was instantly sucked through the intestinal lining. Just like that, I was cruising through Number 33’s circulatory system.
If I could make it into his arteries—which had to be unbelievably clogged with sixteen hundred years’ worth of Mongolian barbecue, mutton dumplings, and fried goat cheese—maybe I could completely block a blood vessel and shut his heart down.
Upstream, I could hear his heart muscle pounding out a four-four beat like a quartet of thundering kettledrums.
Because he had four hearts!
If I blocked the blood flow to one, the other three might be able to compensate.
Okay. I needed a plan B, as in “Blow up” or “ka-Boom.”
The vein I was log-flume riding through splashed me down inside one of Attila’s throbbing hearts. As I shot through one of its valves, I made myself morph again.
I hung on to the flapping valve with both hands as I began to change back into me—the full-sized, five-foot-ten Daniel X. I started to expand inside his cramped heart chamber like one of those Grow Your Own Girlfriend sponge toys that’s guaranteed to grow 600 percent when you soak it in a bowl of water overnight.
Only I grew much bigger and much faster. Call it a teenage growth spurt.
I shattered his heart and burst through that alien’s ribcage like the alien in Alien.
Blood spurting all around me (picture ketchup squeeze bottles gone wild), I watched Number 33—gasping and gurgling and clutching what was left of his chest—topple to the ground.
Attila the Hun was now Attila the Done.
Meanwhile, I was a little wet, somewhat sticky, and totally grossed out.
But I would live to fight another day. And another alien.
Number 2.
Clearly the most formidable and fearsome foe I have ever faced.
Chapter 4
SO WHAT WOULD you say is humankind’s greatest creation?
Language? Music? Maybe art?
All excellent choices. But if you ask me, the greatest thing any creature anywhere ever created is a concept called “friendship.”
I guess my four friends are my greatest creation, too. Without your friends, well, what are you?
“You guys,” said Joe, “this funnel cake is awesome.”
“It’s cold,” said Dana.
“And your point is?” Joe took another chomp out of the web of chewy fried dough dusted with powdered sugar and drenched with squiggles of chocolate sauce.
“You’re basically eating knotted flour and lard, Joe,” Emma said. “It’s not very good for your heart.”
Having just examined the insides of the late Number 33’s cardiovascular plumbing up close and personal, I realized Emma, my earth-mother health-nut friend, had a point.
“Well, it may not be good for my heart, but it is excellent for my mouth,” said Joe, who had an iron stomach to rival Attila’s. My friend has been known to order “one of everything” at Pizza Hut. But no matter how much chow he wolfs down on a regular basis, he stays super skinny. Talk about an excellent metabolism.
This was what I needed; nothing renews my creative juices like hanging out and goofing around with my buds. And we weren’t just in the middle of a pig-out session at the local county fair. No, my four best friends and I were in the middle of Six Flags Over Georgia.
After my Thrilla with Attila, I decided to call up Joe, Emma, Willy, and Dana and head south to do a little recon on Marietta, Georgia—one of the smaller towns on Number 2’s Places to Destroy/Humans to Enslave list. Aliens are much easier to smell outside your major metropolitan areas—fewer competing odors.
Okay, I could’ve gone to Ames, Iowa. But the nearest amusement park to Ames is Adventureland, home to lots of incredible waterslides, and after slipping and sliding through Number 33’s wet and wild circulatory system I was more in the mood for roller coasters. Six Flags Over Georgia has eleven of ’em.
Oh, something else you should probably know, in case you haven’t already figured it out: When I say I “called up” my friends, I don’t mean I hit speed dial on my iPhone. I mean my four best friends since forever are 100-percent pure products of my imagination. It’s not like I walk around talking to invisible, make-believe buddies. When Joe, Emma, Willy, and Dana are around, everybody can see them, hear them, and, in Joe’s case, smell them. But not one of my friends would exist if I didn’t imagine him or her first.
I realize my special talent may seem alien to you but, then again, you weren’t born on my home planet, Alpar Nok. For me, the power to create (the most awesome superpower of them all, btw) is just part