Part Twenty-Six
“Go away,” Snookie groaned.
The guard shook his shoulder again; Snookie felt stiff from spending the night on the floor of his cell. “Gotta gets up. Showtime,” the monster rumbled at him. Snookie angrily wrenched his arm free, curling up tighter, wrapping the blanket around him and wishing he could shut out the world.
“Forget it, you ugly overbite! I’m exhausted! Go away!”
The guard conferred with another; Snookie realized the next step would be his forcible dragging to the showers, if he was lucky. One time they’d had a far-too-pleased Carl drop by to give him a tongue-bath instead. He wasn’t expecting the next voice he heard, however: “Oh, goodness! Are you giving these good monsters a hard time, sleepyhead? Well not to worry! I have just the thing!” Van Neuter bobbled into the cell, gaily producing a large syringe. “This monsteriffic vitamin shot should perk you right up!”
“I’m up,” Snookie yelped, shooting to his feet, then hopping in place to get the cramps out. “I’m up!”
“Well, let me just give it to you anyway. You’ll feel so much slimier afterward!”
“I’m fine, thanks, gottarun,” Snookie gulped, hastily putting as much distance between himself and the vet as his painfully-tingling legs would allow. “Guard! I need a shower! Guard!”
“Oh, well,” Van Neuter sighed, then perked as he caught sight of Thatch McGurk curiously peering into the cell. “You! You were very sluggish yesterday – why not let me make you even sluggier? Hey, come back here! It only stings for a minute, you big sissy!”
Cleaned up and dressed, Snookie tromped into the studio in a foul mood. He slammed the door open, not noticing the tiny monster he crushed behind it against the wall. “You people have to let me out for some air! I’m suffocating down here in this stench!” Snookie yelled. The Frackles merely glanced at him before turning back to their jobs. “Well?” Snookie demanded, glaring at the Yeti who directed this show. The hulking, white-furred ape shrugged, pointed to a wall clock, pointed to a schedule clipboard. “And what if I refuse to perform until I get a breath of fresh air?”
The Yeti shrugged again, then gestured to a stagefrackle. The sharp-faced creature trotted over, yanked up a startled Snookie’s large nose, and sprayed a dash of Mountain Aire FeSqueeze into the Muppet’s open mouth. Snookie gagged and coughed.The Yeti growled and pointed at the stage-floor area of the small studio.
“So…much…better…cough, cough…thanks,” Snookie hacked, stealing a water bottle from the Yeti to try and regain some moisture in his throat. He drank continuously while the soundfrackle wired his lapel mic and checked it, handing back an empty bottle to the disgruntled director. Doing his best to compose himself, he stood in the center of the stage area and waited for the director to count down, the lights and theme music to go up, and the camera to begin filming. His smile wasn’t as wide as usual; he didn’t care. “Welcome, all you baconhounds and porkstuffers! Once again, it’s time to play the Hammily Feud!”
Canned applause rose and faded. Snookie turned to his right to greet the new batch of porkers destined for the stewpot. “Aaaaand today we have two new families to snout off against each other for the prize of living another day! As if anybody here thinks that’s really going to happen… Here we have with us the Carne Asadas from Albuquerque! You guys really should’ve taken that left turn, heh heh. So, Papa Carne, are you all excited to be here?”
A large hog with whittled-down tusks grunted, nodding. “Oh boy! Oh boy! They told us there’d be cake! With spinach!”
“And you believed them?” Snookie asked; the monster crew played a burst of canned laughter. “Well, who’s this amazingly rotund lady?”
“Snookie, this is my wife Prudy; my son Guapo; and my youngest son Mucho,” Papa Carne introduced them all proudly. Prudy sniffed haughtily. Guapo looked less than thrilled, and a very round little Mucho bounced up and down so hard he quivered all over with excitement. “We just can’t wait to get to the barbeque!”
“Neither can the director! All right, and in this corner, we have the Utherwhite-Miit family from Rural Corner, Pennsylvania! Welcome in, fresh Miits!”
The group of smaller pigs oinked happily…all except one. Snookie paused, frowning at the pink splotches over blue felt. “Uh…what’s your deal, little girl?”
“Oh, dat’s our newest family member,” the mother of the clan explained in a thick Penn Dutch accent. “Ve adopted her choost dis morning! Isn’t she pretty…for an Englisher?”
Snookie couldn’t resist touching the plastic-looking snout. It was plastic! Startled, he lifted the fake snout off the nose of a Whatnot girl with a gag in her mouth. “Hey, you’re not a pig at all! What the heck is this!”
“Ve luff her like our own!” Vater Utherwhite-Miit assured Snookie. He added in a lower voice, “It vas de only vay dey vould let us compete! Ve needed anutter child!”
“What’s going on?” Snookie demanded of the director, striding off-set; the camerafrackle hurriedly cut. The Yeti grumbled, gesturing fluidly. Snookie couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You ran out of pigs? Seriously? So you just threw in a…a girl and thought nobody could tell the difference? She isn’t that piggish!”
“Mnnn mnnnnnn mrrrr!” the girl protested. Disgusted, Snookie went back to her and pulled the gag loose. “—and your mother too!” the girl finished.
“Hey, sweetheart, I don’t make the rules,” Snookie told her. “Did you agree to be in this farce?”
“I’m not a pig, I’m not a pig!” the girl yelled.
“Now Sigride…” Mutter Utherwhite-Miit gently protested, but the girl shook off the comforting, hard-nailed hand.
“They dressed me up!” the girl added, nodding angrily at the Frackles offset all trying to look somewhere else.
“Is this true?” Snookie demanded.
A chorus of “No! No, no, no!” sounded.
A pink Frackle shuffled his feet nervously. “Well…we did do the nose…”
“And the hat,” another admitted.
“But she’s still an entrée! Play the game!” a scaly green thing yelled from the sound booth.
“Yeah! Play the game! Play it!” the crew chimed in.
Snookie sighed. The girl stopped him from replacing the gag, asking, “Wait, aren’t you a Muppet? This is discrimination! These monsters are blatantly disrespecting our inalienable Muppetness!”
Snookie shook his head. “Look, kid, what are you, some kind of rabble-rouser? I can warn you right now, that’s not going to play well to this crowd.”
“I’m not a kid! My name’s Stinkbomb,” the girl pouted. “I saw how they disregarded your demand for better treatment! Stand up to them! Be proud of your Muppetness! Felt is beautiful! We will not rest until no Muppet is ever discriminated against—“
“Sweetie, if people looking at you funny is the worst thing you’ve ever been through, you have a lot to learn,” Snookie sighed, shoved the gag back in the complaining girl’s mouth, and set the fake snout over her nose again before the Yeti could decide they should all have an early and unpleasant lunch break. “Fine, let’s get to it,” he said, walking back center stage and putting on a smile for the camera. “So, our contestants are ready and eager to get going! It’s time to play the Hammily Feud! The topic chosen today by our carefully selected panel of losers found loitering around the train tracks is…” A clanging bell signaled the start of the round, as from the top of the large board behind the stage, Carl the Big Hungry Helper let drop a scribbled sign. “Things you’d take to a cookout!”
The Whatnot girl fussed and strained against her bonds most of the show, while contestant after contestant was sent to the grill. Snookie pitied her: if amateur activism was the most strenuous thing she’d ever been involved in, she really wasn’t going to enjoy being basted over a spit…but there was nothing he could do for her. Carl and several other large monsters lurked close by, occasionally chewing on the unlucky goblins holding up drool buckets for them, waiting for the barbeque to impart smoky-sweet tenderness to every ham, whether real or not. Only his current contract kept them from adding him to the low, slow-cooking fire as well. They’re lucky, Snookie told himself uneasily, hurrying away from the sounds of screams and teeth gnashing at the end of the show filming: their awful day is over. I still have four more tapings to go through…and there’s nothing I can do.
This thought, despite its truth, brought him no comfort.
--------------------------
“This is fun! What color are we painting the lobby?” Beauregard wanted to know as they jostled along in the cab of the rusted pickup.
“Beau, we’re not. This is our cover,” Rhonda tried to explain again.
Beau frowned. “Should I have brought extra tarps?”
“You guys set up da paints,” Rocco Rodent directed. “I’ll get youse in, den I’ll…uh…I’ll keep a nose out for anyone inneruptin’ us!”
“Rob the place blind, you mean,” Rhonda growled. “This is risky enough already, kid! Am I paying you for this job or what? Stick to the plan!”
The Newsman shot a worried look at his producer. Bad enough they’d unwittingly involved the placid janitor; just by asking to borrow some coveralls, somehow the message of a painting job had wormed its way into Beau’s thick skull instead, and he’d cheerfully insisted on driving them and bringing the painting supplies. Rhonda had pointed out this would be perfect cover: if they actually allowed him to paint the lobby (and set tarps over the security cameras), who would question the weekend work order? However, Newsie was less then sanguine about Rhonda’s smug nephew wanting to tag along. Picking the office’s lock was one thing; trying to steal half the Nofrisko building was another.
The camerasloth riding in the back of the truck with the paint buckets added another dimension of potential trouble. Newsie was pleased that Tony was coming along to capture visible proof of monsters, but worried that his presence might somehow backfire on their legal action against KRAK. He muttered at Rhonda, “It’s really nice of Tony to help us out, but does he know this could cost him his job too?”
“His name’s Tommy, how many times do I hafta tell ya that? And it’s got nothing to do with nice! He owes me a favor from a station poker game a month ago.”
“A month a—then why did I have to pay him for our last venture?” Newsie fumed.
Rhonda shrugged. “’Cause last time, I thought you were foam-damaged.” She looked up at Newsie somewhat abashedly. “I, uh. I’m sorry, okay?”
He sighed gruffly. “Okay. At least maybe now we’ll finally get proof!”
“Just think: we might be able to bring down a freaky food factory and show up Blanke all at once!” Rhonda squeaked. She tried to fluff her hair under the painter’s cap. “Do I look cute enough for prime-time in this, ya think?”
“Aunty Rhonda, yer always a doll,” her nephew assured her with a smirk. He let out a shrill yelp when Rhonda thwacked the top of his head. “What was dat for?”
“That was for being the most insincere rat on the planet,” she snapped. “Buttering me up will not make me look the other way while you try to make off with their whole IT section!”
“Fine, see if I trow a compliment your way evah,” Rocco muttered. “So, uh, why is youse breakin’ inta dis place anyways?”
“We’re not breaking in, we’re journalists investigating a serious story about monsters,” Newsie said stiffly.
Rocco stared at him a second, then turned to Rhonda. “Where’d ya say ya dug up dis mook?”
“We’re coworkers, kid. Shut it.” Rhonda winced as Beau narrowly missed a corner mailbox. “Beau! Stick to the street!”
“I thought you wanted me to drive on it,” Beau said, puzzled. “I might have some supra-glue in my toolbox, though!”
“Just drive,” Rhonda groaned. She returned her attention to her sulking nephew. “They have security cameras. Make sure you keep your face hidden. Last thing I need is your father angry with me for you being thrown in jail, ironic though that would be…”
“Is you implyin’ somethin’?” Rocco growled. “Dad ‘n my brothers ‘n me is all legitimate businessrats!” He told Newsie proudly, “We’re tops in the waste-reclamation industry in Joisey.”
“Uh…fascinating,” Newsie replied. “Rhonda, about that: they know me! Will the coveralls be enough of a disguise?”
“I’m so glad you asked.” From a large paper bag, the rat produced a Yankees ballcap. “An explosion has just taken place at the hat factory!” She plunked the several-sizes-too-large cap onto his head; he fumbled with the brim.
“It’s covering my glasses! How’m I supposed to see like this?”
“Just keep your eyes on me, sunshine. You only need it ‘til we get past the cameras. I’m guessing they don’t film in this alleged secret room.”
“Who knows what’s down there?” Newsie grumbled, but adjusted the hat to peer from underneath it. “That’s the building, Beau! Park here!”
Newsie hoped no parking cops would be patrolling today and give them a ticket for the skid marks on the sidewalk in front of the Nofrisko office. He helped the others unload cans of paint, rollers, and tarps from the back of the truck. Rocco paused at the front door only a few seconds before opening it and strolling in, paintbrush in hand. Rhonda and the sloth followed, setting up dropcloths and spreading plastic tarps over everything in the lobby; Newsie hung back, hoping no one was around who might recognize him, until Rhonda came and murmured to him that the lobby camera had been found and covered. Taking a deep breath of relatively fresh air, Newsie ventured once more into the minimal lobby of the snack cake company.
“Rocco!” Rhonda hissed; the younger rat glanced up from munching a Fwinkie out of the welcome basket on the reception desk.
“What?” Rocco asked, wiping strawberry crème off his whiskers. When his aunt only shook her head, he threw his arms out angrily. “What?”
“That door, over there,” Newsie muttered low, just in case any sound surveillance was recording. While Beau cheerfully began priming the wall behind the front desk, Rhonda joined Newsie in front of the coat closet. Steeling his foam, the Newsman grabbed the doorknob and turned.
It opened easily. Rhonda took a tiny flashlight from a pocket of her cargo pants and shone it in…and down. Stairs immediately led from the door into darkness. “Okay, score one for Goldie,” she whispered. “I’m guessing this doesn’t go to Narnia.”
“Ton—mmy,” Newsie corrected himself, gesturing for the sloth to bring in the camera. The light mounted atop it didn’t do much more to chase the gloom; impossible to tell from here how far down the steps went. Newsie looked at Rhonda. She turned her cap around, bill at the back, and flashed a grin.
“We are so gonna hit prime time with this,” she said. “To heck with Blanke!”
He nodded agreement, removed his hat, and took another breath. He could smell it, faintly: dampness, filth, must and dust and unkempt fur…
Rhonda prodded him, making him jump. “Well?”
Shooting a glare at her, he felt for any sort of handhold along the wall, and jerked back fingers smudged with slime. “Oh blech!”
“Oh, yeah, Newsie? Ya might not wanna do that,” Rhonda said smugly, having noticed the gleam of the stuff in the beam of her light.
“Thanks,” he muttered, and took the first step down. Then another. Then another, and looked back to be certain Rhonda and the sloth were actually following. Seeing them cautiously descending after him, he continued on, placing each rubber-booted foot firmly, seeing some glops of…stuff on the concrete stairs as he went. “I told you there were monsters involved,” he muttered.
“What, are they especially rotten things?” Rhonda squeaked. “This looks more like stuff the zombies at the party woulda left in their wake! Cripes, what is this crud?” She inadvertently stepped right into a splotch of the goo, and Newsie heard her using some words even Gina didn’t usually indulge in. “I knew I shoulda gone with the booties today! These are my favorite deck shoes, dangit!”
“Shhh,” Newsie hissed, silencing her. “Listen! …Do you smell something?”
The rat edged down onto the same step he’d paused upon, sniffing. “Uh…sorta. What does it smell like to you?”
“You can’t tell?” he asked, astounded. “It’s like…like…garbage and dirt and…and…”
“Smells like a bait shop,” Tommy murmured right over Newsie’s shoulder, making him jump.
“Sloths fish?” Rhonda wondered.
Newsie gulped. “What the hey is going on down here?”
Rhonda poked his leg. “We’ll never find out if we just stand here and discuss the smell!”
Nodding, he reluctantly resumed his slow descent. Their lights picked up different colors in the walls and steps, faded red and orange, and suddenly the stairs bottomed out. Rhonda shone her flashlight on the floor; Tommy swept the cameralight over the arched ceiling. Crumbling, dusty bricks formed a narrow but fairly straight passageway. “Holy Eliot Ness! Look how old those bricks are! Newsie, this must be one of those Prohibition tunnels!”
“I didn’t know New York had anything like that,” he murmured, gazing around; though dirt and more sludge covered the floor of the tunnel, he could see bricks of the same rough color paving the way.
“Sure! There was supposed to be a tunnel like this somewhere in Chinatown…”
“We’re in the Bowery,” Newsie corrected.
Rhonda smacked his knee, making him crouch and wince, surprised. “And this is heading west, Daniel Boone! Chinatown’s that way!” Her voice echoed eerily along the tunnel, and all of them paused, listening.
“Hey, uh,” Tommy spoke up slowly, “You guys ever see the first ‘Lord of the Rings’ movie?”
Gina had coaxed Newsie into attending a marathon showing of all three films at her friend Scott’s a couple of months ago. “This isn’t Helms’ Deep,” he growled, but instinctively kept his voice quiet.
A low echo nonetheless traveled a short ways along the tunnel. “Point taken,” Rhonda whispered. Slowly, they walked along the corridor. Newsie glanced up; dusty webs of long-dead spiders traced over cracks in the bricks at odd intervals, and something like a tiny centipede scuttled ahead of their lights. He shuddered, and suddenly wished he had something to defend himself with…a stick, a club, even a paintgun he didn’t know how to shoot! “What could they possibly use this for?” he whispered to Rhonda.
“Dunno, but someone’s used it recently for something,” she replied softly, nudging him to point out faint tracks in the sludge underfoot. Newsie stopped, staring at a three-toed footprint that was far larger than his own size-five boot.
“That’s not comforting,” he muttered.
“Hey, you’re the one who wanted to check this place out!” the rat hissed, staying close behind him.
The air down here felt chilly, and reeked of offal. He wondered if the slimy sludge coating the bricks of the floor and halfway up the walls was the culprit, but refused to lean any closer to sniff it. Prohibition…why would anyone maintain this tunnel since then? Has it been open all that time? Were the monsters bootleggers? Realizing the absurdity of that thought, he shrugged it off, annoyed. Don’t be ridiculous! The monsters didn’t run moonshine, they operated the speakeasies! Well, then what are they doing with this? Running illegal drugs into Nofrisko? Using it as an escape route from the office? It doesn’t seem to go very deep, he thought, trying to recall how many steps they’d come down to reach this more-or-less level pathway. “Rhonda, how close are we to that ConEd tunnel?”
She pulled her phone out and checked it. “Well, we’re deep enough I got no bars at all…”
He frowned. “Why would you think we’d find a bar down here? Just because the tunnel might go back to the ‘twenties?”
“You and Beau been blood brothers long?”
“Huh?”
“Forget it. I mean there’s no signal down here, Newsie! But, just at a guess…yeah, I think we’re close, within a couple blocks at most.”
He didn’t like the look of the footprints he kept seeing. That one had what looked like webbing between the toes…and that one resembled an enormous pawprint… “Are you sure nothing big could get down here?”
Rhonda didn’t reply; when he looked down at her, he saw her swallow hard and twitch nervous whiskers. “Are you filming?” Newsie asked the sloth. Receiving a nod in reply, he returned his attention forward, then paused. “Look…there’s the end!”
They peered ahead; their lights picked out the edge of some sort of arched entrance, and a cold, empty dimness beyond. Their steps sounded muffled, the echoes ahead dying, sound swallowed into the open darkness past the arch. Cautiously they approached it, and discovered a large landing of rough-hewn stone. Brick steps curved upward to their right; stone ones wound down to the left. An ordinary door with peeling green paint sat directly across from them. Nervously, Newsie tried the knob. “Locked,” he whispered.
“Want me to go back and get Rocco?”
Newsie grabbed the sleeve of the rat before she could run back the way they’d come. “No! That’ll waste valuable time.” He took a deep breath, then wrinkled his long nose unhappily. “Gahh! Smells like drain cleaner.”
“Smells like poison,” Rhonda muttered, shivering.
“Smells like a meh—uh. Doesn’t smell good,” Tommy agreed.
“Up or down?” Rhonda asked.
Newsie considered it. Although he was curious what lay above them, everything he’d found out so far indicated the monsters were holed up somewhere below the city. “Down,” he said.
Rhonda scowled. “How’d I know you were gonna say that.”
“Come on,” Newsie urged, thinking they’d spent a long while just getting this far; at this rate, Beau would finish the first floor and move on to the second before they returned. “We need to find out what they’re doing, and get it on film!”
“You really still think this is about monsters?”
Newsie gestured at the slime; the thick trail of it, almost obscuring the stairs, continued down. “You think this is floor polish?”
“You gotta stop hanging around me. You’re starting to sound rattish,” Rhonda grumbled, but followed him as he carefully placed foot below foot on the treacherously slippery steps.
The smell increased until he had to breathe through his mouth, but the Newsman pushed forward, anxiety balanced nearly equally by his determination to get real proof of the monsters he knew had to be down here – something so irrefutable that Blanke would be shamed into accepting him back at KRAK, something Honeydew wouldn’t even have to test to confirm its horrible origin! There, just below: a stronger scent wafted up, so pungent he could taste it; and now he could hear something, a whispering, rustling, moving – Newsie froze. Rhonda bumped into him with a stifled curse. “Could ya warn me?” she squeaked. “I just stepped in –“
“Run,” he huffed, nearly choking on the scent, a billow of it blowing up from the stairs ahead. The noise increased: a thousand scrabbling claws, a thousand clacking jaws, a sound of – “Rhonda, run!” Newsie yelled, tripping over the step behind him as he tried to reverse course.
His nose had not been wrong.
The rat shrieked. Two of the things burst around the turn of the staircase, bug-jaws snapping, bug-legs whisking over the steps and the walls, stalk-eyes focusing on them, purple fur bristling all along the endless backs of the giant, multisectioned creatures. Tommy staggered, nearly dropping the camera as Newsie pushed past him; the reporter grabbed the sloth’s shoulder and yanked him up. Rhonda was five steps ahead, dignity abandoned, running on all four paws, leaping from stair to stair. Screeching, one of the monsters lunged at Newsie; he flattened himself against the wall, gasping, and when the thing pulled back for another try, he grabbed the camera away from the struggling sloth and swung it as hard as he could. The mic in front crunched, but so did the chitinous jaws. The monster roared, and tumbled into its partner, and Newsie shoved the sloth ahead of him, turning to run backwards, pointing the lens roughly at the second thing scrabbling around the wounded one to come after him. They’d reached the landing again. Newsie pushed Tommy toward the brick archway, but heard Rhonda yelling: “Up here! Up here!”
He looked up: Rhonda stood on one of the carpeted steps leading up, waving desperately at him. Just as he changed direction, he saw something she didn’t: the carpet she stood on was moving just above her. “Rhonda, no!” he shouted, too late. The rat screamed as the soft thing she clung to suddenly rolled and bucked, tumbling her upwards toward a gaping, slimy, toothless maw. “Rhonda!”
“Holy sh—“ the sloth exclaimed, catching the camera as Newsie slung it aside. The Newsman clambered up the steps, reaching his friend just as the sluglike thing tried to gulp her down; she flailed ineffectually on its broad, slippery tongue. Newsie grabbed one of her paws and heaved; they flipped down the steps, crashing onto the landing. Rhonda was screaming. Newsie, barely thinking, simply shoved her bodily inside his coverall and staggered to his feet. Tommy kept filming, backing along the brick corridor.
“Move it!” Newsie screamed, shoving the camerasloth. Tommy didn’t argue, hanging onto the camera and loping faster than he’d ever moved before. Newsie glanced back to see the slug-thing and the centipede-thing collide, snap at one another, then turn their attention to the tunnel. The cameralight picked up the gleam of multiple tiny eyes approaching fast. Oh frog oh frog chest hurts burning why am I burning is Rhonda still in there run dear frog run – His thoughts a blur, the Newsman pounded hard along the tunnel, panting, overtaking and then half-dragging the sloth along. Stupid this was stupid oh frog don’t want to die eaten by BUGS!
They burst through the closet door into the lobby, startling Beau, with a detail brush in one hand atop a ladder to get the ceiling corner, and Rocco, halfway out the front door with his second load of office computing equipment. “Run d—it! Ruuunnn!” Newsie shrieked at them.
Rocco vanished, the stack of laptops crashing to the carpet. Beau blinked at the uproar. “But…I’m not done with the touch-ups!” he protested.
Newsie let go of Tommy, who staggered out the front door after the pawnshop-bound rat. Newsie yanked Beauregard off the ladder. “Never mind that Beau! The truck! Get in the truck!”
“But – all our tarps –“
Somehow Newsie got Beau into the driver’s seat; somehow a harried Beau found the keys and put the groaning old truck into gear in spite of the reporter screaming at him. Gasping, Newsie looked out the passenger window as they pulled away; a dark tentacle slithered around the open edge of the Nofrisko front door – and slammed it shut. What happened in the tunnel would stay in the tunnel.
Sobbing, his chest on fire, Newsie tore open the coverall. Rhonda clung to him, wheezing, and now he saw the cause of the pain: half her clothes were dissolved, and so was a section of his undershirt. Slimy green gunk coated her fur, her eyes squeezed shut. With a choked cry, Newsie dug out a handkerchief and wiped her face. “Rhonda! Rhonda!”
“I…hate…your frogd—d stories,” she gurgled, and slumped against him.
“Are we going back to the theatre?” Beau asked, glancing worriedly at the half-undressed Newsman with the slimy rat, then back at the sloth crouched below the truckbed railings, still clutching a battered camera. “Kermit’s not going to be happy! Those special corner rollers cost a lot!”
“For frog’s sake, Beau, the hospital! Take us to the hospital!” Newsie groaned, the stuff coating Rhonda burning into his felt; he shook her gently with one hand, grimacing when his fingers suddenly seemed to catch fire at the contact with whatever digestive fluid the slug-thing had spewed on her. “Rhonda! Wake up! Rhonda!”
Beau stared at him a split second with wide eyes; then he spun the steering wheel hard, ignoring the horns and brakes screeching all around, and ramped the truck onto the sidewalk to avoid another car. “Watch it! Comin’ through!” he yelled out the window. “Move it! Woooooooooooooooo!” His siren impression was convincing enough to make people stop or get out of the way. Although it only took him three minutes to reach Organ General, it seemed forever to Newsie, who kept prodding the unconscious rat, begging her to respond. “Do we want the emergency entrance?” Beau asked.
“Yes! Yes!”
“Okay!” Another hard turn, and the thump of the wheels over a curb, and a dazed Newsie fell out of the truck cab when the passenger door flew open at the crunching stop right in the admitting lobby of the hospital. He struggled to his feet, cradling Rhonda, and a nurse ran over to see what the matter was.
“Help her!” Newsie begged, holding out the unresponsive, smoking rat. The nurse recoiled.
“A rat? Hey, we don’t –“
“She’s my friend, d—it!” Newsie roared, then fell into a coughing fit, his throat hoarse. A young man in a doctor’s coat knelt by him, pushing the nurse aside.
“Good lord, what did she fall into?” the doctor asked. Newsie shook his head, unable to answer, and the doctor scooped Rhonda up in gloved hands. The doctor swiped a fingerful of the goop off the rat’s midsection into a small jar and handing it to the flustered nurse. “I need this analyzed stat, and clear a space in Triage Four!” He ran with Rhonda in both hands through a swinging door; another attendant stopped Newsie from following, then saw the burns on the Muppet’s chest and hands.
“You too! You, get that truck out of here! It’s not sterile!” the attendant snapped first at the Newsman, then Beauregard, hustling Newsie through the triage doorway. Newsie saw the doctor rinsing Rhonda under an open shower in one corner, swiftly washing as much of the slimy stuff off her limp body as he could; the instant he stepped out of the shower, the second nurse shoved Newsie under it, unsnapping his coverall the rest of the way and roughly tugging it off him despite the Newsman’s weak protests. His shirt was ripped free as well, splitting down the front where the goop had eaten through the fabric to his felt. Shivering in nothing but boxers and socks, he tried to focus on what they were doing to Rhonda; the doctor had her on one of the triage gurneys and seemed to be checking her with his stethoscope while a nurse attempted to insert a needle in one tiny arm. Rhonda coughed, and relief swept through him even as his nurse hustled him out of the emergency shower and onto another padded gurney. He tried to see around the people tending him, feeling dizzy, needing to know how badly Rhonda was hurt. He was barely aware of a towel patting him dry, of his heart and breath being checked, of salve being spread on his burns. He started when something sharp poked his left wrist, and frowned at the IV, forcing himself to look back at Rhonda before he could faint; he’d never liked needles. The room was a blur of movement and a cacophony of voices.
“…burned all the fur off…” the doctor was saying.
“How do we cross-match for…” a tech complained.
“Get me the results…”
“This one looks okay, minor burns,” the nurse examining Newsie called out.
“Is she all right?” Newsie gulped, trying to get someone’s attention. “Rhonda!”
“Pulse looks strong, start treatment for third-degree chemical burns,” the doctor said, then turned to Newsie. “What happened?”
“We…we were underground, a tunnel, under Nofrisko,” Newsie gasped, the sting on his chest and fingers dulling; he felt remarkably aware of his heartbeat, a somewhat disturbing sensation. “A…a slug tried to eat her…”
“A slug? You’re saying a slug did this?” the doctor asked, incredulous.
“It was a really big slug,” Newsie mumbled. He clutched the edge of the gurney, feeling weak, desperate to stay conscious.
The doctor shone a penlight in his eyes; Newsie blinked, startled. “Pupils dilated. Run a tox screen,” the doctor told the tech applying a clean bandage around Newsie’s chest.
“I’m not drugged,” Newsie said. “We...we have proof! We have film!”
“Your friend’s lucky to be alive,” the doctor told him. “Can you tell me what the substance is on her?”
“Slug spit,” Newsie said, shaking his head. “I don’t know! Whatever monster slugs have!”
The doctor turned back to Rhonda, laying still but breathing, with a huge-looking needle incongruously taped to her wrist to keep it in. Newsie gulped. “Watch the film! Our camerasloth is in the waiting room…watch the film! I’m not drugged!” He did feel nauseous, however; could whatever stench he’d been breathing down there have affected him? What if he had hallucinated this? No, no! It was all on film, and these people would see it, and then they’d believe him!
The nurse who’d objected to a rat in the hospital entered, and conferred privately with the doctor. He appeared startled, then darted from the room. Newsie stared at Rhonda, who was gently being slathered with some sort of burn cream from neck to feet. Her fur was indeed gone. Realizing he was seeing a naked coworker, Newsie flushed and averted his gaze, stealing uneasy glances at the nurse treating her. Oh, Rhonda, I’m sorry! This is my fault! We never should have gone in after we saw the slime trail; that was just asking for trouble! Ill, he jumped an inch off the pallet when the doctor touched his shoulder. He stared up at the frowning physician.
“Where did you say you were?” the doctor demanded.
“A…a tunnel, under the Nofrisko offices, on Bowery,” Newsie managed, his mouth dry. “We…we shouldn’t have gone…we saw the slime, and went ahead anyway…that thing was waiting for us…horrible things!” He shivered.
The doctor gently wrapped a light fleece blanket over his shoulders. His gaze was serious. “I just looked at that film your…your sloth shot. I’ve notified Animal Control and the CDC. We’re still analyzing the slime, but I can already tell you it’s strongly basic. The opposite of acid, but just as caustic,” he explained, seeing the confused look on Newsie’s face.
“I didn’t know there was an agency just to handle Animal,” Newsie muttered. “Good luck with that…” Some of what the doc had said penetrated his dazed mind, and he perked. “You—you believe me? You saw the slug?”
“Buddy, if that’s a slug, I’m Jonas Salk,” the doctor replied grimly. “Take it easy. Once we’ve figured out what’s in your system we’ll treat you for it. Meantime, try to rest. Your friend’s going to be okay…it may take a long while to grow her fur back, though. Start an oxygen line on him too,” he told a tech, and Newsie suffered tubing being hooked over his ears to stay in his nose. The doctor frowned. “You look sort of familiar.”
“The Newsman, KRAK,” Newsie gulped, trying to take deep breaths.
“I see. Going after a story, were you? Next time, leave it to the authorities, okay?”
“They didn’t believe me,” Newsie said. “We had to get proof.”
Slowly the doctor nodded, looking back at Rhonda. “Well, I’d say now you have it.”
Newsie nodded, calming slowly. “Can I…borrow a phone? Need to call someone…”
The doctor pulled out a cell phone, but before he could hand it over, an older man in a white coat hurried over and looked Newsie up and down with sharp eyes. “This the one?” At the first doctor’s nod, the second shook Newsie’s hand. “Melvin Cosgrove, CDC. I was downstairs checking out a possible TB case, so until a team gets here, I’ll be handling your case as well. I need all the details. Where did you encounter this creature?”
Summoning what strength and concentration he could, the Newsman told the investigator all he knew about the strange Nofrisko corporation, from the odd ingredients for Shamrockies to the secret tunnel leading to a nest of monstrous invertebrates, relieved that finally, finally, someone was paying attention, and finally, something would be done.
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Welcome to the Muppet Central Forum!
Jim Henson Idea Man
Back to the Rock Season 2
Bear arrives on Disney+
Sam and Friends Book
Hey, that was a pretty good maniacal laugh!
, for I remembered there were two Muppets in birdlike costumes at Grizzly Farms' party. But were they really after 
as part of the wait staff in the undercity.
