And then I was leaping in the air, avoiding his blinding, hypersonic blast and, simultaneously, launching the exact same sort of blast back at him out of my “hand gun.”

When I landed, his discharge had scorched its way across the field behind me, setting afire some cornstalks and taking a nick out of the crown of a hill before it ripped its way into outer space.

My blast, on the other hand, had punched a ten-foot-wide, mile-deep, smoking hole in the ground right where he’d been standing.

“Anybody smell pork chops?” I asked the gawking henchbeasts in my best John Wayne impersonation. “Or is that charbroiled monkey?”

They scattered back into the forest like terrified bunny rabbits.

Chapter 69

I TURNED DANA back into herself, materialized the rest of the gang, and then-with Dad’s electronic countermeasures installed in the van so that Number 5 couldn’t, as far as we knew, spy on us-we proceeded to put the finishing touches on a 3-D battle map of the Wiggers’ farm.

Judging from our satellite photos, the property had changed a lot over the past month.

The farmhouse and barns had been joined together by a number of alien-constructed domes, generating plants, and oblong outbuildings. And dozens of new ponds pockmarked the former corn and sorghum fields.

“Nursery ponds,” said Dana.

“Looks that way,” I said. “It’d be hard to raise a million little Number 5s without a habitat similar to that of his home planet.”

“Check out this footage,” said Joe, hitting a button that superimposed video images onto the map.

Hundreds upon hundreds of human forms were staggering through the fields, zombie-like in every way, except that every single one was a pregnant woman, and all were watching cell phones, iPods, or PDAs-transfixed as if engrossed in the last few minutes of an episode of 24.

With the sort of seamless choreography you’d see in an automated factory, they split into groups and moved toward the ponds. One by one, and turn by turn, they wandered into the water, deposited the wriggling contents of their stomachs, waded back out, took another can of “caviar,” and headed back to town.

And then an alarm went off. Somebody was approaching the van.

Chapter 70

“HUMANS,” SAID WILLY, examining the monitor. “Lots of them.”

We looked out the front and saw masses of Holliswood residents streaming toward the Wiggers’ farm. They were parting around the van and staggering, barely alert, intent only on moving forward, their faces inches away from the cell phones, BlackBerries, and portable game platforms they carried.

“Holy Close Encounters of the Weird Kind,” said Joe. “But these ones aren’t pregnant. So what gives?”

“Well, I doubt the aliens dug all those ponds themselves. So maybe these ones are coming to do some free manual labor. That, or maybe they’re coming to get filmed,” said Dana.

“And then melted,” added Emma.

“All right,” I said. “I think it’s about time we went and had a talk with Number 5.”

Chapter 71

WE DROVE THE van up the poplar-lined, heavily rutted driveway and parked on the gravel by the main barn, just opposite the house.

“Lock and load, guys,” Willy said as we leaped out of the van.

We closed in on the farmhouse, tree by tree, bush by bush, moving so stealthily that nobody would have heard us over the gentle breeze and chirping birds.

“Where’s the welcoming committee?” signaled Joe in American Sign Language-one of thirty human languages we’re fluent in-as we reached the front porch. “I mean, do we have to go up and ring the doorbell?!”

Just then, the birds stopped singing and, in unison, chirped the three tones from those NBC Peacock station-identification interludes. And then the massive barn doors swung open to reveal a JumboTron-sized video screen.

“Greetings and salutations to you and your imaginary friends, young Alien Hunter,” said Number 5 from the screen. He was carrying a pitchfork and wearing a straw hat and oversized overalls-if you can imagine a creature with no legs in overalls-standing in front of a backdrop curtain patterned with a Milky Way Hillbillies logo.

“We’ll see who’s so imaginary,” said Willy, attempting to storm forward as Emma and Dana held him back, “when my boot comes down on your slimy head!”

Number 5 ignored the outburst. “In fact, I’m honored you’ve come. I knew your mom and your dad-back before they got turned into crispy critters, I mean-so I have a good idea of what an upstanding young Alien Hunter you must be. You know, I may even have some footage of them around here someplace.”

That was weird. I mean, obviously he hadn’t arrived on Earth till long after my parents were dead, but maybe there was some chance he’d crossed paths with them when they’d been on assignment in the Andromeda galaxy, or someplace before they’d come to protect Earth…

How cool would it be to see them on film? Of course, I have my memories, and my memories-even from back when I was three, when The Prayer took their lives-are pretty good. But what if he really did have some footage of them? Maybe after I killed him, I’d go looking through his archives, just in case.

“Daniel,” said Dana, “you’re gaping like you’re a fish. Snap out of it.”

I shook my head and forced my mind through a focusing exercise Dad had taught me during my aikido training. She was right-Number 5 was obviously messing with my head.

“Sure,” he went on, “I think I may have even posted them online. Here, I’ll text you the YouTube link.”

“I didn’t bring my cell phone. It’s not like I haven’t figured out your infiltration techniques, Fivey.”

“Well, where can I send an e-mail?”

“Try I-H-eight-F-I-S-H-at-gmail-dot-com.”

He held up his Sidekick, showing me the screen and the “message sent” dialog box.

“So you’ve really never seen it?” he asked.

I raised an eyebrow at him.

“The scene where Number 1 killed your parents? You didn’t know I was there, filming the whole thing?”

Chapter 72

“NOW I KNOW you’re lying,” I said. “I was there when my parents were killed.”

“Sure. But were you upstairs with me and Number 1? Or were you down in the basement, playing with your toys?”

How could he have known that?

“You had no idea I was up there filming, did you? That surprises me. You know, out on the Extranet-the Outer World’s version of the Internet-that clip has had more than thirty-five trillion downloads.”

It simply wasn’t possible. I’d relived that moment a thousand times. There had only been Number 1’s and my parents’ voices.

And in the end, there’d been nobody upstairs with my parents’ bodies. I mean, I hadn’t actually seen them killed, but…

“It’s very moving,” he said. “The part where your mom cries like a little girl is pure emotion, but my personal favorite scene is where your dad begs Number 1 for his life. ‘Oh, Mr. Prayer, please, I can get you money, I can help you, just don’t hurt my fa-fa-family, oh puh-lease!’ ”

“Dude, that’s low,” said Willy, cracking his knuckles.

“Yes, perhaps that necklace of your mom’s you’re wearing will dispel any lingering doubts you may have. You do know it was hers, don’t you? That footage where you recognized it and started crying is priceless. Just priceless!”

Had the necklace really been a plant, a setup? Had he even filmed my reaction to it… was that even possible?

“So,” he went on, “it’s starting to dawn on you, isn’t it?”

It was no secret that Alparians wore elephant pendants. It was probably just an elaborate hoax meant to distract me, get under my skin, cause me to make mistakes -

“And, look!” he said, pulling out a necklace from behind the bib of his overalls… “We’re twins! Do you recognize it? It was your father’s, of course. Number 1 usually collects them for his trophy case, but this time he knew they’d make great props and let me borrow them. Once he was done spitting on their corpses, that is.”