The Fire Triangle -- Part II, Oxidizer

The Fire Triangle: Book II - Chapter 32

Disclaimer: Zootopia stories, characters, settings, and properties belong to the Walt Disney Co. This story is written under Fair Use Copyright laws.

---------------------------------------------------------------

The Fire Triangle

---------------------------------------------------------------

Part Two:

Oxidizer

---------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 6-The Children's Crusade
(Continued...Part 3)

---------------------------------------------------------------

"It is a fact that it takes experience before one can realize what is a catastrophe and what is not. Children have little faculty of distinguishing between disaster and the ordinary course of their lives."

Richard Hughes - A High Wind in Jamaica

---------------------------------------------------------------

Monday, 02:07 Hours, Precinct -1, Savanna Central, Zootopia

The hackers were a bunch of sharpies, even more so than Guild had first surmised.

They could have raised the loading dock door rather than simply unlocking it...but that would have given fair warning to the riot police deployed on the other side-and hackers are anything but fair-minded individuals.

And so they left the freight door closed but unlocked, trusting that the detainee-kids would figure out how to raise it on their own.

In this they would not have been disappointed. One of the first young escapees to reach the loading bay was a hartebeest whose father worked in a warehouse-and he quickly informed the others.

"That thing's gonna open REAL slow when you hit the button," he said-meaning the cops would be there long before it opened up all the way.

Then someone else noticed a pair of tiny windows set near the center of the door...and a flying squirrel and a sugar-glider, both animals with excellent night vision, were sent up to check out the lay of the land. What they had to report was both heartening and disheartening.

"There's a big line of cops out there...but they're facing away from us." The squirrel said, "can't be sure, but I think there's a whole bunch of those protesters out on the street in front of 'em."

It was no great surprise; there'd been a rumor making the rounds since yesterday; the kids picketing Precinct-1 basically had the place surrounded.

Nobody would remember who first suggested it, but everyone agreed. The only way they were getting out of here was by making use of the element of surprise-and if the freight door opened super-slowly, there went that idea. Luckily there was another way out; the drivers' entrance. Only a few detainees at a time could get out that way, but that door could be thrown open VERY quickly.

At once, a call for volunteers went up.

What happened next was later described by one of the cops holding the line in front of the loading dock-Officer McHorn, who normally worked the day shift.