The Return of Ruby Rubber

9: The Not-So Great Escape

‘This is interesting,’ said a clearly bemused Ruth. With a twitch of her face, she narrowed her head and easily threaded it back through the metal brace about her shoulders. Her neck elongated and her head - returned to its normal shape - twisted round and regarded her body, now only held by the two remaining wrist shackles. She slipped out of those easily. Again, she shook out her right leg, but it resolutely refused to do anything elastic.

‘It almost feels like a dead leg,’ she explained. ‘I can feel every other part of my body, every muscle, every sinew.’ Ruth’s midriff sprung out in a coil, balancing awkwardly on one regular and one rubber leg. ‘But this leg is numb.’

‘Can we discuss this later?’ pleaded Stuart. ‘After you’ve freed me?’

‘Listen, I’m very tempted to leave you right here,’ admitted Ruth. ‘But I suppose if I’m going to continue this superheroine gig, I’m going to have to keep you around, aren’t I?’

‘Oh, this is beautiful,’ said Stuart with as much sarcasm as he could muster. ‘I’d wipe the tear from my eye - if I could reach it!’ He shook his chains impatiently.

Ruth sighed. She grabbed one of Stuart’s wrist shackles, not gently, and examined its lock closely. Satisfied that she knew what was required, she sucked her index finger and held it up in the air as if testing for the direction of the wind. Then she placed the finger against the keyhole of the lock, allowing it to squidge into the tiny space. Again, absently, her tongue popped out as she concentrated on the job at hand.

‘I can’t make my finger very hard, but if I get the exact right shape it should still turn easily - A-ha!’ The shackle clicked open and Stuart retrieved his sore wrist, massaging it with his other, manacled, hand. Ruth withdrew her finger, still moulded into the correct key shape, and blew on it like a smoking pistol. In seconds she had repeated the process on the other locks and Stuart was free. Of his shackles at any rate.

‘How do we get out of this cell?’ asked Stuart.

‘I was just about to ask you that,’ replied Ruth. She eyed the much larger lock on the door. ‘I think that might be too heavy for my rubber fingers,’ she confessed. All the same, she jammed her hand into the lock and attempted to move the tumblers. ‘It’s rusty too. We can write that off.’ Ruth’s attention turned to the lone air vent at the top of the door. ‘And while I might normally be able to get through that vent, I’ve no chance with my inelastic appendage weighing me down. The only way we’d get out is if someone on the outside opened it for us.’

Just then, somebody on the outside opened it for them. A young guard, carrying a tray with a bowl of water and a set of hypodermic needles swung the door open and froze as he realised his prisoners were not where he’d expected them to be. The hesitation was fatal. Before he could close the door again a giant fist came flying across the room, knocking him to the ground, unconscious, and sending the contents of his tray clanging into the corridor beyond.

‘Someone’s bound to have heard that,’ said Ruth, stretching her neck across the room and popping her head through the door. ‘There’s no-one here yet,’ she said after checking the passage in both directions, ‘but we can’t count on them taking long. Come on!’

Stuart joined her. ‘Where to?’

Ruth cupped an ear, then stretched her hand into a trumpet shape to help magnify any sound she might hear. ‘There’s some sort of engine noise coming from that direction.’ She indicated left. ‘Like a generator or something.’

‘That’d make sense if we’re in a basement,’ agreed Stuart. ‘The other way, then?’

‘The other way,’ said Ruth, and elongated her torso in that direction. Her head floated ahead further still, on the end of her extended neck, checking around the next corner to see if the coast was clear.

‘There’s some sort of hatchway here,’ she declared, beckoning Stuart to follow her with a foot-long finger. ‘Looks kind of heavy. Maybe it’s the entrance to this prison level. And if you go through an entrance the wrong way, it becomes...’

‘An exit,’ said Stuart, stepping over the coils of Ruth’s body. ‘Let’s have a look then.’

‘And quickly,’ added Ruth, her ear trumpet hand in place once again. ‘I think I can hear someone coming.’

Ruth wrapped an arm around and around the wheel that held the hatch closed. Then she pulled it back in one movement, rotating the wheel like a spinning top until it clanged to a stop. Between them they swung the heavy metal door open.

There was a sudden blast of wind and Ruth found herself stepping into nothingness. Purely through reflex, she shot her three elastic limbs behind her, grabbing the frame of the hatch.

Beneath her dangling, ordinary flesh-and-bone leg, white cotton-wool clouds drifted by in a clear blue sky. Ruth hauled herself back into what she could now see was a long metal gondola hanging serenely beneath the enormous, bullet-shaped gasbag of an airship.

Stuart helped Ruth clamber back on board. ‘Not underground, then?’ he said to the panting would-be Ruby Rubber.

‘Not quite.’ Ruth looked down to see if she could see the ground through the odd gap there was in the clouds. ‘A few thousand feet higher at a guess.’

The sound of approaching feet was quite clear now, even to someone without expanded hearing.

‘You could turn yourself into a parachute,’ suggested Stuart. ‘That’s a standard for rubber folk. Every one of them has to do it at some point.’

Ruth shook her head. ‘I was thinking I could inflate myself around you, I mean massively, to the size of a house or something. And then absorb the impact when we reached the ground. Could be tricky with the dodgy leg, but I reckon I could do it.’

‘That might work,’ said Stuart. ‘Then again, you could simply hold on to the bottom of this airship - lower yourself to the ground. A few thousand feet did you say? Aunt Enid managed to stretch herself that far before now.’

‘Hmm, it seems I’ve got a lot to live up to, doesn’t it?’ pondered Ruth. They both looked down the passageway behind them. They wouldn’t be alone for much longer - they would have to come to a decision imminently.

Ruth cracked a massive smile. ‘I’ve got a better idea,’ she said, matter-of-factly. ‘Come on then, hop on.’ She gestured for Stuart to grab hold of her, piggy-back style. He leapt up, like a child in a playground. He kissed Ruth on the cheek.

‘For luck,’ he explained.

‘Who needs it?’ replied Ruth, and jumped out the hatch.

The first of the airship guards arrived just in time to see them plummet away into the distance below.

À CONCLURE…