“I saw signs,” Logan said softly. “Across the street. Lost-dog signs. I had to investigate. I met a lady whose dog vanished.”
His mom stopped her mindful breathing. “Lots of people’s dogs ‘vanish,’ Logan.”
“But Ollie vanished like Pickles did, Mom. The alien zapped him right out of his collar. His owner found it in the grass.”
“Really?” his mom asked.
“Pickles,” Sloane said. “I want pickles.”
“Not now, Sloane,” his mom said.
“Dogs are vanishing all over town, Mom. And there’s this strange man with lots of hair and an accent.”
“Are the aliens French hippies or something?”
“The hair isn’t just on their heads, Mom. It’s on their necks and hands, too.”
“Could be Sasquatch.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
“Sorry. How about I send out a mass e-mail to everyone I know. I’ll even send one to my clients in the FBI. Okay?”
Logan wasn’t sure if he could trust her. She sometimes promised to do things she knew he could not verify.
“Do it now,” Logan said. “I want to watch you do it.”
“Oh, not now, Logan. I’m tired. And I have a million things to do….”
“Mom,” Logan said, standing up. “You are not getting this. We are in the midst of an alien invasion. That’s why I left Patrice’s. This is an emergency. Me and the Crew were going to set a trap for the aliens when you came and dragged me home. We have important work to do. We must stop these extraterrestrial dognappers from taking our dogs!”
His mom snickered.
“It’s not funny!” Logan hollered at her, then stomped away.
“It was the ‘extraterrestrial dognappers’ that got me, son,” she called after him. “I’m sorry.”
Logan scooped up the phone as he walked by it, then went into his room and slammed the door.
“No door slamming!” his mom yelled.
“Slam!” echoed Sloane.
Logan looked out his window. Bubba was lying on the back patio. The backyard was fenced in, though it wasn’t necessary anymore. When Bubba was younger she might have run off, but now she was too old.
Logan slid his bedroom window open and popped out the screen.
13. Alien Bait
Bubba spread out on the damp sidewalk outside Sandwiches. Logan had tied her to the bike rack. He knew he didn’t need to but he wanted to set the stage the same way it had been with Pickles.
“Be a good girl,” he said to his dog, and hugged her saggy neck tightly, just in case the aliens did zap her and he never saw her again.
“Unnnh, unnnh, unnnh,” she said.
Logan let go of her, scratched her head, said, “Try not to fart,” then crossed the street to his observation post.
He put on his binoculars, camera, and sun-glasses, then got out his clipboard. He couldn’t read his watch through the dark glasses so he took them off and set them on the branch of the dogwood tree.
“Don’t forget them this time,” he said to him-self.
He recorded the time, location, and weather conditions: 3:53, Sandwiches, light drizzle. He then brought his binoculars up to his eyes, and watched.
Regular school was out, so kids were getting off buses and going into the store and coming out with bags of chips and sodas. Some sat around on benches talking and texting and snacking; some wandered over to the library; some stopped to pet Bubba. A few of them stood up quickly, fanned their hands in front of their faces, and hurried away.
Logan recorded it all. His dog’s life, and the lives of all the other dogs of Nelsonport, depended on his being vigilant.
“I will not falter,” he said to himself. “It is my destiny to thwart the aliens’ fiendish plot.”
“What’re you doing there, guy?” a boy said, walking up.
Logan glanced at him. He guessed the boy was about thirteen. He was with two other kids who looked to be the same age. One was a girl, the other a boy. The boy was gripping the girl’s hand.
“You spying on somebody?” this boy asked.
“Are you a spy, guy?” asked the other boy.
Logan recognized that they were getting ready to have some fun at his expense.
“Take a hike,” he said, pointing with his thumb in the direction he wanted them to go.
The boys laughed.
The girl said, “Leave him alone, Burke. Let’s go.”
Burke stepped closer to Logan.
“Trust me,” Logan said without looking at him. “You don’t want to get involved in this.”
“Really?” Burke said. “It’s dangerous work? Dangerous spy work? Something one needs a clipboard for?”
He let his girlfriend’s hand drop and snatched Logan’s clipboard.
Logan whirled on him.
“Give it back!” he yelled. “Give it back, you idiot!”
The boy danced away, laughing.
“Give it back to him, Burke,” the girl said.
Logan kept lunging and grasping and screaming at the boy to give it back, but Burke just tossed it to the other boy.
“Stop it, Burke,” the girl said.
She approached the second boy.
“Give it to me, Wyndham.”
He slumped his shoulders and handed it over.
” Aw, dude,” Burke groaned.
She handed it to Logan, who snatched it from her.
“You idiots don’t know what you’re doing,” he said. “You don’t understand what’s at stake.”
He resumed his observation post and returned his attention to Bubba.
Who wasn’t there.
“Bubba!” he screamed. “Bubba!”
Logan tossed away the clipboard and bolted toward Sandwiches. Along the way he flung off the camera and binoculars.
“Bubba!” he kept yelling. “Bubba!”
“What a freak!” Burke laughed, and gave Wyndham a high five.
“What a loser,” his girlfriend said, shaking her head and picking up the clipboard.
14. Maybe It’s Moms
Bubba’s collar and leash had not been left behind. They had disappeared with her.
“Over here, Logan,” a voice called out.
His mom sat at the end of one of the several long wooden benches in front of the store, petting Bubba.
“Mom!” Logan said, stomping to her. “What are you doing here? I thought the aliens got Bubba!”
“Nope,” his mom said. “No aliens. Just Mom. By any chance did you climb out your window again and leave without getting permission from, or even notifying, your parental unit?”
“I had to, Mom. Someone has to do something. Someone has to stop the aliens from stealing our dogs.”
“Maybe it isn’t aliens. Maybe it’s moms. Maybe their sons keep leaving their dogs all alone outside grocery stores and the moms have to come and rescue them.” She smiled wide and blinked. She had amused herself.
“Excuse me,” a voice said. “Here’s your stuff.”
It was the girl who had been with Burke and Wyndham. She handed Logan his clipboard and his binoculars and camera, which she had also scooped up. Logan took them without a word.
“Thank you, considerate young lady,” his mom said. “I’m sure my son is grateful, too, but he’s too tongue-tied by your beauty to say so.”
Logan kicked her.
“Ow!” she howled exaggeratedly. “Now that’s parent abuse!”
“I’m sorry Burke was so mean to you,” the girl said with a tiny shrug. Then she walked away.
“Who’s Burke?” Logan’s mom asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” Logan said. “I was using Bubba to attract the aliens, Mom. That’s why I left her alone. I was across the street watching.”
“Not very well, I guess, since you thought aliens took her instead of your dear, sweet mother.”
“I got … distracted.”
“By Burke?”
“It doesn’t matter!”
Logan said, then stomped away.
He didn’t like being deterred from his duties by either bored, malicious teenagers or his meddlesome mother. He also hated it when his mom joked around when things were deadly serious.
He stopped stomping when he reached the end of the building. An old man with a humped back was sitting in a wheelchair, reading a newspaper. The wheelchair had a motor under the seat, white rubber tires, padded seat and armrests, and a joystick for steering. Logan wished he had one like it.
Then he remembered the MISSING WHEELCHAIR flyer he saw on the telephone pole across the street from Patrice’s house. This old guy’s chair looked a lot like the one in the flyer. Had he stolen it?
No, he was an old guy who needed a wheel-chair. How could he steal one?
The man peeked out from behind his paper, as if sensing someone staring at him. Though he immediately ducked back behind it when he saw Logan standing there, Logan noted some details: the man wore a dark blue stocking cap pulled down low, a pair of huge, dark, old-people sun-glasses, and stubbly gray whiskers on his chin and cheeks. Logan pulled out his clipboard and jotted all this down.
“Logan,” his mom called. “Come back and sit with me.”
Logan continued writing.
“Logan?” his mom said.
He turned. “What?”
“Come here,” she said.
He stomped back toward her, stopping a couple of yards away.
“What?” he said again.
“Sit down, please,” she said, patting the seat beside her.
“I don’t want to.”
“You’re having a hard time doing what I ask lately, aren’t you, bud?”
He wrinkled his nose at her like an annoyed cat.
“I’ll let you return to your surveillance. I’ll even let you use Bubba as alien bait. But I don’t want you running away without permission, from me or from others I’ve asked to care for you. Buck, for example.”
“Buck!” Logan said, rolling his eyes.
His mom stood.
“I’ll leave you to your work, Crewman Lonergan.”
“Crew captain,” he said, and grinned at the thought of it.
“But if you climb out your window again, I will ground you for a week. Let’s see you foil a full-scale alien invasion from your bedroom.”
“Deal,” Logan said, and stepped forward to shake on it.
“Okay then,” his mom said, taking his hand. “Back to your post.”
15. The Fourth Dog
After his mom had gone, Logan retied Bubba to the bike rack and returned to the dogwood tree on the library’s lawn. His sunglasses were on the branch, blanketed in a film of mist. He wiped them on his jeans, slipped them into his backpack, and, to prevent his forgetting them again, decided he would leave them there. He rehung his binoculars and camera around his neck, then, clipboard poised, turned his attention to Bubba.
Sandwiches always bustled after school let out. Logan had a full-time job recording all the activity: the two gray-haired, power-walking ladies who stopped and petted Bubba; the trio of boys who parked their bikes by her, then waved away the hovering odor; swarms of teenagers, some of whom paid attention to Bubba, some who were too into their own world to notice her; the men (many of them bearded) and sometimes women wearing dirty work clothes who pulled up in trucks, went into the store, and came out with a beverage of some kind; the ruddy-faced sailors, male and female, young and old, striding in knee-high rubber waders; the moms, and sometimes dads, pushing strollers, or toting their child in carriers on their backs, chests, or hips; the old guy in the wheelchair parked at the end of the bench, his face hidden behind his newspaper; and, of course, plenty of people walking dogs. Some walked two, some three. One walker had a large, a medium, and a small: a Newfie, a spaniel, and a wiener dog. The walkers tied their dogs up, or just left them, untied, and went into the store. Some of the dogs growled at Bubba, but she never growled back, or even budged, so they eventually left her alone.
Logan paid special attention to keeping track of the dogs, making sure the ones left outside got picked up, and by their rightful owners, not by someone else.
No dogs vanished. The hairy man with the accent did not appear. Nothing unusual or suspicious happened, which Logan found almost disappointing. He didn’t want anyone’s dog abducted, especially not Bubba, but he had been hoping something would happen—a dognapping attempt, maybe, that he would sweep in and foil. The alien would then be unveiled, apprehended, arrested, and everyone would learn he had been right all along.
No such luck.
After nearly an hour of surveillance, Logan began to get hungry. His eyes hurt from squinting through his binoculars. The cords of the binoculars and the camera had dug a trench into the back of his neck. He decided to pack up and call it a day.
As he walked over the lawn, he saw Aggy appear across the street with her dog, Festus, a fat, sausage-shaped beagle/dachshund mix with a black-and-white coat and stubby legs. From a distance, he looked like a miniature cow.
“Aggy!” Logan called, but she didn’t hear him over a noisy delivery truck coming up the street. She bent over and petted Bubba, then stood up, her face puckered, and waved her hand in front of her nose.
The truck pulled up to the curb, obscuring her and the dogs. Logan ran across the street and around the front of the truck. He nearly collided with the old man in the electric wheelchair, who was zooming past.
“Excuse me,” the man said.
Logan didn’t answer. He was too busy looking for Aggy. He didn’t see her. She must have gone into the store. Bubba, still tied to the bike rack, was on her feet, whimpering, as if frightened.
“It’s okay,” Logan said, rubbing Bubba’s head. “I’m watching out for you. Where’s Festus?”
That’s when he noticed a collar lying beside Bubba on the sidewalk. It was attached to a retractable leash, and buckled, as if it were still around a dog’s neck. The collar was made of faded pink nylon with white polka dots. Logan knew it instantly.
“Not again,” he said, swiveling his head left and right, like an owl looking for prey. A few people sat on the benches, chatting, snacking, sipping. A woman was tucking her baby into a stroller. The old man’s wheelchair was humming as it navigated the crosswalk. A kid rode up on her skateboard. Logan looked at Bubba.
“Where’s Festus?” he asked.
“Unnnh, unnnh, unnnh,” Bubba said.
Logan darted into the store, yelling, “Aggy! Aggy!”
The cashiers and customers at the checkout counters stopped what they were doing and stared.
“Have you seen Aggy?” he asked them. “It’s urgent.”
“There’s a girl over—” one of the cashiers began to say, when Aggy appeared at the end of an aisle.
“Logan!” she said, her jaw tight. “What are you yelling about?”
Logan rushed to her. “Where’s Festus?”
“Outside,” Aggy said.
“No, he’s not.”
“I tied him next to Bubba. I thought you’d be in here….”
“He’s not tied next to Bubba. Come on. I’ll show you.”
He took her arm and tugged.
“Let go!” she said, and jerked her arm free.
“It’s just his collar and leash. Like before. With Pickles. Come see.”
“What?” Aggy said, her resistance evaporating. “Just his collar?”
“Pink with white polka dots,” Logan said.
Aggy raced for the door.
16. After the Hairy Guy
“The alien vaporized him right out of his collar,” Logan said.
“Maybe he slipped out of it somehow,” Aggy said hopefully. “You know. Squeezed out of it. To get free.”
“Not likely,” Logan said.
Festus, like Bubba, was a slow-moving, older dog. He’d also recently undergone hip surgery. He wasn’t prone to escape attempts.
“Maybe somebody undid his collar,” Aggy said. “Then rebuckled it. You kno
w, for a joke. A prank.”
“I’ve been casing the corner for hours,” Logan said. “I saw everybody who came and went and wrote down everything they did. I ran over when I saw you, but a truck pulled up and blocked my vision. You know, it must have happened right then. Shoot! If it weren’t for that stupid truck, I would have witnessed the dognapping!”
“How could somebody have unbuckled him, taken him, and rebuckled the collar that fast?” Aggy asked.
“That’s just it. No human could have. Did you talk to anyone? Did anyone ask what your dog’s name was?”
“Yeah, some lady did. She stopped and petted Festus and talked baby talk to him. Why?”
“What did she look like?”
“I don’t know. She was an old lady. Gray hair. Short. I think she was wearing glasses. And tennis shoes …”
“Hmmm,” Logan said, as he dug out his clipboard. “The hairy guy petted Pickles, then went into the store to look for her owner. He asked Trudy what her dog’s name was, then Pickles just disappeared. Without anyone around.”
“But that didn’t happen to Chloe. Or Ollie. They just disappeared.”
“They were in their yards, unsupervised,” Logan said. “We don’t know who was around. Maybe the aliens take human form, then hang around a dog, listening, waiting to hear the dog’s name. Maybe they need the dog’s name to beam it.”
“That’s a lot of maybes.”
“It’s a theory,” Logan said.
“I better call my mom and tell her Festus got away,” Aggy said, pulling out her phone.
“You should call nine-one-one and inform the police your dog was abducted by aliens.”
“Yeah, I’m not going to do that,” Aggy said, pressing numbers, then putting the phone to her ear. “Hi, Mom. Can you meet me at Sandwiches? Festus—”
Aggy stopped midsentence because a man pushed open the door beside her and exited the store, a plastic bag of groceries in each hand. In each hairy hand. His face and neck were hairy, too.
“It’s him!” Logan said. “It’s the hairy man! The dognapper! The alien!”
“Shhh!” Aggy said, and elbowed Logan hard. “You’re talking out loud, you know.”
Logan hastened after the man and asked, “Excuse me, sir, but are you an alien?”
Invasion of the Dognappers Page 4