It was an alien picnic. Right there in the middle of the road was a cluster of Number 5’s henchbeasts.

“Um…” wondered Joe. “Why aren’t they attacking us?”

“It worked!” said Dana. “See, I put us in stealth mode. We can see them, but they can’t see us. Or hear us, for that matter. A mile or so back I turned on a cloaking device that renders the van invisible.”

“Go ahead,” she continued, “test it out. Drive up closer.”

As we slowly approached, we could see some of them were munching on chicken wings. Not buffalo- or BBQ-style, though… they were the kind with feathers still on them and blood still in them. They guzzled cans of motor oil to wash them down and tossed the empties to the ground and stomped on them like they were at a fraternity party.

And then we noticed one henchbeast had something that looked suspiciously like a cat’s tail hanging out of its mouth.

“That’s so disgusting,” said Joe. “I mean people say they could eat a horse when they’re hungry, but that’s just an expression. What kind of monster would actually eat a poor little kitty?”

“Stay here, Lucky,” said Emma, and before the rest of us could stop her, she’d jumped out of the van and was sprinting toward the aliens.

Chapter 18

I’VE GOT TO hand it to Emma-for a peacenik, she really knows how to lay down some hurt. That first alien she decked must have thought it had been teleported back up into space for all the stars and blackness it was suddenly seeing.

Still, this was a case of seven versus one, and, though she managed to knock down a henchbeast and had delivered some serious facial rearrangement to another, she was soon at the uncomfortable center of an alien pileup.

Willy was the first to reach her side. He grabbed the nearest henchbeast and threw him a dozen yards straight into a tree. The young maple shook and dropped a lot of sticks and leaves but fared better than the alien-which shook and dropped most of its legs.