Дебора Хоу - Bunnicula Strikes Again!

Before the terrible wrecking ball could strike again, I ordered Howie to run for his life. I ran, too. And I didn’t look back.

Chapter 10

One of the Family

“HAROLD!” Toby cried out. “Howie!”

Frantically, I raced toward my young master even as I searched the onrushing crowd for signs of Chester and Bunnicula, hoping against hope that they had miraculously escaped and were somehow already out there in front of the theater. But as Toby threw his arms around me, I knew that the only ones to have escaped were Howie and me.

“Are you okay, boy?” Toby asked. “What are you doing here?”

Mrs. Monroe had picked Howie up and was trying to comfort him, but Howie was squirming to be free.

“We’ve got to go back, Uncle Harold!” he yipped. “We’ve got to rescue Pop and Bunnicula!”

Mrs. Monroe seemed to understand. Perhaps people were more intelligent than Chester and I had been willing to give them credit for.

“Stop the demolition!” she cried out. “There may be other animals inside!”

“Stop the demolition!” someone echoed.

The trucks and the noise came to a sudden halt.

Breaking free of Toby’s embrace, I charged down the alleyway to the back of the theater. Howie, who must have leaped from Mrs. Monroe’s arms at the same time, was fast on my heels. Barking for everything we were worth, we led an impromptu rescue team, complete with flashlights and TV news cameras, into the partially decimated movie house.

“Be careful!” someone warned.

“Just follow the dogs,” another voice called out. “They seem to know what they’re doing.”

A fine thing, I thought. Does that mean most of the time we don’t seem to know what we’re doing? I didn’t dwell on the thought, however. I had more important matters to attend to. Matters of life and death.

There must have been a second blow of the wrecking ball as Howie and I had been fleeing the building, because the wall that had held the small square hole where we’d first spotted Bunnicula and from which he and Chester had tumbled was gone. In its place was a large pile of rubble.

I stared at the pile with a sick, sinking feeling in my stomach.

“Chester!” I woofed.

At first there was no response. But then I heard it. The same sort of pitiful mew I’d heard coming from the closet only—was it possible?—the day before. This time it was not a sickly mew, but a frightened one.

“There!” I heard Mr. Monroe call out. “Let me have that flashlight!”

A beam of light bounced off the walls and floor and fallen pieces of plaster and concrete and wood, and then suddenly it caught something. Something alive! It was Chester, wide-eyed and panting!

Howie and I bounded across the room. “Chester!” I cried. “You’re all right!”

He didn’t respond, but just kept staring at all of us.

“What about … What about Bunnicula?” Howie asked.

Chester did the strangest thing then. He howled. Or so it seemed. He lifted his head high and let out the most piercing cry. Was he hurt?

“Chester, it’s all right, boy!” Mr. Monroe said, brushing against me as he extended a hand to Chester. “Come here, boy,” snapping his fingers. “Come on, it’s all right, Chester. Everything will be fine.”

But Chester didn’t go to Mr. Monroe. On the contrary, the closer Mr. Monroe got, the more Chester hissed and spat.

“Maybe he’s been injured,” another man said.

“He might be in shock,” said Mrs. Monroe. “That’s possible, isn’t it?”

I felt Toby’s hand stroke my head. “Is he going to be all right?” he asked his parents. “Is Chester going to be all right?”

A big man who looked like he might have been a member of the wrecking crew worked his way through the small crowd that had followed us inside. “I’ll take care of this,” he said brusquely.

He walked up to Chester and started to grab him. “Come on, kitty,” he said, “you’re coming with me now.”

He didn’t know who he was messing with. Chester swiped him with his claws.

“ Yeeouch! ” the man said. “Hey, what gives?”

Chester turned to me. “Help me, Harold,” he said. “You’re my friend, aren’t you?”

“I never stopped being your friend,” I said.

“Then help me save Bunnicula.”

“ Save Bunnicula?” I repeated.

“You heard me,” Chester said.

And then I understood. Bunnicula was somewhere in the pile of rubble Chester was sitting on. And Chester wasn’t moving until Bunnicula had been found.

“Come on, Howie,” I said, “we have one more job to do. A dog’s job.”

We moved toward the pile of rubble and sniffed. It didn’t take long to catch Bunnicula’s scent. Once we had it, we began to bark.

“The dogs are trying to tell us something,” a woman said. “There’s something else in there.” Turning to the Monroes, she asked, “Do you have any other pets?”

“A rabbit,” said Mr. Monroe, “but why would he be here?”

“There’s something strange going on, Robert,” Mrs. Monroe said to her husband, and then she said to the others, “Our vet called us this morning to tell us Bunnicula—that’s our rabbit—wasn’t in his cage when he arrived this morning. And soon after that Chester escaped.”

“Well,” said the big man Chester had lashed out at a few minutes earlier, “it looks to me like there may just be a rabbit in that rubble.”

All at once, everyone began to dig.

“I see eyes!” someone called out. “Red eyes!”

“Bunnicula!” Pete shouted when the bunny came into view at last. “This is so crazy! What are the animals doing here?”

I don’t know if the Monroes ever got that question answered to their satisfaction. I don’t know if they really cared. All that mattered was that we were all safe and sound—even Bunnicula, who had miraculously survived because of a large beam that had fallen in such a way as to create a little cave in the debris where he had hidden. He didn’t appear to have even a scratch. But you could see that his little heart was beating rapidly—and those red eyes had never looked more terrified.

The only thing predictable about Chester is his unpredictability, and in the next moment he did the most unpredictable thing I’d ever seen. He jumped down—and began to lick Bunnicula!

“What are you doing?” I cried.

“For heaven’s sake, Harold,” he said. “Use your brain, such as it is. I’m letting him know it’s all right. Can’t you see how scared he is?”

There was a flash of light as a camera recorded the moment. And that was the image that made the evening news and the next day’s front page in the Courier :

cat saves rabbit—the last show

at the centerville cinema

For the record, Howie and I were given some credit, too, but it was the picture of Chester wrapped around the terrified Bunnicula, licking him, that got the most attention. I had to chuckle to think that Chester had earned his brief moment of fame because of his kindness to a rabbit. And not just any rabbit—his archenemy, the vampire rabbit Bunnicula!

* * *

It was some time before things returned to what passes for normal at the Monroe house. Our odd behavior, strange disappearances, and reappearances in unexpected places took some sorting out, and to this day I don’t think the Monroes have all the answers. Truth be told, I’m not sure we do, either. I think we were right about Bunnicula’s missing his mother, although of course he never said a thing. That was why he had run to the theater when he saw the ad in the newspaper. But was she really “out there” somewhere as Chester suggested? I doubt it. I suspect once she had left her baby bunny at that theater years earlier, she had gone on her way, trusting in the kindness of strangers and hoping for the best.