Attack of the Alien Horde

by Robert Venditti

  “So . . .” Miles acted innocent. “You said I could ask you anything about Gilded. That offer still good?”

  “You bet! Just let me check something first.” Henry rifled through the papers on the desk until his hand came out holding a remote control. He pointed it at the flat-screen TV sitting on a stand and turned the set on. A local news anchorwoman filled the screen.

  “—awaiting a statement from the president, which we’ll bring to you live as soon as it begins.” The anchorwoman’s makeup couldn’t hide how flustered she was, like the slightest sound would send her diving under the news desk. “Meanwhile, emergency teams continue to search the rubble at the Atlanta parking garage that was the site of what appears to be humanity’s first confirmed contact with extraterrestrial life.”

  The picture changed to an aerial shot of Miles’s dad’s work site. The hole in the upper deck was larger than Miles had imagined, and with the camera looking down into it, he could see a camouflage tarp draped over the pile of rubble at the bottom. Soldiers formed a perimeter around the structure, holding the news vans and civilian gawkers at bay.

  The anchorwoman’s voice continued over the video. “Authorities have been unable to identify the body of an elderly man found at the scene. Miraculously, he was the only casualty of yesterday’s events.”

  Henry sat at the foot of the bed, watching the screen intently. “Crazy, right?”

  “You could say that.” Miles tried playing it cool, but it was a good thing Henry was fixated on the TV.

  Henry’s head snapped around. “Aliens!” he blurted. “You know how long I’ve been saying we aren’t alone in the universe? I’d like to see the haters deny it now. Did you notice how none of the teachers mentioned it? Bet they had an emergency staff meeting before school to make sure everyone knew not to talk about it. Like the whole world doesn’t already know. I mean, haven’t they heard of the Information Age?” Henry babbled excitedly, like the appearance of the alien somehow wasn’t utterly terrifying.

  The anchorwoman reappeared. “We’ll be covering the . . . attack throughout the evening, but now let’s go to a developing story.” She looked grateful to have some garden-variety bad news to report. “Two armed suspects have robbed a gas station and fled in a vehicle belonging to one of the customers. Police believe the woman who owns the vehicle is being held hostage, and they’re now pursuing the suspects on Interstate 20. Steve Voyeur in our traffic chopper has a bird’s-eye view of the chase in progress. Steve, what do you see?”

  “Here we go!” Henry checked his wristwatch. “Incident reported at four thirty-two and eighteen seconds.” He turned to Miles, grinning from ear to ear. “Live Gilded footage. This is going to be great!”

  CHAPTER

  8

  THE TV SCREEN WAS FILLED with an aerial shot of a red SUV swerving through traffic on the interstate. A pair of police cruisers was trying their best to catch up. Steve Voyeur chattered breathlessly, his words keeping pace with the action.

  “This is a dangerous situation, viewers. The suspects are fleeing westbound at high speeds during the busy afternoon drive time.”

  The SUV darted across two lanes and nearly forced a bus into the guardrail.

  “That was a close one!” Voyeur exclaimed. He sounded like an announcer calling a race at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

  Henry’s toes tapped with anticipation. If he leaned any closer to the TV, he was going to topple forward into it. “Can you believe these guys? Major crimes are still attempted in Atlanta, but Gilded never lets them succeed. Why don’t the crooks pull up stakes and move to another city, you know? But I guess if they had any sense, they wouldn’t be crooks to begin with.”

  If there had been butterflies fluttering in Miles’s stomach when he thought about helping Mrs. Collins, now there were great blue herons. Taking on a mean husband was one thing. Going head-to-head against a stickup team armed with guns and a three-ton SUV was far more dangerous.

  This was Miles’s first real test. The city was waiting.

  “Where’s your bathroom?” Miles asked weakly.

  “Now?” Henry gasped. “This is live. Using an actual video camera. Most of the Gilded footage out there was taken with a phone. Pure amateur hour.” He pointed at Miles’s feet but kept his eyes focused on the car chase. “You stay right there. I’m not letting you miss a second of this.”

  Miles considered making a run for it, but to where? By the time he found a safe place to put on the cape, the chase could’ve ended in a crash or a shootout or who knows what else. The robbers had a hostage. There wasn’t a moment to lose.

  Miles crept over to the window, making sure Henry didn’t see. He undid the center latch and swung the double panes wide, letting in a fresh autumn breeze. He leaned out and saw it was a good thirty feet down at least. Cape, don’t fail me now.

  On the TV, the traffic grew heavier, but the SUV only sped faster. The man in the passenger seat waved his gun like a maniac, scaring the other drivers off the road.

  Henry glanced at his watch and frowned. “Forty-five seconds. What’s taking him so long? Gilded’s response time to crimes in progress is usually faster than this.”

  Miles pulled open his backpack and slid out the cape. It hummed, which was hopefully a sign that everything was back in working order.

  And then Miles got scared. Really scared.

  How many other anxious sets of eyes were glued to their TVs right now? Thousands? Millions? If Gilded didn’t stop those robbers before they hurt someone, the whole world would know.

  Miles wasn’t worried about what people might think of him. No one knew he was the new Gilded. If he screwed up, though, it’d put a black mark on Gilded’s stellar record.

  Gilded wasn’t just a superhero. He was an ideal. An umbrella in a rainstorm. A blanket on a winter night. He made people feel safe and secure. If his reputation were somehow tarnished, who would they put their trust in?

  With the cape across his shoulders, Miles brought the clasp halves closer. He closed his eyes and breathed a prayer. “Please work. And don’t let me suck.”

  “Shots fired!” Steve Voyeur shouted. “One of the robbers is—

  Miles felt the power leave him, and he went from towering over Henry to looking him dead in the eye. Holding the pieces of the clasp in his hands, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d made a terrible, irreversible mistake. The original Gilded had warned Miles not to let anyone know his true identity. Ever. Miles didn’t even make it twenty-four hours.

  All Miles had wanted was to get a few answers from Henry. Now he’d blown the whole thing. Nice going, genius.

  Henry’s excitement morphed into confusion. Or it could’ve been disappointment. Either one would be completely understandable. “W-what the . . .” he stammered.

  “I know it’s weird, but—”

  “You’ve got shape-shifting powers!” Henry exclaimed. “That makes total sense. It explains why in issue 371 of Gilded Age the arms dealer didn’t know you were in the warehouse. Did you make yourself look like a sports car?”

  “Huh?” It was Miles’s turn to be confused. “I can’t shape-shift. At least I don’t think I can. If I could, why would I be hanging out in the seventh grade? I’d turn myself into the starting quarterback for the Falcons or something.” Miles patted himself on the chest. “It’s me. Miles.”

  Henry glanced around, like he was waiting for a hidden camera crew to crawl out from under the bed and shout, “Gotcha! You’re on Prank TV!” Then he perked up and snapped his fingers. “I get it. You don’t age, right? You’re a thousand years old or something. Pretty awesome. Of course, that means you’ll be stuck in seventh grade for eternity.” He frowned. “Less awesome.”

  Miles rubbed his forehead and sighed. “No. I was eleven last year, and next year I’ll be thirteen. I’m not immortal, and I can’t transform into a Corvette.” He slid the cape off his shoulders and held it forward. “I don’t have superpowers. The cape does.”

  Henry wasn�
�t buying it. He fish-hooked an eyebrow and crossed his arms. “If you’re twelve, then how have you been around since 1956?”

  Miles threw his hands up in frustration. “I haven’t been! That was another guy.”

  On the TV, the anchorwoman had gone back to covering the previous day’s attack, and a news crew that had found a way inside the parking garage was filming the rubble. Miles walked over to the screen.

  “You remember the old man they said died in the attack yesterday? He was the real Gilded. I was at the garage with my dad when Gilded and the lizard-monster—which, by the way, you wouldn’t be so jazzed to learn was real if you’d seen it up close—crashed through the roof. The old guy killed the alien, but . . . he said it was his time to go. I guess he didn’t want to do it anymore. Anyway, he gave me the cape before he died. He said I have to be the hero now.”

  Miles knew he sounded like a lunatic. Heck, he hardly believed it himself, and he was living it. What was a kid he’d met only a few hours ago supposed to think?

  The news crew ran up to the military guy with the craggy face and the bottle-brush mustache. He’d no doubt been working long nights, but he didn’t look the least bit tired. He looked like a man on a mission.

  A reporter pushed a microphone in his face. “General Breckenridge, why have you cordoned off the area? What are you hiding?”

  The general didn’t say anything, but his tight-lipped expression and steel-gray eyes spoke a thousand words. One of his large hands reached for the camera, and the screen went black.

  Miles turned off the set. “I know it sounds nuts, but you have to believe me.”

  “I hardly know you,” Henry said skeptically. “Suppose the old man on the news was Gilded all this time, like you say. Then he must’ve kept one heck of a secret identity to make sure nobody found out the truth, which is too bad because he pretty much deserves to be honored with the biggest state funeral ever. Yet here you are, blabbing everything to me on day one. Why?”

  “I probably shouldn’t be,” Miles said softly. “It’s just that . . .” His shoulders dropped. “I don’t know what else to do.”

  Miles wasn’t the smartest kid, but he was smart enough to know what he didn’t know, and he definitely didn’t know how to be a superhero. He took pride in being a good judge of character, though. The same instinct that had warned him on the first day of school that Craig Logg was no good (granted, you didn’t need to be a detective to figure that one out) was now telling him that Henry could be trusted. Miles believed it in his bones.

  “Will you help me?” Miles wondered if he sounded as desperate as he felt.

  “You lifted an SUV over your head on network TV!” Henry shouted in exasperation. “What do you need me for?”

  “Because you know Gilded’s cape doesn’t have stitching. And you have a map of all his sightings from the past two years. And you have”—Miles picked up the toy gun with the satellite dish on the end—“whatever this is.”

  Miles was pleading, and he didn’t try to hide it. Maybe he shouldn’t have told Henry his secret, but he was glad he had. The burden of being Gilded was his, but at least now there was someone to help him carry it. He hoped.

  “Please,” he croaked. “Everyone is counting on me. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned since yesterday, it’s that I can’t do this by myself.”

  There it was. The truth. Miles held his breath and waited for Henry to say something. Anything. As long as it wasn’t a phone call to the press.

  Henry walked over and took the satellite-dish thing from Miles’s hand. “This is a parabolic microphone. You use it for—” He broke off his sentence and tossed it onto the bed. “Never mind. We’ll get to that later.”

  Henry bowed at the waist like a gallant knight pledging himself to his king. “Henry Matte, at your service,” he declared. Then he straightened up and smiled. “Tell me what I can do.”

  CHAPTER

  9

  IT WAS LIKE A RAIN barrel had tipped over, the whole story sloshing out of Miles all at once. He told Henry about the parking garage and the lizard-monster. He told him about picking up Mr. Collins with one hand. He described how unbelievable it felt to bring those armed robbers to justice. They’d been too afraid even to fire their guns.

  Then Miles told him about crashing down before school, how the cape had suddenly turned off like someone had kicked the plug out of the wall. He explained that it still wasn’t working when he’d confronted Craig. That was why he’d ended up humiliating himself and hiding in the bathroom like a loser.

  Henry sat at his desk, calmly soaking in every detail. He must have been really interested, because for once he didn’t interrupt.

  When Miles finished, Henry stood and started pacing in a circle. “Put the cape on,” he commanded.

  Miles draped the cape over his shoulders and tried to connect the clasp. The metal clacked against itself, but it didn’t stick. “Nothing.” He shrugged.

  Henry stopped pacing. “What if it only works when there’s an emergency? Like your neighbor being mean to his wife, or those criminals who kidnapped that lady. The cape knew it was needed, so it sprang into action.”

  Henry mulled his hypothesis. “No. That doesn’t make sense. There’s always an emergency somewhere, even if it’s just somebody with a flat tire on the highway. The cape would always be on.”

  He paced again, studying the cape from every vantage point. “Is it possible it only works against evil?”

  Before Miles could answer, Henry shook his head in disagreement with himself. “If that were the case, then it wouldn’t work against natural disasters. In Gilded Age number 238, Gilded helped drivers stranded in an ice storm. Bad weather is one thing, but evil weather? That’s stretching it. Besides, if Craig Logg isn’t evil, I don’t know who is.”

  Henry stood with his hands on his hips, tapping his foot in frustration. “This is a conundrum.”

  “That’s what I’ve been telling you. It’s like it has a mind of its own. How can I follow in the old Gilded’s footsteps if I don’t even know how the cape works?” Miles dropped onto the bed. “Aw, what’s the use?” he mumbled. “I’m not cut out to be a superhero.”

  “Exactly!” Henry blurted.

  “Hey!” Miles shot back. “How about a little encouragement? You’re supposed to be helping me.”

  If Henry was aware he’d offended Miles, he didn’t show it. “What did you say? Before the part about you being a lousy superhero.”

  “About the cape having a mind of its own?”

  “Yes.” Henry stroked his chin. “Maybe it’s not just the cape that has a mind. Maybe you do.”

  “ ‘Maybe’? So on the brainpower chart, I’m just above a zombie. Thanks.”

  “What I mean is, maybe the cape somehow taps in to your brain. That’s how it knows when you want to fly or throw a superpunch or whatever. Do you remember what you were thinking just before you crash-landed in the woods?”

  “Sure. I was thinking about—” Miles stopped himself, his ears starting to burn. “Uh, I don’t remember,” he fibbed.

  Henry crossed his arms. “You want my help or not?”

  “Okay, fine.” Miles looked down at his feet. “I was thinking about Josie Campobasso. About how . . . impressed she’d be when she saw I was a superhero.”

  Henry’s mouth dropped open in shock. “Josie Campobasso? Aim a little higher, why don’t you.”

  “Can we try to focus here?”

  “Right.” Henry coughed, stifling a chuckle. “Sorry. Okay, on your feet.”

  Miles stood again. Henry faced him, eyeing him like a scientist monitoring a lab rat. “Now, what happened when you went up against the armed robbers?”

  “Well, they sped past me, and then I caught up, and I pulled the driver out of the car. The car was out of control, so . . .” Miles trailed off. “Do you really need the play-by-play? I thought you watched me on TV.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about. What went on up here?” Henry
tapped an index finger against his temple. “What went through your mind?”

  Miles had no idea what Henry was getting at. “Um . . . stuff?”

  “Stuff. Good for you. I need more information, though. Try closing your eyes. Go on,” he pressed.

  Miles closed one eye, but kept the other trained on Henry. “Is this really necessary?”

  “Trust me.”

  “All right, but no funny stuff.” Miles closed both eyes and tried his best to relax. “I’m not in the mood.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it. Now, block out everything but the sound of me talking.” Henry’s usual rapid-fire delivery slowed, and he shifted into a soft, monotone voice. Miles had never been hypnotized, but he imagined this was how it started. If he left the Matte house with an irresistible urge to run in circles or cluck like a chicken, Henry was going to be sorry.

  “Go back to before you turned into Gilded,” Henry continued. “Better yet, pretend it’s happening again. A pair of gun-wielding maniacs is on the loose. They’ve taken a defenseless nun hostage. They’re speeding on the highway with total disregard for decency and traffic laws, endangering a school bus full of orphans and Girl Scouts. Do you feel anything?”

  “I’m hungry for cookies.”

  “I said block everything out!” Henry scolded. “You’re not blocking. Think of the nun praying for help from above. Think of the orphans and Girl Scouts with tears streaming down their cheeks. They’re so scared. All they want is to make a positive contribution to society, but the bad guys won’t let them. What is Gilded going to do about it?”

  A bit over-the-top, but it worked. Miles imagined the Girl Scout troop rolling around the back of the bus, their driver trying to evade the hail of bullets unleashed by a team of nun-stealing evildoers most foul. That kind of behavior wasn’t to be tolerated. Not in Atlanta. Not in Gilded’s town.

  The cape hummed to life. The vibrations started soft and grew stronger, like it was waking up from a nap. Miles concentrated on the power filling him. Power he’d use to protect others. To keep the city safe.