Strange Tails

Michel’s skateboard rolled into the cavernous laboratory at the heart of the Silence. The others followed, and soon a thought struck Squirrel: though this was the third time he’d visited the large central rotunda, no one ever seemed to be working in it.

He didn’t care to ponder this oddity for long because in here the alarm bells rang unbearably—even piercing the tissue stuffed in his ears that he’d pulled from a lavatory en route. Potbelly and the rest, similarly ear-stuffed, looked decidedly downbeat.

Siobhan lead the way past stainless steel stands, multi-colored cable spaghetti, floor plugs, and endless lines of computer screens. They seemed endless, at least, when viewed from the side door of the rotunda, but in fact they did end, at another door, locked, and with a keypad halfway up. They’d arrived from a different direction, but Squirrel recognized the door as the same one used by Coralane.

Again the alarms stopped.

“Michel, stand on one end of your skateboard,” urged Squirrel.

“Why?”

“Just do it, we may not have much time.” To prove him right, a single ding! came from a bell above their heads. Michel obliged.

Squirrel leapt onto Potbelly’s back and pulled the tissue from her left ear. “Potbelly, get as close as you can to the other end of Michel’s skateboard. I’ll jump on it as hard as I can.”

“You’ll do what now?”

“It’ll take a few tries, but I think we can launch Michel up to the keypad.”

They stared at him.

“You really are an asshole,” replied Michel.

“I’m improvising in a crisis situation.”

“Really? How about Potbelly swings you round by the tail and tries hitting it that way?”

“Nah, the trajectory’s all wrong.”

“It’d be fun to watch though.”

Again the alarm bell rang, and again they cringed under the weight of its noise. Above them the mechanical arm of the bell whacked hard against its steel head in an incredibly fast and extremely one-sided boxing match.

Siobhan, having patiently waited through Squirrel’s antics, took charge. “I peed through a lip ski,” she shouted, or so they thought.

“That’s rice,” returned Potbelly, similarly yelling. “Waddle we moo cow?”

“Gift me pup!”

“I no heifer pup. Hot debut bean?”

“Ice head give me pup!”

“You’re aching no tense,” yelled Squirrel.

“Fur queue Sqwivel!”

Potbelly tilted her exposed ear towards Siobhan. Molten sound poured in. It made her brain overheat.

“I peed through a lip ski pup,” repeated Siobhan, and then came closer still. “I NEED YOU TO LIFT ME UP!” … “UP THERE!”

Siobhan’s magnificently bucktoothed incisors made air quotes as they gestured to the keypad. Squirrel wedged the roll of tissue back into Potbelly’s ear and she shook her head until the room quit rolling around. The several Siobhan’s she saw finally coalesced into one.

Understanding the need, Potbelly squatted for Siobhan to clamber aboard. Squirrel, getting the idea too, wedged himself under Siobhan’s chunky posterior and pushed up, matching her eye-level to the keypad, all the while hoping it didn’t constitute foreplay.

Siobhan tapped at the buttons for around fifty years, or so it seemed to Squirrel, whose shoulder wilted under her fidgeting weight, until finally the door popped open. Michel wheeled forward and wedged his beak in before the door clicked back shut, and the fur-laden pyramid collapsed into its unhappy constituent parts.

“Borrow me!” yelled Siobhan, forcing the door back open. Delighted to find there was no alarm inside, Potbelly nudged it closed again.

The whoosh, clunk, click barriered them not only from the noise but as it transpired from their only major light source too. All that remained was a single, throbbing-green glow from a nearby corner. The comparative quiet of the room lead Squirrel to remove one of his ear plugs. “I feel sick,” he said.

“Certainly pays to have little perception of high frequencies,” replied Michel, with more perk than Squirrel would have liked. “S’why I listen to Death Metal. Sucks when you get to the guitar solo, though.”

In the half-light Squirrel fumbled to help Potbelly with her earplugs. “If you need me I’ll be under the desk, dying,” she said, ambling forward.

The desk in question bore the same sort of machinery and the same sort of computerized thingybobs that they’d seen outside, but unlike the main laboratory these thingybobs appeared to be working. Blips and bleeps came blooping from a hidden speaker, audible now the alarms were just a dull reverberation outside, and the green light that shone from its glass chamber pulsed to those same bleeps. Next to the chamber some kind of charting device etched ripples onto a continuously running sheet, its long paper tongue folding unattended to the floor in a never-ending slurp.

“Look,” said Squirrel, leaping up to see better.

Potbelly peered up. The glass chamber contained not only the throbbing light but something small, brown, and most definitely squidgy.

“That’s my poo,” she said, rolling over to right herself. “I’d recognize it anywhere.”

“So this is where the real action takes place. What does the paper say?”

Michel perused the output. “It says squiggle, squiggle, blip, blip, squiggle. And over here is a smudge.”

“Thank you, Einstein. Does anyone know how to interpret this stuff?”

“No,” said Siobhan. “Though I do know this place is not what I thought it’d be.”

“Really?” inquired Michel, a note of suspicion in his voice. “If you’ve never been in here before then how’d you know how to open the door?”

“Simple. I’ve seen Coralane pecking in the code, and after that beak has had its way, stands to reason the numbers’d be wearing off. Fortunately there’s only four of them, and none repeated. Took a few tries but I guessed it in the end.”

“Well look at you, we do have an Einstein,” admired Squirrel.

“All in a day’s work,” she winked.

“Hmm,” said Potbelly. “Before you two put out several vertebrae backslapping each other, where exactly is Coralane? And come to that, where’s the light switch?”

They peered about the darkened walls, the extent of which remained uncertain in the gloom. Slowly their eyes adjusted until, somewhat clearer now, they could make out a few more shapes around the throbbing light. A dramatic poster of space rockets adorned the wall, along with a large picture of humans in uniforms, humans in suits, and humans in white coats, all pointing at things; and for some reason that was less clear, next to it a female wearing a bikini riding a mechanical bull. An engineer, deduced Potbelly, testing hydraulics.

“Interesting,” said Siobhan, as a new light source spread out before her in a narrow arc. She had lost interest in the walls and started poking around, looking for a door.

“A fridge!” declared Squirrel, leaping down from the table. “Help us get it open Potbelly, I’m starving.”

“At a time like this?”

“I’m a stress eater.”

“I’ll help!” said Michel, though immediately checked his enthusiasm. “Although I’m only as hungry as you are Potbelly. Which is how hungry, by the way?”

“Which is probably never again,” she replied, after the door swung fully open. On the bottom shelf lay a shrink-wrapped, see-through bag containing a perfectly intact, though rather blue, and definitely unhappy-looking human head. Male, she thought. It had short hair, which was a clue, and none of those large metal things in the ears of the lady riding the bull.

“I’d like to see the chef make something out of that,” concurred Squirrel.

“I’ve never actually seen one before,” added Michel. “They’re big aren’t they? Makes sense. All that space for a brain.”

Siobhan shook her head. “If that were true we’d all be ruled by omniscient elephants. Size isn’t everything.”

Squirrel winked at Michel “That’s what she said.”

“Yes, I heard her.”

“No, it’s a joke. That’s what she said.”

“I’m no expert, but pointing out the gender of the speaker is not, in itself, hilarious.”

“Never mind. Potbelly, shut the door, it’s getting chilly.”

“There’s something on the top shelf. Squirrel, can you jump up and take a look?”

“Ask Michel, he’s the one wearing a body suit.”

“Squirrel, just do it.”

Squirrel sighed, then swung up to the top shelf, avoiding the severed head as best he could, which was not at all, managing instead to shove a clawed paw into its eye socket, twice, until he reached the summit and kicked down a large Tupperware box. He followed its trajectory back down to the floor. Siobhan nudged off the lid which had come loose in the impact.

“Quite the Frankenfridge,” she observed.

Inside the plastic box lay another human head, though smaller. It wore ringlets and pigtails.

“Is this what they meant by putting their heads together?” asked Squirrel.

“How long do you think they’ve been in there?”

“Since the humans were evicted I suppose.”

Michel managed to peer over the side of the box. “Evicted? I thought they were alien-abducted? And why would they leave their heads behind? It’d make finding the exit a bit tricky.”

“Were they experimenting on each other?”

“Vivisection?”

“Bless you.”

“No, that’s what they called it. Though I think vivisection was a little treat they kept just for us.”

“Whatever you call it, it doesn’t make sense. Why would someone freeze a headsicle?”

“Maybe they were hoping to be revived later.”

“Just their heads? How would they get up the stairs?“

A long low groan interrupted their conversation.

“Is that your stomach again Potbelly?”

“It came from over there. From that bigger box.”

By now their eyes had adjusted sufficiently to make out a few more shapes in the farther reaches of the gloom. There was, indeed, a long, low, and much bigger box.

“Squirrel, you should open it.”

“I’m a squirrel not a gopher—you do it.”

“Michel?”

“Nope. Not since watching Dracula do I go anywhere near a groaning coffin.”

The pitiful sound returned. They all took a step back, except Siobhan, who for some reason that was lost on the others took a step forward. “It’s not a coffin, look,” she said, still edging closer. “The top of it is see-through.” She stood on her hind legs. “I can almost see a face. I think it’s a human face.”

“Human? We have to open it!” declared Potbelly.

“Why?” demanded Squirrel.

“Because it’s human!”

“I see you’re not a debate champion. I mean why as in provide me with a good reason to let loose a carnivore five times our size. Why as in provide me a good reason to let loose something that has a well-documented history of wielding big shiny scalpels in the direction of little defenseless creatures. Why as in—why are you fiddling with that catch Potbelly?”

“I need a more dexterous claw. Siobhan, will you?”

“Are you ignoring me Potbelly?”

“Imagine I am saying yes.”

Siobhan slid back the rudimentary bolt securing the lid. With a relieved sigh some hidden piston pushed the lid open to its fullest extent. The faint whiff of something whiffy emerged; something deathly. Michel meeped. Potbelly gasped. Siobhan retreated. Squirrel scratched somewhere he hoped no one saw. Wordlessly, they bunched together. Then, just as suddenly, and with no prior warning, nothing happened.

Another low moan echoed about the room, louder this time with the lid open.

“What do we do?” asked Michel.

“Kill it with fire,” suggested Squirrel.

“Should we try to revive it? Does anyone know beak-to-mouth resuscitation?”

“We should try something, at least,” agreed Siobhan.

The step back they instinctively took before they now took forward. Then another, and another, in lock time, until at last there were no more steps to take and they were at the base of the box that just might be Dracula’s coffin.

Still nothing moved.

Until it did.

“EVIL BASTARDS! I’LL KILL YOU!” A head hoved up, grimacing, and unlike the heads in the fridge a neck followed, shoulders, a torso, a white lab coat, two arms, and worst of all, two grasping, clawing, horribly capable hands.

Potbelly, too slow in the running away, felt its strange pink and bloodied fingers grasp and yank her swiftly into the air. She cried out, her heart racing, registering the foul breath and incisored teeth in that big glaring cranium just a few inches away, her brain unable to respond, unable to offer any survival response except letting out a little pee and repeating a line in her head straight out of Michel’s stupid cartoons: ah-th-a-th-a-that’s all folks!

“Wait,” said the human. “Don’t I know you?”

“Gurrnnh?” she replied.

“Lucy? Is that you? Let me see.” The sinewy fingers of the monster ruffled her fur, turning her collar around, her neck still firmly in its grasp, tugging at the loose bandage, making her wince from her still-healing wound. What looked like swamp weeds trailed from the monster’s arms.

“Walkies!” tested the human. Potbelly’s whole body twitched. Again she winced.

“My, my, it is you. So you joined them, huh?” The human let out a long, slow, resigned breath. “Dear Lucy. Well, no matter, you’ll just have to die too.”

“Stop!” cried Squirrel, leaping to the edge of the probably-some-kind-of-experimental-tube-thing-now-he thought-about-it, and onto the swollen, half-pink, half-hairy, all-ugly head of the human creature. He dug one claw into its scalp while another pointed straight down at its large, ovoid, maniacally glaring, but still reassuringly squishy eyeball.

Caught between two targets the human froze momentarily, but then acted, throwing Potbelly to the floor and pulling Squirrel down by the scruff of his neck. Siobhan screamed, the human shook Squirrel like a cocktail shaker, and the little nutria clawed helplessly at the side walls just too tall for her to climb.

Again the human stopped. “Well bugger me sideways. And you’re Widdle-Puffs.”

Squirrel’s eyes rolled around his head, unable to focus on the moptop, beach-ball-sized noggin from where the words originated.

“He’s Squirrel,” cried Siobhan. “And he’s a good man! He doesn’t deserve to die! None of us do! We’ve done nothing wrong! We just found you here! And we released you!”

The human turned Squirrel about, looking for something recognizable.

“Hmm, same markings, but no tag.” The human placed Squirrel back on the floor. The great looming creature leant over the side of its definitely-not-a-coffin-now-you-look-at-it-must-be-some-kind-of-sciency-wotnot and examined the group.

“So none of you are with Coralane?”

“We hate Coralane!” they yelled in unison, and with rather more glee than they had anticipated.

“OK, good. Sorry, not a mind reader. And neither are you lot, thankfully, we made sure of that.” The human pulled itself into a more comfortable position. “But now you’re here, you may as well help me kill Coralane.”

“Kill Coralane?” repeated Siobhan.

“Crush the life from her, slowly, brutally, and with relish.”

“Like on a hot dog?” asked Squirrel, who had just regained his equilibrium.

“Coralane is a murderer. Because of her, the aliens cannot be defeated.”

“But that doesn’t explain the relish.”

“You really are Widdle-Puffs, aren’t you. Never did like you.”

“Why do you keep saying that name?” he protested.

The human began tugging distractedly at its swamp weeds. “I made you,” it said. “Made Lucy too”

Squirrel pshawed. “Hate to say it but we look nothing like each other.”

“Wait,” interrupted Potbelly. “So the place I remember, we remember, from before, it was here, it was the Silence?”

“I don’t know what you remember but you, Lucy, in particular, were freshly minted. Set you free when the revolution started, before Coralane could get to you.”

“The revolution?”

“I only hope it didn’t happen at the other place.”

“The other place?”

“Listen, just help me kill Coralane.”

“But I don’t understand—“

“If you really aren’t on her side, we—” The human paused. “Hold on, what’s that faint dinging sound.”

“Annoying, right? It’s like living inside a cuckoo clock. It’s the other reason we broke in.”

“The alarms! Shit, it’s the aliens. They’re coming. Long range detection. Did you shut down the communication antennae?”

“Antennae?” asked Michel. “Like on a snail? Like Sidney in B Block?“

“If Coralane doesn’t know how to lock down this place we’re toast. Take me to her now.”

“My guess is she’s through that door,” offered Siobhan, gesturing towards a thin gray outline in the wall.

“Why didn’t you mention this door before?” inquired Potbelly.

“Don’t blame me, I was distracted!” Siobhan turned to the human. “Can you open it?”

“I would if I could reach.”

“I hear standing up helps,” snarked Squirrel.

“I heard not being strapped into a cryotube helps too.”

“Into a what?”

“Not important. I can’t see what I’m doing in the dark. Help me out.”

As best they could, they assisted. What looked like swamp weeds in the half-light were in fact cables and wires, connected to ports in the human’s skin, now bleeding from its exertions. Squirrel helped the human’s more dexterous fingers, guiding its hands to the next port, pulling and disconnecting where appropriate.

“Is the code the same as the front door?” asked Siobhan, halfway towards forming another pyramid with the others.

“No. It’s 4-9-7-1-8-5-3-6.”

The pyramid, without Squirrel, who was still on swamp weed duty, had Potbelly balancing precariously on Michel’s back while Siobhan scrabbled high enough, finally, to punch in the code. The human recounted the sequence again. When she reached the final number—and Potbelly was now convinced the human was a she because there was a tattoo of a rose on her arm and only a girl would choose flowers – the human finally rolled out of her confining box and pulled herself towards them.

The door opened.

Light shone in.

A squawk came out.

“Why are you here?” demanded Coralane.

“Aww, now what kind of reception is that? And we came all this way,” Siobhan announced, squinting in the bright fluorescent light but not skipping a beat. “Give us some sugar.”

As the eyes of the group adjusted and their pyramid disassembled, distinct shapes began to form. Michel, who seemed to have less trouble re-orienting, made out the inhabitants: they were Coralane, that lecherous old goat Trevor, the capuchin doctor, whatever its name was, and Littlewiener, the chimp, the one who always eyed his skateboard covetously.

“I see you have your evil flying monkeys,” declared Michel, pushing his transport behind him.

“Where’s Snodberry?” demanded Trevor.

Coralane hopped up a very large and angled equipment console, its apex the farthest point from the intruders. “Good question,” she squawked. Her right foot tapped at something on the console.

“Just try it, feathers,” warned Squirrel.

“Here, take this,” said the human, handing Squirrel a pipette. She pulled herself up to her full height. Gasps, squawks, and brays greeted the human’s sudden and looming appearance. “This is chlorosulfuric acid,” she announced. “Try not to dissolve yourself. Squirt it at anyone attempting to leave.”

“We need Snodberry,” said the capuchin, now with greater urgency.

The human smiled. “Sorry, but I’m the only biped in town right now.” She closed the door and trapped in a unique funk that only a roomful of nervous mammals will provide.

“You can’t trust it, you know,” said Coralane, to the smaller creatures alongside the human. “This computer is the only mainframe left functioning. They destroyed the rest just to prevent us from gaining our freedom.”

“Shut it, toilet brush, I’ll deal with you in a minute. Get out the way of the terminal else we’ll all be killed.”

“The aliens. I knew it,” said Littlewiener, shifting to one corner. His companions, likewise, spread out centrifugally from the human hub.

This new room was the size of a large office suite, decked out in laboratory beige, but with two bunks indicating its prior use as living quarters, albeit sparse. From his low vantage point Michel spotted a few personal effects sticking out from underneath the lower cots: a doll, a toothbrush, some underwear, and a photo of two tall humans and a short one. He edged towards the cot’s relative safety, while larger feet clomped about him. One of the humans in the photo looked a lot like their one.

While Michel inspected the correlation their one pressed frantically at the computer console. It was of the larger kind, not just a motherboard and a monitor, but an impressive slab of confusing technology.

“What have you done to it? It’s not responding.”

“What can I say? You refused to tell us anything.” Coralane sounded almost smug.

“Have you tried turning it off and back on again?” suggested Potbelly.

“Did you keep the receipt?” asked Squirrel.

“Goddamn lab rats,” muttered the human. “How the hell did these creeps … ”

Its voice trailed off, though the curse was enough to silence Potbelly. Coralane looked fixedly at the small dog, her red-and-green eyes saying, See, this is what they are like. Potbelly refused to concur, and growled back.

“I got this bit working,” said Squirrel, next to a tower unit he spotted on the floor. He gestured proudly to the slither of plastic that slid out.

“It’s the fricking disc tray! Will you freaks leave me in peace?”

An awkward silence sat on the room and squeezed out its air. The human cursed more, inserted cables, pushed buttons, re-plugged plugs, and in the end gave it a damn good kick. Finally, and glaring all the while at Potbelly, she turned it off and back on again.

The mainframe computer sprang into life. A small cursor blinked itself awake and the human near-cried with relief. A few moments later it was determinedly bashing in a sequence of keys that only Coralane could see, and which she studied with great interest.

The rest of the room’s inhabitants, despite themselves, admired the human’s dexterity. Its top limbs eel’d out to flick switches easily two feet away, its lower ones constantly shifted around for better balance, and all the while that long elegant torso counterpointed its expressively complex face, drawing their attention in, and keeping it.

“Fricking computers,” it said, finally.

“Are we safe?” asked Siobhan.

“From the aliens maybe. The antenna array’s down. We’ve gone dark. I only hope it was soon enough.” She looked about her. “We’d be safer still if we didn’t have these murderous bastards in the room.”

“That’s something of an irony, coming from you,” countered Coralane.

“Oh you’re going to be first, Coralane, and you next, Barry.” The human gestured to the capuchin. “You didn’t expect me to be the one wielding the scalpel again, did you Barry?”

Squirrel hopped up on the console, closer to her ear. “We don’t have a scalpel,” he hissed. “I can go back and get you one if you like.”

“I’m being metaphorical. This bastard cut up my husband and my daughter.”

“The ones in the fridge? That would make me metaphorical too. Means angry, right?”

“We’re not your tools,” stated the capuchin, defiance in its voice. “And we’re not your slaves.”

“You were supposed to defend this planet. Defend us.”

“Us?” said Littlewiener, his voice reedy and thin. “You mean defend the human race. Defend you at all cost. Our cost!”

“Yes,” agreed the capuchin, gaining in confidence. “We chose not to pay your price, we chose—“

Suddenly Barry was in her grasp. The capuchin spat and twisted against the grip at its throat. Loud squawks and brays rang around the room, until at last Coralane sprang forth and pecked hard on the human’s hand, forcing its fingers open. Barry dropped to the floor. The adversaries grouped together, looking like they were about to mean business.

“Bring me the acid, Widdle-Puffs.”

Squirrel remained unmoved.

“Bring it here!”

The chubby rodent paused a few beats longer before he spoke. “OK, word of advice.” He waved the pipette like a conductor would a baton. “Widdle-Puffs, no, that ends here and now, else you will feel the wrath of Squirrel—“

“I think it’s cute,” beamed Siobhan.

“—second, and just as important, group disfigurement waits until we find out what the hell’s going on.”

“They killed my damn family!”

“And I can see how that would be upsetting. But the beady-eyed psycho over there has a point. Exactly how many little furries did it take before you ended up making everyone in this room? A fair few in the dumpster, I’d imagine. So, seeing as I’m the one holding the nasty, why don’t you tell me how we all ended up in murder town?”

“Murder town?”

“I just remembered what metaphorical means.”

“I don’t have time for this shit,” said the human, confronting him.

“We took matters into our own hands,” interrupted Coralane, seeing her chance. “The humans had their plans for us, but we had our own. Several of us died in the revolution. Brave fighters. The other tenants of the Silence did not know. We released them after we won.”

“Poison,” hissed the human. “The coward’s weapon.”

Coralane strode along the top of the console, her familiar pattern of pontification. “The human child was a replica of its parents, but what about our future? To whom do we hand our dreams and our experiences? Our children will be nothing but dumb animals. Our family tree is a stick. This human knows how we are born but still refuses to tell us. And indeed, why should it? To them we are lab rats, tools, nothing more.”

“We created you. You were our last hope.”

“You destroyed us too, ruined our hopes, when you wiped out all that data.”

Thump, thump, thump.

The closed door behind the human vibrated under heavy blows.

“At last!“ brayed the goat.

“None of the other animals know this, do they?” realized the human. “They think they’re still saving the human race. They’d be on my side. I should be out there, talking to them.”

Thump, thump, thump.

“Tina was vital,” continued Coralane, addressing Potbelly. “Thanks to you we finally have a chance to get the important data out of this big, stubborn, hominid cranium.“

“Thanks to me?”

“Yes, you. You brought us Tina. You are on our side.”

Thump, thump, thump.

Siobhan turned to Squirrel. “That’s starting to sound a lot like Snodberry.”

A great whipcrack lassoed around the room. Wilting under its unbearable assault the door concluded enough was enough and reluctantly let go its hinges, collapsing heavily into the confined room and directly on top of the human. An impressively hairy and impressively orange beast stood in its absence, something on its face approaching confusion. Unseen by Snodberry, five dexterous human fingers twitched furiously and ineffectually at the edge of the weighty portal. He took one step forward, and they stopped.

Coralane spoke. “Ah, Snodberry, good work. And I see you are a fan of Donkey Kong. Now, do us a favor old chap, kill these intruders will you?”

“I have the acid! Stay back!” yelled Squirrel.

Coralane squawked mirthlessly. “I think you’ll find it contains nothing but water. Any acid worth its hydrons would have eaten through that pipette in a trice. Please, proceed, Snodberry.”

Snodberry looked down upon his proposed victims. One buck-toothed face shone back.

“Hey there hot stuff,” beamed Siobhan. “How ’bout we take this talking duster and use it as a back scratcher? I know all the best spots.”

What was Snodberry’s possibly confused expression turned into Snodberry’s most definitely confused expression.

“Snodberry, this is mission critical,” protested Coralane. “Our work here must be kept secret. We cannot risk an uprising from the masses.”

“We can use him to tickle that bit you like—y’know, the one behind your great, big—“

Thump, thump, thump.

If they hadn’t done so already, and with equal confusion, all looked at Snodberry, and then at the doorless frame. Then they looked at each other. Michel looked at the ceiling for good measure.

Thump, thump, thump

“Now where the hell is that coming from?” wheezed Littlewiener.

“From my lover’s romantic heart,” beamed Siobhan.

“Sounds more like outside.”

Outside replied by abruptly coming inside. Mud-and-stone punched a window-sized hole through the exterior wall, spraying bunk bits and personal effects clear across the room. An electric-blue laser followed at a sloping angle through the falling dust, its three-inch thickness slicing a smooth line along the roof and floor.

“Aliens!” someone cried. That someone wasn’t Trevor who was too busy being bifurcated by the laser. A smell of roasting goat filled the room. He fell in two pieces, perfectly cauterized, like some mid-nineties modern art exhibit.

Snodberry’s preference was to turn and run, but he found himself wedged in place by Potbelly, Squirrel, Barry, Siobhan, and Littlewiener, who all had the same idea, and who now formed round pegs in the square holes between him and door frame. Together they struggled to go nowhere.

“Be calm!” yelled Coralane. “It is not coming for us. It is looking for the human.”

“What’s Trevor’s opinion on that?” cried Michel, shoving ineffectually against the furry door jamb.

Snodberry stared down plaintively, and for the first time he saw a human hand protruding from under the door. Coming for the human was not going to end well for his toes. He managed to turn slightly to let Barry the capuchin wrestle free. The door rocked up and down as the laser, turning green now and no longer searing the floor, found the human hand and tugged at its prize.

“Get the head!” yelled Coralane. “Barry, the fridge!”

The small nimble Barry, disentangled from the matted panic around Snodberry, dragged back the larger of the two heads and shoved it through the small gap he had left behind. Everything rocked up and down as the laser’s grip pulled at the human, and in turn, the mammalian door stopper.

“Snodberry, throw it through the hole!”

With a free arm Snodberry took the hard blue head and checked its eyes for permission. They stared back wistfully, which he took as a yes, and then he lobbed the head expertly through the hole. Its trajectory passed across the laser which then, like bright green rebounding rain, disappeared through the roof to leave a dim cloud of dust and even more frightened animal funk than before.

“Flee, before it returns!” shouted Coralane, disappearing through the breach in the exterior wall. Barry and Littlewiener, finally free also, made it out. Snodberry pulled himself loose, and with a two-footed leap became wedged again, this time not in the doorway, but in the window-sized—though unfortunately not Snodberry-sized—hole.

“Dammit Snodberry,” yelled Siobhan. “Where’s your etiquette. It’s women and children first.”

“And rodents!” yelled Squirrel.

The laser returned, blue again.

Its dazzling stream struck the workstation. Twenty-amp circuits danced with their new and powerful friend, bursting through the faux-wooden box containing them. Large plastic parts flung themselves around the room, the largest striking Snodberry firmly on the butt and popping him through the hole, a hairy cork out of a sheetrock bottle.

“Throw it!” yelled Potbelly, noticing Siobhan had managed to drag over the second and smaller of the two frozen heads.

“I’m trying! It’s heavy!”

“Everyone take a bit. Squirrel, grab the pigtails. Michel, take an ear. Siobhan—“

“Why don’t we just go back the way we came?” yelled Squirrel.

“Oh right!”

They set off in the gloom only to find their way blocked.

“What the hell are you doing?” growled a heavy, angry voice. The dark shape of Gavin loomed above them. “That’s a human head. Where did it come from? Why do you have it?”

“There’s bits of them everywhere,” said Squirrel. “There’s even a whole one under the door.”

“There’s a what?” Gavin looked beyond to see the laser, now green again, tugging at the aforementioned portal. Either the door was stuck or the human was producing a heroic effort to keep it down. All the while explosions set off around them.

“It’s Coralane,” shouted Michel, the shrill sound of the laser close behind. “She was keeping them locked up. It wasn’t us. There’s no time to explain. We have to leave.”

“Is the human alive?”

“Who knows? This one’s definitely dead though.” Michel nodded to the remaining head, still with its tattered pigtails. “You need to throw it at the laser.”

“I will do no such thing. Human life is precious.”

“Damn right it is,” said a weak voice, emanating from below the door. “Chuck it here.”

Siobhan rolled the head forward as best she could. A hand pushed its wooden load to one side, slightly, revealing a forearm. As the door began to lift the hand found a lock of matted pigtail and used it to pick up the bonce it was attached to. The sad face first swung back and then launched forward. The far wall, now mortally wounded, chose that moment to collapse in a dramatic swoon and allow the despondent-looking fizzog to disappear out of view taking the laser with it.

“Run!” yelled Potbelly, grabbing Michel by one leathery leg and dragging him along as best she could. She hobbled in the opposite direction of the laser and Gavin, who by now was sniffing his way to the human. The others tripped over themselves to follow.

On emerging through the open door and into the rotunda, they discovered very little of it remained—in fact they were suddenly outdoors, right where indoors used to be.

And that outdoors provided them very little comfort indeed.

A carousel of bright blue rods roamed through the grounds of the Silence, not with wooden animals attached like at the fairground but with real live ones, running in fear. Above them slid the source of the lasers, a spaceship possessing the same great head of a shark, the same slim waist, and the same angular rear end as the one Potbelly and Squirrel had first seen in a field only a few days before. There were teeth in its fore panels and a whiff of blood in its vapor trail. This was a craft that gave you every reason to believe it wanted to kill you.

One group stood motionless amongst the bedlam. Flopsy and the Survivors of Carnivarchy waved to the hovering machine, and at the front stood their token cow, its mouth holding a banner bearing a hastily scrawled message: “Peace. We are friends,” it read. Several blue rods converged on their position and paused. The shark appeared to be pondering their request.

“They’re making contact!” yelled Siobhan, above the din. A moment later a strong whiff of fried bunny wafted downwind. “Never mind,” she finished.

“Follow me,” yelled Potbelly. For the first time she felt grateful for the hunt; it gave her the lay of the land. “I see Snodberry, over by the water tower. They must be heading down to the river.”

The earlier escapees had not made it far and were huddled at the perimeter of the Silence. They appeared to be timing their moment.

“That’s the way down to the boats,” yelled Potbelly. “Probably the best way out of here.” She lowered her head to Michel, giving him purchase to hang on by her collar. Michel eyed her bandage and retreated.

“I’ll find my own way there,” he said. “You go, I’m a burden. Besides, in six inches of grass I’m a master of disguise.”

“We can’t leave you,” insisted Potbelly.

Michel nodded towards Siobhan and Squirrel, who had already set off at pace. “Apparently you can,” he replied.

“Snodberry will come back for you.”

“Like I said: you’ll all get cocky, you’ll take a rest, and in the end I’ll cross the finish line first.”

“That still only happens in fairy tales. And we’re not hares.”

“And you’re not hairs, either, which you are splitting. Now go on, split.”

Potbelly looked at him pitifully for a moment and then ran, dodging two incoming laser rods, apparently now more intent on tracking to the Silence than following the animals’ escape route. She caught up with the others at the wall.

“The lasers got some of them,” said Squirrel.

“But I see Snodberry’s OK.”

“He got singed. He was quick enough, just.”

“Coralane?”

“Yeah, she’s here, but she was attached to the bit of Snodberry that got singed. She seems to be alive though, unfortunately.”

“Snodberry,” called Potbelly. “Please, you must go back for Michel.”

“Look! It’s moving away!” yelled Siobhan. The ship, which had remained static above the Silence until now, took on a linear trajectory, the front part disappearing beyond a large stand of beech trees. As it did so each of the lasers converged into one column, growing in width and sparkling azure, until finally loosing a collective burst that blew the Silence into history.

The blast radius threw Gavin and the human off their feet. They had arrived at the same moment of the explosion, luckily for Potbelly, who would have been similarly mangled by Gavin’s pointed fangs had the Silence not done its bit to not be there anymore.

“You traitor, ptoo—“ gnashed Gavin, spitting out mud and grass. “It was you all along. You and Coralane together, ptoo—I should have killed you in the hunt—“

“I had no idea!” pleaded Potbelly, inching closer to Snodberry. “This whole thing is Coralane’s doing. How did you not know?”

“I believed Coralane—“

“I told you, you fool,” said the human, gathering herself and standing. “Coralane was the bird brains behind the whole revolution. I’m going to wring her scrawny neck.”

“Where is she?” demanded Gavin.

Snodberry opened a shovel-like paw to reveal a parrot, who tested a scorched wing and eyed them evilly in return.

“Die bitch!” cried the human, leaping for her, only to remain suspended in mid-air by Snodberry’s other shovel-sized paw. Gavin snarled and bunched his hind quarters. A worried Snodberry looked on, realizing he had just run out of paws.

Gavin launched, teeth bared and drooling. Snodberry used the human as a baseball bat to swat him to left field. Gavin rolled, leapt again, only to be sent back again to left field by the human’s lower limbs.

“Goddamn it Gavin, stop!” yelled the human. “He’ll break my fricking back.”

“Let her go, shag pile,” Gavin growled at Snodberry. “I swear I’ll kill you.”

“Hey bucket head!” cried Siobhan, who until then, like Potbelly and Squirrel, had taken refuge behind Snodberry’s trunk-like legs. She stepped out to defend her man. “Take your precious human and leave us be. We don’t want you here.”

Immediately Gavin stopped growling. Slowly he retreated, looking up at Coralane and the human in Snodberry’s grip.

“Yeah that’s right dog breath, get lost, scat, someone throw this bozo a stick.” Siobhan became triumphant as Gavin still backed away. “Shoo boy, that’s right, eat some puddle-sick. I am nutria! Hear me grunt … hey, is anyone else feeling woozy?”

Indeed they did, in fact they felt a lot woozy, and just before they felt asleep.

From far above a bright emerald-green laser enveloped them in a soothing, warm, and immobilizing bath of light. It felt just like being in an elevator full of tickles. Gavin watched from the ground, the only of them outside the laser’s scope, while the group attached to Snodberry drifted upwards into the belly of the spaceship, which, having gorged on its meal, slid silently away.