Chapter Forty-Five
Turner watched Gadget carefully as she surveyed the mess. Her anger had faded to disappointment by now, and Turner was sure she’d blame him.
Turner had kidnapped Gadget and Devin (though it wasn’t as though he had any choice at the time). He had dragged them off unconscious through a labyrinth of tunnels to his own hideout, and now that they were ambulatory again, one had a mangled wrist and the other was so pregnant that she rolled around like a drunken sailor until she’d built up speed. And now this.
“Soooo….” ventured Devin. That pretty much said it, but he went blithely on with the obvious. “They’re not at home, then.”
The Commander and the twenty-or-so guard rats he usually surrounded himself with were most definitely out to lunch. Not that they would have needed to go far for a bite to eat—there were piles of fruit and well-gnawed chunks of hardening cheese on the rough makeshift tables, bread from fresh to rock-hard stale. No gourmands, these—a bite of this, a bite of that, and leave the rest on the floor.
There was the occasional twisted fork or bent spoon mixed in with the refuse. They’d taken the knives when they left.
“Turner?” breathed Gadget.
Here it comes, Turner winced. “Gadget, I’m so sorry, I was sure your father would be here—”
Gadget furrowed her brow. “You couldn’t have known. It’s not your fault.”
Turner visibly relaxed. “Thank you, Gadget. All the same, I feel stupid. The Commander really has left me out of the loop, if he can pull out an evacuation like this when I let him out of my sight for a few hours.”
“Maybe they just decided it was time for a move,” Devin offered hopefully. “Aren’t there other places they use sometimes?”
“Nowhere like this,” Turner shook his head. “You saw how difficult it would be to get in here if the place were defended properly.”
Gadget nodded distractedly.
Narrow entryway, multiple locked
doors and barred gates, plenty of high ledges with recesses where defenders
could throw rocks down—no shortage of those in the caves… “But they left it
all unlocked. Not a soul left behind,
not even a boobytrap for unwelcome guests.” Oh,
Daddy, where have they taken you now?
“It gives me the willies,” Devin grumbled. “It’s like The
Pirates of the
Turner frowned. “You
mean it’s like the
“Ha, ha. Very funny. You know what I mean. Why would they give the place up?”
“Well,” Turner scratched his head, “That I can only guess at. This was the Commander’s inner sanctum. He didn’t even trust me to be here for more than a few minutes at a time.” Turner flexed his paw, feeling an old, deep pain in it. “And he usually only brought me here for punishment.”
“But this is where you talked to my father.” Gadget started walking the perimeter of the room, tapping on walls. “How did you manage that?”
Turner chuckled. “The
Commander had me play messenger boy. I
told Geegaw when his services were required on a new
project. Most times the Commander wouldn’t
risk a trip down to the pit by himself, after Geegaw
attacked one of the guards.”
“They kept my father down in a pit?” Gadget stopped tapping. “I figured they’d keep him somewhere isolated, but that must have been awful!”
Turner nodded. “A workbench, a flea-ridden old mattress, and shackles. Not the epitome of interior design.”
“Show me,” growled Gadget, sparks flashing in her eyes. “Show me where they kept him.”
“You can’t keep this up!” Devin hollered down the hole at her. “I’m the guy! I’m supposed to go down and check for spiders first!”
“Pshaw,” Gadget shot back from below. “Not with one mangled paw and still fuzzy from that Demerol, you’re not!”
“I’ve been pshawed,” a crestfallen Devin looked to Turner, who nodded curtly.
“Probably the first case in decades,” Turner confirmed. “You could write it up for a medical journal, I bet.” Turner was holding open the cover to the pit—it was springloaded, for some reason only known to the Commander, and in lesser paws would have slammed back shut with great force.
Down deep in the pit, on a packing crate by the ladder, a lantern flickered and jumped. Or jumpered and flicked. Either way, it was as much light as had ever shone down in that sad, cramped place. The only thing comforting about it for Gadget was that it smelled undeniably like Geegaw.
Sweat, singed fur, hot metal and five kinds of oil—that combination of smells was absolutely punched into the walls down here, and Gadget knew no better description of “father”. It was as though he’d just left the room.
The tools were crude but serviceable, a child’s playset in comparison to Geegaw’s workshop back at the hangar where the other Rescue Rangers had found Gadget. Back in the real world, as Gadget was beginning to think of it. Gadget picked up a well-worn hammer with a little difficulty—not too heavy, just too thick in the handle, like most of the collection. A few items still had a little shine on them, though, and a familiar touch…
“I’ll be damned,” her voice rose up out of the pit. “These are some of the tools I lost in the fire at Timmy and Tina’s!”
Turner sat hunched like a boulder about to roll into the pit after Gadget. Holding the cover open looked like a real job, even for him, as sweat was beginning to build on his brow. It’s a real mind-bender watching something his size when it’s perching, Devin shook his head. “I guess a few of your crew decided to do a little looting and pillaging along the way, eh, Turner?”
“I’m surprised… any of them had the brains,” Turner grunted. “If they picked up anything useful, it was like a magpie picking up tinfoil.”
“I can’t believe my father could work under these
conditions!” Gadget’s voice came up again.
“The light down here is terrible!”
“Sorry to spring it on you, Gadget,” Turner called down to her. “He mostly worked by touch. They kept the cover chained down day and night.”
“What?” came Gadget’s distracted reply. “Sorry, working something loose down here.”
“I SAID,” Turner overcompensated, “BY TOUCH! I DON’T KNOW IF IT WAS JUST THE DARK, BUT I THINK HE MIGHT HAVE BEEN BLIND!”
“Shh!” Gadget cautioned him, popping up out of the dark, gripping the ladder tightly with one paw and a folded scrap of paper in the other. “You’ll wake up those bats we saw on the way in.”
“They mostly mind their own business,” Turner reassured her.
“Gadget’s got a point,” Devin chuckled nervously. “Out of common courtesy, I never like to wake up anyone who works the night shift.”
“You shifted a few things in the night I didn’t even remember I had, Devin,” chuckled Gadget. “Oops. Too much info. But Turner, you’re sure my father wasn’t seeing well?”
Turner flashed his razor-point dental oddities. “He always called me ‘handsome young fellow’ when I’d come to visit,” he offered.
“Definitely blind,” nodded Devin.
“Funny thing he held onto this so long, then, it’s an old photo. Stuck under the workbench-- guess it was one piece of home. There’s nothing else personal of his down in the pit.”
“Come out of there and we’ll have a look,” growled Turner. “Right now I’ve held this damn cover open long enough.” Devin extended his good paw and pulled Gadget up over the lip of the pit. They stood free as Turner let go and hopped back—the cover slammed shut with force that could have crushed bone.
“Stupid thing,” Turner rubbed his biceps. “It had a lock on it, why the springs? Ah, forget it. Show us your picture, Gadget.”
Gadget unfolded the tattered photograph on the now-closed pit cover, as they all leaned over it.
“That’s you, isn’t it? No mistake--” Devin ran a pawpad over the faded image of a young mouse-girl in overalls, clinging to the knees of a scruffily handsome, taller mouse. “Must be Geegaw…” The Gadget-from-long-ago was pointing up (way, way up for her) at the wing of a two-seater airplane. Another mouse in a flight jacket was stepping from the wing into a seat—already working on a respectable cheese gut, it was Monterey Jack himself.
“Monty popped a rivet on the wing getting in. They nearly crashed--Dad listened to me better from then on. I did try to warn them.” Gadget cocked her head to one side and ‘hmm’ed. “That’s strange,” she brushed at the picture.
“What’s strange?” rumbled Turner.
“The rivets. Somehow he’s punched little dots on the picture, it makes it look like the rivets on the plane are standing out—”
“They don’t match the real rivets,” Devin scratched his
head. “But I – hey, wait—” He put his pawpad down to the photo again and slowly dragged it
across. ”Braille! It says THORN VALLEY DANGER. TELL THEM LOOK UP. IF CAN
READ THIS, ABOUT FIFTEEN SECONDS…” Devin trailed off. “Fifteen seconds until what?”
Somewhere in the distance, but still too close, something began to groan and creak. Three sets of ears perked up, three heads swiveled around at the sound. A grinding, cracking, approaching kind of sound.
“Run,” Gadget said. “RUN!!!”
Button images by Keith Elder