James Patterson - Watch the Skies

The second book in the Daniel X series, 2009

NIGHT’S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOUR SIDE OF THE PLANET IS POINTED AT OUTER SPACE

YOU KNOW THE second-coolest of all my superpowers? It’s the one that lets me hear any song I’ve ever heard as loud as I want, as often as I want, and anytime I want. It’s like I have an iPod implanted in my head. Only it holds, like, terabytes more songs, and the sound quality’s better. And it never needs to be docked or recharged.

The song I was playing over and over again right then, as I motorcycled down I-80, was “Don’t Fear the Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult. I know it kinda puts the K in Klassic Rock, but it’s a good one. And it was going along real well with my thoughts and plans-wherein I am the Grim Reaper… of very, very bad aliens.

I leave the good ones alone, of course. But, honestly-not to bum you out-I’ve only bumped into a couple other “good” aliens here on your Big Blue Marble.

So what’s the coolest of my superpowers, you ask? The way I can smell alien sweat from ten miles away even while speeding along a highway with my helmet on? The way I’ve recently learned to make high-performance, hybrid-engine racing bikes that can travel three thousand miles at seventy-five miles per hour on a tank of gas? The way I can pop a wheelie… on my front tire?

Well, that’s almost untopable, but, no, the coolest of my superpowers is the one with which I can create my best friends-Willy, Joe, Emma, and Dana-out of my imagination.

It takes some concentration, and I have to be rested and not taking any allergy medicine, but, really, being able to shoot fireballs or outrace locomotives is nothing next to being able to make friends out of thin air.

And they’re not bottom-of-the-barrel specimens, either. Joe is great with video games and computers, and otherwise is basically a life-support device for the world’s fastest-moving mouth. He’s either chewing his way through some mountain of food that weighs twice as much as his skinny butt, or he’s talking a blue-and totally hilarious-streak.

Emma is our moral compass. The part that gets her worked up about Alien Outlaws is that they’re on Terra Firma and doing harm not just to people but to Nature. Mother Earth has no better advocate than her Birkenstock-wearing self.

Emma’s older brother is Willy. He’s the ultimate wing man, built like a brick and slightly harder to scare than one too. He’s our go-to guy when it comes to weapons and engines and stuff like that. Plus, he’s more loyal than, like, Batman’s butler Alfred, Sam in The Lord of the Rings, Wesley in The Princess Bride, and King Arthur’s horse combined.

Finally, Dana is, well… I guess you could say she’s my dream girl. She manages to be both the most attractive and the most grounded person I’ve ever encountered. In the universe. Remember, I haven’t exactly been operating out of a Montana shack all these years.

Oh, and all four of them happen to be outstanding at don’t-try-this-at-home motorcycle stunts. Which we were thoroughly enjoying on this particular night, chasing after an eighteen-wheeler. Keep in mind that aliens don’t necessarily abide by the same rules humans do when it comes to minimum driving age.

“Slalom!” Willy, who was in the lead, called out. One of our favorite tricks.

We leaned the bikes almost on their sides and-get this-zipped under the trailer… behind wheels seven, eight, nine, and ten, and in front of wheels eleven through eighteen… and came out safely on the other side.

Finally we pulled up to a small-town diner.

“Sorry about this,” I said to my friends, climbing off my bike. I was about to face off with the most powerful alien I’d ever engaged in mortal combat.

“Sorry for what?” asked Joe.

“Number 5,” I told them, furrowing my brow. “You smell that?”

There was a terrible smell in the air, like somebody had left a herring-salad sandwich in a hot car… for a week.

“Ugh!” Emma wrinkled her nose. “I’m catching it too. Seriously bad news.”

“Yeah, Daniel,” Willy echoed. “This guy must be more evil than the stink in your sneakers. We better get ready to rumble.”

“My sneakers don’t smell, Willy,” I said. “And I can’t put you guys at risk. This is between me… and Number 5.”

“You’re such a boy,” said Dana, hand on her hip, a look of concerned disapproval on her face. “Are you sure you’re ready to go that high up The List? No offense, Daniel, but you got pretty lucky with Number 6.”

“Always with the pep talks, Dana. Thanks a lot.”

Then I clapped my hands, and she and the rest of them flickered out of existence. (I actually don’t need to clap, but it looks cool.)

And then I cleared my head for battle.

HIS STENCH WAS bad outside, but that was nothing compared to how it was in the diner. This guy made low tide smell like Obsession for Men.

I must have missed him by just a matter of minutes-the scraps of moist membrane rotting in the booth where he’d been sitting hadn’t even skinned over-but he and his henchbeasts had gotten away while the getting was still good.

Unfortunately, with these higher-up-The-List baddies, I was discovering a trend: they often seemed to know I was coming. I guess I should be flattered that they didn’t want to run into me, but it was more than a little frustrating to keep bringing my A-game only to find nobody to play with.

Well, almost nobody. They’d left behind a waitress.

She was in no shape to play, though. The poor girl was collapsed like a rag doll on the floor next to the counter. Her burnt-out face reminded me of a kid’s toy you might have tried to run on a car battery rather than AAAs.

The name stitched on the pocket of her calico uniform was Judy Blue Eyes, and, you guessed it, her eyes were the kind of clear blue a guy could look into and see the promise of the whole world.

A human guy, I mean. For me, the promise of the whole world was usually a great deal darker.

“Hey, Judy. You okay?”

“Nnnn,” she said, consciousness slowly percolating back.

I helped her into a booth and gave her a glass of water.

“Wh-wh’appen?” she stuttered.

“Food fight,” I said, only it was far worse than that. Smashed china plates, syrup and salt caked on the walls, soda dripping from the tabletops, empty jelly packets stuck to the seats, ketchup and mayo on the jukeboxes, Promise spread splattered on the ceiling, slicks of alien slime pooled everywhere like a sticky mix of spilled honey and coffee.

“Oh gosh,” she said, struggling to sit up and take it all in. “I’m so-o fired.”

“Nah,” I said. “I can give you a hand.” And then, like somebody had pressed the ×8 button on my remote, I zipped around with a broom, a mop, a couple bottles of Windex, and a dozen dishrags and had the place spick-and-span in no time, literally.

“Man, I’m really out of it,” said Judy as I returned to her now-gleaming booth. “I mean, did you just clean all that up in, like, ten seconds?”

Man, was she cute. I was trying to think of something clever to say back, but I had this weird-though not totally unpleasant-tightness in my chest, and all I could manage was this really lame giggle.