Chapter 38

I SET JOE to work while I quickly dialed 411 for a McGillicutty residence on Mulberry Avenue. I didn’t have the nerve to call just yet, but I was half thinking about asking Judy on a date… after I’d figured out a little more precisely what kind of trouble Number 5 had been cooking up in Holliswood and environs.

What Joe and I were doing is a little complicated to explain in much detail, but I’ll give you the basic idea: You know how light travels really, really fast?

Well, in outer space, where stars and planets are so far apart that the distance between them is measured by how far light travels in a year, you start to see that light isn’t quite the greased lightning it’s cracked up to be. In fact, being unable to travel faster than light through space would be kind of like cruising the interstate in a mule-driven cart.

Fortunately, alien technology has figured out some ways-which I won’t attempt to explain right here-to surpass the speed of light.

That’s not to say light’s slowness doesn’t have its uses. Like, for instance, when you want to see into the past.

Think about it. If light takes one hundred years to travel from Earth to Planet X-which is one hundred light-years away-then if somebody on Planet X has a really, really good telescope and wants to see what’s happening on Earth right now, like you reading this book, for instance, then he’ll have to wait one hundred years for the light that makes that image come to him.

And, if he were looking through his telescope right now, what he’d see instead of you reading this book is a picture of whatever was happening here one hundred years ago.

That’s the core principle behind how my people-Protectors of the Universe that we once were-have been able to create a bunch of very good remote-control “telescopes” out in space. Some are ten minutes away, and some are ten million years away. By uplinking to them through the minivan’s console, Joe and I were figuring out how to pull up a video feed of whatever had been happening on Earth from moments ago to millions of years ago-kind of like real-life TiVo.

My big idea was to get some clues about Number 5’s plans by going back to when Number 5 and his henchbeasts first arrived in Holliswood.

“Um, Dan-o, what was that code you just read me? Zero-eight-five-three-five-six-F-zero-two-R-P, or zero-eight-five-three-five-six-F-zero-two-R-T?” asked Joe.

“Let’s try whichever one you didn’t just type in,” I said as we received footage of a woolly mammoth playing with her baby in what looked like a prehistoric Holliswood Lake.

“I think that’s a little too far back.”

Chapter 39

“THAT’S IT,” I said to Joe. “Play that scene right there.”

He turned the dial and locked in the playback codes on our improvised deep-space historiscope. What we had before us was a pauseable, zoomable, playbackable recording of Number 5’s arrival in Holliswood.

A pulse of light flashed in the sky over the pine forest next to a country road on the south side of town, and, in a microsecond, his fat, flabby, fishy self materialized, crackling with electricity among the burning pine trees.

Number 21 came next, and then, in a series of slow-motion lightning bolts, a handful, then dozens, then hundreds upon hundreds of alien henchfiends streaked down from the sky.

The fireworks ended with a dozen or so interstellar transport containers materializing in the midst of the horde.

Number 5 opened one and removed what looked like a small, neatly folded mesh of wires and circuits.

He unfolded it with his tentacles, carefully stretching it open to its full teardrop shape, and smiled.

“What is that?” asked Joe. “An alien-style fishnet stocking?”

I was in no mood to joke. “I think we have yet to witness the level of evil this creep is capable of,” I told him as the real horror show began.

Chapter 40

WE WATCHED ON-SCREEN as Number 5 barked some orders at his minions, who quickly dispersed into the still-burning forest. Then he borrowed what looked to be a cell phone from Number 21, placed a call, and proceeded to wait impatiently in the middle of the road.

Four fire trucks soon arrived at the scene, squealing to a stop when they saw the big, levitating, tentacled catfish hovering in the middle of the road. Number 5 took advantage of the firefighters’ astonishment and calmly glided up on the roof of the ladder truck. He twined a tentacle around the flexible communications antenna on top of the cab, and blue sparks coursed down its length.

A moment later, all the firefighters poured out of their trucks, in their black and yellow suits, and formed a Macarena line as a camera crew of a dozen aliens came forward to film the dance.

The rest of the aliens returned, cheering and jeering from the edge of the burning forest as the mind-controlled firefighters slapped hands to the backs of their heads, then to their hips and gyrated.

The scene quickly shifted from absurd to abhorrent as a team of aliens advanced with unholstered blasters and began obliterating the dancing firefighters, one by one, melting them into slicks of black sludge as their film-crew colleagues zoomed in for close-ups.

The unabashed show of depravity made my insides burn. But Number 5 was clearly elated by the entire performance. He pumped his tentacle like he was Tiger Woods after making a tournament-winning putt.

When the last firefighter had been liquefied, Number 5 waved a “let’s roll” gesture, and the aliens activated the hover-drives on the containers, hitching them to the backs of the fire trucks. Then, lights flashing, they drove off down the country road toward the edge of town.

Chapter 41

JOE ZOOMED OUT the view, and we watched as all but one of the alien-driven fire trucks pulled up to a nearby farm-no doubt the Wiggers’ place.

Number 5’s ladder truck had broken off from the others and was now headed into downtown Holliswood. It finally stopped off the main drag in front of a squat building with a big red neon sign on top: KHAW: HOLLISWOOD COUNTY’S PREMIERE NEWS TEAM.

Number 5 hovered off the truck and followed a dozen gun- and camera-toting aliens inside the TV station.

“It makes sense, right?” said Joe. “A free press is tyranny’s greatest enemy. And Number 5’s all about tyranny, so the first thing he does is go after the press.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Although I’m beginning to think there’s more to it than that. Say, TV signals travel at the speed of light too, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, let’s pick up the signal the station was putting out at this same moment. Can you do that?”

Joe made some adjustments, and in seconds we had a split-screen with what we could see of the TV station from the outside, plus what was on air at the time-Weatherman Ron, wearing a shiny suit, a black silk shirt, and tropical-print tie, pointing to a wavy red line on the map behind him.

“And if you thought it was hot enough for ya already, well, this mass of low pressure coming in from the west is gonna change whatchya think hot is. But first, it’s going to bring us a whole mess of T-storms-YOWZA!”

He froze as a blue spark arced out of the remote control he used to toggle through his weather maps. And then LEN’s “Steal My Sunshine” began to play, and he started to dance a spastic, Blues Brothers sort of dance, distorted laughter gurgling in the background.

He kept it up for thirty seconds or so, then Weatherman Ron disappeared in a bright blue flash of light. The off-camera laughter got louder.

“Did they just vaporize Weatherman Ron on live TV?” asked Joe.

I nodded, sadly.

“I mean, he was annoying and all, but nobody deserves that.”