Watch the Skies Page 14

  Now I understood why we couldn’t move our bodies. The van’s seats had sent out tendrils that were no thicker than rubber bands, but they were strong and enveloped our arms and legs more effectively than steel manacles could.

  More than anything, the tentacles reminded me of the sea anemones I used to find in the tide pools on the Oregon coast. Unsuspecting fish that swam too close would be grabbed, stunned by the neurotoxins in the anemones’ tentacles, and slowly digested.

  That’s what this van was, I realized suddenly. A giant anemone.

  Five

  WITH THIS DISCOMFORTING and demoralizing realization came another totally creepy thought: the driver wasn’t actually driving, she was part of the alien, one of its organs. She was bait. How many hitchhikers had been picked up by this kindly looking old lady, only to become her dinner?

  She—it, I should say—saw my look of understanding and horror.

  “Ah, my tentacles are full of neurotoxins. Thank you for noticing.” It cackled nastily. “All the better to kill you with, dearie.”

  I had to do something; I had to do something right now. But what?

  The problem was I couldn’t move, I couldn’t create anything, I couldn’t transform. I couldn’t even talk, to tell my friends to break out, to run away.

  “Yes, indeed. This is when the hunter becomes the hunted and then becomes tonight’s repast. Just be thankful that you’ll all be dead before you’re digested. I’m told that the process is excruciating.” Somehow this didn’t come as much consolation to me.

  The old woman’s body began to transform now, melting into her seat. Meanwhile, a bulbous tentacle tightened around my mouth, and the interior of the van seemed to be getting smaller and smaller. That was just claustrophobia, right? Hey, I had to get a hold of myself.

  No, the van was definitely getting smaller. Shrinking! I blinked, desperately trying to clear my mind and find a quick solution. Being squashed into mush and then digested? Not how I was planning to leave the Earth.

  Up front in the van, Joe’s head was shuddering as he struggled against paralysis. I could hear Emma gurgling behind me. And Dana’s beautiful eyes—they were huge with fear.

  The alien anemone’s voice rasped again. The driver was gone, but mouths had opened up in the walls around us, hundreds of them. It was like listening to the worst chorus imaginable—in surround sound.

  “This is for my beloved brother, Alien Hunter. It’s too bad he couldn’t be here to see it. Do you remember Number 40? You disintegrated him in Dallas, Texas!”

  Of course I remembered, but I couldn’t focus on past victories right now.

  The walls and ceiling constricted yet again. Like a giant heart beating, I thought. The roof was pressing down hard against our heads now. The van’s interior had become smooth and oily; it reminded me of the inside of a stomach.

  “Nice eating you…” The beast’s final message trailed off in a sickening gurgle. “I’m Number 43 by the way. My brother’s name was Jasper.”

  “I remember—may he rest in pieces!” I quipped. What else could I do?

  Another powerful contraction came. The walls closed in even tighter, pushing me and Dana together—something I might have enjoyed, if we weren’t both about to become meat-and-bone Jell-O pudding.

  I’d never felt anything like this before. I was hurting all over, and not just physically. It was like all the terror my friends were feeling was being transmitted back to me a hundred times over. I had never gotten them into a situation this bad before; it looked like I wouldn’t have the chance to get them out of it.

  The walls kept closing in, bending me double. The tentacle around my throat was twisting too tight for me to even swallow. It’s over, I thought. Everything was getting dim, and quiet, and distant. My eyes were finally squeezed shut, and I thought I might suddenly burst like a zit caught in tweezers.

  And then behind the pain and the fear, I heard words way in the back of my mind.

  “You still have time.… you can take out Number 43. At least I think so.”

  I recognized the voice immediately. It was my father.

  My dead father.

  THE WORLD ALL AROUND YOU.

  LIFE AS YOU KNOW IT.

  EVERYTHING YOU LOVE.

  IT ALL CHANGES—NOW.

  WITCH & WIZARD

  This is the story I was born to tell.

  Read on, while you still can.

  –JAMES PATTERSON

  COMING IN DECEMBER 2009

  Prologue

  WISTY

  IT’S OVERWHELMING. A city’s worth of angry faces staring at me like I’m a wicked criminal—which, I promise you, I’m not. The stadium is filled to capacity—past capacity. People are standing in the aisles, the stairwells, on the concrete ramparts, and a few extra thousand are camped out on the playing field. There are no football teams here today. They wouldn’t be able to get out of the locker-room tunnels if they tried.

  This total abomination is being broadcast on TV and on the Internet too. All the useless magazines are here, and the useless newspapers. Yep, I see cameramen in elevated roosts at intervals around the stadium.

  There’s even one of those remote-controlled cameras that runs around on wires above the field. There it is—hovering just in front of the stage, bobbing slightly in the breeze.

  So, there are undoubtedly millions more eyes watching than I can see. But it’s the ones here in the stadium that are breaking my heart. To be confronted with tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands of curious, uncaring, or at least indifferent, faces… talk about frightening.

  And there are no moist eyes, never mind tears.

  No words of protest.

  No stomping feet.

  No fists raised in solidarity.

  No inkling that anybody’s even thinking of surging forward, breaking through the security cordon, and carrying my family to safety.

  Clearly, this is not a good day for us Allgoods.

  In fact, as the countdown ticker flashes on the giant video screens at either end of the stadium, it’s looking like this will be our last day.

  It’s a point driven home by the very tall, bald man up in the tower they’ve erected midfield—he looks like a cross between a Supreme Court chief justice and Ming the Merciless. I know who he is. I’ve actually met him. He’s The One Who Is The One.

  Directly behind his Oneness is a huge N.O. banner—the New Order.

  And then the crowd begins to chant, almost sing, “The One Who Is The One! The One Who Is The One!”

  Imperiously, The One raises his hand, and his hooded lackeys on the stage push us forward, at least as far as the ropes around our necks will allow.

  I see my brother, Whit, handsome and brave, looking down at the platform mechanism. Calculating if there’s any way to jam it, some way to keep it from unlatching and dropping us to our neck-snapping deaths. Wondering if there’s some last-minute way out of this.

  I see my mother crying quietly. Not for herself, of course, but for Whit and me.

  I see my father, his tall frame stooped with resignation, but smiling at me and my brother—trying to keep our spirits up, reminding us that there’s no point in being miserable in our last moments on this planet.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m supposed to be providing an introduction here, not the details of our public execution.

  So let’s go back a bit.…

  BY ORDER OF THE NEW ORDER,

  and the Great Wind—The One Who Is

  THE ONE —

  let it be known that as of

  NOW, THIS MOMENT, or

  TWELVE O’CLOCK MIDNIGHT,

  whichever shall arrive first, following the

  SWIFT TRIUMPH of The ORDER of the

  ONES WHO PROTECT, who have obliterated the

  BLIND AND DUMB FORCES of passivity and

  complacency PLAGUING This World,

  ALL CITIZENS must, shall, and will abide by

  THESE THREE ORDERS for ORDER:
<
br />   1.All behaviors NOT in keeping with N.O. law, logic, order, and science (including, but not limited to, theology, philosophy, the creative and dark arts, et cetera) are hereby ABOLISHED.

  2.ALL persons under eighteen years of age will be evaluated for ORDERLINESS and MUST COMPLY with the prescribed corrective actions.

  3.The One Who Is THE ONE grants, appoints, decides, seizes, and executes at will. All NOT complying shall be SEIZED and/or EXECUTED.

  — As declared to the One Who Writes Decrees

  by THE ONE WHO IS THE ONE

  One

  WHIT

  SOMETIMES YOU WAKE up and the world is just plain different.

  The noise of a circling helicopter is what made me open my eyes. A cold, blue-white light forced its way through the blinds and flooded the living room. Almost like it was day.

  But it wasn’t.

  I peered at the clock on the DVD player through blurry eyes: 2:10 a.m.

  I became aware of a steady drub, drub, drub—like the sound of a heavy heartbeat. Throbbing. Pressing in. Getting closer.

  What’s going on?

  I staggered to the window, forcing my body back to life after two hours passed out on the sofa, and peeked through the slats.

  And then I stepped back and rubbed my eyes. Hard.

  Because there’s no way I had seen what I’d seen. And there was no way I had heard what I’d heard.

  Was it really the steady, relentless footfall of hundreds of soldiers? Marching on my street in perfect unison?

  My street wasn’t close enough to the center of town to be on any holiday parade routes, much less to have armed men in combat fatigues coursing down it in the dead of night.

  I shook my head and bounced up and down a few times kind of like I do in my warm-ups. Wake up, Whit. I slapped myself a couple of times for good measure. And then I looked again.

  There they were. Soldiers marching down our street. Hundreds of them as clear as day, made visible by a half-dozen truck-mounted spotlights.

  Just one thought was running laps inside my head: This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening.

  Then I remembered the elections, the new government, the ravings of my parents about the trouble the country was in, the special broadcasts on TV, the political petitions my classmates were circulating online, the heated debates between teachers at school. None of it meant anything to me until that second.

  And before I could piece it all together, the vanguard of the formation stopped in front of my house.

  Almost faster than I could comprehend, two armed squads detached themselves from the phalanx and sprinted across the lawn like commandos, one running around the back of the house, the other taking position in front.

  I jumped back from the window. I could tell they weren’t here to protect me and my family. I had to warn Mom, Dad, Wisty —

  But just as I started to yell, the front door was knocked off its hinges.

  Two

  WISTY

  IT’S QUITE HIDEOUS to get kidnapped in the dead of night, right inside your own home. It went something like this.

  I awoke to the chaotic crashing of overturning furniture, quickly followed by the sounds of shattering glass, possibly some of Mom’s china.

  Oh, God,Whit, I thought, shaking my head sleepily. My older brother had grown four inches and gained thirty pounds of muscle in the past year. Which made him the biggest and fastest quarterback around, and, I must say, the most intimidating player on our regional high school’s undefeated football team.

  Off the playing field, though, Whit could be about as clumsy as your average bear—if your average bear were hopped-up on a case of Red Bull and full of himself because he could bench-press 275 and every girl in school thought he was the hunk of all hunks.

  I rolled over and pulled my pillow around my head. Even before the drinking started, Whit couldn’t walk through our house without knocking something over. Total bull-in-the-china-shop syndrome.

  But that wasn’t the real problem tonight, I knew.

  Because three months ago, his girlfriend, Celia, had literally vanished without a trace. And by now everyone was thinking she probably would never come back. Her parents were totally messed up about it, and so was Whit. To be honest, so was I. Celia was—is—very pretty, smart, not conceited at all. She’s this totally cool girl, even though she has money. Celia’s father owns the luxury car dealership in town, and her mom is a former beauty queen. I couldn’t believe something like that would happen to someone like Celia.

  I heard my parents’ bedroom door open and snuggled back down into my cozy, flannel-sheeted bed.

  Next came Dad’s booming voice, and he was as angry as I’ve ever heard him.

  “This can’t be happening! You have no right to be here. Leave our house now!”

  I bolted upright, wide awake. Next came more crashing sounds, and I thought I heard someone moan in pain. Had Whit fallen and cracked his head? Had my dad been hurt?

  Jeez, Louise, I thought, scrambling out of bed. “I’m coming, Dad! Are you all right? Dad?”

  And then the nightmare to start a lifetime of nightmares truly began.

  I gasped as my bedroom door crashed open. Two hulking men in dark gray uniforms burst into my room, glaring at me as if I were a fugitive terrorist cell operative.

  “It’s her! Wisteria Allgood!” one said, and a light bright enough to illuminate an airplane hangar obliterated the darkness.

  I tried to shield my eyes as my heart kicked into overdrive. “Who are you?!” I asked. “What are you doing in my freaking bedroom?”

  __________________________________

  Witch & Wizard.

  In stores December 2009.

  About the Authors

  JAMES PATTERSON is the author of the highly praised Maximum Ride novels and of bestselling detective series featuring Alex Cross and the Women’s Murder Club. His novels have sold more than 170 million copies worldwide. He lives in Florida.

  NED RUST lives in Croton, New York, with his family. His writing has appeared in Rolling Stone and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.