The Cow Chronicles Part 6: Two Plans

Farmer Bob’s house was atop a large hill that overlooked the countryside for miles around. His front porch extended off of the hill held up by a few narrow, metal stilts. Uneven, rough stone blocks formed a flight of steps extending down to the road below. Farmer Bob stood on this porch, giving a press conference to an assembly of reporters on the street below. As he was so far away from them, he had to shout for his voice to be heard.

“The age of Farmer Joe’s terrorist plots is at an end! We await a glorious future!”

“We wait laborious Luther? Speak up!”, shouted a journalist for the Wisconsin Informer.

Then, Farmer Bobs pig walked out of the door, carrying a microphone, which Farmer Bob took.

“Ashwa splok, dakoowza recoonig rito the phorm”, Farmer Bob told the reporters.

“Now you sound even more unintelligible!, the Informer reporter told him.

Meanwhile, in the solitary confinement chamber of the Bovine County Jail, Farmer Joe put his escape plan into action. He had considered picking up the small table in the corner of the room and using it to break down the door, but had discovered that the table was bolted to the floor. Then, he noticed the one thing in the room that wasn’t nailed down: a chair.
Farmer Joe picked up the small, metal chair. It was much heavier than he had anticipated. He slowly heaved it over to the mirror, where he knew Williams was watching him.

“Hey! Put that down right-”, Williams protest was cut short when Farmer Joe finally threw the chair at the mirror. . .

. . .and it bounced off. Farmer Joe jumped out of the way as the chair fell to the ground with a massive THUD!, which sent a small tremor through the room. A small web of cracks was visible on the mirror.

The door to the cell burst open. Williams dashed inside, holding a handgun.

“Get down!”, he screamed in Farmer Joe’s face. Farmer Joe jumped out of the way as Williams lunged for him. He fell flat on his face. Before he could get up, Farmer Joe had run into the security room and locked Williams in the cell. He went over to Willams’ computer, and began searching through the files. Surely, a map of the complex was somewhere.

Finally, he came across a file named “blueprint.jpg.”

Suddenly, the screen died with a tremendous bang. Farmer Joe facepalmed as he saw the bullet lodged in the computer. He had forgotten to take Williams’ gun. He threw open the door, and was hit with a blast of sunlight.

Bovine County was a very sparsely populated area. The unnamed community was the only town in the county, and the county was only seven acres wide. The only smaller county was the Insect Microcounty. It came into existence after the 1998 Wisconsin governor election. The state legislature had recently voted to allow insects to vote, and thus, a spider was elected governor. Upon taking office, Governor Spidey had ordered the creation of a microcounty where insects would be allowed to live without fear of being stepped on. Spidey died seven hours later, when an assemblyman accidentally stepped on him.

In any case, Bovine County was the least populated county in Wisconsin. The county maximum security prison had been built during the sociopolitical upheaval of the 1960s, when many had demanded the naming of the community. The town fathers, aghast at such blasphemous heresy, had decreed that any person who promoted the naming of the community would be sentenced to life in prison. Later, a solitary confinement chamber was stuck onto the jail for the detainment of some New Yorkers, who had tried to steal Farmer Joe’s cows in a scheme involving a cow-attracting tractor beam and ice cream bazookas. It was during that time that Farmer Joe had first built the tunnel to shelter the cows.

Next to the door into the solitary confinement wing, a prison guard was curled up against a parked police car, snoring. A rifle leaned against the wall. Farmer Joe slowly tiptoed towards him. He would need more than his fists to make it back to the farm.
The guards face was bespeckled with potato chip crumbs. A rumpled, baggy uniform bedecked her skinny body.

Slowly, Farmer Joe reached for the rifle. The sun glinted off the black metal. His finger slowly approached the wood of the gun, as he pulled up the weapon, and silently ran into the prison parking lot, where he considered his escape options. His plan was to shoot out the window of one of the vehicles, and then smash through the prison gate. At first, he considered taking one of the police cars, but decided that they probably couldn’t smash through the gate. The town’s one SWAT truck would have easily gotten out, but its windows were bulletproof. As he pondered over whether or not the driver of the police tank had left the keys in the ignition, he noticed a police van parked near the entrance to the mess hall. The driver had left the door open. Getting to it would be a risky move. There was a CCTV camera monitoring the area, and there was almost always at least one guard at the mess hall door. Farmer Joe would have to run up to the van, jump in, and drive out of the prison as fast as he could before the police could block off his escape route. He ran as fast as he could to the police van, and noticed something very odd. Not only were there no guards at all at the door, but there was no blinking light on the CCTV camera, showing that it wasn’t active. In fact, as a look around the area revealed, none of the cameras seemed to be active. Farmer Joe slammed shut the van door, and gunned the engines.

The guard towers that flanked the prison gates were empty. Farmer Joe clenched his teeth and furrowed his brow as he sped toward the gate. The gate was torn to shreds as if it was made of tissue paper. The few cars on the road skidded to a halt. Farmer Joe switched on the sirens, in order to clear the streets and appear less suspicious.

“I expect you ordered the police to stand down?”, Farmer Bob asked the Bovine County sheriff.

“Yep. Take a look.”, the sheriff said as he led Farmer Bob into the CCTV monitoring room of the prison. “Look at Camera 12”, the sheriff said, pointing to a smudgy, greenscale view of the street outside the prison. He tapped a few keys and rewound the footage to a few moments ago. A police van could be seen careening out of the prison.

“I need to go to the bathroom, said Farmer Bob as he locked himself in the supply closet. He pressed his left index finger against his wristwatch display. The watch’s cloaking device deactivated, revealing a device called a Communicatrix. It was invented by a group of people calling themselves the ABE scientists. He tapped a few buttons on the Communicatrix and a smudgy, picture of a person came up. It was too hard to see any of their facial features because of the poor camera quality.

“Farmer Bob. . .”, the person said.

“The plan’s going great. We’ve got Farmer Joe right where we want him. The only problem is that the cows are putting up a fight and we’re having a really hard time getting them to my farm.”, Farmer Bob replied.

“Nevermind. I can come to get them myself. In the meantime, make sure that Farmer Joe is brought to the detainment center.”

“Yes, Squid Guy Bob”, Farmer Bob replied as he left the supply closet.