Dangerous Days of Daniel X

Chapter 3

THE SUN WAS JUST COMING UP- well, the grayish-white smudge that passes for a sun in forever-overcast Portland-as I lumbered through my rental apartment’s front door and plopped down on the couch.

I crossed my muddy boots on the coffee table and yawned as I opened the morning’s Oregonian.

As exhausted as my body was, my mind was still wired about the night before. I jumped up and went to my computer. I pulled up The List of Alien Outlaws and checked to see who was naughty and had been recently exterminated. Yessiree, Number 19 was no longer on the boards!

This was, in fact, the same List that The Prayer had been trying to find that fateful day twelve years ago. When I was thirteen, I finally revisited the burnt-down farmhouse where my poor parents had been incinerated. After several days of searching, I found The List-buried under mud and rocks in the rather picturesque brook that ran behind the house.

The List was on a computer-the one now before me, which is thin as a notepad and probably five hundred years in advance of anything currently offered by Apple or IBM. When I first opened it, I discovered that it contained the names, full description, and approximate whereabouts of the known outlaw aliens currently roaming the earth. And trust me on this: they are out there, watching and studying us.

There was also a disturbing message for me from my mom and dad. If I was reading it, the note said, I was to replace them. I was to be the Alien Hunter. I would have to learn how mostly by myself.

As I was pondering this troubling episode from my past, the front doorbell rang.

Not good. I wasn’t expecting anyone-I’m never expecting anyone. I don’t really like visitors, which is ironic, since I’m lonely most of the time and I adore people, actually.

Oh, no! I thought, realizing who it was. And when I say I knew who it was, I’m not saying I had a really good hunch. I knew it as fact.

We’ll get into that in greater detail after I get rid of my visitors.

The police.