Alone

Wow! People sure are easy to distract… and to freak out. All I have to do is run around in their general direction, and they holler and scream and hop around as if someone’s given them the hot foot.

Suddenly, I'm a lot more interesting than the light show in the garden.

They chase me out of the garden, across the pavement, and into the street. I cross the path of a horse-drawn carriage. The horse, a whacking great beast with wild eyes, sees me and starts neighing and rearing. A lady inside the carriage screams. My pursuers stop to calm the horse and soothe the hysterical lady.

Great cheesy pizzas! You’d think I was a cat or something the way they carry on.

I keep running until I reach the other side of the street. I slowly climb onto the pavement, exhausted, and drag myself into the space between a pair of tall buildings. I see lanterns on poles standing here and there down the length of it. They emit a soft, pale green light in the evening darkness.

“Glowworms,” I sigh in relief. “A rodentway. Hallelujah!”

I stumble along until I come to a doorway set between a pair of bricks in the foundation of one of the buildings. I pull myself wearily onto the stoop and collapse.

A Big Problem

boom  boom boom

More scary sounds. They get louder and louder. The ground beneath me starts to quake.

"Oh, kitty litter. Now what?" I look around at the rats. "Chaps..."

But they're not there. I'm alone.

Behind me, I hear voices. They're BIG. I swallow hard to get the heart out of my throat and turn.

Huge tweedy, wooly tree trunks with leather root systems are closing in on me fast.

"Yikes! People!"

I bet they caught our light show in the garden and are coming to investigate.

Time to hit the ground feral (four-footed, that is) and run away... like a mouse is "supposed" to!

In a Cloud of Smoke

"I'm not going anywhere else with you!" I snarl at the tollbooth. I pick self and tail up and push through what's left of the opening.

"Comin' through!" a voice roars behind me.

I turn. Somehow Blue Vinny manages to squeeze through as well. Drat!

Right behind him lumbers Hudson, Cheshire on his back and screaming. As Vinny and I watch, Hudson (the half rat-half machine... an undergraduate's bionics project) slams a big metal foot between the door and the jam, grabs both, and starts pushing them apart.

The tollbooth objects. More smoke, more sparks, trembling and quaking, and lots of high-pitched squealing fill the air.

"Hudson, get outta there! It's gonna blow!" Blue Vinny shouts.

The metal rat pulls himself and Cheshire through. The moment he does--


Clang!


--the door slams shut and--


Poof!


--the tollbooth vanishes in a metallic cloud and a shower of glittering silver confetti.

Trapped!

Wrong! This is not Disneyland... unless they added "Death by Maniac Rat Adventure" to the Magic Kingdom's list of attractions.

My back's to the glass wall. No where to run. Blue Vinny, Cheshire, and Hudson look right out of "spin" cycle in the Maytag. They are miffed and dangerous.

Me... I'm about to become a chalk outline on the control console.

"You guys want to get back to the lab, right?" I squeak before they get busy.

They freeze in a tableau of raised claws and bared fangs. Their goggling eyes glom the tidy, well-ordered world beyond the toll booth.  Their flummoxed faces show they get the point: We're not in Professor Zacchaeus' laboratory any more!

Thawing, Blue Vinny growls, "What'd you do?"

Like it's my fault. Sheesh!

"Don't know. Let me find out!"

Before he grabs me,  I leg it to the big screen and keyboard.

I step on the space bar to wake the on-board computer. (How anything could sleep through all that, I don't know!) More scary numbers pop up on the screen, again counting down to something. Whatever it is, it's 30 seconds away. Another set of numbers shows what looks like a date 30 days from today and a time: 12:00.

The toll booth begins to shake and spark and smoke. The blinky lights start up again. A glass door slides open all by itself.

"That's it. I'm out of here!"

I run off the console, jump onto the chair in front of it, and shimmy down its dangling seatbelt to the floor below.

The door starts to close. I run for it. Almost there, I trip. The door passes in front of my nose.

Another second, and I'm trapped.