by N M Tatum
There were only two entrances to the ballroom—the main double doors and the entrance to the attached kitchen. Cody ran for the door closest to him, the kitchen. The door swung both ways and didn’t have a lock. His brain moving so fast he didn’t know what it was thinking, he ran into the kitchen. Instantly, a plan popped up from the recesses of his brain, the part that was always working whether he was aware of it or not.
It was a beautiful mix of elegant problem-solving and brute force. He pulled the refrigerator, which was thankfully on wheels, out from the wall. With a strength that surprised even himself, he grabbed the bottom of it and tipped it over. He pulled the plug free from the socket with that same surprising strength.
He kicked the kitchen door open, so it swung out, and stepped into the ballroom, holding the cord. He pulled the refrigerator until it slammed into the doorframe inside the kitchen, then let the door swing shut.
“Unless these rats also have thumbs and can pull open a door, this way’s sealed,” Cody declared.
Sam had already made for the double doors, which were the main problem. If the rat swarm got out there, they would have the run of Malibu. The double doors also swung both ways and only locked with a keycard, which she did not have. With only one solution left, she slid her sword through the handles, jamming it shut.
And leaving her weaponless.
Chapter Seven
There had been many moments in the Notches’ short careers that felt utterly hopeless. When they were swarmed by ShimVens on various occasions. When they were swallowed by the queen bug. When Joel dangled outside the ship, fully expecting to die. When they were surrounded by Rapoo.
This was one of those moments. Reggie was concussed and barely standing. The super rats were pouring in from overhead. Sam was without her sword. They were locked in the room with their most vindictive opponent yet.
But, like those other moments, though it may feel like the end, this was far from it. Sam may have been without her sword, but she was a master of most weapons, a killer. Reggie may not have been able to stand, but his blaster still worked.
A plus B equaled problem solved.
Sam picked up Reggie’s semiautomatic blaster. She squeezed the trigger and didn’t let go as she walked the perimeter of the ballroom, mowing down the filthy super rats. Cody hauled Reggie’s arm over his shoulder and helped him in a corner. He set Reggie down and took up a defensive position in front of him. Joel worked his way to the opposite corner. They were able to establish a loose perimeter, though, since they literally had their backs pressed up against the wall, they had nowhere to retreat. This was their last stand.
And in typical Notches fashion, it would be a beautiful, chaotic mess.
Despite their efforts, the mass of rats in the center of the room was growing. The flow continued as powerfully as it had from the second it started. The Notches couldn’t kill fast enough. Reggie climbed back to his feet. He staggered past Cody and bumped his knuckles together. He shuffled forward, world swimming around him, not seeming to care that rats were charging at him. The others managed to keep them off him.
Reggie’s knuckles glowed. He had a full charge. His feet touched the edge of the rat swarm. He lifted his arm, mustered the last of his strength, and drove his fist into the floor.
The swarm exploded. The shockwave sent rats smashing against every wall of the ballroom and took the Notches off their feet. Reggie dropped in a heap, unconscious. The others hoped that was all he was, that their friend was still breathing, that he hadn’t just pushed himself too far.
Sam didn’t allow her concern to overshadow her judgment. She wouldn’t allow Reggie’s sacrifice—No, not sacrifice, he’s fine—to be made in vain. She charged forward, picking off the injured and dazed rats before they could recover. Unfortunately, the rats’ mental advancement was met with physical advancement. They recovered faster than she anticipated.
She was overextended and surrounded. She didn’t even have her back up against the wall now. It was up against more rats. Her team was down or on the ropes.
Okay, so maybe now this was one of those moments. Hopeless. The end looming. Her gut pinched at the thought of ending her time with the Notches with a fight. Why did she pick that fight with Joel? The look in his eyes. The sad look of a boy clinging to his pet.
Her mind lit on fire with the memory. The reason why she’d jabbed at Joel. Her gut pinched again at the idea of dying with that memory in her head.
A sharp pain flared in the back of her knee. The strength left her leg, like it suddenly stopped answering to her and refused to work. Then her shoulder went on strike. A rat sank its teeth into the meaty part of it. She couldn’t hold up the blaster anymore. Instead of letting it go, though, she fell to the side, on top of it, and continued to fire.
The rats crawled up her legs. Their disgusting feet felt like a million ants on her skin.
Then something changed. She could sense the rats hesitate, like a transmission of their collective conscious. It said, “Oh shit.”
A booming roar filled the ballroom, echoed off the walls like cannon fire. The rats shrieked and scurried about looking for a place to hide, a hole to crawl back into. But Peppy was too fast. His jaws clamped down on one and then another. He threw them, stepped on them, swatted them away with the back of his paw, sliced them in half with his claws. He was a killing machine.
And the Notches’ savior.
The carnage was done in minutes. In the end, not a single rat was left alive. The ballroom was a gruesome mess. Blood splattered across the walls like a morbid painting. Rat parts scattered across the floor.
The team began to move, but slowly. They stood like arthritics, groaning, their joints protesting, muscles screaming. Sam clutched her shoulder. The sudden shock of pain made her head swim. The room went sideways, her on the verge of passing out. But something caught her before she hit the floor. Something hairy and wet.
Peppy felt like he’d just come out of a lake. He could have been a typical dog, chasing a tennis ball off the end of a dock on a summer day. But it wasn’t water that soaked his coat. He was like a sponge soaked in blood, and the red oozed over Sam’s hand. It made her stomach turn.
Using Peppy for balance, she lowered herself back to the floor, clearly not yet ready to stand. When she sat, Peppy’s face was level with hers. His breath stank of raw meat. He was a horror show. But underneath the carnage, his eyes shone with gentleness. She felt herself seeing Peppy the way Joel must see him, as a friend and companion. She didn’t see him as that dog in that alley so many years ago.
“Thank you,” Sam whispered.
Peppy whimpered in return and pressed his head against Sam’s hand.
Cody and Joel knelt beside Reggie. Cody’s fingers pressed into the side of Reggie’s neck, and everything went quiet. They held their collective breath, waiting, hoping.
For a pulse.
“He’s alive,” Cody said. “Grab my bag.”
Joel handed Cody his blood-spattered pack.
From inside the pack, Cody produced a vial of silvery liquid and a hypodermic gun. He loaded the liquid into the gun and shot it into Reggie’s neck.
“The medical nanites will have him patched up in no time.” Cody pointed to Joel’s shoulder next.
Joel winced as he slid his shirt off his shoulder with his good arm. Cody injected the nanites. Joel slid back and rested against the column. Peppy laid next to him and rested his head in Joel’s lap.
Sam tried to wave Cody away when he came toward her with the needle.
He scoffed. “Don’t try to be such a badass.” He crouched next to her and brushed her hair away from the wound in her shoulder. The sound of disgust escaped his mouth before he could think to swallow it. “Sorry. It’s just really gross.”
Sam smiled. “It’s okay. Just get me patched up.”
Cody injected the nanites.
The injection site burned at first. Then it cooled to a soothing warmth. Like wool socks and a cup of hot
chocolate on a winter’s night. The warmth spread from the injection site through her shoulder and all the way to the tips of her fingers.
“Can I ask you something?”
Cody’s voice pulled her out of the pleasure. She grunted in reply.
“What the hell was all that about? You know, that little fight that almost got us all killed?”
Sam shot him a death stare, but he seemed unaffected.
“Don’t try that shit with me,” Cody said. “The more time you spend with us, the less impact your grizzly façade has.”
“Façade?”
“You picked that fight with Joel for some reason. And it threw everyone off right before a big fight. Reggie got blown up, putting us down a big gun and making everyone unfocused when the rats attacked.” Cody packed the nanites away in his bag. “Sort it out before we move on. We all need to be on the same page to finish this job.”
Sam cocked her eyebrow as she looked up at him. “Finish it? I thought we just did that.”
Cody shook his head. “My uncle is an exterminator. I worked summers with him back on Earth, where we only had to deal with normal-sized roaches and rats of very little intellect. I know rats. And they always have a nest.”
He checked on Joel and Reggie again. Reggie had begun to regain consciousness, his eyes fluttering open. Cody handed a protein bar to each of them.
“Eat up. The nanites need ten minutes to finish their job. Then we finish ours.”
Chapter Eight
She was twelve. She’d been on the streets a few months at that point. It wasn’t her first time, but it was the first since deciding that she would never go back to another orphanage or foster home. It was her first time since deciding that this would be the rest of her life.
That realization added an extra sense of urgency. Sam wasn’t just biding her time until it got cold or the cops picked her up or she got hungry. This was it. She needed to find a way to stay warm. A way to eat. A way to survive.
One of the boys she’d met at the last group home was on and off the streets for years. He knew his way around. He’d told her the only way to survive long-term was to join up with a group. There were all kinds of groups—gangs, packs, some that considered themselves families even. It was only a few weeks until the cold season. Sam needed to join up with a group.
Maybe it was for that reason, that impending feeling, that she joined up with the first group that came her way, a pack called the Wretches. It was an apt name. They were terrible people, mostly teens that had been kicked out of everywhere else, or ones that chose the chaos of the streets.
But, thinking back, Sam didn’t think that was why she joined them. She joined the Wretches because they were awful. She wanted to be part of the worst group around because she knew that meant protection. But it also meant there was a high likelihood that another in the pack would be a worse person than she was.
It was her first night with them. It was another’s first night as well, a boy named Dylan. He still had the chubby cheeks of adolescence. Sam could tell the moment she saw him that he wouldn’t last with the Wretches. He wouldn’t even last on the streets. He was the kind of kid that needed taking care of. What she didn’t know was that this was the Wretches’ practice, to bring on two newbies at the same time so they could hold a tryout.
Dylan was trembling before the Wretches’ leader, with the apt alias “Dumpster Fire,” even brought in the dog. The alley was cold and wet, but that wasn’t what made the boy shake. He knew something was coming. The line. And his time to decide whether he would cross it.
It was a mutt. Probably had some German Shepherd in him. He was as tired and pathetic as she and Dylan were. He was a stray like them.
“This isn’t the sort of pack that takes in weaklings and losers,” Dumpster Fire said. “We’re ruthless and vicious because we need to be. If you can be, then you can join. If not, then you need to get the hell out of here.”
He tied the dog to the fire escape. Then he tossed a piece of scrap metal, roughly sharpened to a point, on the ground at Sam’s and Dylan’s feet. The clang rang out like a church bell.
“Ruthless and vicious.” He stepped away from the dog.
Dylan jumped away from the blade like it was radioactive, like touching it would poison him. It would have, and he wouldn’t have been able to handle it. It would have eaten him from the inside out.
Sam picked it up.
The pitiful thing cowered and whined. It was barely strong enough to stand. Or maybe that’s how Sam chose to see it. As a half-dead thing. Better off dead. Killing it was an act of mercy.
She wouldn’t look the dog in the eyes. She put her hand over the dog’s face and pushed it away from her. Then she drove the blade into its neck. The blood ran hot down her hand, soaking the sleeve of her only shirt. She grew angry at that, knowing her only shirt would be forever stained. The guilt pinched her gut.
The dog didn’t put up a fight. Maybe it really was better off dead. Maybe it wanted to be. It fell dead in an inelegant heap.
She dropped the blade.
Dumpster Fire clapped, a sickening smile on his face. “Ruthless.” He grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around to face the quivering Dylan. “And now, vicious.”
Her stomach tightened. “What?”
“He’s not a Wretch, but he’s on Wretch territory. He’s trespassing.”
The others surrounded him so he couldn’t run.
Dumpster Fire stepped forward. “Show him what happens to trespassers.”
Sam was grateful she’d dropped the blade. If she was still holding it, Dumpster Fire might have made her use it.
She was oddly relieved to make a fist and drive her knuckles into Dylan’s soft belly. Better that than the rusty blade. Dylan dropped to his knees, wheezing.
Sam turned from him, but Dumpster Fire wasn’t satisfied. He made her hit him again. And again. Until Dylan was a quivering, bloody mess. At least he was alive. She hoped that maybe he’d find something else to cling to for support, something that wouldn’t poison his soul.
Dumpster Fire clapped Sam on the back as they left the alley.
She was a Wretch now.
Joel’s eyes were large and unblinking. His mouth hung open. Cody looked like he was going to be sick. Reggie still seemed slightly concussed, his eyes were glazed over.
“That’s…” Joel struggled to find the right words. “Well, that’s fucked up, that’s what that is.” He scratched his head, unsure what to do with his body. “I’m sorry? Is that the appropriate response? I don’t know what to say.”
Sam shifted from side to side, also seeming uncomfortable in her own body. “I’m not looking for sympathy. That’s not why I told you that story. I told you because I’m trying to…say sorry, I guess.”
The guys all looked glazed over now.
“For what?” Joel asked.
Sam looked around like she’d missed something. She pointed at Peppy. “For picking that fight. For jabbing you about that thing. About Peppy,” she quickly added. “I’ve got a lot of baggage. I’m realizing that now.”
“You didn’t already know that?” Cody said.
Sam looked like she wanted to punch him in the jaw. “I knew my past made me what I am now. Hard. Rough around the edges. A good fighter. I guess I didn’t realize how much it affects other parts of me. Makes me untrusting. Bitter. I hate dogs, too, apparently.”
Joel shook his head. “No, you don’t. I think they just remind you of that terrible, fucked up episode in your past. But this is, like, progress or something.” He looked to the others. “Right?”
Reggie pushed himself upright. “Yeah, I think so. Confronting your past is the only way to move forward.”
Yet again, Sam was blindsided by their capacity for forgiveness and understanding. The concepts were still foreign to her.
“So, we’re cool, then?” she asked.
Joel extended his hand to her. She grasped it.
“You just need to apologi
ze to Peppy.” There was a hint of mischief in Joel’s smile.
Sam couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not. So she decided to assume he was and not squander the goodwill she’d just garnered with her openness and honesty. She looked at Peppy, who cocked his head with an expression like he understood what was happening.
“Sorry.” Her apology was flat and lacked feeling, but it was apparently enough for Peppy.
He rubbed against her leg, smearing her pants with the blood of hundreds of rats.
Cody clapped Sam and Joel on their backs. They both winced, their shoulders still tender. “That was beautiful. Now, let’s track down this rats’ nest.”
Cody had some theories as to the location of the rats’ nest. Which, unfortunately, required them to go into the rat tunnels to confirm. Luckily, they were largely empty since Peppy had run through.
“How do you know Peppy didn’t clear out the nest, too?” Joel asked as they entered the rat tunnels. Even hunched over, their backs still scraped along the roof of the tunnel.
“The nest is always well hidden,” Cody answered. “And seeing how these are rats of NIMH level rats, I assume they’ve hidden it even better than most. They wouldn’t put it so close to the tunnels they use to travel. It’d be too easily tracked.”
“Entering on our end,” Reggie said over the newly restored comms.
Without the rats to defend their sabotaged comms array, it was a quick and easy fix.
“Then why are we trudging through rat tunnels?” Joel asked.
Cody was glad he asked. He loved having the opportunity to explain himself. “Because they’re still animals. They’d still build their home close to their means of travel. It just wouldn’t be so obvious. We wouldn’t be able to find it from the outside.” He brought up the level two layout on his wristcom. “And I doubt it will show up on the plans. I think they’ll have burrowed from the main tunnels into some tertiary space.”
