Daniel X: Game Over (22 page)

I’D ALWAYS ENJOYED Godzilla movies, but I’d never found them to be particularly scary. Watching a guy in a rubber lizard suit step on model-train sets just isn’t the sort of thing that gives me goose bumps. But looking out at the ocean right then, I wondered if perhaps that puzzling lack of fear of an enormous, fire-breathing, radioactive dinosaur didn’t stem from a certain lack of imagination on my part.

Having suddenly experienced something like it firsthand, I can tell you it’s incredibly disconcerting to witness the ocean boiling over like an overfilled pot of pasta as a forty-story crested reptile strides up into the shallows.

The creature’s footsteps shook the ground so violently that the sand on the beach seemed to liquefy. The few trees toppled, and the dunes behind me undulated.

I didn’t for a second think this was the real Godzilla. (Well, okay, maybe I did for
half
a second.) But when I noticed the creature had four black, lifeless eyes, I knew Number 7 and Number 8 were proving their boast that they could indeed take on
any
form they wished.

Kildare’s formulas raced through my mind. Would I be able to put my crash course in chemistry to good use? Certainly the principal reagent—salt water—was available in sufficient quantities. There was just one question to answer: had I done enough cramming to pass the final exam?

THE CREATURE’S FOOTSTEPS were registering on seismographs as far away as Beijing. As I rushed toward the water, I was forced to leap repeatedly into the air to avoid getting swallowed up in sandy fissures or washed a mile inland by a monster-induced tsunami.

It was no big surprise that getting
closer
to the creature wouldn’t make things any safer. I needed to be at the water’s edge, which meant being within range of its radioactive fire, its enormous feet, and its spiky, sixty-foot-long tail.

“Poor little Alien Hunter,” it boomed, looking down at with me with a toothy display that might have been a sneer or a smile. “Not as high up on the food chain as you thought, are you?”

“Last time I checked, Alpar Nokians were still way
above monsters made out of nothing but brainless
bugs,
” I shouted back, dodging a swipe from its enormous hand.

The Godzilla form roared and suddenly sprouted another head. Two of the black eyes moved into it. Then the heads turned to each other and began talking in booming monster voices.

“What a horrible little boy, Colin.”

“The product of poor parenting, if you ask me, Ellie.”

“Yeah,” I yelled up at them, “my folks couldn’t hold a candle to you two. I mean, not everybody thinks to raise their child on a diet of insults, neglect, and, of course, that fundamental pillar of good child rearing:
eating
your young.”

“Oh, it’s not just
our
young we eat,” boomed Number 7’s monster head.

“No, no,” continued Number 8’s head. “We eat
any
young.”

“Or, truth be told,” said Number 7, running a big forked tongue along his six-foot-high teeth, “even the not-so-young.”

I could probably have come up with a good retort right then but my mind was elsewhere. Our little conversation had given me the chance I needed to apply some of my recent studies to Kildare’s formulas. I’d begun by visualizing a series of molecules, then I measured the proper proportions, oriented a series of catalysts, and, finally, isolated the very precise conditions required to initiate the reaction.

And now it was time to stop visualizing and begin
creating.
I materialized a handful of the two principal reactants in Kildare’s formula—one came out as a yellow powder, the other a greenish liquid—and quickly cast
them down into the wave that just then was breaking at my feet.

What happened next wasn’t magic; it was pure, hard-core science. But the results were so dramatic that I imagine the world’s greatest magicians would have paid to see it themselves.

A scream like a billion wailing mice went up, and the two-headed Godzilla in front of me began to sway back and forth. Its screams became louder as it lunged for me, but instead of a giant hand swiping at me, there was nothing there.

Because the creature’s body was melting away. Dissolving into tiny black globs of decomposing alien, which were now beginning to rain down on the beach.

“Get him! GET HIM!” the voices screeched, but its body was breaking down too quickly. “We are indestructible! This is IMPOSSIBLE!”

I jumped back as the now limbless torso began pitching forward and landed in a heap at my feet. I held my ground and watched as the entire beach became covered in a black slick of alien protoplasm.

You see, salt water plus 1.9 pounds of the compound created by Kildare’s formulas result in a self-sustaining reaction that produces a gas which basically interrupts the communications between all the “cells” in the bodies of Number 7 and Number 8’s species.

In other words, I’d created a kind of nerve gas that destroyed the bonds between the tiny pieces of Number 7 and Number 8. They literally fell apart in front of my eyes.

“That’s for Kildare, you scum,” I shouted.

But I felt no joy from having destroyed my nemeses. Instead, as I wiped the oily stuff from my eyes and ran out into the polluted water, all I felt was loss and horror at what I’d done. I dove again and again into the waves—flailing around, searching frantically.

This was not part of the plan. After all, it was
his
formula I’d followed. Kildare was supposed to be here.

Kildare was supposed to live.

EXHAUSTED AND EYES stinging from tears, salt water, and alien goo, I crawled back up the beach and buried my face in the crook of my arm. In the distance, I heard the approaching
thump-thump-thump
of a helicopter. I should have gotten up and left the scene. No sense in me trying to explain to the Japanese coast guard what had happened. The surfers could handle that.

I thought I’d seen something in the chemical reaction, a way Kildare could have fortified his own cells to be resistant. But he’d clearly succumbed right along with his parents. There was no sign of him anywhere. He either hadn’t had time, or he hadn’t been willing, to save himself.

The thought of Kildare’s loss being a noble sacrifice was too bitter a consolation to swallow. Of course, Number 7 and Number 8 had to be stopped. But how much hope
and potential—and how good a friend—had I just destroyed?

I’d never felt so weary and uncertain as I did right then. What was the point of ridding the world of bad aliens if it meant I was killing the good guys, too?

“Gross, huh?”

I recognized the reedy voice immediately.

“Kildare!”

“Sorry about that—” he said as I leaped to my feet and rubbed my teary eyes. “Took me a minute to recoalesce.”

What I did next I know I probably shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t help it: I grabbed him in the best bear hug I could manage. And he hugged me back.

“Kildare—”

“I know, Daniel,” he said. We let go and awkwardly stepped away from each other. “You did it. I can’t thank you enough.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you,” I said. “What you did was so brave—”

He shook his head. “It had to be done. Just like now you have to take out Number 1.”

“I’ve been thinking, Kildare. With your smarts and your abilities, what would you say about
joining
me? With your help, we could finish off the rest of the aliens on the List. I’ll introduce you to Dana, Willy, Joe, Emma, my parents, Pork Chop…. You could be part of our group. My family.”

He was smiling sadly and shaking his head. “I can’t.”

“What do you mean, you can’t? You need to finish school or something?” I laughed.

“I resisted the reaction, but I… I can’t go on.”

“What? You’re here. You’re
alive
. Your parents aren’t coming back.”

“I’m too young to go on by myself, Daniel. My parents were still feeding me. It’s how we develop. Until we achieve full maturity, we can’t subsist on our own. We need mature colonies to sustain us.”

“But there must be others besides your parents—”

“The irony is that even though my parents hunted other species to extinction, we were the last three of our kind.”

“But on your home planet, surely—”

“My parents consumed them all. We were the last.”

“But you came up with that formula. There must be something we can do with your chemistry and my powers that would work…”

He shook his head. “Keep up the good work, Daniel. And please say good-bye to Professor Kuniyoshi for me. He was a good teacher.”

“Kildare, this can’t be happening—”

But it was too late. He was already starting to flicker in and out. “Kildare! You’re the only true friend I have—the only one who knows what it’s like to be alone. Tell me what to do!”

“You know what to do, Daniel,” he said, starting to slump. “Finish what you started. Save this planet. You’re the Alien Hunter. And remember—you were my only true friend too.”

Then he collapsed into a black slick at my feet.

I don’t know how long I cried—my heart was breaking.
I hadn’t lost someone I cared about in ages, and all the grief came flooding back fast and furious.

But Kildare was right. I was the Alien Hunter. I had a job to do. A big one. I had to pull myself together.

After a few deep breaths, I grabbed a handful of the blackened sand, stuck it into my pocket, and ran up to the dunes above the beach.