Casper Candlewacks in the Time Travelling Toaster (9 page)

Three short flashes of the torch across Blight Manor’s lawn meant Betty was ready. Casper replied with two flashes from his own, then nodded to Flanella. “It’s time.”

“Right, Malcolm,” she whispered into the microphone bit of her laptop. “Remember what we practised?”

You know what they say:
Time flies when you’re planning a siege
. This could not have been more true than when applied to Casper’s last three days. A blur of charts, plans and laps round the garden, all accompanied Casper’s lingering feeling that he had absolutely no idea what he was doing. These people looked up to him, practically worshipped him at times. They treated Casper with the respect owed to a hero, to a legend. Funny what a hundred years could do to the collective memory of a village.

“He’s ready,” said Flanella. “Want me to press
ENTER
?”

“Fifteen minutes from when you do, yes?”

Flanella tapped Malcolm’s keyboard, then nodded. “He says yes.”

Casper looked round for Chrys, Lottie and Andrea, his three soldiers, hiding behind nearby trees. Each gave him a thumbs up. The time was now.

Casper gave Betty four flashes from his torch and hoped she’d not fallen asleep.

Thirty agonising seconds passed until he heard a noise. First a
VROOM
-
SPUT-SPUT
from Betty’s position, then the cracking of branches and an engine’s roar. The bushes across the lawn split in the middle as two headlights burst through them, skittering on to the lawn and screeching through a full circle before coming to a halt facing Blight Manor.

“HEY, LADDIE!” shrieked the ancient Betty Woons. Her aged vocal cords still had enough
oomph
to echo across Blight Manor’s ramparts.

Three separate spotlights hummed into action and the old woman was suddenly blinking in pale harsh light, alone, in her wheelchair, in the middle of no-man’s-land.

“Clear off, old woman!” came the reply from a high watchtower. “Want us to come down and employ you?”

“Ha!” screeched Betty. “You jes’ try. I’m retired!” Her wheelchair roared again and the rockets fitted to its frame let out licks of yellow flame. The wheels skidded, tearing up the turf, then caught friction and propelled Betty straight towards Blight Manor at a furious pace.

The spotlights followed, confused. Casper heard laughs and a jeer from the nearest watchtower. But obviously none of these watchmen remembered what she was driving. You see, a wheelchair built by Lamp Flannigan does more than just trundle. The ridiculing taunts turned to shouts of alarm when Betty’s wheelchair left the ground.

Casper grinned at Flanella. “Go for it.”

At the tap of a button, Malcolm grumbled into action, his little fan whirring until he rocked on Flanella’s lap. Malcolm would broadcast white noise, black noise and every other colour of noise on to every short-wave radio frequency for the duration of his battery life (about fifteen minutes). During this time, Flanella assured Casper that Briar’s remote control would be useless, and the Tickle Tags just a clunky sort of ankle bracelet. When Malcolm’s battery ran out, however, they’d be back to full operation. That gave Casper fifteen minutes, and not a second longer, to get the workers out.

In the few seconds that Casper had looked around, the scene on the lawn had changed dramatically. The three spotlights had split now, each one frantically picking arcs across the sky as they searched for Betty Woons. The manor was awake too, with guards on every tower and faces at the windows. The chug of Betty’s engine hung in the air, growing closer and then dying, as she flew figures of eight over the building. Shouts arose as the wheelchair zipped through the sight of one spotlight, but by the time the other lights converged on that point Betty was long gone.

The distraction was in place. With everybody looking up, Casper had his chance.

He, Chrys, Lottie and Andrea leapt from their hiding places and scrabbled down the bank to the redirected River Kobb. Casper felt the ice-cold water seep through his army jacket to his skin, sapping the heat from his body. But this was no time to complain. He had a mission to do, and the three ladies following him must only see his best side. Casper plopped underwater to swim a few silent strokes, checking at each breath that the others were still following.

Betty descended for a shrieking fly-by, never coming low enough to risk her companions being seen. With no weapons save a handful of particularly spicy chilli jelly beans to throw at her enemies, Betty had already resorted to making the
RATTATATATAT
noise of a machine gun with her clacky old teeth. It seemed to be working, though. The last sight Casper saw before he was engulfed by the darkness of the tunnel was three watchtower guards screaming “LIVE FIRE!” and diving for cover.

Swimming downstream was easier than up. Casper was hardly out of breath before the cavernous Warehouse 1 opened before him. On the left was a stout iron ladder, which he caught hold of with one hand as the current swept him past.

Dripping, half frozen, but unobserved, Casper counted the other three up the ladder and made for the exit.

Chrys approached the handprint by the door with her usual scowl. This was the moment of truth – the only thing they’d had to leave to chance. Chrys laid her hand on the outline and scrunched up her eyes.

“Welcome, Lady Chrysanthemum Blight,” said the handprint scanner. “Your hands are wet. Been swimming?”

Chrys sighed, relieved, but no less irritated than usual. “Doors, please.”

“Well, don’t mind me,” sang the doors as they swung open. “A little small talk never hurts, my motherboard always said.”

The courtyard was aflutter with guards and their guns, but they were all making their way up to the battlements. In fact, none batted an eyelid at the four figures prancing from shadow to shadow.

Chrys was equally short with the door into the sleeping quarters, but it swung open just the same.

Stairs swept downwards, leading to darkened corridors on each side, and Casper’s memories of being 34128 flooded back. His head swam and he had to lean on the wall for support.

Chrys grunted. “Whenever you’re ready, Casper,” she said pointedly.

“Hang on.” Casper closed his eyes and focused on breathing. “Just having a moment.”

“Make it a short moment,” said Chrys, making a sour face as she looked at her watch. “Eleven minutes till Tickle Time.” She turned to face the door and placed her hand on the pad once more.

“Leaving so soon?” asked the cheery robot voice.

Chrys clicked impatiently. “Open all the employees’ bedroom doors.”

“Midnight feast, is it?”

“Just do it,” Chrys grunted.

“No problemo,” sang the handprint scanner, and hundreds of soft creaks seeped up from the stairwell.

Casper swallowed down the memories of spit and bottles. There were hundreds of prisoners, Lamp included, sleeping in these quarters. Now was his chance to free them.

Lottie and Andrea split up to take a corridor each on the first basement floor; Casper and Chrys continued to the second, taking their own corridors here.

“WAKE UP!” shouted Casper, poking his head into each room in turn, flipping on the light and checking for movement.

“What is it?” one man grumbled. He saw Casper at his door and blinked. “Who are you?”

“No time to explain. Just get your overalls on and meet me in the corridor. We’re leaving.”

The first thing the man did was to fumble for his copy of
Blight – A History of Violence
, just as Casper had.

Casper continued down the corridor, awakening each employee in turn with shouts, shakes or threats of tickling.

One room was empty. He looked at the number on the door: 34128. Casper shuddered, shook it off and moved on to the next room. Sitting upright on the side of his bed, rubbing his sleepy eyes and still filling the room with the lingering smell of cabbage, the wiry young man called 14307 looked up as Casper entered and let his jaw drop. “Three four one two eight!” he cried. “You’ve returned!”

“It’s Casper, and I’m not staying. You’re coming with me.”

“Coming with you… where?”

“Outside.”

Fear filled 14307’s eyes. “But the tags…”

“It’s OK. We’ve got a plan. Meet you in the corridor.” And then Casper was out and into the next room, waking up the next escapee. And the next, and the next…

Precious minutes were passing and Casper still hadn’t cleared his second corridor. “How many more of these are there?” he asked Chrys as they passed on the stairwell.

“Sixteen corridors. That’s four each.”

Casper looked at his watch and winced. Seven minutes left.

It took time, waking tired workers up. They’d roll over or fall asleep as soon as Casper had gone. One chap thought this whole thing was a dream. When he led his last corridor of employees to the top stairwell, his watch gave him just three minutes before Tickle Time.

“Out!” he shouted, ushering the endless ranks of grey-overalled workers into the courtyard. The guards were too busy on the ramparts with Betty Woons and her flying wheelchair to notice a thing.

The employees tottered in a wobbly line across to the warehouse, where Chrys counted them in and shoved them towards the river channel. The final few stragglers had hurried out through the cheery door, but worryingly, Casper had not seen Lamp among them.

Perhaps I missed him
, Casper thought.
Maybe he’s cut his hair since we last met, or I was helping one of the older ones down the step.
But Casper knew deep down this wasn’t the case. He’d been watching closely for his friend.

The courtyard was free of employees now, and the chorus of yelps and splashing from below told Casper they were learning to swim. Casper performed a running bomb into the water, bringing up the rear of this odd procession. Two minutes. This was going to be close.

At the end of the tunnel, Lottie, Chrys and Andrea were pulling the sopping employees out of the river.

“Run!” they shouted, pointing in the direction of the town centre. “Go! That way!”

They did as they were told, tripping over each other’s legs to scramble across the lawn. Above, Betty’s wheelchair still soared in screeching laps, but now two of the spotlights were dancing across the grass, picking out the scores of sprinting employees.

WAANG
,
WAANG
,
WAANG
,
came the siren.

The slowest swimmers had now emerged from the tunnel, but there was barely a minute left to climb up the bank and dash for safety. Up in the battlements there were shouts of frustration as Tickle Tags failed to activate. But Briar’s voice could not be heard.

Where was he? Surely the clamour of the escape sirens had woken him up, and Casper knew that if there were tags needing tickling, Briar would be the first to press that button.

Thirty seconds. The fastest escapees had cleared the lawn now, but many more were still scrabbling away across the grass, dodging spotlights and bumping into the occasional tree.

A cacophonous screech of metal on metal tore through the air from inside the Blight facility, so ferocious that everyone, escapees and spotlight operators, stopped and turned to face its source. It shook the ground, sending Casper to his knees. Around him, faces turned white.

“Warehouse three…” muttered one.

“RUN!” bellowed Casper to the escapees. “Get out of range! The Tickle Tag’ll be up in twenty seconds! Just run!”

But they didn’t. Everyone just watched. Shaking spotlights converged on the corrugated iron roof of Warehouse 3, which had started to shudder. The guards were as frightened as the escapees, and that frightened Casper even more than both of them put together. Slowly, the roof parted in the middle and the two sides folded outwards like an enormous toy box. Another screech came from inside, so tremendous that Casper turned away.