Once again, thanks to the ZAA weekly meetings people for beta-reading and offering suggestions.


CHAPTER 3: THE DEATH OF THE CONSPIRACIST

It was on the sixth day that I peeped from the window slit for the last time. Rather than trying to push me aside so she could look out of the window, the honey badger had retreated to the kitchen. I went to find her, having had a sudden suspicion at her absence. I fumbled into the darkened kitchen, and I heard the sounds of the honey badger drinking. My temper flared, and I swatted into the darkness. My fingers caught hold of a bottle of whiskey in her paws.

For a few minutes, we fought over the bottle. I didn't want it myself, but the last thing we needed right now was a drunk, paranoid mammal. Eventually, it fell from both of our grip and shattered on the floor. We stared each other down, each issuing silent threats, before I sat myself down between her and the fridge and cupboards of food.

I had devised a system of rations that would last us ten days, if need be. I would not let her eat any more that day. In the afternoon, she made a move to get past me, but I stood my ground and she whimpered away. All day, and even at night, we sat face-to-face. I hoped I would not have to use the tranq gun she had dropped – I had no idea exactly what was in the darts she carried. But, if I had to, I resolved that I would.

Our incompatibility had opened out into full-blown conflict. For the next two days, beyond her increasingly deranged ramblings about a sheep conspiracy to 'cleanse the Earth', there wasn't a word said between the two of us. We wrestled and fought, but I stuck to my guns with the rations, and would not let her through. There were times where I tried to bribe her or convince her, but even the offering of the last bottle of whiskey didn't stop her from trying to get to the food. It seemed that she had lost leave of whatever senses she had left. Seeing that kept my own intact.

On the eighth day, she began to speak loudly instead of whispering. Nothing I did would quiet her.

"We've let the fleeces get away with their plan," she said, "and we're paying for it! I was too careless! I thought we had time! If only I'd moved sooner, this wouldn't have happened!"

She would suddenly revert to the matter of the food, as if her ramblings had somehow taken my attention away from it. She begged, promised things, and in the end, started to threaten me, each time getting louder. I tried to persuade her to be quiet, but she realised she had a hold over me with that.

"I'll be as loud as I want, and if that draws in the Martians to take us both, then so be it!" she cried out. For a while that scared me, but the thought that conceding would shorten the odds of us being able to escape helped keep up my defiance of her.

On the ninth day, she decided she would be silent no longer. And, even worse – her delusions and paranoia had reached a point beyond reasoning. She had come to believe now that, not only were the sheep somehow in league with the Martians, but that they were somehow some completely otherworldly force.

"It's obvious now that these things are a higher order of being that those fleeces serve!" she shouted.

"Quiet!" I hissed.

"No!" she replied in an increasingly loud tone. Surely, she would soon be heard from the pit. "No more! I've figured it out! Those walking mutton chops are demons serving a higher power, not even born on Earth but planted here! I see it so clear now! And those Martians are demons too! I have to go out there and strike them down, while I have the chance! Cut the head off the snake! If those tentacled freaks die, then the whole plan goes with it! Why didn't I see this before?"

"Shut up!" I commanded. My paw reached for the concealed dart gun. I feared I would have to use it.

"I won't!" she stood up, reaching for the weapon she still had on her. She took something from one of the pouches on her belt and loaded it in. One of the pellets dropped from her pocket and rolled toward me, and I saw that it was a round, purple pellet. With a sudden dread, I knew what this was.

It was a Night Howler pellet.

The honey badger planned on shooting the Martians with it, perhaps hoping that in their savage state, they might tear each other apart. I knew that the Martians would tear us apart too. In hindsight, they could have been a potent weapon against the Martians, but I remembered what had happened the first time Night Howlers had been unleashed, the damage they had caused. I had seen that first paw. I imagined what an out-of-control Fighting-Machine could do to us, and to anyone else unfortunate enough to be hiding nearby when the Martian inside it turned savage.

I knew I had no choice. I couldn't let her do it, and I had to stop her increasingly loud paranoid ranting. I got to my feet and pointed the dart gun at her. She looked at me like I was something alien.

"You…" she began. "You're turning on me? After all of that, after everything that's happened, you're going to… what? Kill me? Feed me to those demons to save your own fur? Or were you in league with them all along? Have you led them right to us?"

"The only one who's led them to us is you," I countered. "I'm sorry. Truly. I really don't want to do this. But… if I don't, then we're both dead."

The honey badger gritted her teeth in anger and started forward.

I fired. The dart struck true, sticking out from her shoulder. The honey badger stopped dead. She stared down at the dart, as if she couldn't believe what had just happened.

"You actually shot m…" She said, before the dart's contents took effect and she fell down. I crept over to her and checked her. She was still breathing. I sighed a breath of relief, one I know was premature in hindsight. The first thing I did was take the pellet gun from her and empty all of her pouches. I had to make her as harmless as possible when she woke up.

A sound caught my attention and my ear twitched. I turned towards the window slit. My blood ran cold: the roving eye of a Martian peered inside, from within the cockpit of its Handling-Machine. One of its claws reached inside the window.

I remembered the door to the cellar. I could hide there until I was sure the Martian was gone. But I couldn't leave the honey badger to be found by the Martians, I couldn't leave her to be their next meal, and surely, if they found her like that, they would figure out that another mammal had tranquilised her, and would look for that mammal. And so, with effort, I dragged her down into the dark cellar. Once I got the honey badger down into the cellar, I darted back to the top of the stairs and shut the door behind me. I stepped back into the darkness and found a place to hide.

A rattling came from behind the door. It fumbled at the latch, and I realised with horror that the Martians understood doors!

After maybe a minute, it opened the cellar. I remained still as the claw descended into the cellar. In the darkness I could just see the thing – it reminded me of an elephant's trunk more than anything else – waving towards me and touching and examining the wall, the crates, wood, and the ceiling. It touched my concealed foot, and I had to bite my hand to prevent a scream from escaping my mouth. For a time, it was silent. I hoped that it had left.

And then I heard the click. For a moment, I thought that it had me. And then, the moment passed, and I recognised that it wasn't me the Martian's claw had grabbed.

It was the unconscious honey badger!

With slow, deliberate movements, the Martian dragged her by her leg out of the cellar and up the stairs. There was nothing I could do to stop it.

Once the Martian had dragged her up to the first floor, it let her go for a moment, and closed the door behind it. I had no idea why it had bothered to do that, but perhaps it sought to lock me in there.


Hunger took me back up on the eleventh day. I crept from the cellar, carefully opened the door and headed back for the kitchen. With despair, I noticed all the food had gone. The Martian must have taken it, perhaps hoping to starve any other survivors out.

I spent the eleventh day in the collapsed bedroom. My strength slowly ebbed away in hunger. I couldn't even muster the energy to look through the peep hole. I figured that perhaps I was going deaf, for I could no longer hear the sounds coming from the pit. If I had been able to muster the strength to look, I would have found out why.

On the twelfth day, I sought out the tap in the kitchen, hoping that I wouldn't be noticed by the Martians. The tap still worked, but it gave me blackened, tainted water. Regardless, I drank like I had been in Sahara Square for weeks on end. I thought of the honey badger. Yes, she had become a deranged, raving lunatic, but she did not deserve to die. I felt guilty, imagining, and even dreaming, of trading places with her. The only thing that kept me from falling into total despair were thoughts of Nick. It was true that I didn't know where he was or that he was safe, but I imagined him there, with one of his usual clever quips, trying to lift my spirits.

On the thirteenth day, I drank more water, and I daydreamed about food and impossible plans of escape. My thoughts again turned guiltily to the honey badger, imagining myself again in her place.

The fourteenth day saw the Red Weed growing across the window slit in the bedroom and infiltrating the kitchen. What little light came into the bedroom now became a crimson, hellish glow. I made to drink more water, and noticed that the Red Weed had begun to crawl up the tap, which meant that it would taint the water that came out.

The fifteenth day came, and I heard a series of curious sounds from the kitchen. It wasn't the tapping of a Martian machine's claw, but it was tapping. I crept into the kitchen and saw a crow pecking at the window. A thought came to my mind: if I were a predator in my current hungry state, I might want to capture and eat that bird, but the thought vanished when the crow flew away.

It was then I noticed just how quiet it was. I remembered that I hadn't heard anything from the pit since the eleventh day, and I crawled to the window. Pulling the Red Weed aside, I peered outside.

The pit was empty. The Martians, and all of their machinery, had gone. The discarded bodies of their victims lined the pit, and for a moment, I balked, but then a resolve came over me. I pushed my way through the Red Weed and out of the window. Climbing atop the mound of rubble outside, I took in the scene. The day was dazzlingly bright, the sky a glowing blue. Red Weed had crept across the entirety of Molesey, but there was a gentle breeze that kept it swaying. I breathed deep, taking in the sweet air.

At last, my days of imprisonment were over.


I was still a way from my goal of reaching Zootopia, but I needed food first. I searched a nearby house and found a single broccoli which I ate ravenously. I found some red parsnips and turnips which I stowed away – enough to last me the remainder of my journey. The Red Weed had poisoned the water here too, but I found a bottle of apple juice that I took, planning on rationing it for the remainder of my journey.

My next job was finding something that could get me to Zootopia quickly, because that was still fifty or so miles that I didn't want to have to tackle on foot. It didn't look like there was anything I could use left in this village. I figured that any vehicles left here had likely been seized and dismantled by the Martians.

In the front garden of a house, I found a bicycle that had been coated in Red Weed. I considered it for a moment, and figured that it was better than nothing. So, I pulled the Red Weed apart and got the bike out. It was slightly too small for me, but I could make it work. And so, I started pedalling.

I wish I could tell you that something exciting happened on the last leg of my journey to Zootopia, but it really was just a straight road at that point, with only a forest and the underground tunnel link between us. Even so, the view wasn't as I remembered it. Fields and trees were covered with scarlet, the creeper had reached into the forest and had begun to snake over the Zootopia waterfront too, choking the movement of the water. I could see the railway bridge, and parts of it had been demolished. What was left on either end was also covered in the Red Weed.

I can say that it must have taken me three hours to get that far. I cycled into the tunnel, my legs protesting as I did so. Two weeks trapped had really done badly for my fitness and I was getting tired before I even got half way through the tunnel. I abandoned the bike before I reached the other end, and chose to continue on foot, into Savanna Central.

I had expected it, of course, having seen it from the other side, but seeing Zootopia consumed by Red Weed, and smoke rising, still left me shocked. For one moment, I was not exactly sure what I should do. Should I go home, to the apartment me and Nick shared? Surely there wouldn't be much of a point to doing that. Nick wouldn't be there waiting for me. Of that, I was sure.

Out of habit, I checked my phone, but the display was cracked and the battery was dead, having drained days ago. There would be no way for me to contact him. I had to figure out what I should do next. For now, I decided to find shelter, food and water in the morning before carrying on.


Not much left to say on this one, except, see you Friday!