Fox. It smells like fox.
Judy didn't want to get up, but instinct bid her to open her eyes. Slowly they fluttered open, all the while resisting as much as they could. Was it really still dark out? How much had she slept, anyway? The world slowly came into focus, and she could make out a figure in the dark, a figure whose muzzle was practically inches from hers. That got her going. She opened them with resolve and started at the sight of Nick staring at her, with his eyes as wide as possible and a stupid, toothy grin that nearly touched his ears.
"Whoa!" she cried out, trying to move herself out from under him while she was still on her back.
"Knew that'd get you up," he said, the grin faltering just a little. "Come on. I figured out where we're going."
Judy rubbed sleep out of her eyes; she wasn't going to be able to get any more, not now that Nick had given her the "psycho movie killer" look, so she might as well be done with it and move on. "Where are we going?" she mumbled; apparently, her brain hadn't gotten the memo that it was time to wake up, and she heard herself say something along the lines of, "Heir e owen?"
Nick chuckled. "Not fully functional yet, are we?"
Judy stood up a bit unsteadily. "You try walkin' around after you wake up and see somebody staring at you like they might eat you."
"Fair enough," Nick agreed. "But still, get up. We're screwed if we don't get up and go."
"What's the rush, anyway?"
Nick seemed to relish the opportunity to keep talking. "I was thinking about it last night after we kissed. And I remembered a way I can find one of their hideouts. Vamos al carro, Carrots." And he began to walk out of the fields.
Judy tried her best to be as alert as Nick, but if anything, she was doing an accurate impression of a drunk person: putting her feet out in front of her in abrupt steps, constantly trying to balance herself, and slurring her words a bit. She didn't imagine the undoubtedly bloodshot eyes that were dozing off in the middle of her skull could be helping either.
"Where's the car?" she mumbled, only slightly understandable.
"Follow me, Carrots," Nick said, a little too upbeat to sound like he woke up while the moon was setting. "We parked near your parents' house, remember?"
"You mean their almost house," she said. "They're in the middle of construction."
"Geez, Carrots, picky picky," Nick teased her playfully. "Just follow me and we'll get there. Never mind if the house if actually a house or not."
And so they continued on in silence for a while. It wasn't in Judy's nature to break silence, so she just went along with it, almost completely indifferent. But the awkwardness of the silence was bugging her, like a snake of tension was coiling around her body, suffocating her. Her breath became harder without her knowledge, just enough to be more audible than normal. Should she say something, or just let things fall where they may.
"You all right, Carrots?"
Well, so much for saying something.
Judy gave Nick her best look of innocence. "Yeah, why?"
He chuckled and tried to coax her with his eyes. "Come on," he teased. "What's with the heavy breathing?"
"Oh!" she said quickly, fumbling for an excuse. "I just...I didn't want to say anything, but I didn't want to have it quiet."
Nick nodded. "Okay then."
And that was all.
Judy again walked in silence with him. Now she was determined to not let the silence get to her. It was perfectly okay for two natural enemies to be walking in the dark without speaking a word to each other.
"Where are you two going?"
Judy jumped in surprise; she forgot her father had to get up this early to tend to the crops. She moved instinctively; her paw grasped for Nick's, but he was already offering it to her father as a friendly handshake. When her father made it clear he wasn't in a handshaking mood, Nick retracted his paw.
"Well, we figured out where we need to go to solve our case, so we're headed there to hopefully figure out what's going on and…" Nick trailed off.
"Police business," Judy covered for him. "We've got a perp to arrest."
Her father narrowed his eyes. "All right then," he said. "But if anything happens between you two, I'll-"
"Yeah, yeah, you'll kill Nick, and I'll detain you, and you'll get a life sentence for homicide," Judy said in a tone that made it seem like the conversation was boring her. "Can we go now?"
That shut her father up. She could see him setting his jaw as he moved aside. "Fine," was all he said.
Judy brushed past him, Nick dragging behind a bit. He's probably just feeling kind of awkward, she thought to herself. I mean, he did just have another unpleasant encounter with my dad, which is awkward in and of itself.
"Carrots? You all right?"
"Hm?" Judy looked over her shoulder for Nick, but he wasn't there. A tap on her other shoulder made her jump and look over at Nick; somehow, she had forgotten to keep walking and had stopped for no reason. She shook her head to clear her mind and said, "Yeah, I'm fine. Just...caught up in my thoughts. Nothing else." She smiled at him, and Nick returned the gesture.
"All right. No judgment here," he said, and kept walking. Judy, however, stayed rooted to the ground, but for another reason this time: attraction. God, Nick was perfect. She soaked in what should have been just an everyday sight - a fox walking down a path - the began to walk again.
Nick reached the car first; after Judy's stopping, thinking, and looking, it was a wonder she didn't take all day to get there. She assumed the passenger's side, and gave Nick his keys.
"Thank you kindly, Carrots," he said, ruffling her head affectionately like a father would his son.
"Stop it, Nick," she giggled as he started the car.
"Fine, Carrots," he replied playfully. "Spoil all the fun, will ya?"
They pulled out, ready to go on-road, but Nick was forced to slam on the brakes when Judy's mother ran out in front of them, waving one of her arms in a successful attempt to get their attention; the other had a bag in it.
Judy got out of the car and met her mother in front of the headlights.
"Jeez, Ma, do you want to get run over?" she said, hugging her.
"Did you think I was going to let you go without saying goodbye?" her mom replied.
Judy was struck with guilt. "Oh, my God, Ma, I'm so sorry…"
"Don't be!" Her mother gave her a smile. "It's totally understandable. You got distracted by the thrill of the job. Never mind your dear old mom and your brothers and sisters and father."
"Ma, you're not helping."
"Sorry." Her mother gave her a smile. "So much for being sarcastic."
"It's fine," Judy said. "Really. I'd have forgotten to say goodbye. Thanks."
"You'd also have forgotten this…" Her mother opened the bag and peered in it with a confused look. "Weird shirt...with...blood packs on it."
"Oh," Judy said in understanding, "that's Nick's." She had forgotten that he had put fake blood bags on his bulletproof vest. So paranoid, for no reason. So cautious, for no danger. She took the bag. "Thanks, Ma."
"Judy...do be careful."
Judy looked at her mother, trying to look as honest as possible.
"I will, Ma. I promise." Her mother broke the hug, and Judy stood there for a second, a second in which she burned this memory into her mind. Something about it was special, magical even. "Love you, Mom."
"I love you too, sweetheart," her mom replied. "See you soon."
Judy smiled as she closed her eyes and rubbed her nose against her mother's. Then she turned back, with a bit of hardship, and walked back to the car. Once she had seated herself inside, Nick started the car, ready to catch a criminal.
"So what's in the bag?" he asked.
"Your freaky little bulletproof vest thing," she replied.
"Ah, yes," Nick sighed fondly. "I remember when I made it. ZPD still has no idea who took it."
Judy have him a look that was meant to scold him, but she couldn't help but smile. "You're so bad, Nick."
Nick just chuckled.
As they drove slowly by the Hopps's new house, still under construction, Judy waved goodbye to her mother. She was going to miss it: the simplistic way of life that came with a farm, the hundreds of siblings that were practically underfoot with every step she took, the memories she had made playing in the cornfields, the blueberry patches and the orange groves. The farm was...enchanting, really. Every minute she spent there, Judy felt like she had gone back in time, landing in the 1800s, maybe the early 20th century. She would miss it dearly, and made a mental note to visit it every chance she could. But now, it was time to put a stop to the night howler once and for all. She took a few breaths and shook herself a bit, getting into the right frame of mind. Whoever it was, Bellwether or the chief or whoever, had attacked her family. They'd nearly seen Zootopia razed to the ground by their underground regime. It was her duty to stop them by any means necessary.
And if that meant killing the lawbreaker, then so be it.
"Let's go," she said. "There's no time to lose."
Nick picked up the speed. "You're a little eager, aren't you, Carrots?"
"Whoever this is deserves justice," she said. "Who better than the bunny cop that they almost killed?"
"Fair enough, Carrots, but if you need some reigning in, I reserve the right to keep you from hurting yourself."
"Touché," she replied.
"Yeah, thought so," Nick said. His paw moved to the dial. "Your turn?"
The last time they had the radio going was so long ago Judy couldn't remember who got the last word of music. "No idea," she said simply.
"Great, now it's going to bother me until I figure out whose station we listened to most recently."
"Well, why don't you tell me more about where we're going?" Judy suggested. "I mean, all I know is that you know of a place that might lead us to the head honcho of night howler production."
"I guess we could talk about that." Nick sighed. "The place we're headed to is a house just outside of Bunnyburrow. It's so secluded, it's not even on maps."
Judy didn't get it; what was the point, then? "Why are we going to this house of it's not even on a map?"
Nick chuckled. "Because it's the perfect place for a criminal organization to use as a covert safe house that's far away enough from the rest of civilization that it won't attract attention." His teachings on hyper observance enabled Judy to hear the almost absent nervousness in his voice. It sounded like he had had experience with this before. And he probably had; how else would he know exactly where they were going?
"You've encountered this place already, haven't you?"
Nick sucked in air through his teeth. "-Ish. I've seen it before, but not very clearly. I'm going off of memory...or, at least, I will be once we get on the right path."
"What do you mean, 'the right path?'" Judy asked him.
"I might or might not have been taking a ride with a blindfold on while we were en route to the place." Nick said it very uncertainly, as if Judy might explode if he said the right word.
"What?!" Judy couldn't believe what she was hearing, and couldn't stop herself from sounding the least bit hysterical. "You were kidnapped?"
"Calm down," Nick tried to soothe her. "It wasn't for too long. Plus, I was able to kick the tail light out with relative ease."
"'Kick out the tail light?!'" Judy couldn't keep herself from repeating it; the sheer ridiculousness of the phrase made her feel dizzy. "You were in the trunk?"
"Yeah, so?" Nick didn't seem the least bit bothered about it. "It's safer in there than in the car with Big's minions."
Judy shook her head. It was just like Nick to try and shrug this kind of thing off his shoulders like it happened to everyone at one point or other. "You're so unbelievable, you know that?"
"I know," he said. "That's what makes me so hot."
"It also makes you look like an idiot," Judy replied.
"Okay, fine, so this place we're going to probably hasn't been used in about three years or so, so...just be on your guard if it's super dilapidated, and don't be surprised if it looks run down on the outside."
"Wow, Nick," Judy said sarcastically. "That was helpful."
"Well, I'm just trying to lighten the atmosphere."
Judy sighed. "This is gonna be a long drive."
"Okay, I can't take the silence anymore."
Half an hour later, and Judy was desperate for stimulation. There was no cell reception, she couldn't do any paperwork, and Nick had pretty much shut up for the entire time since they had been talking about the abandoned shack that they were allegedly going to. At this point, she would rather have a three-hour talk with a hyena coming off a coffee binge than drive in total silence for another second. "Turn the radio on or something."
"If you wanna talk, Carrots, then just say so," Nick said in a kind voice. "I've got no problem talking. Sometimes I talk to myself. Not that I'm insane, though, I just have to keep myself busy."
"I don't even know what we'd talk about."
"Let's try and figure out who's behind the return of night howler. Productive and a solution to the silence problem."
Judy thought about it. But the more she did, the more she realized that she knew very little, and certainly didn't know enough to carry on a conversation about it. "Nah," she replied, trying to shake off her lack of knowledge by hiding it with indifference. "It's probably Bellwether again." Bellwether, always playing with their heads. Bellwether, always sowing the seeds of doubt in the minds of everyone she met. Bellwether, throwing a wrench at everything in sight.
"Really? You really think so?"
Judy turned to look at Nick; he hadn't said it in a mean-spirited way, rather in one of amusement, as if he knew the answer to something she didn't, or as if he wanted to turn it into a respectful debate.
"Yeah, I think so," she said. "She was behind the last one, and she might as well have told us herself that she's got a hoof in it."
"When?" Nick sounded a little confused.
"When she shot you full of chocolate-y death juice," Judy said in a way the she hoped conveyed her disbelief at the fact that he might have forgotten so soon. "'Another perp's hiding behind it all, they're the one you'll never see coming,' you don't remember that?"
"Well, yeah, of course I remember that, but how does that prove it's her?" Nick seemed to be getting less and less indifferent about the situation, and his voice began to sound bored.
"Well, does anyone ever suspect someone who says, 'the one who's behind it isn't the one you think it is' to be the one who's actually behind it?"
"Not necessarily," Nick replied.
"Well who do you thi-?"
Nick slammed the brakes before Judy could finish her sentence. That wasn't bad in and of itself. What was bad was the fact that she got such bad whiplash, her head smacked into the passenger airbag compartment. Her head reeling, Judy closed her eyes at the pain and clutched t her head with her paw.
"God, Nick, why'd you do that?!" she asked.
Nick gave her an apologetic look. "Sorry," he replied sincerely. "But we're here."
Judy looked around and saw naught but dust and dry vegetation. She could almost hear the crickets. "Nick, this looks like a great place to get heat stroke. Are you absolutely sure this is where we're supposed to be?"
Nick looked into the distance in front of them, and when she followed his gaze, Judy could make out a house approximately five hundred yards from them. "Yep, this is where we're supposed to be. That house right there."
Judy looked back an forth between Nick and the house. "You've gotta be kidding me, right? I'm not walking all the way over there when we can use the stupid car." As she said it, she could hear how whiny it sounded. Getting her skull whacked into hard plastic didn't seem to have helped improve her mood.
"Well, I would go further, but these guys and I have a bit of a history. The 'ancient predator/prey' sort of history." He looked at her. "I did point out that this is a mafia safehouse, right?"
Judy remembered all too well. "Yeah, you did. It came up while you were talking about getting kidnapped and thrown into the trunk of a car."
Nick chuckled. "Some of my funniest stories include the mafia. So now you understand why I'm hesitant to knock on the front door and say, 'Hey, I'm a cop now! Remember that time you almost killed me? Payback, fishes!'"
Judy narrowed one eyebrow and raised another, looking at him in a confused manner. "It's 'fish,' Nick. The plural of fish is 'fish.'"
"Yeah, I know, but I was substituting for a mean word."
Judy rolled her eyes. "Let's just get this out of the way." And with that, she opened the car door and got out. Nick took a few seconds (Judy didn't look, but he was probably straightening up and such), but eventually climbed out, taking the lead. Judy thought, just like the other sixty-eight percent of her adventures with Nick, that the entire thing, when viewed from afar, looked ridiculous. A rabbit and a fox parking really far away from a house, then getting out and walking on foot for no apparent reason. It felt like high school: "I dare you to get out of your car and run around in the yard of that spooky run-down house everyone says is cursed." Each step filled her with a little bit more of a varying emotion: apprehensiveness, excitement, wonder, cynicism. The odd thing was that Nick had shut up. Normally, he was going on and on about something - not that Judy didn't like his stories, but it tended to get a little old after listening to him for a while. But now he was completely quiet, and...fear? Maybe he had left out a part of the kidnapping recount that he didn't want Judy to know about? Perhaps he was dreading the same thing happening again? She looked him over. As far as she could tell, he showed no signs of fear. Still, total silence? Either he had suddenly abandoned all need to be impulsive, or something was up. Judy shook her head to snap herself out of it. Focus. Focus on the mission, she told herself. Okay, Nick might be a little less efficient. So why should I get all caught up in worrying about him? There's no sense in both of us being somewhat hindered when I can perform pretty much perfectly. She forced herself to look forward, at the house (if it could so be called) that seemed to get a bit bigger with each step she took. As they got closer, she could make out things that she wouldn't have noticed from the car, like the fact that the roof was made of wooden shingles and the lawn was littered with decapitated porcelain gopher gnomes.
"Isn't this how all the horror movies start?" Judy asked, hoping to get Nick talking again.
"Beats me," came the reply. So he hadn't been struck dumb by memories of the past. "I shy away from horror movies as much as possible. The illusion's ruined for me."
Judy gave him yet another look. It seemed like she had been staring at him in a confused fashion a lot more than usual. "What do you mean, 'the illusion's ruined?'"
"Well, in college I took a cinematics class for credit to graduate. Which didn't help, because I left. Anyway, after seeing what goes on behind the scenes, I can't look at evisceration-hungry phantoms the same way anymore, because I know it's an actor and that there's a table with snacks on it just out of the shot. It's straight from 'I'm gonna kill you!' to God', I need a sandwich!'"
Judy couldn't help but chuckle; ill-timed as it was, Nick's joke was kind of funny. It was his shtick, really: get some humor out of the worst scenarios. Especially in a situation like this: going headfirst back into the wolves' lair. The wolves' lair that had dead fake gophers everywhere. And lots of missing shingles. Yeesh. As Judy got closer, she could make out more and more flaws in pretty much everything about the structure. Wooden support beams were lopsided and rotten, the windows were smashed open, and the fence was practically nonexistent. Though why there was a fence, she didn't know. It looked like it used to be one of those white picket fences that were all the rage six decades ago, with the pointy tops and the short little posts. The more Judy thought, the more she lost herself in her mind. The next thing she knew, she had been thinking about the fence so much that Nick had grabbed her shoulder to keep her from tripping over it and cutting herself on the evil little death gopher statues.
"You okay there, Carrots?" Nick asked quietly.
Judy felt herself blushing. "Yeah, I'm fine," she laughed it off. "Just thinking."
Nick raised an eyebrow. "Some serious thinking, then."
Judy managed a half smile. She was surprised to see Nick, upon his deeming her all right, take his hand off her and squat behind a patch of rather tall grass. She looked down at him and gestured at him with both paws. "What are you doing?" she cried out.
"Sssssshhhh!" Nick's eyes went wide as her words hit his ears. Quick as a flash, his paw shot up and grabbed her by the arm, jerking her to the ground so the house was completely obscured by the tall grass.
"What the f-?" Judy's foul mouth was foiled by Nick's ever-ready paw: it slapped over her lips and acted as a rather effective censor. Nick's appendage, however, could do nothing to keep her from looking daggers at him when he took his paw back.
"Sorry," he whispered. "But I saw movement in there."
Judy rolled her eyes. "There's no one here, Nick," she hissed back. "There's not even a flipping car here." She poked her head up over the grass and pried open the inside of the house with her eyes. Nothing. Wait! No, that was just a raggedy, tattered shade flapping in the slight breeze that just passed through. She looked back at him with a straight face. Perhaps Nick could tell that she was unamused, because he said, "Okay, maybe you can't see them, but I can smell 'em."
"Nick, this is ridiculous," Judy said. And with that, she sniffed as hard as she possibly could. Nothing. No polar bears, no Arctic shrews, no...Judy sniffed again. Something unnatural was coming from Nick's general area. She turned to look at him once more, to which he replied, "Deodorant. Papaya scented."
Now it was Judy's turn to raise an eyebrow. "There's nothing there, Nick," she said. "You're just experiencing what you experienced the last time you were here. Your brain's playing tricks on you. Now can we move along already?"
Nick stood up and sighed. "Fine, but if there are people in there, I reserve the right to say, 'I told you so.'"
"Fine." Judy gestured for him to go through the gate. "Well? You know where we're going."
Nick swung the gate open, and it gave the typical creaking sound that all the old movie gates make. It didn't get very far, though, before the hinges snapped off, leaving Nick with his paw on a sad-looking piece of dead fence. He looked at it, shrugged, and tossed it aside. Judy suppressed a laugh. It was one of the most surreal things she'd ever seen, but here it was, happening right in front of her eyes.
The trio of steps that led up to the front porch did more than creak: the second Nick put his full weight on one of them, it bent considerably. Apparently on instinct (though he might have just been messing around), Nick dove for the porch, rolling over his right shoulder blade and standing back up. Judy rolled her eyes yet again and walked up like a normal animal would. She was definitely afraid that one of the stairs was going to snap and leave her stuck there, but she played it off with a cool composure as she approached the door. Nick shook his head.
"Women," he said.
"Men," Judy scoffed back with a smirk as she reached for the doorknob.
The inside of the house was barely an improvement from the outside. Dust littered the air, each speck flying out into the wild to land on more of their unmoving brothers and sisters. Peeling paper canvassed the walls, draping down onto the pictures and clocks. And something had charred one of the corners of the room pitch black. It looked like a…
"Nick?" Judy asked. "Is that a blast mark?"
She turned back to see what he did in response; Nick took the smallest of glances before replying. "Oh, yeah, when I was here last, I might have grabbed and used a grenade off of one of the henchmen that I knocked unconscious."
Judy stood there, almost immobile, trying to comprehend what he just said. "You set a grenade off in here? Great! Now we have to worry about it caving in on us at any moment."
Nick furrowed his brow. "True, but we probably would've had to do that anyway."
Judy shook her head and turned back to the room. It looked completely devoid of life, and she couldn't tell what all the fuss was about over this stupid shack. "Come on, Nick," she said, resuming her walk again. "Let's get this over with."
The second she set her foot down on the wooden plank in front of her, the ground gave way. Judy let out a cry of surprise as she tumbled. Her mind had no time to process anything. Arms over head, protect the head. Curl into a ball to protect the vital organs. Everything was spinning...
And then it stopped. Judy felt a jolt as something slammed into her back. Her head was reeling and a high-pitched noise was close to splitting her head open. Dazed, she carefully, shakily, put one paw on the ground, pushed herself up on one knee, and stood up slowly, taking extra measures to keep from toppling over. The noise faded, the dizziness disappeared, and her sight was restored. Judy's first instinct was to look up at the hole through which she just fell, and, when she did, saw Nick's fuzzy head poking out from above ground with a humored smile on its face.
"You just keep making a habit of this, don't you, Carrots?" he teased.
Judy put her hands on her hips. "Either help me up or come down here."
Nick shrugged. "Fine," he replied, edging closer to the pit. "Save some room for me down there, will ya?"
"Oh, ha ha -" Judy stopped mid-laugh. Something had caught her eye. It looked like a tiny little green blip had just appeared somewhere to her left and vanished within the smallest of seconds. She peered into the darkness, waiting for it, ever ready to- There it was again! Carefully, Judy stepped over the debris that had fallen down with her and drew her pistol, ready to attack any threat that might have presented itself.
A rustling noise came from behind her; Judy whipped around and trained her gun on whatever had made the noise. The disturbance was none other than Nick, who had just jumped down and landed, apparently very gracefully, on the ground. He threw his hands up as he stood up, realizing what was going on.
"Jeez, Carrots, point that thing at whatever's got you so riled up," he protested.
Judy lowered her gun for just a second before turning around and pinpointing the blip again. "Nick, use the flashlight on your phone," she said.
She heard Nick fumbling around in his pockets, and, moments later, the source of the light was revealed. Computer towers stacked on top of each other, all connected to different monitors that took up a large portion of the wall. A little box was wired into all of it, emitting the green light that Judy had seen. The computer towers were idle and the screens were off, but why would someone need so many computers anyway? Why wasn't one good enough? She turned to Nick to ask if he knew what it was all about, but the petrified look on his face gave it all away. He knew what this was.
"Nick, what is it?" she asked him.
Nick blinked a few times, swallowed, and said, "It's a Beowulf cluster."
He might as well have been speaking Swahili. "Sorry. What?"
Nick swallowed again and started moving around. "It's a Beowulf cluster, a DIY supercomputer for hackers. Think about it this way. If you get one person to work on as assembly line, it'll take them forever to meet the demands of their employer. But if you have twelve people working on an assembly line, it's vastly easier. Likewise, twelve computers breach a security firewall much faster than only one. And I'd bet all my cash on this being a Beowulf cluster."
Judy understood now. That kind of power could be catastrophic if put into the wrong hands. "So what are they using a Beowulf cluster for?"
Nick inhaled through his teeth. "Dunno. I have a couple theories, though," he said, walking around to get a better look at the system. "They're either trying to compromise a security system or erase official records." He got to the desk and stopped, eyes open wide.
"What? What is it?" Judy asked.
Nick reached for something on the desk; when he brought his paw back up, he was holding a glass of what looked like alcohol and ice.
"Or maybe there's someone here somewhere," he said. "Whatever we're going to do, we have to do fast."
Judy ran over to him so she could look at what was on the desk. She saw post-it notes everywhere and maps with pins in them and, perhaps the most daunting, a loaded handgun that had what looked suspiciously like blood on it. She grabbed her phone and began taking pictures.
"Good idea," she heard Nick talking behind her. "Intel."
She snapped as many photos as she possibly could. She felt it would take forever, but she was finally satisfied with her portfolio and stepped back. She had barely lowered the camera, however, before Nick shoved his way into the chair. He pressed a button whose function was beyond Judy's knowledge and the great machine rose from its slumber.
"Nick, what are you doing?" she hissed.
"Backtracking," he said, typing furiously with great precision. "If I can figure out what they've done, I can figure out what they plan to do."
"Hey!"
Judy looked up in horror as she heard the yell. A tuxedoed wolf was standing near an open door in shock, shifting his gaze between Judy and the hole in the floor.
"What the he-?"
He was cut off as the butt of a flying handgun hit him square on the nose. The next thing Judy knew, she was watching Nick, who had barreled towards the unknowing enemy, taze the poor canine into unconsciousness. He looked back at her.
"We've got to go," he explained, looking around. "There's got to be a way out of here."
"Why?" Judy said. "What happened to backtracking?"
"Listen, I'm all for collecting data, but he had an alarm on. One of those door alarm bajingus thingies on a timer. Anyway, it's sending out a signal to an underground base about 500 yards away. So we have to go. Now."
Judy looked around. "Well, how are we going to get out of here?"
Nick narrowed his eyes. "I've got an idea." He ran towards the wall and threw himself at it, but just as he was about to slam into it, he planted his foot on it, and pushed off of it with all his might. His paws just barely grabbed the edge of the floor, and he heaved himself up. His bushy tail disappeared for two seconds, but he came back with a chair. He lowered it as far as he could. "Here, Judy, grab onto one of the legs!"
Judy put her hands on her hips. Pfft. Chairs. She bent down, twitching her bunny tail, and just when she felt the time was right, pushed down as hard as she could, her natural jumping ability propelling her up onto the floor with one swift movement. She walked away as she heard Nick drop the chair down into the basement.
"Yyyyeah," he said. "Forgot about that."
Judy threw open the front door, which snapped off at the hinges after encountering the excessive force. Her handgun was drawn, her eyes were scanning the desert, and her feet were racing to the car as fast as they could. Nothing presented itself so far, but if there was one thing she had learned on the force, it was that you could never let your guard down. It only took one second for a cop or a suspect to make a decision that affected them for the rest of their lives.
There! Two SUVs were pulling out of the ground at two o'clock! Judy cast a glance over at Nick, who wasn't as far behind as she thought he was. She turned and fired at their attackers; even if the bullets didn't hit, they would repel the crawling monsters for a few moments. Judy reached for the door handle and hastily lowered herself into the passenger's seat, all the while firing off random shots in the general area of the hostiles. She felt the car start up, and was thrown into the back of her seat as Nick burned rubber out into the desert.
Judy heard her gun clicking; without thinking, she released the magazine, grabbed a new one, and reloaded, keeping a constant stream of bullets flying at whatever was behind them. The mafia's cars had picked up speed and were starting to close the gap between themselves and Nick's car.
"Anything bigger I can use?" she yelled over the noise of the roaring engine.
"No!" Nick yelled back. "You'll have to make do with the pop gun!"
Judy leaned out of the window and resumed firing, this time aiming for drivers and passengers, but shooting accurately in a moving vehicle proved to be too big a challenge. Her bullets either ricocheted off the front of the cars or missed them entirely. But that wasn't her biggest problem; one of the passengers in the right car had mimicked her, and was firing out of the car window. Judy ducked back into her seat to avoid the automatic weapon's hail of lead.
"Well, that's not gonna work," she said loudly. "Any other plans?"
"No, Carrots, we're pretty much done for in the plans department," Nick replied over the engine. "There's nothing else I can possibly think of, and unless you have any- Oh boy!" he yelled. "That's a big friggin' gun!"
Judy looked into the rearview and instantly saw what he was talking about. Another henchman had stuck his head out of the top of the car and shouldered a rocket launcher that was aimed right at them. Judy looked back to see it with her own eyes and was met with the horrifying sight of the missile streaking through the air right towards them.
"Impact!" she yelled, shielding her head as best she could.
As the missile hit, Judy felt the back of the car try its best to buck her through the windshield. Gravity shifted and the earth tilted, and it was all she could do to not get sick. The world turned vigorously as the ground rushed up to crack her skull open on the roof. She closed her eyes; it was too much, she couldn't handle thinking about it. Thinking about the fact that thousands of pounds of metal had just been sent skyward with her in it, and that the only thing keeping her from being pitched through laminated glass was a thin belt across her chest, and that so many animals die in accidents like this, and-
The roof of the car slammed onto the ground and Judy was left hanging there, two feet above the ground. The g-forces had been too much; she could feel her body shutting down, and her vision was blackening. She looked over to see how Nick was doing, but he was in bad shape. She was horrified to see his eyes closed, blood running from his nose and his arms limp, hanging down.
"Nick…" she whispered, for it was the loudest she could manage.
Thick, burly, white-furred arms grabbed his body and dragged him out from under the overturned car, and Judy's instinct was to panic. But she couldn't. She was too weak. He had to rest. No. No, she had to stay awake. She couldn't black out now. If she did, what would happen to her? Where would they take her? She wouldn't know. No. Sleep. She needed to just close her eyes. Just close her eyes, and it would be all better. Judy shut her eyes slowly. That was all she really needed. A bit of a breather…
The last thing she remembered before blacking out was being dragged by thick, burly, white-furred arms.