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Chapter 38: Alone Again

Gizmo stood in the doorway of the balcony, watching Adventure Bay's emergency response team drive over the bridge and disappear into the mist. All except for one. Gizmo stepped onto the balcony while staying in the overhang of the tower. He noticed that, standing in the rain, Zuma's tail wagging tail had slowed to a stop. The chocolate Lab stood on his back legs with his front paws on the railing, ears raised to hear any sign of his friends.

"Why weren't you called out?"

Zuma's head lowered. He didn't answer, but he took his paws off of the balcony railing and walked past Gizmo to the briefing room. Once inside, he gave his body a shake and sat down in front of the screen where the map of Adventure Bay still showed. Gizmo followed him indoors and sat beside the lonely Lab. Zuma pointed a paw towards the upper portion of the screen where most of the land was white with snow, "Do you think that there's any need for a marine first response team up there?"

Gizmo considered the possibility, "Are there any lakes up there?" he pondered.

"Nope," Zuma shook his head, "All of the H2O in that place is decidedly below thirty-two degrees." The water dog stood up and walked closer to the screen. He gestured to a more urban area of the city, "Do you see any possible use for a buoy or oxygen mask here?"

Gizmo shook his head, but wasn't willing to give up, "What about the bay? You live in Adventure Bay. It's a bay. Can't you be doing something about the bay?"

Zuma stared at the screen, "Ah, yes. The bay. The bay isn't really something we need to be worrying about right now. The only possible reason I could see is if somebody was lost out in the bay. In which case they would send out a distress signal. A distress signal that cannot be heard until the tower is back online. I'll have to wait until then. And if there are any people crazy enough to be out there, they probably had the common sense to bring their phone or some sort of tracking device. They should be able to get back here without too much of a problem once the cell tower is fixed."

"But what if they crashed on some rocks?"

Zuma turned to look at Gizmo, "Then I'd be happy to help, but chances at that point are that those people don't need saving any more, dude."

As Gizmo stared into Zuma's eyes, the black Lab noticed a gleam in them - probably from the precipitation. Zuma blinked away the water from his eyes, sending a bead of shimmering liquid cascading off his muzzle. The pup wiped his forepaw across the trail the drop had left. " 'Scuse me…" was the last thing he muttered before entering the elevator and descending on his own.

Gizmo stayed in the control room, pondering Zuma's predicament until he was interrupted by his stomach grumbling at him. He realized with a groan that he hadn't eaten since the night before last, and he was starving. He needed food. The Lab gazed at the empty space the elevator had recently occupied, attempting to determine how to summon it back to the top floor. To his dismay, there was no indication whatsoever. The Lab stood where the door had been and pressed the roof of the elevator to see if it would pop out of the floor. Nothing. He attempted jumping on the elevator, but still nothing happened. He tried standing next to it to see if it would reappear, but he was out of luck. Taking a quick look around, Gizmo quickly determined there would be no chance of determining the appropriate button to call the elevator by randomly pushing the ones on the control panel; there were hundreds of instruments, lights, and dials spread around the circumference of the room.

With that option eliminated, Gizmo knew of only three other ways to get back to ground level. The first option he could immediately eliminate would be to jump off the balcony to reach the ground. Even though he knew he'd never be stupid enough to do that, he felt he should include it in his options. 'For completion's sake,' he thought. The second option was the slide the other pups had gone down. Padding over, the Lab stared at the opening in the floor. Its dark maw gaped at him, with only shimmers of light visible in the reflections on the steely surface. Nervously, he took a step back. Having entered the Lookout in the dark, he had no way of knowing the path the slide took, and didn't want to take the chance of leaping into the unknown - and unpredictable - outlet. That left option three. Gizmo tentatively crept over to the hole Ryder had disappeared into. Soft fluorescent lights illuminated the sides of the tube, and natural lighting emanated from the bottom. A solid metal pole spanned the length of the tunnel. The black pup reached out a paw and felt it. "This should work," he mused confidently.

Rising to stand on his hind legs, Gizmo reached out and allowed himself to fall onto the fire pole because it was too far away to stand on the edge while retaining his center of gravity. Then he realized his mistake. It was a bit harder to grab onto than he thought it would be. In a panic, he clung to the beam for dear life as he began to slip while his back paws remained on the landing. Hastily he wrapped his chin around the pole as well, stopping his slide. Leaning at a forty-five degree angle, only his hind legs on the ground behind him prevented him from plummeting into the depths of the Lookout.

Holding his breath, Gizmo slowly… slowly looked down. The nearly endless abyss seemed to reach for him, stealing away all resolve he had mustered. A wave of vertigo washed over the pup, who was beginning to realize why the other canines had a slide instead of a firepole. Gizmo tried to push off the pole to return to the safety of solid ground, but his first movement immediately caused his grip to slip lower on the pole, launching his heart into his throat. Closing his eyes and hugging the beam tighter, the black Lab attempted to calculate the likelihood of his reaching the floor. The results were… less than promising. "There's no way I'm going to get back," Gizmo realized dejectedly, "which means the only way out of this… is down." Inhaling deeply, the pup jumped into the cavity.

Meanwhile on the second floor of the Lookout, Jake had busied himself in the kitchen again, though this time it was his lunch he was preparing. As he spread peanut butter onto eight sandwiches, he became aware of noise.

"AaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaa!"

Soon after he heard an echoing THUD from downstairs. Jake looked behind himself towards the rest of the room. All that was there was the elevator, cushions, and the firepole that started upstairs and continued to the basement. Shrugging, the snowboarder scooped out more peanut butter with his knife.

"Ouch…" Gizmo wheezed as he lay in a heap at the bottom of the fire pole. "That was a mistake…"

After a minute of waiting for the pain to quit screaming at him, something else made its voice heard. His stomach growled again. Groaning, the Lab rolled to his paws and examined the room he was in. It was a garage containing an assortment of tools and supplies. The entire floor was smooth concrete except for the area directly under the firepole. It seemed to be a round, spring loaded metal plate which depressed into the ground. 'Thank goodness that's designed that way, or I'd be even more sore than I currently am,' Gizmo realized before continuing to examine the rest of the area.

A red and blue ATV rested next to a generator and a pile of empty gasoline containers. To Gizmo's left, a stack of tires leaned against a wall next to the garage door. Against the far wall, an open toolbox and what seemed to be a disassembled robotic dog rested on a workbench with its contents scattered about the tabletop. On his right he could see a workbench with multiple built-in computer monitors, and next to it was the elevator. The Lab immediately raced into the waiting elevator and took it back upstairs, where his previously abandoned breakfast still resided.

Zuma watched as the elevator passed by the uniform landing and settled at the main floor. He stepped out of the elevator and began walking towards the front sliding doors. The Labrador heard a voice from the other side of the elevator.

"Hey, man. Did Ryder give you a job in here? I heard Everest's snow cat, but I didn't count the others. Who else is here?"

Zuma turned to face Jake who came around the elevator with a wet plate in one hand and a towel in the other. The brown pup shook his head, "Well, I wasn't deployed. All the others are gone on missions."

Jake nodded his head and leaned his shoulder against the glass wall of the elevator. He responded carefully, "Where's the little guy?"

"The dude's still upstairs."

Jake appraised Zuma's attire, "Still got your uniform on. Gnarly. I admire your can-do attitude."

Shrugging, Zuma smiled slightly, "Thanks, dude. I was just going to go to my pup house."

"You're not going to hang out with Gizmo, man?" the young man questioned, raising his eyebrows.

"Naw, dude," the Labrador replied, shaking his head, "Gizmo is totally awesome, but I just want to be in my own room for the first time in two weeks. I'll probably be back soon."

Zuma was about to mosey out, when he heard Jake say his name in a serious tone that made him pause, "Zuma."

Zuma looked the snowboarder in the eyes. They had a heavy expression that surprised Zuma. Jake was a funny guy, and nothing ever seemed to bother him.

"Don't give up hope. One of these days there's gonna be something that only you can do, and you're gonna be the only one with the type of courage to do it."

Zuma nodded and continued towards the front doors. Outside in the rain, Zuma made his way to the place where his pup house resided. In the back. It was the first time he had set foot inside it since that fateful day two weeks ago. A glance at his calendar on the wall showed that it still displayed the same date: February 11th. Grabbing a pencil, the Labrador crossed off the days up until February 25th. Today's date. With a sigh, Zuma looked at the bottom of the calendar where nine barely visible tick marks could be seen. One by one he added an additional fourteen for the days that had passed. Then he paused.

With a heavy heart, he added a fifteenth mark for today. 'Twenty four days since last official deployment,' Zuma thought. Putting down the pencil, he sighed heavily.

The orange-clad pup lay down on the ground, gazing at the picture of him smiling with his parents. He still had his puppy teeth, and one was missing from where he had lost it. His mother, a blonde Labrador with the same green eyes as her son beamed with a simple smile that radiated joy. Her brown husband sat to the left of Zuma and grinned at the camera with his whiskered chin and hickory eyes. The dog tags that hung at his chest were tarnished, but he looked proud of both his beautiful spouse and his son. Both sat behind their son, and more than ever, Zuma wished he could be back in that picture with his parents where he was safe, loved, and precious. He knew that his job was important, but he always thought that he would do something more. All he was ever asked to do was play a game of wet fetch.

Zuma, I need your buoy to stop the kitten floating into the bay.

Zuma, we'll need your hovercraft to go over the thin ice and get Mr. Porter's van.

Zuma, we need you to catch Cap'n Turbot's cousin. Again.

He didn't want anybody to be in danger, but sometimes he just wished that he could be more than his tools. And yet any time he had a chance to shine, some other pup showed up to take his place with their Sea Patroller gear. If everything that was specialized about him was taken away and given to other pups with more experience, then there was no need for Zuma to even be on the team.

"Mom… Dad… I know this wasn't what you thought it'd be like… And I'm doing my best. But… I don't know how much more of this I can take."

Holding back tears of frustration, Zuma buried his head in his forepaws as he waited for the others to return.

First and foremost, I have to thank my sister again for her help in writing. And not just for this chapter, but all of them in general. I don't feel like I say it enough. (And honestly, I probably don't.)
As for the chapter, I loved being able to dive into some of what Zuma's facing. (No pun intended.) I can't wait to really explore his identity as a member of the team more, so expect to see more about it in the future.
For Gizmo's part, at first Gizmo deciding to go down the firepole was going to be an outtake. Then as I kept writing it I decided that it was something he would totally do and would be hilarious, so I kept it in. For anyone that's confused, Jake's encounter with Zuma happens while Gizmo is still figuring out how to get down from the control room, but it was put in the order it ended up in because Zuma's section was a better way to end the chapter.
And last but not least, merry Christmas! God bless you all!