by Hugh Howey
It was apparent from the start that Dalton was too strong for Walter. Walter could feel the boy’s tugs and shoves through the shaft of his paddle. Already, the two splashing rodents were being drawn toward the other side, and the further away they got, the less leverage Walter would have. He leaned against the rail, the unforgiving metal digging into his ribs, and locked his ankles around the posts to either side.
Dalton separated his silver rat out and pinned it underwater. Walter’s black rat clawed at the surface, its whiskers twitching with deep gasps of air. Walter pushed the animal under, careful not to slap it on the head and get a foul called.
A groan erupted from the crowd as it appeared the two boys would play a game that tested the lung capacity of their rats rather than the wits of the players. Dalton had his rat underwater first, but more depended on what sort of breath each animal had gone down with and their individual lung capacity and tendency to panic while drowning. It did little to satisfy the spectators, but Walter felt perfectly comfortable with the game plan. If he lost, he could blame his defeat on the rat and no credit would go to Dalton.
“How much on yourself?” a boy yelled in his ear.
Walter looked at the betting board. The odds were almost even; Dalton had just a hair of an edge. Even though Walter only had a few bucks on him, he couldn’t not bet on himself.
“Two,” he shouted over his shoulder.
As soon as Walter made the wager, Dalton changed the game, almost as if he’d been suckering him into betting. He let go of his own rat and slashed underwater with his paddle, whacking the side of Walter’s pole. Walter felt his paddle slip off his rat. Both animals briefly bobbed to the surface, and the crowd erupted.
Walter fumbled for his rat, but Dalton had already pulled it further away. The larger kid deftly shifted back and forth between both scrambling swimmers, waving them toward his side. Walter managed to push his rat under, but Dalton slapped him off it. Walter made a grab for Dalton’s rat, but again was knocked aside. Back and forth they went, both animals heading toward the silver side of the pit.
There wasn’t much Walter could do, he quickly realized. The bigger boy could always overpower him, doing pretty much whatever he wanted, especially as his leverage improved. He smacked Dalton’s pole in frustration. Dalton pushed back, then quickly pinned his silver rat below the surface of the water. Walter did the same with his, but now he was using much more pole than Dalton. It would be child’s play for Dalton to knock him off his rat and re-pin his own before it could break the surface and suck in another breath. It was the classic end-game for a dominate Rats position, and one that would cost Walter double his bet.
Dalton didn’t disappoint. He slid his paddle to the side and whacked Walter’s rat free. He then fumbled underwater for his own struggling animal as it bobbed toward the surface. He must’ve caught it, for he leaned back into his pole with no sign of the silver rat.
Walter’s rat, meanwhile, bobbed to the surface before he could corral it. He got his paddle on its head and pushed it back down. His brain whirled with some way to overcome the boy’s strength and leverage. As he pushed his rat to the bottom of the pool, he steered it nearer Dalton’s paddle rather than try and pull it back closer to himself. As soon as it reached the bottom, he felt Dalton strike his pole again, pushing him off the animal.
Walter acted quickly on a sudden idea, a way to use Dalton’s strength to his advantage. He felt his rat bobbing for the surface and pushed it back down, but not to pin it. He touched it to the bottom, then slid over and pinned Dalton’s rat as it tried to swim up. He held the other boy’s rat in place and waited while Dalton performed his own maneuvers beneath the murky water. No rat bobbed to the surface. Walter took his eyes off the poles and watched Dalton, who was sneering with concentration. He was holding something down right beside Walter’s paddle, and seemed intent on crushing it. Walter waited. Just as Dalton was about to look up at the scoreboard to check his rat’s vitals, Walter yelled out: “Twenty on black!” Far more money than he had on him.
The crowd hissed. Dalton narrowed his eyes, and Walter could see his face grow dull with nerves and confusion. Walter’s rat had half the breath of Dalton’s, making it an odd wager. The other boy acted swiftly, taking another good swipe at Walter’s pole, and Walter felt his paddle fly off the silver rat.
Dalton’s rat.
He stirred the water furiously as if groping for the struggling animal, and the crowd began to chant Dalton’s name. Walter caught a glimpse of the rat below the water’s murky surface. He moved his paddle clumsily all around it, whipping the dirty water into a froth of wave and bubble, his seeming desperation a ploy to keep the color of the animal hidden while also allowing it to regain its breath. He fought the urge to yell out an even higher bet, knowing that would appear foolish and suspicious. Instead, he hissed and cursed at himself as he pretended to struggle with the long pole. The chants of “Dalton” and “Smiths” grew furious, the last filling the room with a powerful English-like hiss, which made the hair on Walter’s head stand on-end.
Walter had a brief moment of panic when individuals among the crowd began pointing up to the scoreboard and tugging on their neighbors. Walter didn’t look himself, fearing Dalton would grow suspicious. He concentrated on his efforts to conceal the boy’s rat while Dalton unknowingly worked to drown Walter’s.
The end of the game was a confusing, riotous affair. When the flatline buzzer sounded, most of the kids erupted to celebrate their friend’s victory, and money went flying from hand to hand. An observant minority, however, began working to undo the celebrations. The winner’s light pointed toward Walter, and the scoreboard reflected a truth incongruent to their own eyes.
There was a moment of stunned silence before the next wave of yelling—of angry yelling—began. The kids shuffled bets around and looked sternly in Walter’s direction.
Meanwhile, in the pit itself, a black rat bobbed up, its arms curled and lifeless. Nearby, a silver rat pawed at the rippled and muddy surface, looking for a way out.
Walter dropped his pole into the pits and did the same.
34 · The Pits
“You’d better run,” a boy beside Walter suggested.
It sounded more like a threat than a warning. Walter scanned the crowd and realized it was a good idea. He also realized he wouldn’t be seeing the two hundred forty dollars he’d just won on the twelve to one odds against. Nobody was amused with how he’d played the game.
As his pole splashed into the pit, Walter pushed his way out of a crowd still correcting their bets. Kids hissed and shouted at him as he forced his way through, but they weren’t about to give chase until their money was squared. Walter ran up the steps toward the luck machines, turned, and scanned the crowd for Dalton. He saw the boy still in the silver outcrop, gripping the rail with both hands and sneering down into the water. For Walter, it was worth at least half the bet he was leaving behind. He spun around and wove through the maze of machines designed to rob men of their money and confidence, and out to the market beyond.
Walter blended in with the light stream of late-night shoppers and worked to slow his breathing. In the hush of the Palan night, the roar of the mob he’d just escaped rang as echoes in his ears. He had left his apartment looking for a bit of excitement and found more than enough to sate him for a day or two. Leaving the markets behind, he skipped over a gutter bridge and shadow-hopped his way back home.
Walter was in such a good mood as he passed the Regal and turned into the alley by its side, that he nearly made a serious Junior Pirate gaffe. He entered the alley with a loud walk and along the edge of a cone of streetlight. There were only a few apartments behind the Regal, so the daily habit of finding it empty had him growing sloppy over time. If he hadn’t seen the figure at the alley’s end moments before the man turned around, Walter would’ve missed out on the heist of a thousand lifetimes.
By the time the man turned to survey the noise, Walter had flushed his skin to dull t
he sheen of his exposed flesh and moved quickly and silently into the alley’s darkness. He stood motionless, his back against the rough brick of the Regal, while the man at the far end peered past him and out into the quiet street.
Walter waited.
Nothing on him moved, save his eyes. He picked out several darkened routes to his apartment door, just in case. He also sized up the figure crouching a hundred feet beyond his stoop. By his bulk, Walter pegged him as Human, which was out of the ordinary for this time of the rains. He watched the man wipe his brow—and even though the humidity was creeping up, Walter sensed the gesture was as much from nerves as condensation. He took in deep sniffs of the alley’s air, but the figure was too far away for him to pick up anything.
After a long moment of staring his way, the man turned back to something at his feet. Walter took immediate advantage. He danced through the shadows along the blackest route, halving the distance between himself and the stranger. Crouching behind his apartment’s crumbling landing, he peered through the flood-rusted rails and watched the man sift through the detritus in the alley’s dead-end.
Finally, the man stood and scanned the alley. He shuffled noisily in Walter’s direction and could be heard mumbling to himself as he passed. Walter tried to catch a glimpse of the man’s face, but the figure happened to be glancing over his other shoulder as he hurried by. When he reached the end of the alley, the Human looked one direction, started to head off the other way, stopped, then hurried toward the Regal’s entrance.
The pathetic display did nothing to undo Walter’s disdain for Humans. That such a dull, noisy, numb-nosed race prospered while his people languished could only be attributed to the unlucky geography of his planet. He knew from his own studies that Earth had many continents and very little ocean. Rains there came sporadically and rarely flooded. Give his people such a place and see who’s naming other people’s stars, then. Oh, he would love to hear a Human throat attempt to gurgle his native tongue. And to think of never needing to hiss English again!
Walter stood from his hiding spot and glowered after the departed figure. His joyous mood from the game of Rats had eroded, marred by the presence of the Human. He turned and crept down the alley to see if the man had left any traces of his curious actions, sniffing the air as he went.
The first thing he noticed was a reek of paranoia. The man had left behind a braided odor of lies of such density, only one living in abject terror of discovery—discovery of something bad—could have created it. That certainly got Walter’s attention. He followed the scent to its locus: a heap of alley trash seemingly no different from the rest.
Walter stooped to inspect the bag. He wiggled its white plastic mouth open and peered inside. It looked to be normal trash: rotting fruit rinds, balls of paper, a tin can. Walter picked the bag up to look under it, but it was caught on something. He moved some of the neighboring trash out of the way and saw that the bag had been tied down to an iron rod poking out of the pavement. Someone didn’t want the bag moved, even in the floods.
Walter peeked back inside at the garbage. He considered running to his apartment for gloves so he could sift through the foulness, then noticed something odd about the mouth of the bag. There were two layers. A bag within a bag!
Walter’s heart raced with the series of discoveries. He knew, as surely as stumbling across a wallet in the market, that he was about to uncover treasures. He glanced over his shoulder at the mouth of the alley and began digging between the two plastic liners.
At the very bottom, behind the cool dampness of the mucky filth sitting inside the inner bag, he felt a cloth bundle. Walter pulled it out to see what he had lucked upon.
Clothes. A stupid Navy uniform, but the pockets felt heavy. Walter reached in one and came out with a radio. He felt the urge to twist the power on, but radios were poison, too easily traceable. And besides, they were worthless unless you had friends with the same models. He chucked the thing over the wall at the end of the alley, taking delight in the sound of its splintering demise on the other side.
In another pocket, Walter found a neat surprise: A gun. Navy issue. He figured it would fetch at least what he should’ve won at Rats. He slipped the thing into his waistband and rummaged through the rest of the pockets.
Nothing. There was a row of medals above the breast of the jacket, so he took those, just in case any of his friends would be dumb enough to trade for them. He then flicked the useless jacket over another heap of garbage.
Walter patted the pants down next and felt a single item. At first he thought it was a credit chip, and his mood again waxed. When he saw it was a Navy ID badge, his stomach sank and swelled at once. He’d seen them before, mostly from wallets lifted off soldiers on training furlough. They were like lottery stubs, always with the allure of high-ranking passcodes and first-class tickets off Palan, but usually coming up as worthless as the plastic they were printed on. Part of Walter knew that he would access the chip and find useless codes he could just hack in his sleep if he wanted. But another part, the hopeful gambler inside, imagined the man was an Admiral with codes that could summon havoc-wreaking forces with a single dispatch, or admit him to a distant university on some foreign aid GI bill.
Walter clutched the plastic chip, which may or may not contain his dreams, and tossed the black pants as far from him as he could. He thought about rushing to his mother and telling her about the curious man in the alley, but he needed to get to a computer first. There was no point exciting her weakened heart only to let it down when nothing came of the find.
Walter slipped the chip into his favorite pocket, the small one with the silent zipper that he greased daily. He trotted down the alley and considered which computer to use: the one at the library kiosk, or the one at Hommul HQ? And should he try and pawn off the gun immediately, or spread some seeds amongst his friends to drum up the price? Or should he just keep it?
Walter was so distracted by the decisions as he slipped past his apartment door that he didn’t notice it opening. Nor did he note the three large Palans sliding out into the night after him.
••••
“Walter? That you, boy?”
Walter’s heart skipped a beat. He slid to a stop in the alley. He looked for the deepest shadow to dive into, when a powerful, meaty hand slapped down on his collarbone, fixing him in place.
“Aren’t you out a little early to be on a proper raid?”
Walter turned and met the squinty gaze of his uncle, then saw the old man was escorted by two of his large goons.
“And aren’t you a little early to come pay your respects?” Walter asked. He nodded toward his apartment door. “She’s not dead yet, you know.”
His uncle laughed and slapped his back. “Not yet, you are quite right. Doing a fine job of tending to her, I see.”
Walter shrugged. “Some other clan leaders pitched in equipment,” he said.
His uncle wagged a finger at him, and the two brutes to either side shifted their bulk as if eager to put some of it to use. “Careful,” he said. “You know I’d do more if the clan wasn’t hurting like it is.”
The clan wouldn’t be hurting if you did more, Walter thought.
“What’s this?” his uncle asked. One of his fat hands darted toward Walter’s belly and came away with the pistol.
Walter flinched, but it was too late.
“Hey—”
“Very nice,” his uncle said, turning the gun around in his hand to inspect it. One of the brutes stepped closer to get a good look. Walter’s uncle beamed. “Excellent find. I’ll add it to the clan coffers.”
“But that’s—”
“You’ll get your share, of course.” He sniffed the air. “Was there something else you wanted to tell me about?”
Walter shook his head and thought of mintberry shakes and shiny new laptops.
His uncle smiled. “Don’t overdo the pleasantries, Nephew. I’m liable to think you’re plotting my demise.” He handed the gun to one of his go
ons, his eyes never leaving Walter’s. “Now tell me, Junior Pirate, since you obviously think I’m performing below the watermark—If you were running Hommul clan, what would you do differently?”
One of the goons chuckled. The other looked over the gun before stuffing it into the shadows of his jacket.
“I’d invest in ships,” Walter blurted out. His thoughts on the matter were no secret. He watched the gun—his treasure—disappear.
“You’d sink us with a fleet of ships, would you?” His uncle laughed. “No clan has ever prospered by wasting their spoils on ships.”
“No clan has ever led without them,” Walter said. He looked back to his uncle.
His uncle laughed even harder, his throaty bellow filling the alley and flooding out beyond.
“You think this is about leading?” He pointed out the alley. “Do you think the Smiths own their ships? They don’t. Terran banks own their ships and they own the Smiths with their interest payments. What do the Smiths get in return? The headache of managing this flooding place and the thrill of first recruits, that’s what. You think this is about who’s in charge? Boy, you have no idea. This is about who can pay the rent, who can raid enough to get by. Scrap and salvage, boy, that’s what’ll see us through the rains, not your blasted pirate ships.”
Walter clenched his jaw lest his mouth get him in trouble. His uncle stepped to the side and waved at his apartment’s flood-high stoop.
“Now get along. Go see to my sister in case it’s the last chance you get.”
Walter was glad to. He squeezed past his uncle and between the two towers of goon.
“And no more talk of ships,” his uncle called out after him. “Nobody ever made a dime on the blasted things. They’re just holes in space that suck your money away.”
More laughter filled the alley. It chased Walter up the steps and mocked him for being stupid while he fumbled uncharacteristically with the locks. He hurried with them as fast as he could and took longer as a result. After working the last lock loose, he slipped inside with his mom and the machines, slamming the door shut to block out the awful and humiliating stench in the alley.
