Forces of Nature Read online

  Contents

  Chapter 01: What a Trip

  Chapter 02: The Ol’ Switcheroo

  Chapter 03: Carsick

  Chapter 04: Ranger Davis

  Chapter 05: The Site

  Chapter 06: First-Night Blues

  Chapter 07: Washed Out

  Chapter 08: New Friends

  Chapter 09: Meltdown

  Chapter 10: Lost in the Woods

  Chapter 11: Loud Silence

  Chapter 12: Directionless

  Chapter 13: Don’t Drink that!

  Chapter 14: Junk Pile

  Chapter 15: Lost and Found

  Chapter 16: Science Geek

  Try it Yourself: The Water Compass

  Excerpt from Alien in My Pocket #7: Telescope Troubles

  Chapter 01: Brain Dump

  Chapter 02: Meltdown

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  What a Trip

  “The answer is still no,” Zack said, stuffing a pair of jeans into the canvas bag that usually held his baseball gear.

  “Just think about it,” Amp said from atop a pair of rolled-up wool socks that sat on Zack’s desk.

  “What part of ‘no’ are you not getting?” Zack asked. “The n or the o part? It’s really a pretty simple word.”

  Amp stared off into space dreamily. “I’ve always wanted to go camping,” he sighed.

  “What?” Zack said, fixing his eyes on his tiny alien roommate. “Yesterday you had never even heard of camping! Now, suddenly, it’s your lifelong goal? Give me a break, Short Pants.”

  “We Erdians are fast learners,” Amp said with a proud shrug of his little blue shoulders. He folded his arms behind his head and nestled deeper into the sock. “Besides, what an adventure! The chance to battle the elements, the opportunity to encounter wild animals, the daily struggle to find food? Who would pass that up?”

  “I already told you, we don’t struggle to find food.” Zack groaned, pulling a fistful of underwear from an open drawer and tossing it into his bag. “We bring about five hundred pounds of food with us. We’re not exactly hunting down beavers with bows and arrows.”

  Amp sat up and grabbed his antennas with excitement. “And to sleep on the ground in that little cloth house held up by sticks.”

  “You mean a tent,” Zack said flatly.

  “Yes!” Amp said, snapping his fingers. “A tent! I want to sleep in a tent.”

  “Forget it,” Zack said, sitting on the corner of his unmade bed and holding his head in his hands. “Quit bugging me about this, okay? You know my family can never know you’re here. They’d freak out if they ever saw you. Call the park ranger. Call the cops. Call the government. Not to mention you’ve still got a little alien invasion to stop. Remember the whole reason you came to this planet in the first place? You don’t want the Erdian Army to arrive only to find their lead scout napping in the woods.”

  “Come on, a camping trip might be just the thing I need to get the creative juices flowing again.”

  “It’s too risky. If anyone else sees you, they’ll take you away and dissect you like a frog.”

  “But look at the size of me,” Amp said, standing up and doing a sort of jumping-jack motion. “I’m so little, they’d never see me. Plus, you know how good I am at staying out of sight.”

  Zack looked over at Amp and shook his head at his friend’s energy.

  His family had gone on an annual camping trip for the last three years, and each year had been a disaster. The McGee family just wasn’t the outdoorsy type. But every year Zack’s dad insisted they go. And every year, a perfectly good three-day weekend was ruined.

  Amp fell onto his belly and pressed his face into the fluffy socks. “I promise if you take me with you to the Crooked Forest,” his muffled voice begged, “you’ll never know I was even there. I’ll be like a ninja.”

  “It’s not called the Crooked Forest,” Zack said, rolling his eyes. “It’s called Twisted Grove State Park.”

  “Yes! That’s it. I want to see the ghost, too,” Amp said, rolling onto his back and staring up at the ceiling. “I’ve never seen a ghost.”

  “There’s no ghost,” Zack sighed. “That’s just a story people made up.”

  “You told me the outlaw Nasty Ned hid his stolen gold in that forest over a hundred years ago, but could never find the spot where he buried it. Now his ghost wanders through the trees at night trying to find it.”

  “I was just reading you that stuff from the back of the park’s map,” Zack explained.

  Amp sat up. “The anger from Nasty Ned’s ghost made all those trees crooked. That’s just so exciting.”

  “But it’s not true! It’s just something they wrote to make the campgrounds sound mysterious to tourists. It’s just a bunch of trees that got bent out of shape. It’s no big deal.”

  “Watch this,” Amp said, and he disappeared from sight. “See, nobody will see me,” his voice explained. “I’ll be invisible. Now let’s go hug some trees and see ghosts in the Crooked Forest!”

  Zack pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration.

  He knew all too well about the Erdian mind trick that enabled Amp to stop your brain from seeing him. The way Amp explained it, he could make your brain forget you were seeing him at the same instant you were seeing him. Zack had trained himself to block the mind trick when he wanted to, but now he just stared at the empty space above the sock.

  “Forget it,” Zack said, yanking the sock off the desk and stuffing it in his bag. He heard Amp give an invisible cry and then appear just as he crashed onto the desk.

  “Ouch!” Amp cried. “That was incredibly rude.”

  “See, you can’t always be invisible,” Zack said with a chuckle, zipping up his bag and heading toward the door. “Under the bed are enough Ritz Crackers and SweeTarts to last you a month. I’ll be back late on Monday night, okay? Are we good?”

  “But I’ll be so bored,” Amp whined, rubbing the back of his head.

  “Just stay in here and out of trouble,” Zack said and closed his door.

  Alone in the hallway, Zack pressed on the door to make sure it was securely shut, sighed, shook his head, and headed downstairs.

  There was one more thing he had to do before leaving.

  The Ol’ Switcheroo

  “Jimmy has pinkeye,” Zack’s little brother, Taylor, reported when Zack dropped his bag at the front door. “He can’t go camping with us.”

  “No biggie,” Zack said. “More room in the kids’ tent.”

  “But Jimmy always comes with us,” Taylor moaned. “He just called. Both his eyes are glued shut with pus.”

  “Gross! Thanks for sharing, Taylor,” Zack said.

  Taylor sighed. “This will be our worst camping trip ever.”

  Zack shrugged. “I’m not so sure. The bar is set pretty low.”

  “Oh, stop it, you two,” Zack’s mom said, rolling out a plastic cooler stuffed with ice and food. “C’mon, Zack, bring this and your bag out to Dad. Olivia is helping him put everything on top of the car.”

  “Olivia? Why?” Zack asked. Helping Dad tie down the tents and bags was usually his job. He looked out the window and saw Olivia on top of the car, helping Zack’s dad thread twine through the handles of various suitcases and tent bags.

  Mom brushed Zack’s hair from his face with her fingers. “Since Jimmy couldn’t go with us, I asked Olivia to come instead. It’ll be so fun.”

  Zack pulled away from his mom. “What?!”

  Zack had planned on having Olivia keep an eye on Amp while he was gone. She was the only other person on the planet who knew about Amp, so her going on this trip threw a major wrench in
to his plans.

  Plus, when Zack thought about the close quarters of a tent, camping with Olivia might be a little . . . embarrassing. He flapped his arms, trying to think of something to say. “Mom, I can’t sleep in a tent with Olivia. She’s a girl. It’s just weird!”

  “Yeah, Zack likes to fart when he camps,” Taylor said. “Nobody should be subjected to his weaponized toots.”

  “Don’t be crude, honey,” Mom said to Taylor with a tsk-tsk. “Zack can’t help it if he has a sensitive system.”

  “I don’t have a sensitive system,” Zack said. “It’s just that . . . I don’t know. It’s just weird, Mom.”

  What Zack couldn’t say was that, while he knew Olivia would make this camping trip a lot more fun, the thought of leaving Amp unsupervised for a whole three-day weekend made him nervous. Amp was like a disaster magnet.

  “Zack also likes to sleep in his underwear,” Taylor said. “Now he can’t.”

  “That’s not true,” Zack said.

  Mom continued to try to fix up Zack’s hair. “Olivia and I can sleep in the small tent, and you, Taylor, and your father can sleep in the big tent.”

  “Dad! He snores like a volcano,” Zack protested.

  “Volcanoes don’t snore,” Taylor said, shaking his head at his brother’s lack of basic science knowledge. “But they do sort of burp. Mostly water vapor and carbon dioxide. But also lots of different sulfur compounds. It’s a long list and varies by volcano.”

  Zack stared at his brother like he was the alien in the house, and then began flapping his arms again. “It’s bad enough that Taylor laughs in his sleep, now I get snoring on top of it?”

  “I don’t laugh in my sleep!” Taylor shouted, apparently insulted at being accused of sleep-laughing.

  “She’s already coming,” Mom said with a firm nod. “Now let’s have fun, you two.”

  What Zack couldn’t explain was that Olivia was going to feed Mr. Jinxy and walk Smokey while they were gone. Now somebody else would have to come into the house to take care of the cat and the dog, further risking the accidental discovery of Amp.

  Zack closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. Camping had always seemed inconvenient, but this year there was so much more at stake.

  Zack had a bad feeling about this trip.

  He wished he were the one who had come down with pinkeye.

  But he was not the lucky type.

  Carsick

  The car ride was long and filled with twists and turns.

  Zack kept yawning sleepily to pop his ears as the car climbed into the mountains on a curvy, looping road.

  They stopped three times so Taylor could vomit on the side of the road. His carsickness was part of the tradition, and more often than not he wound up vomiting alongside Jimmy. Already the trip felt odd without Taylor’s co-vomiter.

  After his third puking episode, Taylor fell asleep against Olivia and began laughing. Nothing was creepier than a kid laughing at invisible dreams. It gave Zack the willies.

  Zack watched out his window as the trees became bigger and wilder.

  Olivia, surprisingly, didn’t speak much. Usually she could chatter on about stuff until your ears fell off. But Olivia had never been camping, just fishing and hiking with her grandpa. So, before they left she had grabbed some books about camping from her grandpa’s shelf and now she studied them like her life depended on it.

  Zack’s dad had decided to bring Smokey. Nobody was available on such short notice to take care of him. He slept on Zack’s feet, jerking occasionally while dreaming about squirrels, bacon, or whatever it is that dogs dream about.

  Mr. Jinxy wound up being the lucky one. He got to stay home with plenty of food and water, a fresh litter box, and a few balls of yarn to keep him company.

  Zack’s feet began to fall asleep. He stared out the window. He was worried about Amp. Although Amp was from a far-off, far more advanced civilization, he was lost on Earth. He needed close monitoring and constant attention. And even then, trouble always seemed to follow him. Without Olivia around to watch him, Zack shuddered to think what kind of mischief he could get into.

  Zack eventually fell into an uneasy sleep. He dreamed about eating a salami-and-earthworm sandwich at the front of his classroom. He hated that dream.

  It was the dream he usually had just before things went terribly wrong.

  Ranger Davis

  “You didn’t order a permit for the dog?” a park ranger with a wide-brimmed hat was asking through the open window.

  “A what?” Zack’s dad asked.

  “There’s an extra fee to bring a dog to the campgrounds,” the ranger explained.

  “Oh, well, the girl who was going to watch him while we went camping is now in the backseat,” Dad explained.

  “Hi, Ranger Davis,” Olivia said cheerfully.

  “You know him?” Zack croaked.

  “His name is on his badge,” Olivia said quietly.

  Zack pushed Smokey’s tail from his face. “We’re here already?”

  “You and your brother have been sleeping like two big babies,” Olivia said.

  “And you don’t have a reservation number?” Ranger Davis asked.

  “I must have forgotten it,” Dad said, looking around lamely.

  “This happens every year,” Zack mumbled to Olivia.

  “One moment,” Ranger Davis said crisply. He entered his little ranger hut.

  “Last name is McGee!” Zack’s mom called after him. “Isn’t this fun, kids?” she asked.

  They all sat quietly, the car idling, Smokey panting, his terrible breath nearly melting Zack’s eyeballs.

  Zack noticed that Taylor was fingering a small pair of binoculars. His binoculars! “Those aren’t my binoculars, are they?” he asked with a hollow voice.

  “Relax, they’re for bird-watching,” Taylor said. “Mom said I could borrow them.”

  “You went in my room?” Zack shouted, leaning across Olivia and grabbing Taylor by the sleeve.

  “Take it easy, Zack,” Mom said from the front seat. “I told him he could borrow them, sweetie.”

  “But they’re mine!” Zack said. “You should have asked me! Did you close my bedroom door?”

  “Why?” Taylor said, trying to pull away. “What’s your problem?”

  “What’s your bedroom door got to do with anything?” Dad asked, peering back at him in the rearview mirror.

  “Uh-oh,” Olivia whispered.

  “Did you close my door?” Zack asked Taylor again. “Yes or no?”

  Zack’s mom snapped her fingers at him. “Zack, you’re squishing Olivia!”

  “Is there a problem here?” Ranger Davis asked, reappearing at the window.

  “Tell me now, did you leave my door open or not?” Zack hissed at Taylor through gritted teeth. “It’s a matter of life and death!”

  “It is?” Taylor said, his face wrinkled up in disgust. “Why?”

  “Stop the monkey business back there,” Dad barked.

  “Did . . . you . . . leave . . . my . . . door . . . open?” Zack grunted.

  “I guess,” Taylor said. “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

  The ranger tapped his clipboard on the open window. “Folks, is everything okay?”

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS!!” Zack shouted. “I LEAVE MY DOOR SHUT!”

  “What’s the big deal, honey?” Zack’s mom said.

  “Mr. Jinxy could get him,” Zack told Olivia.

  “Get who?” Mom asked.

  “Folks, please,” Ranger Davis said.

  “Or he could get out,” Olivia whispered.

  “I was afraid of this,” Zack said, grabbing a fistful of his own hair. “If there’s trouble to be found, he’ll find it.”

  “Who could get out?” Mom asked. “Who could find trouble? Mr. Jinxy?”

  “Would everybody just pipe down!” Dad roared.

  “Maybe everybody should get out of the car and have a time-out,” Ranger Davis said.

  “Sorr
y, officer,” Dad said, “the kids get cranky after a long drive.”

  “We run a nice, friendly campground here and—” Ranger Davis’s face froze. He scrunched up his face. His lip quivered and his left eye closed. “Yikes. Did you folks bring eggs with you? I smell rotten eggs, real bad.”

  Zack and Olivia exchanged a glance of horror.

  “Oh no,” Zack said.

  Ranger Davis pulled off his hat and waved it in front of his watery eyes. “Whew! Here, take it,” he gasped, handing Dad a sheet of paper. “Campsite thirteen. Take the second left. It’s the very last one on that road, just past the narrow bridge.” He stumbled back from the car.

  “Thank you,” Dad said, taking the paper and putting the car into drive. He pulled the car forward. “What was that all about? Does anybody else smell eggs?”

  “Probably Zack tooting already,” Taylor said, glancing sideways at his brother.

  “We don’t smell anything,” Olivia said, staring at Zack with a look of alarm.

  The alleged egg smell could only mean one thing: they had a stowaway. Amp was somewhere in this car! One of Amp’s favorite Erdian mind tricks involved convincing people they could smell or taste things—usually gross things.

  Zack pressed his fists into his eyes. This is exactly what he was afraid of. He shook his head in disbelief.

  Olivia patted Zack’s shoulder as the car moved slowly over the gravel road. “Did you hear that, Zack? We’re at campsite number thirteen. Some people would consider that unlucky.” She poked him in the ribs, but she couldn’t get him to smile or squirm.

  “I’m gonna strangle that pipsqueak for disobeying a direct order,” Zack growled quietly.

  The Site

  “When Ranger Davis said it was the last campsite on this road, he wasn’t kidding,” Olivia said.

  “Lucky number thirteen,” Zack said, staring at the small sign with a faded and chipped 13 painted on it.

  They were a good hundred yards past the second-to-last campsite. The trees soared around them, forming a dark canopy that hung gloomily over them. The sound of a nearby creek provided the only noise in the hushed surroundings.