Boy Battles Bot (Space Invaders Book 1) by A.K. Meek

Author:A.K. Meek [Meek, A.K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2021-09-13T22:00:00+00:00

16

Boot Hill

Everyone knew Ethel Granberry was older than dirt. Parents told kids they’d sat through her same dry sixth-period history class. Some even said their grandparents remembered her. Even then, she was always old.

Her yellowed, stacked beehive, horn-rimmed glasses, and nicotine-stained lips that even a heavy dose of dollar-store lipstick couldn’t control said she didn’t fool around. She didn’t take any guff from anyone.

Many said she knew the old ways of doing business.

She carried a mustard-colored wooden ruler inlaid with a strip of metal. No doubt to cleave her branding on disobedient troublemaker hides. But she’d never used it. She didn’t need to lay her stick of justice across anyone’s knuckles. She didn’t need to. Not when she had the old-lady stare.

Jimmy had seen firsthand her no-nonsense, withering, medusa-like glance drive a fellow fifth grader to the brink of insanity.

The stare alone, from the eyes of an ageless and nameless evil dwelling amongst mortals since time began, could peel away your helpless soul.

Anyway, last summer one of Witch Hag Granberry’s assignments had been to write about a historical location in the local community. And Jimmy pulled Boot Hill Cemetery from the hat.

It goes without saying cemeteries are on the low end of travel destinations. Probably because they’re full of dead people. And Jimmy felt no different about this assignment. He was slightly intrigued, but cautious about the dead person drive-in.

Even Little Doug, when he crashed his hot-wired alien spaceship in the middle of the local cemetery, didn’t fool around. He beat feet out of there ASAP. No slowing down to read headstones and laugh at ridiculous old names.

Legend had it (according to the Apple Valley Gazette) Boot Hill was where aliens from the stars visited local Navajos and brought them a gift, a strange alien recipe. Some said it was fruit pies, but Jimmy was skeptical about that.

Unfortunately for that moment of first contact, the aliens misinterpreted some of the Navajo language (being the most difficult language to master, according to the Gazette) and didn’t get the translation right. Dysentery from undercooked batter almost wiped out the proud Indian nation.

The few brave warriors left, with hardy constitutions, declared war on the aliens and drove them back to the stars.

But the victims were buried where Boot Hill now stands. This spot. When the Navajo built a new burial ground, they turned this plot into a Navajo pet burial ground.

When Thaddeus Apple showed up and started planting apple trees at some point in the Great Expansion, a time when every man wore a handlebar mustache, the Navajo packed up and moved out, remembering the heartache cooked fruits wrapped in pastry had brought them.

The settlers built their burial ground on top of the pet burial ground, which was built on the Navajo burial ground, since there were already dead people buried here. It only made sense.

Some of the storm clouds overhead thinned enough for the moon to break through. Everything bathed in moonlight reminded Jimmy of the first-in-series made-for-TV movie he’d watched last week, A Cemetery in Moonlight.

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