I WALKED INTO the store and heard this strange, gurgling voice on the piped-in infotainment shopper channel, and I’m like, huh, that sure is a strange person to pick as your announcer. I was relieved to be approached by a very normal-looking, young fresh-faced store clerk as I walked in.

“Can I help you find something, sir?” He looked like a good candidate for Employee of the Month.

“Yeah…” I said, operating on my eighth sense again, “fish food.”

As the clerk led me through hardware and housewares and electronics, I found myself gagging. And when I spotted a video display, I understood why.

Scowling on-screen was none other than the unfortunate fish head of Number 5.

And even more unfortunate, he saw me.

Number 5 scowled, and his image disappeared, leaving a prerecorded Rosie O’Donnell to talk about some titanium-plated sandwich maker. Maybe he’d spotted me from one of the overhead security cameras. Did that mean he was in the store someplace?

“Sir? Are you all right?” the clerk called back to me.

“Couldn’t be better,” I told him with a weak smile. “Are we there yet?”

“Almost,” he replied, as we passed an empty motor-oil section… and then his voice transformed into a hideously twisted gurgle, just like the infotainment announcer’s voice: “We’re going to Number 5.”

I stopped dead in my tracks.

Until I realized that smiley Mr. Employee-of-the-Month was heading toward a sign for aisle five-Pet Food. And he was soon surrounded by an enormous throng of pregnant women who stood slack mouthed, staring at some empty shelves where all the fish food had been.

I was just about to tell everyone to take their fish-food orders to a certain minivan in the parking lot, when World War III broke out in aisle four.

GUIDED BY THE sound of explosions, falling shelves, and screams, I made a mad dash to the source of the chaos, leaping over people, dodging carts, somersaulting over cardboard display stands.

The cause of the commotion was a makeshift film set “manned” by ten henchbeasts that were melting terrorized shoppers with their weapons. And heading the group was an alien that made my jaw hit the floor-a big-nosed ape that was none other than number twenty-one on The List.

In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have taken even a nanosecond to think about it. Because as soon as he saw me-and clearly he’d been waiting in ambush-he fired this rifle kind of thing with a round dish on its front end.

At me.

I’ve got some pretty good reflexes, if I do say so myself, and I managed to leap up into the air before he got the shot off-like high enough so that I could grab one of the exposed I beams in the thirty-foot ceiling-but I wasn’t fast enough.

A massive shockwave slammed into me, compressing all the air in the warehouse-sized store and smacking me down like I was a fly and it was a rolled-up newspaper. I crunched onto the floor, my ears ringing, my vision blurry, the room spinning.

“This is gold,” Number 21 cackled.

It would’ve been a great time to conjure up my friends or some weapons to help me kick some alien butt, but right now I could barely remember the word for ouch. I was on my own.

“We’ve found a lot of talented extras here in S-Mart,” Number 21 said darkly. “But you’re our best talent of the day, Daniel.”

My legs were like rubber as I staggered to my feet and forced myself into a jujitsu stance, instinctively realizing that since I couldn’t think clearly enough to create a peashooter, I was going to have to resort to old-fashioned hand-to-hand combat.

Unfortunately, I was still so unsteady, I think I ended up looking more like a drunk clown than a highly trained martial artist.

Number 21 was busting a gut. He mopped his sweaty brow and slung his shockwave cannon over his shoulder. “Are you guys getting this?” he asked the henchbeasts that were filming the shopping nightmare.

One of the crew asked, “Should we melt him too?”

“Nah,” Number 21 replied. “This was just his screen test. Boss says he’s still got some real important parts to play.”

And then everything went black as I fell back against a tower of mac-and-cheese boxes.

AS I CAME to, I could feel the henchbeasts’ high-tech restraint device squeezing me from my chest down, holding me to the floor.

“Can we make a deal?” I pleaded to the two shadowy figures standing over me-and then, um, I became about as embarrassed as I’ve ever been in my fifteen adventure-filled Earth years.

What was holding me to the floor was not some alien-tech, carbon-fiber straitjacket, but a whole mountain of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese boxes that I’d knocked on top of myself when I passed out.

And the two figures standing above me weren’t alien henchbeasts, but two twelve-year-old skate kids.

“You mean you want us to join your crew?!” asked the shorter chubby one.

“Dude, that’s so stoner!” said the taller skinny one.

“Yeah, when you jumped up and the monkey dude with the big space-gun blasted you and you fell! Whomp, dude! Stomped like a narc! And those guys in the weird bug suits with the cameras? Totally awesome FX.”

“You,” I said, looking down the aisle at the brown stains on the floor that had been some of their fellow humans not long ago, “are insane.”

“And you, dude, are a magnate! When’s the show going to be on? Are you guys on YouTube?”

“You guys own both Jackass movies, don’t you?”

“Dude. And T-shirts,” he said, lifting up his buddy’s sweatshirt to show an “I Jackass” decal.

I like humans; I truly do. But, sometimes it amazes me their civilization ever got off the ground.

MY FRIED HEAD and body were starting to feel better as I crossed the parking lot back to my motorcycle. Pregnant women were still streaming into the store to look at the empty fish-food and motor-oil displays, but at the moment I was too bummed about losing my first battle against Number 5’s crew to continue my investigation alone.

So I decided to summon Mom and Dad. I was so aching for my family right then, I even whipped up Brenda, aka Pork Chop-my annoying little sister-out of thin air.

“Um, Daniel, I don’t think we’re all going to fit,” said Pork Chop, nodding at my bike.

“You are not still riding motorcycles,” said Mom. “You know how I feel about them, Daniel. Not safe.”

Dad smiled knowingly at me. It wasn’t an argument worth having with Mom, although-for the record-he and I knew that unless I had an accident on my bike that involved falling into the sun or possibly a direct hit from an Opus 24/24, chances were I would escape permanent injury. And so-presto change-o-I willed some additional matter into existence and transformed my motorcycle into an awesome late-eighties vintage, wood-panel, retrofitted Dodge minivan.

“Air bags?” asked Mom.

“Side-impact air bags and ABS,” I assured her and gave her the keys.

“Well, let’s get going,” said Dad. “Time’s a wasting, and we need to convene a strategy session for dealing with Number 5 and Number 21.”

The man never took a breath without having a six-point plan for it.

“And then, dear, sweet, wonderful, multitalented brother, we can all go out in the yard and polish the giant golden statue we’ve made of you because we love and adore you and, basically, worship your fantastic self… or not,” said my sister, making the L-is-for-Loser sign against her forehead.

I was too tired to retaliate, so I just rolled my eyes.

“So where’s home, anyway?” I asked.

“Why, right here,” said Mom, pulling the minivan over in front of a huge Victorian house with a wraparound porch and a FOR RENT sign in the front yard.