“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 into 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 powerfuclass="underline" 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.