“Strange, like…”
“Monsters? Aliens?”
“What?! Did you eat my ice cream? What’s going on, Daniel?”
“Okay, look. Can we agree that there’s a lot of weird stuff going on lately?”
She nodded vigorously.
“I mean, this isn’t the first time something freaky’s happened in recent weeks, right?”
She shook her head no.
“And there not being any kids here at the King Kone tonight? And the caviar in the mail? Or how people are watching even more TV than usual? And the fact that the firemen have all disappeared, but nobody talks about it?”
“Yeah, I guess that’s all weird enough.”
“Well, remember that story I told you about how I was an alien?”
“Yeah, that was a little bizarre… but cute. I feel like an alien in this town myself.”
“Well, what if I told you it’s true?” I began, and then I couldn’t stop. “And that the stuff I was telling you about there being other aliens around here is on the level too? And that I’ve figured out the evil alien that I’m tracking right now has learned how to get into everybody’s heads and keep them from realizing, or at least remembering, that anything’s wrong-even when they’ve seen it with their own eyes?”
I took a deep breath, half expecting Judy to turn and run away from me as fast as she could. But she still had her incredible eyes fixed right on me.
“I guess I’d say you could probably tone it down with the stories. I mean you did get me out on a date-I’m a homeschooled kid, remember, so I’m just a little desperate-so you really don’t need to try so hard. Say, cool elephant necklace. Is that Indian?”
She put her hand on my shoulder and leaned in close as if to look at it, but she seemed to be aiming her gaze more at my lips than at my neck. My heart jumped up in my chest-was she about to-I mean, were we about to -?
I never found out because, right then, there were a bunch more bright blue flashes and a huge explosion.
Chapter 54
WE CAREFULLY PEERED around the wall again and saw that the aliens-frustrated by not being able to find their potential victim-had decided to destroy the ice-cream stand. Not to mention my motorcycle. There was nothing left but a smoking hole in the ground, and the fiends were now staggering around the lot, firing into the air like a bunch of drunk banditos in a bad spaghetti Western.
“Daniel-those are -”
“Yeah, I know. Aliens. Bad aliens. And you know what? As soon as you turn away, you’re going to forget you ever saw them.”
“Nuh-uh,” she said, on the verge of tears. “I’ll never forget seeing this for as long as I live.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked, pulling her back to look at me.
“Huh, what?” she said. “Did we just kiss? ’Cause it must have been pretty good. Seriously, Daniel, I feel like I must have blacked out or something. Wow. Here, let’s do it again -”
She leaned toward me, but, instead of kissing her, I put my hands up to her face and did a little scan on her brain.
Sure enough, right there in the middle was this weird little electrical imbalance-a sort of hovering charge within the nerves of the short-term memory area.
So that’s how Number 5 had done it. He’d implanted some sort of semi-intelligent electrical impulse-like a computer program-in her head that apparently kept her from retaining any memories that involved experiences with aliens.
“Hey,” she said, “that feels nice, but do you want to kiss me or not?”
“Um, yeah,” I said, and we kissed. And though it took all my strength to stay focused, I managed to blast a carefully formed countercharge directly into her mind.
“Ow!” she yelled, pulling back from me and putting her hand to her lips.
“I’ll say,” I said. “Sweater shock, I guess.”
“Yeah, but you’re wearing a T-shirt. And we’re not standing on a rug. And it’s June.”
I shrugged.
“Daniel, this is all so weird.”
“You want weird?” I said. “Look around the corner at what’s going on over at King Kone.”
“What? Here, let me see -”
She saw at least three of the aliens piling into their stolen KHAW-TV news van.
“Oh my gosh! Aliens!”
“Yeah, aliens-in other words, let’s get the heck out of here ASAP!”
Chapter 55
AFTER I FIXED Judy’s memory, I was hoping she’d be a little scared of Number 5’s blaster-toting thugs-at least enough to want to step out of the way and let aliens fight aliens.
But she wasn’t afraid in the least. She was angry. And she was determined to convince me to let her help.
“What do you mean, let’s get out of here? We can’t let these monsters take over the town!”
“Okay,” I finally relented after ten minutes of arguing with her, “but we’re just watching for now. And you need to listen to everything I say, okay? I say ‘get down,’ and you hit the deck, right? I say ‘run,’ you run like there’s a flesh-eating monster right behind you, okay? And if we get separated for any reason, you go right back to your house and take care of your parents, okay? And no touching TVs or cell phones or computers or anything electronic, okay? I’m positive that’s how Number 5 got into your head in the first place.”
“Aye-aye, Captain Daniel!”
“I mean it.”
“I know you do. But isn’t it kind of a moot point? I mean, didn’t they just drive off?”
“Oh, that,” I said, snapping my fingers and rematerializing my motorcycle. I also made us two new helmets-one blue and one pink, just like her dress.
“Awesome,” said Judy, grabbing the blue one. “It goes with my eyes.”
Chapter 56
WE FOLLOWED THE KHAW van at a safe distance into downtown Holliswood and back to the television station.
We parked at the top of the four-story public garage across the street.
“Here,” I said to Judy, “stand back a bit. We need something a little better at eavesdropping than our own eyes.”
“Like, ears, maybe?” Judy quipped.
“Better,” I replied, and turned my bike into Dad’s minivan.
“Wow,” said Judy. “Can you make anything?”
“Anything I can grok,” I said.
“Huh?”
“It means ‘understand,’ roughly. I guess you haven’t been reading any Robert A. Heinlein.”
“If he wrote after 1920 and was fun in any way, the answer’s no. I just got done with Silas Marner. Talk about Snoozeville.”
“Yeah,” I said as we climbed inside the minivan. “They use that book to punish criminals on my home planet. They make the worst offenders read it out loud and then write reports about the author’s use of symbolism and metaphor.”
“Ouch. Say, is that a gun?” asked Judy, pointing at an RJ-57 over-the-shoulder tritium-charge bazooka that was latched in the munitions cabinet at the back of the van.
“Yeah, and it’s powerful enough to punch a hole right through Mount Rushmore,” I cautioned. “So stay away from it, okay?”
I noticed Judy didn’t make any promises.
“Here, let’s fire up the van’s eavesdropping equipment,” I suggested, “and figure out what those space bullies are doing.”
The flat screens winked to life-I’d replaced the one I’d punched my hand through the other day-and scanned around to see what was going on inside the station’s walls.
I didn’t detect Number 5’s massive electromagnetic signature anyplace, but there were at least forty of his regular, low-level henchbeasts in there, including the handful that had just returned from the ice-cream stand.
I also discovered that they were already transmitting the raw footage of the ice-cream stand incident to their network in outer space.
We watched as the counter boy put down the phone and began juggling ice-cream scoops and chanting, “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!” And then got melted. And eaten.