Attack of the Alien Mole Invaders! (5 page)

Then both at once, she and Jeff fired spray upon spray of red-hot laser rays directly at the heart of the cloud.

ZAM!—Z AM!—KA-BLAM!

The huge cloud rocked and shook and bucked and jerked and then was silent.

“Victory!” Jeff cried out loud. He glanced around. He was soaring hundreds of feet above Grover's Mill. His hometown looked like a little toy village below him. It seemed so helpless.

But now it was safe.

“This I can do!” Jeff cried out, smiling big.

Suddenly, something felt wrong. Jeff was losing power. He started to dip. He looked back at Holly. The blue flame on her suit started to sputter. She couldn't keep herself on course, either.

Jeff tried to jet over to her.

But he couldn't. “Holly, I'm—falling!”

Bong!
The clock on the Double Dunk Donut Den chimed out.

And Jeff knew, as he and Holly fell hundreds of feet to the ground below, that their time was up!

12

All Cool Things Must End!

J
ong! Grink! Choonk-chank! Flang! Thwonk!
The incredible armor collapsed back into plain old purple sneakers.

“Uh-oh!” gasped Jeff, tumbling fast. “No more fancy suits!”

Holly tumbled next to him. Faster and faster! “Jeff, we're not going to make it!”

Suddenly, the huge pan on top of Usher's House of Pancakes let off a giant puff of steam!

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

Jeff and Holly fell right into the puff and were lifted up on a pillow of soft billowy air! They were saved!

Slowly the steam faded into mist and they tumbled gently into the huge pan.

Holly looked over. “Well, that was lucky!”

Jeff grinned. “Just like in the movies!” But all at once his grin turned to horror as he looked at the street below him.

WHOOM!
A manhole cover burst in the air and a mole alien poked his head up from below.

WHOOM!
Another manhole cover popped up. Then another and another!

And climbing out of the sewers just below Main Street was the evil mole kid himself, Zoll! He flashed his silver cape and stomped his big blue boots.

“Up, my mole army!” yelled Zoll. “Up from the sewers! Up—and conquer!”

“Oh, no! We're not finished yet!” shouted Holly. “It's the—ugly alien mole invader himself!”

“And, guess what?” screamed the whiny high voice of Zoll. “You can't stop me—now that you're just—plain old earth-lings!”

“There's no such thing as plain old earth-lings!” Holly screamed back. She and Jeff quickly jumped from the giant pan and climbed down the side of the House of Pancakes to Main Street.

They froze in horror as they saw hundreds and hundreds of hooded mole heads poking up from the sewers below.

“What are we going to do now?” gasped Jeff. “This is hopeless!”

“We've got to stop them!” cried Holly.

“But we're not robots anymore. Just kids.”

Holly looked at Jeff… . “That's gotta be enough.”

WHOOM!
More manhole covers exploded. And from each one a mole head popped up and looked around.

Then Jeff's heart leaped as he saw three figures appear on Main Street behind the moles. They were holding long sticks and gliding fast.

“Sean?” said Jeff. “Mike? Liz?”

“Yes!” cried Holly. “Reinforcements!”

The three skaters barreled up the street and slid to a stop in front of Jeff and Holly. Sean held out two sticks to them.

He pointed over his shoulder at the mole aliens. “Looks like we've got a game to finish.”

Holly nodded. “The game of our lives.”

Liz nodded at her and smiled.

Mike crouched and made an ugly face at the moles.

“Let's play ball!” yelled Jeff. “I mean—puck! I mean—moles!”

The five friends drove hard down the street, slapping at the mole aliens wherever their twitching whiskers popped up!

Thwang!—grok!

Fwunk!—grok!

Slappp!—grok!

It was incredible to see. Up one street and down another, the five friends drove the moles back underground. Every time a mole head popped up—THWACK!—it got a hockey stick to the side of its furry head!

“They like to swat their own heads,” cried Holly, dashing at another mole. “They ought to
loooove
this!”

While all this was going on Zoll was stomping up and down in his big blue boots and getting madder by the minute. “I don't like these people!” he growled at Exetor, who stood behind him holding a pile of Zoll's pink lightning bolts. “Oh, give me some of those!”

Zoll grabbed several bolts and starting heaving them at the five kids.

ZAM! ZAM! ZAM!
the bolts exploded.

But Sean, Holly, Jeff, Mike, and Liz dodged them all and kept coming.

“We're kids!” shouted Sean.

“Grover's Mill kids!” cried Liz.

“Earthlings!” yelled Jeff.

“But—I AM ZOLL!” Zoll shrieked. Then his little mole chin began to quiver. “Oh, everyone to the ship! They don't play fair! I wanna go home! Maybe it's still snack time!”

A few seconds later—
VROOOOOOOM!

Zoll's cloud ship rose up from the roof of the pretty blue house and settled over Main Street. The street filled with fog.

Zoll, and Exetor, and all the mole aliens disappeared into it.

“Home! And make it snappy!” mighty Zoll screamed.

A second later, the little cloud ship joined the big cloud ship. The big ship flashed red and shot swiftly over the mountains. Soon there was nothing but blue sky.

It was sunny in every direction.

A regular, normal Saturday afternoon.

“Grover's Mill, one,” said Jeff. “Mole aliens, zero!”

Holly turned to Jeff. “So I guess maybe hockey
is
your game!”

The kids laughed and turned toward Mike's house.

Suddenly—
THONKA! THONKA!

The swirling blades of a shiny black helicopter whizzed above them. Dust blew up everywhere. A figure in a military uniform jumped down from a ladder.

“Hi, Mom!” yelled Jeff.

Mrs. Ryan strode over and gave Jeff a tight smile. She held out two pairs of hockey skates. “Kids, I think you have something that doesn't belong to you.”

Jeff slumped his shoulders. He sat on the curb and pulled off the purple sneakers. Holly did the same.

“These really are awesome sneaks, General,” said Holly.

“General?” Mrs. Ryan looked startled. “You must mean general
manager
. Everyone knows I work in a shoe store!” But a moment later, she was climbing up the ladder to the chopper and heading back off into the hills.

Jeff turned to Holly. “Hey, I gotta believe her.”

“Excuse me, Jeff,” said Liz. “You still believe that whole shoe store thing? I mean, why?”

“Why?” repeated Jeff. “Because I am I!”

“No,” said Holly. “
I
am
I
!”

“Uh-uh, I said it first!” Jeff protested.

“Yeah, but still!” said Holly.

Sean, Liz, and Mike gave their two friends a weird look as—

Bong!
the giant donut chimed.

Sssss!
the huge pancake pan hissed.

Turn the page to continue reading from the Weird Zone series

1

If I Only Had a …

B
y the time Mike Mazur saw the greasy french fry bag, it was already too late.

Wump! Bump! Dump! Splat!

“Owww!” Mike cried out as he tumbled down the school bus steps. He rolled onto the sidewalk in front of W. Reid Elementary School.

Mike peeled the Jolly Meal french fry bag from the bottom of his sneaker and looked up. The bus driver was tossing another empty fry bag to the floor under his seat. With his mouth full, he gave Mike a shrug, closed the door, and roared off.

“Thanks for the ride … I think!” Mike groaned. He limped up the school steps and through the main doors.

At once, he felt a tingle of excitement. A giant banner rippled above the entrance to the gym.

W. R
EID
S
CIENCE
F
AIR
T
ODAY!
W
IN
F
IRST
P
RIZE!

“I can see it all now!” Mike mumbled as he burst into the gym. “I win first prize, do lots of TV interviews, and become the most famous scientist in the world. Cool!”

Mike grinned and whispered into the lunch bag he was carrying, “And it'll all be because of you.”

Dozens of tables were set up on the gym floor. There were already lots of science projects lined up. Mike smiled as he walked past the other kids' projects.
Three-Sided Triangles. The Amazing Bottle of Air. Dirt + Water = Mud.
None of the other projects seemed quite as brilliant as his.

“Zoners,” he thought to himself.
Zoners
was the word his friends used to describe nearly everyone in Grover's Mill. Mike was pretty new to town, but he had to agree that Grover's Mill was definitely the Zone.

The Weird Zone.

The absolute center of intergalactic weirdness. A place where, if two things could happen, a weird thing and a regular thing, the weird thing would always happen.

Mike set the bag on his table and whispered to himself, “And the first prize goes to …”

“… Liz Duffey!” said a voice behind him.

Mike turned on his heel just in time to see his friend Liz Duffey glide past him. Her long blonde hair floated in the air behind her.

Mike glanced at her feet. Liz was riding on a skateboard. A tiny motor on the back was powering the wheels. Liz rode down one aisle and back up the next. She stopped in front of Mike's table and hopped to the floor.

“I'm going places on
my
project,” she said with a smile. “I call it—Motorboard!”

“Nice work, Liz,” Mike said. “I'm glad you're here. Because today will go down in history.”

Mike opened his bag and stuck his hand in.

“The history of weirdness,” said Liz. “I mean, did you look at these science projects?
How Water Drips! See-Through Glass?”
She shook her head. “Pretty zoney, Mike.”

“At least you and I have good stuff,” Mike said. He grinned as he pulled out a red plastic box and set it on the table.

“Wait,” said Liz. “Is that a radio? Mike, I hate to tell you. Radio has already been invented.”

Mike snickered with delight. “Not just a radio.” He pulled out a dusty brown base-ball-sized potato from the bottom of his bag. “A potato-powered radio. I call it—
Potadio
!”

Liz watched as Mike slowly pushed wires from the radio right into the potato. “The acid from the potato is changed into electricity,” he said. “It's like nature's battery. Cool, huh?”

“Not bad,” said Liz, pulling a tissue from her pocket and blowing her nose. “Can you get hockey scores?”

Mike shrugged. “So far it just picks up WYRD, the Grover's Mill station. It's kind of faint.”

“Well, I probably won't hear it,” mumbled Liz. “My cold has stuffed my ears.”

The gym was starting to fill up. Mike saw Mrs. Carbonese taking surprise snap-shots for the yearbook. She wore a pink sweater and glasses on a string. Around her neck was a silver police whistle. She used it to get silence in her class.

Principal Bell was walking from table to table with his hands on his hips. Miss Lieberman, the assistant principal, was right behind him. She was making notes about everything he said.

“There's Jeff,” Mike said to Liz, pointing to their friend Jeff Ryan as he set up his project.

“Let's see what he's got,” said Liz. “By the way, I talked to Holly last night. She and Sean built some kind of
secret
project. I can't wait to see it.”

The two kids stepped over to Jeff's table just as Principal Bell strolled by.

“Ahem!” boomed the principal, reading the sign on Jeff's table.
“The Gizmo.
Very good. Now, show us the magic of science! The wonder of invention! The terrific W. Reid spirit!”

“Yes, sir!” Jeff smiled big and slipped a pair of goggles over his face. He tapped a button on the base of the Gizmo and cried out, “Stand back!”

It was a good thing.

Zzzzz! Krrrr! Nnnn-chunka-chunka!

A sudden flash of prongs and nozzles and flippers screamed into action!

Nnnnnnn!
The ceiling lights hissed and sparked and flashed as the Gizmo jumped and jumbled across the table, growling and grinding.

All the lights in the school dimmed and flickered. The machine was a blur of horrible noise!

“What does it do?” Liz yelled over the sound.

Jeff gave her a blank look. “Do?”

Mike nodded. “Do. What does it do? To advance science?”

Jeff shut off his machine and the lights came back up. He gave another blank look. “Do?”