by Greg Pace
It was my turn. I looked over at the team with Chucky, Suzie, and J.J. on it. They had just gotten to their rope, which meant I had plenty of time to climb up there and win it all.
I looked up. The top of the rope seemed to be a million miles away. I took a deep breath and remembered what Dad once said about running into a burning building.
When lives are on the line, it’s all about doing, not thinking.
“GO!” Todd growled in my ear.
I began to climb. Within a few seconds, the muscles in my arms were on fire, and my sweating palms kept losing their grip. I slipped and slid down a few feet.
Todd and my teammates groaned in disgust, but I grabbed the rope again. I wasn’t giving up yet. Our competition already had two of their flags and were catching up, fast. I gritted my teeth and pulled. Halfway to the flag, my muscles screamed again and my palms were on fire. Is this stupid rope made of barbed wire? I couldn’t go farther, so I clung desperately to the rope and tried to find some strength. I dared a glance down and saw a mash of sneering faces.
My incompetence had allowed The Dorf’s team to catch up. And on the other team, only Suzie Walters needed to retrieve her flag. It was down to me against her.
She looked up at me, grabbed her rope and smirked.
It’s on, she mouthed. I had to get moving.
Grunting and snorting and making noises I didn’t even know I could make, I climbed, hand over hand. Suzie was making good time, and in just seconds, we were neck and neck. Her teammates cheered wildly, and, surprisingly, my teammates were cheering me on too. I felt a rush of energy.
I weighed a thousand pounds, but the flag was in my sights. It didn’t look so far away anymore.
I heard a groan from Suzie. She was struggling! I might actually win this thing!
With a final surge, I reached for the flag, fingers shaking from fatigue and adrenaline. But just as I was about to grab it, I made the mistake of looking down again.
I blinked. I couldn’t believe it.
The lost kid from the diner was standing behind my team, looking up at me. He wasn’t wearing a fishing hat anymore, but it was definitely him. His sandy brown hair was short and choppy, like he’d cut it with a weed whacker. His brows rose in surprise when our eyes met. And then . . .
He vanished into thin air—poof. Adios.
What the—
I was so jolted by the vanishing act that I let go of the rope. I tumbled through the air and braced myself for the unforgiving smack of the gym mats below. Would I survive a fall from this height?
I saw Suzie, high above me, grabbing her flag. It was over. And then, suddenly I wasn’t falling anymore.
“Nice effort, Stone!” Coach Denton barked. I was in his arms. He’d caught me. Then, without warning, he unceremoniously dumped me on the floor, and I smacked the mat like a sack of flour. I didn’t know what was more embarrassing: the fact that he’d cradled me like a baby or the fact that Suzie’s team was now hugging her while gleefully chanting “Peetz-a! Peetz-a! Peetz-a!”
“Hit the lockers, everyone!” Denton shouted.
I sighed in defeat, still on the ground as Todd and my teammates stared down at me.
“You’re dead, Stone,” Todd snarled. “Dead meat.”
3
142:12:39
“IF YOU WANT YOUR CLOTHES, come and get ’em!” Todd’s bellows echoed through the locker room. Next to him, his goons snickered.
I had jammed myself into a locker but could see Todd had my jeans and T-shirt over a toilet. He could have found me in less than two minutes if he wanted—he just enjoyed the game too much to end it.
“Your loss! Have fun wearing your gym clothes all day!” My stuff dropped with a splash, and Todd flushed while the guys gave him fist bumps.
“And I’m really not paying you for that oil change now!”
That made my blood boil. I could live with him humiliating me for losing, but Mom and I needed every dime we could get, and I had earned that money.
With my heart pounding, I grabbed the locker door.
“What’s going on in here?”
Coach Denton entered the room, and I stayed put. Todd sidestepped in front of the toilet to keep Denton from seeing my wet clothes.
“Nothin’, Coach,” he replied, sweet as can be.
The two-minute warning bell for the next class sounded.
“Then I suggest you get moving,” Denton warned. “We need you, Byers. You won’t do anybody much good if you’re sitting on a bench in next week’s game ’cause of too many tardies.”
“Right, Coach. Sorry.” Todd and his buddies hightailed it outta there.
Denton paused in the doorway and squinted. “Is somebody in here?”
I held my breath, but after a few moments he shrugged and left. I exhaled just as the final warning bell sounded. I only had thirty seconds to get there without being late, so I grabbed the locker door handle and . . . it was stuck.
I yanked harder, but it wouldn’t budge. What if I’m trapped? I imagined the headline: SON OF HEROIC FIREFIGHTER FOUND DEAD OF STARVATION IN GYM LOCKER, CLOTHES STUFFED INTO TOILET.
“No!” I slammed myself against the locker door until it finally popped open, sending me tumbling to the floor in a twisted heap.
“Ouch.” I rubbed a new bump on my head.
“Need a hand?” someone said behind me.
I whirled around. That freaky kid was here!
I scrambled backward and jumped to my feet.
“Man, what is your problem?” I snapped, my chest heaving.
“Sorry about what happened earlier. I didn’t mean to startle you. I just wanted a front row seat for your victory.”
“Victory? We lost because of me,” I shot back, taking an angry step closer. Then I raised an accusatory finger. “Because of you and your . . .”
Vanishing act, I wanted to say, but it sounded too crazy, so I lowered my finger and stayed put.
“I do apologize. I had such high hopes for our first meeting, but after yesterday and now today, well . . .” The kid sighed and shrugged. “C’est la vie.”
I said nothing, so he added, “That’s French. Beautiful language.”
I sat down on a bench, dumbfounded. “You’re seriously nuts. Who are you?”
“I’d rather not say yet. I don’t mean to be cryptic, but—”
“Why are you following me? Are you lost? Did you just move here?” I got up again as my voice started rising. “You’re in the wrong school!” I cried, throwing up my hands.
“You have questions,” he said deliberately. “Entirely understandable.”
“Stop talking like that!”
He tilted his head and furrowed his brow. “Like what?”
“Like a grown-up! You sound like you’re in a school play or something! And how did you, uh . . .”
I knew I’d have to say it sooner or later.
“—disappear?” I whispered.
“The actual mechanics of it are complicated.”
Enough. I turned for the door.
“Something is coming, Benjamin.” The kid’s voice cut the room like a knife. “Something dangerous.”
I stopped. I’m still not sure why.
“It’ll be here in just under six days,” he added grimly. “A hundred and forty-two hours, to be exact.”
“Coming where?” I sighed. “What are you talking about?”
“To Earth. It could mean the end of mankind. The end of . . . everything.” What little color he had in his face drained away.
I sighed. “Again with the mankind stuff. You should try playing with kids your own age—”
The kid held his hand up. “I’m part of a group. An initiative, if you will, to protect the planet. It’s no mistake: We have proof, Benjamin.”
I wasn’t fright
ened anymore. Just annoyed.
“First of all, my name is Ben. Only my grandmother calls me Benjamin and she’s like a hundred years old. Second of all, who’s ‘we’? What is this ‘group’?”
“I’d rather not say until you’ve agreed to accept.” The weirdo was stubborn, that’s for sure.
“Accept what?”
“What I hope is your destiny,” he replied, eyes brightening again.
He was serious. The end of mankind? Destiny?
“Nice try, Junior,” I stepped forward and reached for him. “C’mon, I’m taking you to the principal’s office.”
The second I made contact with his hand, he grabbed me and held on. Then something amazing and terrifying happened. I instantly felt my body breaking down, disassembling into a billion pieces in the blink of an eye. I felt no pain, only warmth. For that split second, I couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear anything. In a purely physical sense, I, Benjamin Thomas Stone, didn’t exist.
And then I was back, and it felt like I was being dunked in a tub of ice cubes. My lungs burned with icy air. Most of my body had been reassembled, and my skin, still wearing gym clothes, covered me in an instant.
I gasped, dizzy, as I felt the ground under my feet again. The kid clasped my hand tightly as I wobbled. For a lightning-fast moment I saw the final pieces of him being put back together as well.
I shivered and looked around. We were outside.
It was night, and so dusty that I couldn’t see more than four feet in front of me. It was like a snowstorm of gray, and I was shivering in my gym shorts and tank top.
I screamed and pulled away from the kid. “Where is this? How is this?”
He held up a hand. “Relax.”
“Relax?! I’m going crazy and you want me to relax?”
“You’re not crazy,” he assured me.
“What did you do?” I demanded. “Make us . . . teleport or something?” I couldn’t believe I was using the word “teleport” in a sentence. But the kid nodded. In fact, he smiled, like he was impressed I’d thought of it.
“How did you do this? Magic?”
He shook his head. “There’s no such thing as magic.”
The psychotic eight-year-old was now the voice of reason.
He showed me his other hand. There was a little round device, not much larger than a quarter, in his palm.
“That little thing?” I spat, squinting for a better look.
“Size isn’t everything,” he replied matter-of-factly.
“Where are we?”
He held out a hand. “See for yourself.”
I was scared, but who was I kidding? I had to look.
I walked forward slowly, the air still too murky to see much of anything. The strange dust stuck to my clothes and hair and eyelashes.
“This way.” The kid passed me and pointed to the right.
A pale glow peeked through the haze, and the dust thinned as we moved in that direction.
We emerged and I blinked a few times. What I saw before me was a real-life nightmare.
Devastation.
We were in the middle of a destroyed city. Pieces of some buildings still stood, their jagged edges sticking up from the ground like skeletal fingers.
The light.
I looked up and saw the source of that pale yellow glow. It was an oval moon, with points at the top and bottom. Another one, identical to the first, peeked out from behind it.
With every nerve in my body on overload, I looked down and realized that the crunchiness under my feet was shattered debris from the destruction.
But something else, too.
Bones. Lots of bones. And they definitely weren’t human.
There was a skull with three eye sockets and a strange, elongated jaw. The wind blew ash from its bared teeth.
I looked to the kid, aghast. I couldn’t believe what I was about to say.
“You teleported us to another planet.”
He nodded, those strange eyes of his staring intently into mine. “Indeed.”
4
141:38:12
“I DIDN’T WANT YOU to have to see this,” the kid sighed as we walked through the devastation, “but you left meno choice.”
I’d never left Texas, and now I was on another planet. Was I dreaming? I tried pinching myself. Maybe Mom wasn’t kidding when she said eating a burrito before bed could cause nightmares.
We walked down a street littered with strange vehicles, round as fishbowls with a dozen small wheels at the base. Most had been burned, reduced to husks.
“What happened here?” I breathed. The sky overhead was spotted with purple and gray, as if even the planet’s atmosphere was covered in bruises.
“They were attacked,” the kid said softly.
“Is anything here still . . . alive?” I wondered. Did I want anything to still be alive?
The kid shook his head. “We began to detect evidence of the destruction here some time ago—space debris, and sound waves produced by explosions. A faint distress signal. Back then, we didn’t have the technology to even know that it was a distress signal, much less decipher it.”
“Can you decipher it now?”
“Oh, yes. Our technological advances in the last few years have been stellar.”
“What did it say?”
I noticed the kid’s hands tense. For the first time, he was afraid.
“Dredmore. Whoever or whatever did this is called Dredmore. And it will penetrate Earth’s atmosphere in six days.”
My stomach clenched like it was churning with glue. “You’re talking about more aliens?”
The kid nodded, then began walking again.
“How can you know for sure?” I asked, following.
“We’ve been tracking them from the moment they came into our view parameters last week. Before that, they could have been anything—asteroids, meteors, dead satellites that drifted off course; we just couldn’t be sure.”
“But now you are?” I pressed. I still couldn’t shake the feeling I was in a dream. It was like the afternoon I found out my father died. I came home from school and Mom was already home. I stood there in the doorway for a long moment before going inside. My gut already knew what had happened, but I didn’t want to accept it.
“One hundred percent sure,” the kid confirmed, his voice thick with the weight of it. “Otherwise you’d be in Biology class right now.”
I had so many questions, but I didn’t know where to begin. And I was still shivering. Walking in the middle of an ash-covered war zone will do that to a person, especially if that person is wearing gym shorts and a tank top.
“How long have you been stalking me?”
The kid flapped his hands like he was shooing away my words. “Scouting you . . . Long enough to know you’re the one we need.”
A terrifying thought barreled into my head. I stopped walking.
“Is something wrong?” he said.
My heart was practically tripping over itself. This was all starting to make sense.
“You’re an alien, aren’t you?” Just hearing myself ask that out loud forced me to take a cautious step backward. As I did, something crunched under my foot. The bone was long and looked heavy. If the kid came at me, I would grab it and fight him off.
“I assure you I’m human, Benjamin.”
“You sure do like assuring me of things, but I wasn’t born yesterday,” I said. The kid exhaled loudly. “And that teleporting hand buzzer of yours? It’s got ‘alien’ written all over it.”
I covered my mouth in case the kid tried to jam an alien embryo into it. I have this little rule about being impregnated with alien babies: I avoid it.
“This thing?” he asked, opening his palm again. “It’s just a machine, built by our techs. Wires, circuitry—”
“What about that?” I shot back, pointing at him.
He looked down. “What? My shirt?”
“Very funny. No, you. No offense, but you stink at being an eight-year-old! Just admit it. You’re a lizard or something under that little kid disguise!”
The kid’s face twisted into a flabbergasted scowl. “I assure—I mean, I’m not a lizard.”
I looked into those strange eyes of his. The craziest thing was, I did trust him. So I let my guard down. A little bit, anyway.
“I still need answers.”
“We have a weapon,” he said pointedly. “We think it’s potentially the greatest weapon humankind has ever had in its possession. And we believe that tapping into this weapon’s . . . abilities . . . is the surest way to protect Earth.”
Hmm. Now we’re getting somewhere.
“What kind of weapon?”
“I’d rather not say yet, and before you question that, let me explain. I need your mind to be open, without preconceived notions of what you’re about to do. It’s imperative for this . . . project . . . to be a success.”
“What exactly am I about to do?”
The kid took a step toward me. This time I stood my ground.
“Travel to London and begin your training.”
Whoa. I definitely didn’t see that coming.
“Training for what?”
“To protect Earth from the coming threat.”
“What about school? What about my mom?” I felt a little dizzy.
The kid just watched me with a little smile.
“Take a look around.” He held out an arm. “This will be Earth if we don’t stop what’s coming. Your school, your friends, your teachers . . .” He trailed off, but I got the point.
I looked off at the destruction in the distance. These poor beings had probably lived lives very much like ours.
“You’re sure I can help stop this from happening?” My voice trembled. The kid, too short to reach my shoulder, patted my elbow.
“I’m sure,” he replied softly. If there was a chance I could prevent this from happening to Earth, then I had to take it.