Bunnicula Strikes Again! (10 page)

“Chester!” I cried. “But how—”

“How did I get here?” Chester said, stepping out into a pale pool of light. His eyes looked unnatural, possessed. “Oh, it was easy enough, thanks to last night's handiwork of a couple of criminal kitties. When Greenbriar opened my cage this morning, I made a dash for it before he spotted the open window. I got here moments before you did, Harold. Oh, and by the way, whatever you
had planned, forget it. Bunnicula is mine!”

“But what are you going to do?”

Chester bounded up to the opening in the wall with a single leap. Bunnicula barely budged. I could tell the poor thing was terrified.

“What am I going to do? I'll tell you what I'm going to do,” Chester said.

But that was all he had time to say, for suddenly there was a thunderous roar, and before we knew what was happening, the wall to our right exploded.

“Run!” I heard Chester cry.

I looked up at the opening in the wall and to my horror watched as Chester and Bunnicula, locked in a deadly embrace, tumbled from the precipice. The scene from the story Toby had read to me flooded my mind, its words, its images exploding within me even as the room seemed to be exploding around me. I thought of Chester, my dear friend, who had so recently called me traitor, and the words of the story came back to me: “It was the last that I was ever destined to see of him in this world.”

Before the terrible wrecking ball could strike again, I ordered Howie to run for his life. I ran, too. And I didn't look back.

“H
AROLD!
“Toby cried out.

“Howie!” Frantically, I raced toward my young master even as I searched the onrushing crowd for signs of Chester and Bunnicula, hoping against hope that they had miraculously escaped and were somehow already out there in front of the theater. But as Toby threw his arms around me, I knew that the only ones to have escaped were Howie and me.

“Are you okay, boy?” Toby asked. “What are you doing here?”

Mrs. Monroe had picked Howie up and was trying to comfort him, but Howie was squirming to be free.

“We've got to go back, Uncle Harold!” he yipped. “We've got to rescue Pop and Bunnicula!”

Mrs. Monroe seemed to understand. Perhaps people were more intelligent than Chester and I had been willing to give them credit for.

“Stop the demolition!” she cried out. “There may be other animals inside!”

“Stop the demolition!” someone echoed.

The trucks and the noise came to a sudden halt.

Breaking free of Toby's embrace, I charged down the alleyway to the back of the theater. Howie, who must have leaped from Mrs. Monroe's arms at the same time, was fast on my heels. Barking for everything we were worth, we led an impromptu rescue team, complete with flashlights and TV news cameras, into the partially decimated movie house.

“Be careful!” someone warned.

“Just follow the dogs,” another voice called out. “They seem to know what they're doing.”

A fine thing, I thought. Does that mean most of the time we
don't
seem to know what we're doing? I didn't dwell on the thought, however. I had more important matters to attend to. Matters of life and death.

There must have been a second blow of the
wrecking ball as Howie and I had been fleeing the building, because the wall that had held the small square hole where we'd first spotted Bunnicula and from which he and Chester had tumbled was gone. In its place was a large pile of rubble.

I stared at the pile with a sick, sinking feeling in my stomach.

“Chester!” I woofed.

At first there was no response. But then I heard it. The same sort of pitiful mew I'd heard coming from the closet only—was it possible?—the day before. This time it was not a sickly mew, but a frightened one.

“There!” I heard Mr. Monroe call out. “Let me have that flashlight!”

A beam of light bounced off the walls and floor and fallen pieces of plaster and concrete and wood, and then suddenly it caught something. Something alive! It was Chester, wide-eyed and panting!

Howie and I bounded across the room. “Chester!” I cried. “You're all right!”

He didn't respond, but just kept staring at all of us. “What about. .. What about Bunnicula?” Howie asked.

Chester did the strangest thing then. He howled. Or so it seemed. He lifted his head high and let out the most piercing cry. Was he hurt?

“Chester, it's all right, boy!” Mr. Monroe said, brushing against me as he extended a hand to Chester. “Come here, boy,” snapping his fingers. “Come on, it's all right, Chester. Everything will be fine.”

But Chester didn't go to Mr. Monroe. On the contrary, the closer Mr. Monroe got, the more Chester hissed and spat.

“Maybe he's been injured,” another man said. “He might be in shock,” said Mrs. Monroe. “That's possible, isn't it?”

I felt Toby's hand stroke my head. “Is he going to be all right?” he asked his parents. “Is Chester going to be all right?”

A big man who looked like he might have been a member of the wrecking crew worked his way through the small crowd that had followed us inside. “I'll take care of this,” he said brusquely.

He walked up to Chester and started to grab him. “Come on, kitty,” he said, “you're coming with me now.”

He didn't know who he was messing with. Chester swiped him with his claws.

“Yeeouch!”
the man said. “Hey, what gives?”

Chester turned to me. “Help me, Harold,” he said. “You're my friend, aren't you?”

“I never stopped being your friend,” I said.

“Then help me save Bunnicula.”

“Save
Bunnicula?” I repeated.

“You heard me,” Chester said.

And then I understood. Bunnicula was somewhere in the pile of rubble Chester was sitting on. And Chester wasn't moving until Bunnicula had been found.

“Come on, Howie,” I said, “we have one more job to do. A dog's job.”

We moved toward the pile of rubble and sniffed. It didn't take long to catch Bunnicula's scent. Once we had it, we began to bark.

“The dogs are trying to tell us something,” a woman said. “There's something else in there.” Turning to the Monroes, she asked, “Do you have any other pets?”

“A rabbit,” said Mr. Monroe, “but why would he be here?”

“There's something strange going on, Robert,” Mrs. Monroe said to her husband, and then she said to the others, “Our vet called us this morning to tell us Bunnicula—that's our rabbit—wasn't in his cage when he arrived this morning. And soon after that Chester escaped.”

“Well,” said the big man Chester had lashed out at a few minutes earlier, “it looks to me like there may just be a rabbit in that rubble.”

All at once, everyone began to dig.

“I see eyes!” someone called out. “Red eyes!”

“Bunnicula!” Pete shouted when the bunny came into view at last. “This is so crazy! What are the animals doing here?”

I don't know if the Monroes ever got that question answered to their satisfaction. I don't know if they really cared. All that mattered was that we were all safe and sound—even Bunnicula, who had miraculously survived because of a large beam that had fallen in such a way as to create a little cave in the debris where he had hidden. He didn't appear to have even a scratch. But you could see that his little heart was beating rapidly—and those red eyes had never looked more terrified.

The only thing predictable about Chester is his unpredictability, and in the next moment he did the most unpredictable thing I'd ever seen. He jumped down—and began to lick Bunnicula!

“What are you doing?” I cried.

“For heaven's sake, Harold,” he said. “Use your brain, such as it is. I'm letting him know it's all right. Can't you see how scared he is?”

There was a flash of light as a camera recorded the moment. And
that
was the image that made the evening news and the next day's front page in the
Courier:

CAT SAVES RABBIT—THE LAST SHOW

AT THE CENTERVILLE CINEMA

For the record, Howie and I were given some credit, too, but it was the picture of Chester wrapped around the terrified Bunnicula, licking him, that got the most attention. I had to chuckle to think that Chester had earned his brief moment of fame because of his kindness to a rabbit. And not just any rabbit—his archenemy, the vampire rabbit Bunnicula!

* * *

It was some time before things returned to what passes for normal at the Monroe house. Our odd behavior, strange disappearances, and reappearances in unexpected places took some sorting out, and to this day I don't think the Monroes have all the answers. Truth be told, I'm not sure we do, either. I think we were right about Bunnicula's missing his mother, although of course he never said a thing. That was why he had run to the theater when he saw the ad in the newspaper. But was she really “out there” somewhere as Chester suggested? I doubt it. I suspect once she had left her baby bunny at that theater years earlier, she had gone on her way, trusting in the kindness of strangers and hoping for the best.

Now the theater itself no longer exists, and so
for Bunnicula there truly is no going home again. But then, that movie theater was no more his home than Chateau Bow-Wow was Howie's or the animal shelter where the Monroes had found me as a puppy was mine. Chester, who as a kitten was given to Mr. Monroe as a birthday present, has no memory of where he came from. But it doesn't really matter. When you're a pet, your home is with your people and your people are your family.

The reason Bunnicula missed his mother, I think, was that he never felt entirely at home here—not as long as Chester was threatening his very existence. But that's all changed.

“So you're no longer worried that Bunnicula is a vampire, eh, Chester?” I said one evening after dinner. Howie, Chester, and I were sprawled out on the front porch enjoying the warm spring breezes.

“Nonsense, Harold,” Chester replied snappishly. “Of course he's a vampire.”

“Then why are you no longer trying to do him in?”

Chester yawned elaborately, letting me know that the topic of conversation was barely worth the bother. “Really, Harold,” he said, “it's so obvious.
Vampires are indestructible. Don't you see? When Bunnicula wasn't killed in that pile of rubble at the movie theater, I suddenly came to understand that he had powers beyond defeat. How would I ever overcome such powers and save an unsuspecting world?”

“How, indeed?” I asked, bemused.

“No, no, I figured it was best to return Bunnicula to where he rightfully belongs. Who knows him like I do, Harold? Who better to use that knowledge in a different way than I have used it in the past to keep a close eye on him and make sure he does no harm?”

“So you've become his guardian, is that it, Chester? His protector?”

“In a way. Though I think of myself more as protecting him from himself.”

I smiled and said nothing. I think I understood then that Chester had never really meant to destroy Bunnicula. He may have wanted to destroy the evil he thought Bunnicula represented, but Bunnicula himself? He was just a bunny. More than that, he was one of the family.

Now Chester has taken to napping next to Bunnicula's
cage. The two of them sometimes sleep so that their backs touch and, although I would never embarrass him by pointing it out, I've noticed that Chester purrs loudest at those times. And Bunnicula? The sparkle is back in his eyes and the bounce is back in his step.

If there was any doubt that a new relationship had been forged between Chester and his Moriarty, however, it was answered one morning when I crept downstairs to sing Bunnicula to sleep. Imagine my surprise when I heard a familiar voice singing those familiar words in my stead. I stopped and listened. It was surprising enough that Chester knew the lullaby, but my astonishment was even greater when at the song's end, I heard hard-hearted old Chester utter the words: “Sweet dreams, Bunnicula, old pal.”