Heroes A2Z #1: Alien Ice Cream Read online



  Alien Ice Cream

  by

  David Anthony

  and

  Charles David Clasman

  Illustrations

  Lys Blakeslee

  Heroes A2Z #1: Alien Ice Cream

  Copyright 2012 David Anthony and Charles David Clasman

  Published by Sigil Publishing, LLC

 

  No part of this publication may be reproduced in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Sigil Publishing, LLC, Box 824, Leland, MI 49654.

  This book is fiction. The people, places, and events depicted within are fictitious or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons living or dead or to real life places is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  1. Meet the Heroes

  2. How Hot Was It?

  3. I Scream, You Scream

  4. U.F.O. Sure-Burt

  5. Out-of-This-World Flavors

  6. Villainous Vegetables

  7. Eat Your Ice Cream

  8. The Deep Brain-Freeze

  9. Zombies, Zombie Everywhere

  10. Spreading the Freeze

  11. Robo-Cone Robots

  12. Lost in Space

  13. No Earthlings Allowed

  14. Scoop de Loop

  15. Plan Zero Degrees

  16. Snow Cone Cannons

  17. Zoë’s Antidote

  18. Heroes Again

 

  1: Meet the Heroes

  Welcome to Traverse City, Michigan, population 18,000. The city has everything you might expect: malls, movie theaters, schools, and playgrounds. Kids swim here in the summer and build snowmen during the winter. Sometimes they pretend that they live in an ordinary place.

  But Traverse City is far from ordinary. It is set on one of the Great Lakes and blooms with brilliant colors in the spring. Thousands of people visit every year.

  Still, few of them know the city’s real secret. Even fewer talk about it. You see, Traverse City is home to three exceptional superheroes. This story is about them.

  Meet Abigail, the oldest of our heroes by a whole eight minutes. When it comes to sports, she can’t be beat—not at arm wrestling, not at archery, and certainly not at aces on the tennis court. Her duffle bag is stuffed with athletic equipment that never weighs her down. Once she sank a pirate ship with a well-aimed drive of her golf club.

  Andrew comes next. He’s Abigail’s twin brother, younger by a measly eight minutes. If it has wheels, Andrew can ride it. We’re talking anything with wheels, no matter the size. From airplanes to automobiles, he is amazing, astounding, and awesome on wheels. He even rode a unicycle to victory in a BMX bike race.

  Last but definitely not least is Baby Zoë. She’s the strongest of the heroes, like Superman in a diaper. She might not be able to walk that well, but she can fly and shoot lasers from her eyes. Zoë puts the super in superhero.

  Together these three heroes keep the streets and neighborhoods of Traverse City, Michigan, and America safe. Together they are …

 

  2: How Hot Was It?

  “I think I’m going to melt,” Andrew complained. He and his sisters were sitting under a sad little limp tree in their front yard. It was the hottest day of the year.

  “How hot?” you ask. Hot enough to fry eggs on the hood of a car.

  And that’s hot. Gross, but hot.

  “Awful,” Zoë sighed, dabbing her sweaty forehead with a corner of her cape.

  Abigail agreed but she wasn’t about to let the heat ruin a summer day. Her superhero’s super-brain was always working. Suddenly, she leaped to her feet.

  “Slam dunk!” she cried. “I’ve got it—the swimming pool! C’mon!”

  Abigail in the lead, the heroes raced to the pool in the backyard. When they reached it, they stumbled to a stop and their mouths dropped open.

  “Abnormal!” Zoë shrieked, staring in horror at the pool.

  Abnormal was right. The heat had gotten to the pool. Its water was so hot it was boiling. Swimming in there would be worse than taking a bath in a bowl of hot soup.

  “This way,” Andrew urged, tugging Abigail’s elbow. He couldn’t let her be the only one to come up with an idea. More importantly, he knew that his idea would be better.

  “Who wants to run through the sprinkler first?” he asked with a huge smile. His sisters cheered. Running through the sprinkler would beat the heat!

  When Andrew turned on the faucet, the hose coughed and wheezed. Then it spat dust like a mummy’s dry sneeze. Not a single drop of water came out.

  Seeing her brother sad made Zoë sad too, so she decided to do something. It was time to use her superpowers.

  “Artic,” she announced, and jumped into the air.

  In minutes she flew thousands of miles to the North Pole. There she found a wonderfully chilly and icy iceberg. It was perfect for the scorching day back home.

  Flying as fast as she could, Zoë zoomed home with her iceberg. Andrew and Abigail would be so proud! Over Canada, Lake Michigan, and the Sleeping Bear Dunes she sped.

  All the while, the temperature rose. Zoë started to sweat and her iceberg started to melt.

  Zoë arrived home to discover that the worst had happened. Her wonderfully chilly and icy iceberg had melted! Now it was a tiny cube floating in a tiny puddle in her tiny hand.

  “Aww,” she sniffed.

  How would the heroes ever beat the heat?

 

  3: I Scream, You Scream

  Just then, faint music reached our heroes’ ears. It was a song they knew, and a song they loved. It was music from an ice cream truck headed their way!

  “Ice cream!” the twins shouted. Zoë squealed and forgot about her iceberg.

  Sundaes, push-ups, sugar cones, too.

  Snow cones, bomb pops—red, white, blue.

  I love ice cream, so do you.

  I scream, you scream—we all do!

  The ice cream song was irresistible. Neighbors from up and down the block shuffled out of their homes, digging for money in pockets, purses, piggy banks, and wallets. Everyone wanted ice cream on a scorching day like this.

  Bomb pops, chocolate drumsticks, push-ups, and more. The heroes dreamed of delicious frosty treats, but the ice cream truck remained nowhere in sight.

  Finally the truck came slowly into view. But it didn’t arrive from down the street, and it didn’t pull out of a driveway. This truck didn’t do those things. In fact, it wasn’t like any truck any of them had ever seen before.

  “Arrival,” Zoë exclaimed, pointing at the sky. Nothing got past her super vision. She could read the fine print on an eye chart blindfolded.

  The crowd looked to where Zoë pointed, and the sight caused adults to shriek. Kids cheered, dogs barked, and cats scampered up the trunks of trees.

  No one expected to see what they saw. It was impossible, amazing, and couldn’t be true.

  But they saw it, all of them. They couldn’t look away. The ice cream truck floated down from the sky like a spaceship from another world.

 

  4: U.F.O. Sure-Burt

  “It’s not an ice cream truck!” Andrew cheered. “It’s an ice cream spaceship!”

  “Awesome!” his sisters agreed, clapping excitedly.

  Sure enough, the ice cream truck was silver and shaped like a flying saucer. Colored lights blinked up and down its surface. On its roof, a long metal antenna crackled with electricity.

  Everyone fell silent as the ice cream spaceship descended. When it neared the ground, landing gear like a giant-sized
unicycle popped from its underside. Andrew saw this and grinned.

  “If it has wheels, I can ride it,” he boasted.

  Abigail nudged him in the ribs. “It doesn’t have wheels. It has wheel. One wheel. Can you ride that?”

  Andrew just stuck his tongue out at her.

  The crowd gasped—Oooh!—when a round hatch whisked open on the ship’s side. Then they sighed—Ahhh!—when they saw that it was a window like the kind on a submarine.

  Next, a strange-looking man peered out of the window and waved. He was green, had only one eye, and looked like something from a cheesy old science fiction movie. The heroes didn’t know whether to laugh or be afraid.

  “Greetings, Earthlings,” the green man in the window said slowly. His voice sounded mechanical, like a robot’s. “I am Burt. Sure-Burt. From the planet Vanilla Prime. It is my objective to serve you delicious frozen treats.”

  The crowd shuffled slowly forward, forming a line. Everyone wanted ice cream, but Sure-Burt and his spaceship were a little too convincing. They looked like a real alien and a real spaceship. Their costumes were flawless.

  Abigail and Zoë made their way to the front of the line. As usual, Abigail was first.

  “Sweet ice cream truck,” she told the green man. His ship had to be a truck in disguise, she thought. Everyone knew that aliens and spaceships weren’t real.

  Sure-Burt scratched his big bald head. “Truck?” he asked, perplexed. “My vehicle is not a truck, Earth-girl. It is a flying saucer.”

  “You mean it’s a U.F.O.,” she said, nodding and trying not to smile. She knew how to play along with a joke. She wouldn’t give up his secret.

  The ice cream man shook his head and laughed. “He. He. He.” His voice sounded more robotic than ever.

  “I am the U.F.O.,” he stated. “Not my ship.