Armageddon (6 page)

“Mel,” I said, “these are my best friends: Joe, Willy, his sister, Emma—”

“I love your horses, you guys!” Emma gushed as she rushed over to stroke their manes. “Can I feed them an apple?”

“Sure,” said Mel.

“Um, Daniel?”

“Yes, Emma?”

“Apples?”

“Coming right up.” I snapped my fingers and materialized Emma a bushel full of Granny Smiths, Macintoshes, Braeburns, and Galas—with a couple of carrot stalks and sugar cubes stuffed in down the sides to make it a gourmet gift basket.

“So, Daniel,” said Dana, “aren’t you going to introduce me to your new…
friend
?”

Okay, this was going to be a wee bit awkward.

How does a guy introduce his dream girl to the girl of his dreams—or vice versa?

Dr. X?
I mentally checked in with my trusted steed and advisor.

But all he did was chuckle.
Heh, heh, heh.

I had to handle this one all by myself.

Welcome to the joys of being a teenage boy.

WHILE MEL AND Emma fed apples to the horses and Joe and Willy brushed them down, Dana and I slipped away to have A Conversation.

I hate Conversations.

“Come on, Dana. Go easy on Mel. She’s nice.”

“Oh, yes. She’s swell.”

“Wait a second,” I said. “Are you jealous?”

“Of course.
NOT!
”

Fortunately, Joe came to my rescue.

“I’m starving,” he said. “Where’s the nearest Kentucky Fried Chicken?”

Mel heard that and laughed.

“What?” said Joe. “This is Kentucky, is it not?”

“We don’t eat fried chicken every day,” said Mel.

“No chicken for me,” said Emma. “I don’t eat anything with a face.”

The six of us swept into the kitchen through the back
door and I was all set to materialize our finger-lickin’ good feast when Agent Judge stormed into the room.

“You need to see this, Daniel.
Now.
”

He snapped on an under-the-counter TV set. A horrific news report from Washington, D.C., filled the screen.

The time for R and R was officially over.

As I watched I was sickened by the image of the gleaming marble sides of the Washington Monument appearing to crackle with spidery fissure lines, like a shattering sheet of ice.

Giant marble slabs slid down the sides of the obelisk, like the walls of a crumbling glacier. The deafening roar of the thunderous rockslide rumbled across Washington, D.C., as Number 2 brought down the world’s tallest stone structure. Five hundred and fifty-five feet of marble, granite, and sandstone crumbled before his glowering red eyes, sending up a billowing cloud of dust and destruction that blotted out the sun and darkened the sky.

As if this weren’t sickening enough, I heard a voice from the newscast that was all too familiar. And it was talking to me.

“See this and know who I am, Daniel X!” Number 2 whispered, unfurling his enormous black wings. “This is all for you!”

IT WAS THE Fourth of July, and the second-deadliest alien in the universe was enjoying the most spectacular “fireworks” display the nation’s capital had ever seen.

He had already torched the White House, charring its ruins black.

He had laid waste to the Lincoln Memorial, rolling the sainted president’s sculpted head into a rat-infested sewer.

He had crushed the Capitol Building, flattening its Great Rotunda as if the cast-iron dome were nothing more than an aluminum Coke can.

Meanwhile, his alien army was sweeping like a plague of locusts across the metropolitan area to usher survivors down into the abyss.

His name was Abbadon.

Hoping to enslave millions, he quickly assumed the guise of a concerned newscaster and infiltrated the earthlings’ television broadcasts, as well as their Internet, cell
phones, and encrypted National Security networks. His face filled video screens everywhere.

“People of Washington, D.C., if you wish to live, flee your homes and join me underground. The world as you have known it is nearing its apocalyptic end. Come to me and survive. Refuse me and die.”

Everywhere, flecks of debris drifted down from the ominous sky like mammoth gray snowflakes. Those who wished to survive stampeded toward the underground entrances to Washington’s Metro system, where Abbadon had stationed his minions, all of whom, as had been decreed ages ago, now appeared with locust wings and scorpion tails.

As more monuments and landmarks and office towers collapsed, riots erupted among those clawing their way toward the subway entrances. A few of the greediest humans took advantage of the chaos and leaped through shattered shop windows to loot the shelves.

Two brothers fought each other over the last loaf of bread in a convenience store. Abbadon reveled in the sight. He delighted in the depraved indifference these terrified creatures now showed to those they had once considered their fellow men.

Now it was every man and woman for him- or herself.

The human animals were viciously turning on one another in their Darwinian pursuit of survival.

All is as it was always meant to be
, thought Abbadon.
My time is at hand!

I COULD NOT believe my eyes.

Washington, D.C., looked worse than it did in the movie
Independence Day
.

All across the capital, buildings were imploding—coming down on themselves and sending up swirling clouds of dust and debris.

Happy Fourth of July, everybody.

This had to be Number 2’s doing; Washington had been the first city mentioned on his hit list back in the bat cave.

“We need to be there,” I said to Agent Judge. “Now.”

“A chopper is on the way. It’ll ferry us down to Fort Campbell, where we can hitch a ride on a C-140 transport plane. They’ve already loaded IOU’s ATV into the cargo hold.”

“With all due respect, Agent Judge,” I said, “we’re going to need a whole lot more than an all-terrain vehicle to go up against the universe’s second-most-vicious alien outlaw.”

“It’s an Alien Tracking Vehicle, Daniel.”

“Still, I’d rather—”

“Your father designed it for us. We still don’t know what half the gizmos and gadgets inside the thing do.”

“Don’t worry,” said Joe, my own personal Geek Squad. “I’ll figure it out.”

“We need to hustle,” said Willy. “Check out the creepy-crawlers Number 2’s found to do his dirty work.”

CNN was airing live footage of Number 2’s insect-like minions herding terrified citizens toward the entrances to D.C.’s underground Metro system. The beasts appeared to be about seven feet tall, with curled tails, see-through locust wings, and hideous human heads. They used their pointed tails as cattle prods to drive the hordes of humans down steep staircases and into the subway tunnels.

“Wait a second,” I said. “What do we know about their weaponry? How did Number 2 bring down all those buildings?”

Special Agent Judge consulted a handheld computer that was feeding him real-time updates from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s former headquarters in downtown D.C. I say “former” because the J. Edgar Hoover Building, a massive structure made out of raw concrete poured over steel beams, was now a pile of chunky gray gravel on Pennsylvania Avenue, just a few blocks east of what used to be the White House.

“My guys on the streets report seeing no incoming missiles, no blasts from orbiting spacecraft, nothing,” said Agent Judge.

“No way,” said Dana. “That’s impossible.”

“He must’ve used stealth weaponry of some sort,” said Willy, our intergalactic arms expert.

That’s when I remembered the laser-beam blasts Number 2 used to throw the hench-lackeys who had dared to laugh during his underground pep rally.

“I saw Number 2 take out a couple of his goons back in that cavern just by glaring at them. His eyes are like high-energy laser beams.”

Maybe when he took down the class clowns, he had his eyeballs set on Stun like they used to do on
Star Trek
. Then, once he arrived in Washington, he’d flicked his high beams up to Total Devastation.

“Have we heard anything about casualties?” I asked Agent Judge.

“Affirmative. There aren’t any.”

“
What?
That’s impossible. I just saw—”

“So far, no one’s been killed or injured. Number 2 is destroying the entire city, but not the citizens.”

“So,” said Willy, “whatever he’s using, it’s the complete opposite of a neutron bomb. Instead of killing all the people and saving the infrastructure, he’s wiping out the structures while sparing the civilians.”

“This makes no sense,” I mumbled. “None of it.”

“There’s only one way for us to figure out what’s really going on,” said Mel. “We need to be in D.C. Now!”

“Us?” said Dana, arching an eyebrow. “We?”

“What? You don’t seriously think I’m going to hang here while the country I love is under attack?”

“Now, Mel,” said Agent Judge, “we’ve talked about this before. It isn’t safe out there.”

“Dad!” Mel exclaimed, gesturing at the TV screen. “I don’t think
any
place on Earth is safe right now.”

“You can’t come,” I said to Mel. “I’ve made a vow to never risk human life when dealing with alien outlaws on Terra Firma.”

“Really?” said Mel with a crooked smile. “Well, Daniel, I’ve made a vow, too: to never be a wimp. So come on. Like you said, we need to be in D.C.!”

IT WAS DUSK when we finally rolled into the Virginia suburbs just west of the capital.

My dad had done an amazingly awesome job outfitting the Alien Tracker Vehicle for the FBI. Joe was practically drooling as he fiddled with all the sensor knobs and sliders arrayed across the control panel in the back of the sleek, aerodynamic truck. The van’s speedometer topped out at 288 mph (my dad had obviously tweaked out the engine, too), which, of course, was the equivalent to 250 knots, the maximum speed an aircraft can fly below 10,000 feet.

Yep. I wouldn’t be surprised if pretty soon Joe found a toggle switch that deployed wings on both sides of the titanium truck.

“Do we have weapons?” asked Agent Judge, who was up front, riding shotgun, while one of his top IOU guys manned the wheel and piloted the vehicle through the smoldering ruins of Arlington, Virginia.

“Definitely,” said Joe. “Blaster cannons, stun guns, and an extremely lethal rotating rocket launcher up on the roof.”

“But we won’t use any of the weapons unless we absolutely, positively have to, right, Daniel?” said Emma, who, of course, was wearing her Birkenstocks and
GIVE PEACE A CHANCE
T-shirt.

“Of course we won’t use any weapons,” sniped Dana. “We’ll just very politely ask these scorpion-tailed locust scuzzballs to put everything back the way they found it.”

“That won’t work,” fumed Willy, who was standing up, bracing himself against the bulkhead between the front of the truck and the crew area. Dana rolled her eyes.

The ATV bounded over potholes and rubble as we passed what was left of the Iwo Jima Memorial (the flag lay in tatters atop a mound of melted bronze). The driver was heading for the Arlington Memorial Bridge.

A dozen plasma-screen TVs mounted on the interior walls of the ATV displayed images of the mass destruction awaiting us when we crossed the Potomac River to enter the District of Columbia.

“There’s nothing left,” Mel announced with a gasp. “I came here on a class trip last spring… the cherry blossoms were in bloom….”

Now there wasn’t a tree of any kind standing anywhere.

Or a monument. Or a building. Not even a mailbox or parking meter.

Mel was seated next to me on the crew bench. I squeezed her hand, hard.

Because the images of devastation playing out on the video monitors were tearing me apart.

Hey, I’m a guy blessed with the greatest superpower of them all: the ability to
create
anything I can grok in my imagination. As a
creator
, nothing breaks my heart more than this kind of mass
destruction
. An entire city laid to waste. Magnificent monuments to everything my adopted home stands for, reduced to rubble. And yes, like Mel, I thought the National Cherry Blossom Festival—held in early April, when the Yoshino, Akebono, Usuzumi, and Fugenzo blooms hit their peak—was as stunningly beautiful as anything on any planet anywhere. And next spring? It just wouldn’t happen.

If there even was a next spring.

“Heads up,” said the driver. “We have company.”

I swiveled in my seat and looked out the front window.

I wished I hadn’t.

AS WE ENTERED Washington from the west, a crazed swarm of people, numbering in the thousands, came charging across the arched bridge, headed for Virginia.

Our driver slammed on the brakes. The mob parted and swept around the ATV, surrounding us like a raging river ready to overrun its banks.

“There’s a Metro station on the other side of the bridge, back in Arlington!” said Agent Judge. “That’s where they’re all headed.”

As the crowd swarmed around our vehicle, I checked out the video monitors. Some showed terrified residents of D.C. trampling one another like there was a day-after-Thanksgiving door-buster sale going on down in the subway stations. Others showed Number 2’s wing-backed goons pillaging and plundering across the wasteland that had once been the capital city of the most powerful nation on Earth.

One of the locust-like creatures had found himself a
Ferrari and was cutting tire-screeching, rubber-burning doughnuts inside the drained concrete basin of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool.

Some other beasts were outside the Library of Congress, burning all the books.

A trio of thugs standing on the broken steps of the crumpled Capitol tucked in their scorpion tails and smiled so they could satellite-beam souvenir images of themselves back to friends on their home planets.

Just then, an air horn blared a warning.