Attack of the Alien Horde by Robert Venditti

Author:Robert Venditti
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

CHAPTER

12

MILES NEEDED AN ESCAPE. HE didn’t want to dwell on his dad or his mom or all the things he should or shouldn’t have done to keep their marriage together. That was in the past. The very near, very painful past, but still the past. There was nothing he could do about any of that now.

But the future . . . There was plenty Miles could do about the future, and he planned to do it all. He just needed instructions.

Miles spread Henry’s copies of Gilded Age on his bed, wondering which to read first. He instinctively arranged them in order by issue number and was miffed to see they were completely out of sequence. Oh, well. He’d fill in the missing issues later. Provided Henry could locate them in that sty he called a bedroom.

Miles dove in. He’d never really read a comic book before—he’d always thought they were kind of hokey—but as he pored over the stories, he had to admit there was something engrossing about them.

In issue 265, Gilded busted up a ring of shoplifters operating out of a U-Haul stuffed with stolen cell phones and designer clothes. He made the thieves confess and then used his superspeed to return all the stolen goods to the stores they’d come from in a single afternoon.

Issue 282 told a story about Gilded taking down a gang that had set up shop in a family neighborhood. Mean as the gang was, their knives and guns and tough talk were no match for the Twenty-Four-Karat Champion.

Miles was hooked. The comic books weren’t hokey at all. They were full of hope, brimming with the promise of a tomorrow that would be better than today—a message Miles was wholeheartedly onboard with, since his todays pretty much stank. He found himself becoming so invested in the stories, he kept forgetting the reason he was reading them: to learn what the cape could do.

What he could do. Could he really clap his hands together so hard, it’d create a tidal wave (issue 307)? Was it really possible for him to carry a mobile home on his back (issue 314)?

As he read, a warm sensation started in his chest and swelled until it seemed like his heart would burst out of his rib cage. It was an emotion he hadn’t experienced in a long time. It was pride. The people were safe with the cape in Miles Taylor’s hands. He would never let them down.

Miles finished every single comic book Henry had given him, and then he read them all again. He read until the late-night hours, eventually falling asleep facedown on an open copy of issue 299.

The double-page spread showed Gilded flying across a clear blue sky, his golden costume gleaming in the bright, yellow sun.

• • •

Miles’s weekend went pretty much like that. He holed himself up, studying the copies of Gilded Age until he knew them backward and forward. He emerged every few hours for a drink or a bowl of cereal, then returned to his room before his dad could invite him to watch football.

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