Nightmare at the Book Fair (3 page)

Sixty Seconds to Live

I felt something hard
jammed into my gut. It was a fist.

“Oooooooff!”
I grunted, falling backward and landing in a pile of boxes.

Frantically, I looked around. I was in a small plane. It was one of those twelve seaters, except that there were no seats. That was odd.

The plane was humming and rumbling, bumping through turbulence. I looked for something to grab on to.

“Have you had enough, Dinkleman?”

The guy who had punched me was standing there. He was wearing a military uniform and punching one fist into an open palm.

He was looking straight at me, but there was so much noise that I wasn’t sure who he was talking to. I looked around to see if anybody was behind me. Nobody was there.

“Did we win the Super Bowl?” I asked.

The guy didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled on a large red handle, which opened the door on the side of the plane. A whoosh of wind rushed in, and some papers swirled around. Outside, grayish clouds were shooting by.

“Jump, Dinkleman!”

“Me?”

I don’t
think
so. I’ve never parachuted before. It’s something that I’ve always thought would be interesting to try. I should take some lessons. Maybe someday.

“Yeah, you! Or would you like another shot to the gut?”

This guy was creepy looking, with a mustache that almost perfectly matched his unibrow. It was like an optical illusion on his face—which line was longer? He took a step closer to me with every word he spoke. When he was a foot away, I realized he was wearing a disguise. I recognized that face.

“Lionel!” I said. “What are you doing here? What happened at the Super Bowl? Why did you punch me?”

“My name is Murphy,” Lionel said.

“This is all a big joke, right, Lionel?” I said. “What, is it April Fools’ Day or something?”

“Enough fooling around! I said
jump
, Dinkleman!”

“Well, if you’re not my best friend Lionel, then how do you know my name?” I asked.

“It’s right there on your uniform, you idiot!”

I looked down. He was right. I was wearing a camouflage outfit with my name embroidered on a patch on my chest.

“You go ahead, Lionel,” I told him. “I’ll be right behind you. I’m just going to tidy up in here a bit.”

“
Now
, Dinkleman! And stop calling me Lionel. Don’t make me get rough with you.”

Make him? If I was going to make him do anything, it would be leave me alone.

“But I’m afraid of heights,” I said. “I don’t even like Ferris wheels. You know that. Look, I just want to go home. Remember? We were going to try out for lacrosse.”

“Don’t worry about going home, Dinkleman,” the guy who looked like Lionel said. “In sixty seconds, you’ll be on the ground.”

“After you, I insist,” I said, gesturing for him to go first.

“You think I’m fooling around here?!” he thundered. And with that, he pulled a gun out of his waistband and pointed it at my head. “Get
out
!”

Whoa!

“Okay, I get it,” I said, sweating profusely.

“Where’s my parachute? Will you at least show me how to work it?”

“Parachute?” he said, sticking his chin in my face and forcing me to stand up to him or take a step back toward the open door. I took a step back. “Parachutes are for crybabies!”

“Why are you trying to kill me, Lionel?” I stuttered. “We’re best friends! Wh-what did I do?”

“You know perfectly well what you did, Dinkleman!” he said. “Don’t play dumb.”

I wasn’t playing dumb. I
was
dumb.

“Th-there must be some misunderstanding,” I explained. “I never did anything to anybody. You must have mistaken me for somebody who looks like me. Just like you look like Lionel. Please, can’t we just talk about it?”

“The time for talk is over!” he said, cocking the gun. “It’s your choice. Die now, or die later.”

Jumping out of a plane without a parachute meant certain death. Staying up there in the plane with this lunatic who looked like Lionel meant highly probable death. Given the choice, I’d pick highly probable death over certain death any day of the week.

“No!” I said, trying to look brave. “I’m not going to—”

Before I could say another word, he picked up his boot, rammed it into my stomach, and shoved me backward through the open door.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” I screamed. “Heeelllllllllllllllpppppppp!”

This was totally not fair! I didn’t do anything! All I did was go to a stupid book fair. And now I was falling out of a plane without a parachute and I was going to die!

The wind tore at my skin, my face, my hair as I tumbled backward, flailing with my arms and legs to try and stabilize myself. I never stopped screaming.

My eyes were tearing and I couldn’t see a thing. Just whiteness all around as I fell through a cloud. The air was cold. The plane was long gone.

“Heeeeeeeeeeeelllllllllllllllp!”

It was pointless. My brief life was over. I’d never had the chance to drive a car. Never had a job. Never did anything meaningful. What a waste. I resolved right there that, if by some miracle, I survived this thing, I would never go to another book fair again.

There was a break in the clouds, but I couldn’t see the ground. I didn’t
want
to see the ground. But then, suddenly, there was an opening and some fields and forests came into view.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! I’m gonna dieeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

That’s when somebody grabbed me from behind.

I turned my head around. It was Carrie, the beautiful blond girl who had saved me from Professor Psycho and had been my wife at the Super Bowl!

“I gotcha, Trip!” she said.

“What are
you
doing here?” I yelled.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” she asked. “Saving your life! Grab hold of me!”

I wrapped my arms around Carrie. She had a parachute on her back.

“Why did that guy push me out of the plane?”

“Let me give you some exposition,” she explained.

“Expo-what?”

“Exposition,” she replied. “That’s when a storyteller explains everything that led up to the present events. You see, it all started with your great-grandfather Harry, who owned a farm in Yugoslavia. There was another man who lived next door. He and your grandfather got into an argument one day over some potatoes.”

The ground was starting to look a lot closer. Something told me that falling out of a plane was probably not the best time to be giving exposition.

“Could you finish the exposition later?” I suggested. “I think you should open up your parachute now.”

“It’s very important to explain the depth and psychological aspects of your being,” she said. “It gives meaning and depth to the story. Otherwise, you’re just some kid who got pushed out of a plane. Nobody cares about that.”

“I do!” I shouted.

“So anyway,” she continued, “the other guy stole your great-grandfather’s wife and ran away, which made your grandfather go on a worldwide quest to get his revenge and win back the heart of your great-grandmother. Years and years went by—”

Luckily for me, this was the longest sixty seconds ever recorded in history. But even so, the ground was coming up fast.

“Shut up!” I yelled. “Open the parachute!”

She pulled a cord, and I braced myself to be jolted upward as the chute opened. But there was no jolt. No nothing.

“It’s not opening!” she yelled in my ear. “Something must be wrong!”

“It must have been sabotaged by that guy who looks like Lionel or Professor Psycho!” I yelled in her ear.

“Professor
Who
?” she yelled back.

“Forget it,” I yelled. “Do you have a backup chute?”

“Yes!”

“Thank goodness!”

“It’s back up in the plane!” she yelled.

“I can’t believe you’re making jokes at a time like this!” I yelled.

“I’m not making a joke,” she yelled back. “The backup chute really
is
back up in the plane!”

My breath caught in my throat. That’s it. Unless we were able to come up with a completely improbable and far-fetched solution to the mess we were in, we were both going to die.

“Wait!” Carrie yelled. “I happen to suddenly remember there’s a conveniently placed cotton candy factory almost directly below us! If I can maneuver us to the right about a hundred yards, we’ll crash through the glass roof and land on about a hundred tons of cotton candy! It will break our fall!”

What luck!

We were low enough now that I could see individual buildings. And there it was! On the roof of the big building directly below us were the words
COLEMAN’S COTTON CANDY
. We were heading straight for it.

“Ready?” Carrie shouted in my ear.

“Yeah!”

“Set?”

“Yeah!”

“Hold on!”

“I’m holding on!”

“Brace yourself!”

“I’m bracing myself!”

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and we crashed through the glass. I wasn’t sure if I was dead or alive.

The Good Samaritans

I wasn’t sure
if I was dead or alive. The sky was a deep blue, bluer than seemed possible in the real world. I stared at it as I lay on my back in the grass. I was safe. Nobody was trying to kill me. Nobody was trying to steal my face or push me out of a plane. The sun was warming. All was well on planet Earth.

I turned my head to the left and saw…the Washington Monument. I turned my head to the right and saw…the United States Capitol building. Well, at least I knew where I was for a change—smack in the middle of the National Mall in Washington, DC. I had seen it on TV plenty of times, but I’d never been there.

“Hey Dink!” somebody yelled. “Are you okay, man?”

I looked up. It was Lionel! And there was my social studies teacher, Mrs. Babcock! And the other kids in my class at school! My nightmare must be over.

“Lionel!” I shouted. “Why did you push me out of that plane?”

Everybody cracked up.

“Uh,” Lionel said, “maybe because you stole my little bag of peanuts?”

“I guess I just dozed off and had a bad dream,” I said. “Why are we in Washington?”

“It’s the class trip, silly boy!” said Mrs. Babcock, laughing, as she extended a hand to help me up. “Come on, we’re late for the tour of the Capitol.”

My whole class was milling around the grass, walking slowly toward the Capitol building. I fell in with Lionel, not saying much. It would take a while to get used to the idea that I was in the real world again.

The other kids were talking about the trip. I didn’t remember any of it. They pretty much agreed that Ford’s Theater was the best thing they’d seen so far. The Lincoln Memorial and the Holocaust Museum were really interesting, but the International Spy Museum wasn’t nearly as cool as everybody had thought it was going to be. Everybody apparently wanted to go to the White House but decided not to because the President was visiting Portugal this week and he wouldn’t be there.

We passed the National Air and Space Museum on our right. I knew it was filled with planes, rockets, and relics from the space program—everything from the Wright brothers’ plane to a Hubble telescope.

“You know what would be awesome?” Lionel said. “If a UFO landed here, right outside the Air and Space Museum.”

“That would never happen,” one of the other kids said. “Did you ever notice that UFOs are never spotted where lots of people would see them? They never land in New York City or Chicago. They only show up in some cornfield in the middle of nowhere and places where the only witnesses are nuts, drunks, and UFO fanatics.”

It was true. If aliens with superior intelligence
really
wanted to contact us, the perfect place to do it would be the middle of the nation’s capitol.

We were all laughing about that when I saw the flash in the sky.

It was a color I’d never seen before. I know the colors of the visual spectrum. I know all about Roy G. Biv (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet). But this was a new color. It was indescribable.

After the flash and a brilliant afterimage came a boom, billowing smoke, and the smell of sulfur in the air. The smoke began to clear, and bright white lights poked through the haze. We all just stared, transfixed. Soon I could make out a shape. It wasn’t like the saucer-shape spaceships you see in comic books. It was more like a tire from a car, lying on its side. A tire about the size of a building.

My first reaction was that it had to be some advertising campaign. Or maybe somebody was shooting a movie. Maybe we were going to be on TV.

But it was all too real.

“Holy—,” Lionel said.

We froze, but a lot of the other tourists scattered, running wildly toward the museums that line the mall. Lights began to blink on the ship as it hovered about ten feet off the ground. The grass directly underneath it appeared to turn blue.

“Everybody stay calm,” Mrs. Babcock whispered, as we instinctively gathered around her for protection. “Don’t make any sudden moves.”

A few kids grabbed for cameras and cell phones to take pictures. Nobody could take their eyes off the ship, but everybody was whispering questions, as if any of us knew the answers.

“What should we do?”

“Why are they here?”

“What kind of weapons do they have?”

“Are we going to die?”

Me, I just had one question—when would we be able to go home?

A low buzzing sound seemed to move from left to right. Then a disk, about the size of a Hula Hoop, lowered from the middle of the ship. And standing on the disk was some sort of—creature.

It had legs—three of them supporting itself like a tripod. The body of the thing looked almost human, except that it was covered with a shiny metallic surface. It didn’t appear to be armor or clothing. It was the outside of the creature. The thing itself was about seven feet tall.

We all gasped as it raised one arm. It had no fingers.

The head, if you can call it a head, was octagonally shaped, with no hair and no nose. It did have a mouth, a gaping hole with no lips. The eyes—four of them—were about three times larger than human eyes, and they scanned our faces in a sideways motion. It was unclear to me whether or not we were being photographed.

It didn’t talk or gesture. It just stood there looking back at us. But somehow, I felt the words inside my head as if I was listening to an iPod.

“We are from the planet Samar,” it told me. “We have traveled a hundred thousand light years to see for ourselves.”

Aliens!

“To see
what
for yourselves?” asked Mrs. Babcock, taking a hesitant step forward.

So we were
all
hearing the voice!

“I must speak to your leader,” the thing echoed in my head.

“Our leader is out of the country,” Mrs. Babcock said. “We have three branches of government. The executive, the legislature, and the judic—”

“Who is in charge?” the thing demanded, with more urgency, it seemed.

We all looked toward the Capitol, and the thing turned on its disk to face the huge building.

“Let us go there,” it said.

Word must have spread. A siren wailed in the distance. There were helicopters in the air. I could see guys inside holding guns. I was sure they would have opened fire on the alien if there weren’t so many of us kids in the way.

The alien on the disk slid forward along the grass toward the Capitol building. I didn’t make a conscious effort to follow, but something was pulling me along. Something was pulling
all
of us along, and soon we were running to keep up with it.

“Don’t shoot it!” Mrs. Babcock yelled, as the Capitol security police gathered outside the building with their guns drawn. A shot rang out anyway, but it didn’t hit the alien. He raised his hand and a beam of something—maybe light—shot out to stop the bullet in midair. It bounced harmlessly to the ground near me. When I picked it up, it was freezing. These aliens must be able to shoot microwaves or some freezing equivalent of microwaves.

“Do not put your children at risk!” the alien said.

It led our whole class inside the Capitol. It seemed to know where it was going. The security guards just stood there watching, terrified. They weren’t about to risk killing one of us in cross fire.

The alien led us into a huge room. I had seen it on TV. This was the room where Congress gathered to debate and vote on laws. The senators must have been notified of the disturbance. When we entered the room, a group of old guys in suits and ties turned and stared at the creature, terror in their eyes.

“Who are you?” one of them asked. “Why are you here?”

The thing didn’t speak, but each and every one of us heard it anyway.

“We have come to warn you,” it said. “There is a grave threat to your civilization. If you do not address it immediately, your planet will become uninhabitable.”

All the senators started to buzz with conversation.

“Is it an asteroid?” asked one of the senators.

“No.”

“Bird flu pandemic?” asked another.

“No,” the thing said. “The threat is from within.”

“What is this, some kind of joke?” one of the senators asked.

“We have been observing you,” the alien responded. “You burn twenty million barrels of oil every day. In the last century, you burned most of the oil that your planet took millions of years to create.”

“That’s none of your business,” one of the senators said.

“True,” the thing replied. “It is
your
business. The last ten years were the hottest decade in your history. Does that not tell you anything? Your atmosphere has heated up to the point that your polar ice caps are melting. Water levels are rising. Species are becoming extinct. Soon the oil will be depleted, and your planet will be uninhabitable.”

“Look, we know global warming is a problem,” a senator stepped forward and said. “We’re studying it, evaluating various solutions, courses of action. This doesn’t happen overnight. A blue ribbon panel has been appointed, and in time—”

“You are running out of time!” the alien said. “The time to study is past. The time to act is now. In this spirit, the people of Samar offer a gift.”

Then, he produced a box. I don’t know where it came from. I didn’t see the thing reach into a pocket or anything. It didn’t have any pockets. It just produced a box out of thin air. The box was small, about the size of a tissue box.

“What is it?” a senator asked. None of them were rushing forward to accept the gift.

“It contains a pellet,” the alien said. “We have developed a source of power strong enough to meet the energy needs of your planet for a thousand years.”

“That’s bull!” yelled one of the senators.

“Impossible!” yelled another.

“What are you supposed to do with the spent fuel?” a third senator asked. “Where do we store the waste?”

“There
is
no waste,” the thing said. “No greenhouse gases. No pollution. No negative side effects.”

“It sounds like an infomercial to me,” one of the senators near us muttered. “What’s the catch?”

“When a civilization is in trouble as yours obviously is, we are duty bound to offer any assistance we can,” said the alien.

“I suppose in exchange for this pellet you get to rule us,” said a senator. “Is that the way you work this scam?”

“We ask for nothing,” said the alien.

“We must confer,” one of the senators announced. “This is a democracy. We need time to talk it over.”

“Be quick. Time is your enemy.”

The creature moved to the far end of the chamber, while the senators squeezed into the opposite corner of the room, where we were standing. I could hear every word they said.

“I don’t trust this guy, if it
is
a guy.”

“This pellet thing, if it works, would put the oil and energy companies out of business.”

“Gas stations too.”

“We’d have to revamp our entire energy system and redesign it from the ground up.”

“The automobile industry would freak out.”

“It will hurt the economy.”

“…lose jobs.”

“If we stop buying oil, it will set off a worldwide financial crisis.”

“I come up for re-election in November. I don’t need this aggravation.”

“That thing has got a lot of nerve, coming here and telling us how we should run things.”

“He should mind his own business.”

“Who knows what’s in that box? Maybe it’s a bomb. How did that thing get past security?”

“Nobody travels a hundred thousand light years out of the kindness of his heart.”

“He’s trying to control us. That’s his scheme. Trust me, he’ll have us worshipping him in no time.”

“It’s a trick.”

“It’s a trap.”

“If they can get that much energy into a pellet, can you imagine the weapons they have? He could snap his fingers and wipe us out. That is, if he had fingers.”

“I say we blow him to kingdom come.”

“Yeah, let’s kill him now, while we have the chance.”

Kill him? I huddled close to my classmates, as if that would provide any protection once the bullets started flying. I was safer in the haunted house. I was safer when I was falling out of that plane.

One of the senators, who had been standing in the back and had not said anything, suddenly spoke up. He was an older man, with glasses.

“Has it occurred to any of you,” he said, “that maybe this alien is making sense? Maybe we should listen to him.”

All eyes turned to look at him.

“Hey, whose side are you on, Whitney? Are you with us or against us?” one of the senators said.

“How do we know Senator Whitney isn’t in cahoots with the alien?” said another. “For that matter, how do we know he isn’t an alien posing as one of us?”

“They’ve infiltrated the government!”