by Lucas Flint
But on the sixth night, after yet another beatdow—er, I mean ‘training session’ with Nightbolt, Nightbolt informed me that I would have tomorrow off. He said that we’d been training hard all week long and that it was a good idea to take a day off every now and then when you were training. To say I was glad would be like saying that the sky is blue, so when I went to bed that night, I fully intended to sleep in tomorrow morning, even if that meant missing breakfast, because I needed to catch up on my sleep.
It seemed like only seconds later, however, when I was awakened by my phone ringing on the desk next to my bed. Dazed, I opened my eyes and saw nothing but darkness. It must have still been very early in the morning, because I didn’t even see any light streaming in from the cracks in the curtains. The only light came from my ringing phone, which I awkwardly grabbed for until I got a good grip on it and held it up to my face to see who was calling me at such an ungodly hour.
My heart skipped a beat when I saw that it was Greta. I immediately answered the phone and said, in a half-asleep voice that probably sounded terrible, “Hey, Greta, what’s up?”
“Alex!” came Greta’s cheerful voice on the other end. “Sorry for calling you so early, but I just haven’t heard from you all week and I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
I yawned and rubbed my eyes. “I’m fine now that I’m talking to you. You sound chipper.”
“Coffee,” said Greta with a slight giggle. “I got up early because I’ve got to be at school early and I wanted to call you before the day started. I really didn’t expect you to answer the phone, though.”
I yawned again. “I wouldn’t have, but the ring tone woke me up. But don’t worry about that. I’ve been forced to get up early every day of this goddamn week anyway; I probably would have woken up out of habit if you hadn’t called.”
“Oh, good,” said Greta. “But where are you, exactly? Frank told me you were taking a special study program to boost your grades, but when I went to your home, your brother James told me you were gone.”
“Wait, James is at home again?” I said in surprise. “And you met him?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Greta. “He’s a real nice guy. I definitely see the family resemblance between you two. He looks like you, except older and taller. Maybe a bit more muscular, too.”
“Don’t remind me,” I grumbled. “Anyway, sorry for not telling you where I was ahead of time. I just had to leave in such a hurry that it didn’t occur to me to call or even text you until I was long gone.”
“I understand,” said Greta, though she sounded a bit hurt just the same. “James didn’t tell me where you went, but I’m guessing it had something to do with work, right?”
“How did you guess that?”
“No one has seen Beams all week,” said Greta. “Frank told me. After he interviewed Beams, he said that Beams just up and vanished. Rubberman is still in the hospital, but no one has seen Beams at all. So I figured you probably weren’t in Golden City anymore.”
“That’s right,” I said. “I’m not. I’m not supposed to tell you where I am, though, because it’s supposed to be a secret.”
“I understand,” said Greta. “Trying to avoid the Vigilante Legion, right?”
“How did you know that?”
“The Golden City Journal did an interview with that creepy Iron Angel guy recently. He claimed that the Legion would descend upon Golden City to avenge him and kill you and Rubberman in the process. He said a lot more than that, of course, but that was the part that stood out to me the most.”
I bit my lower lip. “Have there been any sightings of the Vigilante Legion since I left?”
“Not that I know of,” said Greta. “Still, I have seen more police patrol cars around than usual. Seems like the police are taking Iron Angel’s threat seriously, but maybe nothing will come of it. Some people think that the Vigilante Legion isn’t nearly as big as Iron Angel says it is, but others say that it is a legitimate threat and ought to be labeled as a terrorist organization by the government. I don’t know what to think either way.”
I stroked my chin. It was good to hear that the vigilantes hadn’t attacked the city yet, but I wondered why they were waiting. After all, Rubberman was in the hospital and basically unable to defend himself. Even if Rubberman did have bodyguards protecting the entrance to his room, there’s no way that the hospital would be able to withstand a coordinated, unannounced attack from multiple vigilantes. If the other members of the Legion were anywhere near as competent or strong as the ones Iron Angel brought with him to Golden City, they should have zero trouble getting Rubberman.
Maybe they were aware that the police were on the lookout for any vigilante activity or were waiting for the perfect opportunity in which to strike. Or maybe they wanted to kill me and Rubberman at the same time, but because they didn’t know where I was, they were waiting until I returned to Golden City. Regardless, I did not feel good about this situation at all.
“I hope you come back soon anyway,” said Greta. “How long are you going to be … wherever it is that you are?”
“Three more weeks,” I said. “So it will still be a while before we see each other again. I’ll call you every day in the meantime, though. Only reason I haven’t before is because I’ve been too tired at the end of each day to call you.”
“No problem,” said Greta. “If you don’t call me, I’ll call you. Even if I have to do it early in the morning like I’m doing right now.”
I nodded. “Sounds good. Anyway, what is—”
All of a sudden, a strange sound interrupted my sentence. It sounded like a mixture between fingernails scratching on a blackboard and the buzzing of an insect’s wings.
“What’s that sound?” said Greta. “It reminds me of a wasp.”
“Don’t know,” I said, looking around the dark room, though without any light I couldn’t see much. “Might just be a wasp. There are a lot of wasps around here, so—”
The buzzing, scratchy sound suddenly grew louder, causing me to flinch. Now I could tell that it was coming from outside the right window, though I could not tell what was actually making the sound. But whatever it was, I had a very bad feeling about it.
“Greta, I’ll call you back,” I said, lowering my voice for some reason. “I need to check something. I’ll call you again tomorrow.”
Before Greta could say anything, I ended our call and placed my phone back on the bedside table. Throwing my legs over the side of the bed, I put my glasses over my face and crept across the floor, doubled over to avoid being seen by whatever was making that noise. The noise grew louder and louder—and more and more irritating—the closer I drew to the window. Part of me just wanted to crawl back into bed and hide under my covers, but another part of me wanted to make sure that the noise was not being made by something which could threaten me or Nightbolt. I thought about putting on my Beams costume, but decided that I didn’t have time for that. I would peek through the window and see what was making the noise.
Stopping before the curtained window, I listened as closely as I could to the noise on the other side. It was as loud as ever, almost to the point where I couldn’t even hear myself, but I didn’t run. I pushed aside the curtain slightly, just enough for me to get a peek at the outside, but not enough for whatever was on the other side to see me.
The outside was much brighter than my room, mostly because of the moon and stars, which were bright and clear tonight, with not a single cloud in the sky to obscure my view. Despite that, I still didn’t see anything out of the ordinary at first, even though that weird noise was as loud as ever. But then I saw it.
I don’t know what I saw. It moved quickly across the ground, large and spider-like … at least, I thought so. It moved too fast for me to see for sure, but that was the impression I got when I saw it. But it had to be at least as large as Spike, which made no sense, because there were no spiders that big anywhere in the world. Yet I was sure I’d seen something like a giant spider move acros
s the ground.
I peered more closely out the window, but I couldn’t see it. Somehow the creature had disappeared. It had disappeared so thoroughly, in fact, that I started to doubt if I had seen anything at all. Maybe I was still half-asleep and seeing things.
But that noise was still there. It was slightly muted, as if someone had lowered its volume, but I couldn’t ignore it. Yet where could such a large creature have disappeared to? There wasn’t anywhere to hide out there.
All of a sudden, I heard a dog barking. It sounded like Spike and he was barking as if he had seen something. Remembering that Spike slept in his doghouse outside, I turned around and rushed toward the door. I opened my bedroom door and stepped out onto the hallway, but Nightbolt was already there. Like me, he was in his pajamas, though I took note of the shotgun in his hands, which he held as if he went out shooting every day.
“Nightbolt?” I said, staring at him in surprise. “I didn’t know you were awake so late.”
“I wasn’t,” Nightbolt said in his usual gruff voice. “Heard Spike’s barking. And what’s that weird noise? Sounds like a giant bee dying.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I did see something out my—”
I was interrupted by another howl from Spike, but this time, it didn’t sound like a warning. Instead, it sounded like Spike had gotten hurt.
“Spike,” said Nightbolt in an alarmed voice.
He rushed toward the front door, with me following closely behind him. We burst out the door onto the front porch and Nightbolt shouted, “Spike! Where are you, buddy?”
But Nightbolt’s voice was lost in the volume of that strange noise I’d heard earlier. With the flashlight I’d taken from my desk, I flashed it over in the direction of Spike’s doghouse. This showed us exactly why Spike had howled in pain … and why we probably were going to be howling in pain, too.
A large creature stood over a wounded Spike near the front of his doghouse. The creature looked kind of like a spider, but it only had four legs, rather than six, and it was completely hairless. Its smooth, metallic skin shone in the light, but it was slightly transparent, allowing us to see strange bodily fluids coursing through its veins.
Below the creature lay Spike, who was whining almost as loudly as the creature. The reason why was obvious: His back right leg had been wounded and he couldn’t get up. And as soon as I flashed my light at the creature, it turned its head toward us.
Its head didn’t look even remotely insect-like. It was actually creepily human, with a strange beak where its mouth should be. Its eyes were a dull black, while its nostrils were two triangle-shaped holes in its face. Its head was mounted on a long, spindly neck, which appeared to give it a much greater range of motion than our own necks could.
I was so shocked by the creature that I didn’t know what to do. Nightbolt, on the other hand, screamed, “Get off my dog, you monster!” and fired three shots in rapid succession at the creature.
When each bullet hit the creature, they made a resounding gong-like echo, which was when I realized that the creature was wearing some kind of metal armor or shell. Even though the bullets did not appear to harm the creature, it nonetheless turned and fled, making that strange noise all the while. It jumped over the fence and hit the ground running, its four legs moving its bulk at an astounding pace. At this rate, it would escape and we might never see it again.
But I sensed that this creature was more important than it appeared, so I turned to Nightbolt and said, “Nightbolt, you check on Spike and make sure he’s okay. I’m going after the creature, see if I can find out where it came from or at least where it’s going.”
Without waiting for Nightbolt’s response, I rushed toward the fence and leaped over it. Unfortunately, the sleeve of my right arm got caught on the barbed wire of the fence, which caused it to tear, but I ignored that. Holding up my flashlight higher, I ran in the general direction in which the creature had fled. I couldn’t help but feel surprised as I ran at how far the creature had gone already, but as I drew near the Arena, I saw the creature disappear inside. That seemed like a strange thing to me, given how the Arena only had one entrance, but maybe the creature was so afraid of us that it wasn’t thinking straight. Assuming, that is, it could think at all, which was not a guarantee, though somehow I felt that it was likely.
I rushed inside after it. I stopped in the doorway and swung my flashlight back and forth, arcing the light across the entirety of the Arena’s interior as I shouted, “Come out wherever you are, you monster! Show yourself!”
But to my astonishment, my flashlight did not reveal any sign of the spider creature. It appeared that the spider creature must have vanished into thin air, but that made no sense. I couldn’t even hear the weird screeching sound it made anymore.
Indeed, I almost believed that the creature had somehow teleported away to safety before I remembered that the Arena’s rafters were still in place. I looked up just in time to see a long, thin green string shoot out of the shadows and hit me in the chest, knocking me flat to the ground and sending my flashlight flying out of my grasp. The flashlight landed a few feet away from me, its light aimed in my general direction, which was how I was able to see the spider creature slowly descending toward me on another thin bit of green webbing.
I tried to get up, but the creature spat out four wads of green webbing at me in rapid succession. The wads struck my arms and legs, pinning them to the ground. I struggled to break free, but the webbing was as solid as concrete.
I looked up again. The spider creature was close enough now that I could smell it. It smelled like blood and excrement; the stink was overwhelming, especially in the dry Texas air. I gasped for air, but the air wasn’t very clean to breathe due to the monster’s proximity. All I could think about was how the creature would soon be upon me and how it would tear my face off if I didn’t act fast.
Just as the creature touched its feet against the ground, I fired my lasers at its face. Without my helmet’s visor, my lasers were significantly weaker; however, they were still strong enough to blow up a car or, in this case, mutilate a weird spider creature’s face.
The lasers hit it dead on. The creature screeched in agony, covering its face with one long limb as it staggered backwards out of the Arena. I fired my lasers at the web holding down my arms and legs, which successfully melted the webbing, freeing me. I scrambled to my feet, rubbing my wrists that hurt slightly from the melted web flowing over them, and looked at the spider creature.
It had completely retreated out of the Arena by now, but rather than flee, it was too busy rubbing its face where my lasers had struck it. It seemed defenseless at the moment, so I took a step forward to fire another laser blast at it.
That is, until a huge, bright white light suddenly came out of nowhere. The light made my eyes water, forcing me to slam my hands over my face. A strange buzzing sound filled my ears, but it was different from the buzzing sound which the spider made. It was mixed in with what sounded like humming engines and, as best as I could figure, it came from the sky.
Then, without warning, I heard yet another strange sound. It was brief, lasting no longer than a second, but it was a very distinct sound. It reminded me of a drill striking concrete, except slightly electrified.
As soon as the sound passed, the bright white light went away. I opened my eyes, which took a moment to adjust to the sudden lack of light, and saw that the spider creature was gone.
I rushed out of the Arena and looked around wildly, but I didn’t see the spider creature anywhere. Then I heard that same humming engine sound above and looked up just in time to see something large in the sky vanish.
Though the thing was only in the sky for a moment, it was long enough for me to see that it was the alien spaceship that Nightbolt had told me about.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I walked back toward the house, tired and exhausted. The adrenaline from the past ten minutes or so was starting to fade and my sleepiness was starting to return. In
the east, the first rays of the sun were starting to peak over the horizon. It seemed like daytime came faster here than back in Golden City, but Nightbolt had told me that that was just because West Texas was so flat that there was nothing to block the rays of the sun in the morning. The first rays of the sun showed a sky as empty as ever; there was no hint that the alien spaceship had even been there.
But I’d seen it. It looked exactly as Nightbolt once described it to me: Large and ring-shaped with blinking lights. I had only seen it for a very brief moment, not long enough to make out any details, but there was no doubting what it was. It was no weather balloon or experimental government aircraft. It was an honest-to-God, real life alien spaceship, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that the spider creature must have been rescued by the ship, maybe even come from the ship.
I probably should have been stunned by the idea that I’d met and fought an actual alien, but for some reason that particular realization hadn’t set in yet. I was more interested in knowing why it had attacked Spike and what it was doing on Nightbolt’s property in the first place. Nightbolt didn’t have any cows, after all, so there was no cattle for them to abduct. Were the aliens aware that Nightbolt was one of the people trying to stop them? Or did they have another reason for sneaking around his house?
I remembered the alien object which Teresa gave us. I’d had my doubts about its legitimacy at first, but after this incident, I realized that not only was it a genuine alien artifact, but it was important to the aliens who dropped it. Important enough that they felt the need to retrieve it personally.
That thought was on my mind when I entered the house again. In the living room, I found Nightbolt kneeling beside Spike, who was lying on his indoor bed that he slept on whenever Nightbolt let him into the house. Nightbolt was bandaging up Spike’s wound, which I recalled had looked pretty serious, though my memories of the last fifteen minutes or so were a bit mixed up. Spike, like the good dog that he was, lay very still, though he made a soft whining sound every now and then.
