When It’s Cold, Steam Comes Out of Your Mouth An electrical charge raced through the wire in a fraction of a second.
A mad grin froze on Harry Drago’s face.
But despite pressing the detonator button, no explosion occurred.
He stood motionless in complete silence for literally a few seconds.
And only then did he realize that no explosion had followed; he was still alive and standing not far from his hostages.
Not understanding what was happening, he involuntarily looked at the hostages, causing the poor gazelle to faint from everything that was happening.
The first thought that flashed through Harry’s mind came with an abyss of disappointment and insane rage.
He must have messed up the wiring somehow.
In a fit of anger, he pressed the red button again, sending another hostage into a faint.
Realizing the problem wasn’t the button, he quickly glanced at the bundles of dynamite.
The first was attached near the nearest column; from it, a wire ran to the second, and from that to the third bundle, also located near a column.
Harry took a couple of quick steps to look at the fourth, last bundle of dynamite, which was hidden from his view.
As soon as his gaze reached its target, his jaws slowly opened.
Right in front of him, just three meters away, stood a little rabbit in a police uniform.
In her paw was a sparking wire, which she had pulled from the bundle of dynamite literally a second before Harry pressed the button on the detonator.
The fact was that this was the very first wire in the system the crocodile had set up.
The explosion was supposed to start from it, and then the charge would spread to the rest.
Judy had noticed this while watching Harry from the ventilation.
But since the wire was disconnected from the overall system, naturally, no explosion followed.
A cold breeze ran down the crocodile’s spine.
Judy stood, looking at the huge crocodile from under her brow with an angry glare, smiling and crying at the same time.
She wiped her nose with her paw, sniffled, and said quietly but distinctly: “No one is dying today.” It’s impossible to describe how furious Harry became when he saw his plan foiled by some little rabbit who had appeared out of nowhere.
It was an explosion of emotions, stronger than a dynamite blast, followed by a furious roar.
Harry launched himself from his spot like a whirlwind and rushed at Judy, hoping to tear her apart, trample her, literally split her into atoms.
Probably at that moment, for the first time in a long while, he had found something he hated more than the Lemur Bank.
The three-meter distance separating them was covered in a single leap, his huge jaws wide open.
Judy dodged to the side, hiding behind a column.
Harry’s massive body, with its corresponding mass and initial speed, simply couldn’t stop instantly.
He flew past Judy, scratching the parquet with his huge claws, and crashed into the wall with a roar.
But not even feeling the impact or the pain, he recoiled back, toward the fleeing Judy.
“Give me the wire!” he roared, barely intelligibly.
Another leap — and the little rabbit tumbled to the side again, dodging the crocodile’s paws and claws.
And again, Harry was left with nothing.
Maneuvering between the columns, Judy managed to evade the terrible blow that was supposed to be her one and only, every time.
She understood exactly what she was doing.
First, maneuvering in such a space between the columns gave her an advantage in agility.
But she couldn’t go into the center of the hall; there were no hiding places there from the enraged crocodile.
Second, as long as Harry was chasing her in this part of the hall, he was far from the hostages and couldn’t harm them in his fit of madness.
The little mouse’s paws were numb with cold, but Gren wasn’t about to give up.
The stubborn valve wouldn’t budge.
He strained his whole body again, bracing himself with all four paws.
Gren clenched his teeth.
“Come on!” he shouted.
The valve jerked, then again, and again.
And finally, it turned.
Red warnings about system instability began appearing on the computer screen.
Gren recoiled and fell to the floor, tucking his frozen paws under his armpits, then pulled his knees up and curled up in pain.
On the monitor screen, which was now filled with red warning windows, one appeared with the inscription: “Emergency message about a fatal error sent to the head of the technical department of the Lemur Bank.” After Gren opened the valve, the cold mixture spread to all the other pipes connected to it.
They began to freeze instantly, becoming covered with frost.
Even the walls they were attached to couldn’t withstand the low temperature.
The entire room was covered in ice in a matter of seconds and began to resemble an ice cave.
One pipe began to bang loudly, and the last thing the camera on the ceiling captured was the cold vapor bursting the pipe and filling the entire room.
Chief Bogo’s face now looked more like a zombie’s.
His eyes were red, his clothes were splattered with bloody mucus, which he had been coughing up profusely in all directions.
All his snow-white teeth were also covered in blood.
With great difficulty, he sat down in the driver’s seat of the huge armored mining truck.
The substantial vehicle rocked under his weight.
He took a deep, feverish breath, like someone drowning.
The key turned in the ignition.
The engine started.
Completely detached from everything, feeling only the most intense pain, he pressed the gas pedal and reversed.
The huge truck shot backward with a screech and spinning tires, flying out into the open space between the bank steps and the police cordon.
Bogo braked sharply, spun the wheel, and started spinning like a seasoned racer showing off his skill.
The huge multi-ton truck, stationary, spun in circles, spewing clouds of smoke from burning tires from underneath it.
Due to its enormous size and speed, it began to create huge vortices in the air like a propeller, dispersing the acrid smoke and clearing everything around.
Under the roar of the engine, having gulped down fresh air, Bogo let out a loud, piercing scream, venting all his rage.
Amazing images were being born in Nick’s head.
While his brain was dying.
Nick couldn’t surface.
He stood in the middle of a flooded forest that was on fire.
All the smoke filled the clearing, which was flooded with water, all the way up to the sun.
Nick, falling to his knees, tried to breathe.
But instead of getting the oxygen he had never appreciated in his life, he only swallowed smog and water.
His vision began to narrow slowly.
He grabbed his chest with one paw, and immediately smoke poured from his nostrils and dirty swamp water flowed from his mouth.
His tail twitched, showing his death throes.
He squeezed the ground with his paw, which immediately turned to embers and, dissolving, entered his body like water.
He was twisted and fell onto his back.
Above, under the water over which the acrid smoke spread, from the boiler pipes, soot fell on him from above under the scorching desert sun.
And the last thing he saw, lying on his back facing the sky, was Judy’s face.
She came up to him from the head side and looked down at him carefully.
She looked him straight in the eyes.
She wasn’t smiling.
She just leaned down, quietly filled her lungs with air, and blew on him.
Harder and harder.
And for the first time in years, Nick was able to breathe.
“Get up, Nick!” Judy said, then grabbed him hard by the shoulders and tossed him up into the air like a toy.
Nick flew all the way up to the sky, and when he reached the very top, he saw enormous mountains, from which a fresh mountain wind blew like an avalanche.
A moment more, and the avalanche knocked him off his paws.
Nick finally opened his eyes.
The acrid gas from Bogo’s actions had dissipated from the wrecked car where Nick lay, now coming to his senses.
Nick opened his eyes and sat up; his head was splitting.
He sniffled and felt dried blood caked near his nose.
He shoved his phone into his pocket and looked around the car he’d hidden in.
But he didn’t have time to figure things out properly before, in the blink of an eye, he flew out through the shattered windshield and ended up next to the gearbox in a huge truck driven by Chief Bogo.
Apparently, when Bogo had finished his maneuvers, he’d clipped the car where Nick was coming to.
The impact sent Nick flying out of it and landing inside the truck, tumbling through the whole cabin.
That’s how he ended up right next to Bogo.
“Good, Wilde, you’re here too,” Bogo rasped, noticing Nick.
“Got a job.
We’re robbing a bank.” Bogo stepped on the gas, and the truck stopped directly in front of the second ill-fated bank entrance door.
Inside the bank, in the lobby where Judy was weaving between columns to avoid death at the claws of the crocodile Harry, all the walls with radiators and air conditioners — everything was frozen solid and covered in ice.
The crocodile’s clawed hand nearly caught Judy’s paw.
And that’s when Judy’s brilliant plan missed one detail.
A very important one.
Panting, releasing puffs of steam from his mouth, the crocodile had gone so mad that even sub-zero temperatures didn’t stop him.
He stood across from Judy, breathing heavily, and Judy herself was breathing hard too, gulping down the cold air.
Harry looked at his detonator, still in his clawed hand.
During the chase, the wire attached to it had wrapped around the columns and torn off at the last moment.
Now he definitely couldn’t set off the dynamite; he’d have to solder the wire back on by opening the detonator’s cylinder.
Harry tossed the useless detonator aside.
He bared his teeth and stared intently at Judy.
He felt his fingers starting to go numb.
His whole body too.
Harry realized he’d fallen into the trap this rabbit had set.
“Who the hell are you?” Harry asked, exhausted but still ferocious.
“Give it up, Harry, it’s over,” Judy replied.
“You’ve got nothing.” Harry shot a meaningful look at Judy, then at the wires tangled between the columns, and then at the hostages, frozen with cold and terror.
“No, I’ve still got something,” he said threateningly.
Harry took a step toward the hostages.
Then another, and another.
Judy stood still, waiting for the right moment with careful calculation.
Harry thought she’d lose her nerve and rush to defend everyone, making herself easy prey.
But Judy was calm.
She’d seen through Harry’s plan and waited for him to end up right in front of the frozen pipe.
Like a maniac, Harry stared at his victims, his jaws wide open.
And just as his jaws were about to snap shut on the neck of a poor pig, Judy reached the crocodile in two leaps.
Dodging his paw that tried to crush her, Judy jumped and kicked the frozen pipe next to the villain’s snout with all her might.
Because it was completely frozen through, the pipe had become brittle.
It broke from the impact, a piece flying off to the side and nearly shattering into fragments, as if made of ice.
Cold gas burst from the broken pipe and blasted straight into Harry’s face.
A loud scream from Harry rang out in the white smoke that enveloped part of the lobby.
The crocodile screamed in pain.
The gas, cold as his heart, seemed to pierce his skull clean through.
At least, that’s how it felt to him.
Judy did a somersault and safely rolled out from under the cold vapor.
She spun around sharply to see what had happened to the crocodile, when suddenly an enormous paw, covered in frost, grabbed her by the throat and dragged her away into the mist.
Harry tumbled out of the smoke, holding Judy by the throat in one paw and poor, miserable Rhino in the other.
His snout was frozen and also covered in frost, making him look even more sinister.
Standing in the middle of the lobby, Harry squeezed Judy’s throat hard, then threw her just as hard onto the tiled floor.
A dull thud rang out.
But Judy was already unconscious.
“Death!!!” the crocodile roared madly.
As he strained every muscle in his face, screaming insanely, the frozen patches of skin cracked and flaked off.
His disfigured snout bared its teeth at the helpless Judy.
Harry raised his enormous paw over Judy’s body, intending to crush her.
Putting all his strength, rage, and hatred into it, he brought his paw down to the floor.
But the crocodile’s huge paw only brushed the fur on Judy’s head.
A second before the irreparable step, the second armored door was torn from its hinges by the furious impact of the huge truck.
The multi-ton vehicle got stuck in the opening, blocking the entrance.
But the impact still broke the upper part of the grille.
From the truck, crashing through the windshield, flew an enraged Chief Bogo.
Ignoring the pain from the cuts, he moved toward his target like a machine.
A punch to the jaw — and the crocodile flew backward, unable to crush Judy.
Harry got up sharply and hit Bogo on the right.
Blocked.
A counter hook from the left.
Some of the crocodile’s teeth flew to the side.
Harry grew fiercer, spun around, and struck with his massive tail.
Blocked again.
The police chief took the hit, even though it sent him sliding sideways.
Harry lunged at Bogo again.
The crocodile’s huge fist swung up from below, aiming for the throat.
Bogo jumped back.
The chief’s counterstrike — first to the side, then to the jaw, then to the chest again.
Harry faltered.
Bogo, caught up in the frenzy and putting all the rage he’d built up over time into it, sent the enormous crocodile into a knockout with a powerful blow to the chin.
Bogo fell to his knees, trying to cough and not lose consciousness.
Completely exhausted, he knelt there, covered in blood, his fists broken.
His opponent, the huge crocodile, lay ahead of him.
In the corner, the poor animals trembled, not understanding what had happened.
Yes, this day would stay with them as their worst nightmare.
They had stopped being afraid or feeling anything.
They seemed like travelers frozen in ice.
Broken by the constant terror for their lives.
They didn’t even try to run, even though they believed their “monster” was defeated.
Even now, lying unconscious, he was still their overseer who had ordered them to sit still.
Behind Bogo lay the brave rabbit Judy, barely breathing.
“Attach the cable!” the police officers outside shouted.
Nick heard them, swaying as if drunk from the gas.
Their voices were like an echo somewhere far away for him.
“This hulk needs a tank or a bulldozer to move it; we’ve only got light cars.” “I think I can help you,” Nick heard the voice of Sange Ace.
“My jeeps are armored; they’ll clear the entrance in no time.”