Maintaining their held breath, Maria and Sara stayed right on top of Double H, squinting their eyes as they attempted to see whatever they could in the dense smoke. As much as they were inconvenienced by the impairment of their own sight, they knew it was well worth the trouble. If they were having this much difficulty seeing, they hoped the mecha-monkeys were having an even harder time.
Besides, they didn’t need to be able to see particularly well at the moment, since they were relying on the memory of Double H, who surely knew the layout of the auditorium and the stage like the back of her own hand. Having come this far, and with so few options available, they had no choice but to place their trust in the woman entirely.
Without her help, the sisters knew the odds of rescuing their father in time were drastically reduced. At this point, it was all or nothing, and they had to embrace the risk now, and worry about any potential consequences later - Dad was all that mattered.
Double H proceeded in a stealthy manner, crouched over, doing her best to further reduce her profile, hoping to evade the probing eyes and snatching claws of the gremlins. She walked quickly, despite the lack of visibility, confident in the placement of her steps.
Sara and Maria did likewise, staying right on Double H’s heels, swiveling their heads from side to side as they stayed alert for danger. Around them, they could hear the clamoring and howling of the mecha-monkeys.
It was an eerie experience. The uproar surrounded them, assaulting their ears, and they could hear the scraping of claws and the pounding of fists as the robotic creatures scurried about, searching for their quarry in the smoke. It was like being under siege in the thick mists of a jungle, surrounded by a legion of unseen assailants.
As if materializing from thin air, a pair of mecha-monkeys appeared just beside the girls, emerging from the smoke with aggressive, scuttling movements. With no time to even consider what to do, Maria and Sara reacted purely on reflex. Each of them swatted one of the gremlins with a well-placed strike.
Clang! Hammer and wrench met their targets, and the critters went flying, disappearing once more into the smoke, warbling as they went.
After dealing with the menace, Maria and Sara immediately grasped for each other’s hand, holding tight to one another. In this strange, hostile environment, which had an almost alien quality, their support now meant more than ever.
They felt their heartbeats spike as they realized they could no longer see Double H. The brief moment in which they had turned to repel the attacking mecha-monkeys had been enough time for her to disappear in the dense smoke.
The passing seconds felt like eons, and the sisters grew frantic. Utterly disoriented, they had no idea where to go without the aid of their guide.
More mecha-monkeys emerged, and the girls lashed out with their tools, bonking the robots into submission. However, many of the gremlins seemed to have honed in on their location, and they were finding their way to the sisters in the smoke with increased frequency. They scuttled into view by ones and twos, and Maria and Sara struck out with efficiency and accuracy, repelling each threat as it appeared.
They reared back with their tools, ready to wallop the next gremlin as it began to materialize. Fortunately, they stopped at the last moment, realizing the shape coming toward them was far too big to be one of the little robots. It was, in fact, Double H. She had come back for them!
Double H quickly approached, coming within inches of the girls, so they could see one another with relative clarity. “Come on!” she shouted, her voice affected with a tone of desperation.
Having released her breath in order to speak, Double H began coughing, but she didn’t let this slow her down. She gamely turned around and once more headed for their goal, with the girls close behind.
Having expended so much energy in fighting off the mecha-monkeys, Maria and Sara found they too had exhausted the gulp of air they had held in their lungs. They were forced to expel it and begin taking deep breaths. They didn’t have nearly as much trouble breathing in the smoky environment as Double H, but they sputtered a bit as they clouted the sporadic assaults of the gremlins.
The three of them reached the back wall of the auditorium, and Double H wasted no time. She began climbing up, using improvised handholds and places she could secure her feet.
There was a series of cleats and shelves that had been affixed to the wall, designed for holding various supplies and stage props. However, the clever placement of these things also made for an easy ascent up the wall, and it seemed this had most likely been done by design – an amendment crafted by the Phantom of the Auditorium, no doubt.
Maria and Sara followed closely, remaining as quiet as possible. For the time being, they had escaped the notice of the throngs of mecha-monkeys, and they hoped to keep it that way. The sisters and Double H were now outside the plume of smoke, and they could once more breath freely.
Glancing over their shoulders, the girls could see that the gremlins had converged at the center of the stage, and they were diving to and fro within the whirling smoke. They scurried this way and that, searching for the humans, howling with outrage each time they came up empty handed. Periodically, another one of their number would stumble and fall to the stage, its battery depleted, and the floor was littered with an increasing number of deactivated robots.
“Their batteries keep failing them,” Sara whispered to her sister and Double H. “But there’s still way too many of the buggers.”
However, not all of the mecha-monkeys were centered on the stage, futilely searching for a target that was no longer there. There remained a frantic few among the rafters, energetically lurching against the rope that held Chief Fresco’s suspended chair. They swung from their hands and feet and even their tails, pushing and pulling and causing a ruckus.
Fortunately, this handful of gremlins had thus far been too busy to notice the ascent of the girls, who were now quite close indeed. They had quickly climbed up, following the route that Double H established, and they now crouched on a steel girder that helped support the weight of the roof.
“We need to take these guys out quick, before they get too crazy and make Dad fall,” Sara said. “Hopefully, they won’t even see us coming.”
The chair was swaying madly, and Chief Fresco was starting to look a shade green. He was trying to shout an objection, but the gag in his mouth muffled his protests. The mecha-monkeys aggressively jostled him, warbling and howling and clapping their hands together.
Just when it seemed things couldn’t get any worse… they did.
One of the gremlins in the rafters engaged a motorized saw, causing Chief Fresco’s eyes to bulge even wider, so much so that they looked as though they might fall from his head (though one eye was more or less obscured by the crookedly applied patch). The mecha-monkey approached the swaying rope, and Sara and Maria gasped with disbelief, filled with dread at the intent of the diabolical critter.
Chief Fresco vigorously shook his head from side to side, but his gesture was useless. Unaffected by his protest, the robot kept coming, its saw humming and buzzing as the blade spun at high frequency.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Rumble In the Rafters
The Green Beans, Volume 5: The Phantom of the Auditorium Page 27
