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Level: Extremely high. Seth’s goal is to de-populate Earth, then colonize it with his species. This violates every moral and ethical code extant.
    Special Abilities: Telepathy, extraterrestrial Level 7 speed, Level 7 strength, shape-shifting, cunning, general viciousness.
    The Level 7 strength concerned me. I was maybe a 3 on my best day. The slug in Portland had been a 4. I read the footnote next. Vermgypians were beyond strange. No one knew what they looked like beneath their demonic-appearing, armored containment suits. They were best known for the lethal nerve gas they emitted. If you were exposed, your cells started to melt. Then you rotted from the inside out. It was an extremely painful way to die.
    Extremely.
    Chapter 23
    I LIKE THIS PLANET just the way it is, thank you very much—well, except for a few problems like poverty, war, polluted drinking water, and global warming—but I knew that Ergent Seth was on his way to making those crises seem like child’s play.
    It was time to check out LA, and hopefully do some surveillance. In particular, I wanted to see the areas where Number 6 did his nastiest scut work, usually late at night.
    “You sure you want me to drop you off
here,
mate?” the cabdriver said as we stopped at the corner of Sixth and San Pedro. Since I like to chat up a storm, I’d found out the cabby’s name was Clive. He was a good-looking Brit who’d come to LA to—surprise, surprise—become a movie star.
    “This part of town inn’t fit for man nor beast after dark,” Clive warned. “I’m not foolin’.”
    “I’ll be all right,” I told him. “This is where my job is. At Taco Bell. I’m a lettuce shredder. Love those chalupas.”
    I stood on the corner, probably looking a little lost, as the cab sped away. Truthfully, this part of LA seemed like a war zone with palm trees. Abandoned, deteriorating buildings and empty lots, plus a few single-occupancy hotels known as Homeless Hiltons. In the gutter at my feet, a rat was going to town inside a discarded Styrofoam tray from a local soup kitchen.
    I stuck to the shadows as I did my recon. I was turning onto Towne Avenue when I saw a silver minivan pull to the curb. I figured it was a drug user looking to score. Then the doors slid open. Half a dozen kids between nine and twelve hopped out.
    Isn’t it a little late for a class trip?
I thought, watching them shuffle across the street and strike a pose on the stairs of an abandoned factory.
    “New stuff just in,” I heard one of the younger ones call to a chrome-yellow Hummer passing by slowly. “China, china, burning white. Pure as the driven snow. Guaranteed to get you where you want to go.”
    I’d seen drug dealing before, in New York, London, even Portland. But I’d never seen such little kids dealing poison.
Who would use kids like this? Maybe Number 6?
    I hung back in a urine-scented doorway, watching as the kids did quick, hand-to-hand sales through car windows. What a disgrace. My blood was starting to boil.
    About an hour later the silver van came around again. The driver-side door flew open.
    A wiry, red-bearded skinhead in a brown leather jacket and a ponytail jumped out. Not Ergent Seth, my sixth sense told me, but maybe an important lackey of his. The kids rushed up to him, handing over money from their dealing. He restocked them with more plastic bags and vials.
    I stared at the scene, fuming. Everything about the dealer was an abomination. Suddenly he backhanded a kid hard, knocking him onto the street, then went through his pockets for more money.
    That was it, I thought, stepping out of the doorway. I couldn’t take any more of this creepy, night-crawling, red-bearded vermin.
    Chapter 24
    “EXCUSE ME,” I said as I approached the scuzzy dealer and felt my skin start to crawl. “Haven’t I seen you on the TV show
Miami Ink
? No, my mistake. I think it was in the freak tent at the California State Fair. Or maybe Folsom Prison?”
    The dealer smiled, showing off