“Okay. I’ll take you to Vegas for the weekend.”
“I’m not sleeping in the car again. I want a motel room with a bed and a shower.”
“Fine. A motel and dinner at the restaurant of your choice,” Uncle Ben said stoically.
In a no-nonsense tone, I added, “We are also stopping at the local supermarket and buying food too. Like chocolate, fruit, vegetables and real meat.”
“Consider it done.” Uncle Ben waved his fork at me. “How many bombs have you made?”
“Five. We are out of ammonium nitrate.”
Pulling out a notepad, Uncle Ben jotted it down. “NASA has a new prototype spacesuit. I’ll pop you into their lab and you can steal one.”
“Oh, yippee. The last security guard shot at me.”
Uncle Ben’s satellite phone chimed. He glanced at the screen and handed it to me. “It’s your father.”
“Hey, Dad, what’s up?”
“Put the call on speaker.”
I did as he asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Earth is under attack by aliens that are a dead ringer for the one you had locked up in your lab, Ben,” Dad growled.
Uncle Ben and I exchanged appalled looks.
“What city did they hit?” There was a note of raw panic in Uncle Ben’s voice.
“The monsters are eating their way across Europe and the Middle East as we speak,” Dad snapped. “General Jones wants all your research on the alien.”
I interjected, “How many ships do they have?”
“One hundred and five spaceships are now orbiting our world. The first thing they did was destroy our satellites, thecell towers, and every military base in Europe. The only way to communicate with the survivors is Ham radios,” Dad answered.
Shock rolled over me and I sank down on my chair. Those nine spaceships we had blown up hadn’t even made a dent in their fleet. “Are we able to shoot them down?”
“No. The alien ships have some type of energy shields, and our rockets aren’t getting through. It took the monsters ten hours to decimate Europe. NATO only has a handful of fighter jets left and those are being used to try to stop the slaughter of civilians. We need to find a way to stop them now.”
“They call themselves the Tai-Kok and they are driven by an insatiable hunger. They consider humans cattle, and they will never negotiate with us,” Uncle Ben said out of the blue.
My jaw dropped and I muted the call. “Have you lost your mind?”
“They need to know the truth.”
I threw my hands up in the air. “Dadwillkill you.”
“Hello? Are you there?” Dad called.
Uncle Ben unmuted the call. “Sorry. Technical difficulties.”
“How did you communicate with your specimen?” Dad wanted to know.
“They’re psychic.”
Dad shot back, “But you’re not.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. He sent me mental images.”
