Chapter 8: Exit Light
"Get down!"
Herbie pushed Tammy to the ground, shielding her with his body from what he was sure was a titanic explosion. He felt rather sheepish when several seconds passed without any sound to accompany the flash of light. "Sorry about that."
"Don't be," she said, getting up, clutching the scrapbook to her chest. "That could have been some genuine life-saving under different circumstances." She pushed past him to look at the oak tree. "I think that came from inside the Ranger Tree."
"We better take a look."
"Hold on," she said, turning back to enter the Chestnutt apartment in a rush.
Herbie poked his head in. "Need any help?"
Tammy's voice drifted back from her room. "Which do you think would be better in a life-or-death scenario: a loaded longbow, or a hockey stick?"
"Hockey stick," Herbie replied without hesitation. "No need to reload."
"Right," she agreed, emerging from the front door wearing a lumpy backpack and holding the same hockey stick from her class photos aggressively in both hands.
"They let you keep that?"
"Well..."
He gingerly poked at the bottom of Tammy's backpack. "And the pucks?"
Tammy's grin was a sight to behold. Herbie sighed. "I don't even want to know."
Tammy looked up at the branch that linked the spruce and oak trees. "That's a long way around. I wonder if ..."
"Are you suggesting I carry you?" asked Herbie, skeptically.
"Not if it violates some law of physics or something," she said sarcastically.
"Well, no, it wouldn't, but..."
"Then you better catch me, 'cause I'm about to find out if I'm part flying squirrel!" And with that she made a run off the end of the branch.
Herbie spread his wings and caught Tammy's shoulders with his feet. He continued the trajectory to the Rangers' tree in a glide, where he dropped her off on the entrance branch and landed about half a yard closer to the door.
"Thanks," Tammy gasped. "I don't know if you were looking down, but I saw Freddie down there. I don't think she saw us, though."
"I imagine even for a human, a squirrel being carried by a bird that's not a predator would be a strange sight."
"She was looking at the Ranger Tree, I'm sure of it. She looked rather shocked." Tammy looked up and down at Rescue Ranger Headquarters. All of the lights were out. "I've got a bad feeling about this."
"You can lead the way. If Chip loses his temper, I'd rather him take it out on you than me."
"Chicken," she joked. She walked up to the door and knocked.
There was no reply.
"Chip!" she called out. "Dale! Is everything all right in there?"
Still no response.
She checked the doorknob. It was unlocked.
Tammy swallowed nervously. "Well, here goes..."
She turned the knob and carefully pulled the door open towards her, letting in some of the light from a lamp across the street.
Almost immediately, she heard the sound of multiple paws scampering towards the door, accompanied by a terrifying cacophony of squeals.
Throwing her weight against the door, she managed to close it just before hearing three or four loud "THUMP"s.
Herbie tried peering into the window to the right of the door, only to jump back when something bounced forcefully off of the glass.
"What was that?" Tammy asked, although she had an awful suspicion she knew what...and who, that was.
"I-I don't know. I think it was a feral chipmunk."
Tammy shook her head forcefully, rejecting the evidence of her senses. "No, it was something else. Gadget accidentally opened the door to Heck. Yes," she smiled grimly, "that's much better." She looked around. "We need to sneak inside and find out for sure what happened. Follow me."
Wrapping her tail around the hockey stick, Tammy scampered on all fours down a floor from the living room window to reach a small round opening in the tree. Unlike the other window, this one had no glass, only a crossed pair of twigs tied together with twine.
Tammy deftly untied the twine and removed the two twigs. "Heh," she remarked, "I've always dreamed of doing that."
"So this is Chip's bedroom?" Herbie asked cheekily from above.
Tammy sniffed in what appeared to Herbie to be an obvious imitation of his mother. "If you're going to be that way about it, you go first."
"Fine. I'll need room to land, anyway." Herbie took off and swooped in through the window, landing on the upper half of a bunk bed, which immediately collapsed. "Ouch," he stated dryly from the floor, telling Tammy by the tone of his voice that he was all right. "I could have used more room to stop than I got, though."
Tammy carefully lowered herself to the ground and took a look at the wreckage. "You didn't do this, Herbie. This whole room was trashed." Reaching under a mattress, Tammy pulled out the torn remains of Chip's nightshirt. "Come on," she said urgently, grabbing Herbie's wing.
She pushed past the door, which had been torn off of its hinges, and turned right into the dimly-lit corridor.
"We are not heading up to the living room," she said in a low voice. "I think we'd need a lot more than a hockey stick and a couple of pucks for that."
"Did Gadget teach you enough to build some sort of stun weapon?" Herbie asked.
"We're heading for the workshop. Materials to build things, and it overlooks the living room."
Herbie nodded. "I don't want to go near that mad chipmunk without something that can knock it out."
"Stop calling it a mad chipmunk!" she screamed.
Herbie just looked at her retreating back. The corridor ahead of them branched to the left before continuing onward to terminate in another door ripped from its hinges.
Without a word, Tammy took the turn. Herbie hesitated. "Who would have gone and ripped the Rangers' doors off their hinges?" he asked.
"That's Monty's room. He was probably sleepwalking," Tammy replied over her shoulder.
"Okay, Monty, I can understand, but what about Chip and Dale's room?"
"It's just a little bit further," Tammy said, ignoring his question.
The side corridor ended, with a standard door to the left and a sliding door to the right. Mounted into the end of the corridor was a pair of pulleys attached to a rope that ran from a hole in the ceiling to a hole in the floor. Tammy tried to slide the door to the right open, but it wouldn't budge. She used the hockey stick to sweep the wall above the door until she found a gauge mounted above it, impossible to see in this light. She lightly slid the stick around on either side of the indicator until she was certain of its position. "Okay," Tammy concluded, "the elevator's above us, on the workshop floor I think."
She grabbed hold of the rope and started pulling it upwards. As she did so, the sound of something could be heard gently lowering towards them from above.
After a few seconds, she felt something click into place, and a bell mounted next to the sliding door was struck once by a felt-covered hammer, making a faint sound.
After listening at the door for a moment to make sure nothing was inside, Tammy opened it and walked into the small circular chamber inside, taking position beside another rope and pair of pulleys that ran through one side of the compartment. Herbie stepped in beside her and slid the door closed, plunging the elevator into total darkness. After a moment, the car began to slowly rise, to the sound of the rope being pulled through the pulleys.
"Do you think..." Herbie speculated. "Oh, I hope not..."
"Look, Herbie, it's bad enough that we are in pitch blackness right now. Please don't make it worse."
"How can you be sure we won't end up in the living room?"
"I'm counting floors."
A few minutes passed. The elevator briefly stopped with a moment, then continued upwards until meeting a second stopping point and a muffled "ding!"
Herbie heard Tammy walk over to the door. There was a long moment of silence. "I don't hear anybody," she whispered.
"Is that good or bad?"
A moment of silence. "That was a shrug, in case you couldn't see it."
"I didn't."
The door slid open a crack, letting a dim ray of light into the chamber. Tammy could be seen peering through it. "I don't see anybody," she concluded.
She quietly slid the door open the rest of the way. As she had predicted, they were in the middle of the workshop. The door on this level opened significantly wider than it did on the lower floor, wide enough to allow a vehicle in. The only light came from a distant lamppost visible through a window at the far side of the room.
The first thing Tammy did was to make sure that the only other door leading out of the workshop was locked. In fact, it had already been locked, from the inside.
Tammy turned around with a start and looked around her. Then she looked up. Foxglove was hanging from a rafter, looking very severely down at them.
"Foxglove! What happened here?"
The bad dropped silently to the floor and looked the dove squarely in the eye. Finally, she blinked. "Herbert, is it?"
"Yes."
Foxglove put a wing up to her face. "Good, at least I remember that much."
"Wait, is your memory failing, too?" Herbie asked.
"Yes."
"But you were fine at the beginning of the party." The bat nodded. "Then that means it is a disease, and it's communicable," Herbie concluded. "We'll probably be next."
"What happened?" Tammy asked, desperation creeping into her voice.
"Well," Foxglove began, "Dale and I had first watch. He left to get changed, but never came back. After a few minutes, I searched for him and found him lost in the corridors.
"I led him back to the living room. His memory just kept getting worse and worse, until Dale, he..." she sniffled, "...he introduced himself to me. Like he never knew me!
"There was this bright flash in my head, then I hit the master power switch when Dale attacked me, so I'd have the advantage..."
"'Attacked'?"
Foxglove continued without noticing the interruption: "...I tried to immobilize him, but the others came too fast..."
Tammy was standing at the railing, looking down in horror at the scene below her. The tire slide had been ripped from its attachment to the ceiling, and the furniture was scattered in all directions. In particular, the television set had a head-shaped hole in it, and the chipmunk roaming about wearing the remains of Dale's nightshirt had spots of red on the top of his head. The large shirtless mouse that was once Monty was ramming into random walls, and Zipper was walking on four widely spread legs in slow motion, his head craned back to look at her. But she wasn't looking for any of these animals.
"Chipper!" Tammy finally gasped, as she caught a glimpse of the other chipmunk tearing at the couch with his teeth, the chipmunk she had glimpsed at the window, reduced now to a thing instead of a person.
Herbie walked over to the railing, but then quickly retreated upon glimpsing Gadget. "She...they've gone feral!"
"But that's not possible!" Tammy exclaimed. "You're either born feral, or sentient. You never go from one to the other - never!"
"It's the final stage of the disease," observed Herbie clinically. "Loss of memory, loss of personality, loss of sentience."
"...I can feel my mind slipping..." said Foxglove in a cold voice. "Promise me you'll take me to Bear Mountain in northwestern Connecticut after I lose my mind, so my family can take care of me."
"We will," Tammy promised, "but you won't lose your mind, because you're not sick."
"But she is," stated Herbie. "The evidence points to it. She caught the disease," he speculated, "whatever it is, from the Rangers. And they went to that party tonight, and mingled with dozens of squirrels and doves, including us. It's the end of the world. Nimnul's ultimate revenge."
"No," Tammy said, shaking her head, "it's not a disease, it's not irreversible. We saw that flash from the spruce tree - it was not in Foxglove's head."
"You saw it too?" asked Foxglove.
"Yes," Tammy brightened, "and that means there must be another explanation."
"Did the flash happen before or after Dale crashed into the TV?" asked Herbie.
"Um...I'm not sure."
"In any case, no electrical short could have produced a flash that bright, or that brilliantly colored. Perhaps that was the disease striking our brains at the same time. Quick, Tammy, try to remember what you ate at the party. The newest memories appear to be the first to disappear."
Tammy shook her head violently. "It doesn't have to be that! Maybe it's magic - Freddie's returned!"
Foxglove shook her said uncertainly. "I don't know. This doesn't feel like any magic Winifred ever cast."
"I still believe it's natural," Herbie said, "and probably impossible to stop. Nimnul would have covered every angle. An air-borne pathogen, attacking the nervous system of all non-human life forms, in order to undo the day when the Professor realized that the 'vermin' he despised were as self-aware as he was."
"You're not helping!" Tammy snarled.
"We are looking at the end of animal civilization," Foxglove pronounced in a dead voice, "and it's all my fault, because I can't remember the phone number of what's-his-name. Gadget's got a device that lets humans understand us. There's only one human I can trust to help us out, and I can't remember his number."
"Even now," Herbie droned on, "a plane full of plague vectors is taking off, heading halfway around the world. When it arrives, animal sentience in India is dead. And here in America - dead."
"Like my Dale down there," Foxglove said, "everything that makes him Dale disappeared forever in the blink of an eye. And soon all animals will be as feral as he is."
"No," cried Tammy in a shrill tone, grabbing Foxglove by the shoulders and shaking her. "That's not true. I won't let it be true! There has to be another explanation, something reversible, there just has to be! Give me another explanation!"
"Stop shaking me!" cried Foxglove, in tears. "Who are you? What do you want from me?"
As Tammy stepped back in shock, Foxglove suddenly gave off a blinding burst of light.
Before they had recovered, a now-feral Foxglove swooped down and burst through the living room window to freedom, followed by the wild animals that had once been the Rescue Rangers.
