Dangerous Days of Daniel X

Chapter 7

HERE’S THE THING that I have to share with you.

I have these powers, and I don’t know exactly how I got them. I can create things, for example. Like my parents. Of course, technically they’re not my parents. My real parents are dead. My imagined parents are probably just mental projections that I make real.

And when I say real, I mean it. When I manifest my mom and dad, they’re as real as you or me. Right down to their DNA.

How do I do it? Good question.

I don’t know the specifics, but what I do know is that at its most microscopic, most subatomic level, everything in the universe-matter, people, the air, all the elements, and even energy-is made up of the same basic materials. And I was born with a strange ability to rearrange the material at will.

I know what you might be thinking. I can just snap my fingers and what I want is there, but it’s not really like that. Not at all.

There’s only so much I can create, for a limited period. I have to be really calm, and concentrate like you wouldn’t believe. If I’m tired or cranky, forget it-it won’t work. Plus there seems to be a mass limit. Or sometimes I seem to run up against a mental block of some kind. One time I tried to create a really cool, flaming red Ferrari, but nothing happened.

Some things are easy to create. My mom and dad, for one. I do them a lot. When I’m afraid or lonely. They’re like a recipe you’ve done over and over again until you can do it in your sleep.

I’m pretty fast too. I’m talking about movement now. One time a New Jersey state trooper tried to arrest me for hitchhiking, and as he started to close the cuff on my wrist, I reached out, grabbed his hand, and pulled it forward so fast he actually cuffed himself.

Oh, and I’ve caught birds. Not slowpokes like chickens either. I plucked a passing sparrow out of the air- gently-just to see if I could. I could.

I’m strong, especially for someone who’s five ten, 140 pounds. Not strong enough to lift a car, but I could probably flip one in a pinch. I can influence people. Sort of an instant hypnosis type of thing. And I can sometimes tell what’s going to happen before it happens. Like knowing that there were cops at the door.

But this is the most important part. Life-and-death stuff. Don’t let anybody tell you any different: there are aliens on this planet. They’ve been here millions, maybe hundreds of millions of years. They were on the earth before man, even. And most of these creepy-crawlers are seriously homicidal lunatics.

Number 19 was a horror show and a half-but Number 6, my next target, was actually plotting to change everything about life on Earth. And I don’t mean he was going to bring in universal health care and solve global warming. I’m not talking homicidal, I’m talking genocidal. Number 6 wanted to take over Earth and destroy every life-form, then recolonize with freaks from his own planet. That’s why I had to go after Number 6 now, before he got on a roll…

One more thing I need to cover. There might be some good aliens here. I’ve never met one, but hey, never say never, right? The one thing I know to be true, there are definitely bad ones. I don’t think I can stress that part enough.

But wait a second.

This is going to blow your mind. It did mine.

Actually, I have met a good alien.

In the mirror. In every mirror I look at.

I’m pretty sure I’m an alien too.

Chapter 8

I LEFT PORTLAND, heading south on a Greyhound bus. Truthfully, I prefer the train, but Amtrak clerks usually ask questions if you look like you’re a minor, which I do, which I am.

I tend to try to stay as paranoid as I can, and that’s because I’m always being followed. I don’t like the idea of my name, or even an alias, floating around in somebody’s database. In fact, right now I’m afraid I’m being followed. But I try not to think about it too much. Too depressing and disturbing.

On the positive side, the bus was only half full-believe me, few things in life are worse than a lengthy ride on a crowded bus, except maybe confronting an alien with an appetite-but even so, I only took the Greyhound as far south as Grants Pass, a town thirty miles north of the California border.

I could have gone all the way to LA, my next destination-Number 6’s home base-but fourteen hours riding the dog is my personal limit.

I laid out my Rand McNally in the back of a McDonald’s across from the bus station. I wanted to see if there was a way to Southern California besides Interstate 5 so that I could be a little more off the beaten path. Right away I spotted another, skinnier road, 199, heading for the California coast. The fact that I’d never seen the Pacific before settled it for me.

Oregon ’s rain seemed to instantly turn to Northern California fog as I put the McDonald’s behind me and stuck out my thumb.

I don’t recommend hitching, by the way. Do not. There are some pretty sick wack- a-doos out there. If I hadn’t had the means to protect myself and the urgent need to cover my tracks, I would have stayed on the bus.

But you come across some good people on the road too. I actually caught my first lift from a couple of them, two nuns heading for a retreat house in Kerby. They were wearing habits, and I thought they would give me a sermon or something, but all we did was talk about the Mariners baseball team and its slim-to-none chances of making the AL wild card. Even better, they didn’t ask me where I was going, so I didn’t have to lie to them.

“God bless you,” they said as they let me off. How nice was that? Maybe they had a sixth sense that I was about to need some extra blessings.

Chapter 9

IT WAS GETTING DARK an hour later when I came across a card-carrying, charter member of the wack-a-doo species. To put it mildly.

I didn’t mind so much that the pickup truck I stuck out my thumb at didn’t stop. It was the can of Busch beer that sailed out of his passenger window that I found quite unnecessary. It probably would have shattered the bone structure of my face if I didn’t have pretty good reflexes. I ducked at the last second and watched as the full can exploded with a foamy hiss against the trunk of a pine tree.

I decided I needed to teach that idiot truck driver a lesson about highway safety and etiquette.

I stared at the can and willed the spilled beer back into it. Then I sealed the crack and pop-top, and holding it in my hand like a runner’s baton, I started after the truck.

It took me a full ten seconds to catch up. I could have done it in less, but Busch boy was doing a hundred or so, and the roads were windy that day.

I gave the surprised driver a big wink as I drew alongside his pickup’s open window. “What the… how the?” he yelled over the howl of the wind.

“Hey, I think you dropped something,” I said, and I tossed the beer can into his lap. “Don’t drink and drive, you useless dink.”

I was acting pretty smug-until I realized that my ability to sense danger was not nearly as advanced as my super speed and strength.