(Vegetables) Chapter Thirty Eight: Pizza, Anyone?

Forty nine minutes after Mrs K had left the barn, a car pulled up in front of the barn, and a bored and tired looking pizza delivery lady got out. She knocked on the door of the barn, insulated pizza bag in hand.

She didn’t even blink on seeing Stewart’s impressive nose hair, just handed over the pizza, refused to get into an argument about who ordered it as it was already paid for, and left.

For lack of anything better to do, Stewart took the pizza upstairs, eating a slice of it as he went.

Two hours and fifteen minutes after that, there was the sound of an engine starting up in the barn, followed closely by several loud bangs and crashes, and then the door to the barn flew open¹⁰⁰. Through said door drove a vehicle that looked like the unholy offspring of a tractor and a tank, by way of a few lawnmowers and several oil drums. It skidded wildly across the drive, sending clots of mud and bits of gravel flying everywhere.

Those rabbits and pigeons that hadn’t been scared off after the contraption had burst through the barn doors quickly fled. Some of those gobs of mud and gravel were bigger than they were.

With the engine howling madly, and several voices screaming from inside the vehicle, it drove unsteadily along the track, back towards the road. It got about a hundred feet away, then stopped abruptly. Morwen jumped out of the cab-slash-cockpit and ran back to the ruined barn doors, grabbed her phone, and jumped back into the vehicle again.

As they drove down the road to freedom, the phone insisted on playing the theme music for the A-Team.




Richard’s car was stuck in the mud and going nowhere. It seemed like the tractor-tank could pick up a good head of speed, even if it wasn’t strictly speaking road-legal. At the hour of the morning that it was, and road traffic police officer was more likely to believe they were dreaming than to seriously consider giving chase. So it was an uneventful, if noisy, trip back to the Agency headquarters, where all the humans fell into beds somewhere, and Richard went off to park the tractor-tank in his underground lair.




Four hours and forty six minutes later, a particularly loud and obnoxious alarm went off. Morwen grumbled in her sleep, reached out for her phone and threw it across the room.

“Oi!” yelled Sissy, increasing the volume of the alarm. “That wasn’t very nice!”

“Ten more minutes,” mumbled Morwen, pulling the pillow over her head and going back to sleep¹⁰¹.




Three hours and nineteen minutes later, all of the captives and Sissy were reassembled in the Agency’s dining room, tucking into a large breakfast-cum-lunch of pizza, and ignoring the tv on the wall which was broadcasting a 24 hour news channel¹⁰².

“Good pizza this,” said Rosa with her mouth full. “Not convinced by the banana on it, mind. And if it’s going to send me to sleep, I have to say it won’t need much help.”

Sissy was practically vibrating with irritation.

“Ok,” she said firmly. “I’ve let you sleep, and you’re doing the eating thing and have had coffee, and done all those things that you say you need to survive. Now will someone please explain what the hell happened in that barn!”

“Why, Sissy,” said Richard. “Don’t tell me you were worried?”

“Tell me!” Sissy snapped.

Everyone turned to look at Morwen, who took a slug of her coffee.

“The barn was full of all sort of old junk,” she said. “Kind of like you’d expect the inside of the barn in the middle of nowhere to look like, but crossed with a healthy dose of mad scientist’s laboratory. There was a load of old farm machinery, and benches covered in tools, old plant pots and stuff like that.”

“Some of the stuff freaked me out a bit,” said Rosa. “All dangerous and sinister looking. But the plants were cool.”

“What plants?” asked Sissy.

“Some of the benches were obviously nursery benches, with propagation boxes and seedlings in pots on them,” explained Morwen. “The wall along the back had larger pots and plants lined up against it. Some were in full bloom, others were dormant.”

“I liked the one with the red and yellow sunburst blossoms,” said Rosa. “Pretty. It was hot in there though – the roof was mostly greenhouse plastic.”

“Don’t tell me they were daft enough to let you loose in a barn full of tools?” said Sissy.

“Of course not,” said Morwen. “We were all locked in a cage underneath the hayloft bit. Except for when they had us making the CS4.”

“CS4?”

“Cabbage surprise number four,” explained Morwen. “Mrs K and Horace van Twaddle were really keen that we make it. We had to make several batches.”

“Is it a recipe from the book? And if so, what does it do?”

“Yes. And we’re not quite sure. It was only myself and Rosa making it, so the results were, er, variable. The first batch just succeeded in making a horrible, horrible smell.”

“Made us all throw up, except Mrs K and Richard,” explained Rosa cheerfully, grabbing another slice of pizza.

“The second batch smelled of roses,” continued Morwen. “And when it got dripped onto a test cabbage, it turned the cabbage a lovely shade of bright red. Horace van Twaddle was very interested in that batch – kept muttering things about leftover Brussels sprouts and Valentine’s Day. The third batch didn’t repeat either of the two previous results. It didn’t do anything to vegetables, but it did explode spectacularly when mixed with coffee.”

Morwen looked pointedly at Rosa at this point.

“I said I was sorry!” said Rosa defensively. “I was distracted, ‘cause that was when Richard and Felindre got caught and locked in the cage too.”

“After batch number three, we all got locked in the cage again while Mrs K and Horace had a long shouting match upstairs. Long story short, they both stomped off in a snit, separately, and we were left being guarded by Stewart, Dave and several guns.”

“Given enough time, we would have taken them,” said Felindre, quietly.

“We hang around in the cage for a while, until we hear a scrabbling sound. It’s a little mouse, who decides to run over Richard’s shoe, twice. Rosa starts freaking out,” said Morwen.

“Not my fault either – it spooked me!” interrupted Rosa.

“And that causes enough of a distraction for Richard to whisper something to the mouse and it to disappear. Next thing we know, someone is at the door with pizza. Stewart and Dave eat it, and fall fast asleep.”

“We don’t hang around at that point,” said Felindre. “We’re out of that cage as quickly as I can break the lock…”

“About ten seconds,” said Rosa fondly.

“… and in another thirty, we’ve got Dave and Stewart tied up, and are planning our escape.”

“Why didn’t you just sneak out?” asked Sissy. “Why the whole A-team tractor-tank escape plot?”

“The rabbits,” explained Richard. “Some of them had flame throwers.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Ok, I’ll give you that,” said Sissy. “The next question is, where did you get the tractor-tank-thing?”

“We built it,” said Rosa.

“You built it?! How?”

“Put pieces of stuff together until they worked,” said Rosa. She and Richard looked smug.

“That’s what happens when you put a woman who can build a scale model of the Eiffel Tower out of paperclips, and a man who can modify a household blender to puree a brick, into a barn full of old junk,” said Morwen. “They just had no idea.”

“Almost makes you sorry for the bad guys,” said Sissy. “Almost.”

More pizza was eaten and coffee drunk.

“What were you doing when all this was going on?” asked Richard.

“Well,” said Sissy, snippily, “after someone dropped me, I had to make my own way. I did learn something about Operation Control All the Veg though.”

“Operation what?” asked Rosa.

“Control All the Veg,” said Sissy. “Whatever it is, it’s got the rabbits and pigeons signed up in a way that borders on the fanatic. Did you know they were actually drilling manoeuvres out there?”

“What on Earth are they up to?” asked Rosa. “I don’t like the sound of Operation Control All the Veg.”

“Can’t blame you,” said Felindre. “Stupid name.”

“It’s something to do with supermarkets,” said Sissy.

Everyone looked puzzled.

“Morwen,” said Sissy, “you remember, the pigeons flying around in the supermarket? And the cashier saying about the rabbits?”

Morwen nodded.

“When I saw the rabbits and pigeons drilling, that’s what they were trying to do. They were trying to get some liquid onto the fruit and vegetable displays in the supermarket,” Sissy continued.

“But what’s the liquid?” wondered Rosa.

“CS4 obviously,” replied Sissy.

“What’s so important about Cabbage Surprise Number Four, and why spray it on supermarket fruit and veg?” asked Felindre.

“Now, that’s a very good question,” said Morwen. “I think we should make some, the four of us, properly, and find out.”

“But we don’t have the recipe,” said Rosa.

“Tadaaa!” said Morwen, pulling a piece of paper out of her pocket. “I nicked it from the bench after the minions had fallen asleep.”

“Right then,” said Richard. “Let me escort you to the lab and show you around our state of the art facilities.”




“Y’know,” said Rosa, as they all watched the unpleasant gloopy liquid that was Cabbage Surprise Number Four bubbling away in a flask over a Bunsen burner. “I thought it would have cabbage in it.”

“It’s ready,” said Morwen.

Carefully, Felindre took an eyedropper full of the liquid and tapped it against the side of the glass in order to release any drops clinging to the outside of the dropper. Then she moved the dropper over to hover above a bucket containing half a potato, an apple and a carrot.

Everyone watched carefully as she let a single drop of CS4 fall into the bucket. It landed without a sound.

“Eeeewww!” said Rosa, holding her nose. “That smells horrible”

“I’ve never seen decomposition happen that quickly!” said Morwen.

“Handy for the compost heap though,” said Felindre.

The bucket was now full of a horrible, goopy, brown sludge.

“So,” said Richard. “If I was head of the Most Ancient and Noble Order of Greengrocer’s, and I had a substance that allowed me to turn any fresh fruit or veg into sludge, what would I do with it?”

“Hire a crack team of rabbits and pigeons to deliver it to all the supermarkets in the world, and then sell the only fresh veg left at a massive profit?” suggested Rosa.

“No one’s that crazy, are they?” asked Morwen.

Richard and Felindre exchanged glances and nodded.

“Yes,” said Richard. “Yes, there’s plenty of people, and animals, out there who are exactly that crazy.”

“On the plus side,” said Felindre. “At least we’ve figured out the plot now, and haven’t had to sit through any evil genius monologues. Or bad rip-offs of Gilbert and Sullivan arias.”

She and Richard both shuddered slightly.

“Hey,” said Rosa, brightly. “Do you think the rabbits are doing it for a twenty four carrot reward?”


___


¹⁰⁰ Thankfully missing Morwen’s phone, if only by mere inches!
¹⁰¹ I have no idea how she can do that.
¹⁰² The news item at that moment was about a bunch of research scientists and animal control experts trying to round up a herd of multi-coloured, glow-in-the-dark rabbits that had been released into the wild by animal rights activists. These rabbits were a menace, and had already caused several car crashes and other accidents.