I was working my way through the crowd when a sound cut through the static of incoherent zombie babble.
“David!”
I wheeled around and saw nothing but the shuffling masses.
“Over here!”
I whipped my head around and stumbled in the direction of the voice. There! Under the wooden steps of the bandstand. A glimpse of a face and a waving hand.
I sprinted over and crouched down to get a look.
“Quick, get under here. You have to get out of sight!”
I scrambled underneath the stairs, where it was dim and cool. All of a sudden I was being grabbed and pulled by several hands. Fierce whispers in my ear: “David, thank the Creator you’re all right!” and “You came back! I knew you’d come back!”
I untangled myself and pulled back for a better look. Grandma and Amy were gazing back at me, as hunched over as I was. Their eyes were wide, and deep worry lines creased their faces.
“Oh, David,” Grandma said. “I’m so sorry I didn’t listen to you.”
Amy nodded vigorously. “We both are.”
I followed their lead and whispered, “What’s happening?”
“The festival is not going well this year.”
“Yeah, I guessed that much. But what happened?”
“Scratchull got the whole crowd gathered around my booth to kick off the judging for the silly baking contest,” Grandma said. “Passed out a scone to every man, woman, and child. Told them to hold off on eating until he could deliver a proper opening address to start the day’s festivities.” Grandma shook her head and sighed. “Of course, everyone listened even though we’ve never had an opening address. Not once in a hundred years. Anyway, he let loose with a lot of fancified speech—you know how he is—and then lifted a scone high in the air and proclaimed the Centennial Pioneer Day to be officially in session. Two minutes later we had this.” She gestured to the crowd of zombies stumbling past the bandstand.
“But you didn’t eat any?”
“Saying good-bye to you left me without much of an appetite, and thank goodness for that. As soon as I saw what was happening, I realized you had been right about him all along, of course. I ran away and hid here. I’ve been trying to think of what to do ever since.” Grandma took off her glasses and wiped at her eyes. “I still can’t believe anyone from off-world could do something like this.”
“So you don’t know what he’s planning?”
Grandma shook her head.
I turned to Amy. “You didn’t eat one, either?”
“No, I wasn’t even down here yet. After we said good-bye last night I just couldn’t sleep at all. I was in bed, staring at the ceiling, when I remembered something that teenage alien guest had told me about the translator. You know, the one who helped me rig up the baby monitor?”
“Yeah?”
“Remember how I didn’t want us to say anything incriminating around that thing? That was because he said that it not only translates, but it records as well. Stores up the audio file for playback.”
“Really? Then that means you could—”
“Go back and listen to the conversation you overheard. Exactly. I stayed up until three in the morning but couldn’t figure out how to make it work. I slept in way later than normal, and even though I knew I’d be late to the festival, I tried again this morning. And I finally got it to play.”
“So you heard?”
“Everything.” Amy reached into her pocket and pulled out the baby monitor.
“Where did you find that, anyway? Didn’t Scratchull have it?”
“He just left it lying around in the sitting room after our meeting in there. He doesn’t need a translator, of course, so I think he just sort of forgot about it.”
I shook my head. “He doesn’t forget anything. He just thinks so little of humans that he didn’t even consider the possibility that anyone would be able to figure out how to use it. He didn’t see you as any kind of a threat to him at all.”
Amy’s eyes went dark. “Last time he makes that mistake.”
She fiddled with a few knobs and then pressed a button. Suddenly the voices of Scratchull and his nervous green assistant filled up the crawl space underneath the bandstand steps.
“It is very simple. I want to escape from this planet first, and then annihilate it, you graxx-for-brains.”
“Yes, yes, of course…but…I thought you said…”
“Pay attention!” I heard a splat! and pictured blobs from Greenie’s head splattering around the guest room. “My first priority remains getting off this forgotten space island.”
Grandma’s eyes went wide, and she put her hand over her open mouth. Amy turned off the monitor. “I ran down here to warn Dad and your grandma, but I was too late, obviously. Oh, David, you were right, and I can’t believe I didn’t trust you more. I am so, so sorry.”
“No time for apologies. Speaking of your dad, where is he?”
Grandma scoffed. “Are you kidding? He had a scone in each hand. Could hardly wait for Scratchull to finish making his speech so he could be the first one to dig in.”
“So he’s out there somewhere?” I gestured toward the shuffling crowd.
“I’m afraid so.”
Amy smacked her fist into her palm. “If I had just twenty-four hours and some decent lab equipment, I bet I could come up with an antidote for those stupid zombie scones.” Her eyes narrowed to slits as she stared out at the shuffling mob. “Or at least a poison deadly enough to take care of that traitorous jerk.”
“I don’t think we’re going to get twenty-four hours.” I rubbed at my temples. “Just give me a minute to think.”
Okay, keep it simple and start with what I know. One: Scratchull wants to get off the planet. Badly. Two: I ruined his first plan. Three: He must have made another plan…but what did that have to do with temporarily turning everyone in Forest Grove into a zombie? Sure, the town was isolated, but he must know that sooner or later the outside world would find out that—
“PEOPLE OF EARTH.” Scratchull’s voice boomed out over the crowd noise. It had that electronic echo that comes from using a bullhorn. “STOP WHERE YOU ARE.”
The zombies lurched to a halt.
“VERY GOOD. NOW STOP MAKING THAT INFERNAL RACKET.” No change in the volume of the group air-gargling. “I MEANT SHUT UP!”
The hideous chorus stopped as if a switch had been thrown. The sudden silence was intensely eerie. To make it worse, somehow, a few birds started chirping, as if this were an ordinary summer day.
“YES. THAT’S MUCH BETTER,” Scratchull said through the bullhorn.
“I’m going to see what he’s doing,” I whispered.
“We’re coming with you.”
“No, it’s too dangerous,” I said.
I crept out from under the stairs. Amy and Grandma ignored my warning and followed right behind me. We crawled up the steps onto the elevated platform of the bandstand. Crouching below the level of the banister, we watched the town common through the narrow slits between wooden slats.
“There he is,” said Amy.
I followed her pointing finger. Scratchull was standing on the ledge of a fountain on the outskirts of the open common area.
He spoke deliberately, enunciating each word with care. “WHEN I SAY ‘GO’ YOU WILL MOVE IN A SLOW AND ORDERLY FASHION TOWARD THE SOUND OF MY VOICE.” The heads of hundreds of zombies turned in unison and faced more or less in Scratchull’s direction. “GOOD. I DARESAY YOU FEEBLEMINDED CREATURES MIGHT ACTUALLY BE ABLE TO PULL THIS OFF. ARE YOU ALL READY?”
A multitude of gargling groans were directed his way in unison.
“EXCELLENT. GO!”
The crowd lurched as one toward the fountain.
“Come on!” I said. “It’s our only chance of getting close to him undetected.”
“What are we going to do then?” Amy said.
“One thing at a time,” I said. “We’ll figure it out when we get there.”
Amy hesi
tated. Grandma looked at her. “I’m through with not trusting David.”
“Good point,” Amy said.
We ran down the bandstand steps and waded into the crowd. “Walk like they do in case he looks over here.” We let our mouths hang open as we lurched and shuffled along with the mob, but at a faster clip, getting nearer and nearer to the white alien.
The first zombie to reach the fountain was a big man in blue overalls and a John Deere cap. Scratchull reached down and palmed the man’s head like it was a basketball. The zombie stopped in his tracks.
“LINE UP BEHIND THIS PERSON HERE, AND THEN STOP MOVING.” The zombies bunched up near the fountain. “SINGLE FILE, EARTHLINGS. THERE IS NO NEED TO CROWD TOGETHER. I ASSURE YOU, THERE WILL BE PLENTY OF ROOM FOR EVERYONE WHERE YOU ARE HEADED.”
There was still some stiff-bodied jostling here and there, but the mindless drones eventually aligned themselves into a loose single-file formation. The Forest Grove undead were nothing if not obedient. Soon the line stretched out of the common and all the way down a side street. Every person in town must have been in that line.
“This way,” I whispered. We staggered zombie-style toward the line, then broke off and scurried to a hiding spot behind a cluster of picnic tables near the fountain. I saw a suitcase and an aquarium full of slugs propped up on the ledge of the fountain near the white alien.
Scratchull pulled something out of his pocket and raised it to his dark lips.
“What’s he doing now?” Amy whispered.
The white alien spoke into the thing he was holding, then paused and cocked his ear toward it as if he were listening.
“It’s the receiver!” I said.
“What?”
“He made some sort of an interstellar phone from a satellite dish on top of the roof. I saw him talking on it last night.”
Grandma shook her head and looked at the sky. “What has been going on at my place of business? And right under my nose?”
Scratchull spoke in his screechy native tongue.
“The translator, quick,” I said.
Amy fished the baby monitor out of her pocket again and switched it on.
“—and all clear for landing,” Scratchull was saying. Amy fiddled with the volume and we heard the next part loud and clear. “Everything is prepared and ready for a quick loading and then immediate takeoff again. You will not encounter trouble from any humans whatsoever.”
An enormous shadow fell across the city hall building. I looked at Amy and Grandma. Their faces grew darker. Soon the whole town was immersed in the dull gray of twilight.
I looked up. An enormous spaceship was dropping straight down on the common from out of the sky. It was so big it blotted out the sun.
The next sound to come out of the baby monitor was knife-against-glass laughter. It needed no translation.
The bulk of the spaceship was an enormous black globe. No lights, no portals, no distinguishing features at all: just a dull, unmarked surface all the way around. It looked dead, like a black hole had solidified and fallen from the darkest depths of space.
The spherical ship was encased in a red triangle. Surrounding the globe at equator level were massive red wings, three long, straight extensions that met at their tips.
“I don’t suppose there’s any chance they’re from the Collective?” I whispered to Amy.
She just shook her head and stared up at the ship.
“Are you sure? Because Scratchull said they’d come back with ships if there was a natural disaster or something.” I was desperately clinging to any scrap of hope I could think of. “Maybe they found out about the frozen river and figured out that Scratchull got hold of his invention?”
“No chance. There’s no Collective insignia, see?” Amy pointed at the ship. “No markings of any kind to alert anyone as to what kind of ship it is, what its mission might be.”
“What’s that mean?”
Grandma, mouth hanging open as she gaped at the sky, found her voice. “It means that it’s a rogue ship.”
“Rogue?” I said.
Amy nodded. “Lawless. They don’t answer to any governing body.” Her face went even darker in the encroaching shadow of the spaceship. “It means anything goes.”
The craft continued to descend. I cringed, certain that the buildings all around us were going to get smashed. But as the ship lowered, it squeezed into the town common, just barely missing the structures around the perimeter. It made the three-story city hall building look like a dollhouse.
When the bottom of the black ball touched down, the bricks of the common walkway were ground into dust. The ship threatened to roll out of the common like a giant’s bowling ball and level the buildings of downtown Forest Grove, but the tips of the triangle wings folded down and formed a stabilizing tripod. The massive vessel nestled into the depression it had made.
Then a hatch opened, and a ramp fell down from the belly of the ball and crashed onto the ground.
A dozen of the fiercest-looking aliens I’d ever seen marched out.
Their faces were mostly teeth. Fangs as long as daggers, too big for their slobbery mouths, jutted out at odd angles. A row of intense black eyes across the top of the forehead was the only sign that maybe these weren’t completely mindless eating machines.
They leaned forward when they walked, as if their thickly muscled torsos were too heavy for their tree-trunk legs. Or as if they were eager for a fight.
And they all carried ten-foot staffs, each of which ended in a knotted club covered in swirling dots of red light.
“Look at that armor,” I breathed.
“Actually, I think that just might be their bodies,” Amy whispered back.
I looked closer. I had thought the mottled green, gray, and dirty tan that covered them was a synthetic camouflage suit, but maybe it was just the coloring of their skin. And Amy was right—on closer inspection, the thick plates that covered their shoulders, forearms, stomachs, and shins looked like natural growths for protection, like dinosaurs.
“Evolution can get pretty weird on other planets,” Amy whispered.
“But what kind of a world could lead to beings like that?” I gestured at the hideous creatures.
“Someplace where they fight.” Amy swallowed. “A lot.”
I put my arms around Grandma and Amy and tried to scrunch us all down even further out of sight behind the picnic tables.
The new arrivals pounded the bricks with cinder-block feet until they drew near and formed a semicircle around Scratchull and the fountain. Thick gobs of drool spilled over the sides of their overcrowded mouths and splattered on the ground.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen.” Scratchull spread his long arms out to indicate the surroundings. “Welcome to Earth, such as it is.”
The biggest, ugliest alien stepped forward. “You one who called?” This was the voice I had heard last night, with words that sounded like they were deep in his stomach.
“Indeed I am.” Scratchull stretched his dark lips into what he probably thought was a welcoming smile. “And you must be the captain of this fine vessel. An Arslaggian slave ship, is it not?”
The camouflage alien grunted in the affirmative.
“Excellent. May I ask what you would like—”
“Your offer. Better be real.” The Arslaggian captain shook his staff menacingly. “Better be good.”
“Of course, my dear sir.” He swept a white hand toward the line of Forest Grove zombies stretched out behind him. “One thousand human workers, precisely as advertised. Delivered at the exact time and place that I promised. And they’ll all be joining you without a bit of a struggle, as you can clearly see. I assume that the acquisition of indentured servants has never been so effortless for you, yes?”
The Arslaggian captain sneered at Scratchull—one long, jutting tusk nearly lacerating his own bulging eyeball in the process—and stalked over to the head of the line of zombies.
The big alien jabbed the lead zombie in the middle of
his blue overalls with a thick, gnarled finger.
“UHNNGHNGHN.”
The captain turned his head to glare at Scratchull.
“What wrong? They look worthless.”
Scratchull jumped down off the fountain to approach the pair. The dozen armed aliens growled and closed in as a unit. Scratchull hurriedly put up his hands in a calming gesture of peace. The captain waved his henchmen away with a flash of his staff.
“Oh, no, they are perfectly capable, I assure you,” Scratchull said. “They are only temporarily incapacitated. You see, they recently ate a mixture of Kerntaberries and Mooglah fruit.”
“Huh? Why for? Everyone know that make you stupid.”
“Well, now, please remember I never said they were the smartest creatures in the universe. But they will snap out of their stupor in less than twenty-four hours, and I do guarantee they will be able to take simple commands. Also, they have good, strong backs. I am confident you shall find them well suited to a lifetime of menial labor on your planet.”
The Arslaggian captain strode up and down the line of zombies. He stopped near an old woman, leaned in close, and sniffed her all over.
“Ah, yes, I see where you’re going there. Indeed, they would also make great snacks,” Scratchull continued. “I’ve never tried one myself, but many of the beings on this planet are quite soft. I am certain they would be most succulent.”
“This one. Too old.”
“Come now. Certainly someone with your refined palate knows that a well-aged cut of meat is always the finest, yes?”
“Hmmph.” The captain looked over the population of Forest Grove, then sneered at Scratchull. “And you. In return. You just want hitchhike ride?”
“That is correct. My home planet is conveniently located on your path as you return to Arslag. You only have to drop me off there and our account will be settled.” Scratchull stuck his hand out for the Arslaggian captain to shake. “Do we have a binding agreement? I daresay this will be your easiest pickup ever.”
The captain ignored Scratchull’s hand and took one more look up and down the length of the line. He grunted and nodded once. “Load them on ship.” He turned to one of his henchmen. “Open dungeon.”
Alien on a Rampage Page 21
