Armageddon (12 page)

“Hey, Daniel, I think I can see your house from here,” Joe said, pointing at a tiny twinkling dot on the eastern horizon.

“It’s
so
romantic,” Dana said, squeezing Willy’s hand.

Yes, the two of them were
still
holding hands.

“Not to be a downer, guys,” I said, “but we have work to do. I want to make one hundred percent certain security is airtight.”

We came upon two FBI agents on sentry duty.

“Evening, folks,” said one.

“State your business,” said the other.

“I’m Daniel. These are my friends. We’re double-checking Agent Judge’s security setup.”

“We’re locked and loaded,” said the brusque one, brandishing an RJ-57 tritium-charged bazooka powerful enough to drill all the presidents on Mount Rushmore new nostrils. “No one, alien or human, gets in or out without passing a checkpoint.”

“We have teams set up every hundred meters along the fence line,” said the other one, who was toting a high-intensity microwave pistol some alien outlaw must’ve dropped in a firefight with the IOU. “But I have to admit, our air defenses are a little weak. I wish we had more than a standard radar package and the HAWK surface-to-air missile system.”

“I wish we had a big glass dome,” said his gruff partner. “Like in
The Simpsons Movie
.”

I grinned. I
loved
that movie—and I thought the bazooka-toting FBI guy’s idea was brilliant! So while he hummed a few bars of “Spider Pig,” I closed my eyes and started thinking about an upside-down teacup four miles wide and about a mile deep. A teacup made out of an impenetrable plastic polymer, thirty feet thick.

When I opened my eyes, the stars in the sky were a little fuzzier, a little blurred around the edges. When I checked the top of the dome, the constellations on the other side looked kind of warped, as if the stars were staring at themselves in a fun-house mirror.

“Willy?”

“Yeah?”

“You want to do the honors?”

“Absolutely.” He turned to the sentry with the microwave ray gun. “Can I borrow your pistol, sir?”

“Huh?”

“I need to test your newly enhanced air defenses.”

The FBI agent, not entirely sure what Willy was talking about, reluctantly handed over his weapon.

“Thanks.” Willy aimed the pistol up over his head and squeezed the trigger.

A microsecond later, an undulating aurora of brilliantly colored light radiated out from the impact point and, for an instant, illuminated the curve of the dome.

“Outstanding,” said the man with the bazooka. “Just like
The Simpsons Movie
.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Oh, and one more thing: you should probably tell your guards not to venture fifty feet forward from the fence line.”

“How come?”

“Joe?”

Joe bent down, picked up a hefty rock the size of a softball, and chucked it toward the horizon.

When the stone hit the interior lining of the dome, it exploded into a puff of dust. We could all hear a shower of gritty sand particles sprinkling to the ground.

Both FBI guys nodded.

“Gotcha,” said the one.

“Good to know,” said the other.

“Um, Daniel?” said Joe. “Quick question.”

“Fire away.”

“You’ll take down the dome for food deliveries, right?”

“Don’t worry,” I said, “I’ve already stocked the pantry. If we run out of Doritos or Ring Dings, I’ll stock it again.”

Joe let out a huge sigh of relief. “Awesome.”

“IF ABBADON WAS thinking about bringing the fight to us tonight,” Willy said as we headed back to the farmhouse, “I’m afraid he’ll have to change his plans!”

“Absolutely,” said Emma.

“What kind of name is that, anyway?” asked Dana. “ ‘Abbadon.’ It sounds like he’s some kind of Swedish pop group. Maybe he’s a fan. Probably knows all the words to ‘Mamma Mia.’ ”

“That song has words?” said Joe. “I mean other than ‘mamma’ and ‘mia’?”

“Hey, look,” Willy said, bending down to examine a shadowy clump. “A whole pile of horseshoes.”

“Let’s play!” said Emma. “Come on! We’ve all been so keyed up these last couple of days. We need to blow off a little steam.”

“I agree,” I said. “We deserve a little R and R.”

“Okay, see that weather vane on top of the horse barn?”
said Willy, pointing to the moonlit silhouette a half mile away. “The pole holding it up is our target.”

“Me and Willy against you three!” Dana said, scooting over to latch on to Willy’s arm.

“No way,” said Willy.

“What?” said Dana. She sounded kind of like an eighth grader who’d just heard from her girlfriend that her boyfriend had talked to some guy who said that this other guy heard some guy in the locker room say Willy didn’t like Dana anymore.

“Daniel’s too good,” Willy explained. “It should be all
four
of us against him.”

“Yeah,” Joe and Emma agreed as they sidled up alongside Willy and Dana.

“Fine,” I said with a grin. “Bring it on.”

“Alpar Nokian rules?” asked Willy.

“Definitely.”

“Okay,” said Emma, “that means zero points for leaners.”

“And zero points for being the closest to the pole,” added Joe.

“And, of course,” said Dana, “you have to turn your back to the target and toss the horseshoe over your shoulder.”

“While hopping up and down on your nondominant foot,” added Emma.

We all nodded. On Alpar Nok, instead of horseshoes, the contestants hurled giant metal booties worn by domesticated elephants across great distances at flaming torches planted in the turf. If you knocked out the fire by flinging
your bootie straight through the flame, you earned ten points. If you snuffed it out by landing your bootie upside down on top of the flame, you got a Douser, worth fifty points (not to mention first dibs on the deviled eggs).

“We go first!” said Joe.

“Fire away,” I said.

I heard the familiar whir and whistle of wobbly steel flying through the air. It was soon followed by the clank of a spinning horseshoe grabbing hold of a metal rod 30 feet up and 2,640 feet away.

And then, in very rapid succession, I heard that clank three more times.

“Four ringers!” shouted Dana. “How are you going to beat that, Daniel?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, turning my back to the barn, hopping up on my left foot. “Maybe like this?”

I flicked my horseshoe backward, right over the top of my head.

Then I spun around to watch it spiral and soar across the sky until it wrapped itself around the torso of the flying-horse ornament poised on top of the weather vane. The arch of metal hit the horse at extremely high velocity, and it ripped the whole weather vane rig right off the roof, tearing out its anchor bolts and sending it flying. Naturally, this caused all four of my friends’ horseshoes to slide off the support post and clink, one by one, down to the ground below.

“Yes!” I cheered, triumphantly raising my arms to celebrate my spectacular victory.

I was staring straight up at the top of the dome.

Surprisingly, the Milky Way didn’t look smudged or milky.

In fact, all the stars were once again crisp, clear, and sparkling.

It was almost as if, while I was busy ripping the weather vane off the barn, someone had ripped a hole in my impenetrable security shield!

ABBADON STOOD, SURROUNDED by his minions, in a charred meadow a hundred yards east of the white stockade fence surrounding the FBI agent’s horse farm.

“Foolish boy,” he whispered to the wind. “Did you not see what I did to New York, London, Beijing, Moscow, and the rest? Did you really think your idiotic dome would remain impenetrable? To me?”

He shook his head.

He wondered if this Daniel would ever prove himself the worthy adversary he had been promised.

“Whatever you create, child, I can just as easily destroy!”

He fluttered open his massive set of wings.

“Fly!” he shouted to the pack of warriors he had brought with him to Kentucky. On his command, the aliens clustered in the flattened field once again morphed into inky black bats. Squealing, the swarm took flight and blotted out the starlit sky. They zoomed to the west and shot
through the gaping hole Abbadon had so easily punched in Daniel’s protective shield.

Abbadon watched as his minions, using their innate radar systems, swooped under and around the latticework of unseen laser-beam triggers crisscrossing the airspace around the Judges’ farm. Once clear of the alarm grid, the bats skimmed across the open fields, flying inches above the ground, remaining undetected by the humans’ mechanical and, therefore, less-effective radar systems. The flock split in two. One squad rocketed toward the main house while the other zoomed off to the barn.

To deal with that one
, thought Abbadon.
The interloper.

When the twin sorties reached their targets, the bats zoomed straight up the sides of the buildings. The house squad dive-bombed down the chimneys. The barn squadron simply slipped through the crack between the sliding front doors.

“We’re in,” both leaders reported back.

“Excellent,” said Abbadon. “Complete your missions.”

“Yes, Master,” the leaders grunted.

“And remember, do not hurt the girl. Ferry her down below.”

“What about Xanthos?” asked the leader in the barn.

“Eliminate him,” Abbadon replied easily. “He has been giving Daniel an unfair advantage.”

I CAN OUTRUN hummingbirds and Japanese bullet trains. My personal best speed used to be 438 mph. Nobody was clocking me on this particular night, but I think I topped that as I shot across the half mile of open field to the farmhouse. My sonic boom shattered a couple of windows in Agent Judge’s antique pickup truck.

I had seen a swarm of scuzzy bats plunge down the chimney pipes and knew, instantly, what was going on: Number 2 was sending in his creeps from the cave. They’d morph out of their flying mammal mode and switch back into their hideous alien selves the instant they were inside.

But why? What did they want in the house?

I
was out in the yard.
My
face was the one on the
WANTED
poster. I was the Alien Hunter with an unbelievably hefty bounty on his head.

So why did the bats storm into Agent Judge’s house?

Unfortunately, Agent Judge soon gave me the answer.

I burst in through the front door and saw him in the
parlor, swinging a laser-sighted blaster right, left, up, down—searching for a target.

“They grabbed her!”

“What?”

“The aliens took Mel!”

“THEY’RE IN THE barn!” Willy shouted as soon as we’d bolted outside. Someone had pushed the doors wide open.

“I heard whinnies and screams,” reported Emma. “I think they’re torturing the horses!”

“Cover us!” I called to Agent Judge, who was joined by maybe a dozen other FBI agents, all of them hauling heavy E.T. hardware. They took up firing positions behind fences, horse troughs, rain barrels, and that antique pickup truck.

I led the gang toward the barn.

Suddenly, six screaming horses came stampeding toward us, all of them ridden by alien outlaw freaks who were spurring the stallions’ ribs, hard.

“Time to dismount!” I commanded, swinging out my leg to roundhouse kick the lead rider off his steed.

On my right, I could see Willy leaping up into a flying back kick. Dana was going with a scissor kick, attempting to take down two riders at once.

But an instant before any of our blows landed, the
horses transformed into rocket bikes and zoomed away, torching our shins with their afterburners.

“Mel’s not with them!” I shouted as I tumbled to the ground.

“The first bunch must’ve taken her,” reported Willy. “I saw them morph into some kind of robots and shoot skyward. They were hauling a sealed capsule behind them.”

That capsule had to be Mel’s portable prison cell.

“Take these criminals down!” Agent Judge shouted to his team, and they immediately started firing. Hot tracers streaked through the sky. Warbling shock blasts rippled through the air. Unfortunately, when that last invader squeaked through the shrinking exit hole, the FBI weapon bursts ricocheted off the inner lining of my refurbished dome.

“Cease fire!” I shouted as boomeranging ammunition pummeled the ground around us. “Cease fire!”

Agent Judge took up the call. “Cease fire!”

We dodged the incoming blasts until the last of the deflected shots sprang back at us.

Then everything under the dome became incredibly, horribly quiet.

I looked over at Agent Judge. I’ve never seen a man look so shocked or grim.

“Don’t worry, sir,” I said. “I’m going after her.”

Not yet,
I heard Xanthos’s voice say in my head. It was weak, barely audible.
Not… yet…

He sounded like he was hurt.

No—it was worse.

It sounded like my spiritual advisor was dying.

XANTHOS WAS LYING on his side in his stall. I could see that the straw scattered around his battered body had been scorched; his flowing white mane was singed and seared. I’m not certain what kind of flame-throwing weapons the thugs had used, but one thing was totally clear: they had come to these stables with orders to kill.

Xanthos was barely clinging to life. His blackened rib cage rose up and down very slowly, the movement accompanied by a wet death rattle creaking up from his lungs.

My brudda
, I reached out mentally to my fallen friend.

Believe it or not, a slight grin twitched across his muzzle.

My brudda
, he thought back.

What did those animals do to you?

The worst they could, Daniel. They live to hate. For this, we must pity them. For they will never know the one true love that unites us all.

Hang on. I can fix you.

No, Daniel. There are some things even you cannot repair.