Undertow

Skipper slapped Private. "Br-Breathe - like me!"

Private continued heaving breaths as deep as the Marianas Trench until Skipper slapped him again. "L-Like me! Pant - like - Elmer when - he was - a puppy!"

"El-El-El-muh muh muh -"

"Do it!" Pouring all the command he could into his voice, he captured the cornflower blue gaze with his adamantine sapphire. "Now!"

Private's pupils dilated to onyx pools that should never reflect suffering of the body or heart if Skipper had anything to say about it. "R-Righto!"

They disciplined oxygen intake for ten minutes until the spots faded from their vision. Skipper played the Maglite up, down, and around. They sprawled on their backs on a gravel beach like others they'd seen throughout Howe Caverns.

"Unship the GPS, Private, and we'll see where we landed."

"Aye." Out came the smartphone, protected from its dunking by Japanese tech. Skipper indicated to Private to start the gizmo's operation. The device powered up to display the time of day and a few mysterious lighted blips, but nothing else started: no smartapple female voice, no arrows, nothing.

Private hit the number five key again and again. "It's busted, Skippa."

Skipper shook the device, aimed a trademark scowl at it, and growled. Nothing. The Angry Words that followed Private pretended not to hear.

"K'walski did say GPS might develop a rash or the gollywobbles at times - "

"It's American knowhow and it let me down."

"Actually, I think it may be off its form because we're in a cave so it's - um. Wotever you say, Skippa."

"Never mind, it's another pile of shit to step over. I'll go commando, er I mean consult Mama Nature." Skipper asked his brain where they were, closed his eyes and received impressions of no deeper than before and farther east. Well. That was a relief beyond pure survival, because Kowalski's intel said three areas comprised Howe: the current happy turistas area with its elevator and spiffy building including gift shop and thimbles, the 'undiscovered area' beyond the damn dam door that turned out to be the abandoned former happy turistas area, and the quarry that really was abandoned. The quarry opened to a hillside through the original original opening from back in 1842.

"Wot a spin on the wheel of fortune, Skippa."

"So help me Pat and Vanna, that was a close call, babe. We've never had closer."

"Worse than when Manfredi and Johnson bought it in the tsunami, yeah. At least then K'walski and Rico maybe could have found our floatin' corpses, that is if they themselves didn't croak - "

"Private."

"Mmm?"

"Moodbuster."

"Oh. Yes. Well then. Light a fire, shall we?" Private probably knew his suggestion was, well, suggestive, but that was all right with his commander.

"A splendid idea." Skipper passed the Maglite to Private as he slipped off the Hello Kitty backpack from his own shoulders. Poking around the bottom, he discovered matches as well as one of Private's surprises for him. "What's this?"

Wrapped in aluminum foil and giving off a heavenly stench, the single perfect sardine could mean only one thing. "You're wooing me, aren't you."

Private tapped the tips of his flippers together. "Is it workin'?"

"It is."

Private beamed. "Then you'll love this next bit." With a 'pardon me' look, he extracted a collapsible mug from the side pocket of the backpack, filled it with water from the stream and tore open a packet of familiar looking brown powder with his beak. Performing like Ricky Jay at his best, Private misdirected, indicated the mug with an expansive flourish as he sprinkled powder into the water and then turned his back. Skipper's smile grew as a fart sound flowered not from Private's behind but from his front. He tidied up the backpack and resealed it.

"Presto change-o! Hot coffee!" Private crowed as he presented the mug to Skipper and then bowed. Skipper placed the sardine in its proper place and took a sip.

"You're a wonder, babe."

"Thank you, kind sir. You're quite amazin' yourself."

The atmosphere became steamy and not just from the steam arising from the mug. Skipper sat on a convenient stalagmite with a cup shaped top as he savored his favorite beverage. "Hmmm, how did you get it so hot? The coffee, not yourself."

Private dug a toe into the gravel after tittering at the question. "K'walski said it's a one-timey thing usin' a broken glowstick and his secret Jiggles formula which makes the heat bigger, like."

Skipper would have spluttered if he hadn't just finished his coffee. "Good redeye gravy, will we be fighting Jigglei down here? And with no backup? Private!" He sat down the mug.

"You're cute when you're mad, honey. No, the one-timey hot flash fizzles to nothin' when it's through, see?" He indicated the mug, where absolutely nothing was going on.

"Tell that to my heart when it stops racing."

"I like your heart that way." Private turned to gathering sticks, snapping long ones to neat lengths, the darling. Skipper threw off gloom and doom while allowing the swell of good feelings to buoy his mood. He supposed he wore a bashful expression that Private couldn't see anyway. Damn, he was looking forward to whatever happened next.

"You relax, Skippa, I'll make the fire."

"All right. Let the good times roll." A drip of fluid hit Skipper square in the eye. He wiped off the wet, feeling the mineral water's tackiness on his flippertip as he sucked it.

Private giggled as he collected firewood. "K'walski said the River Sticks fed into the lake we passed, how clever!" He roamed farther downstream and got close to getting out of earshot before commenting, "I wonder how Phil knew to sign where there were sticks?"

Skipper concentrated on practicalities as he searched the best spot for a cozy fire. "It's drier over here, Private - whoa!" White crystal shards the size of bowling pins dropped from above to pierce the gravel not one foot away from his foot. He could have sworn he heard Trinidadian drums followed by a warning that he felt through his gut, which never let him down. "Private! Evasive!"

Dodging spears of calcite and gouts of mineral water, the two birds kept their footing through ground tremors with a penguin's natural sense of balance. A rectangle bigger than Alice's zoo cart thrust through the water, foaming it to resemble Tide detergent on laundry day.

"Skippa!" The blocky thing looked familiar as it loomed above their heads. They scrambled ten feet away from the disturbance.

"What fresh madness is this?" cried Skipper. The blunt spear was the tunneler mecha, the same one that tore through Hallett Reserve forest loam on Kidsmas Eve, only this time it surged through watery gravel until its tip reached eight feet high, not counting the ten feet long blades. It quivered as steam hissed from its rotating blades even after they stopped turning and glowing. Water drained through the gravel, making patterns that Kowalski would term Escheresque. A depth of perhaps three inches slopped around the base of the mecha.

A hatch opened as the two birds took up battle stance.

"Zombie Apocalypse, Private! Routine Seventy-One!" shouted Skipper as a hunched over man and a blonde woman stumbled down the ramp. "Not Frances Alberta, the other one!"