Chapter 22
IT WAS DUSK when we finally rolled into the Virginia suburbs just west of the capital.
My dad had done an amazingly awesome job outfitting the Alien Tracker Vehicle for the FBI. Joe was practically drooling as he fiddled with all the sensor knobs and sliders arrayed across the control panel in the back of the sleek, aerodynamic truck. The van’s speedometer topped out at 288 mph (my dad had obviously tweaked out the engine, too), which, of course, was the equivalent to 250 knots, the maximum speed an aircraft can fly below 10,000 feet.
Yep. I wouldn’t be surprised if pretty soon Joe found a toggle switch that deployed wings on both sides of the titanium truck.
“Do we have weapons?” asked Agent Judge, who was up front, riding shotgun, while one of his top IOU guys manned the wheel and piloted the vehicle through the smoldering ruins of Arlington, Virginia.
“Definitely,” said Joe. “Blaster cannons, stun guns, and an extremely lethal rotating rocket launcher up on the roof.”
“But we won’t use any of the weapons unless we absolutely, positively have to, right, Daniel?” said Emma, who, of course, was wearing her Birkenstocks and GIVE PEACE A CHANCE T-shirt.
“Of course we won’t use any weapons,” sniped Dana. “We’ll just very politely ask these scorpion-tailed locust scuzzballs to put everything back the way they found it.”
“That won’t work,” fumed Willy, who was standing up, bracing himself against the bulkhead between the front of the truck and the crew area. Dana rolled her eyes.
The ATV bounded over potholes and rubble as we passed what was left of the Iwo Jima Memorial (the flag lay in tatters atop a mound of melted bronze). The driver was heading for the Arlington Memorial Bridge.
A dozen plasma-screen TVs mounted on the interior walls of the ATV displayed images of the mass destruction awaiting us when we crossed the Potomac River to enter the District of Columbia.
“There’s nothing left,” Mel announced with a gasp. “I came here on a class trip last spring… the cherry blossoms were in bloom….”
Now there wasn’t a tree of any kind standing anywhere.
Or a monument. Or a building. Not even a mailbox or parking meter.
Mel was seated next to me on the crew bench. I squeezed her hand, hard.
Because the images of devastation playing out on the video monitors were tearing me apart.
Hey, I’m a guy blessed with the greatest superpower of them all: the ability to create anything I can grok in my imagination. As a creator, nothing breaks my heart more than this kind of mass destruction. An entire city laid to waste. Magnificent monuments to everything my adopted home stands for, reduced to rubble. And yes, like Mel, I thought the National Cherry Blossom Festival—held in early April, when the Yoshino, Akebono, Usuzumi, and Fugenzo blooms hit their peak—was as stunningly beautiful as anything on any planet anywhere. And next spring? It just wouldn’t happen.
If there even was a next spring.
“Heads up,” said the driver. “We have company.”
I swiveled in my seat and looked out the front window.
I wished I hadn’t.