CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: SHORT CUT
Ian greeted the first light of day with a series of burps and moans. "Oh, I can't believe we ate the whole thing!"
"I can." Justin lay on his back, his head propped up on a pillow of moss. "I feel very bloated and very happy. Ah! - I can still taste it!"
Ian belched. "I'm afraid I can too." He cautiously got to his feet. "Bloated or not, it's time for us to get moving."
Justin tried to sit up, then fell back on his moss bed. "Ian, if I stand up, I think I'll rupture my stomach. Can't we stay here a little longer? Just until the sun comes up."
"I would have thought with all that sugar in your system you'd have lots of energy to burn," said Ian. "Oh, all right. Rest until sunrise if you feel you have to. I'm going to take a walk. I'm too uncomfortable to just lie around. I'll see you in a little while."
"Have a nice walk." Justin settled back for a few more minutes of blissful, inactive shuteye. He had begun to doze off when Ian ran back, shouting for him to get up. "What is it?" Justin rubbed at his eyes.
"No time for questions." Ian pulled Justin up off the ground. Justin groaned. Ian began to fetch Justin's sword belt for him.
"I can do that myself," Justin said curtly.
"Good." Ian grabbed up his crossbow and one of the food sacks. "Have to leave the flamethrower behind. Take the clothes and another bag of food and follow me. And hurry!" Ian vanished into the undergrowth. Justin took what he had been told to and plunged after him.
They came out only a couple of feet from the car of the humans whom they had taken the food from the night before. The trunk was open, and the man was loading their supplies into it. Justin looked at Ian. "What exactly do you have in mind?"
"There's a parking permit sticker on the back window," Ian said, "for a hospital in Washington, D.C. That man must work in that hospital, which means he must live in or near Washington."
"And?"
"NIMH is located just north of the city. I propose we hitch a ride."
"You mean stow away in the trunk?" Justin stroked his whiskers. "That would be risky."
"What isn't these days? Look, Justin, if we keep walking, it'll take at least another couple of weeks to reach NIMH, and I don't know if I have that much time left. I haven't said anything because I didn't want to worry you, but I really am starting to feel my aging."
"Yes," Justin nodded. "I noticed we've been slowing down a little more each day."
"And I almost became cat food a few nights ago. That little incident doesn't sit too well on my mind. If we catch this ride, we could be at NIMH by tomorrow night."
The man walked away from the trunk to get something else from the camp. "I say we go for it. Come on!" Ian raced to the back of the car and hurled his crossbow and bag of food up into the trunk. Then he jumped onto the bumper and pulled himself in.
He landed on rusted metal. His things were beside him. Ian picked them up and hid behind the sleeping bag rolled up in the corner of the trunk.
A moment later he heard a soft thunk as Justin and his load entered the trunk. Justin hastily joined him in the dark behind the sleeping bag. "Bad luck, Ian," he said, breathing hard. "I think the boy may have seen me."
"Nothing we can do about it now if he did." Ian lay back against the grainy metal of the trunk wall. "If we're discovered, then we're discovered. And if we're not, then we've got a long ride ahead of us. I suggest you make yourself as comfortable as you can."
Justin heaved a sign of relief when, a minute later, the man stored away his last item and slammed the trunk closed. The engine started up, and the two rats were jerked about as the car abruptly pulled out of its parking slot. They were on their way.
Justin made a bed out of a loose flap on the sleeping bag and took a nap to pass the time. Ian couldn't get to sleep, but there wasn't much else to do in the darkness of the trunk, so he spent the ride thinking about what they would have to do once the car reached its destination.
It seemed to Ian that days passed as he was jostled about by the auto's movement. He wondered if his companion had ever traveled this way before, since Justin slept quite soundly, as if he were perfectly at home in the trunk of an automobile. He moaned a couple of times when the car hit especially nasty bumps in the road, but otherwise remained unconscious. No doubt dreaming about his chocolate feast, Ian mused to himself.
The car stopped and turned off. Ian gave Justin a gentle kick to wake him up. "Justin! I think we're here."
"Where?"
"I don't know." The locked clicked, and the trunk was opened. Ian peeked around the edge of the sleeping bag to view what was going on.
The man reached in and grabbed the other bag. When he had disappeared from view, Ian cautiously crept up to the edge of the open trunk to scan the surroundings. Justin joined him.
The car was parked in the driveway of a modern-looking suburban home, backed in so the trunk was only a yard or so from the garage. Ian craned his neck to get a better view of the street and the rest of the neighborhood. An ear-to-ear grin spread across his face.
"Do you know where we are?" Justin asked, noticing his companion's expression.
"Yes," Ian nodded.
"Well, how far is NIMH?"
Ian pointed down the road. "About half a mile that way."
(A/N: A quick search of the Internet - a tool not available to my 19-year-old self - reveals NIMH to be headquartered in Bethesda, MD, which is indeed "just north" of Washington, DC, so that's one little detail I got right all those years ago.
One thing I've always wondered about is just where the Fitzgibbons farm and Thorn Valley lie in relation to NIMH. Just how far did the rats travel after their escape before they settled down? The movie certainly didn't seem to take place in the swamps and bayous of the deep south, the deserts of the southwest, or the high mountains of the Rockies - and the presence of a valley rules out most of the Plains States as well. I'm guessing they stayed fairly local - right in Maryland, perhaps in one of the state parks there (Justin does refer to a "ranger" coming to investigate the plane crash from which they scavenged parts for their boiler and other apparatus), or perhaps next door in Virginia or West Virginia. I doubt they went any farther than Kentucky, Tennessee, Pennsylvania or Ohio at the most, and all of those states could easily feature a locale like Thorn Valley, and still place our protagonists close enough to NIMH for the story to work. But it's fun to speculate!)