Chapter Eleven

Fern was recovering nicely from her bout with boogie fever, but she was still too weak to move by herself. I called a meeting near midday to discuss our plan for the second attack and already Bruno, Vance, Brophy, Spaz, and Father Biff had arrived. Mervin and Yakboy were the last in and we began the strategy session.

"The mice we are glomming have sworn to me, under threat of a Manilow serenade, that the evil horde will not parade till brightness tomorrow." Yakboy said proudly.

"That's great! We still have an army of mice in a cheese frenzy waiting to mash our livers into pate and all you can do to get them to talk is to threaten them with songs!?! Get them to tell us when they plan to attack. Come on Yakboy, get on the ball." Father Biff advised.

"Er...a...father? He DID get them to tell us when they are going to attack." Mervin said somewhat subdued.

"He did? Oh...excuse me...I wasn't really listening anyway. Can I go now? I've got some things to rinse out and the twinkees have to be ready for the lunch crowd." he said.

Pausing for a moment while the monk leader left, I asked for a report on what was happening on the estate. Brophy jumped up to answer, "We have several milk tanks burning out of control and if the wind shifts back to our direction we are going to have some hefty problems with lactose blindness. Other than that everything is fine. I asked Father Biff to get some monks on the fire right away."

Bruno explained his position. "I am confident that my cows will be ready for an attack at the previously mentioned time, sir." he said and then saluted.

I almost asked if someone had inducted us into the army while I was sleeping, but thought better of it. I didn't want to steal any of Bruno's thunder anymore than I wanted to steal Brophy's lightning.

"The twinkee supply will hold out for another week." Mervin said with a hint of fear in his voice. "Can't Vance just teleport all of us out of here?"

"No, he can't teleport this many people in one day and even if he could, we gave our word to the Barnwaft's to fight until help got here." I said.

Mervin looked at me with widened eyes, "So we break it. I'd much rather be a lying monk than a dead monk."

"You are a lying monk." Brophy said.

"See? That's the spirit. The Barnwaft's probably knew that we were lying and counted on us to leave. We could be messing up their entire plan by staying here!" Mervin said.

"That's enough! We are staying. Everybody go and relax a bit, have a twinkee. Who knows, maybe the reinforcements will be here before tomorrow and we can all leave before the attack anyway." I said not really believing it.

Everyone went off in their own separate directions and all was quiet until an excited monk flew through the room. "Twinkees!! Everywhere! Crates and crates!!!" he said breathlessly.

"Where did they come from?" I asked.

"I don't know. We must be blessed by Merf to reap such a harvest." the monk said. He fell to his knees then and repeatedly thanked the god of the twinkees for his generosity.

I was never one to believe in such good fortune. I guess my jadedness came from the time I found out that Santa Claus didn't have a kid brother named Dirk as my parents always insisted. Yes, bitter disappointment was my constant companion from a very early age. I ran for the room the thankful monk had come from and was shocked at the sight the room held for me.

Sure enough, the room was packed with crates of twinkees, but much more disturbing were the mob of monks that surrounded the goodies. They swarmed over the boxes and soon the floor was a mash of slick and sticky cream that matched the faces of the twinkee-crazed monks. I thought it was a bit odd, but not really anything to be concerned about. After all, once you've seen a cow talk or a groundhog breathe lightning it isn't so strange to start seeing twinkees by the crate appear in your living room.

The peace and contentment of the moment wasn't broken until almost half the twinkees were gone. After that, monks who had eaten the sponge cakes began to have intense bladder pressure and really rank gas. The sounds of monks blowing wind filled the halls of the Barnwaft's estate and the line to the bathroom got longer by the minute.

Soon, a few of the first to come down with symptoms dropped their robes and let loose with their bodily fluids. Monk puddles were all over and the stench at ground zero was more than enough to take down a wild boar. Call me a genius, but my midget sense for danger told me that the twinkees might have had something to do with the sudden gas and liquid explosions the monks were experiencing.

Yakboy and Brophy ran into the room to investigate and I watched helplessly as Yakboy promptly fainted. I assumed that our fine half-yak was not all that used to the odor of monks battling a monster of a colon disease. Brophy had no such problems, in fact, he rather enjoyed the monk-whiff. After I told him what had happened, the groundhog reached over to inspect one of the untouched twinkees. As he grabbed it, a small fuzzy animal popped out, said "Look, Free Beans!!!", and then tried to force it's way into Brophy's mouth.

Brophy opened his mouth and fried the little beaner before it knew what was happening. The groundhog turned to talk to me, "Is there a lightbulb over my head?"

"Nope, should there be?" I asked as I dodged a stream of monk juice.

"Sure, I know what the problem is...Trojan Twinkees!!!" he said proudly.

"Trojan twinkees? What's that?" I asked.

"That's these!" he said waving the twinkee in his hand.

"No, I mean what's causing them to act like this?" I asked.

"Oh, probably Carpagian Hyper Giblets. They shoot down the victim's throat when eaten and give the eater incredible pee velocity and colon blow." Brophy explained.

Nodding, I went about my business before I realized what he had said. "Hyper Giblets!?! I thought that they were just a myth."

"Well it looks like they're real. Either that or the monks have all lost control of their body functions on purpose." Brophy suggested. As if to demonstrate the panic of the moment, a monk ran by being propelled by his own internal water pressure. This sight caused me to think that maybe Hyper Giblets were real. Monks never liked being pushed around by anything -especially their own urine.

"What do we do to get rid of them?" I asked the groundhog that had become my expert on giblet removal. Poor Yakboy was still face down on the floor, but the pool of urine he rested in was starting to revive him.

"Hmmm..." Brophy moaned as if deeply pondering a response, "I'd say that we have to get the giblets out of the monks. That's what I think."

"And how do we do that?" I asked.

"We could make them all barf," this option was at best unappealing, "we could operate on each of them and rip the little suckers out," not bad, but it lacked something I wanted in an answer -my nonparticiption, "or we could let nature take it's course." We have a winner!

Yakboy stirred dragging his face out of the waterish liquid around his head. I looked to him to relay some orders, "Once we are out, I want you to close up this room and lock it. It's going to be real messy in here real soon and we don't want this to depress any of the cows." There was a certain thrill involved when ordering around a half-boy.

"Hardy agreement present, mien herr." Yakboy replied and went about his appointed task. The room was locked down tight before any of the monks could voice their disapproval. As a finishing touch, Yakboy put a sign on the door, "Monks with bowel problems -Caution!" If that wouldn't keep curiosity seekers out, I couldn't think of a thing that would.

Brophy and Yakboy followed me to the main dining room where the rest of our command group had gathered. Vance was standing while Mervin, Bruno, Spaz, and Father Biff sat around the table discussing the odds of having twinkees spontaneously appear in any one room of the mansion. Bruno perked up near the end of their talk and said, "Gotta be at least four to one."

Father Biff ignored Bruno's oddmaking attempt and stood, "All my monks except for myself and three others are sick from the Trojan Twinkees." he announced. "We were almost done with putting out one of the milk stables when word of the twinkee appearance got to us. Most of the monks ran off to get their share of the newfound twinkees."

Mervin interrupted, "You know what they say, you can catch more monks with a case of twinkees than with a dumpster full of lima beans."

Biff continued as if no one was spouting Merfish proverbs, "We tried to control the fire, but it was too much for just four monks to handle."

"So the milk stables are still on fire?" I asked.

"Maybe you need a monk to English dictionary -I just said that the milk stables were still on fire." Father Biff said.

I looked up to the ceiling in disbelief. Why did Merf choose to plague me with smart mouths and ignorant idiots at every turn? Vance brought me out of my reverie with his telepathic "Moo!". Something had to be done about the fires before the wind shifted and Vance knew it. Vance was the lone survivor of a buttermilk blaze that wiped out his entire family when he was just a calf. The fire itself didn't do the damage, it was the lactose madness following it that took the greatest toll.

"With almost all of the monks down with these giblet parasites we are severely undermanned and undercowed. The fires will have to be put out by our remaining cows in shifts until the first signs of an attack." I said.

Brophy stared, somewhat depressed, out the window that faced the gate of the estate. The huge television used to repel the gouda zombies still sat atop the entrance. I looked out trying to make out what had caught his attention. There, several hundred feet outside the gate, was a small group of deer. They were huddled alongside the driveway giving the appearance that they wanted to stay hidden.

"Do you see the deer out there?" I asked Brophy.

My question sparked interest from the others who gathered at the window to catch a glance. "Yeah, they walk a little way toward the gate and then dive for cover every few minutes." Brophy responded. "Just the way my old mailman would deliver fresh maggots to my burrow back home."

The deer rose to get closer to the gate and wobbled a bit as they approached. Mervin immediately recognized this as bad news. "Aren't they walking the way the deer back in Berfina did? You know, like the ones that were possessed by Liver Leeches?" Mervin asked.

"Those fibbing squeakers! The face-slapper is set for now!" Yakboy yelled.

Bruno ran for the barracks to alert the cows and get them into action while Vance teleported the rest of us down to the main entryway where we could get a better view of these new events. Sure enough, the deer were possessed by Liver Leeches. Cows at the gate readied their wax stations as the deer approached. It was a small band easily subdued by the wax-wielding cows, but then the deer were probably just sent to test how we would react to them.

I sent Yakboy, Father Biff, and Spaz to the back of the grounds to make sure that nothing similar was happening over there. As they left, the sounds of low flying planes burst through the growing sense of doom and parachutes popped open in the sky. That's when I first heard their frightful battle cry, "Whack the Cowpokes!" The very sound of their voices raised human bumps all over the geese in the estate pond.

This sudden turn of events made me think that being set for life wouldn't be so great if 'life' meant the few minutes before a platoon of desert mice tapped over my bod. The mice were not alone though. Through the dull morning light I saw the glowing noses of mercenary Jungle Sperfs dressed in their traditional war togas, this was not good news. I ordered Bruno to call a retreat to the house and soon we were inside with the few cows that had heard the order.

Bruno and his crack squad of cow commandos had us barricaded in faster than you can say, "Jump that penquin and you're one dead vegetarian" three times. After a tense couple of minutes, Yakboy and the rest came running from the back part of the house.

"There's mice, sperfs, and leeched-deer all over the backyard." Father Biff panted.

"Yeah, it's raining mice in the front too." Brophy said.

"So now what do we do?" Mervin asked. All eyes looked toward me. Somehow being the leader lost some of its charm seeing that people only wanted to be led when being faced with twinkee-deprivation or mass extermination.

"Well...we...a...ba...hrmm...dooo...." I stalled them with brilliant words of wisdom like past leaders while desperately trying to figure something out.

Yakboy saved my credibility when he stepped forward with a plan. "Well, the milk is still on nova-flame, affirmative?" he asked getting nods in response. "So, we gibble the holy-whizzers over to the stow-cans, make them whoosh on the moo-inferno and wallah! No more moo-juice blazin'?" he said with a flourish.

"Yeah, that's great there Yakboy, but what about the mice, sperfs, and deer?" Brophy asked.

"The squeakers we serenade to lala land with Yakboy's own beautiful harmphonics; we make the sperfs think that they're cheese," Yakboy said pointing to the digital clocks still sitting on the mantel. "And we candle-coat the deer." he said quite pleased with himself. So pleased in fact, he started doing victory laps around the room again. This time only Brophy joined him in his run, Mervin didn't seem to have enough confidence in the plan to do laps.

Confident or not, the plan had to be used, mainly because it was the only one we had. "All right. We'll have to go with it. Father Biff, see if you can steer the monks over to the storage tanks to put out the fires. Bruno, have your cows make sure that no one gets in through any of the barricades." I ordered. That took care of the fires and any breach of the mansion.

Mervin came up with a refinement to the plan, "Why don't we hook up the video camera in here and show the digital clocks on the big screen outside. It would be a lot faster and safer for all of us."

I was genuinely impressed by the monk, sometimes he was almost respectable. He just had to ruin my mood of admiration with a few victory laps of his own now that he judged the plan to be perfect. Mervin, Brophy, and Spaz went about setting up the video after the laps were finished while Yakboy rehearsed for his singing debut. Vance looked at me and told me telepathically, "We could still blow off this gig and find a good lasagna street vendor."

I shook my head no. Everything seemed to be under control for now -we could always leave if I got a bad craving for Italian. With a spark and a scream from Brophy, the video camera and sound system were set for our plan. The injured groundhog sat a bit dazed from the sudden electrical current that had run through his body. It was the first time he had ever been electrocuted and he didn't find the sensation pleasant.

The sound of desert mice and jungle sperf pounding on the door grew louder as the heavy oak of the entryway groaned under the pressure. The equipment for the digital clocks was up and the transmissions started with the appearance of a digital Mickey on the wide screen outside. For the first five minutes nothing seemed to change, but after that, the sounds of jungle sperf ramming the door subsided and were replaced by numbed chants of: "I am Gorgonzola!" and "I am Fromage!"

Without the sperfs to help break down the doors, the mice had to wait for the uncoordinated deer to make their way up the driveway. They were a lot slower than their sperf counterparts, mainly because they were doing this under the control of liver leeches against their wills. The deer made their way to the door with halted steps and soon had replaced their hypnotized sperf allies. The beating on the door again intensified.

I looked around to see if I could find Spaz, "Spaz, could you turn all of us invisible?"

The ferret glanced up from her work with the sound system, "Enthusiastic abnegation. My potency dissipates exponentially with the lunar wane."

"She can't while the moon is getting smaller." Brophy interpreted. I nodded wishing our ferret's range for invisibility was greater.

Yakboy grabbed the microphone from where it rested and began testing his voice with one of his favorite ditties:

"Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip. That started at this tropic port aboard this tiny ship...." The acoustics of the area proved to be ideal for his intentions.

Everyone grew silent as he tore into a lullaby that very nearly put everyone on the grounds to sleep. I even had to nudge Vance a few times to make sure he wasn't dozing. The words were hauntingly beautiful: "O' Canada. Our home and native land. True patriot love, by all thy sons command. With glowing hearts we see thee rise, the true north strong and free. From far and wide, O'Canada, we stand on guard for thee...."

Being so close to the speakers, the mice couldn't help but fall asleep. The plan was working like clockwork. All that remained were the deer and they were too slow to stop the Pee-Jet Monks, as they came to be known, from extinguishing every last milk fire in the area. They even put out the cooking fires in the kitchen and a couple of cigarette lighters the cows were using to light their cigars with. (Ok, so the plan wasn't perfect)

Yakboy did more victory laps with Spaz, Mervin, and Brophy participating. Everything was great until the air crackled and a flash of light erupted in the middle of the room. When the brightness faded, Ruby and Nubby Barnwaft stood with ten gophers at their side. The gophers screeched a battle cry, "It's Pudding Time!" It would have been too late for them to do battle with anyone if they hadn't yelled like that. The ear-piercing noise woke up the sleeping mice and returned them to their attack refreshed from their short nap.

The cows guarding the door didn't expect anymore attacks so they had left the door unattended. The mice easily fought their way in and with their hand-held hypnotizers, eliminated the cow force still arrayed against them. The phrase "We are Sapsago!" filled the halls and soon all that remained was our small group in the main meeting room of the house. I tried to slam the door shut, but one of the mice caught me with a hypno-blast. The maxim "I am Munster!" rolled through my head. At hypnotizer point, the rest of us were held captive until the leader stalked ominously in: the Boogie-Mouse.

The light glinted off his polished contact lenses as I helplessly watched the Boogie-Mouse choreograph the gophers into unconsciousness. Ruby tried to counter with a salsa number, but it wasn't good enough and he was sent flying across the room. The others were given a choice, either surrender and become slaves for the mouse cause or die and become slaves for the mouse cause. Bruno was the first to reject the offer and sent a bolt of cow liquid straight at a group of the closest mice. They were nothing more than a large puddle on the floor before the cow started to think he was cheese.

I couldn't take watching my best friends being tortured like this anymore. Deep inside my kidneys I found a hidden reserve of strength that fought desperately against the hypnotics. Finally, I screamed, "I am not a munster, I am a human midget!!!" The sudden surge of willpower had managed to break the spell that held me at bay. The Boogie-Mouse wore a look of surprise and then recognition on his face as he waved off the other mice who were about to rehypnotize me. He wanted to settle our fight once and for all, for the last time.

He opened up our rematch with a boring polka just to toy with me. It was too easy to respond with my standard fox trot, but it worked. I should have know that he was just setting me up for a stunning mazurka, the best I had ever witnessed in all my years of dance contests. The move made me stumble backward and left me winded for a moment. There was something different about him this time, either he had gotten better or he liked performing in front of larger crowds.

I went over the moves that had worked in the past on him, but nothing seemed to phase him. He must have had studied hard since our last meeting because he was able to answer everyone of my steps and have something extra to put me on the defensive. I stumbled around the room of hostile mice doing vague renditions of dances I had barely heard of much less learned much about. Fighting off the hypnosis must have taken a lot out of me.

The Boogie-Mouse sought to finish our dancing duel with a sparkling rumba, the likes of which would go down in history as a textbook version of the dance. This step sent me tumbling to the ground while the mice rooted for their leader, "Do that boogie one more time!" The Boogie-Mouse appeared to feed off of the cheers and did a brief victory tap. The sight made my stomach churn.

I had to beat this sixteen-ounce dancing fool to avoid being a slave to him for the rest of my natural life. The only way I could think of was to do the dance that put me in the hospital for ten dingbars once when I was younger and more able. What would it do to me now?

Hesitantly at first, then with the enthusiasm and gusto it required, I whipped up the pinnacle of my dancing abilities: the dreaded Albanian Smush-Kick! It embodied all the pure and energetic emotions found in any faintly good soul. It was also physically demanding and afterwards I wouldn't be able to so much as belch without help, but it was all I had left.

When Vance recognized what I was doing he jumped to his taps and bellowed, "Moooooo!" It translated to: "Oh no, not the Albanian Smush-Kick!!!" The Boogie-Mouse whirled around in time to see my grand finale, after which I collapsed from the exhaustion. He stared for a long time at the ground where I came to rest.

At last he threw up his hands in defeat, he knew when he was out-danced. As the mice quietly filed out of the room, the Boogie-Mouse turned around and gave me a swift salute. I wouldn't have seen it at all if my good eye wasn't facing him so I counted myself lucky. Unfortunately, my eye was the only thing that was working at all. As I lost consciousness I could faintly hear the voice of Brophy say, "I wonder if I can have his pants now?"