As I passed the kitchen, Grandma poked her head out from behind the swinging door. “David? Could you come in here?” She held the door open and Snarffle trotted in ahead of me. He dashed to the communal dining table and hopped on top. Grandma whisked away a platter of baked goods just before he could inhale them.
“Still working on your contest entry?” I nodded toward the platter.
“These scones have a layer of fresh Kerntaberry preserves baked right into the center. Try one.”
I grabbed one and inclined my head toward Snarffle, eyebrows raised. “All right,” Grandma said. “He can have one, as well.” I tossed the scone into the air, and the alien’s tongue shot out and lassoed the flying snack. He was like a frog with superpowers. Grandma grinned. “His manners need some work, but I suppose I should be flattered that he likes my cooking so much.”
I tossed Snarffle another scone, and then grabbed one for myself. It was still warm, and I closed my eyes when I bit into it, savoring the otherworldly goodness.
“Grandma, you seriously need to think bigger than the Pioneer Day baking contest. With recipes this good—that no one else in the world has ever tasted—you should host your own show on the Food Network.”
“Wouldn’t that be a hoot?” She spread her hands out in front of her, highlighting an imaginary marquee. “I could call it Baking Tips from Beyond the Asteroid Belt.”
“Sounds good. Or maybe Secret Recipes of the Stars. I’m sure it would be a hit.”
Grandma placed the platter on top of the fridge, hopefully out of Snarffle’s tongue range. “As soon as this planet is ready to handle our little secret, perhaps I’ll do just that.” I couldn’t help but think of the Collective scientists for a moment.
I popped the last bit of scone into my mouth and licked the jam filling off my fingers. “So, you need me for something? Or did you just want a couple of taste testers?”
Grandma walked over to the swinging door and peeked out into the hallway, then checked to make sure no one was listening outside the window. Finally she stepped close to me. “Actually, yes,” she whispered. “I have a rather urgent job for you.”
“Yeah?” That sounded good. Anything to try to erase the memory of my big screwup from this morning.
“Our friend Sasquatch should have returned by now. Normally I wouldn’t be such a worrier, but he’s always on time, that one.” She glanced out the window again. “Plus, Tate made such a big deal out of his visit. And I really don’t have time to put up with a lot of his Code Blue nonsense. If Sasquatch is missing for too long, Tate will want to evacuate the premises, close down the transporters, and generally mess up everyone’s vacation plans. I’d feel a lot better if Sasquatch returned and got safely back into his transporter before that man starts asking a bunch of nosy questions.”
“Okay.” Snarffle nuzzled up against my feet, and I reached down to pat him. “But how can I help you with that?”
“I was hoping you could hike up the logging road this evening.” Grandma watched me hopefully. “Poke around a little bit, see if you can find our guest?”
I was a lot more comfortable in the woods after my camping adventures last summer, but I didn’t exactly see how that was going to help in this situation. “Grandma, you know I’d do anything you asked…but I don’t think I’d have much of a realistic chance of finding him. I mean, haven’t thousands of people gone out there looking for him? Haven’t they been searching for years and years?” It was nice to know she still had some confidence in me, but having messed up so badly made me hesitant to put an impossible task on my to-do list.
Grandma waved away my objections. “Oh, sure, but they go about it entirely the wrong way. Those weekend warriors tromp through the woods and set clumsy traps baited with half-rotten food. Then they sit around drinking beer in some abandoned deer hunter’s blind. The only thing they ever catch doing that is a cold.” Grandma gave me a wry smile and shook her head. “Sasquatch finds them hilarious. After they fall asleep, he usually leaves a couple of footprints for them to find in the morning. But don’t tell Tate that,” she added.
“So what do you want me to do?”
“Just walk down the middle of the logging road and call his name.” Grandma swept her hands down an imaginary path for emphasis. “Trust me, nobody ever tries that technique.”
I guess she had a point. My facial expression must have still been pretty skeptical, though, because Grandma pressed on. “And most people, of course, have no idea when he’s in town. They’re lurking up there in the forest while he’s back on his home planet. Plus, we have a couple of other factors in our favor. We know approximately where he’s staying, and best of all, he’s already met you. If he hears someone calling his name and spots you, he’ll just pop out from his hiding spot and say hello. He has excellent hearing.”
I nodded. “Sure, I can do that for you. I’d like to.”
“Oh, bless you, David.” She put her arm around my shoulders and led me out of the kitchen and down the back hall.
Suddenly I remembered something else from this morning. “I was supposed to hang out with Amy tonight. You mind if I invite her along?”
Grandma opened the back door. “Actually, dear, I don’t think that would be a very good idea.”
My spirits sank. “Really?”
“Amy’s wonderful, and if it ever came right down to it, I trust her not to mention anything to Tate. But I just don’t like putting her in a situation where she might have to lie to her father if he asked her anything. Not if I don’t absolutely have to.”
I dropped my head a little. “Yeah. I see what you mean.”
Grandma shut the door and squeezed my shoulders. “You know what? I’m sure everything’s fine with Sasquatch. It always has been before. You can head up there in the morning.”
“No, it’s okay.” This was the first time she had really needed me since I showed up, so I couldn’t turn her down. Especially after this morning. “I’ll go now. Just let me reschedule with Amy first.”
“She’s running an errand in town with Tate. I’ll fill her in when she gets back.” Grandma studied my face for a moment. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell her I insisted that you go. And that you were terribly disappointed.”
I really hoped Amy wouldn’t be mad. But I had to admit, it felt good to actually have something real to do. I looked down at the purple alien nuzzling up against my shins. “I think I will take Snarffle, though. Let him stretch those little legs before bed.” Snarffle bobbed and wriggled. He thought that was a great idea.
A few minutes later Snarffle was strapped into his new harness and dragging me up the logging road. Pretty soon sweat was pouring down my forehead. Fortunately, I got a little break whenever he stopped to make a snack of the clusters of pale mushrooms that sprouted from rotting logs, or to chew on long wisps of moss hanging from tree branches.
It didn’t take long to put civilization completely behind us. The old logging road narrowed and became more of a hiking trail with a pair of fading wheel ruts. No houses or buildings, no car noises, no people.
As peaceful as the whole scene was, the forest was still a busy place. Families of deer smashed through thickets of undergrowth as the little purple alien bounced and scampered from one side of the road to the other, making mini-excursions into the woods as far as his leash would allow. Squirrels raced circles around the big evergreen trees and chattered at him, while birds squawked from the branches overhead. Snarffle whistled happily back at all of them.
Now, I knew they were just animals…so why was I so embarrassed to be calling out “Sasss—qua-atch? Sasssss—qua-aa-atch!” at the top of my lungs every couple of minutes? I hoped we’d find him soon.
Walking through the forest, with the surrounding trees forming hundred-foot walls and a canopy of branches knotting themselves into a ceiling, your mind could be tricked into thinking you were still indoors. So when we came upon a huge, barren clearing, it definitely surprised me. Snarffle, too. We both stopped an
d stared.
The clear area off to our right was enormous, about as long and wide as a city block. It didn’t look like any of the clearings I had seen while hiking last summer, those peaceful mountain meadows covered with wildflowers. Places like that made you wish you had brought a picnic lunch and a blanket to lie on while you looked at the sky.
This was different. It looked unnatural, like a huge scar slashed across the landscape. The whole area was featureless and flat; no vegetation, no rocks or logs, no little ponds.
And the surface seemed to be shifting and moving, even though there was no wind, not even a breeze.
Snarffle nuzzled his purple body up against my leg, making little whistle-whimpers deep in his throat. The sound was so persistent, I almost didn’t notice the noise just underneath. I dropped down to one knee and patted him on the back. “Shhh, it’s okay, boy,” I whispered soothingly. “It’s okay. Just be quiet for a minute. Shhhhhh.”
Snarffle’s whining simmered down, and the other noise became more noticeable.
Bloop…slllshh…bloopbloop…
What was that? It sounded like…well, like a pot of soup boiling on the stove. But that was ridiculous.
I watched the landscape, trying to make some sense out of that eerie, shifting movement.
A flash of motion caught my eye. It was halfway across the clearing and off to our left; something rising out of the ground, only to disappear after a few seconds. What the…?
I let my eyes drift over the clearing, not really focusing on any one section, watching for another flicker of movement.
There! Only ten yards away and right in front of us. Coming up out of the ground, it was a series of…dirt bubbles?
It happened again, out in the middle of the clearing. And there were more over on the right-hand side, close to the edge where the trees started growing again. Little splashes that threw up brown bubbles of dirt. These rose out of the ground, hung ponderously in the air for a couple of seconds, then popped, sending dirt drops splattering down to be reabsorbed into the ground. It was like the surface of an enormous cauldron as a thick stew boiled and bubbled.
I scooped up a rock and threw it out in the middle of the clearing. Blorp! It sent up a brown splash of dirt and then disappeared below the surface.
“You ever see anything like that where you’re from, fella?” I whispered to Snarffle. He responded by nuzzling up even closer, and I patted him on the back. His whistle-whimpers increased in volume and intensity. “It’s okay. It’ll be just fine,” I told him, even though I wasn’t sure how much I believed my own words.
We kept staring, frozen by the strange scene in front of us. Then one of the enormous Douglas fir trees at the edge of the clearing, about half a football-field length away from us, started wobbling back and forth. For a split second I worried that maybe a bear was at the base of the tree, shaking it to dislodge a woodland creature that he had trapped, but the trunk was way too massive for that.
The top of the enormous tree swayed in larger and larger arcs, smashing right through the branches of the surrounding firs. The tree dipped even farther in the direction of the clearing, hung suspended in the air for a few moments like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, then tipped past the point of no return and fell all the way over with a majestic slowness.
You know that old riddle about whether or not a falling tree makes a sound if there’s no one there to hear it? Well, I sure wish I wasn’t the one around to hear this tree fall. Because it landed with a horribly unnatural squelching sound, sending up a shower of dirt spray. The whole thing just looked wrong. The tree bobbed on the bubbling surface of wilderness-stew, and then with a sickening sucking sound it disappeared into the earth, like the clearing was a greedy mouth slurping it up.
The strength went out of my legs. I dropped to the dirt and just stared. Snarffle crawled into my lap, and I wrapped both of my arms around him. I’m not sure how long we stayed huddled there, but it was enough time to see three more hundred-foot trees surrender themselves to the hungry ground below.
The clearing was spreading.
I had to get back to the B&B, fast, and tell somebody. I was trying to rouse myself out of this stupor when Snarffle leaped off my lap and charged toward the clearing. He moved so swiftly that his leash burned right through my palm, and I lost my grip on it.
“Snarffle, no!” I jumped up and ran after him.
It looked as though he was going to plunge right into the clearing, but he veered off at the last second and headed for the tree line. I raced after him and finally saw what had him so excited—a mama deer and her baby fawn, leaping nimbly through the trees.
Snarffle crashed into the brush near the deer, startling them and flushing the pair out of the woods and onto the logging road ahead of us.
He scampered along the road after them, that long tongue wagging. Snarffle placed himself between the two deer and the soupy clearing. It took me a few moments to figure out that he was trying to save them by herding the pair away from this new danger.
The doe bounded away in smooth, powerful leaps, all four hooves hitting the ground at once and rebounding like rubber to send them ricocheting back into the air. The fawn lagged behind. It was a tiny thing, hardly bigger than a golden retriever, and still had a pattern of white spots on its side.
The fawn veered toward the clearing, and Snarffle dashed nearer to remain in a protective position but got a bit too close, running up under the baby deer’s heels. The fawn got skittish and shot off of the road—
Right into the soupy ground.
It vanished beneath the forest floor, which was far more surreal to see than watching the trees sink below the earth. I lunged for Snarffle’s leash and managed to grab hold of it, stopping the little purple alien before he could splash in after the baby deer. He stood at the very edge of the shifting ground of the clearing, his little tail twirling like a ceiling fan and his eyes darting back and forth.
Suddenly the fawn’s head broke the surface of the earth, streaming rivulets of brown dirt juice. Its eyes rolled wildly in their sockets. The front hooves emerged for a moment and scrabbled in a frantic dog paddle, but then it was slowly sucked back underneath.
Snarffle strained at his leash. “No! I’ll do it!” I shouted. I wrapped the end of the leash around a nearby branch, tethering Snarffle to the tree, then moved along the edge of that swampy mess like a tightrope walker.
There was a roiling whirlpool of activity as the fawn thrashed around just beneath ground level. I reached out and stuck my hand into the earth, shuddering at the texture. It wasn’t like mud—it was both smoother and heavier, like jamming your hand into semi-wet concrete.
I grabbed one of the fawn’s struggling legs and pulled as hard as I could. The hoof rose slowly above the surface, followed by the leg, then the deer’s head. That’s when it opened its mouth and screamed, an eerily human sound. It really did a number on my last good nerve.
The fawn tried to rip its leg out of my hand, but I held on in a death grip, my heart pounding in my ears. The animal wriggled around some more and pulled me off balance. I fell headfirst into the boiling, soupy mess.
Everything went black. I tried to pop back up above ground, but it didn’t work. In a swimming pool you feel light and buoyant; this was the opposite. I felt buried in sludge, the weight of the earth pressing in on me from all angles. My arms flailed uselessly.
The fawn struggled, its hooves thudding into my chest, but I couldn’t see anything.
The fierce need to breathe consumed me. I tried to pull all my confused thoughts together, knowing I didn’t have much time.
Instead of trying to “swim,” I shot my hand straight up above my head. It broke the surface; I splayed my fingers and felt the cool evening air. I did the same with my other hand and then, keeping my elbows locked, pushed down with all my might until my arms were at my sides. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought maybe I had lifted myself up a bit. I struggled to do it again. And again.
Finally,
my head poked up through the liquid earth. The light reminded me that I was still alive. I gasped painfully. Snarffle was racing back and forth at the edge of the clearing as far as the leash would allow, whistling shrilly.
I tried to make my way over to him, but my natural swimming motion was worthless. I started to slip under again, the sludge lapping at my chin.
Snarffle turned his back on me and scaled the trunk of the tree as easily as he climbed the walls of my bedroom back at Grandma’s place. What—he wanted to play now? My head slipped below the muck, back into that suffocating blackness, but I managed to propel myself back up by working my arms through the earth again.
I came up spluttering and spitting out dirt juice, but quickly slipped back down. Sludge oozed back into both of my nostrils, choking me. I desperately needed more oxygen. My arms were tired, and I was in a battle with gravity that I had no chance of winning.
I spied a purple streak of motion. Snarffle had shinned out onto a tree branch directly above me. He flipped upside down on the branch, then spun himself back upright. He did it again and again, a blur of purple.
The muck pooled around my temples, flooding my vision. This was it. I knew that if I went under again, I wouldn’t be coming back up. They say your life flashes before your eyes at the end, but that wasn’t true for me. I just saw a clear image of Amy’s face, smiling her lopsided smile at me, and I remember hoping that she would miss me.
Just before the ground covered my remaining eye, I saw Snarffle leap off of the branch. His purple beach ball body plummeted straight toward me—
And stopped short, a few inches in front of my eyeball. He bounced back up, then dropped down again, bobbing in the air like a bungee jumper on the end of his leash.
My head slipped back underground, but something warm and slimy wrapped itself around my wrist. My downward slide was halted. The grip on my wrist stabilized me, and I was able to work my other hand up through the muck. Waving my arm around, I blindly found one of Snarffle’s feet and clamped on.
Using the last bit of my strength I pulled on the alien’s foot. The slimy grip on my other hand matched my effort. Gradually my body rose.
Alien on a Rampage Page 9
