My Gym Teacher Is an Alien Overlord (9 page)

We headed out of the math block, passing a bulletin board plastered with announcements about guard-duty rosters, the forthcoming invasion, and a bake sale. Next to the board was a long window that overlooked the staff parking lot. A glimpse out revealed the scale of the aliens' invasion preparations. Cara gasped. The parking lot was crowded not with the usual Nissans and Fords, but with sleek atmospheric strike fighters and bombers. If they were anything like the ones in the video game, Earth's military forces would be swept aside.

“How are we going to stop all that?” said Cara.

“We're not,” I said. My brother was the only thing that stood between the aliens and Earth's destruction—and only if he stopped being in a huff with me.

We paused at the next junction, pressing our backs to the wall and holding our breath as a patrol marched past. Once they turned the corner, I started to move off. Cara held me back.

“Uh, wasn't that Miss Dunham? And Miss Dunham?”

Cara didn't know about the sue-dunham. It turned out she hadn't seen a soul since being beamed aboard the ship. She only knew that she was in an alien vessel at all because of the glossy magazine slipped under her door, titled
What's On Board!
And the accompanying article, “This Month, Invasion Earth: Ten Things You Never Knew About the Destruction of the Human Race.”

As we plotted our way through the maze of corridors, I filled her in on what I'd learned about the aliens—their gym teacher disguise, the reality TV show, the video game trap—and then I got to the part about her robot impostor. That was kind of awkward.

“Wait, why did you make her look like
me
?”

Uh-oh. I felt a slipping sensation, as if this conversation was about to get away from me.

“You could have picked any girl in the world.”

“Uh, no, I couldn't,” I said quickly. “The game only has people from our town.”

“OK, but you could have chosen
any
of them.”

The truth, of course, was that I'd had to pick Cara because Zack had a crush on her. But I couldn't exactly tell her that without revealing Star Guy's identity. The possible conversation flashed through my mind:

“I made the robot look like you because Star Guy has a huge crush on you.”

“He does? How do
you
know?”

“Because he's my big brother.”

She was studying me with a curious expression, waiting for a response.

There was a whistle from back down the corridor—an alien patrol had spotted us. I'd never been happier in my life to be ambushed. An alarm that sounded like the school bell blared across the deck. Now the whole crew would be looking for us.

“This way!” I shouted, taking Cara's hand and leading her into a stairwell. We bounded downstairs, taking the steps four at a time. Behind us I could hear the beat of alien sneakers as the sue-dunham pursued us as relentlessly as Miss Dunham during cross-country season.

We crashed through the stairwell door, our feet sliding on the polished floor as we came to a halt in the school's entrance foyer. Over the main door hung the school flag, with its Viking ship emblem and Latin motto,
Sit Vis Vobiscum
. But the alien foyer was far bigger than the real one. It had to be in order to house so many trophy cabinets. Instead of the handful of dusty glass cases that lined the corridor outside the main office on Earth, here there were dozens and dozens arranged in tight rows.

“Quick, over here,” whispered Cara.

I felt a tug on my collar as she pulled me down behind one of the cabinets. There was the athletic bounce of footsteps as the sue-dunham patrol swept into the entrance foyer from the stairwell. From our hiding place we watched with relief as they jogged past us, into the cafeteria across the corridor.

As they filed inside, my eyes switched focus to the glass cabinet in front of me. Instead of a football trophy or a medal for being the runner-up in volleyball, there sat an unexpected but familiar object.

“It's a TV remote,” I said.

“And there's another one in here,” said Cara, peering into the next case.

An inspection of more cases revealed remote controls in all of them. Each had a different design. Some appeared to have been fashioned for use with one hand, two, or even three. Others were meant to be held in suckered tentacles or claws, or operated by fingers made of water or pure energy.

Set into the plinth beneath each case was a plaque engraved with alien writing and a pattern of circles and intersecting lines. I ran a finger over the raised design.

“It's a star chart,” I said, suddenly realizing what I was looking at. “They're coordinates for different planets.” I came to a horrible conclusion. “Each of these remote controls must belong to a race that the aliens have conquered.”

We looked slowly around the entrance foyer. There were hundreds of remote control trophies. The sue-dunham had rampaged across galaxies, destroying everything before them, all in the name of a reality TV show.

“And we're next,” said Cara quietly.

The full horror of our situation sank in. If the aliens succeeded, then we'd soon be just another TV remote in a glass case.

“What are you doing?!” said Cara, as I lifted off one of the glass tops and removed the remote from inside.

“If it's anything like the sue-dunham's, then maybe we can use it.” I pointed it at the main entrance door and tapped the
ON
button. Nothing. “Batteries must be dead.”

I abandoned the remote and headed off with Cara for the gym. I was sure that at any moment a sue-dunham patrol would pounce on us, but we reached the end of the corridor unscathed. We peeked around the corner.

The entrance to the gym lay before us. Unfortunately, so did a solid line of guards. My heart sank. There was no way we were getting past them.

Cara turned to me. “Look, kid, one of us has to get off this ship and warn Star Guy,” she said. “But not both of us. I'll create a diversion while you get to the beaming thingy and head back to Earth.”

“But—”

Cara suddenly looked furious. “The aliens took my phone,” she said. “And
no one
takes my phone.” She said it the way the Thing says, “It's clobbering time.” Part of me felt scared for the alien invaders.

“Kid, if I don't make it, tell Matthias . . . I really, really liked him.”

I winced.
Do I have to?
Under the circumstances I felt I ought to agree. I nodded.

She took a deep breath and stepped into the corridor. Waving her arms and yelling at the top of her lungs, she charged at the guards. Taken by surprise, they turned and ran, whistling their dismay as the fearless Cara chased them off down the corridor. Soon they would realize they were being hounded not by the Howling Commandos, but by an unarmed teenage girl looking for her cell phone. Dangerous as that was, it wouldn't stop them for long. I had to go. Now.

A low hum of power filled the near-empty gym. One side of the pommel horse had been removed, exposing a bank of intricate alien machinery. It had to be the controls for the matter transporter. A lone sue-dunham performed what I guessed to be a series of diagnostic tests on the equipment. Focused on her work, she failed to spot me lurking at the door. She adjusted several dials, tapped a sequence of keys, and studied a readout on a display. She noted something on a handheld device before disappearing through another door into the sports equipment storage room. Now was my chance.

I stood before the baffling control panel. To my dismay it looked nothing like the one in the transporter room on the starship
Enterprise
. I felt like a monkey put in charge of the Large Hadron Collider. This was bad. I could take a guess and start hitting random controls, but in comics, teleportation was notoriously dangerous. I'd be meddling with the fabric of space-time; one wrong input and I could end up beaming myself into the side of a mountain, or a dimension populated by bloodsucking giraffes. Or worse.

Fishing out the TV remote I'd snatched from the guard, I studied the symbols on its buttons. Every remote control in our house had a button that brought up a help menu. I pushed the likeliest candidate.

A 3-D holographic image of a book appeared above the pommel horse, accompanied by a jumble of noises that I quickly realized were lots of different languages. The system seemed to be searching through them. Finally, it stopped and a woman's voice said in perfect English, “Congratulations on choosing the UniBeamer 500, the latest in interpersonal matter transportation. With the proper care and maintenance, the UniBeamer 500 will provide you with years of trouble-free teleporting pleasure. This beamer is sold with a five-year guarantee—valid only if repairs are made at an authorized spaceport using genuine parts. Guarantee not valid in the Horsehead Nebula.”

The holographic manual opened to the contents page. I scanned the list for the quick-start section.

As I searched for the instructions I racked my brains. What did I know about teleportation? I knew that when Nightcrawler did it in comics, it made a sound like
bamf
and left behind a whiff of brimstone. Most teleportation devices that I'd read about needed a target. Something to lock on to. So how had they targeted me? When the sue-dunham had beamed me up, I'd been in Crystal Comics playing
Puny Earthlings!

The game disc.

Of course. The spiderweb of circuitry beneath the surface wasn't some kind of graphic design; it was
actual
circuitry. The disc had to be part of the teleporter. That way the aliens could beam up whoever was playing the game.

There had to be something in the manual about targeting. I combed through it until I found the right section. I had to read it twice—it was even more complicated than the instructions for my LEGO Star Wars AT-AT Walker. Crossing my fingers, I tapped a control on the main pommel horse panel. A map appeared before me like a genie from a lamp. I recognized my town immediately.

A second later the map was overlaid with hundreds of disc-shaped symbols that speckled the area like measles, one for every household where the sue-dunham had planted a copy of their fiendish video game.

If I understood the manual correctly, I could teleport anywhere on the map with a disc symbol just by touching it.

I hesitated. The sue-dunham would be able to track me using the teleporter's equivalent of the last number dialed. They'd be sure to follow me to Earth. Once there I'd need help to keep them off my back while I tracked down Zack and convinced him of the imminent invasion. This was exactly the kind of mission S.C.A.R.F. was designed to handle. But S.C.A.R.F. was no more than a rejected logo in a portfolio case.

I zoomed in on the map. I needed someone with experience. Someone familiar with evil, world-dominating plans. There was only one man for the job.

I prodded the glowing disc symbol on Main Street.

A whine rose from the pommel horse as the teleporter charged up, and then a shaft of green light shone down from the roof, bathing the top panel of the horse. It was the transporter beam—my bus home.

From the other end of the gym came a screech of outrage. The transporter's start-up sequence had alerted the sue-dunham operator. She sprinted from the equipment storeroom, brandishing a lacrosse net, whistle clenched between her teeth. I had seconds to get to the beam.

I swung a leg up onto the pommel horse, but only succeeded in banging my knee against the side. It was too high. If I was going to get off this ship and save Earth, then I had to do something I'd never accomplished: a perfect vault. I took a few steps back, closed my eyes, drew a deep breath, and remembered Miss Dunham's words from gym class:
“Knees high and
spring
.”

I felt my feet pound against the floor, my hands set firmly against the suede top, and then I lifted off like the
Millennium Falcon
blasting out of Mos Eisley Spaceport. The whine reached a terrible crescendo, like the school orchestra rehearsing. There was a bright green flash.

And I was no longer in the room.

I hurtled through darkness at incomprehensible speeds, but at the same time I felt as if I was moving through water. Stars blurred, galaxies swirled, space folded. Who knew what dimensions I was traveling through or where I was headed? In the murk of space-time I glimpsed a shape. Quickly it became a figure. It was me, but not me. He stood with hands on hips, chin thrust outward, a cape fluttering from his back, a set of stars glowing on his chest. I didn't understand. Who? How? Where?

And then I had a sudden and overwhelming need to eat a grilled cheese sandwich.

“I'm not paying you to sit here and play
Space Invaders
all day,” said a faraway voice.

Blearily, I opened my eyes to see Christopher Talbot standing over me.

“Just to be clear,” he went on, “I'm
not
paying you, but if I were, then it wouldn't be to play computer games. Well, what have you to say for yourself?”

“I'm not in an evil giraffe dimension,” I mumbled.

He folded his arms. “OK, one out of ten for sense, but I'll give you the full ten for weirdness.”

I was still woozy from the teleportation, but I could see that I'd made it back to Crystal Comics. There wasn't much time—the aliens would be right behind me. I had to explain everything to Christopher Talbot and warn Zack without delay.

Too late. A green glow enveloped the Xbox, and a swirl of atoms appeared in the beam.

They were coming.

“You know anything about this?” said Christopher Talbot, poking an investigative finger at the beam.

“Don't!” I cried, reaching for my alien remote. It wasn't there. In the chaos of the escape I must have left it behind. “We have to get out of here. Now.”

Before I could move, the atoms took the shape of a tracksuited sue-dunham. She stepped from the beam onto the floor of the comic book store. Immediately, she was followed by another. Behind them I could see a third forming. Instead of the usual light-blue tracksuit, each wore a matte black version, and their silver whistles were smudged with camouflage paint to reduce reflections. Just as I'd expected: the Overlord had sent a squad of Special Forces gym teachers to hunt me down.

Christopher Talbot threw me a questioning look.

“I was on an alien spaceship, and I may, accidentally, have brought about the end of the world. I didn't mean to,” I added hurriedly.

He shrugged. “Happens to the best of us.”

The sue-dunham commandos raised their remote controls.

Christopher Talbot gave a reluctant sigh. “I was saving this. But desperate times . . .”

He thrust out a hand and flared his fingers.

There was a howl, like a hurricane and a tornado having a fight, and the aliens sailed toward the back wall of the store. With a succession of thuds they slid to the floor, stunned but alive. One of them vanished in a cloud of glowing particles. I think she must have been damaged, and some automatic recovery system had beamed her back to the mother ship. That left two.

I knew instantly what had happened. “You lied to me,” I stuttered, turning an accusing stare on Christopher Talbot. “The asteroid. It
did
give you superpowers.”

He looked at me like I was an idiot. “Of course it did. Some kind of energy field. My theory is that Nemesis had a nickel-iron core—y'know, the stuff they used to make rechargeable batteries from. And somehow the power was transferred to me.” He studied his hands. “I'm thinking of calling myself the Energizer.”

It was a terrible name, but at that moment I didn't care. The sue-dunham were already getting to their feet. “Can you do it again?” I asked.

“Takes about an hour to recharge,” he said, running for the door. Fleetingly, I registered that he wasn't using his cane anymore. He paused in the doorway. “Well, don't just stand there. Move it! I can't have those aliens blasting you to atoms. Not before
I've
had my chance to blast you.”

“Are you saying what I think you're saying?”

“Yes,” he said grimly. “Until they're defeated, looks like we're on the same team.”

I scrambled after him, and we raced out onto Main Street. Christopher Talbot was a whirl of pumping arms and legs. I struggled to keep up. He hurdled a line of kindergartners. “But just to be clear, Luke, the first chance I get, I'm going to double-cross you and take my revenge on you and your annoying brother.”

At least I knew where I stood. He dashed across the road to the angry honks of passing cars.

“But you always said you wanted to be a super
hero
,” I said, catching up with him once again.

“That dream is over,” he said, clipping the elbow of a charity collector and knocking the money can out of his hand. “And I have you to thank for putting me on my true evil path.”

Me?

“As you so ably pointed out during our epic confrontation in my former volcano lair, I am a much better villain than a hero.”

I felt a sudden and terrible weight on my shoulders. I was responsible for giving the aliens the key to taking over Earth, and I had turned Christopher Talbot to the dark side. And it wasn't even lunchtime.

“In here,” he cried.

We ducked into Marshalls, and he made directly for a rack of clothes in the clearance section.

“So, what exactly are we dealing with?” he asked, flicking through an assortment of jackets and cardigans.

“A squad of alien shock troops, sent in advance of the main invasion by an evil overlord on a cloaked mother ship disguised as an ordinary junior high school in geosynchronous orbit above the highway at the corner of Brewery Road. And it's all part of an intergalactic reality TV show.”

“OK.”

I'd been counting on him catching on quickly, but I was still surprised at how well he took the news. “So you believe me?”

“I've just been assaulted by cloned gym teachers who materialized out of an Xbox. Let's say I'm keeping an open mind.” He thrust a cardigan at me. “Here, put this on.”

“For a disguise?”

“No, because the blue brings out your eyes.”

I pulled on the cardigan as he slipped into a tweed jacket. Finally, he handed me a stripy wool hat with a pom-pom on top. Normally, I wouldn't wear anything with a pom-pom, but these weren't normal circumstances. I had a horrible thought. If he was willing to team up with
me
, then . . . “You're not going to do some sort of supervillain deal with the aliens, are you?”

“Well, I wasn't,” he said. “But now that you mention it—”

“No! I didn't mean—”

“Yes,” he mused. “Once they've taken over the world with my help, they're sure to reward me. Perhaps I'll ask for Bavaria. I've always had a weakness for
zwetschgenkuchen
. It's a short-crust pie covered with pitted
zwetschge
.” He gave me a withering look. “Oh, come on, Luke, what do you take me for? Team up with alien invaders—when has that
ever
worked out for the villain?”

He was right. I'd never read a single comic in which alien invaders stuck to their promises.

We joined a line to pay for the new clothes. “And anyway, I'm not the one who gave the Martians the nuclear codes, or whatever it was you did up there.” He paused. “What exactly
did
you do up there?”

I fiddled guiltily with my pom-pom. Swiftly, I explained the situation with the Cara-borg sent to distract Star Guy. Just as I finished, there was the screech of a whistle from behind the new season's monochrome checkered jackets. One of the sue-dunham commandos had found us.

“Let's get out of here!” I yelled, but Christopher Talbot had already gone. We hadn't been a team for long, but I'd already noticed that at the first sniff of danger, he didn't exactly hang around.

“We need to find your brother before that robot girl gets her lips on him,” he said as we burst through the door back onto Main Street.

“I know where he'll be,” I said. I glanced back to see a security guard tackle the sue-dunham in a tassel-print wrap dress that she hadn't paid for. That would buy us some time.

It didn't take long to reach our destination. The slab-sided battleship that was the Central Library reared up before us.

We dashed inside to begin our search for Zack. “He's probably in the section with all the math books,” I said. “Let's start there.”

“Lead on, Macduff,” said Christopher Talbot with a grin.

I thought that in all the excitement he must have forgotten my name, but I didn't correct him. He loped up the staircase, three stairs at a time, fizzing with energy and happier than I'd seen him since he'd stepped into his Mark Fourteen Super Suit, ready to do battle with Nemesis. A dose of danger and the prospect of revenge had made him perkier than a pig with a jetpack. I was glad, at least for now. I needed all the help I could get if I was going to stop the aliens.

Zack wasn't among the math books. As we continued to the next floor, the sheer scale of our challenge struck me. Zack had been obsessed with Cara since the day she'd moved onto our street. The robot was a flawless copy of my brother's dream girl, programmed to love him. As far as he knew, she
was
Cara. This wasn't Mission: Impossible; it was harder than that.

If I was going to save the world, I had to stop Zack from kissing Cara.