It was pitch-black outside in the desert. And freezing cold. At two, maybe three o’clock in the morning.
Why did I have the feeling that we weren’t going on a nature walk?
Chapter 55
AS I TURNED to my right, I saw that the desert sky was filled with stars in every direction. Except one. Above the eastern mountains, there was a . . . hole in the sky. A hole that was moving closer and getting larger and larger by the second.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood at full, parade-ground attention.
The object hovering about fifty feet above me was black as the night itself, and about the size of a football stadium. I don’t know who started that UFO saucer nonsense, but they must have been nearsighted. This ship was undoubtedly rectangular, like a Dumpster. Or a giant coffin.
It just hung there above us, ominously floating. There was a disturbance in the air as some kind of energy field pulsated loudly across its massive length.
Then a telescopic column, possibly an elevator, dropped from its belly into the ground.
Some of the kids started crying, and I called out, “Don’t worry, it’s nothing. It’s probably just E.T.”
The elevator thingy landed less than thirty feet from where I stood. A hydraulic hum followed. Then a doorway opened.
Inside, a particularly huge and ugly horse-head in a black uniform was smiling, showing cobralike teeth.
“Hey there, kiddies. Want to go for a ride, huh-huh-huh?” he said in a pretty good imitation of SpongeBob SquarePants.
All of us abductees stared at the alien in the doorway. Then we stared at each other. And then, as if we’d finally reached a silent consensus, we started to scream at the top of our lungs.
Chapter 56
THE RIDE UP in the crowded alien elevator made all of the smaller kids scream again. It was like an upward free fall, or bungee jumping in reverse. I can tell you this—the open wound that was my stomach really appreciated the ride.
The back of the elevator opened, and we were hauled out into the mother ship.
Somehow the hot, cramped inside managed to be more horrible and despair-inducing than the grim exterior had promised. Those Star Trek writers were bugging when they dreamed up the dentist’s office–like Enterprise, I thought, as I looked around. Water and steam dripped from tangles of overhead ducts. The floors were slick with what appeared to be oil and discarded garbage. The place looked like a boiler room and a landfill combined.
A blast of hot air from somewhere swept across my face, and I caught the stink. Think the world’s hugest bus station bathroom.
We were pushed through a metal detector–like apparatus. Seth came over to me as it beeped. He ripped my List computer out of my backpack.
“You won’t be needing this,” he said, tucking it under his arm, “ever, ever again.”
We were sprayed with some type of stinging gas, stuffed into gray jumpsuits, and shackled together with leg chains. Very neighborly.
I turned toward one of the portholes when I heard a low rumble coming from somewhere inside the ship. Down below, the desert mountains were getting smaller and smaller at a mind-blowing speed. What was crazy was that, unlike in the elevator, there wasn’t the slightest sense of motion.
About three seconds later, there was Terra Firma, my beloved planet Earth. Even under the circumstances, its grandeur took my breath away.
The astronauts had never communicated how completely lonely it looks, though. Sad, blue, and sort of helpless against the endless void of space. I watched it get smaller and smaller, and then—with what felt like a pinch in my heart—Earth was gone.
Chapter 57
A COUPLE MORE black uniforms smacked and kicked us down a corridor toward a scary grinding sound that made me think of a transformer eating scrap metal. The hall opened into a tremendous chamber, and I had to wipe my eyes to make sure I wasn’t imagining things.
Down here were tiers upon tiers of cages and machines. At the machines, humans—mostly kids—were hard at work. They were hand rolling cigarettes, putting what looked like torture devices together, sewing animal skins into coats.
There were a few older humans too. The floor managers of hell, I thought. One of them was shaking a tiny Chinese kid back and forth against an industrial sewing machine. The kid was so dead-eyed, he wasn’t even crying.
The ship was some kind of flying child slavery sweatshop, I understood. A prison, a slave ship, and a sweatshop all rolled into one.
It really was hell, I thought. We’d actually arrived.
“Home sweet home,” one of the aliens said as he doled out the manacled kids to floor managers waiting by escalators. “No iPods or PlayStation 3’s here, you spoiled, hairless monkeys. Prepare to learn the true meaning of the expression ‘working your fingers to the bone.’ You’ve heard of tough love? Welcome to tough hate.”
“We have different accommodations for you, Daniel,” Seth said in my ear as he personally dragged me over another catwalk and down a filthy gray corridor. “You actually get your own room. Just in case you’re more dangerous than you seem to be.”
A door zipped open in a wall, and I flew through the air into a pitch-black cell. “Anything you need, scream.”
Chapter 58
FOR A WHILE, I did my best to stay upbeat. The night is darkest before the dawn, I reminded myself. Every cloud has a silver lining. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I will live to fight another day.
Yeah, right, I thought as the bullet in my abdomen continued to send out unrelenting pulses of agony.
Makes you stronger; cripples you forever. Flip a coin.
I couldn’t believe how overly confident I’d been. I’d actually thought I could defeat Ergent Seth. But I was a loser, complete and utter. I guess it was a family tradition.
“You are not a loser!” said a voice. “Not always, anyway.”
It must have been my fever. I was hearing voices now. Was it Glenda, the good witch? Or maybe Pinocchio’s friend the Blue Fairy?
“I’ve been brave, truthful, and unselfish,” I slurred. “Now make me a real boy.”
I guess several hours held captive by Seth was my mental limit. E.T. ready for funny farm.
I opened my eyes and saw that it was Dana. Well, sort of.
She was coming in hazily, kind of two-dimensional. I could actually see through her. How weird was that? She seemed like a ghost. Or an angel. Maybe I was dead and had gone to heaven?
“You are not a loser, Daniel,” Dana insisted again, her matchless blue eyes on the verge of tears. Then a second later, she was past the verge.
“Oh, Daniel,” she sobbed. “You can’t die.”
“Don’t,” I said. “You can’t cry, Dana. My heart can stand pretty much anything except seeing you cry.”
“But look at you. I’ve never seen you like this. What happened to you? Besides that . . . Phoebe Cook flirtation. What was that about? God, Daniel.”
The last thing I was going to do was tell her that I was gut-shot.
“Seth,” I said. That about summed it up.
“What about your powers? Don’t tell me they’re gone. Please don’t tell me that.”
“Dana, c’mon,” I said. “Of course I still have my powers.”
“Maybe you’d feel better if you got up off that cold floor and moved around,” Dana said, offering me her hand.
Maybe she was right. Maybe all this agony was in my head. With super effort, I climbed up on my knees. Then I dropped facedown, cracked my head on the hard cell floor, and passed out cold.
Chapter 59
WHEN I WOKE AGAIN, I don’t know how much later, I noticed that I wasn’t bleeding anymore. I wasn’t up for a footrace with a pickup truck or anything, but I felt like maybe in another hour or so, I could do something incredible. Like, say, sit up.
I was about to give it a shot when the cell door clanged open, and Seth waltzed in. In his claw was an iron bowl of some slop that smelled like rotting fish and looked like maca
roni and eye cheese.
“Here, boy,” he said, clucking his tongue as he dropped the bowl next to my head. “Oh, what’s wrong? Does the little doggie have a tum-tum ache? Don’t want to play epic hero anymore? No more a-hunting-aliens-we-will-go? I came down here just to watch your suffering and humiliation. The thing about moments of triumph, you want to make them last!”
“Please don’t hurt me,” I said, shivering. “Please.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Seth said as he squatted down to get a better look at my misery. “I will.”
That’s precisely when I manifested Willy, Joe, Dana, and Emma into the open doorway behind the big horse-headed creep.
That’s right. Never give up, never say die, live in complete denial. I even remembered to dress them in the filthy gray jumpsuits that were all the rage with the abducted tween-age slave set this season.
I told you I was feeling a little, teensy bit better. It’s hard to keep a good Alien Hunter down. I think it was the sleep that had done it. I’d recharged enough to work at least a little of my power. Maybe five percent.
I watched my gang hoof it out of my cell and down the corridor of the ship.
“You are pathetic, do you know that?” Seth continued. “You actually thought you could come after me? And win? I even warned you. But losers such as yourself never learn, I suppose. Losers like you are never satisfied until someone actually hands them their head.”
“I should have listened to you,” I moaned, crying. Shia LaBeouf couldn’t have done a better acting job, not even with Steven Spielberg directing. “Please, please,” I said, writhing for effect. “I’ll do anything you want.”
Seth merely smiled. “Of course you will.”
Chapter 60
FOR THE NEXT couple of hours, I lay flat on my back in my cell with my eyes closed. What with all I’d been through, I was putting up my feet and taking a major breather.
Yeah, right! Actually, I was busy communicating telepathically with my friends as they searched the ship for a way out, or at least a way to strike back at Seth and his goons.
First off I watched as Willy searched level upon level for any sign of a lifeboat or an escape pod, but unfortunately there was nothing. It was a Hail Mary, I knew, because even if he found one, there was no way of knowing how to operate it or even which was the direction back to Earth. Willy tried to get near what he thought might be the bridge, but it was crawling with heavily armed mutant horse-faces.
On the main slave factory floor, Joe and Emma discovered that there were chains and pallets underneath all the worktables. The kid slaves worked and slept in the same five square feet.
But Joe and Emma did manage to do something positive. They sat with about twenty or so abducted girls gathered around them. Emma had snagged some yarn from one of the sweatshop shelves, and she was showing them how to make friendship bracelets. Leave it to Emma to find a silver lining just about anywhere.
The most heart-shredding of the psychic podcasts came from Dana. She had spoken to one of the prisoners, a pale Asian American boy who had more than a passing resemblance to the ghost kid from The Grudge.
“How long have you been here?” Dana asked. “Can you tell me that?”
The kid looked right through her.
“Dunno.”
“Months? Years?”
“Dunno.”
“Where are the older kids?” Dana said.
A look of horror invaded the kid’s face.
“Taken away,” he whispered. He began sobbing as Dana picked him up and put him in her lap. “Sold.”
Of course, I thought. As if breaking their spirits wasn’t enough, Seth had put the kids on the auction block and sold them to whoever—or whatever—could come up with the highest price.
Maybe that was why I was being kept alive—to be sold at auction. How much for an Alien Hunter, slightly used? With five percent of his former powers?
“You’re going to be okay,” Dana said, hugging the boy as tears rolled down her cheeks. “We’re going to get you out of here and back home. Hey, you want to play I spy? I’ll go first. I spy with my little eye something cute. You.”
The kid actually giggled. How do you like that? Leave it to her. Even in hell, Dana could make people laugh.
Okay, then, what had I learned? Fact one: there was no resistance against the impossibly cruel alien creeps. Fact two: there was no possibility for escape.
I reminded myself for the millionth time to never underestimate an opponent again. Oh, wait. What was I thinking? There wasn’t going to be an again.
Chapter 61
I WAS EATING an imaginary cherry sno-cone—which helped my spirits more than you might think. I was planning on an imaginary lemon-and-lime one next.
“Bet’s to you, Daniel,” Pork Chop said, peering at me over her massive pile of chips. “Quit stalling and lose the hand already.”
If you think regular solitary confinement is boring, you should try it on an alien spaceship. That’s why I decided to host a family World Series of Poker tournament in my cell.
I guess I was feeling a little better. In the special power sense, at least. I was able to manifest my parents and sister, the poker table, cards, some chips, sno-cones.
“And on our left, the Danster continues to hold up the game,” my sister complained. “And to slurp in the most disgusting way imaginable.”
“I call,” I said, turning over my aces.
All six of them.
“What the —?” Pork Chop said in outrage. She picked up two of my aces and shook them in my face. “This is outrageous. I don’t care if you are delirious.”
“That’s the ace of crosses and the ace of cats,” I said proudly.
“Those cards don’t exist,” Pork Chop said. “Those suits don’t even exist.”
“Daniel, c’mon. That’s not like you,” my mom said.
“Gee, Mom,” I said, clutching my aching stomach. “I guess I haven’t been in the best of moods since Seth gave me this new belly button here.”
An overwhelming sense of sadness and anger had finally enveloped me. Here I was about to be executed or maybe something worse—and what was I doing? Sitting here and taking it.
“Who am I kidding with this garbage?” I yelled. “Pork Chop, listen to me! You think cheating at cards is a shocker? I know something that’ll blow your mind. . . . You’re not real! I invent you, create you, bring you into being. I daydream you like the alien that I am. Mom and Dad aren’t real either!”
“What are you? Crazy?” Brenda said, making a face. “Who died and made you God? Explain that one to me.”
A chilling realization came to me then. I knew who Brenda really was. And why I could manifest her so easily.
“Okay, here’s your explanation. Ready? You used to be real, but you were killed.”
My sister’s face was drained of its color.
“What do you mean? I feel perfectly fine. When did this happen?”
“When I was three a killer came to our house. His name is The Prayer. Mom must have been pregnant with you. When she died, you died.”
Pork Chop turned to my mom and dad. Tears beaded in her eyes. “He’s lying,” she said. “I don’t want to be dead. I don’t want you both to be dead.”
I looked across the room, where my mother and father were hugging Pork Chop. Both of them were crying too.
And then they were gone.
Chapter 62
I WAS SLUMPED over in my cell, feeling awful about what I’d said to Pork Chop, when I sensed wraithlike movement on the other side of my cell door. Then Seth entered with a contingent of formal-looking, uniformed alien guards. Now I felt even worse. If I was murdered, I’d never be able to tell Pork Chop how sorry I was.
I was herded into a large, high-ceilinged chamber crowded with a couple dozen horse-heads in black smocks, working at computer consoles.
Was this the execution chamber?
My mind reeled, coming up with a couple dozen horrendous ways in wh
ich I would now be put to death. I gritted my teeth and erased all the bad images. I wasn’t going to give Seth the satisfaction of seeing me afraid.
“Get it over with, Seth,” I said. “Do your worst. I can take it.”
“You think so? Put his home up on the big screen,” Seth commanded.
I turned as a soccer field–sized wall seemed to vaporize and a star-sprawled view of space appeared.
Oh, I thought. This wasn’t the execution chamber. It was the bridge of the spaceship. Whoops, I’d jumped to the wrong conclusion. I liked this one a whole lot better.
The view on the screen seemed to pan to the left. I gasped! Filling the screen was Earth in all its massive, beautiful glory.
“Why have we come back?” I asked. “And why is Terra Firma greenish at the edges? What have you done now, Seth?”
“Come back? Did you hear this fool?” Seth called out to the other aliens. “Of course, we just went for a seventeen-light-year spin around the block. That’s not Earth, idiot. I said you were home. Welcome to Alpar Nok, your home world, jackass.”
Alpar Nok? I thought, staring at the green-tinged planet. My home?
The screen tilted suddenly, and the shining green planet on it got larger and larger as we approached in a hurry.
My poker face crumbled as we blasted through clouds and an ocean appeared. An ocean, calm and limitless and filled with the purest, bluest water I’d ever seen.
I felt it then, a kind of warming of my soul. I could hardly breathe. I couldn’t take my eyes away from this miracle.
I was home.
Chapter 63
I WAS STILL DUMBFOUNDED as Seth and his security contingent of armed mutant killers escorted me through the bowels of the ship and toward the landing elevator.
A million questions and feelings rushed through me at once. What would my people look like? Would anyone know me? Did they all have powers like mine? Did I have actual family still living here?
“You may wonder why I brought you home,” Seth prattled on with his fancy English accent. “I’m such a show-off. Love to rub it in. I wanted your race to see that their defeat was complete across the universe. All hail the returning conquered loser! That’s you, by the way.”
The Dangerous Days of Daniel X Page 8