Tears sprang to my eyes as I felt the strength suddenly leave my body. My head hit the tabletop as a bolt of despair shot into my brain stem. It felt like I was being torn in two.
With all the destruction that I had seen, the ruin of an entire world, it wasn’t until this moment that I was truly overcome. I hadn’t felt such sadness since I was three.
Dana, Joe, Emma, and Willy—my best friends had all been murdered by Ergent Seth and his villains.
I don’t know exactly who I was when I finally lifted my head and dried my eyes. Just that I wasn’t the same person I had been minutes before.
“Seth,” I whispered. “I’m coming for you. I swear I am. I promise you, Dana, Joe, Emma, Willy, my dear dead friends! My drang.”
Chapter 79
MY HEAD WAS STILL SPINNING when I woke up the morning after the party. Meeting my real family for the first time would have been overwhelming in itself. But at the same time trying to get up to speed on my people and the history of my planet and—hello!—my destiny had been like drinking from a fire hose.
I was hoping to catch a few stragglers from the night before. I still had about a thousand questions bouncing around in my skull. But there was no one. In fact even my grandmother seemed to be gone.
I found a handwritten note taped to the inside of the front door.
Dear Daniel,
You are still recuperating, so I couldn’t bear to wake you, but there is grave news! Terrible, woeful news!
The Outer Ones’ World Harvesters have reached the outskirts of Undertown, our last sanctuary in the city. A cave-in at one of the lower tunnels has left hundreds of casualties, and I must leave to help. It is utter chaos and desolation for thousands more who have lost their dwelling places. Mothers and children are weeping and bleeding in the streets.
You have come at a miserable, desperate time for our planet. Who knows, maybe this is no accident. The horse-faced beasts are everywhere, so I must go.
I hope to see you again, and if not—
Love, great love, for all of eternity, my brave, handsome Daniel.
Grandma Blaleen
Chapter 80
THE SUN WAS GETTING LOW as I finally made it back out of the confusing maze of tunnels under Alpar Nok’s shattered surface. I turned into the nearest abandoned office tower and hit its stairwell at a gallop. Grandma Blaleen was right—the horse-faced beasts were everywhere!
A short time later, I stood on the roof, watching the sun set. The Alparian sun was almost twice as large as Earth’s. Or was Alpar Nok just closer to it? Anyway, it had a yellowish-green tinge that turned into a blue and gold as it sank. It was heart-stoppingly beautiful, as I was sure this city had once been. I imagined this same fate for New York and Paris and London back on Earth, and it chilled me to the bone.
Then I stared at Seth’s spaceship hovering ominously in the distance. And his sickening machines eating through this planet, like worms through a smashed apple.
I thought about all the dreams and beauty Seth had taken away. And lives—like Joe’s, Willy’s, Emma’s, Dana’s. My dear friends murdered long ago at their school, of all places.
How long would it be before this same kind of senseless destruction would be replayed on Earth?
I closed my eyes, concentrated fiercely, and brought my friends back. With my mind, of course.
“Whu-what?” Joe said, coming up beside me. “No! You gotta be messing with my head. I mean, the alien spaceship was a trip, but now we’re actually on another planet? A wrecked planet, I see, but still. Tell me they have light sabers, Daniel. I want my own light saber!”
“Don’t listen to him, Daniel,” Willy said, punching Joe in the arm. “He’s just taken one small step for idiots, one giant step for idiotkind.”
“I know things look bad now, Daniel,” Emma said, scanning the jagged horizon. “But this planet has an incredible life force, one that is even greater than Earth’s. I can practically taste it. Given time and isolation, it’ll come back.”
I felt something hopeful in my chest. I’d almost forgotten how good it felt to be among my friends again. My murdered friends, I couldn’t help thinking.
I stepped over to where Dana stood, off by herself, looking very sad.
“What is it, Dana? Why won’t you talk? Did I do something wrong?”
Her eyes teared. Suddenly she hugged me hard.
“Okay, Daniel, I know what you have to do here. I’m just so afraid, afraid of losing you. And myself. But let’s get to work anyway. Let’s try to stop Seth if we possibly can.”
For the next several hours, we just sat there and thought about how to save our homeland. We turned over the options and possibilities, thousands of them, actually. Unfortunately, they all pretty much stank.
“What do we do now?” Dana finally asked. “We still don’t have a plan—and my brain is getting numb.”
“Sleep,” I said. “Dream about The Prayer, I suppose. But tomorrow we fight to live!”
Chapter 81
THE NEXT MORNING it took us hours of tricky and difficult hiking through the landfill of the destroyed city to get anywhere near Seth’s ship.
If the disaster area looked bad from far away, close up it was much worse. There were thousands of horse-heads everywhere I could see.
We staggered around shattered baby cribs, computer screens, old newspapers and books, broken appliances, skeletons, all of it covered thickly with ash and mud.
When we got closer to Seth’s gigantic spacecraft, I saw that another landing chute was down.
“I guess he’s not afraid of an attack,” I said.
“What are we going to do?” Willy said nervously. “I don’t like the look in your eyes.”
“Get it over with,” I said. “Tussle, rumble, duel to the death. Something awful, something final.”
I pulled a metal pole out from the rubble. Then I hurled it about the length of three football fields. About four seconds later, the pole clanged against the ship’s hull.
“What are you doing?!” said Emma as a deafening alarm sounded in the ship.
“Do you see a doorbell anywhere?” I said, and walked forward.
“Knock, knock!” I yelled up at the belly of the ship. “Come out, come out, wherever you are, Seth! It’s me. Daniel.”
Chapter 82
ABOUT TWENTY SECONDS LATER, there was a metallic groaning sound, and the door opened.
Seth came out in a bathrobe, holding a travel mug of coffee in one hand and a folded-over Wall Street Journal in the other. The dozen or so commando soldiers who filed out the doorway behind him swung their 24/24 Opus Magnums in my direction.
“Well, if it isn’t Daniel X himself,” Seth said with a yawn. “Become tired of living in this dump of a city already, eh? What can I do for you today? Death? Eternal enslavement? What’s it going to be?”
“I had something a little more sempiternal and epic in mind,” I said as I put my fingers to my mouth and whistled. “You saw Lord of the Rings I, II, and III, right?”
At first, nothing happened. Then, slowly, there was movement at the rim of the valley wall. Actually, it seemed as if the rim itself was moving, which couldn’t be.
Spikes of light glittered off thousands upon thousands of mirrored visors, and titanium battle helmets, and rifle barrels.
Around the edge of the valley walls stood a massive army of futuristic-looking starship troopers. Each soldier was sheathed head to toe in high-tech silver battle armor, and each one aimed a blocky, snub-nosed submachine gun down at Seth and his fellow aliens.
Suddenly their voices roared as one!
I smiled, trying to mask the fact that each and every cyborg space marine had been created by yours truly.
With my mind.
I turned back to Seth as his newspaper fluttered down from his claw. I thought his eyeballs were going to pop out of his butt-ugly face.
“You thought we were all gone, didn’t you?” I yelled theatrically. “Thought you had us beaten int
o submission? Think again. Prepare to feel the terrible wrath of Alpar Nok!”
Dana leaned in from behind me and whispered against my cheek.
“Daniel, will they actually be able to fight?”
“I honestly don’t know,” I said out the side of my mouth.
“Great,” she said. “One more question. Will it hurt when I die?”
Chapter 83
“PREPARE TO FIRE on my order!” Seth screamed to his soldiers. “And summon more backup. I want a full squadron of battle tanks and missile drones! Get me a million squadrons!”
“Anybody moves, they’re dead. Same goes for you, Seth,” I said.
Our eyes locked and held. This was the crucial part of my plan. The next ten seconds or so meant everything, the future of this planet, and probably of Earth. Hey, you can never be too dramatic when you’re psyching yourself up before a battle to the death.
“On Earth, this is what they call a Mexican standoff,” I said. “You move, you die. I move, I die. So how about instead we actually see who is more powerful: Alien? Or Alien Hunter?”
“What are you saying, Daniel?” Seth said.
“You and I fight man-to-man. Man to whatever you are. Winner take all. You win, my warriors disarm and become your slaves. I win, you and your hideous cretins slime back into your flying Dumpster and never come back.”
After all my thinking and searching through annals of every strategy and warfare book ever written, I’d actually gotten the ploy from The Iliad, by Homer. Achilles gets Hector outside Troy’s walled gates to fight him one-on-one while both their armies watch. Check it out in The Iliad. Great story!
Seth suddenly laughed at me.
“Sounds exciting, except I really don’t care how many of my drones die. How about I just give the fire order and go back and watch the end of 24, the fifth season, on my DVD?”
“Oh, I get it now,” I said, shrugging. “Seth is afraid of a fifteen-year-old. I’m not surprised.”
“What did you just say?” Seth said, putting a claw to his ear.
“You heard me. Gutless. Ugly. Slime-bucket. Horse-headed beast. How can I put it any clearer? Let’s see. You’re totally petrified of me? You’re quaking in your bedroom slippers? You just soiled your undies with the little hearts on them? Isn’t that right, Dumb-Dumb?
Seth, already halfway inside the door of the ship’s elevator, stopped suddenly. “Dumb-Dumb,” he muttered.
“Hold this,” he said, handing his coffee, paper, and robe to one of his hench-creeps.
“Bring down the Earth slaves!” Seth roared. “Watching the death of this fledgling nothing will be a once-in-a-lifetime learning experience for them.”
I resisted the urge to wipe sweat from my forehead, and just about everywhere else on my body.
My plan was working so far, I guessed. I’d used what I’d learned from Seth’s dream to manipulate him. In the dream, he was a little mutant horse-head, and all the other horse-heads were chanting “Dumb-Dumb” at him while he was being humiliated by a horse-head teacher.
Being thought dumb was Seth’s greatest fear. Join the crowd.
And mine? Maybe being torn limb from limb by one of the strongest and most evil creatures in the known or unknown universes.
Chapter 84
TEN MINUTES LATER, the sun was blazing directly over our heads, and all the Earth kids were watching with google eyes. The scene reminded me of the Roman Colosseum, or at least the way it looked in Gladiator.
Seth’s clawed feet made nails-on-a-blackboard scratching sounds as he approached across the courtyard of our makeshift arena.
Me and my big yap, I thought. Defeat Number 6? I doubted I could last thirty seconds with the beast.
That’s when Joe started his ridiculous ringside announcement.
“Ladies and gentlemen. And all of Seth’s creeps,” Joe shouted. “In this corner, wearing Eagle Outfitter jeans and a powder blue Gap T-shirt, weighing in at one hundred and forty pounds—Daniel, the Wailin’ Alien.”
By this time, along with the Earth kids, what seemed like everyone surviving on Alpar Nok, including my aunts and uncles and my grandmother, had arrived on the scene. They’d held back at first—probably as frightened as I was—but now they were cheering like a home crowd at Dodger Stadium.
“And in the nether corner, standing seven and a half feet tall and weighing in at a whopping six hundred ninety pounds, and maybe more—Ergent ‘The Planet Eater’ Seth.”
I turned and stared at Joe.
“Would you shut up already?” I said. “You’re making him angry.”
“Angrier,” Seth corrected. “Just wait till you see angriest.”
“Sorry,” Joe said sheepishly. “I always wanted to do that. It was great!”
“Fair warning, sir,” I babbled as Seth got closer and closer. “Did I tell you? My powers came back. In full. And maybe some extra since I’m now well rested.”
Bluish light crackled from my fingertips as I spun to my left. Then an enormous wall of energy flew up, protecting the Earth children from any kind of harm.
Seth threw up one hand—the energy wall I’d created buckled and disintegrated with a loud sucking sound. The Earth kids were left unprotected again.
“You were saying something,” Seth said, holding a claw over his mouth as he yawned.
“Oh, I get it,” I said. “I’m the one who creates, you’re the one who destroys. Interesting concept.”
“Isn’t it, though?” Seth said as he rushed forward to end my life.
Chapter 85
I LET HIM keep coming until the last possible second, when I dropped low and tumbled directly under his legs. I even managed to hook my right foot around his leg and trip him.
The home and away crowd cheered as he landed hard enough to crack the stone ground.
Okay, I thought. So far, so alive.
Seth grunted as he got up and shook his mammoth shoulders. He jogged toward me, then stopped and grinned. He curled his claws, crouching in a kind of kung fu stance.
I put up my fists beside my head and crouched, waiting for the next, furious attack.
But instead of the roundhouse kick I was expecting, a forked bolt of red lightning erupted out of Seth’s mouth. It struck me point-blank in the forehead.
Not fair, I thought, as sizzling force and blinding light hit me between the eyes like a burning sledgehammer. Nobody said anything about lightning.
I stumbled back, my hair singed, my clothes black and smoking. So much for my Iliad strategy, and my being Achilles the Second, and probably my living until tomorrow morning.
“Nice try, Seth,” I said, grinning. Which was a pretty gutsy statement considering that I was about to die.
I even managed to stay on my feet. Alien Hunter rule of thumb: In the event of near electrocution, stay upright.
And then Seth changed strategies. He ran over me like a runaway freight train.
Maybe might does make right?
Chapter 86
HE ACTUALLY DROVE ME down into the stone ground a few inches. Then he wrapped me in his arms and lifted me above his head. Up close, he smelled like death, and yes, unfortunately, I have experience with that particular odor. Far too much for my tender years.
“Oh, Danny,” he said in Phoebe Cook’s voice as he drew me to him. “I love it when we hug.”
Let me walk you through the being-squeezed-to-death-by-an-alien process. First it feels like a dump truck is sitting on your chest. Then it feels like an aircraft carrier landed directly on you. Black stars begin to cloud your vision. I had never seen or even heard of black stars before. Maybe they were the last thing you got to see on your way to the other side.
“I am more,” Seth roared through gritted teeth as he continued to crush me into fine particles. “I am more.”
I could feel my bones about to pulverize, my eyeballs ready to pop from their sockets.
I held on as long as I could.
Then I forced a final smile.
; “I told you I was smarter than you, Dumb-Dumb. Didn’t I tell you?”
Seth looked at me curiously, and in the next instant, everything—Seth, the improvised coliseum, the immovable crushing pressure—all of it was gone.
I was on a white sheet.
I’m not talking a regular hospital sheet or something, but an incredibly enormous, billowing white sheet, a virtual desert of a white sheet going off and out of sight in every direction.
I was clinging to it desperately. With my arms and legs and teeth.
My eight, long, segmented, covered-in-an-exoskeleton arms and legs, by the way.
I’d turned myself into a tick.
I was now too small for Seth to squeeze to death. Let’s face it. I was so small I doubted Seth could even see me.
Chapter 87
I STARTED to turbo-climb the cloth cliff of Seth’s white shirt. I was actually on his shoulder blade when I turned and saw his enormous eye staring down at me.
Far off, I watched a claw the size of a two-family house rise toward me. Uh-oh.
Then I jumped! The claw actually brushed my back. It came so close, I almost went flying off Seth altogether.
Almost.
I landed on the side of Seth’s head, next to his ear.
And then I held my breath . . . and crawled inside.
YUCK!
It was like the most disgusting cave ever discovered. Right in my path was what looked like a tractor trailer’s worth of melted Limburger cheese.
My tick torso doubled over and I started to dry heave. I realized I was standing in Seth’s earwax.
Finally, though, I rose up tall—and shouted!
“On Terra Firma, they have a product called Q-tips. You should look into it, Seth,” I yelled.
“WHO SAID THAT?” he bellowed as I scampered down the curving corridor of his ear canal.
I didn’t stop until I came to a bulging red nodule. It was plugging up the tunnel. Now what?