The Last of the Gullivers

by Carter Crocker

  In the city, everyone heard the Farmer’s rising cry to, “Run, run, run!” The G.P. saw the monster horde and called the Beacon Tower to sound the alarm. People hurried to battle posts, grabbing what weapons they could. Others ran to the shelters, but most of these were still flooded and filled with mud.

  One of them leveled a crossbow and the arrow stopped the beat of a weasel heart. It fell where it stood, a surprised look in its ugly eye, but others took its place, climbing over their dead comrade and charging on.

  The monsters knew their time had come.

  The Grand Panjandrum knew it, too. This was the full-out attack that had haunted him. The Farmer and Postman loaded the cannon as weasels sniffed the village and found the shelters. With carnivore-claws, the rodents dug at hidden hatches and secret doors. Topgallant saw that the hideouts were useless and called, “To the Great Hall! Hurry now, hurry!” It was the only building strong enough to keep the monsters out.

  With spears and guns and arrows, a few of them held the weasels back as the People escaped to the muddied Hall. Hoggish Butz was last to waddle in, and just in time. The Lesser Lilliputians shouldered the doors closed, but one of the things pushed through his toothy snout. Topgallant’s wife ground out her Rhodesian pipe on the tender nose and the beast drew away with an angry anguished squeal. The doors were shut and bolted.

  “They can’t get us now,” the Grand Panjandrum reassured them, and himself. “The doors are iron and the walls are solid stone.”

  But the ceiling above was wood, and weasels were gnawing their way in. Slobbery splinters rained on the Little Ones.

  “What now!?” wailed Hoggish. “WHAT NOW?”

  Then, from a distance, a hopeful sound: the small whine of a steam engine. When he first saw the weasel hordes from the distant railyard, the Engineer coupled every possible car to his locomotive and set out for the city’s main station. If he could get the People aboard, he was sure he could outrun the beasts.

  As he drew closer, the Engineer let go the throttle and quietly pulled the train into the station. He made his way, carefully, through back streets and rapped at the Great Hall’s side door. When he’d told Topgallant the plan, they called to the People together: “We’re going for a train ride, come on now, single file, no talking, that means you, Frigary Tiddlin.”

  The Lesser Lilliputians pattered through the muddy side streets and into the station house. The weasels, still gnawing at the Great Hall dome, didn’t see their prey slip silently away.

  The People were piling into railcars by the time the weasels caught their scent and let out furious barks. The beasts crawled from the Hall and into the station as the Grand Panjandrum made his way along the coaches: “Close the windows, that’s it, lock them tight!” Even now, the wretched weasels were smashing through the flood-ravaged station.

  The locomotive’s drive wheels spun on the mud-slicked track and the Engineer poured extra sand for traction and the train moved off in a steamy fog, its couplings catch-catch-catching. It pulled out of the town center, a fire-bellied serpent, picking up speed, racing for the countryside. But the weasels weren’t far behind.

  Philament Phlopp knew they’d only bought themselves time and not much. Sooner or later, the beasts would understand that the train was only running in one great circle.

  Then Mr. Phlopp began to remember something.

  It had been, what, a week, two weeks ago?

  Yes, two weeks back.

  Before the flood, before the war, he’d been working on a fireworks show to mark the coming of Spring. It would have been the grandest he’d ever attempted: twice the usual rockets, with bigger charges, louder blasts, brighter displays and more—much more—gunpowder. He remembered loading the rockets for delivery to the town center, a delivery by train. If those explosives were part of this train . . . Phlopp made his way down the carriage and into the next, and through one more. The way was blocked then, by a freight wagon. The train had reached top speed by now, swaying side-to-side, ready to fly from the track at any second. Phlopp struggled up the ladder to the car’s rocking roof and carefully made his way to a hatch. A fast look was all he needed: it was packed tight, every inch, with fireworks. At least a thousand rinniks, a full Lilliputian ton, of gunpowder filled that car.

  There was only one thing to do.

  Phlopp hurried back to the last three cars and started moving the passengers to the front of the train. He helped them up the ladder, to the top of the wildly rocking freight car. It was a dangerous, risky climb, but there was no choice and all of them did as he asked. As the Lesser Lilliputians moved along the roof, some of them crawling, terrified by the height and speed, the weasels saw and charged faster after them.

  As the passenger cars emptied, one after the other, Phlopp uncoupled it. The cars went rolling, slowing, and the weasels stopped to sniff out each one.

  When the Lesser Lilliputians were safe in the front-most cars, Phlopp set to work making a long fuse. He waited for the weasels to catch up to the train, not a long wait. He heard the first of them leap to the roof and he moved closer to the door, to the passage between cars. He could hear more and still more of them jumping onto the freight car, chewing its wood-plank roof.

  And still he waited, listening to the grinding of their teeth. When one of the monsters chewed through, Phlopp lit the fuse and bolted the door and let the freight wagon loose. He hurried to join the others, as the weasel-crusted car drifted free of the train.

  With a lighter load now, the rest of the train pulled away and left the slow-rolling wagon behind. The People gathered at windows to watch, but Phlopp warned them back from the glass.

  A second passed and another and then, all at once, the gunpowder exploded. A light as bright as day flooded the coach and the sound of the blast came next and shattered every window in every railcar.

  The freight wagon went up in a red riot of flame and train and weasel-parts. The Little Ones cheered and the Engineer let off the throttle as they watched the great fireball roll into the night sky. The weasels were gone from the earth and the People were safe, at least for now.

  From his bedroom window, a half-dozen miles away, Nick Bottoms saw the fiery glow and briefly wondered what it was.

  That next morning, Michael was taken to the Recreation Room and three voices rang off the cold concrete walls: “Good to see you, squire!” “Knew you’d make it sooner or later!” “You poor swot!”

  It was Peter, Gordy, Phil, and they wanted to know about Nick and Robby. Michael told them as little as he could, and let them fill in the rest as they chose.

  “You’re going to like it here, Mike,” Gordy said and seemed to mean it. His face was still red and puffy from the dog bites, but he looked happy.

  “If you need anything, squire, just let us know,” said Peter.

  Michael saw a guard watching and wished the boys would leave him alone.

  “We got everything, Mikey, everything! Three meals, billiard room, telly, exercise yard, everything!”

  “And all built on a plague pit,” Phil added. “Ten thousand peasants, dead from the plague, buried right under our feet.”

  Michael tried wandering off. But they followed.

  “Where’re you staying?” Gordy wanted to know.

  He waved a hand toward the building at the far corner of the prison yard.

  “12-A? You’re kidding me!”

  Michael shrugged, no.

  “They put him in Seg!”

  “What’s Seg?” the boy asked.

  “That’s the Segregation Unit, squire,” said Peter. “They only put the special ones in 12-A.”

  “It means you’re VP, Mike!” Gordy shouted.

  “What’s VP?” Michael asked.

  “That’s a Vulnerable Prisoner.” Peter laughed till he nearly choked.

  Michael was glad when
his time in the yard was done. He was taken back to his cell in Seg and he sat on the foul bed and thought about the Little Ones.

  They’d be better off without him, that much was sure. He couldn’t take care of himself. What ever made him think he could take care of them?

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  WHERE THE WIND’S ALWAYS BLOWN

  Horace Ackerby was at his usual table at Folk-in-the-Clover, looking out on the windy graveyard and thinking, only thinking. As the news about Michael moved through the town, so did the calls for the Chief Magistrate’s resignation. He was about to lose his job and all the things he cared about, but he wasn’t going to give up his dinner. The wiry cook brought the pig’s nose with parsley-and-onion sauce and Horace said:

  “I am remembering myself, Bertram, as a little boy, fishing with my father. I feel a strong tug at my line, and another. Quite fierce. I know I’ve hooked the biggest fish ever to swim the river. I know this in my heart. I see the creature in my mind’s eye, a monster, something from a myth, from a lost race of river-giants. They’ll put my picture in the paper, I’m sure. I nearly have it reeled in, so close I can see its silver shadow flash under the water! And then . . . then my line drops back, empty and useless. The fish has got free, Bert, it’s gone.”

  And he added:

  “My life’s been pretty much downhill since.”

  The cook, not knowing what to say, said nothing and left. Ackerby stared at the food, but his hunger was gone.

  He remembered how his Dad began taking him fishing when some schoolmates joined a gang. Ackerby-the-Father wasn’t going to see that happen to his son. He took young Horace to football games, went camping with him, made him take piano lessons. It was the music that worked. Horace Ackerby II loved music and spent his spare hours at practice. He and some friends started a band—The Restless Ones, they called themselves—and they were really quite good. True, as he grew, he slowly forgot about music and the piano sits in his home, unused. But there was a day, once, when a band kept him out of a gang.

  Horace realized he’d invested more of himself in Michael than he’d imagined. He had thought, had hoped, he could keep Michael out of a gang, too. But he’d been let down, absolutely.

  Maxine Bellknap, sure the whole thing was her fault, resigned from the court and took her retirement at last. As Ackerby went back to his lonely meals at Folk-in-the-Clover, she went back to her home and let the hours drift away, unused. Her garden went wild: chickweed and dandelion began to fill the flower beds.

  Mr. Fenn spent long lonely hours sitting quietly in his office, lost in aimless dreams. The shelves of his store went un-straightened for day after day.

  They were still cleaning up in Lesser Lilliput. The weasels had done real damage to the Great Hall—the dome was near collapse—but the G.P. was sure it could be brought back.

  “My friends—” he began, when a louder voice drowned out his.

  “Friends, you say?” Hoggish was calm and confident this night. He smiled to the smallish crowd. “With friends like him, we don’t need enemies, do we?”

  “Now, Hoggish,” one of them warned, “we don’t want another war.”

  “Exactly!” Hoggish said, clapping and smiling. “That’s the LAST thing we want.”

  “If only,” added Dr. Ethickless Knitbone, “we had a Grand Panjandrum who could keep the peace and keep us safe, from weasels and floods and fires!”

  “Precisely,” said Hoggish. “Someone bold, decisive, someone like . . .”

  “Someone like Hoggish Butz!” called Knitbone, alone in her zeal.

  There were mutterings among the crowd: Topgallant had been G.P. for a while, hadn’t he? Maybe he needed a rest.

  The Reader will be spared details of the campaign that followed. But it was a horrible thing. Hoggish and Dr. Knitbone used their printing press to spread horrible rumors about Burton Topgallant and he wasted too much time denying these. They hinted that he wasn’t one of them, but Blefuscudian by birth. They called him “nobbulous and griffic,” meaning “old and cranky,” implying dementia.

  A few days later, with each vote counted at least once, Hoggish won the election, 284-191. They said that the cemetery vote put him over the top. In a hasty ceremony, the Golden Helmet was set on Hoggish’s head at last.

  And what sort of leader was he? How would one define the Grand Panjandrumcy of Hoggish Butz? These questions will be left for some distant historian to answer.

  Because his reign lasted only twenty minutes.

  As soon as tables had been laid out with Hoggish’s beloved éclairs, the coronation began. “Friends, Citizens—!” he bellowed.

  But a louder voice drowned out his.

  “Look at that, look at them!”

  “I beg your pardon, whoever you are,” Hoggish sniffed at the crowd. “You’re interrupting what’s going to be a very good speech. Now, listen and learn. Ahem. Friends, CITIZENS—”

  “What are those things?” again, the new voice.

  “Well, excuse me!” Hoggish was on his feet, red in the face, waving a fat finger. “WHO dares speak when the Grand Panjandrum speaks? Don’t you see this beautiful Golden Helmet on my head!?”

  He happened to look up then. He happened to see Nick Bottoms and Robby towering over the city, like two Colossi.

  “Well . . . Great Ghost of BOLGOLAM.”

  Days ago, Robby had tracked Michael here to the stone cottage. Tonight, he had brought Nick.

  “You ever seen anything like ’em? What do you figure they are?”

  “Must be some sorta Spriggans or Leprechauns, Dobbies,” said Nick. “I guess I don’t much care. They got to be worth a fortune.”

  “All right, Panjandrum,” Evet Butz turned to his brother. “What do we now?”

  Poor Hoggish was speechless and bits of spit dribbled from his open mouth. It was Topgallant who called for everyone to, “Run! Run, Brothers, run, Sisters, run!” And they ran, fast, but Nick and Robby were faster. The giants scooped up one Lesser Lilliputian after another. There was complete, hopeless panic in the Garden City, all of them running and screaming and crying.

  The Architect made it to his studio, but Robby kicked out a window and snatched him up. The Accountant hid under his office desk, but Nick smashed the building front and found him. Another of them dashed into her store and locked and chained and blocked the door, but Robby ripped off the roof and got her.

  In all the madness, Slack and Frigary Tiddlin were separated from their mother. They’d run to the Farmer’s field and Robby saw them there. He went for them, clumsily slipping in mud, crashing through yards, fences, houses, overturning trees, but Thudd Ickens got there first. Much more agile than the Giant, he escaped with the young Tiddlins through the patch in Flestrin’s Wall. Burra Dryth, Mumraffian Rake, Philament Phlopp, these few also made it through the wrecked Wall.

  Some others reached shelters, but the Giants used picks and shovels to dig them out. Most of Lesser Lilliput was laid to waste and the nightmare ended only when Nick was happy they’d got all of them. The boys stashed the Little Ones in a rubbish bin, boxes, whatever they could find.

  “A few of them got away, over the wall,” Robby told him.

  “They won’t last long out there. Something’ll eat ’em.”

  “What’re we going to do with these?” Robby wanted to know.

  “Let’s get ’em back to my house. We’ll start spreadin’ the word, start building up some interest, right? We’ll let everybody know we got something special, something Lyall Murphy will never have,” said Nick. “We’ll split ’em up, they’ll bring more that way. We’ll sell the squits, one by one, for a million pounds.”

  At the Wall-edge, Philament Phlopp heard it all.

  “These little things are going to make me big,” Nick laughed.

  The market was closed and dark
and still. Fenn sat in his office, with time slowly passing around him. On his desk sat the nearly 400 pounds that Michael had stolen.

  Fenn picked up the money and counted it, as he had many times. But tonight, in the stillness and the desk lamp glare, he saw something he hadn’t seen. He took a closer look and saw that each of the pound notes was lightly, slightly smudged. Gooey, grubby, chubby-fingered peppermint smudges.

  Ickens, Phlopp, the others—refugees of the blitz—gathered in the stone cottage and considered their dismal future.

  They needed help.

  They needed Quinbus Ooman.

  And Burra Dryth had the number.

  When they called to tell her what happened, Jane knew she had to get to them, grounded or not. She wrote a note for her father: “Michael needs me—will explain—love—Jane.” She grabbed what money she had and hurried to Lemuel’s house. The few survivors were waiting on the porch when she got there.

  “Do you know where he is?” Jane asked them. “Do you know how to find him?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THE KEY TO ALL LOCKS

  Fenn went to his brother’s house, a run-down Tudorbethan, and asked to see Myron. “In the kitchen,” his sister-in-law told him, “having a little snack.”

  The grocer set the pound notes on the table, smudgiest on top, and Myron looked up from a dish of peppermint ice cream he was sharing with the cat. “Look at that,” Fenn said simply. “Three hundred and ninety-eight pounds.”

  Myron said nothing, but kept eating.

  “But you knew that of course.”

  Myron shrugged and ate.

  “Did you count it—before you hid it in his schoolbook?” Fenn asked.

  Myron didn’t answer.

  “You can tell me. I’m not going to kill you,” Fenn went on. “I just want to know the truth. I saw how the notes had peppermint on ’em and I thought to myself—nahhh, Myron isn’t as clever as that.”