Armageddon Read online

  Emma dashed back to see how Dana was doing. Blood was dribbling out of the gash on her cheek.

  I felt sick. I’d sworn I’d never let my friends get hurt again—especially Dana.

  This was a failure I wasn’t prepared to accept.

  Chapter 36

  “WHAT’S THE MATTER, Daniel?” Dana said, gritting her teeth to smile through the pain.

  “I’m so, so sorry, Dana! I-I don’t know what happened. My response time is lousy right now… my brain must be out to lunch….”

  “Chya,” Dana said, chuffing out a nose laugh. “Whatever, Dr. Danny. Can you just focus on fixing up my face?”

  “You got it.”

  I was able to stanch the blood without lifting a finger.

  “She still has a scar,” whispered Emma.

  I focused on it, tried to erase it from her face, to imagine it away.

  But I couldn’t.

  It was still there.

  “Um, are you okay, Daniel?” asked Emma. “Maybe you shouldn’t have tried that being-in-four-places-at-the-same-time trick.”

  “Or whipped up all the heavy artillery,” added Willy.

  “Yeah,” said Joe. “Maybe you left a few of your superpowers back in London or Beijing.”

  “Just fix Dana, will you?” blurted Willy.

  “I’m trying,” I said, sounding way more defensive than I ever want to sound again.

  “You can do it, Danny,” said Joe. “Since Dana’s a product of your imagination, just imagine her looking the way she’s supposed to.”

  “Is it bad?” Dana asked, trying to check out her reflection in the lenses of Joe’s glasses.

  “Nah,” said Willy. “It’s just a tiny little nick. But, well, I always think of you as being, you know, totally perfect.”

  When Willy said that, Dana fluttered her eyelashes. She might’ve even blushed. “You do?”

  “Well, yeah,” Willy said very shyly, slightly embarrassed. All of a sudden, I got the funny feeling that some of my more personal opinions about my dream girl had seeped out of my mind and found their way over to my imagined guy friend, because Willy sure sounded like he had a mad crush on Dana, too.

  “Well, that’s sweet, Willy,” Dana said, smirking. “But I have news for you: it’s just a little scar. No big deal. I’m still perfect for you, Willy!”

  For you. I gulped even though I knew Dana was trying to make me feel jealous about her and Willy the way I had made her feel jealous about Mel and me. Yep, even for Alien Hunters, being a teenager is one big, complicated, boy-girl, he said/she said mess.

  “Okay, so if Danny boy’s not working any miracles here, then let’s go grab some cheese blintzes and shish kebab–flavored potato chips,” urged Joe. “Moscow’s famous for ’em—and I’m so hungry, I could eat a horse. Even that gnarly green nag Number 2 was riding.”

  That’s when it finally struck me: Xanthos had told me to be on the lookout for strangely colored equestrian creatures….

  Know this: a red horse shall be a sign, he had advised, adding that the red horse would be a sign of all that is written, of all that must be.

  The red horse had been in New York City, not Moscow.

  I had pulled myself together in the wrong location!

  Chapter 37

  I FLEW SOLO to New York City.

  Actually, I teleported there, a skill my dad had taught me a while back. But to pull it off, I need to fully grok the topography of where I want to go and do some serious GPS mental gymnastics. As you might guess, such intense grokation requires a ton of focus, so, typically, I don’t bring along any excess cargo, like my four best friends.

  I sort of wished I had at least tried to bring Joe, Willy, Emma, and Dana. For a couple of reasons.

  Reason one: I felt horrible about abandoning Dana before I completely healed her. Joe and Willy were right: Dana is a hundred-percent pure product of my imagination. I should have been able to erase any trace of the wound simply by imagining Dana the way I always imagine her. But, for whatever reason, it wasn’t working.

  This logic problem made me wonder: Did I subconsciously want to leave Dana slightly “flawed” as I kept falling deeper and deeper for Mel? I might need to check in with Dr. Phil or Xanthos on that one.

  Reason two for wishing I had brought the gang: I sure could’ve used some backup going up against Number 2. If the guy could turn the Empire State Building into a trash heap even King Kong wouldn’t recognize, what could he do to me?

  I popped into New York a full ten city blocks away from Number 2, but he was extremely easy to spot because he was the only speck of color in an otherwise bleak landscape. He sat astride his bright red horse in a crater-strewn plane of gray dust and destruction. Using my telephoto vision, I zoomed in on the black-hooded beast as he and his scarlet stallion pranced around the ruins of Grand Central Terminal, the city’s biggest commuter train station. A mob of New Yorkers was pushing and shoving its way down mangled staircases to the subterranean train tracks.

  And New Yorkers really know how to push and shove.

  “Get outta my way!” I heard somebody shout.

  “Are you talking to me?” an angry man shouted back. “Are you talking to me?”

  Meanwhile, Number 2 calmly circled the madness on horseback, looking like an NYPD mounted cop nonchalantly patrolling the city’s annual Thanksgiving Day Parade. When a fistfight broke out between a bunch of guys in Yankees caps and another group in Mets hats, he just reared up on his crimson steed and laughed.

  My disgust for this alien invader was about to overwhelm me.

  How dare he destroy this planet and enslave all of its people?

  Suddenly I felt a buzzing in my chest.

  I figured my anger was raging so intensely it was ratcheting up my blood pressure.

  Sorry, Xanthos, I thought. I was about to give sway to the negative way—big-time. I was going to obliterate Number 2 before he got the chance to demolish any more of the world I had vowed to protect.

  The buzzing in my chest intensified.

  I touched my jacket and realized I had set my cell phone on vibrate.

  I pulled the quivering thing out of its pocket. Mel’s image was glowing on the call screen.

  “Daniel? Where are you?”

  “New York.”

  I could hear Xanthos whinnying in the background, so she must have been calling me from inside the horse barn.

  Then I could hear his voice in my head.

  Choose wisely, my yute. Do not gain the world and lose your soul.

  You said the red horse would be a sign! I telepathically thought back at him. A sign of what?

  What is written in the book.

  What book?

  All of them.

  “Daniel?” Mel spoke again. “I’m not so sure about this multiple-personality thing. It’d be great having four of you to hang out with, but I want the one guy I’ve ever really, really liked to come home. Now, please!”

  Home? I thought. I have no home. Number 1 had made certain of that, years ago, when he wiped out my entire family. And now Number 2 was laying waste to everything on the surface of what had become my adopted home. Earth.

  “I’m sorry, Mel, but I feel like there’s a bomb inside my chest that’s going to explode if I don’t take out this creep right here, right now.”

  “Wait a second, Daniel….” I heard Mel cry as I flung my phone to the ground.

  Do not give sway to the negative…

  “Shut up, you stupid horse!” I yelled. Call ended.

  Furious, I bounded up into the air and soared ten blocks above the horde of rowdy New Yorkers fighting for their chance to hop on an express train down to Number 2’s slave pens.

  When I landed, Number 2 was standing right in front of me, but his flaming-red stallion was nowhere to be seen.

  We were face-to-face in the pile of marble and tile that used to be Grand Central’s magnificent main concourse. I could feel Number 2’s foul, death-stench breath chilling my w
hole body.

  “Hello, Daniel,” he said with a sneer. “I see that I have finally earned your undivided attention.”

  “Whatever!” I sneered back. “Fight me. Right here. Right now.”

  My challenge seemed to amuse the colossal freak. “Don’t be absurd, Daniel. This isn’t as it should be.”

  “I said fight me. Come on.” I poked out my chin to give him an easy target. “Give me your best shot.”

  I was so blinded by my rampaging rage that I hadn’t worked out exactly how I was going to defeat this demon. I figured once we were fighting, inspiration would hit me. I’d improvise a winning strategy after Number 2 showed me exactly what I was up against.

  “Fight me!” I hollered again.

  Number 2 smiled. Then something hit me—BAM!—right on the chin.

  And it sure wasn’t inspiration.

  In a blindingly fast, hypersonic instant, Number 2 socked me with a punch so powerful it knocked me straight into tomorrow.

  Literally!

  PART TWO

  MARCHING TOWARD ARMAGEDDON

  Chapter 38

  I LANDED ON my butt in front of what used to be the Chrysler Building, just up Forty-second Street from Grand Central Terminal.

  I knew it was the Chrysler Building because I recognized the bashed-in steel beaks of the eagle-head gargoyles that used to stare out at the city from the ledges of the sixty-first floor. The eagles were replicas of Chrysler hood ornaments from 1929. Talk about a time warp: I was sitting in tomorrow, staring at a relic of yesterday.

  The streets, which before had been so crowded with throngs of jostling New Yorkers elbowing and stiff-arming one another as they ran down the subway stairs, were now totally deserted. So I had a sneaking suspicion that I wasn’t in exactly the same space-time continuum I’d occupied a second earlier.

  After gaining my bearings I noticed that I wasn’t completely alone. A man was scavenging his way across the scrap heap of the Chrysler Building, digging through the debris, looking for anything edible he could find. He danced a little jig when he rolled over a boulder and uncovered what had once been the lobby’s snack shop.

  While he helped himself to a whole carton of plastic-wrapped Oreos packets, I climbed over the rocky remains of the collapsed art deco masterpiece to talk to him.

  “Where is everybody?”

  My voice startled the guy. He whipped his head around while nibbling his way around the black edges of the cookie like a rat working its way around a wheel of cheese. I couldn’t help making the rat comparison, since a squealing pack of wiry-tailed rodents scurried around his ankles, helping themselves to the treasure trove of crushed candy bars, cookies, and chips he had just uncovered.

  The man didn’t answer. He just kept staring at me with a terrified look in his eyes.

  So I asked again. Louder this time. “Where did everybody go, sir?”

  “Who are you, kid? Where’d you come from?”

  “I’m Daniel. And let’s just skip the where. It’s complicated. Who are you?”

  “Bob,” the man replied. He had a week’s worth of stubble on his cheeks, not to mention a week’s worth of grime on his clothes. He wore a tattered raincoat, a soiled shirt, baggy pants belted by a frayed rope, and bundles of plastic bags on his feet for shoes.

  “Did you see that mob of people at Grand Central?” I asked.

  “Yesterday.”

  “Where did they all go?”

  Bob pointed a shaky finger toward the scrap heap that had been the railroad terminal. “Below. Down with the horseman. Yesterday was the end of the world, unless you were sleeping inside a Dumpster.”

  That’s when I fully understood what had happened. Somehow, a single blow from Number 2 had sent me spiraling forward through time, something I had never done before and, frankly, wasn’t really interested in doing again anytime soon.

  “He rode a red horse!” Bob shouted. “The second seal has been broken. He was the second horseman of the Apocalypse.”

  Maybe, I thought.

  I had seen all four steeds, but I hadn’t yet put two and two together to figure out that the alien invader was trying to terrify the world by aping the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, who, the Book of Revelation predicted, would ride a white horse, a red horse, a black horse, and a pale (or puke-green) horse.

  “ ‘Then another horse came out, a fiery red one,’ ” Bob ranted, recalling the ancient text. “ ‘Its rider was given power to take peace from the Earth and to make men slay each other. To him was given a large sword!’ ”

  My turn to nod. I had seen Number 2’s sword, too.

  And if this really was tomorrow, I had lost more than a day.

  I had also lost Number 2. The second-most-lethal alien outlaw on Terra Firma (or what was left of it) had at least a twenty-four-hour jump on me.

  I needed to talk with Xanthos. After all, it was my spiritual advisor who had advised me to be on the lookout for a red horse. Maybe he could drop me a few more hints. Like how to end Number 2’s world by giving him his own personal Armageddon.

  “Nice meeting you, Bob,” I said. “Maybe I’ll see you again.”

  “When? There will be no more tomorrows!”

  “Well, then maybe I’ll see you yesterday, because that’s where I’m going.”

  Hey, I may not know how to pull a fast-forward without someone sucker-punching me in the chin, but I’m an old hand at time-traveling backward!

  Chapter 39

  IN AN INSTANT, I was back in Kentucky—and back in time.

  In fact, Mel had her cell phone out.

  “Wow,” she said. “I was just about to call you.”

  Apparently I had picked up a few extra minutes and landed in yesterday before Mel had gone into the horse barn to make her phone call to me in New York. If I had yet to save the world from the wrath of Number 2, at least I was saving Mel some minutes on her dad’s monthly phone bill.

  Mel threw her arms around my neck and hugged me like she never wanted to let me go—or to let me go anywhere ever again. To be honest, the idea of mucking horse stalls with Mel for the rest of my life sounded like the most totally awesome thing I have ever imagined and, as you know, I can imagine some amazingly incredible stuff.

  I savored the moment. For a full five seconds.

  “So, how about you don’t do that again,” Mel said as we came out of our embrace. “One Daniel is hard enough to keep up with.”

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “You mean other than being worried sick about a certain Alien Hunter?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m fine. Dad says we’re totally safe here. His whole squad is camped out in the house, in the barn, out in the fields. And they’re decked out with all kinds of ray guns and junk they’ve confiscated from extraterrestrial outlaws.”

  I had a hunch I had already seen most of the alien weaponry they were armed with at some point in time, when it had been aimed at me.

  “I need to check in with Xanthos,” I told Mel.

  “What do you want us to do?” asked Joe.

  Yes, my “squad” was in Kentucky, too. Joe was chowing down on a bucket of Extra Crispy KFC, a box of Colonel’s Crispy Strips, and a tub of Popcorn Chicken. Emma was over in the paddock, petting a pony. Willy and Dana were in the barnyard, standing beside Joe.

  Holding hands.

  “What’s next, Daniel?” Dana asked, trying to seem nonchalant.

  I knew Dana wasn’t just asking about what was going to happen next in our battle against Number 2. She was wondering what came next for us.

  Before I could answer, she said, “Think about it. In the meantime, Willy and I are going for a walk.”

  “We are?” Willy looked pleasantly surprised.

  Dana cuddled up closer to him. “You want to see what’s behind that horse barn, don’t you?”

  Willy’s face went beet red. “I guess. I mean, if it’s okay with you, Daniel.”

  “Sure,” I said. “We have time. I ne
ed to check in with Xanthos, work up a plan.”

  “A plan might be good,” Dana said, giving me a look. Then she leaned up to whisper something in Willy’s ear.

  His face went from beet red to I-just-ate-a-pound-of-jalapeño-poppers red.

  “Are you okay?” Mel asked as I watched Dana and Willy, strolling hand in hand, disappear behind the barn.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m fine.”

  “You sure? You don’t mind Dana and Willy’s nonstop PDA activity?”

  “That? Nah. I’m cool. I couldn’t care less about them. Hey, I have a world to save, remember?”

  Mel faked a smile and acted like she believed me.

  Heck, I didn’t believe me, either.

  Chapter 40

  XANTHOS WAS LYING down in his stall, his head fully erect, his eyes locked on mine.

  I was sitting yoga-style with my legs crossed in a corner.

  Our minds were totally linked.

  Tell me about Number 2, I said telepathically.

  What is it you would know, Daniel?

  Anything and everything.

  Xanthos snorted a horse-sized sigh through both of his nostrils. What have you learned, my brudda? What have you seen?

  Um, in case you don’t watch TV, Number 2 is out there destroying the entire planet, and from what I’ve seen so far, I don’t think he’s giving free passes to horses. So if you don’t mind, can we do this a little more expeditiously?

  Do you mean faster?

  Yes! For starters, how about you don’t answer every question I ask with another question!

  Do you think that would help your cause?

  Yes! Who is Number 2?

  He is one who calls himself Abbadon. The Destroyer. He is known in some sacred texts to be the king of tormenting locusts and the angel of the bottomless pit.

  Okay, I’ve seen the locusts. But trust me, this Abbadon is no angel.