Against All Odds Page 8

  “Itchy!” Boney shouted with relief. “Why were you sneaking up on us?”

  “I wasn’t sneaking up on anyone,” Itchy said. “I just thought we could play with the new batch of kittens.” He pulled a basket of kittens from behind his back and gave a big sneeze.

  Samantha’s face brightened. “Kittens!”

  “So you’re not mad at us anymore?” Squeak asked.

  Itchy pulled out a hanky and blew his nose. “What’s she doing here?” He glowered at Samantha. “Didn’t you read the sign? NO GIRLS ALLOWED. And you’re sitting in my chair.”

  “Oh.” Samantha lowered her eyes.

  Boney stood up from the table. “Yeah, we need to talk to you about that.”

  “We didn’t vote on it,” Squeak said.

  Itchy sniffed. “What’s there to talk about?”

  “A lot,” Samantha said.

  Itchy brandished his hanky. “See—she’s taking over already.”

  “We need her help,” Squeak said. “There’s something terrible going on.”

  Itchy scoffed. “I’ll say.”

  Samantha retrieved a file folder from her bag and flipped it open. It was filled with photographs. She placed the snapshots in chronological order across the table.

  Itchy rushed over. “Hey, that’s us in those pictures! Where’d you get these?”

  “I took them the day before the Flying Fiends Amateur Aircraft Competition,” Samantha said.

  The Odds stared at the photos, mouths open. The pictures showed a huge saucer-shaped craft hovering over the three boys as they stood on Starky Hill, wide-eyed and frozen in place, the dust whirling around.

  Itchy choked. “Is that a … spaceship?”

  The three boys exchanged terrified looks.

  “This explains the missing time,” Squeak said.

  Samantha tapped her watch. “Twenty minutes. The spaceship probed you with that beam of light, stealing samples of your DNA. They used the information to clone Itchy.”

  Itchy’s face turned white as a sheet. “What do you mean ‘clone’?”

  Samantha looked to Boney and Squeak for help.

  Boney hesitated before he spoke. “There are hundreds of you out there.”

  Itchy’s face grew paler still. “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s true,” Squeak said. “There’s this place in the woods—it’s like a giant warehouse. They’re using some kind of positronic light technology to clone full-scale copies of you …” His voice trailed off at the end.

  Itchy withered into Boney’s chair at the table. “I feel sick.”

  Boney pulled the crumpled newspaper photo from his pocket. He smoothed out the picture and placed it in front of Itchy. “Your clones are running amok. They’re looting and causing all kinds of trouble.”

  “The police came this morning,” Samantha added.

  “The police!” Itchy blurted.

  Samantha nodded. “They managed to catch one of your clones.”

  Itchy searched his friends’ faces. Boney stared back sympathetically. Squeak bit his nails. “I knew something strange happened that night. I just couldn’t ascertain what it was exactly.”

  Itchy groaned, placing the basket of kittens on the table. Boney turned to Samantha.

  “How did you know the spaceship would be at Starky Hill that day?”

  Samantha pulled a magazine from her bag and tossed it in front of the boys. The cover showed a tornado twisting through a barren landscape; the name STORM CHASER was sprayed across the top of the magazine in big yellow letters.

  Squeak picked up the magazine and flipped through the pages. “I know this publication. I was considering getting a subscription.”

  “What do tornadoes have to do with aliens?” Boney asked.

  “The electrical anomaly we experienced the other night,” Squeak said, pushing on the bridge of his goggles. “It’s been theorized that alien aircraft create both electrical and meteorological occurrences when they travel, as a result of their propulsion technology.”

  “And as a means of avoiding detection,” Samantha said.

  Boney pulled on his chin. “So … the occurrences act as a kind of stormy camouflage …”

  “Exactly. That storm the other night tipped me off. So I used my electro-node-a-metre to detect fluctuations in the atmosphere.” Samantha retrieved the wandlike instrument from her bag and held it up. “And it led me straight to Starky Hill.”

  “Where you saw us,” Boney said.

  “Yes.”

  Squeak smiled. “So … you weren’t spying on us.”

  Samantha looked confused. “No … Why would I be spying on you?”

  Squeak shrugged. “Oh … no reason.” He made a self-satisfied face at Boney and Itchy, then reached for the electro-node-a-metre. “Do you mind if I look at it?”

  “Not at all.” Samantha handed him the device. “I got the schematics from an earlier issue of Storm Chaser— volume twelve. I modified it slightly for my purposes, but the basic principle is the same.”

  Squeak engaged the switch and the electro-node-a-metre started to hum, the thin wire arms rising and slowly whirling like a propeller. “It’s quite similar to the Apparator in purpose,” he observed.

  Samantha raised an eyebrow. “The Apparator …?”

  Squeak flipped the switch off. “The ghost detector that I—or should I say we—developed.” He gestured toward Boney and Itchy. “It won the Invention Convention at our school.”

  “Congratulations,” Samantha said.

  “What has any of this got to do with spaceships?!” Itchy demanded.

  Squeak patted him gently on the back. “It’s quite simple. The electro-node-a-metre registered the electronic signature of the alien vessel, leading Samantha—”

  “Please, call me Sam.”

  “Leading Sam to Starky Hill — which is why she was able to take pictures of us while we were being scanned for DNA by the alien craft.”

  Itchy let out an involuntary sob. “But why? Why would they want to clone me? Who are these people?”

  “Not people,” Sam said. “Extraterrestrials.”

  Boney clenched his jaw. “Aliens.”

  Itchy’s face drained to the colour of spoiled milk. “Little green men. I hate those guys.”

  “Actually, they’re grey,” Sam quietly corrected him.

  “You’ve seen them?” Boney and Squeak asked.

  “I’ve seen pictures. Fourth-level Greys—the ones responsible for abducting human beings.”

  Itchy groaned, his hands on either side of his head. “What do you mean ‘the ones responsible for abducting human beings’? There’s more than one kind of alien?”

  “Of course.” Sam pushed her hair behind her ears. “There are at least twenty-three species of extraterrestrials visiting our planet at this time … at least … that’s what the literature purports.”

  “How do you know all this stuff?” Boney asked.

  Sam grew wistful. “My father is an astrophysicist. He was one of the founding members of SETI.”

  “Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence?!” Squeak exclaimed. “How cool is that!”

  Boney placed his hand on Squeak’s shoulder. “Calm down, Mr. Spock.”

  “But this is incredible!” Squeak said. “I’d love to meet your father! I have so many questions.”

  Itchy clutched his stomach. “I think I’m going to throw up …”

  “Is your mother a scientist as well?” Squeak asked Sam. “I’d love to meet her, too.”

  A flicker of sadness crossed Sam’s eyes before she lowered them. “My mother’s gone. She disappeared when I was a baby, in a failed teleportation experiment conducted by my father. He’s never forgiven himself. He’s pretty much a recluse now.”

  Boney and Squeak shifted in their sneakers while Itchy continued to sniff and blubber incoherently at the table. After several excruciating moments, Boney broke the silence.

  “I’m sorry. My parents disappeared w
hen I was just a baby, too—in a ballooning accident. I don’t really remember a lot about them.”

  Sam raised her eyes. “Well, Father and I are making a new start. We moved here to get away from old memories.”

  “It’s not such a bad place,” Squeak said. “Despite the clone crisis we’re currently facing …”

  This made Itchy moan even louder. Boney ran his hand through his hair. “What I want to know is what the aliens expect to accomplish with thousands of Itchys. I mean … we know he’s great … but does the rest of the universe …?”

  Boney, Squeak, and Sam turned to where Itchy sat, his bottom lip quivering uncontrollably, his eyebrows crumpled across his drawn, white face. He blew his nose loudly several times, sniffing and snorting noisily as he fumbled and folded his old hanky with each blow. He raised his mournful face to his friends, his eyes blinking wildly. “What are we going to do?”

  Squeak took a box of saltines off the shelf and handed it to Itchy. “Here. Have these. It always makes you feel better when you eat.”

  Itchy shook his head, refusing the crackers. Squeak shot Boney a worried look.

  “You know what this means, don’t you?” Boney said. “It means the vampire my aunt saw staring through our kitchen window was an Itchy clone.”

  Itchy’s head popped up. “What vampire?”

  “They know where we live,” Squeak murmured.

  “What vampire?” Itchy whimpered. “Will someone please tell me what’s going on?”

  Sam bit her lower lip. “They know everything about you, I imagine.”

  Itchy groaned louder still. “What have I ever done to them?” He dropped his forehead to the table. The kittens scrambled from their basket and began pawing at his bramble-bush hair, purring loudly. Itchy gathered them in his arms and held them to his face. “It’s all so terrible. Why is this happening to me?”

  “What could the aliens possibly want from us?” Boney asked.

  Sam pulled her notebook from her bag and flipped through several pages. “Historically, aliens have visited earth to create alien-human hybrids.”

  “With someone like Itchy?” Boney blurted out.

  Itchy sneezed and blew his nose again with a big honk.

  Squeak pulled his notebook from his messenger bag. “They’ve also been reported to be mining for resources similar to those squandered on their own planets.”

  Boney snapped his fingers. “Or maybe they’re here because they want to eat people, like we saw on that Twilight Zone episode.”

  “Ahhh!” Itchy cried out, rocking his head from side to side on the table, the kittens still poking and clawing playfully at his hair.

  Squeak made a face at Boney. Boney shrugged apologetically.

  “Well, whatever the reason, we’re going to find out what they intend to do,” Sam vowed. “And we won’t let anything happen to Itchy.”

  Itchy raised his head, snorting fitfully. “Really?”

  “Of course not,” Sam reassured him. She looked to Boney and Squeak for support.

  “No, of course not,” Squeak and Boney said. “We won’t let anything happen to you.”

  “We know where their warehouse is,” Boney offered hopefully. “That’s a start.”

  “Now we need to find the Mother Ship,” Sam said. “From what I’ve read, the ship shouldn’t be too far from the warehouse. In fact, usually it’s cloaked and hovering very close by.”

  “Why do they need a warehouse for the clones if they have a spaceship?” Boney asked.

  “It’s part of their deception,” Squeak explained. “That way, if the clones get caught, they can’t be traced back to the spacecraft.”

  “Well, we’re going to beat them at their own game.” Boney smacked his fist into the palm of his hand. “We’ll find the Mother Ship and destroy the Itchys.”

  Itchy looked up in horror. “But … how will we tell the difference between the fake Itchys and the real me?”

  There was silence in the clubhouse as Boney, Squeak, and Sam considered this challenge. Itchy panicked, grabbing Squeak’s arm, his voice breaking on hysteria. “Can’t you just invent something?”

  Squeak pried Itchy’s hand away. “We really don’t have time.”

  “No, we don’t,” Sam solemnly agreed.

  “I’m doomed!” Itchy wailed.

  But then Sam’s face suddenly brightened. “I have an idea!”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ANIMAL COMPANIONS

  Sam jumped up from the table, her eyes glittering with excitement. “We can use Henry to determine who the clones are! He knew instantly that the Itchy clone in the clubhouse was a fake.”

  “And the kittens,” Boney said. “Somehow, they knew the difference, too. They hissed at that clone at the Flying Fiends Competition. I knew there was something funny going on there.”

  Itchy’s face screwed up as though he’d just swallowed a fly. “There was a clone at the competition?”

  “Yes,” Boney said. “Remember when I sent you to get lemonade?”

  “Yeah …”

  “Well, you returned empty-handed—at least, the clone did—and I thought it was you. It was wearing my Superman T-shirt and I thought you’d changed because you were too embarrassed to wear the pink kitten shirt your mom made.”

  Itchy wiped his nose. “What did it want?”

  “I don’t know. It just stood there, staring blankly, until I yelled at it to go get lemonade and it left.”

  “That falls within the realm of normalcy,” Squeak observed.

  Boney nodded. “That’s why I didn’t suspect anything. But the kittens knew there was something wrong because they began to hiss and growl the second it showed up.”

  Itchy’s eyes glimmered hopefully. “So … all we have to do is carry kittens everywhere we go …?”

  “Yes!” Boney said.

  Sam took a kitten from Itchy’s arms. “I like this one with the black and white spots.” She held the kitten up to her face. “I’m going to call him Fluffy.” And then she started speaking in a strange, high-pitched voice. “Isn’t he just the cutest thing on the planet? Isn’t he just the sweetest, fluffiest, lovey-dovey boy? Yes, he is! He’s a lovey-dovey boy!” She squealed and hugged the kitten, kissing him over and over.

  The boys stared at each other uncomfortably.

  “Disgusting,” Itchy muttered.

  “I’m rather fond of the orange one,” Squeak piped up, taking the orange kitten from Itchy.

  “And … uh … I really like this striped grey one,” Boney said, claiming the last kitten.

  Squeak looked at Boney, raising an eyebrow and speaking in his best Mr. Spock voice. “Your aunt’s response to the kitten should prove most interesting.”

  “What do you mean?” Boney asked.

  Squeak continued to stare at him, eyebrow pitched. “Do you really think she’s going to allow you to have a cat?”

  “I’ll have to come up with a reason that my aunt can’t refuse.”

  “No one can guarantee the actions of another,” Squeak said.

  Boney shrugged. “My aunt’s pretty predictable.”

  “True. Assuming she does allow you to keep the kitten, what do you intend on calling him?”

  Boney considered the kitten for a moment. “I think Tiger’s a good name for a striped cat. How about you? What will you call your kitten? Leonardo da Vinci?”

  “That would be illogical. He looks more like a Spock to me.”

  “Of course,” Boney said. “It’s the ears.”

  “What about Itchy?” Sam asked. “He doesn’t have a kitten.”

  Itchy waved his dirty hanky. “Oh, don’t worry about me. My house is crawling with cats. Besides, I think I’m allergic.” He sneezed loudly.

  “How about Henry?” Boney suggested. “You’re not allergic to him.”

  The friends turned to look at the rooster, who was slumbering on the clubhouse floor, his head under his wing. He seemed to sense he was being watched and startled awake, shak
ing his feathers and blinking a yellow eye in Itchy’s direction.

  Boney smiled. “See? He knows we’re talking about him. He’ll keep you safe from the clones, Itchy.”

  Itchy held out his hand. The rooster strutted over and hopped into his lap, nestling in.

  “Perfect,” Boney said. “Now all we need is an action plan.” He turned to Sam. “You seem to know more about this than any of us. What would you suggest?”

  Sam held Fluffy up to her face as the kitten purred loudly. “I think we should go back to the warehouse in the woods and try to find the Mother Ship. Once we accomplish that, we can find out who we’re dealing with and what exactly it is that they want.”

  “Affirmative,” Squeak said.

  “Then what?” Boney asked.

  Sam thought about it for a moment. “I guess we have no choice but to play it by ear. We really don’t know what we’re up against at this point.”

  Itchy slumped in his chair. “Oh great. We’re doomed.”

  “We’re not doomed,” Sam said. “I have the Disruptor. And we have Henry and the kittens.”

  Squeak adjusted his goggles. “They should prove valuable.”

  “Definitely,” Boney agreed. He was just about to elaborate when his aunt called out the kitchen window. “Boneeey! Suppertime!”

  Boney groaned. “Gotta go, guys. But we can meet up after supper. I’ll call you on the Tele-tube.”

  “What’s the Tele-tube?” Sam asked.

  “It’s a primitive form of communication,” Squeak answered.

  “But it works,” Boney said. “We speak to each other through plastic tubes so our parents won’t hear us.”

  Sam tossed her hair. “That’s interesting.”

  “Boneeey!” his aunt called again.

  Boney rolled his eyes. “Okay, I’ve really got to go before my aunt comes out here. Just in case, let’s plan to meet in the clubhouse tomorrow morning at eight—sharp.”

  Squeak saluted. “In full regalia?”

  Boney saluted back. “Full regalia. And if anybody sees or hears anything out of the ordinary before then, transmit over the Tele-tube. Sam, you can’t do that, obviously, so we’ll just have to wait for your report when we meet next.”

  “Unless it’s urgent,” Squeak said. “Then you could just throw a rock at my bedroom window … or something.”