Rangers of the Lost Car-park
Chapter 2
By: Stainless Steel Rat
Even while the hamster was speaking, Chip was acting. A glance to Zipper, and a pointed paw sent the fly towards the guy with the rifle. Chip himself scooped up two pieces of the pea gravel that was mixed with the sand, and stepped behind the piece of wood that was stuck in the sand. A single kick brought it down, and he jumped on, hurling the first stone at the end of the rifle to knock it aside just as the hamster brought it to bear.
The startled hamster fired, and the pellet went zinging off into the darkness. Then he was beset by a small but violent buzzing hurricane as Zipper arrived with his flying fly fists of fury. The three guards holding the prisoner were hard pressed to see what was happening with the search light turned towards them. The one at the back never knew what hit him. Chip did, because he’d thrown it.
The one nearest to Chip finally looked towards him, but too late. Chip was sliding down the sand pile like a snowboarder, and flew off a minor outcropping to send his improvised sled right into the goons head. This hapless hamster hoodlum quickly discovered the ‘Plank Constant’, to wit that when someone smacks you upside the noggin with a chunk of wood, you fall over in an unconscious heap.
The captive rat realised she had a chance to break free and took it, wrenching her arm away from the grip of the last guard, who turned to face the bigger threat, though Chip was a head shorter than either him or the escapee. Chip had picked up the plank and swung it, only to be intercepted by the hamster, who laid hold of the other end.
Chip responded first, letting go of his end and dropping underneath it. He shoved up with a paw, and the board flipped up like a fold away ironing board. It hit the bigger creature right between the eyes, and he fell over backwards to join his mates in sleepy land. With his opponents disabled, Chip looked to the APC, where Zipper was doing his favourite ‘boot to the head’ routine.
Already the hamster had his eyes closed against Zipper’s strikes and was flailing away with the gun butt with as much enthusiasm as he lacked accuracy. Zipper actually caught the end of the weapon as it reached the end of one of it’s swings and rode it like a bronco, waving an arm and buzzing a ‘Yehaw!’.
When one particularly wild flail made the guy lean further than usual, Zipper hauled with all his strength and the leverage of the gun. He tipped the goon out of his cupola and onto the ground, dropping the released gun on his head to knock him out. He buzzed overhead, using ‘mysterious fly senses’ to check they were out of it, and would stay that way for some time.
He buzzed back to Chip, smirking and clasping his hands together over his head. The wind had died down, and it was quiet and still. The girl had disappeared.
“Nice move Zipper! Are they all good and out?”
“Zure are! Zo zwho were zoze guyz?”
Chip dropped down to examine one in the full glare of the search lights more closely. The uniform tunic was brown, with a red arm band which carried a circular insignia, a white circle with a face on it. “Huh? This is cuh-razy! Henrich von Sugarbottom? What has he got to do with them…”
Zipper gave a buzz of warning, and Chip looked up to see the girl rat dart in and grab the plank, moving backwards to hold it like a club. She was facing him, and looked as if she wasn’t sure whether to strike, run or do the can-can. He moved back out of the way, circling the ex- captive until the searchlight illuminated her quite clearly.
She was about Monty’s height, or a head taller than Chip, with glossy black fur and small pointed ears. Her eyes were equally dark, and her muzzle was quite short, with delicate white whiskers and a pink nose. She had loose, shoulder length headfur, that was a shade lighter than the rest of her body. She wore a torn green jumper and brown skirt.
She called out suspiciously. “Who are you working for? Why did you attack them?” She had a trace of English accent.
“Well, that guy was about to shoot you, and I figured you might not like that too much. And I don’t work _for_ anyone, I work _with_ the Rescue Rangers, and so does my friend.” He pointed to Zipper. “My names Chip, and this is Zipper.”
The girl lowered her guard slightly, looking puzzled. “The Rescue Rangers? I’ve think I’ve heard of them from a bat that lives over at the University… but what were you doing out here, and where are the others? I know there’s five of you…”
Chip sighed. “You know Foxglove?” From her reaction it was clear she did. “We were on a mission at the Mega-mall, and they had to leave me behind for a couple of hours.” He outlined the main points of what had happened. He continued, hands up, posture neutral.
“Look, it’s clear you don’t trust me. If you feel that nervous, then turn and go. Zipper and I won’t follow. Or you can put down the wood and maybe we can help. After all, that’s what the Rescue Rangers do.” “Zyeah!”
The girl rat hesitated a moment, clearly debating with herself. Then she shifted the piece of wood onto her shoulder like a rifle at port. “Alright, but let’s get away from here. I don’t want to be around when they wake up, or if any more of Sugarbottom’s Choc troopers show up.”
“I knew I recognised that fat phiz of his!” Chip exclaimed, causing the girl to start.
“How do you know about him anyway?” She asked, suspicion still clear in her voice.
“Oh, the Rangers have tangled with that chocolate fruitcake before! Last time it was down in South America, where he was using mosquitoes to deliver ancient Aztec zombie drugs to unsuspecting creatures, and using them to harvest cocoa trees.” He caught the leader by the shoulders and dragged him round to the back.
“What’re you doing?” the girl asked, surprised.
“Moving them inside. They’re exposed out here and there might be predators about.” He looked around the inside, two benches along the side and a separate compartment for the driver. It looked like an Action Guy Bad Guyz (TM) troop carrier, a fairly common model of dual control (internal and remote) toy.
Chip briefly wondered what vibe made humans outfit models with internal controls that the dolls they were built for didn’t need, but as always accepted it as a fact of life. The hamsters had apparently added some touches of their own, a rack with some pole arms and rifles, and an electric fire starter which had apparently been juiced up into the rodent equivalent of a cattle prod.
He moved the last one inside, flicked off the searchlight from the drivers cabin and got out of the back, closing the fold down door/ramp behind him, and wedging it with the plank. Zipper popped up from inside the drivers compartment, having jammed the connecting door. They’d be found eventually, but if they came to quickly, they wouldn’t be able to do much.
“But we could use that!” The girl glanced about and shuddered. “Let’s get out of here!” She discarded the plank and picked up the rifle, examining it.
“Too conspicuous. We’ll be less obvious on paws.” As his eyes adjusted to the lower light levels, he asked, “What else does Sugarbottom have moving around?”
With only the distant mall lights, the girl rat was just a shadow. “I saw more of those, some trucks, and a few jeeps. He’s got diggers and a couple of tanks, but…”
“They’re not likely to be used for a search. No bats, or aircraft?” He saw her shake her head, slightly uncertainly. He nodded and said in a reassuring tone. “Well, it’s not likely. So, what’s the chocolate nut up to this time? Nothing good, I’m guessing.”
She tensed when he said that, which was puzzling, but replied, “You guess right. As to what’s going on… it’s kind of complicated. Though it’s funny you should mention nuts…”
He started walking off in the direction of the rendezvous, then thought better of it and picked up a leaf that he swept along behind, covering their tracks in the windblown sand.
He glanced up at the stars visible between the now, more scattered, clouds. “C’mon, this way. Feel free to explain as we go, starting with who you are. Everything above the rim of my fedora is all ears.” he said lightly.
That got a slight smile. She walked alongside him, but slightly behind, while Zipper flew overhead.
“My name is Marion Ravenfur. As for what that leiderhosen lunatic is after, it’s the resting place of the last and greatest invention of Mr Willy Wonti. In short, he’s after the Ark of the Chocolate Covered Nut.”
Chip looked puzzled. “How is that so valuable? I can get a bag of chocolate covered nuts from any corner store.”
“Not like this one.” She paused. “His last invention, the one he didn’t release, was a new _flavor_ of chocolate. My grandfather was his lab rat, which is how I got involved.”
“I’ve heard of him. Dale, the resident chocoholic on our team, talked about Wonti a couple of times, said he was the greatest candy-maker who ever lived. But how could he come up with a new flavor? Chocolate is chocolate!”
That got a snicker. “What about, white chocolate, dark chocolate, orange chocolate, mint chocolate, caramel chocolate…” she ticked them off on her fingers. “Granddad was more than just a lab rat, he was Mr Wonti’s friend those last years.”
“Wonti was a Speaker, like Sugarbottom?”
“No, or at least, only with my grandfather. I’m not sure he heard words, but they understood each other. He came with Mr Wonti when he came from Britain. Granddad said Mr Wonti claimed this new flavour would be worth a mint, or possibly even a caramel to whoever got it. You see, he enjoyed pottering around in his lab, so he licensed his inventions out to the big chocolate firms rather than go into big business for himself. He was rich, but kind of eccentric towards the end.”
“So he hid his last invention away for some reason?”
She nodded. “Apparently, he had a vault built somewhere around here, in one of the underground tunnels. This whole place was once small factories and warehouses, and his workshop was one of them. Now, of course, they’re turning it into a new car park for the Mega-mall.”
He asked, quietly. “Were you a part of this business?”
“Heavens no! I live over at the University trash dump. I’m an under-the-floor graduate student in Human History. I just come to visit him, make sure he’s eating right. He stayed behind to look after Mr Wonti’s place, even after the above ground part was gone…”
“So how did Sugarbutt become a part of it?”
“Apparently he was some sort of protégé of Mr Wonti and must have gotten wind of his discovery. According to my grandfather they were once friends, but Sugarbottom wanted more glory, and stole some of Wonti’s ideas and presented them as his own. They never spoke again, and I’m sure Mr Wonti wouldn’t have wanted Sugarbottom to have this secret.”
“That doesn’t explain the German soldier hamsters. They didn’t act like regular Aztec zombies… Too mobile, and the shock didn’t wake them. So the question is, how did he get them, and what are they doing?”
Marion shook her head, “I don’t know about that. I came for my regular visit, and found my grandfather's new place looking like a bomb had hit it. Then a bunch of them swarmed me and dragged me to Sugarbottom’s place, a shop in the Mega-mall. They put me in a cage next to my grandfather, and there I stayed until I escaped. Sugarbottom was going to use me to get my grandfather to co-operate.”
She thought a moment. “I heard my grandfather talk about them being ‘conditioned’ some how. Sugarbottom don’t want to risk trying it on him, because it might affect his memory, then there’d be no-one who could tell him how to …” There was an uncomfortable pause as she stopped herself.
Chip gave it a cushion. “I’m guessing there’s some kind of map item showing the location. Your grandfather had it, only he knows how to read it, and you managed to bring it with you when you escaped. That’s what that goon was asking about.”
He heard a sigh. “Foxglove said the not so cute one was a top notch detective… Oh, I’m sorry!” She sounded worried. “I don’t mean you’re not cute, but…” She was getting good at making pauses uncomfortable.
Chip chuckled. “Foxglove views the world through Dale coloured glasses. I’m surprised she even notices me.”
Zipper had been hovering along above them all this time, staying quiet as Chip questioned Marion. Now he saw moving lights over several intervening dunes, coming towards their position. He dropped down in front of Chip and buzzed out a warning. “Good work, Zipper!” the chipmunk crusader replied, looking around in the dim-lit car park. “Looks like more of the chocolate brownies are headed this way. We need to hide.”
A stack of bricks over four feet high towered off to one side, and he started moving towards it. Marion took one look at it and exclaimed. “I’ll never climb that!”
Chip grinned. “Perfect, then they’ll never think of looking up there.” He pulled out his trusty bobby pin grapple line, and hurled the end up to catch on the top edge. “Don’t worry. You just tie yourself onto this rope, and I’ll belay for you as you climb.” He made a bowline cradle in the end, and swarmed up the brick wall using the rope. As a matter of fact, he could have done it unaided, but he wanted Marion to feel confident about using it.
Zipper helped the still uncertain lady rat into the loop at the end, and stayed with her as Chip helped pull her up, using his jacket as a cushion on the edge of the brick so the string wouldn’t break. He pulled her over the edge just as a convoy pulled up at the base of the stack. Chip lay down at the edge and pulled a fragment of mirror out of his reclaimed jacket. He held it over the edge, angling it to act as a periscope while not reflecting any searchlights directed their way.
It was a big group, all vehicles from the Action Guy Bad Guyz range. A command car, patterned after a Kubelwagen jeep, was in the lead. It had two hamsters in the front seats, and a walkie talkie in place of the back seat. It was followed by an APC, and three half-track trucks with canvas covered load beds similar to US M3’s, and another APC. The trucks proved to be full of hamsters in Sugarbottom uniforms as they piled out.
“Halten!” Another hamster with a peaked cap stood up in the command car, and called out in a movie German accent. “Our orders are to comb dis section of der car park until ve recover der Ravenfur fraulein and the gob-stopper she carries. Ve must get it even if ve haff to kill her!”
Dutifully, groups of hamsters started hauling out combs from the backs of the trucks.
The driver in the command car spoke hesitantly. “Obersthamster, are you schure dis was vat our glorious leader vanted us to do?”
This got him a cuff. “Idioten! I am followink his orders eshactly!” He waved the others forward. “Schnell, schnell!”
Chip stifled a chuckle, and said quietly. “what a bunch of goobers! that’s going to take them half the night.” He sobered up. “but while they’re down there, we’re stuck up here.”
Marion started to say something, then thought better of it. The wind was starting up again, and it was cold, even though it was almost summer. Chip looked around, their perch, which was a bare, two foot square surface of none too neatly stacked bricks. The only thing to break it up was a lunch box. The high wind earlier had tipped it over, and it lay on it’s side with the lid open, exposing the remains of some worker’s lunch.
Marion had trotted over to the shelter it provided, them picked a foot long satay stick out of the debris. It still had chunks of meat on it, and she pulled one off, nibbling daintily at it. When Chip looked at her, she shrugged. “They didn’t feed me in there!”
Zipper hauled an apple core bigger than he was out of it, and gulped it with a satisfied sigh, and a complete disregard for normal physics.
Chip turned back to surveying the situation. The view was excellent. He could see over the stacks of sand and building supplies, all the way to the edges. Other lights told of other groups, and there were at least a dozen of them. “whoa! he’s really going all out!”
The mega-mall had a few external security lights, which did more to define the black shape then actually illuminate it. But there was also a larger light, lower down, and open loading bay with movement inside. He pulled out a Gadget-made spy glass and started looking at it.
“That’s sugarbottom’s place!”, exclaimed Marion, the last two words quieted by Zipper flying up in front of her, signaling to stay quiet. “we do _not_ want to go there.”
Chip rolled over and got up. “actually, we might. there’s only a couple of hamsters and sugarbottom there, and they’re in the loading bay. i bet he has everyone out looking for you. it would be the perfect time to sneak in and rescue your grandfather. what’s the layout inside?”
“well… there’s a big chocolate making room just behind the loading bay, with some smaller rooms off to one side, and I think the far wall door leads to the front store. The third room along is where he keeps his prisoners.”
“there were more than just you?”
“oh yes indeed, he’s gathered up a lot of the locals to work at digging out the tunnels. he followed the instructions on the gob-stopper, but so far it just lead him to a dead end. that’s why he’s trying to get my grandfather to tell him what he’s missed.”
“that complicates things…”
“how can it complicate the impossible? not that I wouldn’t like to help them escape, but if we go down, they’ll spot us!”
Chip grinned, and held his hat in the air, feeling which way the breeze pushed it, which was in the direction of the mega mall. “i wasn’t thinking of going down…”
He pulled a folded piece of paper and a stack of inch squares of duct tape from inside his jacket. Using the shelter of the lunch box, he unfolded the piece of paper to it’s full A4 size, and started refolding it in a paper glider.
Marion took some seconds to realise what he was doing. “You have got to be joking!” Zipper shushed her again.
“it’s okay, i’ve built these before… well, not exactly this design, but the principle is the same. i need that stick.”
He said nothing about how that last attempt, just before their first case, worked out. Spending time with Gadget had given him a much better understanding of the principles of flight and he was sure he knew what had gone wrong the last time.
He took it and laid it along the keel, taping it in place with some of the duct tape. A second, gnawed off stick was set across the back as a cross brace. He tore hand holes in the paper of the keel, and sacrificed part of his grapple line to make two safety harnesses to hang from them, and a control cable that could warp the wings, passing from the tip of one wing, through the front hand hold and to the other tip.
At the end of it Chip had a two person hang glider, which caught the wind and almost blew away when he turned it upright. He spoke to Marion. “just get yourself in the rear harness, hold onto the handholds over your head, and run forward with me. and stay quiet, for both our lives.”
She stepped back and exclaimed, “I’m not running anywhere, and certainly not in that! I’m a rat, not a bat!”
There were noises from below, and a clink, as something caught the edge of the bricks. Zipper shot to the edge, then back, buzzing with alarm.
“well it’s either the glider, or rejoining the happy hamster brigade.” Chip translated.
Reluctantly, she stepped forward, and set herself in the loops. On Chip’s command they ran forward and straight off the edge of the bricks on the far side from the parked convoy. The rising wind caught them and lifted them away into the air, and Marion gave a stifled squeak. A few seconds later, a hamster in a choc trooper uniform and with a novelty key-fob torch and a comb strapped to his back, hauled himself over the edge.
&&&
Chip could maneouvre the glider by shifting his bodyweight, and moving the control cable back and forth for wing warping. Marion, behind him had her eyes closed and was holding her breath.. Zipper, of course was riding on top. He brought it around until they were facing the mega-mall. The loading bay areas weren’t actually in the main structure, but in a sort of annex with a lower roof that ran the length of the main one.
He heard Marion’s voice from behind him. “If we die, I am going to kill you… Is it safe to look now?”
He had no need to whisper now. “Perfectly! The view is great!” Zipper added his endorsement.
He heard another squeak. “Ohmigosh! We’re so high! I’ll fall…”
“Will you cool it? You’re perfectly safe in that harness, and it’s not that high, can’t be more than 50 feet. I’ve gone up thousands in the Rangerwing, and flown just about every type of aircraft.”
“I don’t want to know… Does that include paper airplanes?”
“Of course, and this one handles even better than I hoped. Look, we’re almost at the roof of the loading bay, all I have to do is glide down. Easy!”
He heard a deep sigh, and Marion said, “You know, once you get past the terror, this is kind of fun… Should? Have you actually _landed_ a paper airplane?”
Chip chuckled uneasily. “Well… not exactly… I mean it landed, and I landed, but not all at the same time… But I’ve landed everything else safely…”
Marion balled up in her harness with her eyes closed. “OhnononoImgontodiegontodie…”
Chip dipped the nose and sailed down to execute a perfect walkout landing with the rat still curled up in a ball behind him.
“We’re down. The red zone is for the loading and unloading of passengers only.”
“…gontodie…huh?” She opened one eye, then tentatively put down one foot, as if testing water before jumping in. “Amazing. I didn’t even feel the bump.”
“Told ya! Y’know, you should really switch to decaf!”
“Zoverhere guyz…” called Zipper. He was already at the edge where the roof of the loading bays met the mega-mall main building. He’d found a grill with warm air coming from it.
Chip untangled himself from the glider and came over. “Okay… A way in… you check for other ways out…” As Zipper buzzed off, Chip pulled out a section of disposable craft knife blade and scraped some of the dirt away from the holding screws, then stuck it crosswise in the grove on the top and turned. Slowly at first, it unscrewed, and the other three screws followed it.
“Have to make myself a better torch, and soon…” He muttered, as he peered into the stygian gloom. It looked like a horizontal shaft, with a number of grills opening down into lit rooms in the distance. “Hmm…”
Marion came up behind him. “How do you know this will get us to the prison room?”
“I don’t. But I landed us right on top of Sugarbottom’s loading bay, and this is about a quarter of the way along. It’s our best shot…”
“So why are we waiting?” asked the girl rat.
“How many other animals were there in the prison?”
“Several dozen…”
“Darn! We need some way to get them all out.” He went to the other edge and looked over.
Sugarbottom was standing right below, shouting at a bunch of hamsters in fancier versions of the brown uniforms, with gold foil coins as epaulettes.
“Ach! Can you sausage-heads do nothink right?”
The one with the biddest chocolate coins responded. “But glorious leader! We haff every choc trooper out searchink. Ve will find der fraulein.”
“We haf no time! They are bulldozing and fillink in the old tunnels, and soon der Ark will be lost for efer. You are findink dat little rodent soon, or maybe I try out mine recipe for chocolate hamsters, hein?”
Chip looked around the rest of the bay and found nothing that pleased him. Stacks of boxes, an overhead winch, some powered trolleys…. big enough, but too slow. There were half a dozen choc trooper vehicles, hooked up to recharging units on a multi-way bar socket. Some of them were fully charged, if the green LEDs meant anything, however, getting to them would be almost impossible, and anyway, he was unlikely to find enough drivers to animal them from among the prisoners.
He came back, shaking his head. “We’re not getting them out that way…”
Zipper flew back up, buzzing excitedly.
“That’d work!” Chip exclaimed.
Marion folded her arms. “And the translation for those of us who don’t speak Fly?”
“There’s a bunch of dumpsters at the far end overflowing with wastepaper and soft trash. If we can get them up here, they can jump down and get away.”
“If we can get to them…” Marion said, uncertainly.
Chip forged on into the ventilation tunnel. The downwards facing grilles were, as he expected, ventilators leading into the well lit main room, filled with various pieces of cooking machinery and work tops. He stopped at one, and looked down with interest.
“What’s up?” Marion asked.
Chip shook his head. “Maybe nothing.” There were crude ladders and other additions to the manually operated machinery. It seemed that having failed with zombie labour, he was using small animal slave labour to run his enterprise. While Chip was no expert, all the machines looked both worn and archaic, or at least old, with mechanical dials and switches. The area was also deserted, with no guards, at least outside the doors, which was a relief.
A side vent, just beyond that, showed a darkened room, lit by a couple of nightlights. It had clearly been a storeroom, but now the metal shelving units had been converted into hamster dormitories, with rows of beds. But it was what was down in the centre that made Chip gasp.
“So that’s how he did it…” Chip gasped, and Zipper buzzed agreement.
“Why do I get the feeling there’s a circular that went round and I missed it?” Marion said. “It’s just a bunch of old junk and a tape player. Why he’d put a cutout of his face in front of a spiral disk I don’t know. Modern art?”
Chip shook his head. “One of our regular foes is a crime boss called Fat Cat. One of his scams was kidnapping and hypnotising sturgeon to lay eggs like chickens, so he could sell them to the rich cats uptown.” When he heard a giggle from beside him, he said. “True story! Anyway, he used a gizmo that looked a lot like that.”
Zipper had buzzed down through the grill, landed on the tape player, and turning down the volume, pressed Play. Sugarbottom’s voice came from it.
“…You vill obey Heinrich von Sugarbottom as your glorious leader in all things. You vill vear chocolate coloured uniforms. And anudder thingk, you vill speak with a proper German accent, like mine own …”
Chip nodded. “Yeah, that sounds about right. It wears off after a couple of days, but I bet they’re getting a refresher course every night. We found out later that the design came from this kooky ‘How to make friends and hypnotise people’ book published in the 70’s, when there was a lot of interest in it.”
He called Zipper back, continuing, “It sold only a few dozen copies, because it didn’t work on humans. We figure the guy who wrote it tested it on animals, and assumed it would work on anyone. Fat Cat had a copy, and I guess it makes sense a hypnotism happy hoodlum like Sugarbottom would find one too.”
Zipper popped back in through the grate, and they carried on. The second side grate was an office of sorts, combined with a bedroom, or at least there was an unmade camp bed in one corner. The desk was piled high with papers and lit by a desk lamp. Chip wanted to get down there and check those papers, but he had bigger strudels to stuff.
The third was the jackpot. Better lit than the others, there were several rows of locked cages stacked on shelves, and other shelves of various stores and packages, including industrial sized jars and tins of ingredients. Along one side of the floor, there were several child’s sewing machines, several open tins of brown dye, and a big box with an Action Guy logo, and a shipping label.
‘1 gross Bad Guyz uniforms, Deliver to: Spiffy Toys, Harland’s Mega-Mall.’ and the address.’
“So, hijacking shipments to a toy store, is he? I’ll bet that’s how he got all his stuff. Usual cheapskate M.O. like using second hand cooking equipment.” Chip looked over at the cages, which had all sorts of animals, from mice through to squirrels, rabbits and moles, even a family of chipmunks. “Those poor guys…”
There was an isolated cage there, with a dignified rat in a once neat, now torn and stained, lab-coat. He had the same black fur as Marion, though his was speckled with a salting of white.
“My grandfather!” Marion squeaked, and pointed to one of the top row shelves. “We have to get to him!”
"Zipper, do a quick circuit to check if they have a guard in here." Chip said.
Zipper came back with a negative. It seemed they really had sent everyone out for the hunt. There normally was a guard though, because over by the door was a hook with a set of Yale style keys.
Chip checked out the view from the grill. He could jump down a couple of feet, but the drop to the solid floor would be risky. “Unfortunately, there’s no shelving on this wall, and I don’t have enough rope left on my line to get us down to the floor. I used it on… that’s it!”
“Oh no, not that again…” Marion moaned.
&&&
The sleepy animals in the cages were woken by a metal creak as the air-conditioning grill on the far wall opened. A fly zipped out, followed by a curiously constructed paper plane, with two creatures hanging off it, the rear one for dear life. It spiraled round the room, losing altitude with each cycle, until it grounded on the floor in the centre.
There were various exclamations of surprise as the chipmunk in front peeled himself free.
In response to the rising hubbub, Chip signalled for silence. When he had it, he called out. "We're here to rescue you, all of you. But you'll all need to co-operate."
A worried voice came from one of the lowest level cages, a rabbit. "But the guards..."
"Are off on a wild rat chase at the moment, but we have to hurry. Don't go outside this room unless you want to blow everything."
He turned where Marion stood after freeing herself. "Marion, take the keys and free your grandpa, then get started on the top row. Zipper, middle row, and I'll take the bottom." The locks on the cages were of the ultra cheap 'jewellery' type, barely better than a latch, but quiet sufficient to keep an animal inside. Both the Rangers could pick such locks as easily as picking their teeth, Chip having learned from Gadget, Zipper from Monty, so it was a matter of moments before the group of animals were milling around on the floor.
They were a sorry lot, more than Marion had said, as she'd been counting cages, and there were sometimes entire families in a single one. A few had recognised Chip, by his description at least, and the fact he was palling around with a fly, and the news had quickly spread through the crowd. He talked to a few of them, getting their stories, and his opinion of Sugarbottom sank lower then ever. Operating the machines, digging for the secret chamber, making uniforms, even down to the youngest kits. If they didn’t work, they didn’t eat.
All of them seemed eager to get out, which wasn’t surprising. He had been worried at first that some of them might have been hypnotised, but it made sense that they weren’t. The hamsters were cage bred, raised by humans to be pets, and would therefore trust a human, especially one that could talk to them. They would likely watch the birdie and quickly be conditioned. From then on repeated doses kept them that way. Big enough to be tough, small enough to outfit with toys. That was probably why Sugarbottom had used them in the first place.
These guys, however, were from the wild, and had been kidnapped. To condition them with a different, complex set of instructions for slavery would take hours, as their natural independence and anger would help them resist. You couldn’t have hamsters watching over them, unless you wanted the hamsters affected too, so Sugarbottom would have to oversee it personally.
But time spent doing that, was time not spent running the shop and the retrieval operation. Far easier for a petty bully, cheapskate and short term thinker like Sugarbottom to use threats and punishments to the same end. Besides it probably fed his pitiful ego to be, quite literally, the big boss.
Zipper was using a bottle of food colouring to mark the exit route, and Marion was attending to her grandfather, who’d been particularly badly treated. Meanwhile, Chip managed to ferret out the leaders (though none of the leaders was a ferret) and explained his plan.
“The loading dock is being used by Sugarbottom and his goons, but if we build a stairway out of those cans on the storage shelves, you can get up to the ventilation shaft and out. The left hand route leads to the roof, and left along that, there’s a set of rubbish bins which you can use to get down.”
“You just leave that there stairway to us, Mister Chip”, the oldest mole said, pushoing back his hardhat, “When it comes to diggin’ holes down, or pilin’ stuff up, we moles have the knowing of that.”
It didn’t take long for the Fore-mole to prove he knew what he was talking about. All the animals went to work with a will, since this was one piece of work they’d be happy to complete. Chip helped organise the families for evacuation, smallest animals first, then bigger ones. Marion and her father were last, because he wanted to see them to safety personally.
When the evacuation started, he had enough time to dash off and do some constructive violence to a certain machine, and to find a certain book and feed it, or at least certain key pages, into the office shredder. That’d put a serious crimp in Sugarbottom’s XXXXL shorts.
It was on the way back from this pleasant duty that he heard an ear-splitting crash from the prison room. Zipper burst out, and buzzed frantically. Chip stopped at the door and could see for himself, what the fly was saying. One of the big rabbits had slipped on trying to get into the duct, a fairly tight squeeze. They’d managed to scramble in, but knocked the top of the pile in the process.
The steps had been well designed, but to take vertical pressure, not lateral. The top couple of steps, the lightest stuff had fallen and tumbled enough of the rest that the ventilator duct was now unreachable. Now he, Marion and her grandpa were trapped, and they could hear the voice of doom from outside...
“Gott und Himmel! Vat vas dat crashing? If dose rotten rodent vorkers have caused any damache I vill remove their schoft centres personally, vith a schpoon!