail cells lined both sides of the narrow holding room.

  Kevin spotted Klyk in a mini cage within one of the larger cells. He was no longer encased in the plasma, but he looked a little woozy. Locked up in the cells to the left of Klyk’s were Kevin’s two brainwashed friends—Warner and Tara. In the cell to the right, some kind of undulating jelly monster with tentacles was being held captive as well.

  As he gazed down from the air vent, Kevin heard the door to the prison open up and listened to the clanking footsteps of Nuzz entering the room. Zouric strode in close behind it, towering over its partner.

  Kevin watched silently as Zouric approached Tara’s and Warner’s jail cells. With one swift motion from Nuzz’s robotic arm, their holding cells swung open and Tara and Warner stepped out obediently, their eyes black as night.

  Kevin listened from the vent, clutching the newly charged supersizing shrink ray in his hand.

  Zouric babbled something in its alien language to the freshly brainwashed minions, Warner and Tara. Kevin had no clue what any of it meant, but he knew it was probably bad news. Tara and Warner didn’t seem to understand either, looking blankly at the Gastropod.

  “You have to speak to them in their own language,” Nuzz said to its partner. “How many times must I tell you to activate your language chip?”

  Zouric tapped a button with his long slimy-looking finger and spoke again, this time in perfect English. “You will find your two other accomplices and bring them to us unharmed. There is something I would like to do to them personally.”

  Kevin gulped as Zouric handed his friends back their alien weaponry—a fully charged wormhole generator and the force field gloves.

  Tara pulled the gloves onto her hands and cranked up the power level. Warner had the wormhole generator in his hands and an evil glimmer in his eyes.

  Tara and Warner marched out of the prison chamber to do Zouric and Nuzz’s bidding. Kevin’s face turned bright red with anger. All he wanted to do now was blast Zouric and Nuzz with the shrink ray, but he couldn’t get a clear shot until he removed the grate from the air vent. And that would cause too much of a racket to go unnoticed. It was too risky.

  Instead he watched as Nuzz went over to the gelatinous blob with the shifting tentacles. The alien brainiac reached its robotic arm through the bars of the jail cell and started petting the disgusting blob monster.

  “There, there, Burbles,” Nuzz said in an affectionate voice. “I don’t like that you have to be down here, either. But since you can’t behave yourself, this is where you’ll have to stay for now.”

  Kevin furrowed his brow. Is this dude really talking to that slimy alien freak beast like it’s a pet?

  Kevin held his breath as Zouric and Nuzz exited the room. Klyk was alone in his mini cage.

  Kevin pried off the metal grate and hopped down from the vent. He landed on the floor with a thud.

  “Kevin!” Klyk’s eyes lit up at the sight of his earthling pal.

  Kevin made sure the alien device was set to supersize, and then aimed it at Klyk. “Say cheese!”

  “Why?” Klyk asked with a look of confusion on his face.

  “Because that’s what you say when . . . ,” Kevin started to explain. “Oh, never mind.” He lined Klyk up on the touch screen pad and pushed the trigger button, but the shrink ray didn’t respond.

  “What the heck is wrong with this thing?” Kevin said, turning the alien device around in his hands. “It was working just fine a few minutes ago.” He held the laser beam in one hand and shook it.

  “Be careful with that,” Klyk said, flinching away.

  ZAP! The shrink ray blast skewed off to the left and struck the tentacled jelly monster in the adjacent cell.

  The alien slimoeba shuddered and then expanded to five times its normal size. Klyk, still miniaturized in his tiny cell-within-a-cell, smacked his forehead in disbelief.

  The monster could now barely fit in its jail cell and was all smushed up against the prison bars. One of its now giant tentacles slithered into Klyk’s cell and swept his tiny cage against the wall.

  “Oomph!” Klyk groaned while Kevin lined up Klyk’s cage with the shrink ray a second time.

  The thing’s enormous tentacle wriggled in front of Klyk’s cage. “Whatever you do!” Klyk cried. “Don’t hit it again!”

  “I got it, I got it.” Kevin took his time aiming, lining his soon-to-be-mega-sized alien friend up more carefully this time around. He waited for the tentacle to move out of the way and pulled the trigger.

  Blammo!

  The ray beam struck mini Klyk, and his tiny cage exploded into a thousand pieces. In a flash, Klyk grew to his normal humongous size. Kevin had almost forgotten how huge their alien ally had been once. He must have been close to seven feet tall and roughly three hundred pounds. Klyk pulled out his full-sized ray gun and pointed it at the lock on the prison cell.

  Just as Klyk was about to pull the trigger, Kevin felt a massive wet slimy thing land on his shoulder and spin him around. Before he could shoot the alien jelly monster back down to size, the thing’s tentacle lifted him off the ground and Kevin found himself dangling upside down from the ceiling. The shrink ray clattered to the floor. The tentacle coiling around his left ankle tightened. The alien slime monster was moving Kevin closer and closer to its face, which was pressed between two of the prison bars.

  “Help!” Kevin cried, turning to Klyk for some assistance. “It’s trying to eat me!”

  Nom! Nom! Nom! The slimeball slobbered and stuffed Kevin’s whole foot directly into its mouth.

  “Hold on, Kevin,” Klyk said calmly as he cracked his neck and stretched a little bit. “I’ll be right there.”

  The jelly monster slurped his leg a little farther, up to the kneecap.

  “This is not cool, man,” Kevin said.

  “They should have taken my weapon away,” Klyk said, ignoring Kevin as he took his sidearm out of its holster and twirled the ray gun on his finger like a cowboy. “You know one of the great things about being small? Everyone underestimates you.”

  “Klyk!” Kevin yelled as the jelly monster slurped Kevin’s leg now up to the middle of his thigh. Kevin’s leg was drenched in the alien’s digestive juices, which started to sting.

  Klyk blasted the lock off his jail cell with his ray gun. He strolled out and grabbed the jelly monster by the tentacle, the one holding Kevin. He twisted it hard with both hands and the thing snapped off, leaving the rest of it coiled around Kevin’s ankle.

  Kevin fell against the prison bars still upside down with his leg in the slimeball’s mouth. Klyk picked Kevin up with both hands under his armpits and yanked back as hard as he could. Kevin felt the suction of the slime monster’s throat ease up, and Kevin’s leg released with a soggy pop.

  Klyk stumbled back and set Kevin on the ground. “There, that wasn’t so bad.”

  “Yeah,” said Kevin. “Maybe if you’re a seven-foot-tall alien cyborg cop it isn’t. But I’m just a kid.”

  Kevin picked up the unshrink ray and dialed the settings back to shrink. He aimed it at the slimeball monster, but Klyk grabbed the weapon away from him.

  “Don’t waste a shot on this guy,” Klyk said. “We’ve got bigger fish to fry. Come on.”

  Klyk handed the shrink ray back to Kevin, and they left the ship’s prison level to go take down Zouric and Nuzz and unbrainwash their friends.

  Adrenaline coursed through Kevin’s entire body as he walked back to the control room of the mother ship with a full-sized Klyk at his side. He had never known anyone this strong or this powerful before, let alone ever had
someone like this on his team. It felt pretty darn good. He wasn’t even that scared anymore. Anybody who messed with Kevin had to get through Klyk first.

  As they jogged through the maze of hallways on the spaceship, two Kamilions appeared out of nowhere. “Get down!” Klyk shouted, and nudged Kevin out of the way with a flick of his arm.

  Kevin slammed into the curved steel wall, nearly knocking the wind out of him.

  PYOO! PYOO! Klyk fired two deft shots that nailed both reptilians in the abdomen and flung them unconscious to the floor.

  “Whoa!” Kevin’s eyes bulged. “You didn’t kill them, did you?”

  “They’ll be out for a while,” Klyk said. “But they’ll survive.”

  Kevin clutched his abdomen and wheezed for a second but then caught his breath. A momentary surge of pride filled him up so that he didn’t even have to use his inhaler.

  “Be on the lookout for Tara and Warner,” Klyk told him now that the coast was clear. “Zouric and Nuzz gave them orders to capture you and TJ by any means necessary.”

  “We have to get back to TJ,” Kevin said. “He’s working on the computer mainframe right now.”

  Kevin glanced at the map of the ship and pointed to the room where TJ was trying to jam up the mind-control technology.

  “He is?” Klyk said, a little surprised. “How were you able to gain access?”

  “You don’t think you’re the only one with a few tricks up his sleeve, do you?” Kevin said.

  Pointing again at the map, Kevin whispered, “He’s in this room here. Just to the left.” Kevin crouched down and peered around the corner. Two reptilian henchmen stood outside, guarding the door.

  “How’d you get past the guards the first time?” Klyk said.

  “We didn’t,” Kevin said. “We took the air vents. They must not even know he’s in there yet.”