Codename Alpha

Chapter 17

I kept my ears open, listening for every sound, paranoid of the door suddenly swinging open again. There weren't any pawsteps coming from the other side, thankfully. Rather, I could hear what was probably a TV, or someone playing games without headphones. There was frequent shouting, alarms, and many other things. If I had to guess, it was a movie about a submarine.

Overall, the process didn't take too long, including the plate at the front, but it certainly felt like it took forever to accomplish. When I finished, Max was still timidly walking about the room.

"Alright, I'm all done here," I whisper-shouted.

I seemed to catch him off guard, and he jumped a bit. It didn't take him long to regain composure. "Alright. As far as I can tell, there's only one way out of this room, and it's out of that window," he said, motioning towards it. "Obviously we can't open the garage or go through their house without being caught. Now, the shelf presents it's own issues." He walked over to it, and pulled slightly on the metal racks. They shifted slightly. "The window itself can be opened, but this shelf is gonna tip over if either of us climb it."

"Well, I'll just hold it in place," I said.

"Don't take this personally, but I think you might be a bit heavier than me. I'm just going by height, though," he responded. "So it's probably best if you go first while I hold it in place or something like that."

"Sounds good to me," I said, walking over to the shelves and sizing them up. "And don't worry, I'm not offended or anything." I reached up to the top shelf, and carefully set the two license plates there. "Alright, brace it up," I said, getting ready to climb. He did just that. I hopped up onto the first level of shelf, making sure it was stable, before going any further. Thankfully, it was. Making sure not to knock anything on the shelf over, I climbed up the rest of the racks until I was within arms reach of the window. I lifted the lock into what I hoped was the unlocked position, then pushed it open. Thankfully, it did just that. "Marine? Are you out there?" I said, loud enough to hopefully get her attention but not to alert everyone around to our presence.

"Yeah, down here," I heard back. "Are you climbing out the window?" She asked.

"I am indeed. I suggest you move out of the way, I'm about to drop our new license plates out."

"Got it," I heard in return, accompanied with the sound of pawsteps briefly moving away from the window. Once a few seconds had passed, I took one of the plates and then lightly tossed it out, and did the same with the other, but in a different direction so they didn't hit each other. After that, I climbed all the way to the top shelf.

"Hmm..." I said to myself. "I'll try and hold the shelf in place from up here, so you can get up as well."

Max nodded as I laid down on the top shelf and grabbed on to both the outside of the window and the shelf. He began climbing up, and before long, was crouching on the top shelf with me.

"Good to see you again, Max!" I heard from the outside as he leaned out the window.

"It's good to see you as well. Watch out," He added, while getting ready to hop out. "It's not too far down," he said, briefly turning to me, before hopping out. I heard him land on the grass below.

I crawled in a decidedly strange way so I'd be going out the window legs first, that way keeping the shelf from being knocked over by me jumping out. I pushed myself against the windowsill once in position, and fell to the ground below, almost landing on my face. I thankfully broke my fall without breaking my snout.

"You alright?" Max asked, as I stood up.

"All good." I took in a deep breath, and looked around at our surroundings. There was no way to close the window from the outside, unfortunately, but the cool air and the sound of crickets was relaxing. We weren't quite in the clear, but it was still good to be out of the garage.

"What say we never, ever, do that again?" Max asked.

"That is a plan I can agree with," I commented, while picking up the two license plates I had tossed out.

"Same here. I'm glad you guys found a way out."

"Indeed. We can only hope that whoever lives here deems that," I began, pointing at the open window, "as an animal getting into their garage, and not the results of an escape by two aliens they accidentally trapped in there."

"You know, the former is possibly fairly accurate," Marine said. "I still can't get over that fox from earlier."

"Well, we can think about that all later. For now, we ought to get the hell out of this town."

I nodded in agreement, looking at our surroundings. I realized we had also been fairly lucky that nobody was driving by, because we were standing not too far away from two different roads. Before long, we were once more all sprinting across the road, towards the rows of plants on the hillside. Thankfully, unlike yesterday, we weren't nearly getting run over by cars or being chased by random people who were previously minding their own business. Max wanted the trip up the hillside to be quick, just for the sake of getting us away from the town quicker. By the time we reached the top, Marine and I were both panting heavily. We didn't stop, though, instead continuing along the dirt path we had used to exit the forest.