Base 14

“Oy! Ollie! Get back here!”

Ollie winces upon hearing his name, followed by a deep sigh. That tone is never a good one.

He slowly turns around and scampers back to General Chi, who towers over him, scowling. Ollie shudders.

“And where do you think you’re going?”

“I was just—”

“Is that how you address your General?”

Ollie swallows. “Sir, I was just hungry. I was going back to Base 14––”

“Back to Base 14? What in the… What are your orders regarding the current situation?”

“Sorry, sir!” Ollie straightens, cheeks reddening. “I—er, yes. The orders. They’re…” his eyes shift to the side. The General swats him upside the head, his claw catching Ollie’s ear, sending a sharp pang of pain.

“Ow!”

“You deserved that,” General Chi mutters. “We’re on a Stage 4 Lockdown. Nobody leaves. Are we clear?”

“Yes, sir.” Ollie rubs his head, which is still sore. “Er… why?”

The General glares.

“I just mean… I want a better understanding of the situation. So I can be prepared. For anything,” Ollie says quickly. His stomach growls. The General narrows his eyes, his lips pursed. His whiskers quiver.

“Fine. There’s no power in Base 14. We’re on foreign territory. An away game. We still don’t know our enemy well, especially in the dark. Are we clear?”

“But… sir…”

“I said, are we clear?”

“Sir! The enemy has vacated the premises!”

The General raises his hand again, seconds from swatting Ollie for subordination. Ollie holds his breath, eyes glued to the hand raised above him. Then, to his surprise, the hand slowly lowers. The General is still looking at him with narrowed eyes, but this time, they’re… calculating.

“Vacated?”

Ollie clears his throat. “Yes. Gone.”

“Gone.”

Ollie says nothing. The hand could rise again at any moment.

“Hm.” The General rubs his chin, his tail flickering behind him. His eyes take on that familiar glazed look that the troops know well––the start of a plan.

“Ollie,” the General says, his voice soft and firm, “I think you might finally be on to something.”

“Really?” Ollie says brightly.

“Yes. Go get Lieutenant Blue. She’ll be needed.” 

Ollie salutes him––poorly, of course, but the General ignores this lapse of form––and runs off to Base 1, in the abandoned shed of the backyard. He slides in between the gap formed by the crooked doors and into the bustling crowd of his fellow troops.

They’re everywhere. Lining the floors, the shelves, the tools in the shed… hundreds upon hundreds of rats. 

“Eh, Ollie! What’re you up to? Haven’t seen you in ages!” Scout shouts from the left side of the room. He’s sitting on a low shelf, gnawing on something that smells like weeks old stale bread. The best kind.

“Can’t… talk…” Ollie pants, shaking his head. “Where’s Lieutenant Blue? The General needs her.”

Scout stops eating, his ear perking up. The other ear is, well, gone. Caught in a hidden trap on Base 12. It was a hard day.

“Wait––he needs the Lieutenant? What’s he planning?”

Ollie grins. “Can’t say. But might be an attack. Might be something I helped plan.”

“Really?” Scout’s eyes widen. “Ollie, that’s… wow. Atta boy!” He grins, pumping his paw in the air. “I knew you could do it!”

Ollie waves another poorly formed salute before scampering back into the crowd, searching over hundreds of heads for the one person he needed to find.

There she was. As usual, she was in her office––a small shoebox near the back of the shed. Lieutenant Blue was sleek and muscular, and admired by all. As Ollie approached her, he noticed a deep furrow between her eyes as she looked down at her table. It was a matchbook with an unsoiled gum wrapper resting on top of it, marked with tallies and notes.

“…only two boxes left…”

“Lieutenant Blue?”

Her head jerked up. “Ollie? What’s going on?”

“Two boxes of what?”

She smiles, amused. Ollie always liked her much more than General Chi. “Eavesdropping, are we?”

Ollie smiles shyly. “Maybe a little.”

She stares at him. He can’t help but think that she’s measuring him, assessing him. His cheeks redden again.

“We’re down to two boxes of crackers. And three loaves of bread. That won’t last us a day, let along a week.” Her eyebrows furrow again as she looks down at the gum wrapper. “That won’t even last us an hour. Not when winter’s around the corner.”

“Well…” Ollie grins. “I might be able to help with that.”

“Oh, really, huh?” Lieutenant Blue crosses her arms, raising an eyebrow. “And how’s that, exactly?”

“The power’s out on Base 14.”

“Yes. I know the drill for the situation, Ollie. I am your Lieutenant, you know.” She waves her hand dismissively.

“No, no, that’s not what I meant! I mean, the power’s out on Base 14. Meaning the enemy has vacated the premises.”

“The enemy has…” she trails off. And then, her eyes widen. She gasps, reaching forward and clutching Ollie by the shoulders. “Ollie, brilliant! Brilliant!” She rushes around the desk, then takes the gum wrapper, crumples it, and throws it behind her shoulder, before turning back and smiling. “Guess we won’t need that anymore, huh?”

“Really? Did you say ‘we’?”

“Yup, you bet I did. Gear up. You’re finally going on a mission.”

***************************

“Okay. You all know the drill. In and out. We form a line quickly and efficiently; you all know your positions by know. We need two guards at either entry; Chipper and Pickens, you’ll be on the east entry. Nori and Beets, you’re on the west. We’re going quick and dirty. No more than twenty minutes. On my signal.” The General looks around the corner of the house, to the doorway on the back terrace. There, right in the middle of the door, is the doggy door––the perfect access to the glories that await inside. And the perfect way to get out. Plus, Mr. Snuffles had passed on years ago. They were in the clear.

General Chi motions the first team forward, Ollie included. He falls in line with the other troops as they quickly surge forward toward the doggy door. He helps the others by boosting them up, and one by one, the group enters the dark house. The second group, those that form the line from the door to the shed, remain behind, organizing themselves quickly.

“Up you go,” whispers Scout, boosting Ollie forward and up. Ollie lurches for the opening and pulls himself––rather shakily––into the house, the doggy door flap swinging shut quietly behind him. He can hear Scout's and the other troop's muffled scuffling on the other side.

Ollie falls in line behind the rest of the troops, who are already surging forward in perfect rhythm. He tries to keep up, struggling to keep his tail from quivering with excitement.

His first mission. He couldn’t fail. He couldn’t afford to.

The house is dark and… cold. Ollie shivers. He follows the rats past the tiled laundry room, dodging haphazard piles of clothing. He turns around the doorway to follow a small hallway, which leads to––

There. Ah.

The kitchen.

Ollie sighs in relief. The familiar spices and pleasant aroma and sweet-smelling flavors enter the air. He doesn’t need to focus on the troops anymore; he can simply follow his nose to the treasure. 

Ollie almost runs face first into the troop in front of him.

He throws on the brakes, barely managing to squeak to a rest. He hadn’t noticed that the troop had stopped. Ollie peers around the troop’s head, to the front of the line, where General Chi signals the runners to enter various parts of the kitchen.

Ollie falls in line, a few inches from the troop in front and behind him.

And then it starts.

The troops have grown efficient over time. In less than a second, food is passed down paw to paw, quickly and quietly, all the way to the laundry room and out the doggy door and back to the shed for safekeeping. A brilliant means of securing weeks, perhaps even months, of sustenance.

Ollie’s tail swishes with excitement as he takes the food and passes it along. There are so many things to behold. Salted crackers; cheesy chips; packages upon packages of all different types of breads; grapes and strawberries and pears and apples; and, his personal favorite.

Olives.

General Chi got his tea (he had watched the humans for some time to learn how make it just perfectly). Lieutenant Blue smiled as she passed along blue cheese. Scout grinned at the box of Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies. Chipper and Pickens got their fair share of chips and pickles; Beets and Nori delighted in beets and rare seaweed.

Everybody got their treat. The General and Lieutenant Blue made sure of it.

The line runs perfectly for about fifteen minutes. They easily accumulate a minimum of a month’s worth of food when, to Ollie’s surprise, he hears an odd sound.

It is a low rumble. Not loud, not at all; more like a deep hum, from far away.

Ollie pauses. So do the rest of the rats.

For a moment, it is utterly, completely silent.

And then Ollie hears a devastating purr.

The movement happens quicker than he can register.

“MOVE OUT!” General Chi shouts at the top of his lungs.

A massive, large, furry being leaps from behind the kitchen doorway, a mound of teeth and claws, hissing as it tries to swat the rats from the air. Ollie gasps, scrambling and tripping over his paws as he scurries away. He catches flashes of movement to his left, to his right––everywhere, rats are escaping and running and screaming. And that thing, that horrible cat, is sprinting after his family and friends, attempting to crush them in its large claws.

Suddenly, Ollie notices the cat swivel its head, its eyes narrowing as it focus in on something. What could it be––?

“No!” Ollie screeches as he sees the cat lunge toward Scout. Ollie explodes into action, sprinting back against the crowd of rats racing toward him. He leaps into the air without a second thought, landing right on top of the cat’s head.

For a fraction of a second, Ollie wonders if this is a terrible, terrible mistake. He pushes the thought away.

He takes a deep breath. And then he stabs his the small claw on his left paw directly into the cat’s eye.

The cat screams, shaking its head violently and throwing Ollie off of it. Ollie leaps down, landing safely on the ground. The cat shakes its head again, whining and crying, before slowly limping away to care for its injury. Ollie doesn’t stay around to watch it go; instead, he sprints over to Scout.

“Are––are you alright?” Ollie asks, panting.

Scout stares up at him. “Alright?” His face bursts into a grin. “Ollie, you just saved my life! You just attacked that thing!”

Ollie leans back, breathing deeply, trying to catch his breath. “I… I guess you’re right.”

“Guess? I know I’m right! I can’t believe it… your first mission, and you already defeat a beast!”

“It’s still alive,” Ollie says weakly. Scout merely laughs.

“Yeah. Barely.” He slowly gets on his paws. “Come on. We have to go––the General called it. He called the mission off.”

Scout pats Ollie affectionately on the back, and they run to the doggy door together, helping one another through it. When they approach the shed, they see General Chi and Lieutenant Blue waiting for them in front of the entrance. The General’s arms are folded, and his face is set into a deep scowl.

“Uh, oh,” Ollie mumbles.

“Good luck on this one,” Scout murmurs back. He salutes both the General and Lieutenant before running off into the shed.

“So,” General Chi starts. “Tell me, Ollie. What exactly went though out your mind when you tried to handle a… a cat?”

“Well…” Ollie falters. He steals a glance at Lieutenant Blue. She looks at him sternly. And then, just for a moment, she winks at him before settling back into her stiff gaze.

Ollie smiles. “Sir, I thought I could defeat that monster.”

“And?”

Ollie cocks his head. “And what?”

“Well, did you?”

Ollie stares at him. The General’s face twinges, and just for a moment, Ollie notes the trace of laughter in his eyes. He can see the pride beneath the fierce demeanor.

“I did.”

“It’s about time,” Lieutenant Blue mutters. The General fixes the Lieutenant with a look before turning back to Ollie.”

"Well, son, she's right. It’s about time. Welcome to the troops.”