Читать книгу The Ghosts of Rabbits Past - John R. Erickson - Страница 7
ОглавлениеChapter Two: Something Big and Hairy
The first reports were sketchy, but we had reason to think that a force of Hoodian Voles had overrun ranch headquarters and captured the barn and chicken house. I had never gone up against a Hoodian Vole, but our intelligence units had warned us that they were more dangerous than skeletons, ghosts, or monsters.
We responded in a professional manner and dived into our bunkers, the heavily fortified areas beneath our gunny sack beds. Once there, we closed the hatches and waited for something to happen. In the deadly silence, we heard a burst of high-pitched screeching and cackling.
Pretty scary, huh? You bet. Hey, I’m no chicken liver and over the course of my career, I’d heard some creepy sounds, but this! It was goose-bump creepy. For several moments, we listened as the sounds changed from hideous cackles into howls.
Drover was the first to speak. “You know what? That sounds like coyotes.”
“Don’t be absurd. Coyotes never come up this close to the house. And besides, your report stated that you saw twenty-five…whatever you called them.”
“Hoodian Voles?”
“Exactly. Follow the trail of logic. If you witnessed an invasion of Hoodian Voles, that’s what we’re hearing.”
“Yeah, but sometimes my eyes play tricks.”
I glared at him in the darkness of the bunker. Actually, it was so dark in there, I couldn’t see him, but I glared anyway. “Drover, is it possible that you turned in a garbled report?”
“I’d hate to put it that way.”
“How would you put it?”
“Well, it was dark…and I was scared and half-asleep…and I thought I saw something, but maybe there weren’t twenty-five of them.”
“All right, maybe you miscounted. How many did you see?”
“Maybe five or three or only one. Or maybe I didn’t see anything.”
I was stunned. “Drover, the first thing we need to clear up is…what exactly is a Hoodian Vole?”
“I don’t know. It just popped into my head.”
“It just popped…DID YOU SEE ANYTHING OR NOT?”
I heard him sniffling in the darkness. “No.”
“Then why did you…I can’t believe this!”
“I wanted to do something important. I thought you’d be proud of me.”
“Proud! Do you realize the full impact of your bungling?”
“Yeah, I’m a failure.”
“No, it’s worse than that. You’ve made the entire Security Division look like…I don’t know what. An outside observer would probably think this ranch is being run by monkeys.”
“I’m sorry. I want to go home!”
“You are home.”
“Then I want to go homer!”
“Stop blubbering. Once you’ve spilled the milk, it’s too late to feed the horses.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. I’m babbling, you’re babbling, the Security Division is in shambles…” I had to give myself a minute to absorb all of this. “All right, Drover, listen carefully. We must form a plan and stick with it. Number one, no more behaving like monkeys.”
“I wish I had a banana.”
“What?”
“I said, I’ll try.”
“Good. Number two, we will leave the bunkers. Number three, once we’re outside, I don’t know what we’ll do, but we’ll do something. Are you ready?”
“I guess.”
“All right, stand by to put our plan into action. On my mark, we will leave the bunkers. Three, two, one, exit bunkers!”
We climbed out of the bunkers and found ourselves…well, in our office under the gas tanks. I lifted Earatory Scanners and did a sweep for sounds. I heard two crickets and an owl, but nothing that suggested skeletons, coyotes, or those other things. Hooligan Moles.
“Drover, the radar is clear, not a sound out there. Is it possible…do you suppose we dreamed all of this?”
“I sure thought I heard something scary.”
“Right, and you thought you saw twenty-five Hooligan Moles, then admitted that you saw nothing. In the middle of the night, we can’t trust your reports.”
“Gosh, what’ll we do?”
“We need some boots-on-the-ground reconnaissance.”
“Boy, that’s a big word.”
“Any volunteers for a scout patrol?”
“I don’t think I could even spell it.”
“Spell what?”
“That word you just said.”
“It’s easy. S-C-O-U-T.”
“No, the other word.”
“P-A-T-R-O-L.”
“No, the other one, the big one.”
I stuck my nose in his face. “Life is not a spelling bee and we have serious work to do. We’re looking for volunteers to make a scout patrol.” Silence. Drover’s eyes avoided my steely gaze. “The payoff could be huge: stripes, medals, stars, bars, certificates, promotions, double dog food…you name it. We’re talking about hitting the jackpot.”
“I think I’ll pass.”
“Drover, in this time of crisis, the ranch needs us.”
“You’ll go too?”
“Huh? Well, I…someone needs to stay here to coordinate the mission.”
“Yeah, that’s for me.”
“That’s not for you!” I paced a few steps away and tried to control the swirl of my thoughts. “All right, you little slacker, I’ll go too, but you have to promise me one thing.”
“Okay, I promise.”
“I haven’t said it yet.”
“Oh, sorry.”
I marched back and glared down into his face. “Promise you won’t take off running and hide in the machine shed.”
His eyes grew round with surprise. “How’d you know that’s what I was going to do?”
“Because I know you. Because you do it all the time.”
He grinned. “Gosh, I thought I was being sneaky.”
“You’re not smart enough to be sneaky, and besides, you’re doing business with the Head of Ranch Sneakurity. I’ve seen it all, son. Now, promise on your Solemn Cowdog Oath that you won’t run off and hide in the machine shed.”
He stood up straight and raised his right front paw. “I promise NOT to NOT run off and hide in the machine shed.”
“Good. It’s done. Let’s move out.”
We grabbed weapons and ammo belts, left the barracks, and marched off to the northeast, the direction from which the horrible sounds had come…if we’d actually heard any horrible sounds. Let’s be honest. Things get confusing when we’re jerked back and forth, from asleep to alert. Add Drover to the mix and you get something close to sheer chaos.
Remember what he’d said about loading the kitchen sink into a lifeboat? It was all crazy nonsense, but that’s the kind of mess I have to deal with every day. Sometimes I can laugh about this stuff, but…well, remember the Wise Old Saying?
“Once in a while, it really matters that everyone on the team has the same grasp of reality.”
That’s a very wise Wise Old Saying, and you probably ought to write it down.
So there we were, marching through darkness, on a mission to gather reconnaissance about whatever had interrupted our sleep. By the time we arrived at the yard gate, we had seen nothing suspicious, and I had pretty muchly decided that we had dreamed the entire episode.
That’s when I ran into something in the dark, something that shouldn’t have been there. I reached for the radio. “Cottage Cheese, this is Chainsaw. We’ve encountered something in the dark. Description: large and hairy. What is your location? Over.”
The radio crackled, then I heard a faint reply. “I’m outa here!”
“Cottage Cheese? Repeat that, over.” The radio went silent. “Drover? I need your coordinates at once. Drover?”
Dead silence. My mind was tumbling. Was it possible that the little sneak had…wait a second! Remember Drover’s Solemn Pledge? I hit the replay button and listened to it again.
“I promise NOT to NOT run off and hide in the machine shed.”
Do you see the meaning of this? Let’s go to the blackboard and write down the equation.
Not + Not = 0.
Do you get it now? Two nots cancel each other out. Remove the knots from a knot hole and you get empty space. Remove the nots from Drover’s so-called pledge and you get, “I promise to run off and hide in the machine shed.”
Are you shocked? I was. Maybe I should have expected some kind of treachery, but old, trusting Hank had gotten himself blind-sided. The magnitude of Drover’s corruption left me dizzy and speechless, and don’t tell me that I should have been listening more carefullier. Care-full-lee-er. More careful. Don’t tell me that I should have…phooey.
Hey, I knew what he was supposed to say, and he knew what he was supposed to say, only he used a cheap trick and didn’t say it. Before my very eyes and ears, he promised on his Cowdog Oath to run off to the machine shed and hide. And then he did it!
How did that make me look?
Oh brother. Sometimes I’m overwhelmed by the wickedness of this world—lies, cheating, dirty tricks, friend against friend, comrade against comrade. It almost broke my heart.
But I had bigger problems than a broken heart. If you recall, I had walked into something big and hairy in the darkness…and I wasn’t anxious to find out what it might be.
