“Now can we tell them about your fantastic water system?” Jimox asked his beloved partner, tail wrapped all the way around her.
“No! They have to hear about the wonderful animal-proof fence you made, and how we got the dogs out of Similand!”
Jimox squirmed with embarrassment, but saw the sparkles of pride in Teina’s old eyes, so he reluctantly took a deep breath.
“We settled into a routine that lasted for almost two years — three days a week on each project, the extra day for scrounging and exploring. As we got closer and closer to getting the fence done, we were both dreading the final step — killing all the dogs in Similand — because neither one of us actually liked killing anything. There were about a dozen who lived here all the time, and another half-dozen who just visited. We were starting to give them names . . .”
About a week after deciding to make the fence around Similand completely dog-proof, Jimox and Teina set out in the cool air of early morning with a pad of paper, a hundred-foot tape measure, sun hats on their heads, and pistols in their holsters.
“Main exit,” Jimox dictated, “sixteen feet wide, needs wire along the bottom. Small dogs can squeeze under.”
Teina wrote with her simple printing, glancing up often to help keep watch. “Got it. But it’s high enough, right?”
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“Yeah. I’ve never seen a dog who could jump over an eight-foot fence, but this stretch of four-foot behind the ticket booths has to be improved.”
They worked in silence with the tape measure, both looking around often.
“Seventy-five feet,” Jimox announced.
“Got
it.”
“Then comes this section, all the way to the west service entrance, where they can dig under, and have in several places.”
The pair walked in silence as Jimox paced off the distance.
“A hundred and five paces, needs railroad ties, concrete blocks, whatever.”
“And has five crawl-holes already. Got it.”
They both stood gazing at the service entrance to Machineland. Even horses could easily get through.
“This is the worst part. I’m gonna look for a couple of wide gates we can put in, attach them to the lamp posts on each side. Forty-six feet across, guard house covers the middle four feet.”
“Got it. Two big mutts coming down the street!”
“Guard
house!”
The pair of monkey mammals watched as the dogs sniffed around, sensing something to eat, but unable to find it.
Months later, the pair clung to the top of a ladder as three dogs fought over the right to smell, chew, and mark the fencing tools and supplies on the ground.
“No, not my wire cutters!” Jimox lamented. “I hate dog piss on my wire cutters.”
Teina laughed so hard she almost fell off the ladder. “That’s old Blackie!
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He marks everything! ”
Jimox held onto her as she wobbled. “Be careful, or he’ll be marking you! ”
“Sorry, but you have to admit, it was funny!” she responded, still chuckling. Then she looked down again. “Oh, no, don’t you dare steal my tape measure, Slinky!”
It was Jimox’ turn to laugh, but he kept a strong arm on the fence on one side, and around Teina on the other.
All the dogs ran off behind Slinky.
“Shall we take a break?” Jimox proposed. “Wash the wire cutters and get another tape measure? We’ve got plenty.”
Teina pouted. “I suppose.”
A moment later she forced out a smile.
Finally the day arrived when the pair of brown monkey mammals pushed a cart loaded with railroad ties along the sidewalk, just outside the theme park, to fill the last three places where dogs could dig under the fence.
“This is kinda scary,” Teina admitted as she kept watch while Jimox, with leather gloves, worked each railroad tie into place. He couldn’t carry the heavy tar-soaked timbers, but could lift one end and pivot them a little, sometimes gaining just a few inches at a time. Finally, three railroad ties filled the gap between the sidewalk and the fence.
“If this works,” the nineteen-year-old boy began as they pushed the cart to the next hole, “it’ll be the first time since . . . we were kids . . . that we could go outside without deadly dangers all around us.”
“Yeah,” the fifteen-year-old girl agreed, “it’ll be the first time we could just
. . . play!”
They both laughed out loud at the thought as they came to the next canine crawl-hole.
Teina checked the cylinder of her pistol as Jimox worked. “But I think we should still carry guns.”
Jimox dropped a railroad tie into place. “Yeah. There’s too much fence for us to patrol it constantly. Things will get in sometimes.”
The cart now much lighter, they moved to the last weak place in the fence surrounding their precious Similand.
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As Jimox worked the final timber into place, then jumped up and down on it to make sure it was solid, Teina frowned. “The next thing we have to do is gonna be hard.”
Jimox was silent as he tossed his gloves into the tool box on the cart.
“What in our lives has ever been easy, since . . .”
“Burning Day,” she finished the thought.
The front entrance was closest, so they pushed the cart in that direction.
The entrance turnstiles were now completely covered by wire fencing, well-attached to poles and pinned to the ground with heavy concrete blocks.
Teina maneuvered the cart toward the amusement park’s main exit, a wide gate that was easy to swing open. The latch had been placed high enough to be unreachable by children . . . and dogs.
But before she could even reach for the latch, a shimmering golden glow suddenly got in her face and began scolding with a faint but determined voice.
“Giona! What is it?”
Jimox had been checking the turnstile fencing and keeping watch. “This must be important. We haven’t seen her in months! ”
Try as they might, neither monkey mammals could understand what the little spirit was trying to tell them. A few words like “dogs” and “danger” came through, almost more as a feeling in their bones than audible words. But they couldn’t deny that the ghost clearly did not want them to go through that gate.
Jimox looked around. “Ladder up to the Kid’s Motorway? We can see what’s going on from there.”
Teina nodded, but took a moment to put their tool box onto an old drinking fountain where it would be safe.
Jimox
smiled.
Once they climbed onto the elevated miniature motorway, both pulled out their pistols. They knew dogs rarely got onto it, but could at each station, if determined enough.
A short walk back toward the main entrance allowed the pair to see Olde Towne, and they immediately understood what Giona was trying to tell them.
The usual dozen or so resident dogs, the visitors Jimox and Teina recognized, and several more they didn’t, were all going crazy. They madly
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tore at whatever they could get their teeth around — posts, flower pots, signs, and each other.
Teina and Jimox watched with wide eyes from the relative safety of the motorway as the frenzy continued, sometimes surging to the front gate, and sometimes vanishing into one of the streets of Olde Towne. But after a few minutes, the dogs returned, all together, and each time they seemed wilder and more frustrated.
“I think . . .” Jimox began, “they’re gone just long enough each time to check one of the crawl-holes we closed up yesterday or today.”
Teina nodded. “They’re more dangerous than ever like this, acting like one big pack.”
Jimox was silent for a minute as he watched the chaos below. “I . . . don’t want to kill them.”
Teina looked at him. “It’s them or us . . . or we can give up Similand and go live in the big old train station.”
Jimox frowned. “I didn’t mean that. I mean I want to let them out. And I think I know a way.”
Jimox shared his plan as they climbed back down the ladder.
Teina grinned and nodded.
A fast walk completely around the outside of Similand took nearly half an hour, but it was necessary for the plan to work. They opened the Machineland service gate on the west side, the Castleland employee’s entrance on the north, the Forestland emergency exit on the east, and finally the main exit that Giona had forbidden them to use. This time, she seemed to understand their intentions, and didn’t mind.
After climbing back up the ladder to the Kid’s Motorway, they crept to their dwelling in the Olde Towne station and filled their pockets with boxes of bullets.
The only dangerous part of the plan was the dash across open ground from the nearest motorway station to the World Tree, about a hundred meters during which the wild dogs could get them. They waited until the pack surged toward Machineland, then ran.
The frenzied dogs were soon back, just as Jimox and Teina ascended the
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first ladder into the lower branches of the huge artificial tree. Part of the pack dashed into Forestland, a few went toward Olde Towne.
Jimox looked around. An old sign dangling by one corner caught his eye, so he yanked until it came loose. Teina opened boxes of ammunition.
He held the sign like a shield, with his pistol in front, and looked back at Teina.
She
nodded.
Jimox fired all six bullets into the air, avoiding the direction of any glass windows.
Even though the sign had directed most of the sound away from them, still their ears rang, so they didn’t attempt any further communication. He handed the sign to her, and she unloaded her pistol in a different direction while he reloaded.
They went back and forth, directing a blast of deafening noise toward each of the lands of the theme park, three times for each land.
Teina saved just enough bullets for one final reload, then raised her hand.
They listened, and couldn’t hear a thing.
Jimox said something, and Teina frowned.
She spoke, and he was clueless.
They both laughed, but as far as they could tell, both of them were laughing silently.
“Luckily, our deafness only lasted about an hour,” Teina reassured her worried listeners, then paused to cough deeply.
“But in that hour,” Jimox took over, “we had to close all four gates, without being able to hear each other, or any approaching dangers.”
“But it worked, and I was very proud of Jimox!” she said, her tail wrapped around him. “Only two dogs remained in Similand that we had to get rid of the old-fashioned way.”
