Chapter Forty-Two

The boards had danced beneath him like a magic trick gone haywire, and as he burst through into the space below, he felt an unfamiliar and fleeting sensation.  All weight seemed lifted from his body as he fell, just for a second, and as though he’d found his natural habitat too late, he managed one free breath in freefall.

For that moment he was only a piece of flotsam in the flying whirl of destruction raining down upon the upturned and gasping faces.  It burned like a snapshot in his memory, those ranks of wide little eyes that probably had not even had time to register his presence before the falling ceiling and all the rest had blotted them out.  For good.  For bad.  Forever.

I must look like a whale falling out of the sky, his mind danced.  A skywhale--

Athletic he was not.  Graceful—well, somewhere deep within lay a pearl of long-slumbering reflex. He registered a split-second of personal pride as he slammed into the Assembly Hall floor, punctured by lumber and nearly flattened by falling concrete.  He’d broken three limbs, but at least had twisted his thunderous bulk around.  And landed on his feet.

All was dark.  Before he passed out from the pain, he chuckled to himself.  Two of the gray-uniformed Group B fighters lay crushed beneath his bulk, under his broken hind legs.  Hadn’t he given them the surprise of their lives?  Ahh.  I went out like a cat.  Went out like a--

Lights out.

Half an eternity dragged by…

His body played a terrible mean trick on him and let him stay unconscious for a whole day before he woke up and realized he wasn’t dead.  The interrupted bombers lay squashed beneath him, though.  And they were beginning to get a bit gamy.  Not in eating condition.

This is what happens when you get your own paws dirty, he sneered at himself.  What was I thinking, rushing in to save the day?  I could have left an anonymous tip!  Sent a postcard!  I could have stolen the postage—

After mentally chewing on himself, he settled down to the serious business of hurting.  That occupied all of his thoughts for a while.  He was punctured in several places, but his extra pounds had proven useful.  His layers of fat had obviously kept anything from piercing a vital organ.

Above, a cacophony of hammering and power-sawing cheated him of any chance of rest.  They were searching, seeking—but the ones they were hoping to find were far too small, and dashed to smaller pieces.

Buzz around, busy little bees.  Your hive is broken.  Me, when I get out of here, I’m going to eat a gallon of caviar.  If it goes straight to my hips, all the better, he purred.  He tried to shift himself with his one free paw, but made little progress.  He had survived these last long hours on sips of air and curiosity, and though he had all the energy reserves anyone could hope for, a crystal dish full of Perrier would have been appreciated.  No, no, flat old tap-water would be just fine, out of a plastic tub if need be.

His welcome was not quite that… welcome, as it turned out.  A little mouse moved aside a chunk of lathe and plaster and saw one beady, twitchy eye peering back at her—

“Elizabeth?” he rumbled.  “Is that you?”  She certainly looked it--

The mouse shook her head violently, shrieked like a teakettle, and then the poor thing nearly died of fright on the spot. 

Normally, the trapped cat would have been gratified at the reaction, but it didn’t do him much good just now.  And that lump pressing into his side!  How it bothered…

A raccoon, his eyes a little darker around the edges than usual from lack of sleep, had rushed to the mouse’s aid (his first instinct was to pick up her limp form and wash her like an apple, but with no water nearby, he managed to fan some oxygen back into her).  Her swoon quickly attracted more attention; she seemed to be a person of some importance, and a mob of creatures quickly rallied to dig out her find.

“I’d keep to my left side if I were you,” Fat Cat waggled his right paw.  “Small animals just might stir up my finely-tuned instincts, and WHAM!” he brought the paw slamming down too close, grinning wide as they skittered back. 

A beaver, looking like a buck-toothed bulldozer among the smaller creatures, slapped Fat Cat’s paw with a massive paddle-tail.  Fat Cat yowled and pulled the paw back, flapping it.  “Just so we understand each other,” he chuckled, tucking it back under his battered body.

Though he had seen better days, he was instantly recognizable, once unearthed.  His moustache was matted with blood from an inconsequential cut above one meticulous eyebrow; his whiskers were in disarray, and but for his huge bulk, the splintered lumber would have killed him like the poor Italian delegate Tina had stumbled onto earlier.  But he was obviously Fat Cat, so the growing collection of searchers and rescuers quickly turned into a classic pitchfork-and-torches mob.

The work lights gleamed on pickaxes, shovels, and a forest of tiny little pocketknives, needle points thirsty for blood.

“Dig him out and string him up!” someone yelled.

Fat Cat nodded thoughtfully.  “Yes, if you can find a ceiling to hang me from.”

Teresa Brisby, who had first discovered him, would have none of it. 

“Sophie!” fretted Teresa, and the flag-laden little mouse at her side turned to look  “Go get your father!”  Teresa gave Sophie a push-start.  She nodded and disappeared in a rustle of color, up another pile of broken ceiling, where she would meet more Brisbys than she’d bargained for.

Ignoring Fat Cat’s own advice, Teresa gulped, pulled herself straight, and before the others could stop her, rushed into his astonished right paw.  It curled tight around her and squeezed of its own accord.

Fat Cat gasped, and the crowd stared.  He relaxed his grip a touch as not to suffocate Teresa.  “Looks like you have a hostage,” she muffled.  “Watch the ribs.”

He spoke low to her.  “That was incredibly stupid.  Thank you.”  He gathered up enough breath to speak to the assembled ill-wishers with a bit of his remembered authority.

“I have a list of demands…” he announced, as though he had his paw on all of them.  “Firstly, I must insist on a personal space of at least three feet, out of the range of all hand-held weapons and other implements of destruction,” he bared his array of choppers, causing a few hearts to skip a beat despite his predicament.  Even pinned and immobile as he was, his gaze was enough to freeze the blood of the poor little beasts.  They shuffled back to leave him a ring of open space.

“Secondly, you will bring me something to drink.  Cold if possible!  Drug it if you must, but I’d rather not be poisoned. I’ll be very touchy if I feel I’m being poisoned.” He gripped Teresa a bit tighter.  “Squeak, dear, it’s expected,” he whispered to her, and she complied enthusiastically.  Disappointed mutters spread around the crowd. 

“Lastly,” he sighed with regret, “After my drink, I must insist that you all leave.”  He rolled back a bit, until it hurt him unbearably.  This revealed a digital timer strapped to a large grey wad of plastic explosives, indeed almost half as large as himself. 

The numbers were ticking inexorably toward zero.  His zero.  He eased his bulk back against the bomb, sudden tears of pain rolling down his mangled whiskers.  “Don’t worry, I didn’t bring this here.  Promise.  But if I could roll over just a little more, I do think it would explode.  Ever hear of a dead-man’s switch?”

They had.  And no one wanted to be near it.  Like a furry flash flood, they fell all over themselves to get out.

Martin bounded along in the wrong direction, adrenalin and quiet anger keeping him knit into an undaunted knot of determination.  He would sleep for a week when he finally slept (days later, much the worse for wear).  His brother Timothy was no more to him than a feather on his back--an extra set of eyes and a mouth telling him to watch out.

Sophie, like a babbling pebble in his hands, had filled in a few gaps in the story.  Martin was angry at Teresa for putting herself in danger, angry at Fat Cat for being alive, angry at himself for deciding to scoop up Tina along with Sophie, just to get closer to a bomb—quicker.

Tina was tucked under one of Martin’s arms like a baguette, asking questions but not hearing any of the answers, of course.  She was beginning to fold over uncomfortably in the middle, and had to keep picking up her feet.

People with better ideas—and no Brisby family ties—were dashing the other way as quick as their furry little legs would take them.  No walking upright; they were headed for the exit on all fours—okay, so the kangaroo rats were jumping, but no one was wasting any time.

“Martin, mate!” one of them called on his way out.  “I’d hop the next train out!”

“I am the next train out,” Martin growled, his body bristling with clinging Brisbys and Tina (one nearly).

“Rrright.  Step it up, all the same!”  The kangaroo rat pelted pell-mell, back into the rush.

The crowd thinned out the closer Martin bore his squirming burden toward Fat Cat.  Thoughts of feeling like rats fleeing a sinking ship seemed too grim for humor, and no one was in a mood to stop and chat, with a chunk of C-4 and a ticking timer not far behind.

Sound also diminished—the power tools had been the first to go, with everyone putting down their work to come rubberneck at the trapped cat.  Now that word of the bomb had gotten out, an unwelcome silence dropped over the Assembly hall as all signs of life hightailed it to any handy exit.  Soon the only sound to be heard was a jaunty, eerily chipper whistling, echoing around the battered landscape.

 Everyone but Tina and Sophie soon recognized the tune as an off-key attempt at “Only The Good Die Young”.  They hoped it wasn’t true.

When the entourage finally reached the half-covered mound that was Fat Cat, he stopped whistling.  Teresa, still clutched in his paw, took her own paws away from her ears.

“Thank goodness,” she fumed.  “I thought my ears would start bleeding.”

“If I could carry a tune,” Fat Cat bristled, “I would have chosen a different line of work!  I would be thin and miserable, eating out of garbage cans,  but maybe I wouldn’t be stuck through with splinters,” he grimaced, twisting a bit.

Bits of metal and wood, sticking up from his blood-smeared back like a hedgehog’s spikes, made a clacking sound as they slapped together.  One or two of the longer ones were actually run through him and into the floor, though they were mercifully hidden by his bleeding bulk and layers of former ceiling.

Tina finally wrested herself away from Martin and stood on her own two feet.  She felt like a piece of luggage.  You okay?  she signed at Teresa.

“Yeah, fine.  Just be glad you guys missed ‘Stuck In The Middle With You’.”

After running so far for so long, with arms full of relatives, even Martin was out of breath enough to need a few lungfuls of air before starting in.  “FAT CAT!” he boomed (as well as even a big mouse can boom).  “I don’t know what you’re doing here, but let my wife go!”

Fat Cat nodded, but caught himself halfway.  With genuine confusion, he scowled and bunched his whiskers.  “Wife—um, well.  Unless the Brisby family tree has developed quite a loop, wouldn’t that be ‘sister’?”

Sophie spoke up angrily from Martin’s protective paws, her collection of flags rattling at him.  “Yeah, yeah, there’s a loop in our tree, and I’m the fruit!  Let her go!”

Fat Cat blinked twice.  “You look like a fruit loop.  Small, round, and colorful.  Bet you’d taste good in milk, too,” he smiled widely with his dagger teeth, and the mouse-girl retreated deeper into Martin’s grasp.  “I’m only kidding, child,” he reassured her, in a slightly wounded tone.

“Ahem—” coughed Teresa.

“Oh, yes, right—” Fat Cat remembered, and let her go with a shrug.  “I don’t think anyone is coming back with my drink of water, anyway.”

Teresa’s clothes were rumpled but not a hair on her was harmed.  She dashed to Martin, who didn’t have space for another Brisby.  He unloaded his remaining passengers to make room, then wrapped her up tight with a hug, and a long, relieved kiss on the lips.

“Now I’ve seen everything,” Timothy grimaced at the reunion, not relieved at all.  “Someone poke my eyes out.”

“Be nice, Timmy,” Tina threatened.

“I am touched!” exclaimed Fat Cat.  “I am positively run through with emotion.  Now get out.”

Martin shrugged.  “He’s got a point.  Let’s pack up this circus and split.”  Martin bent to hoist Timothy back onto his neck, but Timothy waved his arms in protest.

“Hold on!  We can’t just leave him here!  I mean, he didn’t hurt Teresa, so what’s going on?”

Fat Cat bared his teeth and snapped at the collection of mice, who didn’t have to pretend it frightened them.  “Shall I tell you a bedtime story, Mr. Brisby?  Do you all want to die with me, or run?  I would run.”  He extended his paw, taut with anger now, and raked the air above their heads as they cowered.

Timothy shook off his instinctive fear and leaned forward.  “You didn’t do this, did you?” He gestured widely at the destruction all around them.

“I prefer a nice surgical strike myself,” growled the cat, “and a plot with some finesse.  This—“ he rolled his eyes at the ruined Assembly hall, “is madness.  Waste.  HSSSS!!! And cowardice!”

“Okay, so he didn’t do it,” agreed Martin, “let’s go,” and snatched Timothy off the ground again.

“Put me down!” Timothy flared, pounding on his brother’s shoulder.  He twisted around, catching Martin off-balance and dragging him down.

“We’re all going to blow sky-high!” shrieked Tina.  “Please, please, Timmy, don’t make this difficult!”  Martin pinned Timothy to the ground and stopped his thrashing.

From under Martin’s bulk, Timothy looked sadly at Tina.  Something in his eyes made her heart leap into her throat.  “Honey,” he shook his head, “I’m not even started.”

Martin stood up, brushed plaster dust off his fur, and glared at Timothy.  “What are you playing at, Timothy?  You’re coming with us.”

“No, I’m not.  Martin—you know I wired my own house.  Even after the accident and my legs.  Remember back when Arthur used to corner us and drag us into his workshop?”

Martin blinked.  “Lord, yes.  Bored me to tears with his Ohms and volts, capacitors and resistors.  I could hardly put a battery in the right way.”

“Not me.  Remember?  I can strip down a radio in the dark and put it back together again, not that Arthur would let us talk on it.  I can do this, Martin.”

“You’re g-going to—” stammered Tina.

“Oh, but Timothy, if you’re wrong,” breathed Teresa.

“You and everyone else, get to safety.  No sense in risking all of us,” Timothy gritted his teeth.

“No, no, no!” shrieked Tina.  “Pick him up, get us out of here!”

“I really think you should leave,” rumbled Fat Cat.  “Live to fight another day, and all that folderol.”

“Timothy?” Martin waited.

 “Sorry, guys,” Timothy gulped.  “You’re going to have to trust me on this one.”

“I trust you, but you’re not staying here!” wailed Tina, who tried to pry him loose from his grip on the ground.

Martin hissed his steam-engine hiss again, veins sticking out of his neck in fury.  He settled Sophie around his neck, and picked up Tina and Teresa under either arm.  Tina did not go quietly, but Martin was persuasive in such matters, and pinned her under one arm until she quit wiggling and merely sobbed in place.

There was not much bend left in Martin, but he loomed over Timothy.  “How much time do you have?” he seethed.

“About five minutes, I should think,” Fat Cat chuckled.  “Just long enough to get in trouble.”

“I’ll be back in three,” Martin said through his teeth.  “Alone.  And whether that bomb is disarmed or not, I’m dragging you out.”

Timothy flopped onto his side and rolled closer to Fat Cat.  “Go, then!”

Martin bit his lip.  “Bro, if you screw this up, Mom is going to kill me.”

“I won’t,” said Timothy, wishing it were a promise.  Martin turned away and grimly stalked off with his charges, Tina starting up a fresh round of curses and threats.  She stopped suddenly and looked back at Timothy, more frightened than he’d ever seen her.

Until then, he hadn’t really been scared.  I love you, he signed at her, and she mouthed the word please.  The group dropped out of sight over the high edge of the “salad bowl” and were gone.

“Timothy, isn’t it?” Fat Cat reached out his paw and tweezered Timothy up.  He sat him down closer and rolled back, hissing with pain, to give the mouse a better look at the device, sticky with blood.

“This isn’t four sticks of dynamite taped to an alarm clock,” whistled Timothy.  He laid his paws on a piece of scrap wood and levered up the digital timer, just a bit, to look at the leads running into the block of plastic explosive.  “Someone had a bank account.”

“I’ll bet my bank account is still healthier than theirs, even after all the money I’ve thrown into this damn crusade.  Mind the switch,” growled Fat Cat.

“I can see it.  Don’t worry, it looks like there’s plenty of weight on it.”

“Tact must have skipped a generation with the Brisbys,” sniffed the cat.

Timothy flopped onto his side again to reach a glint of metal that caught his eye. “I’m not my mother.  She can run a small country, but she can’t do this.”  He unwadded a ball of aluminum foil, probably from some long-ago baked potato in an upstairs lunchroom.  He mashed it into a long crinkly rod and tucked it in around the bases of the leads.

“I can’t see much of that, but it looks dangerous,” Fat Cat twisted around.

“Be still!”  ordered Timothy, sudden sweat stinging his eyes.  Oh, Tina, let this be the right thing to do— He put his paws around the leads and aluminum foil, prayed, and yanked both at the same time.

A breath.

He and the cat did not fly into a million bits.

The timer ticked away happily, connected to nothing at all.  Fat Cat gasped as Timothy pitched it away and wiped his bloody paws on his shirt.

Fat Cat nearly melted with relief.  “Well!  A small set of paws can sometimes come in handy.  That’s the timer—now, what about this damnable thing?”  Fat Cat inched his body back a bit more to reveal the dead man’s switch, careful not to take too much weight off it.

Timothy leaned closer to get a better look—and froze.  Tick tick tick tick…

“The timer’s dead.  What the hell is that?” Timothy lay his head down ever so gently against the block of explosive, and heard a faint electrical hum and click.  His whiskers went limp.  “It’s a secondary…” he whispered.  He poked at the explosive gingerly, felt a patch that was not the same.

Retrieving his scrap of wood, he gingerly scraped a little of the explosive away, baring the edge of another digital readout, thinner and blinking digits.  “They hid it inside!” Timothy tore at his whiskers, with just a touch of admiration.

“Nice trick,” nodded Fat Cat.  “How much time?”

“It’s not set for seconds.  Counting down fast though!”  Numbers shrank, flitting by in mad flashes.  “Maybe thirty seconds!”

“Get behind something,” sighed Fat Cat.  Timothy scraped at the edge of the timer.  “Behind something, you damaged little nitwit!” Fat Cat snagged Timothy, protesting as he dangled from the massive paw and dropped his makeshift tool.

“Now,” Fat Cat continued, giving him a shake, and glad to have a more familiar command of the situation. “Will it hurt you any worse if I throw you?”

Timothy pushed ineffectively at Fat Cat’s paw, trying to get his arms free.  “Look at my legs!  They can’t get much worse.  Don’t do it, though!  I can still stop this!”

“Not in fifteen seconds,” Fat Cat bristled.  “Have a nice flight,” and with that, he drew back his paw and flung the startled mouse over a pile of debris.  Just barely out of sight.  And too close.

“Aughhh!” cried the unseen Timothy.  “I kicked myself in the head!”

“Count your blessings!” Fat Cat called after him.  He looked down at the blinking timer with its shrinking row of red numbers, hardly able to get a glance at it for his sheer size.  And all your money won’t another minute buy, a snippet of an old song suddenly sprang into his head.

“What do they take me for?” Fat Cat sneered in disgust.  “Only poor people wait in line!  I will not have my schedule dictated by some preposterous machine!” he thundered imperiously. 

“Don’t do anything stupid!” moaned Timothy.

“A grand exit is never stupid, Mister Brisby,” he purred.

And rolled over.

Button images by Keith Elder