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Sally and Billy in Babyland

Chapter Twelve

She crept through the house but she couldn’t find him. Then she went back to their room and noticed that Billy’s shoes and backpack were gone. So Sally dressed and went to where she was certain he must have gone.

Sally hurried through the deserted streets. Suspicious of the gas lighting and unsure of her direction, she returned to the abandoned factory-school because that was how she had learned the location of the Kit-Kat Klub. Billy would try to break Kitty out.

“You should have paid attention,” she said, trying to comfort herself with criticism like her mother would offer in such a situation. But her mother’s critical words, although familiar, were no more comforting now than they were when Sally had forgotten to bring along her ballet slippers for her most recent dance competition.

Sally found the school, recognizing the smell of spilled gasoline and dead skunk in the darkness even before she saw the abandoned factory. From there she went to the barbed wire fence and walked along it, searching in the darkness for any signs of Billy.

A siren wailed in the distance and Sally saw an orange glow toward Big Baby Tower. Fire! And there was a figure approaching. Billy! She recognized his gait. Without looking her way, he crossed the street, ran along the fence, and squatted down with some kind of tool.

Sally glanced around at the dark and silent houses, but no one was there. Either the sirens had not awakened them or else they didn’t care. Sally slipped over to where Billy crouched down. He raised the tool, ready to strike.

“It’s me,” Sally said. “Relax.”

“Oh, sorry,” Billy said.

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to cut through this fence.” He squeezed wire cutters with both hands, but he couldn’t make it work.

“Where did you get this stuff?”

“The pole barn by the park. I figured that’s where they keep the catapult so that’s where they’d keep a bunch of tools. I snagged a gas can from the so-called school for the fire, and then grabbed all this stuff from the pole barn to bust Kitty out.”

“You set that fire?” Sally squeaked.

Billy shrugged. “It truly doesn’t matter.”

“Where did you get the idea to do all that?”

“From that television show mom and dad have been watching about the drug dealers and the cops. Between television and the internet, a kid can learn a lot of stuff.”

Sally looked through the tool bag and found what seemed to be a much larger version of the wire cutters Billy held onto. “Let’s try this.”

Working together, they could snip through the chain link. They each grabbed a handle and carried the tool bag to huts inside the compound.

“Kitty?” Sally called.

There was a noise in the nearest hut, but in the darkness they couldn’t see inside through the slotted window.

Billy went to work on the lock. “We have to let them all out, anyway.”

Sally realized he was right. They couldn’t leave any of the cats behind.

They struggled at first, but together they cut through the lock on the door using the long-handled snippers. When they opened the door, a cat peered back at them from inside.

But it wasn’t Kitty.

“It’s okay,” Sally said. “We’re rescuing you.”

The cat blinked. “You’re joking, right?”

“Nope,” Billy said. “We’re busting you out.”

They went to the next hut and set to work on cutting the lock off. This one went a little quicker and, again, the cat inside blinked at them.

By the time they had four more huts open, the cats emerged from their huts.

One of those cats rubbed against Sally’s leg. “Did you bring any food?”

“No, sorry. You’re hungry?”

The cat nodded. “Big Baby likes his cats to be skinny, so they starve us.”

“That’s terrible,” Sally said. But it also reminded her of things her mother had said to Sally about eating ‘too much.’”

“It’s no worse than any of the other stuff that happens in this town.”

“They’ve all lost their minds,” another cat said.

The next hut they opened revealed a cat that had already died.

“Oh no,” Sally said. “I’m so sorry.”

“At least she will be mourned,” said the first cat. “So many have passed on without so much as a by your leave.”

They came to the last hut. Lock-busting pros by now, it took only a moment to release the latch. Sally swung open the door and peered inside at the small, thin occupant.

It was Kitty.

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