Breaking into the military area turned out to be quite the strain on everyone.
Several hundred thousand people had participated in the storming of the rumored alien storage facility and due to many heavily armored soldiers, the losses had been devastating. It was only thanks to the sheer number of participants, that a small group of civilians had managed to penetrate the well protected, but ancient facility.
And while the majority of survivors were outside, taking care of the wounded and phoning in the losses, what amounted to a microscopic part of the original group had managed to slide through the tight net of soldiers that was busy upstairs, ushering the intruders away and taking care of reestablishing a social structure.
“What’s it say?”, Konrad asked, wiping his forehead with a towel and taking an enormous gulp out of his can before he stared at the enormous bright yellow sign right in front of him and furrowing his fuzzy brows. His sparse reddish mane had never been a particularly pleasing sight to behold, but since his far too-close-encounter with a flamethrower, it was partially singed off and the rest of it was a frizzy mess, giving the muscular equine an involuntary electric-Afro-look.
“It says: ‘Don’t open’ in kinda big letters”, little Willie piped up. The tiny beagle was clutching the leftovers of a life-sized pillow that was sporting several bullet-holes and had the stuffing coming out at the bottom. If one looked at the large-eyed canine too closely, one would have noticed that both his baggy clothes and his pillow easily out-sized him. But no-one ever actually gave him that pleasure. Most people simply overlooked him because of his slender, stick-like figure, his watery eyes and unremarkable behavior. “And...and ‘Danger’ as well. Maybe we should just go?” A little helplessly he gesticulated toward the steel door that they had squeezed through earlier and that was emitting faint sparks of electricity after Konrad had kicked it a few times.
“Nonsense”, Katrina waved her expertly manicured hands, fluffed her bushy white and red tail and sighed. “Those signs are there to scare people of, is all.” Purposefully the fox walked forward a few steps, before turning back toward the four males staring at her and clicking her tongue. “Seriously. They are here to ward off people. Just in case anyone ever makes it this far. Now come on, you ninnies. I am on a mission here.”
“She’s right!” That voice came from Nick, who punched his fist into his left hand, quickly weaving his fingers into a few intricate shapes, before posing. It looked ridiculous on a medium sized feline like him. Almost as if he was getting in line for a kiddie-pool and cowering down to slide through the height restriction. “We have come this far, with so many losses. We owe it to the people outside to find out what they are actually hiding here. Let’s get on with it!”
Four of the fives shapes that had been standing in the corridor stampeded forward, leaving behind a slender wolf, who had been standing with his hands in his pockets. “Uh, guys...”, be began, lifting his hand as the other shapes rushed forward – one of them with his hands trailing behind him like banners. Before he could so much as utter a word of protest, the others were already cheering at Konrad to punch in the number pad or kick in the solid steel door.
Sighing, the fifth figure bent down toward an unconscious soldier, plucked a key card off his chest and wandered after his eager and rather involuntary brothers in arms. He hadn’t actually meant to take place in this raid of the alien facility. But since his best friend Nick had been so eager to show off his running skills and needed someone to ferry him here with a car, he had tagged along. Before he knew it, things had escalated, and here he was: Trapped in a forbidden military facility with a bunch of nut-heads.
Calmly he shoved his way through the group of furs fiddling with the number pad on the entrance, bent smoothly past the towering equine and slid the key card through the slot. A light flashed up, blinking and no doubt counting the seconds it took him to type in the number he had read on the chest of the soldier.
Green light flared up and the hissing hydraulics of the opening doors were quickly drowned by the cheering of his peers. The door slid open, revealing a truly massive area featuring large cages and boxes and in a stunningly disappointing anticlimax: even more doors.
“This is unbelievable! I want to speak to the manager of this facility!”
“What? You mean the lad that was shot halfway through the battle because one of his dudes totally misplaced a bullet?” Nick rolled his eyes and facepalmed. “We need to be reasonable, Katrina. This is up to us now.”
“So which way should we go?”
Konrad, who was the largest of them all, picked up little Willie and lifted him on his enormous shoulders so the beagle could read out loud what the signs said.
“I’ll go into the research-facility”, Nick instantly exclaimed, punching his fist energetically into the air. “That is the most likely place to find out what they are hiding here. I wanna see the aliens!”
“Nonsense”, Katrina waved her hand and her red and white tail, thrusting out her broad hips and making sure that the short strands on the front of her rather hog-like hairdo were falling over her sunglasses that she had not bothered to take off, even during the hail of bullets they had weaved through. “In my opinion, the best data and the biggest success to find out what people up to, is the laboratory.”
“No the con… the… uh...” Konrad flailed his large hands, one of them wandering tho his neck and rubbing the singed mane. “The… the stuff… where they… uh….” His other hand was waving back and forth and finally he began snapping his fingers. “The thing… Boxes and cages. How’s that called?”
“Storage facility?”
“That one. That’s gotta be where uh… where they keep’em.” Having done a much larger speech than he was used to, Konrad took another sip of his drink to calm his nerves with the familiar taste of the energy drink he was carrying with him at all times.
“Right. What about you guys?” Katrina’s accusing eyes darted back and forth between Willie, who seemed to shrink even more behind the pillow and Norbert, who – in her eyes – did not contribute enough to the mission and had been nothing but slowing them down from the start. “Where will you go?”
“Home”, Norbert wanted to reply, but didn’t. His eyes flicked toward his best friend Nick, who was busy posing again, practicing his moves. As if all this was nothing but a game. They would of course all end up in jail the second they were found. But for some reason, Nick didn’t seem to bother about it very much.
Under the lasting silence and Katrina’s continuous stares, Norbert shrugged his shoulders. “Whichever is left, I guess.”
All eyes wandered down to Willie, who ran his slender paws over his face, moving the white and brown patches of skin and getting tangled up in the enormous flapping ears. “All right”, he announced, carefully weighing between the two choices that were left for him. “I’ll go… uh…” He sighed as he stared at the last two remaining signs. All the best options to see aliens were already gone. It was unlikely that he was ever going to end up with an alien if he followed this particular path. But it was what was expected of him. And at least it wasn’t as bad as the last option. “I’ll go to correspondence”, he piped up, hugging his pillow a little tighter.
“Fine, assembly it is for me then”, Norbert uttered enthusiastically. “But if I don’t find anything good, I’ll be coming after you.”
“Then it’s settled!” Eager as always, Nick stretched forth his gray paw, the back of his hand facing toward the ceiling. “For science!”
A small white and brown paw placed itself on top of his. “For knowledge.”
A red paw settled on the white and brown one, covering it completely. “For all the people that didn’t have the chance to come here and are suffering under the onslaught of the military and their suppression.”
“For knowledge and the fact that we will hopefully get out of here alive.” A jet black paw hesitatingly joined the others.
“Aliens!” Konrad neighed, covering up all the other paws of different sizes with his shovel-like clutches.
The five of them cheered, thrusting their fuzzy hands into the air and split up.
