Into the Dorkness

by John Kloepfer

  “Warner, do something!” Tara shouted, watching Zouric pulling himself up onto their spaceship. “Get rid of him!”

  “No problem,” Warner said, flipping the steering controls. “He doesn’t know who he’s messing with.”

  Warner shifted the lever and angled the spacecraft, twisting his palm slightly on the steering sphere. The spaceship jerked side to side, one wing dipping back and forth and then the other. Zouric lost his grip, barely holding on with one hand while trying to sling his other arm back up.

  Warner then flipped the steering controls and the spaceship spun 360 degrees before coming to a dead stop above the treetops. Zouric yowled and went flying into the trees.

  “Way to go, Warner!” Kevin cheered.

  “Go, Warner, it’s your birthday,” TJ said, and did a little celebration dance.

  “It’s not my birthday,” Warner said, shifting gears.

  The spacecraft rose swiftly above the treetops and then jolted to a stop high above Zouric and Nuzz’s brainwashed army of reptilians and soccer campers.

  “I know it’s not your birthday,” TJ said. “It’s just an expression.”

  Warner chuckled and hit the throttle on the steering column. “Whatever’s clever, my man.”

  The spaceship shot forward and they were off full throttle for Colorado, soaring far away from their alien-infested science camp.

  Klyk’s spaceship pierced the overcast sky and shot out of the clouds as it cruised into the stratosphere.

  “Yee haw!” Warner hollered as he accelerated into hyperdrive. They flew through the clear blue sky as if they were the wind itself. The craft didn’t really seem to be moving, Kevin thought. It felt more like they were stationary and the Earth was rotating faster and faster beneath them.

  Klyk scaled the wall up to the interstellar communication device that had short-circuited during the firefight.

  “It’s dead,” Klyk said, punching the power button in frustration.

  “Can you fix it?” Tara asked.

  “I can try,” Klyk said, turning back to the alien communication device. “But it’s not looking good.”

  Kevin stood in front of the navigation system next to Warner. “Hey, Klyk, how do I input the address we got from Marcy?”

  Klyk jumped up on the armrest on Warner’s seat at the main controls. “Push the button on the left and then you can access the local network and google whatever info you need.”

  “You know what Google is?” Tara asked, futzing around with one of the three firing stations located around the rear of the craft.

  “You don’t seriously think humans invented Google, do you?” Klyk said.

  Kevin looked up the precise latitude and longitude for Max Greyson’s house and punched the coordinates into the spaceship’s guidance system.

  Warner put the spaceship on autopilot and kicked his feet up on the control board. As they flew toward the Rocky Mountains, Klyk grunted and grumbled to himself, trying to fix their communications.

  “How does it look, Klyk? Any chance we’re going to be able to call for backup?” Kevin asked him.

  “The whole system’s shot,” Klyk said. “There’s no way to fix it. Looks like we’re on our own.”

  Kevin felt a knot in his stomach tighten. He knew it had sounded too good to be true that they could get out of this mess by calling for reinforcements. Zouric and Nuzz were their problem and their problem alone. Nobody could stop these alien creeps now except for Kevin and his friends.

  “Klyk, get over here quick!” Warner said, sitting back up in the pilot seat abruptly. “Check this out. I think we’ve got some company.”

  The little cyborg hopped across the control board and looked at the radar screen. Two red flashing triangles were homing in on their ship.

  “Enemy space cruisers,” Klyk said.

  “Are you sure?” TJ asked. “Maybe it’s the air force or something. I bet we could fly circles around them!”

  “Those aren’t fighter jets,” Klyk said. “They’re moving too fast.”

  “Zouric and Nuzz?” Tara asked.

  “Probably just a couple of Kamilions.”

  “Just?” Kevin said, but Klyk ignored him.

  “Warner, are you ready for this?” Klyk asked his pilot. “You’re going to have to do some fancy flying to lose these guys.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Warner said, glancing at the reptilian cruisers. “I was born for this.”

  “What do we do?” Kevin asked.

  “Kevin, Tara, TJ.” Klyk ordered them to the copilot seats. “Man the photon blasters while I activate the viewports.”

  Kevin, Tara, and TJ hustled over and each sat before one of the three firing stations facing the rear of the ship. The stations looked like arcade games with screens showing a live video feed from the exterior of the cruising ship.

  They waited until Klyk flicked on the viewports and the screens flashed to life. Kevin could see the clouds whipping by and a Kamilion cruiser drifting into the frame. The reptilian spacecraft looked mean, like the jaw and pincers of a desert beetle.

  “Fire at will!” Klyk shouted.

  Kevin grabbed the control stick and lined up the enemy spacecraft in the digital crosshairs on the video monitor.

  Kevin pulled the trigger, and two photon blasts streaked past the target and disappeared against the bright blue sky.

  The pair of Kamilion cruisers flew in tandem behind them, trailing from a slightly higher angle than Klyk’s spaceship.

  Warner twisted the steering sphere with a flick of his wrist, and they dipped down beneath the cruisers. Warner then switched directions suddenly in the air, and the alien cruisers flew past. The Kamilions made a sharp U-turn to keep up with Klyk’s ship.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Warner shouted. “Gotcha!” He swerved around a snowcapped mountain peak as the alien cruisers adjusted their course.

  ZAP! ZAP! Two laser blasts struck the force field as the cruisers kept pace with Klyk’s spaceship.

  “Lower us down into the mountain range,” Klyk instructed him. “We have more agility than these guys. We might be able to lose them in the valleys.”

  Warner steered them lower, and they sailed through a narrow gorge in the valley flanked by two mountainsides. He weaved in and out of the laser blasts as they cruised ten feet above the valley floor.

  “The gameplay on this thing is incredible!” Warner said, flipping the steering sphere and pushing the hyperdrive to its limits.

  “It’s not a video game, Warner,” Kevin reminded him.

  “I don’t know, Kev,” he said. “It sure feels like one.”

  “Slow down,” Klyk commanded Warner. “You won’t be able to bank at that speed.” Warner eased up and the spacecraft steadied.

  Swoomp! Swoomp! The reptilian cruisers fired two blasts from their laser guns. Swoomp-swoomp! The laser blasts whizzed by Klyk’s ship as Warner banked right and then back at a hard left, tilting their axis to dodge the enemy fire.

  “Missed me, missed me.” Warner was getting cocky. “Never going to catch me.”

  “Quit hotdogging, Warner!” Tara said. “And it’s ‘never gonna kiss me.’”

  “Gross,” Warner said. “Who would want to do that?”

  Warner veered down into the canyons of the mountain range. The ship bobbed and weaved around the rocky outcroppings jutting up from the bluffs.

  He banked right through a curving ravine. Klyk’s spaceship swiveled and turned sharply around the rocky embankments. They zipped niftily through a narrow passage deep in the canyon. The Kamilions were still right on their tail.

  “Come get some!” Warner said, focusing intently on the terrain ahead of them.

  “Nice moves, buddy!” Kevin yelled.

  “These guys are too good,” Klyk said. “You have to shake them!”

  “Let me take care of this.” Warner narrowed his eyes and steered through the canyon.

  While Warner flew, Kevin, Tara, and TJ fired off some laser beams at the enemy sp
acecraft. Kevin could see the alien space cruisers dipping and dodging every shot they took. These guys were good.

  “Here we go!” Warner steered them hard left down a narrow stretch of Rocky Mountain pass. Kevin cringed watching the tight squeeze his buddy was about to make. The spacecraft banked left, then back hard right inches away from scraping the sides of the zigzagging ravine. He thought for sure they were going to crash into the mountain. But at the last second, Warner steered the plane back and leveled them out smoothly.

  “Good luck with that one, fellas!” Warner said. They all watched as one of the reptilian cruisers burst into flames trying to make the exact same turn.

  Kevin looked in the monitor and zoomed in with the controls. The Kamilion had jumped out of his pod cruiser and was stranded on the side of the mountain, shaking his fist at them as they zipped off.

  “Did we lose both of them?” Klyk asked.

  “I only saw one of them crash!” Kevin said.

  THUNK! Klyk’s spaceship shook as the remaining cruiser fired something that latched onto their force field.

  “What’s that thing?” TJ yelled.

  “Not good,” Klyk shouted. “That’s a pulsatron. It’s going to disable our force field!”

  “Well, get it off then!” Tara shouted.

  “Too late,” Klyk said.

  ZOOMPH! The pulsatron unleashed a burst of energy that rocked the entire ship. Warner jerked in the pilot seat, and his hand skimmed across the steering sphere. The spaceship spun in the air, whipping around like an out-of-control merry-go-round.

  “Warner, look out!” Kevin yelled as they careened off course toward the mountainside. The edge of their ship scraped the rocky bluff.

  Kevin could hear the force field die all around them, leaving them wide open for attack. The Kamilion cruiser opened fire, barraging the ship with a vicious onslaught from its laser cannons.

  “Yo!” Warner screamed at the top of his lungs. “Whoa! Little help, please!”

  “Hit the invisibility shield!” Klyk shouted, but Warner was too busy swerving away from the photon blasts screaming through the air.

  Kevin scanned his monitor, but he had no visual on the reptilian space cruiser. Behind him, TJ was going berserk at his firing station trying to line up the Kamilion target in his crosshairs. Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack! TJ fired off round after round from the laser cannon.

  A laser blast clipped the cruiser’s left wing, and the Kamilion swerved hard to the right. They all watched on TJ’s screen as the cruiser crash-landed into a craggy mountain bluff.

  “Got him!” TJ yelled. “Woo-hoo!”

  Tara high-fived TJ while Kevin breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Nicely done,” Klyk said. “There may be hope for you earthlings yet.”

  About ten minutes later, Warner lowered them down over Max Greyson’s house and hit the switch to conceal the spaceship from sight. The exit hatch opened up with a mechanical hiss. The five of them dropped down on the lawn. Tara, Warner, and TJ were all congratulating each other, slapping each other on the back and high-fiving.

  They stood before a squat one-story ranch house in the boondocks of Denver. The streets stretched endlessly into the Colorado flatlands, and a never-ending line of telephone poles ran to infinity. In the distance, the Rocky Mountains peaked off the horizon.

  “I must say I’m rather impressed,” Klyk said, hopping down out of the hatch. “I haven’t seen flying like that since the Andromeda Riots of 1000101.”

  “Dude, we gotta sit down and talk sometime,” TJ said to Klyk. “You must have some crazy stories.”

  “Yeah, maybe you could sell them to Max Greyson for his next book,” said Warner.

  Meanwhile, Kevin was checking the street sign and the house number against the envelope Marcy had given them.

  This was the right place, but something was bugging him. Kevin scratched his head while his friends celebrated behind him.

  “Kevin, what’s up, man?” Warner asked as Kevin turned away from the house and walked toward Klyk’s spaceship.

  “I don’t know,” Kevin said. “Something’s not adding up. How could they have caught up to us so fast or known where we were going?”

  “Maybe they scanned Marcy’s memory once they had her brainwashed?” Tara asked.

  “They didn’t have time for all that,” Kevin said. “It must have been something else.” Kevin walked over and inspected the wing of the ship. And there it was, right where Zouric had been thrown off. A foreign object looked as though it was floating in midair, stuck to the invisibility shield. It was some kind of alien gadget. Kevin plucked it up and it detached easily.

  “Look at this.” Kevin brought the little gizmo back to the group and showed it to Klyk. “Have you ever seen one of these?”

  “It’s a tracking device,” Klyk told them. “Zouric must have attached it when he grabbed onto the ship.”

  “That’s what I thought!” Kevin said, kicking the dirt in frustration. “I’m getting sick and tired of these guys outsmarting us.”

  Kevin squeezed the alien tracking device in his hand, smashing it to bits. “Let them try and figure out where we are now. . . .”

  “Good thinking, Kev,” said TJ, and knocked his shoulder with a friendly punch.

  “Thanks,” Kevin said. “Now let’s go see if this Max guy knows anything about what’s going on.”

  Warner led them up the cement walkway to the front stoop. “I can’t believe we’re really at Max Greyson’s house!” he said, and rang the doorbell.

  A few moments passed before the door clacked open. A chain lock held it in place. A man in his midthirties peered out through the gap in the partly opened door. He had a scruffy beard with big flat lips and a square face that made him look like a frog. Kevin could picture a long sticky tongue shooting out of his mouth to catch flying bugs.

  “Hello, sir—” Kevin began.

  “What do you want?” the man asked brusquely, cutting him off.

  “Are you Max Greyson?” Warner asked, his voice filled with anticipation.

  “It depends on who’s asking,” the man said.

  “Why would it depend on that?” Tara asked skeptically.

  The man shot her an unpleasant look. “Because I said it does.”

  “I think what she means is you’re either him or not him,” TJ said. “Regardless of whom you’re talking to.”

  “You have about five seconds before I go take my nap.” The man seemed irritated, already tired of the conversation.

  “Mr. Greyson, or whoever you are, we’re in big trouble and it has something to do with your comic books. We really need your help . . . please.”

  The door slammed shut and Kevin flinched away. “Well, I guess that’s that. What now?”

  But then the chain lock clinked and clattered against the door frame inside and the door swung open fully. The man stepped out onto the front stoop. He was wearing a pair of baggy sweatpants, leather sandals, and a threadbare T-shirt with an ancient yellow mustard stain smeared across the logo of some rock-and-roll band. “I’m not Max Greyson,” he said. “I’m Bjorn. Bjorn Jensen. Come inside and I can tell you what I know about Max.”

  Bjorn ushered them through the door, looking suspiciously up and down his deserted street before shutting the door behind them.

  Kevin and his friends entered the house and were struck immediately with a thick, pungent stench that smelled like rancid food garbage. The interior of the house looked like a trash heap. Massive piles of knickknacks and random junk filled nearly every room to the brim. Trampled newspapers cut narrow pathways through the mounds of accumulated clutter.

  “Ick,” Tara said, plugging her nose. “What’s that smell?”

  “What smell?” Bjorn asked obliviously.

  TJ pulled his T-shirt over his mouth to stifle the rank odor.

  “I wasn’t exactly expecting company,” Bjorn said, getting a little defensive.

  “Sorry, Bjorn,” Kevin said. “We’re not try
ing to insult you. We just really need to talk to you about Max Greyson.”

  “You do know him, don’t you?” Tara asked.

  “Of course I know him,” said Bjorn. “I used to be his assistant.”

  “What do you mean ‘used to be’?” Warner asked. “Maybe it would be better if we got to talk to Max directly. Is he going to be home anytime soon?”

  “I’m afraid I’ve been wondering that exact same thing for about a year and a half. You see, Max disappeared under some very mysterious circumstances. He was mixed up in something serious.”

  “Wait a minute,” Warner said. “Max Greyson comes out with a new comic like every three or four months. How does he do that if he’s been gone for over a year?”

  Bjorn explained. “Max’s comics have continued to be delivered even after his disappearance. I can show you. I don’t know where he is or who took him. One day he was just gone. I know it sounds crazy, but I’m pretty sure he was abducted by aliens. But I’m not supposed to talk about that. Every time I start talking about it, it just seems so unreasonable.”

  “You’d be surprised how reasonable it sounds to us,” said Kevin. Kevin felt Klyk crawl from the top of the backpack to stand on his collarbone.

  Klyk addressed the inhabitant of the house. “Max wouldn’t be the first human to be abducted. Aliens are real, Bjorn, but I think you already know that. These youngsters have accidentally invited some really nasty aliens to your home planet. We need you to tell us everything you know about your friend Max.”

  “Whoa!” Bjorn said. “Sorry, there’s a little alien talking to me. . . . It’s kinda freaky!” Bjorn led them down a narrow, junk-filled hallway and opened the door at the far end. “Every few months a new manuscript for the Brainstorm series shows up. I take it to the publisher and keep up with the contracts and yada yada yada. It’s a lot to keep track of and as you can see, I’m not the most organized person in the universe. Here’s his office.”

  The kids along with Klyk walked in behind Bjorn and took a look around. Except for the desk, Max’s office was just as cluttered with Bjorn’s hoard: cardboard boxes filled with all sorts of papers; milk crates packed with old computer chargers, extension cords, and jumper cables; a mountain of vintage board games and Star Wars action figures on the futon against the wall; and at least three or four filthy microwaves stashed among the squalor, which gave the place a stale reek of old buttered popcorn.