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  Chapter 10

  SO, AS YOU can see, I have trust issues.

  But it wouldn’t have taken a ninth sense—let alone a sixth sense—to know the guy definitely wasn’t cool. The next thing you know, his eyes fixed on Mom’s modest engagement ring.

  “Three thousand,” he said, and spat some tobacco juice into the lawn.

  “Dollars? A month?!” my mom asked.

  “Plus a month’s rent in advance. Security deposit. And heat and electricity are not included,” he said, already turning back toward his luxury sports car.

  “We’ll take it,” said Dad.

  The man spun around. “Now, don’t waste my time here, buddy. I have twenty properties to manage and can’t waste time on deadbeats.”

  “Are you calling us deadbeats?” asked Mom.

  Pork Chop blew a bubble and stared at him menacingly.

  “All right then—a cashier’s check. Six thousand dollars made payable to Ernesto Gout. And I need it today. I have a lot of other people looking at this place.”

  The guy tensed up a little as Dad stepped toward him, but Dad was all smiles.

  “It’s a deal, sir,” he said, putting out his hand.

  The landlord grudgingly accepted the handshake, whereupon I quickly stepped up behind him and put my hand on the back of his head, causing him to go rigid like somebody had dropped an ice cube down his shirt.

  Cool Alien Hunter power number 141: Telepathic Attitude Adjustments.

  “So, would cash be okay?” I asked.

  “Yes, yes, of course. Cash would be fine,” he said, quickly coming around.

  “And how about if you bring it to us by, oh, say, noon.”

  For a moment it looked like he was going to lose his lunch, but he nodded.

  “And we’ll need you to call the electric and gas companies and arrange to pay that yourself, okay?”

  “Yeah-yeah, sure-sure.”

  “And, here, why don’t we trade cars? You take the minivan, so you can have some more room for stuff when you run our errands. And we’ll keep the Ferrari.”

  “Great idea.”

  “All right then. If you can just give me the keys to the house and your car, I’ll let you go to the bank and get us our money.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  It all goes to show that you can’t always believe first impressions.

  Or, if you don’t like your first impression, then change it. I mean, if you’re an Alien Hunter.

  Chapter 11

  AFTER MR. GOUT returned with the money, we sent him off to get some lumber and other things to help alienproof the house. His attitude was much improved—he actually seemed happy about it.

  “Your abilities are getting sharper,” remarked Dad, “but you’re going to need a bit more than that for Number 5. In fact, I’ve managed to update his profile, and I created a brief dossier I want you to digest before dinner.”

  “And you aren’t going out till you’ve taken a shower and done your laundry,” added Mom. “You look like a ragamuffin. And tomorrow you’re getting a haircut.”

  I guess it’s a little weird that I let myself get bossed around by people that are essentially products of my imagination; but what kind of parents would they be otherwise?

  “Sure, Mom,” I humored her. Meantime, I went to check out some updates and relevant List computer information that Dad had helped me locate on Number 5 and Number 21.

  You don’t make it into The List’s top ten without a pretty terrifying résumé to back it up, but the more I found out about Number 5, the more it was clear this was going to be my biggest test yet.

  Like the electric eels on Earth, his species had evolved in murky swamp waters where electrical powers gave a creature a distinct advantage. Only, of course, his species had evolved a little more than any eel. Not only were Number 5 and his kin able to sense and stun with electricity, but they could also manipulate the electrical impulses in their prey’s brains and actually hypnotize them into doing whatever they wanted.

  According to recent reports, it wasn’t uncommon to find Number 5’s species living with a handful of attending servants, who would do everything from cleaning to cooking themselves for dinner.

  In the field of electromagnetics, Number 5 was described as something of an artist—you know, like in the way Genghis Khan was an artist with battlefield tactics and ruthless leadership. Oh, sorry… maybe you missed that part of world history class.

  Also, he was a dynamo of energy. Literally. Where an electric eel could generate a few kilowatts—enough to kill the population of, say, a bathtub—Number 5 could generate enough electricity to fry an entire water park full of people… and even those out in the parking lot.

  As to Number 21, the space ape that had gotten the jump on me in S-Mart, I discovered his show-biz name was Dougie Starshine and that he’d been credited as the production assistant and casting director on Number 5’s last dozen shows—and that he was no weakling, either.

  That alien miscreant was wanted for murder in a half dozen galaxies, and it looked like he had some pretty serious psychic warfare talents. I mean, maybe a twenty-one ranking doesn’t quite compare to a top-ten baddie, but if you’re the type of reader who likes a little perspective, consider that Joe and I had figured out that if Superman were evil and real (in fact, he is loosely based on a real alien from the Crab Nebula), he’d come in at about number thirty-seven.

  Real aliens seldom have weaknesses as obvious as kryptonite.

  Chapter 12

  DAD AND I went out back and did some jujitsu training—and savate, tae kwon do, taekkyon, aikido, judo, and glima for good measure—and held a brief tactical planning session afterward.

  He’d decided that when you boiled it right down, all that Number 21 had done to me was seize the advantage by using the element of surprise.

  If there is a kryptonite for me, then there you have it: because my powers are directly linked to my imagination, I have to be thinking clearly in order to make the best use of them.

  By hitting me with that concussion-inducing shockwave, Number 21 had been able to keep me disoriented and unable, for instance, to visualize any weapons—or summon my alien-butt-kicking friends.

  “Hey, Mom,” I yelled. She was sitting on the back porch reading a book, The Elephant-Keeper’s Secret Kite, that I’d picked up for her. Have I mentioned that I love elephants and that it’s a little-known fact that they originated on my home planet?

  “What’s for dinner?” I asked.

  “I have no idea,” she replied. “All we have here is a tin of caviar I found in the mailbox along with a lot of other old junk mail.”

  “Caviar?” I asked. “As in fish eggs?”

  “A lot of people consider it a delicacy, Daniel,” she reminded me, holding out the package. It was still in its clear plastic mailer, addressed to “Female Resident.”

  I tore open the bag and read the note that came with the can:

  A gift to the women of Holliswood from the KHAW news team, in gratitude for your kindness to visiting film producers. Bon appétit!

  Caviar from the local news station? Well go ahead and chalk up mystery number 112 for me to solve already. And, while you’re at the board, why don’t you put me down for what is really only my second bad pun ever—although in this case I think you’ll agree it’s completely unavoidable—because there was something very fishy going on in this town.

  Chapter 13

  SINCE I REALLY did not want caviar for dinner—or ever—I sent Mr. Gout out for some KFC original recipe. I knew my friends, especially Joe, would never forgive me if I didn’t summon them for the Colonel Sanders gorge fest. Joe nearly cried with happiness when he saw Mr. Gout come in the door with the big red-and-white buckets.

  Then Dana, Willy, Joe, and Emma and I said good night to my parents and hopped into the Ferrari. The only problem was the five of us couldn’t fit in a two-seater sports car.

  “Leave Dana here,” said Joe.

  “No
way,” said Dana, “You’re the one who smells like Colonel Sanders’s gym shorts.”

  “I’ll stay behind if you guys want,” said the ever-sacrificing Emma. “Even though all I smell like is coleslaw because nobody ever asks what I want to eat for dinner.”

  Emma always serves us a generous helping of grief for eating meat.

  “Hey, you kids,” said Dad, who was standing on the front lawn, laughing at us along with Pork Chop. “Take the minivan,” he suggested. “I made some modifications that will help quite a bit with your, um, errands tonight.”

  Willy had already clambered out of the overstuffed Ferrari and was sliding open the minivan’s side-panel door.

  “Dudes. You gotta come check this out!”

  Chapter 14

  DAD HAD CONVERTED the minivan into a cross between Scooby Doo’s Mystery Machine and a NASA command center.

  The spacious, now shag-carpeted interior was blinking, pulsing, and humming with sensor displays, joysticks, trackballs, touchpads, data visors, relay panels, heads-up displays, sampling hoods, and holographic imagers.

  “This is great, Dad,” I said. “So how’s everything work?”

  “I’m sure a genius like you can figure it out in no time,” said Pork Chop, snapping her bubblegum.

  “It’s all very user-friendly,” said Dad. “I don’t think any of you will have any trouble getting the hang of it.”

  “Actually, it’s my four copilots who’ll be getting the hang of it,” I said. “I’m driving.”

  They groaned but settled into the back of the van without another note of complaint as I drove toward the outskirts of town. They’re good friends like that.

  As we made our way down the quaint residential streets, you couldn’t help noticing the windows of nearly every house glowing with the eerie blue flicker of TV and computer screens. This thing called Contemporary America—and its obsession with televisions, game systems, and computers—has gone a little far if you ask me. Some call it the Information Age, but I’d tend to say it’s more the Sitting-on-one’s-butt-and-letting-other-people-do-the-thinking-for-you Age.

  “You guys find anything useful back there?” I asked, turning onto Mulberry from Larch.

  “Yes, I think I have our first target!” said Joe. “There’s a whole mess of ’em in a building about a half mile from us. Hang a left here and then a right at the next stoplight.”

  “How many are there?” asked Willy, practicing some jujitsu moves in the middle of the van.

  “Can’t tell yet. Hang on, okay?” Joe remained intent on his data feed. I turned at the light onto a commercial street lined with stores and shopping plazas.

  “Okay, it’s up there on the right,” said Joe. “Should say ‘White Castle’ on it… and it’s absolutely infested with… hamburgers!”

  We pelted him with food wrappers, empty soda cans, a couple of dirty sneakers. I should’ve remembered that no mission is more important to Joe than filling his supersize-me stomach.

  Chapter 15

  JOE PRACTICALLY HAD to be held down to be kept from leaping out of the van as we passed the White Castle.

  I steered back to our original route, but we didn’t get very far. A man, covered from head to toe in mud, staggered out of the bushes and into the middle of the road.

  I swerved and hit the brakes.

  “Hey,” I yelled out the window. “You need some help?”

  He ignored me and staggered up the lawn of a house whose windows—like all the others we’d seen—were flickering blue from TV and computer displays.

  “Yo,” yelled Willy, climbing out of the van after him. “You okay?”

  The man must have heard him—unless he was deaf or had mud in his ears—but he just walked up to the house and right smack into the closed front door. After a minute or two, the door opened, and we caught a glimpse of a pregnant woman as he pushed his way through and disappeared inside.

  “Rough day at work, I guess,” said Dana.

  “Maybe he’s an alligator wrestler,” suggested Joe.

  “Alligators don’t live this far north, stupid,” said Emma. “But clearly he was coming from someplace muddy.”

  “The closest body of water is two point one miles south-southeast of here,” said Dana, clicking away on a computer in the back of the minivan. “That roughly lines up with the direction he was coming from.”

  “Step on it, driver!” said Willy.

  “Hey, I’m in charge around here,” I said and added, “as should be obvious to a bunch of people who depend on my imagination for their very existence.”

  “Sorry, your highness,” said Joe, returning the flurry of food wrappers, soda cans, and sneakers that had nailed him earlier.

  We’d just turned onto County Road 23 when Emma suddenly shrieked like a banshee.

  A dog had run into the street just feet away from our car.

  Chapter 16

  I BRAKED SO hard that everybody in the backseats ended up in the front seats.

  “What’s with all the jaywalking delays?” I grumbled. I had an investigation to conduct here.

  “Aw,” said Emma, sitting up and looking at the poor animal shivering in the van’s headlights.

  “Somebody tried to burn him,” she exclaimed as we got out of the van. She gathered the medium-sized brown dog in her arms.

  “Are you sure you want to pick him up like that?” asked Joe. “He’s, like, really muddy.”

  Emma shot him a reproachful glance.

  “Judging from the shape of the burn marks,” said Willy, petting the dog’s head, “I’d say an alien firearm did this. He’s a lucky pup to have escaped with only some singed fur.”

  “He doesn’t have a collar,” Dana observed.

  “Which is just one more reason why we’re taking him with us,” said Emma. “We’ll check with the animal shelter to see if anybody’s missing a dog, and, if not, we’ll adopt him. And, for now, his name will be Lucky, just like Willy said.”

  I thought about this for a moment. Unlike the rest of them, Lucky wouldn’t just disappear when I needed to be alone. So if Emma adopted him and then Emma wasn’t around for a bit, the dog would be my responsibility. I felt like a parent having an awkward moment at PetSmart.

  “Um, I think we better leave him here. I mean, he was probably going someplace —” I broke off. Emma looked like she was deciding exactly how to conduct my public execution.

  “Right,” I said. “Bring him into the van already.” I’d figure this out later. He was a pretty sweet-looking dog, at least under the burned fur and inch-thick mud.

  Hey, I may be an alien, but I still have a heart.

  Chapter 17

  WE TRAVELED ABOUT a quarter mile down an unpainted, heavily potholed strip of asphalt that saw more traffic from combines and livestock trailers than passenger vehicles. I knew we’d hit the boondocks when we saw something far stranger than a farm animal emerge about twenty feet in front of the van.

  It was an alien picnic. Right there in the middle of the road was a cluster of Number 5’s henchbeasts.

  “Um…” wondered Joe. “Why aren’t they attacking us?”

  “It worked!” said Dana. “See, I put us in stealth mode. We can see them, but they can’t see us. Or hear us, for that matter. A mile or so back I turned on a cloaking device that renders the van invisible.”

  “Go ahead,” she continued, “test it out. Drive up closer.”

  As we slowly approached, we could see some of them were munching on chicken wings. Not buffalo- or BBQ-style, though… they were the kind with feathers still on them and blood still in them. They guzzled cans of motor oil to wash them down and tossed the empties to the ground and stomped on them like they were at a fraternity party.

  And then we noticed one henchbeast had something that looked suspiciously like a cat’s tail hanging out of its mouth.

  “That’s so disgusting,” said Joe. “I mean people say they could eat a horse when they’re hungry, but that’s just an expression.
What kind of monster would actually eat a poor little kitty?”

  “Stay here, Lucky,” said Emma, and before the rest of us could stop her, she’d jumped out of the van and was sprinting toward the aliens.

  Chapter 18

  I’VE GOT TO hand it to Emma—for a peacenik, she really knows how to lay down some hurt. That first alien she decked must have thought it had been teleported back up into space for all the stars and blackness it was suddenly seeing.

  Still, this was a case of seven versus one, and, though she managed to knock down a henchbeast and had delivered some serious facial rearrangement to another, she was soon at the uncomfortable center of an alien pileup.

  Willy was the first to reach her side. He grabbed the nearest henchbeast and threw him a dozen yards straight into a tree. The young maple shook and dropped a lot of sticks and leaves but fared better than the alien—which shook and dropped most of its legs.

  Joe, Emma, and I managed to take out another two, but the other aliens had remembered their guns by this point and were laying down some heavy fire that kept us playing far more defense than offense.

  That is, until it occurred to me that I could turn their high-powered plasma guns into Super Soakers.

  Willy was quick to notice the change, and he jumped forward, taking a shot right in the chest.

  “Oh no!” he screamed, “I’m me-eh-eh-elting!!!” And then he collapsed to the ground.

  “Or… not!” he said, leaping back up and adopting an intimidating martial arts stance.

  Alien henchbeasts tend not to be as deep or as sensitive as human beings, but they do have faces, so it’s pretty easy to tell what emotions they’re feeling. In this case, the look on their ugly mugs is what you could safely call terror.