Touched by an Alien

Christopher thought.

CHAPTER 43
    I WONDERED IF MEPHISTOPHELES was going to engage me now, but he was still hanging back. As long as one of his minions was still functioning, I guessed he wasn’t going to take any risks.
    However, I was standing around out in the open, and while we had two superbeings down, we had four still functioning. Not good odds for me, seeing as I didn’t have hyperspeed to help me out.
    I decided getting into a vehicle would probably be a good idea. Conveniently, we had a spare that hadn’t been hit, trampled, or washed away. I ran for it.
    Behind the wheel was a nice place to be. I didn’t unhook my purse, though, just in case. This made driving a bit awkward, but I figured awkward was better than losing my bag of tricks.
    I took a look. Tim was having a lot more problems than Reader, and all his doors were open. I decided to go help out our team’s rookie. I pointedly ignored that, in reality, I and the girls were the real rookies; we were doing pretty well so far, after all.
    I hated driving without music, but Tim had my iPod. Even in this life and death situation, I wanted some tunes. “Fight for Your Right” was getting old.
    I hit what I thought was the radio button as I headed toward Tim and the Serpent. I was very proud of myself for heading toward it, rather than away from it. But there was no one around to brag to. There was only static coming out of the speakers. I twisted the knobs and hooked into what I thought was talk radio.
    “… not working any more.” The voice sounded familiar.
    “Might be time to close the doors and take off.” That sounded like Gower.
    “I do and we’re all gonna die.” Aha, this was Tim.
    I looked around and found another button, pushed it, and gave it a try. “Hey, can anybody hear me?”
    “Kitty?”
    “Yes, Paul. If I live, can I have one of these cars?”
    “Glad you can think of the future.”
    “James is doing better than Tim.”
    “I already told him that,” Tim snapped.
    I looked at the Serpent and another thought came to me. “Switch the music.”
    “To what?”
    “Try something soothing, but with a beat.”
    “You have that?”
    “I have everything.” Well, almost everything. I didn’t have Indian pipe music, which would have been my first choice. I thought about it. What song would lull a snake into submission? “John Mayer?”
    “Over my dead body.”
    “Could be, Tim, could be.” I thought some more. It needed a beat, and it needed to be soothing. And I needed to own it. This gave us a lot of choices. The Serpent had responded to the beats, but I wanted to soothe it. “Put on Tears for Fears. ‘Cold.’ On continuous.”
    “You have got to be kidding. I thought we were trying to kill the superbeing, not me.”
    “Tim? I’m in charge.” Supposedly. “We’ll know fast if it’s not the right song.”
    “No Barry Manilow or John Tesh?” Reader was on the group radio.
    “If you want. I have Rod Stewart, too.”
    “I’m ready to let the Serpent just kill me.” Tim had switched the music. The Serpent started to sway.
    “I point out that it’s working, so stop complaining. Is there any way to make the music come out of my car, too?”
    “Why?” This was Gower.
    “Because then we could surround it with the sound.”
    “Turn on the radio.”
    “I thought I had.”
    “Under the buttons you used to turn on the intercom, girlfriend,” Reader offered.
    They marked where their invisibility shield button was, but the radio button was incognito. Aliens were weird.
    I found the right button, and the music blared out. I rolled the windows down and drove around toward the back of the giant snake-thing. It saw me and expressed an interest, but its head was starting to bob, and its glowing eyes were drooping.
    “We’re boring it to death,” Tim said. I was impressed I could hear him, but the intercom was pretty powerful.
    “You know, I haven’t passed judgment on your musical choices.”
    “Because you don’t know them.”
    “Girlfriend, I was with you on all of the other stuff, but you’re kidding me with this, right? You don’t really have Manilow or Tesh, do you?” Reader snickered.
    Well, I didn’t actually have Tesh. “I think we have more pressing issues at hand.”
    We did. I could see the girls hanging off cables in the distance, and the Pachyderm was heading toward us. This meant Martini and Christopher were herding it. At least, I hoped so. But it also meant that Tim and I were going