Armageddon (2 page)

I also needed to recharge my batteries. For me to rearrange molecules to create whatever my imagination cooks up, I need to be super calm and concentrate like crazy. If I’m tired or cranky, forget about it. At that moment I don’t think I could’ve materialized a Double Whopper with cheese, even though I sort of wished I could. Bats burn up a ton of calories, what with the wing flapping and all that internalized radar action. I was famished.

The List thrummed to life in my lap. Much to my surprise, Balloon Boy—the bloated bullfrog I had called 30-something—was actually Number
29
. Guess the freakazoid had shot up a slot or two after I erased a couple of his superiors in alien hunts past.

However, slot 29 was as high as Floating Froggy would ever hop. The constantly self-updating List was already flashing
TERMINATED
next to his name and number.

I swiped my fingers through the air and The List, fully annotated with illustrations, scrolled up the screen to exactly what I needed to see.

The entry for Number 2.

For some bizarre-o reason, the computer continued to pretty much draw a blank on the guy. Yes, there was a list
of his known physical appearances (apparently he was a world-class shape-shifter, just like me), but under Planet of Origin, all I saw was
CLASSIFIED
. Same thing with Evil Deeds Done.
CLASSIFIED
. Powers?
CLASSIFIED
.

Classified? Hello, computer—you work for
me
, remember?

I gave the computer a good whack on the side. Yes, it’s an extremely low-tech solution, but one that sometimes works, even with the galaxy’s coolest, most artificially intelligent gizmos.

Not this time. The images on the screen refused to budge. Number 2’s background would remain a mystery. A
CLASSIFIED
mystery.

I realized I needed to forget about where Number 2 came from and what he had already done, and focus instead on where he said he was going (all over the planet) and what he planned on doing once he and his army got there (wiping out human civilization and enslaving millions, not to mention making my life totally miserable).

Still glued to the uncooperative computer screen, I felt a not-so-gentle tap on my shoulder.

Startled, I whipped around.

Suddenly I was face-to-face-to-face-to-face with a four-sided killing machine.

“WELL, WELL, WELL, well,” the thing said, chortling in quadraphonic surround sound.

Then all of the blockhead’s faces grinned.

“How frightfully convenient! Number 2 commissions us to go find Daniel X and, lo and behold, I find you hiding right outside our super-secret meeting place.”

I, of course, immediately recognized the cubic jerkonium. It was hard not to. The creature was a four-sided warrior from the planet Varladra, complete with two pairs of brutal arms clutching four extremely lethal weapons: a scimitar the size of a scythe, a quarto-headed battle-ax, a classic nine-ring Chinese broadsword, and—just in case he got tired of flailing his limbs and swinging steel—what looked like a semi-automatic, rapid-repeating disintegrator gun.

Having just eyeballed The List, I knew exactly who (make that
what
) I was dealing with: Number 33 in my top forty countdown.

“Prepare to die, traitor!” sneered the clanking cube.

“No thanks,” I said. “By the way, is Rubik your uncle or your aunt?”

He growled and swung his ax, aiming for my head like my neck was the tee and my skull the ball.

I ducked into a crouch. He whiffed.

“
Stee-rike
one,” I said.

Number 33 rotated ninety degrees to the left, jangling the belt of human and alien skulls he wore wrapped around his squarish waist. Swishing blades twirled and whirled on all sides of his chest. It was like fighting a berserk food processor. The boxy behemoth only had two stubby legs, but both were mounted on rolling swivels. Number 33 was definitely turning out to be hell on wheels.

He tried a downward log-splitting lumberjack chop with the battle-ax—the one with
four
razor-sharp blades.

I was supposed to be the log.

I rolled right. Again, he whiffed.

“
Stee-rike
two!”

He yanked his ax head out of the dirt with one arm and used two of the others to swing his Chinese broadsword and slash at me with the scimitar.

I dodged, then ducked.

Two swings. Two misses.

“
Stee
-rikes three and four!”

I guess the official rules of baseball are different on Varladra, because he kept taking swings. I kept countering: juking and sidestepping, bobbing and weaving.

I needed to figure out this creep’s weakness, and fast.
Fighting this four-sided death machine was a lot like taking on four Attila the Huns at the same time.

I darted left to avoid a flying triple parry and follow-up double thrust.

Man, the guy’s aim was definitely off. Maybe he needed four pairs of glasses for his four pairs of eyes. Maybe he was still blind as a bat.

I checked out his flat noses, swarthy complexion, and wispy Fu Manchu beards.

Wait a second.

Number 33
was
Attila the Hun, one of the most fearsome Eurasian nomads to ever invade Rome and earn the name “Barbarian.” Or he
had
been Attila, back in the early to mid fifth century. All he needed was a fur-lined helmet and a woolly vest. This killing machine had been on Earth for sixteen centuries and he’d never been beaten. Talk about your heavyweight champion of the world.

“Stand still, boy!” Attila growled at me. “Do not prolong the inevitable.”

“What’s the matter,
hon
?” I said, still flitting around like a hummingbird stoked on liquid sugar. I couldn’t resist the pun. “Have a rough day pillaging and plundering?”

Cube-head sneered at me. I could see chunks of meat snagged between his rotting teeth.

“Prepare to die, weakling!”

“Sorry. No way am I letting you and your mongrel horde of mutant misfits destroy human civilization.”

“Foolish boy! This planet belongs to whoever or whatever is strong enough to take it!”

“Or defend it!”

Attila swiped a couple of hands roughly across a few of his slobbering mouths.

“Enough,” he said. “It is suppertime, and I am most hungry. Therefore, submit to me and die!”

Up came the disintegrator gun.

Good thing I finally figured out how to beat this guy.

In a flash, I turned myself into a bubbling hot pot of yak stew.

Yum.

ATTILA THE GORILLA must’ve been seriously starving.

He immediately grabbed the pot of meaty yak gruel and tossed it into his mouth. That is, he grabbed
me
and threw me down his gullet in a single gulp.

Over the teeth, over the gums, look out stomach, here I come.

I slid into his esophagus and cannonballed down the quivering chute into his gut.

They say the way to an alien’s heart is through his stomach, and that was my plan: get digested, clog his arteries, and attack his heart!

Of course, when they say that thing about the stomach and heart, they leave out the bit about how, in between, you have to spend a little quality time down in the bowels. Remember to hold your nose when we get there.

I splashed into a pool of burbling acid and bobbed around with milky chunks of half-digested french fries, the gooey remains of a Snickers bar, and what might’ve
once been creamed corn. Attila’s stomach looked exactly like that Rubbermaid barrel full of pig slop the high school cafeteria guy scrapes all the dirty dishes into.

I sloshed forward, trying to avoid a McNugget oil slick. I needed to act like a bran muffin and move things along his digestive tract—fast. So I swam downstream as quickly as yak stew can.

Now, in order for me to get into Number 33’s bloodstream and give him some serious heartburn, I needed to be a nutrient by the time I reached his small intestine. If not, my whole plan (and me with it) would go straight down the toilet. Literally.

As I was funneled into the stomach’s exit ramp, I transformed myself into a glob of yak fat and, after a quick bile bath, moved into the small intestine. I thought I might hurl. The narrow, undulating tube smelled worse than any sewer I’ve ever had the pleasure of crawling through.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to deal with the bowel stench for long, because I was instantly sucked through the intestinal lining. Just like that, I was cruising through Number 33’s circulatory system.

If I could make it into his arteries—which had to be unbelievably clogged with sixteen hundred years’ worth of Mongolian barbecue, mutton dumplings, and fried goat cheese—maybe I could completely block a blood vessel and shut his heart down.

Upstream, I could hear his heart muscle pounding out a four-four beat like a quartet of thundering kettledrums.

Because he had four hearts!

If I blocked the blood flow to one, the other three might be able to compensate.

Okay. I needed a plan B, as in “Blow up” or “ka-Boom.”

The vein I was log-flume riding through splashed me down inside one of Attila’s throbbing hearts. As I shot through one of its valves, I made myself morph again.

I hung on to the flapping valve with both hands as I began to change back into me—the full-sized, five-foot-ten Daniel X. I started to expand inside his cramped heart chamber like one of those Grow Your Own Girlfriend sponge toys that’s guaranteed to grow 600 percent when you soak it in a bowl of water overnight.

Only I grew much bigger and much faster. Call it a teenage growth spurt.

I shattered his heart and burst through that alien’s ribcage like the alien in
Alien.

Blood spurting all around me (picture ketchup squeeze bottles gone wild), I watched Number 33—gasping and gurgling and clutching what was left of his chest—topple to the ground.

Attila the Hun was now Attila the Done.

Meanwhile, I was a little wet, somewhat sticky, and totally grossed out.

But I would live to fight another day. And another alien.

Number 2.

Clearly the most formidable and fearsome foe I have ever faced.

SO WHAT WOULD you say is humankind’s greatest creation?

Language? Music? Maybe art?

All excellent choices. But if you ask me, the greatest thing any creature anywhere ever created is a concept called “friendship.”

I guess my four friends are my greatest creation, too. Without your friends, well, what are you?

“You guys,” said Joe, “this funnel cake is awesome.”

“It’s cold,” said Dana.

“And your point is?” Joe took another chomp out of the web of chewy fried dough dusted with powdered sugar and drenched with squiggles of chocolate sauce.

“You’re basically eating knotted flour and lard, Joe,” Emma said. “It’s not very good for your heart.”

Having just examined the insides of the late Number 33’s cardiovascular plumbing up close and personal, I realized Emma, my earth-mother health-nut friend, had a point.

“Well, it may not be good for my heart, but it is
excellent
for my mouth,” said Joe, who had an iron stomach to rival Attila’s. My friend has been known to order “one of everything” at Pizza Hut. But no matter how much chow he wolfs down on a regular basis, he stays super skinny. Talk about an excellent metabolism.

This was what I needed; nothing renews my creative juices like hanging out and goofing around with my buds. And we weren’t just in the middle of a pig-out session at the local county fair. No, my four best friends and I were in the middle of Six Flags Over Georgia.

After my Thrilla with Attila, I decided to call up Joe, Emma, Willy, and Dana and head south to do a little recon on Marietta, Georgia—one of the smaller towns on Number 2’s Places to Destroy/Humans to Enslave list. Aliens are much easier to smell outside your major metropolitan areas—fewer competing odors.

Okay, I could’ve gone to Ames, Iowa. But the nearest amusement park to Ames is Adventureland, home to lots of incredible waterslides, and after slipping and sliding through Number 33’s wet and wild circulatory system I was more in the mood for roller coasters. Six Flags Over Georgia has
eleven
of ’em.

Oh, something else you should probably know, in case you haven’t already figured it out: When I say I “called up” my friends, I don’t mean I hit speed dial on my iPhone. I mean my four best friends since forever are 100-percent pure
products of my imagination
. It’s not like I walk around talking to invisible, make-believe buddies. When Joe, Emma,
Willy, and Dana are around, everybody can see them, hear them, and, in Joe’s case, smell them. But not one of my friends would exist if I didn’t imagine him or her first.

I realize my special talent may seem alien to you but, then again, you weren’t born on my home planet, Alpar Nok. For me, the power to create (the most awesome superpower of them all, btw) is just part of my genetic code.

Without this amazing gift, I’d be totally alone in your world.

And alone is never a good place to be when dealing with the likes of Number 2.

“Hey, you guys,” said Willy, coming around the base of the Dare Devil Dive coaster to join us. “I scouted it out. We’re the only ones here! The place is totally ours!”

“Well, duh,” said Dana. “It’s after three
AM
. The park’s closed.”

“Hmm,” said Joe, licking sugar and chocolate sauce off his fingers, “must be why the funnel cakes are stone cold. Hey, you guys ever eat cold pizza for breakfast?”

“Yeah, right,” said Dana with an eye roll. “Whenever possible, Joe.”

“You should try it, Dana,” said Willy. “When pizza’s cold, the cheese stays locked in place.”

“No sauce drippage, either,” added Joe.

“By the way,” said Willy, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder, “the new coaster looks absolutely amazing.”

“I believe the Dare Devil Dive coaster is the Southeast’s tallest beyond-vertical roller coaster,” said Emma, who
had picked up a bunch of brochures and maps when we first entered the amusement park.