Authors: Carrie Ryan
I must say I’ve never in my life been called a slut. It was a tiny bit thrilling, but also quite embarrassing. I could feel myself turning bright red, and saw that Kyle had an outraged expression on his face. I will admit that this was also a bit thrilling.
Excuse me, I forgot to ask, you won’t be making this video available for public viewing, will you? Oh, good, thank you.
Well, before Kyle could say anything, I saw KC grab Duncan’s baseball bat and stalk up to Taylor’s car.
“Hey,” KC said. “You ladies want to live?”
I must say, mine wasn’t the only jaw that dropped. Amber’s did, too.
“Are you
threatening
us, KC?” Amber asked. “You better cut it out, or you aren’t going to know what hit you.”
“No,” KC said, angrier than I’ve ever seen her. She was still holding the baseball bat in the air. But she wasn’t looking at Amber. She was looking up. “In about ten seconds, if you don’t get out of that car,
you
aren’t going to know what’s hit you.”
I looked up, following KC’s gaze.
And I realized the light I’d been seeing that I’d been mistaking for the moon wasn’t the moon at all.
It was a large spacecraft … its engines were what had been causing all the wind.
And a second later, it landed directly on top of Taylor’s car.
It was a pretty dramatic entrance, landing on Taylor’s dad’s car like that. I don’t mind admitting, I was scared. Someone could have been seriously hurt.
But of course thanks to my warning, no one was. Taylor and Amber escaped just fine … not that you’d have known it from the way they carried on. Neither of them was the least bit grateful to me, either. It was like they thought he’d done it on purpose. Which I’m sure he didn’t. He wouldn’t want to draw that much attention to himself.
Things had changed a lot since the last time he’d been there. Now ours wasn’t the only house in the middle of a bunch of empty lots. So he couldn’t just swoop in and out undetected, the way he had ten years ago. Dozens of other houses had sprung up all around ours.
Which meant everyone in the whole neighborhood came out onto their front porch to see what the racket was when Taylor’s dad’s car got squashed … including my parents, Duncan’s mom and dad, the Garrisons, everyone in town, practically, who wasn’t already up and on their way over to my house because they’d read my blog entry, like you guys.
And those of our neighbors who didn’t grab a cell phone and start filming what they were seeing used their phone to call the local news and tell them to get over there right away. It was an instant media frenzy.
Which I’m sure is what made him switch on the force field. That’s what the big blue light was that came out from his ship and circled it … and us, Kyle, Radha, Duncan,
and me. It totally freaked out my parents. Like they weren’t freaked out enough that there was a spaceship on the front lawn.
“Don’t worry, kids! I called the base!” Dad yelled. He’d rushed down to the side of the ship. “General Henry and the rest of the boys are going to be here any minute. They’re bringing everything we’ve got. Whatever this thing is”—he banged against the force field—“it doesn’t stand a chance against those new Phantoms we just got in. We’ll have you out in no time!”
This was so like my dad. Someone was messing with his kids? He’d call the Air Force base where he worked and get them to drop a missile on them. Never mind that he might be starting an intergalactic war.
Meanwhile, next to him, Mom was calling to us reassuringly, “It’s all right, kids. It’s going to be fine. You’re destined for greatness!”
That almost made me laugh. Because Mom didn’t remember where she’d heard that the first time.
We’d
told her that. The guy who’d crash-landed his spaceship on Taylor’s dad’s car had said it.
But I didn’t feel like laughing a few seconds later when the door to the ship started to open.
Because even though Duncan was right—it’s always best to tell the truth—I’d never intended for
this
to happen. It wasn’t the same thing at
all
as outing your brother’s girlfriend for unsportsmanlike behavior.
Now because of me, the poor spaceman who’d only wanted help saving his planet was probably going to get nuked.
Kyle must have realized how terrible I felt, since—just like that night on our birthday a decade earlier—he reached out to grasp my hand.
“Mom’s right, you know,” he said, when I glanced over at
him. He was smiling. “He selected us for a reason. It’s going to be all right.”
But I had trouble smiling back. Sure, we’d been selected … probably because I’d been the only person on earth—or at least in Peachtree County—who hadn’t had the sense to run away.
So why, because of my stupid mistake, did poor Duncan and Radha have to be dragged into it? They were innocent bystanders.
Not that they were looking that upset about the situation—in Duncan’s case, anyway. Radha had reached out to grasp Kyle’s other hand a bit worriedly, to be totally truthful.
But Amber had apparently gotten over her near-death experience, and was now jealous that she wasn’t the focus of the Channel 4 news crew that had pulled up and was filming us through the force field. Taking a cue from my dad, Amber started banging on the side of the force field, only she was demanding to be let inside, not that we be let out.
The spaceman completely ignored her—and everyone outside the impenetrable barrier he’d erected around us—as he leaned out of the door of his ship and smiled at us.
“Children,” he said, “I’m so sorry about the mess.”
Just like ten years ago, I found myself hypnotized by the blue of his eyes …
… until I saw him glance—for the briefest moment—in the direction of my dad.
“Hurry up!” Dad was yelling into his cell phone, his expression stricken. “He’s got my
children
!”
“Don’t worry,” the spaceman said in a soothing voice, glancing back at us. “You’ll be completely safe with me. Come in.”
But if we’d be completely safe with him, this tiny part of my brain asked, what did he need the protective force field for?
That’s the only reason I brought the baseball bat into the ship with us. So I guess you can call it premeditated if you want to. Something told me I’d need it.
And it turned out I was right.
I’m only going to say this once, because I don’t like how you guys have been running this little show. So listen close.
That space dude may have been all smiles and blue eyes for the cameras outside that ship. But inside, where no one was taping, it was another story.
All Kaleigh was trying to do was ask him why, if he wasn’t planning on doing anything wrong, he needed the force field. Fair enough, right? She’d known this guy since she was a kid. She was concerned. She was trying to protect him. And us, too. She was trying to explain how that kind of thing might not look good, especially to a guy like her dad, who’s in charge of a squadron of fighter jets.
But did the dude listen to her? No way. He was completely ignoring her, messing around with a bunch of switches on his control board.
That’s when we noticed the mucus. It was soaking through his human suit. Because that’s what he was wearing: A human suit to cover up the fact that he was actually a six-foot slug.
We found that out when Kyle stepped up and pulled off the dude’s mask. Underneath, he was … well, I’m all for
diversity, but where those blue eyes had been were tentacles. Instead of a mouth, he just had a gash … a gash filled with razor-sharp teeth.
Once the mask came off, things got ugly. Pun intended. The dude picked up what looked a lot like a gun and pointed it at all of us.
“I only bothered disguising myself to look as disgusting as you to make you trust me,” he hissed. “There’s no need for that now.” He pressed a button, and this blue laser appeared at the tip of the gun he was holding. “I warned you never to reveal my presence to anyone, and you didn’t listen. So I will take the implants now. There must be no evidence I was ever here.”
“Uh,” Kaleigh said. I have to hand it to her. She looked scared, but she stood her ground. “It’s a little late for that. There was a news crew out there, not to mention two dozen people with cell phones. Video of what’s happened here is probably all over the Internet by now.”
“
Outside
this ship,” the alien said. And I swear, he smiled with that slug mouth as he turned the gun toward us. “But no one will ever know what’s happened
inside
. Because no trace of any of you will ever be seen again.”
So, let’s say some alien civilization from way out there in the Andromeda Nebula discovered our planet. What do you think they’d do? Share with us all their advanced technology, so that we too could roam the universe in search of new worlds, like James T. Kirk and the rest of the crew of the starship
Enterprise
?
No freaking way.
First, they’d send out scouts to gather as much intel about us as they possibly could … their own Christopher Columbuses. Especially intel about our military and defense systems.
Only they couldn’t just go strolling into government offices and military bases, could they? Not when the mucus of their
real
skin soaks right through their human costumes in about five minutes. Sure, it might fool a kindergartner hopped up on birthday cake. But no one else.
So they’d need another way to gather all the information required for the mass invasion they’ve been planning. Because ultimately their goal would be to colonize us, after first enslaving us, then kill us off when they didn’t need us anymore.
That’s exactly how we’ve always done it when we’ve discovered new worlds. Why should they do anything differently?
This guy’s solution was to find little kids—especially ones whose parents work for the government, the military, or even local hospitals in some capacity—to stick these little data recorders in, and gather as much info from them as he could.
Up until now, no one’s ever been the wiser, because everyone’s just thought they were these little blue moles. Any kid who’s ever said, “An alien put it in me,” has gotten laughed at.
But what that slimeball failed to count on was Kaleigh blogging about what had happened, in a post that would get forwarded so many times by her brother’s crazy girlfriend, a quarter of a million people would read it in one night, including you guys, causing our little alien friend’s mission to be completely compromised.
So he panicked. He knew he was going to have to get rid of the evidence so there’d be no way anyone could verify what she’d written, and his people would have the benefit of a sneak attack when they did get here.
But he was a little late. And his landing was a little off.
So you tell me. What exactly would you have done? I get that he was an alien life form, unique to our galaxy, and all of that.
But would you really have just stood there and let him butcher your best friends, then escape to send vital information about our planet back to his galaxy that they could use to annihilate us?
I don’t think so. You’d have done what I did, and taken him out.
Duncan said he did it?
What? No, I’m not crying. I have something in my eye.
He’s just lying to protect me.
I’m
the one who was holding the baseball bat. It’s on all the videos, remember? I was holding it when I went in.
He was a walking slug who was going to kill us
. Not just me, but Kyle and Duncan and Radha. I had no choice. You’d have slammed a baseball bat into his head, too. Or the area where his head appeared to be.
Let Duncan and Radha go. They had nothing to do with it. My brother, too. It was all my fault. Where’s that lawyer I requested?
What? She said that?
Duncan
said that? That’s just … that is whack. Because
I
did it.
He wasn’t exactly ET, was he? I mean, you guys saw the body. He wasn’t here for Reese’s Pieces.
Speaking of which, have you got any? I’m starving.
What? A guy’s gotta eat.
I’m sorry, while I’m very saddened by what ultimately ended up happening to that …
creature
, I simply cannot agree with your assertion that had you been able to take him alive, the outcome would have been at all different. You did not meet him while he was alive. I did.
And he did not strike me as someone who’d have been agreeable to negotiating peace between our two galaxies. Far from it, actually.
Though it does appear, from what we were able to gather after his demise, when we looked at the data on his shipboard computer—before we disabled the force field and all of you lovely people burst in with your guns and bulletproof vests—as if the invasion won’t be happening anytime soon. While their ships do have the ability to achieve super–light speed, their planet is still over two and a half million light-years away from ours.
By my calculations, it will take at least fifty years for their battle fleet to arrive, by which time our planet’s population is going to be approximately ten billion, give or take a billion. So we should have plenty of time—and people—to form an intergalactic militia and overtake
them
before they ever get a chance to invade us … especially if Kaleigh and Kyle are put in charge. Everything they’ve done has been in the best interests of Earth. You should be treating them like heroes, not criminals. Now you have the ship, from which you’ll learn a great deal. You even have that
thing’s
body on which to perform a nice alien autopsy.
I highly suggest you move on and accept the facts: It’s a whole new world now. Contact with extraterrestrial life has
been established. And those extraterrestrials are very, very hostile.
All right? I can go now? Oh, thank you. I didn’t want to have to remind you that, in addition to being president of the Science Olympiads, I’m also president of Pritchard High School’s Junior Law Institute, and you had a legal obligation to release us, as …