by Ged Gillmore
It was very difficult for Ginger to tell the time in the unchanging light underground, but she knew in her gut it would soon be time for her to escape. Which also meant, if her plan did not come off, it would soon be time for her to die. She sat up as well as she could in the dead-end pipe and closed her eyes tightly. She thought of her beloved Major waiting for her in Purrvana. She thought of Tuck and how sorry she was she would never see him again. She thought of Minnie and the Fur Girls, but these thoughts were interrupted by the voice of Private Staines squeaking outside her cell.
‘Here you blooming well are!’ he was saying to a rat coming down the tunnel. ‘What time do you call this?!’
‘Now, we call it ten past seven, so,’ said a familiar voice. ‘What do you call it?’
‘Or are you not familiar with the names of the times, like?’ said another familiar voice.
‘You was supposed to take over from us at seven,’ said Sergeant Scard. ‘You’re late. Here, don’t I know you?’
‘I doubt it,’ said the first familiar voice. ‘But you might recognise me from the telly, so. I do a lot of adverts.’
‘Humph,’ squeaked the Sergeant. ‘You’re still late.’
‘Probably got lost,’ said Private Staines, sniggering nastily. ‘Country bumpkins!’
Ginger heard the two gruff guards scampering away, continuing to grumble and then laughing a bit too loudly, like they wanted to make someone think they were laughing at them.
‘How do yer like that, now?’ Ginger heard Bumfluff say. ‘Bumpkins, so, is it?’
‘I’ll give them bumpkins in their bum, like,’ said Fleabomb.
‘Boys,’ hissed Ginger at them. ‘Can we please concentrate on what we’re supposed to be doing here. Did you have any luck with any of the other guards?’
The two rats appeared in the dim light of Ginger’s cell.
‘Nigh,’ said Fleabomb, ‘“luck” is a very interesting word. It reminds me of a man I knew who was asked why he was always so lucky. “It’s funny,” he said, “the more I practise at something, the luckier I get.”’
‘Aye,’ said Bumfluff, ‘“luck” implies a lack of skill, whereas I think you’ll find we are two very highly-skilled rats.’
Ginger sighed and would have rolled her eyes, but she was very nervous. ‘Well, did you have any skill with any of the other guards then?
‘Oh, aye,’ said Fleabomb. ‘There’s one there who’s just rushed off to the loo with a very nasty case of food poisoning. He must have eaten something that wasn’t rotten.’
‘And there’s another,’ added Bumfluff, ‘who’s just heard news that his mother down the other end of the sewer needs a hand fouling her nest.’
‘Very good,’ said Ginger. ‘And …’
‘She’s about to ask about the bus timetable,’ said Bumfluff. ‘Just yer listen. That’s what she’s going to ask. And about the sunglasses, you’ll see.’
Now Ginger did roll her eyes. ‘Well, did you get them?’
‘Get what?’
‘The bus timetable and the sunglasses?’
‘Ha!’ said Bumfluff, giving Fleabomb a wink. ‘Didn’t I tell yer she’d be asking about them, so?’
Then he caught the look on Ginger’s face and said hurriedly, ‘Sure now, didn’t I leave them just where yer said? At some great danger to meself, I might add. The place is fairly crawling with cats up there.’
‘So the posters worked?’
‘Something worked alright. That old boss cat of yers, Sue Narmi, she nearly ate me. I hope yer will take account of that when considering my compensation.’
‘Compensation?’ said Ginger.
‘Payment.’
‘Payment?’
‘Wages, like.’
‘Here you go,’ said Ginger. ‘How about I get rid of your sworn enemy, have a good percentage of my stolen goods returned to you, and then how about I don’t eat you. How does that sound for compensation?’
Bumfluff appeared to be thinking about it so Ginger pushed passed him with another sigh. She’d crawled a metre up the tunnel before she heard the sound of his voice again.
‘Good luck, yer big ginger cat girl, yer,’ he said.
‘Aye,’ said Fleabomb. ‘What he said, like.’
Ginger turned and thanked them. Then she said maybe one day she’d see them back at the farm. If she did, she’d be true to her word, and never eat them.
WHAT A HERO!
Tuck worked hard through the night. First, he worked at keeping the other cats calm, now that he’d convinced them of the Pong’s perfectly poisonous plans for the pussies in their perilous penitentiary.
‘We should be quiet,’ he said quietly.
‘We should whisper,’ he whispered.
‘Ssh,’ he shushed.
But the other cats just ignored him. Principessa Passagiata Pawprints from the posh part of Palermo was particularly perplexed.
‘Me-a!’ she sobbed. ‘That anyone should-a wish to kill-a me-a! Do they not-a know-a my lineage?’
Butch, meanwhile, was arguing with fat-cat Matt about how they should escape.
‘Maybe we should keep our voices down?’ said Tuck. ‘After all, I already know how to escape.’
Suddenly all was silence as the other cats turned and stared at him.
‘Do you really, sweetheart?’ said Butch.
‘Er, I think I do. But you all have to be very quiet or else the Pongs will come back and discover we’re alive.’
Well, poor Tucky soon wished he’d said nothing at all. For now, as he worked away on his second task of the evening, he had multiple pairs of eyes watching his every move. And more than three dozen mouths asking what he was doing and how it was going and why wasn’t he done yet? Ooh, how extreeeeeeeeeemely unhelpful! Because, let me tell you, dear reader, watching someone do something is the most sure-fire way to make them make a mistake. If you don’t believe me, ask your resident adult to explain how to park a car next time they’re parking the car. Ask them to describe in detail how they’re doing it, what they’re looking out for, what their hands and feet are doing. I bet they make a mistake—and I bet they blame it on you! Ha, ha! Oh, sorry.
Bendyfenders, imagine how poor little Tuck felt. Everyone was watching him and he couldn’t afford to do anything wrong. It’s a good job all of his intelligence lay in his physicality or the chances of him succeeding would have been even smaller than they already were. The first thing he did was push his paw through the wire between him and Bunk and stretch and stretch and streeeeeeeeeetch with all his might to reach his friend.
‘He can’t do it,’ he heard fat-cat Matt say.
‘He can’t do it,’ he heard Butch say.
‘Oh, of course he can’t-a do it!’ he heard Principessa Passagiata Pawprints say.
But that only made Tuck even more determined and he pushed and pushed and puuuuushed until he was just shy of Bunk’s neck. Then he extended one of his magnificent black claws and looped it around Bunk’s collar. He pulled on it hard until the collar popped open and he could drag it back towards him.
‘He did it!’ said Butch.
‘He did it!’ said fat-cat Matt.
‘Of course he-a did it!’ said the Principessa.
Getting the right pin out of Bunk’s collar was easy for Tuck, but using it to open the lock on his cage door was maybe the most difficult thing he’d ever done. You see, he had to remember the instructions from ever so many chapters ago, and he wasn’t that kind of clever. He remembered not to swallow the pin this time, and he remembered he had to pick up the pin and put it in the lock, but he had no idea what he had to do next.
‘Try wiggling it,’ said fat cat Matt.
‘Try-a niggling it,’ said the Principessa.
‘Try jiggling it, darling,’ said Butch.
And so Tuck wiggled and niggled and jiggled and, just like that, the lock on his cage popped open.
‘Me next, me next, me next!’ shouted all the cats, until Tuck told them whoever spoke n
ext would have their cage opened last. Well, mute moggies, that worked well. All the cats sat silently, giving him those eyes cats give you when they want something. And to a degree this worked (as it so often does), for it made Tuck walk up and down the rows of cage to see, for the first time, quite how many cats he had to set free. Yikes, there were loads! Tuck didn’t even know where to start. But the closest cage to him was Butch’s, so Tuck jumped up and, hanging off the cage by his claws, wiggled and niggled and jiggled the pin in the lock until his mouth was sore. But sure enough—click!—Butch’s lock came open. No sooner had it done so than Butch was out of the cage like a cat out of hell. He didn’t even say thank you. He just pushed past Tuck, ran out of the barn door and into the night. And so it went with all of the cats Tuck set free that night. They were so excited at being freed that they all completely forgot their manners. Only Principessa Passagiata Pawprints from the posh part of Palermo made any acknowledgement of the service she’d received.
‘Mille grazie,’ she said, before jumping down to the ground and bolting for the barn door. ‘One shall-a remember you-a in the birthday honours list-a.’
Then, like all the other cats before her, she disappeared into the dark night. Well, I jolly well hope you’re thinking what I’m thinking! I’m thinking about my dinner. Oh no, not that bit. I mean, I’m thinking: ‘How ruuuuuude!’ and ‘What about teamwork?’ and ‘Couldn’t they have stuck around and helped Tuck open the other cages?’ I mean, it’s come to a pretty sorry state of affairs when the PP from the PP of P is the only one minding her P’s and Q’s. I do hope that if you had been one of those cats you’d have hung around, not only to say thank you, but also to help free the others.
However, unlike me and (maybe) you, Tuck was not thinking this at all. He was just thinking that he had to carry on working and finish what Bunk had set out to achieve: to free the other cats. On and on and on he worked, so deep into the night that it was officially the next day. When he’d freed the very last black cat, a skinny black tom who’d been in custody so long he was halfway institutionalised, Tuck collapsed in a heap. His jaw ached, his claws ached, but most of all his heart ached for, unlike all the cats he had set free, he had nowhere to run to.
He stood slowly and, without knowing why, used his sore and tired mouth to pick up the pin for the last time. Then he walked back down the row of cages and wiggled and niggled and jiggled it in the lock on Bunk’s cage. Except, of course, when the cage door popped open, Bunk didn’t push past him to escape. He didn’t move at all. Tuck couldn’t say why, but it seemed wrong to leave Bunk there alone in the cage. Who knew what the evil Pongs would do with his body? Whatever it was, Bunk deserved so much more, so Tuck climbed into his cage, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him slowly out. He dropped him to the floor of the barn, then dragged him all the way to the huge doorway and out into the farmyard. Then, without any idea of where he was going, he carried on walking backward, dragging Bunk through the snow.
WHAT AN ENTRANCE!
The tunnel that led from her cell seemed much longer than the previous time Ginger had crawled along it. Bumfluff and Fleabomb had told her all she had to do was head straight on until a sharp corner turned towards a major junction. Then all she had to do was turn right. That way she would be sure to find the exit she wanted. But now, with her eyes accustomed to the dark after so many days underground, she saw lots of offshoots she hadn’t noticed on the way down. Sometimes, an entrance to one of these offshoots appeared when her tunnel was curving, so that neither way was really straight on. Or maybe this offshoot was the junction the two rats meant? What if she took the wrong turning and got lost? What if she was destined to perish down here, whether King Rat and his guards found her or not? Ginger stopped and shook these negative thoughts from her head. All she had to do was to keep calm and carry straight on until she found a large junction.
After ten minutes she still had not come upon any guards, and she was at last convinced that the two country rats had done that part of their job properly. Still, she knew there would be guards soon enough and she crept slowly forwards, barely able to see where she was going at all, her ears and nose and eyes alert. Soon enough she heard a scuffling noise and then, as if it was right next to her, a voice squeaked: ‘What was that?’
‘I didn’t hear nothing,’ squeaked another voice.
It was as if the two rats were either side of her, or right in front of her, or just behind her. Ginger froze, and then listened as the rats spoke again.
‘How’s your mum?’ said the first.
‘Same as ever.’
‘And the kids?’
‘Vermin, the lot of ‘em.’
The voices were definitely ahead of her after all, and so Ginger took another step forwards. As she did, she felt the wall of the tunnel push into her and she realised it was turning sharply. The rats must be just ahead, out of view. Ginger took a deep breath, steadied herself and ran around the corner. There were the rats alright and, at the sight of this great ginger monster appearing beside them, they both gave out piercing squeals. Ginger bared her teeth and they turned and ran, squeaking loudly as they disappeared down the tunnel, shouting for help at the top of their voices. Bumfluff McGuff and Fleabomb McGee must have heard them for, as agreed, they too started squealing at the top of their voices.
‘Prisoner on the loose, like!’ shouted Fleabomb.
‘That big ginger cat there has got away, so!’ squeaked Bumfluff.
Now Ginger lost no time. She looked quickly around her and saw offshoots and tunnels running in every direction. This had to be the junction the two country rats had told her about. She went back the way she’d come, around the sharp corner to be completely sure of her bearings. This part she could not afford to get wrong. She came back to the junction again, turned right into a wide flat tunnel and ran along it as fast as she could, not worrying about the wet ground below her paws. Soon she saw two guard rats barring the passage.
‘Just let me go,’ she shouted running towards them. ‘You don’t have to get eaten. Grrr!’
Well, that was enough for one of the guards and he shot into a side tunnel and away into the dark. But the other stood his ground. It was Binjuice Jones, the rat with the sharpened front teeth and the leather cap who had guarded her on her first night in the tunnel.
‘Come on then’ he said. ‘You don’t scare me. Let’s s—’
But that was all he got to say because next thing he knew (or, more likely, didn’t know) was that his head had been bitten off. It was fear as much as anything that drove Ginger to such drastic action. Binjuice Jones was such a big and scary rat she wasn’t sure she could have beaten him in a fair fight—at least, not quickly enough to escape the other rats who soon would be on the scene. Thankful for her fight training and the fitness it had given her, Ginger ran on, the tunnel widening around her until it became a huge drainage pipe, the dirt beneath her paws now replaced by concrete, along which ran a steady stream of water. Not to mention a steady stream of Ginger. There was concrete on the walls and ceiling of the pipe too and it echoed every noise. At first, this was just the splashing of Ginger’s paws as she ran quickly through the water, but soon, Ginger heard, it was also the scampering of hundreds of rats.
‘There she is!’ The unmistakeably rasping voice of Corporal Punishment echoed up the tunnel. ‘Cut her off at the next opportunity!’
Now Ginger ran faster than ever. She pushed herself on and on through the darkness, the noise of the rats behind her growing steadily louder until—just as she was beginning to lose hope—she saw a bright pinprick in the distance. It had to be the large tunnel mouth Bumfluff and Fleabomb had told her about. The sight of it drove Ginger on, gasping for every breath, until the pinprick of light grew into a blinding ball of light and her eyes were unable to cope with the white gleam from the moonlit snow on the ground beyond the mouth of the tunnel.
Ginger was desperate to carry on running out through the wide opening and into fresh air a
t last. It was only by using that ingredient which is required for all success—self-discipline—that she managed to resist. Half a metre from the tunnel’s bright and snowy mouth, she sat and turned, panting heavily and sucking in the fresh air, and looked down along the pipe behind her. For the first few metres, the water that ran along the tunnel’s floor caught the light of the moon outside. After that, there was nothing to see but darkness. Turning back to look outside, Ginger studied the creek which ran into the tunnel. She didn’t know exactly where she was, but she knew from Fleabomb and Bumfluff that she had to look for a shopping trolley and exit the creek there. With the brightness of the outside world in her eyes, the massive hole behind her looked black and empty. But Ginger’s ears were not deceived: they heard nothing but scratching and scampering and shouted orders. Corporal Punishment had misjudged how fast Ginger could run and was telling her underlings where to go. Which offshoots to use to intercept Ginger, which ones to take as short cuts. Louder and louder the noises came as the army of sewer rats approached. Then, at last, Ginger saw movement. It looked at first as if the tunnel floor was oozing a thick tide of mud. But then she blinked again and saw it was oozing with a thick tide of rats. Thousands of them, only metres away, and at the head of them, the small white rat who was their king. His teeth were bared and his pink eyes were bright. Suddenly, he spotted Ginger. He sat up on his haunches and shouted out, his squeaky little voice echoing all around.
‘Tear her to pieces! Two weeks of meat for whoever brings me a morsel of her!’
Spurred on, the carpet of rats moved faster than ever. Still Ginger forced herself to stand her ground. Ten one thousand, eleven one thousand, twelve one thousand. Only when the first rats were a metre away from her did she turn and run. Thirteen one thousand, fourteen one thousand. She ran more quickly, worrying she would be late. She spotted a rusty old shopping trolley ahead of her, ran up to it, and jumped up out of the creek and through a hole in the fence which ran around this part of the waste ground. But that was no deterrent to the rats. They broke ranks at last, hundreds of them scampering up the side of the creek and under the fence; a thousand rats fanning out after her, like a deadly wake chasing a boat. On and on Ginger ran, until she could hear the noise of the crowds ahead of her. She glanced back quickly to see if the rats had heard it too and gasped at the sight behind her. There were thousands and thousands of rats, as far as she could see in every direction, the nearest of them much closer than she had imagined. She could hear their murderous squeaks of ‘Let me at her!’ and ‘The reward is mine!’ and ‘I’d kill that cat for free!’ and remembered how rarely a rat has a chance to gang up on a cat.
