by Chris Coppel
Suddenly Angel appeared, out of breath but laughing madly! “Looks like I beat you lot doesn’t it,” she managed to cry between gasps and laughs, “There’s a regular stairway right next to this one. You should have followed me!
“Why?” Lucy asked in a calm and superior voice as she hopped off the steps and moved clear to allow room for the others. “I believe I quite enjoyed the experience, and if I may point out, I didn’t have to lift a paw . . . unlike yourself.”
Angel simply glared playfully back at Lucy as she tried to control her panting. The others made it to bottom, and by their expressions, were obviously relieved to be clear of the strange metal-stepped contraption.
“Oh no!” Rex shouted suddenly, as he pointed his muzzle up the moving steps. Fat Man and Champ were just getting on the top stair. Unlike the others, they didn’t simply stand still allowing the stairs to do all the work. They began walking as well, giving them extra speed in their descent.
“I have an idea,” Lester stated calmly.
The others all turned to him with urgent expressions.
“These buttons,” he said, pointing to a pair of large, and important looking knobs located at the base of the stairs.
“What are they?” Rex asked anxiously.
“I don’t know but it says ‘start’ on one and ‘stop’ on the other,” Lester responded. “and something about a fine, though I have no idea what that is.”
“Stop . . .? It says stop. I think we all know what that means,” Hans said. “Humans are always saying that word to us.”
“It’s about time we used it back then, isn’t it,” Lester grinned mischievously, as he reached up with his front paws and hit the red button marked ‘stop’.
The result was far better than they could have hoped for. The moving stairway immediately stopped moving with a jolt. Their two adversaries were about halfway down the flight when Lester hit the button, and without advanced warning, they were taken completely unawares. Both man and dog sailed forward and began tumbling down the metal steps in a confusion of limbs and curses.
Though wishing they could stay and observe the results of their deed, the dogs realised that the opportunity was far better used for their own escape rather than for simple amusement. They turned and dashed down a narrow-tiled corridor that loudly echoed their every sound as they galloped along at full speed.
They had gone only a short distance when they came to a split in the tunnel. It branched off in two separate directions. On a wall in front of them were two odd tree-like drawings, each different, and each with an arrow pointing down their respective branch of the corridor.
They all turned to Lester.
“Well?” asked Angel in a somewhat nervous voice. “What do they say?”
“It looks like names of places,” he responded as he tried to read the strange signs. “This way says Gre . . . Green . . . Pa . . . Par . . . Park . . . then . . . Pic . . . Picca . . . Picca . . . Piccadilly something.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Angel snapped impatiently. “What does all that nonsense mean? What about the other way? Where does that go?”
“South Ke…Ken…Kensing . . . ton and Glo . . . Glouc . . . Glouces . . .”
“This is ridiculous; we don’t know what any of these places mean. They could be . . . ”
“Angel, let him read. He’s trying to help,” Lucy said in a stern voice, trying to calm the anxious Spaniel. “Lester go on. Do you see anything that might help us?”
The Doberman kept on reading, but the others could now hear the unmistakable sounds of Fat Man and Champ as they neared. They were moaning loudly somewhere down the corridor and were moving towards them.
“As quick as you can,” Rex added, with feigned calmness.
“Sai . . . Saint . . . Paul! We can get to a Saint from here!” Lester announced excitedly.
“Is that good?” Hans asked, innocently.
“Saints are always good,” he stated, assuredly. “They are the best of bipeds that even the humans look up to.”
“And this . . . St. Paul, he can help us?” Rex asked, urgently.
“Who said anything about it being a he?” Angel interjected.
“Whatever . . . he or she,” Lucy interrupted, trying to calm the others. “Do you really think this St. Paul could help?”
“I think it’s worth a try,” Lester replied.
“Good enough for me,” announced Rex. “Let’s go!”
He began to lead the others, then stopped suddenly.
“Lester!” he called. “Which way?”
“To the right! The sign says to the right,” Lester replied as he pointed his muzzle down the appropriate corridor.
“Right,” Rex commanded. “Follow me.” he began leading the group down the correct passageway and to yet another flight of steps. This time they were unmoving, and the dogs descended with ease. They turned and exited into a large, rounded chamber on which were posted huge pictures depicting humans performing various actions. In one, they drank liquid. In another, spoke into the hand-held plastic things. They rode horses, drove vehicles . . . they were strange illustrations! In each one the bipeds looked beyond ecstatic even while carrying out the most basic of chores.
What struck Lucy as most odd within the chamber, was the fact that the stone floor only covered half of the ground. The other half was far lower, filthy dirty, and contained three strips of oily metal that ran the entire length of the room then vanished at either end into dark tunnels.
“Stop! You mangy mutts,” Fat Man screamed from behind them.
The dogs burst into a frenzied charge along the slippery floor of the chamber as Fat Man, now limping slightly, and Champ, raced after them.
They covered the distance quickly as they headed for another exit at the far end. As they neared it, they saw with heart-stopping realisation that it was shut off with a heavy metal gate. They turned and looked back down the room.
Fat Man and the Boxer stopped running. They knew they had them cornered. Both man and dog shared an evil smile, as the pair stepped towards the cowering group.
“I can take them!” shouted Hans.
“He’s right, between us we can stop them!” Lester said in agreement.
Fat Man reached into his dirty leather jacket and removed a nasty looking knife of sizeable proportion.
“It’s too risky,” Rex stated with resignation. “We’ve got to find some other way . . . ”
“There is only one other way,” Lucy interrupted as she leaned over the edge of the upper concrete level and stared down at the filth between the metal strips. She gave the others a resigned nod then jumped off the edge.
CHAPTER 24
“Lucy!” Rex cried in horror.
“Yes,” she responded, calmly.
Rex moved to the edge and saw that she was standing between the metal strips smiling back up at him.
“I can’t believe you did that,” he began to scold. “Do you realise . . . ”
“Do you realise that if you don’t shut up and get down here with me, I’m going to have to rescue all of you; again?” Lucy grinned up at the others.
Rex turned and saw that Fat Man, and Champ were closing in fast. “I’ll hold them off while you lot get down there with Lucy,” he instructed.
“Excuse me,” Angel said, as she looked over the precipice with an expression of great disdain. “You’re not thinking that I’m going to go down there, are you?”
“It’s your choice, Angel, but I think that Fat Man plans to make you into a coat,” Lucy replied.
Rex moved towards the approaching pair and began to growl viciously as he lowered his body close to the ground, ready to pounce should the need arise. He turned back briefly to the others and in a booming voice filled with authority, yelled, “Jump!”
Hans and Lester got on either side of Angel and coaxed h
er over the edge. Because of her size, the drop was far more substantial for her. She had to ease herself over, keeping her backside on the upper level for as long as gravity would allow. Complaining all the way, she finally released her hind legs and dropped to the lower ground.
“Yuck!” She exclaimed. “It’s filthy down here.”
“I told you,” Lucy said, smiling at her friend’s attempt to not let her dainty feet make contact with the dirty surface.
Hans and Lester leapt and landed next to Lucy with loud grunts, as their breath was literally bounced out of their bodies. They all then turned to face up to the ledge, waiting for Rex to make his move.
They saw his rear first. He was backing away from his two adversaries - keeping them in his sight at all times. His posterior reached the edge and seemed to hang over it for a moment.
“Jump, come on Rex,” Hans called up to him.
The others all joined in the chorus of encouragements until finally, feeling the time was right, Rex spun around and leapt just as Fat Man dived at him. The biped missed by only a few paws and found himself lying flat on his sizeable stomach with his head leaning out over the precipice. His fleshy features were drawn into any angry mask as he stared down at the five dogs. Not wishing to be left out, the Boxer lowered himself next to the human as he too leant over the edge and glared at the escapees.
“We’d love to stay,” Lucy said coyly. “But we have another commitment. I am sorry!”
She gave the pair of angry faces a happy grin and tongue-pant then, with tail raised high, proceeded to move towards the nearest tunnel.
The others joined her, and keeping close together, entered the dark confines of the tunnel’s mouth.
“Do you know where you’re going?” Rex whispered in her ear.
“Not a clue!” she whispered back. “My feeling is that St. Paul’s is either somewhere down this tunnel or the other one. That gives us an even chance of being right.”
Rex nodded his agreement but clearly wasn’t that happy with the odds.
“I don’t believe it,” Lester said, incredulously. “Look!”
They turned to see what he was referring to and saw to their utter amazement that back along their path, in the brightly lit chamber, Fat Man was edging his large rump over the ledge and onto the lower ground. As they watched, the Boxer leapt down to join him as the two resumed their pursuit of the dogs.
“I’ll give him this,” Rex said. “He may be a biped, but he sure acts like a bloodhound!”
The others nodded then began to move faster along the dark interior of the tunnel.
Lucy was not happy with the current circumstances. Here they were, deep underground, running inside a pitch-black tunnel stepping on, well she had no idea what they were stepping on, but thought it best that it remain a mystery. Meanwhile, they were being chased by a pair of truly despicable characters, who appeared intent on causing them great harm. Lucy had been taught both by her mother, and then by her Man, that life gave you back almost exactly what you put into it. She’d never quite understood the part about proportions, but she understood and believed fully in the principle.
She knew that if she assisted, say a young bird who’d fallen from its nest, it was almost certain that some good occurrence would befall her soon afterwards. The reverse also applied. If she’d say, been greedy and buried her favourite toy so that her man couldn’t find it, odds were that when she attempted to retrieve it, it would either be impossible to find, or so grimy and misshapen that she’d no longer even be interested in it.
The basic rule was very simple; do good to get good. Which was why she couldn’t for the life of her understand why she was being forced to flee from a fellow canine and an overfed biped to whom, far from doing harm, she’d only met a few days earlier. She tried to think of what possible infraction of the moral code she could possibly have broken but could see none. She’d been minding her own business, lying in front of the cottage, napping contentedly, when the bipeds had given her the drugged meat.
“The meat!” Lucy cried out loud.
“What meat?” Angel asked anxiously.
“Nothing. Sorry! I was just thinking.”
“Sounds like nice thoughts,” Rex added with amusement.
The meat; of course. That day at the cottage, she’d had a proper meal only hours earlier. She hadn’t really been hungry at all. But the moment she saw that steak, she’d been drawn solely by greed. That was it. This whole thing was a punishment for being greedy!
No! That wasn’t it. She argued back with herself. That simply didn’t work. Firstly, say she had been mildly greedy. It had happened before, the appropriate bad reaction would have been a scolding from Cook, a sour stomach, or even having to bring up her food in an embarrassing display of overindulgence. Secondly, if she had been bad, then the reaction would be focused on her alone, not on all these other animals. No this was something else entirely.
She started to form just the haziest outline of a thought about how maybe bad things could sometimes happen to you even if you didn’t deserve them, when her thinking process was interrupted by the sudden halting of the others.
“What is it?” she whispered.
The others stood stock still, hardly moving even their tails. She was about to ask the question again when she sensed it. They were not alone. This had nothing to do with their pursuers. This was a sense of being surrounded by something very foreign and very unpleasant.
Suddenly a pair of small, yellow eyes lit up only a couple of paws from them. They were off to the side, halfway up the tunnel wall.
As the nervous dogs edged further along the dark tunnel to get away from the following eyes, another pair lit up, then another, then, almost instantly, the tunnel was filled with hundreds of pairs of small, piercing, yellow eyes all staring right back at them.
The dogs moved closer together as they tried to focus their own eyes on their observers.
“What are they?” Angel whispered in a small and very frightened voice.
“Rats,” Rex stated. “Nasty things. I had many a run in with them on night security.”
“What are they?” Lucy asked, trying to keep the cold fear from her voice.
“You’ve seen mice, right?” Rex said, with a controlled and level tone. “Well imagine a mouse the size of a cat, with the temperament of a rabid dog and you’ve got a rat.”
“Oh my,” Angel said, snuggling close to Hans and Lester.
“Stop talking nonsense,” said a whining, high-pitched voice from the gloom. “We’re not that bad.”
“Yes, you are,” Rex said back to the tunnel wall.
“Are not,” replied a chorus of whining, high-pitched voices that surrounded the entire group, causing the hair on their backs to rise involuntarily.
“Excuse me,” Lucy tried to sound as casual as she could. “If I may interject here, if you’re not bad . . . ”
“We’re not!” The lead rat announced. “We’re simply misunderstood.”
“Really!” She continued, “Then why do you hide yourselves down here in this filth and darkness waiting to sneak up on unsuspecting individuals, frightening them half to death?”
“Who’s sneaking? We haven’t moved an inch. You lot walked up to us, and as for the filth and darkness remark, how would you like it if I turned up at your home unannounced, then criticised your housekeeping?”
Lucy tried to think of a good answer but couldn’t. The lead rat had a point.
“I apologise for my comment, it was uncalled for,” Lucy said as she tried to make out even the slightest shape within the sheer blackness of the tunnel wall. “You know it’s very difficult to carry on a conversation with someone you can’t see.”
“So?” replied the rat.
“So, I was wondering if we couldn’t have some light of some sort,” Lucy requested.
“We will,”
the rat said smugly. “Very soon in fact.”
Even as the rodent spoke, the dogs felt the beginnings of a warm draft of air move over them as they stood squinting in the darkness. They listened carefully for a moment, thinking that they’d heard an unusual sound in the distance. All they could hear however, was the loud panting of the fat man as he and the Boxer moved towards them, still some distance sway.
“Are they with you?” the lead rat asked.
“Not really,” Lucy said to the wall. “They happen to be trying to catch . . . look it’s bad enough that I can’t see you, but I don’t even know your name!”
“My what?” the whiney voice snapped back.
“Your name . . . you know . . . what they call you!”
“What does who call me?” he asked, clearly confused by her line of questioning.
“The other rats!” Lucy tried to remain patient. “When they talk to you, they must call you something.”
“Why?”
“Because they must! Everybody does!”
“I’m terribly sorry,” the rat said, actually sounding quite apologetic. “But I’m not following you at all. When a rat speaks to me, they look at me and speak. That’s it! What more is there?”
“Names! That’s what’s more. You have to have names otherwise you can’t identify yourselves,” Lucy insisted.
“What nonsense!” he said, with a nasty, little whining laugh. “We always know who we’re talking to or about. Why would we want to confuse everything with . . . what was it you said . . . names?”
“Look,” Lucy said with great patience. “I don’t think you’re . . . ”
“It’s quite simple, “Rex interrupted, with a definite edge to his voice. “My name is Rex, hers is Lucy, though we call her Goldie, that’s Angel, Hans, and the darker shadow at the end is Lester . . . That’s odd! Why am I able to see more clearly? I’m certain it was darker a moment ago.”
“It’s expected. Don’t worry.” The rat answered calmly. “You may want to lie down though.”
“I beg your pardon?” Rex asked, in astonishment.
“You don’t have to,” the rat continued. “I mean it’s up to you, but I really do suggest you lie down.”