by Paul Zindel
“Hi, guys,” Leroy called out as he drove the bulldozer onto the freshly dumped garbage and saw the first few rats of the day scurrying across the top of a heap of meat scraps. “I’m gonna see a lot of ya buy the farm today!” he said, stopping to grab his BB gun and fire off a few shots. “It’s gonna be my little farewell present to ya all!” Leroy knew he would have gone nuts if he hadn’t made a game out of the rats from the beginning. He could hit a rat on the run at fifty feet. Hit it right in the face. About that, he was very proud.
Leroy had noticed the increase in rats over the last few weeks. He’d shot hundreds of them, but there were so many, he’d taken to bringing along city-issued packets of poison that he’d dip in peanut butter. “Ya love peanut butter, don’t ya, fellahs?” Leroy shouted at the rats. He knew they loved peanut butter more than anything else. Their next favorites were sardines and beer! “Love yer poison with a little fish and brew, don’t ya!” He could always tell when rats had gotten a good dose, because the poison would react with the rats’ digestive juices and puff them up with gas. The rats would swell up to twice their size before they died a horrible, painful death.
Ehhhhh. Ehhh.
He’d hear them dying. In their last hour they’d stagger over the top of the dump like drunk balloons. Leroy loved pumping their bloated bodies full of BBs. He’d hit them dead in their eyes, making their eyeballs pop and leak and explode out of their sockets.
Leroy spotted a fresh pile of dumped appliances and furniture. He left the bulldozer motor running and got down with the BB gun to check things out. “Lookin’ for a good refrigerator,” he mumbled. “Wouldn’t mind findin’ a decent cuttin’ board, either.” Half his house was furnished with stuff he’d found at the dump, including a twenty-one-inch mahogany TV picture-in-picture and a SWAP button.
BING. BING.
He got off a few good shots at the bloated rats on top of the body of a dead collie somebody had thrown out with the trash. People had no respect anymore when it came to what was legal garbage and what wasn’t. He plodded farther away from the bulldozer and pulled his boots up as he sank deeper into the garbage.
For a while he forgot about the time and enjoyed shooting every rat he could. When he turned to start back to the bulldozer, he noticed a half dozen very large rats sitting on a distant ridge of garbage.
BING. BING.
He fired at them one after the other. He hit several of them right in the head. Dark red fluid gushed out of their mouths and ears. He was about fifty feet from the bulldozer and went after another line of fat rats that appeared on the highest ridge.
“I’ll shoot ya in yer ears!” Leroy yelled at them. “In yer ears and yer bellies. I’ll hit ya where it hurts!”
He spotted a swollen mother rat trying to salvage her nest of straw and threads and bottle caps. In a moment he was standing over her, pumping her mouth full of lead pellets. He saw her naked, furless babies, barely able to move, and he shot each of them, too. Their heads burst off their bodies, and he laughed.
He was laughing when the first rat bit him.
He hadn’t seen it coming. He remembered the line of them on the ridge, but suddenly, one of the rats turned and raced across the top of the garbage. Before Leroy could do anything, the rat was in the air. It landed on his shoulder, digging its claws into his collarbone and sinking its chisel-shaped front teeth into his back.
“Whoa!” Leroy yelled. “What are ya doin’? What do ya think yer doin’?”
Leroy reached around and grabbed the rat by its wet, oily fur. He tore it off of him along with a strip of his own skin, punched the rat, and hurled it away across the dump. For a few moments he tried to laugh, but he was too surprised by the attack. Confused. He couldn’t think of anything funny to tell himself. That was when he felt something he’d never felt before.
Something like …
Like fear.
It was the sight of a hundred—two hundred!—rats that came over the ridge as a unit. “Ya keep away from me!” he shouted as the rats inched closer. His voice was empty now. Hollow. He felt his arms begin to shake and his belly drew into a chilled, rock-hard knot.
CHIRRRRR. CHIRRR.
The rats made low sounds like some sort of large, half-muted fowl or seabirds. As they advanced, the garbage made its own crackling noises from under the army’s weight. His tongue grew thick and dry, and his eyes started to tear and burn. His instincts told him to get out of there.
Fast.
Get back to the bulldozer.
Leroy started off, but his boots sank deeper. He got less than ten feet before he noticed several dozen of the rats had ducked into the garbage and were writhing beneath the debris in front of him. Thick brown bodies, some as large as a foot, slithered like shining fish beneath the surface of a muddy pond. They closed in and climbed swiftly to the surface. A dozen rats began to bite at Leroy’s legs as he spun around, swinging the butt of the BB gun.
“Ya get away from me! Ya get away!”
Several larger rodents from the ridge were airborne now. They landed as a single clump on Leroy’s neck, biting him deeply. The rats hung on tight, like a living, gnawing scarf as he screamed. Twenty—thirty—rats were biting at his legs now, ripping open veins and arteries as they tripped him.
“Nooooooo!” Leroy cried, trying to crawl the distance to the bulldozer. There was a flurry at his groin, and he doubled over like a fetus as rats with large front teeth began to gnaw through his T-shirt and into the folds of his stomach.
Another mob of rats rushed Leroy, and his body began to convulse. His whole being shook violently, desperately trying to throw off the feeding rats. The wounds of his abdomen were larger now. Bloodier. Gashes two and three inches wide. Several smaller, muscular rats scooted in to wiggle their heads into his wounds. The rats crawled under his skin, their sharp, relentless teeth chewing through his layers of stomach fat toward the moist, curling warmth of his intestines.
Leroy was on his side, his legs flailing, striking out against a rusted ice chest that lay on a ruptured mattress. He could feel the rodents inside of him now. Moving. Squirming. At last a wail bubbled up through his frothing lips, a treble scream of pain and shock and amazement.
Air and lymph gushed from Leroy’s mouth, and his eyes froze open and suddenly glazed. There was a final reflex, a gentle quivering of his body, while his steaming entrails spilled out like snakes of chalk into the morning air.
To see what happens next get the book from your favorite ebook retailer.
Or visit
http://www.graymalkinmedia.com/
About the Author
PAUL ZINDEL (1936-2003) wrote more than 40 novels, including The Pigman, one of the best-selling young adult books of all time, and Pardon Me, You’re Stepping on My Eyeball! His Broadway play, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, won the Pulitzer Prize and was produced as a film directed by Paul Newman.
Mr. Zindel taught high school chemistry for ten years before turning to writing full-time. His work as an author brought him to exotic destinations around the world, from Australia’s Great Barrier Reef to the monkey forests of Indonesia. Drawing from those experiences, he created The Zone Unknown series—packed full of horror, humor, adventure and bravery—with reluctant readers in mind. It includes six titles: Loch, The Doom Stone, Raptor, Rats, Reef of Death,and Night of the Bat.
Fans can visit Paul Zindel on the Web at: http://www.paulzindel.com/
