“Raffie, listen.” Next to me, Oggie stops abruptly.
I cock my ears. In the distance, I hear a soft gurgle. “Water!” I gasp. We follow the sound to a pipe. It’s dry inside but I can just make out the sound of water at the other end. Relief floods through me. “This way,” I tell Oggie.
We climb into the pipe. It’s smooth and cool inside. Our paws patter softly as we walk …
… and walk …
… and walk.
“Does this pipe ever end?” Oggie moans. “I need a break.” He slides down to his belly and buries his snout in his paws. “I’m tired and I’m thirsty and my paws hurt.”
“Me too, but we have to keep going, Oggie.” I nudge my brother back to his paws. He sags against me as we move forward. “Will you tell me a story?” he whimpers. I swallow hard. My throat is so dry that it hurts to talk, but I tell Oggie a story anyway. “Another,” he begs when I finish. So I tell him another story, and then another, as we drag ourselves through the pipe.
“Look!” I croak at last. There’s light up ahead. The sound of water grows stronger. I get a fresh burst of energy at the thought of something to drink. I nudge Oggie forward. “Almost there…”
The pipe spits us out into another abandoned subway tunnel. Grimy water flows along the tracks. I lower my head and guzzle hungrily. Next to me, Oggie does the same.
Once we’ve drunk our fill, I look up eagerly. “We just need to find an exit,” I say breathlessly. I scan the ceiling. Nothing. I look again. There has to be an opening somewhere. “Do you see anything?” I ask Oggie.
I scan the ceiling three more times before I finally accept it. Oggie and I say it at the same time. “There’s no exit.”
“It’s okay,” I say slowly. I clear my throat. I don’t want Oggie to hear the fear creeping into my voice. “We’ll find one soon. At least here there’s water to follow.”
We walk along the tracks, our paws splashing lightly. The walls around us are damp and crumbling. Every few minutes a piece of plaster splinters off, crashing to the ground.
“Watch out!” I yell. I shove Oggie out of the way, just before a huge chunk of plaster hits the ground.
Oggie moans, and my stomach growls with hunger, but we keep going. We dodge traps and poison. We avoid crumbling plaster. I don’t know how long we’ve been walking when I hear something strange.
I stop short.
There it is again. The worst sound in the whole entire world.
A hiss.
“Not now,” I whisper. I’m shaking harder than a napkin in a storm as I turn around.
I can just make it out in the distance. Sharp claws. Arched back. High, bristling tail. A cat is at the other end of the tunnel.
CHAPTER
42
Smell a Rat
The cat glides toward us. “I smell a rat,” she hisses. “Two for the price of one.” Her eyes lock on Oggie. “And look at that. One’s a baby. My favorite delicacy.”
Oggie backs into me. “Raffie?” he squeaks.
I bare my incisors at the cat, but she just laughs and bares hers back. They’re twice as big as mine. “I’ll start with the baby,” she decides.
“Run,” I whisper to Oggie.
Oggie scurries away. Again, the cat laughs. “Look at my paws compared to his. It doesn’t matter how fast he runs, I will catch him.” She strikes the air with a paw. Her claws are out. “And then I’ll catch you.”
My whiskers tremble. The cat’s right. We don’t stand a chance in a chase. I look desperately around the tunnel. I have to do something! To my right, another piece of plaster flakes off and falls onto the tracks with a splash. That’s it! I race over to the wall. I dig my incisors in and start to gnaw.
The cat takes off after Oggie. I gnaw harder. A large chunk of plaster comes off in my mouth.
The cat picks up speed. “I’m starving,” she hisses.
Oggie screams. He runs, but the cat runs faster. “Help!” Oggie shrieks.
I toss the piece of plaster into the air. “Tail ball!” I shout. The plaster hurtles down toward me. I stretch out my tail and bat it to Oggie. “The cat’s mouth is the goal!”
The cat lunges for Oggie. Oggie jumps away, diving for the plaster. He catches it on the tip of his tail.
“Get in my belly,” the cat growls. She opens her jaws. Her teeth gleam as she goes for my brother.
“Take that!” Oggie screams. He whips the plaster at her. It zooms right into her mouth.
“OW!” the cat howls. She stumbles backward, choking in pain. The plaster is stuck in the back of her mouth.
“Score!” Oggie exclaims. I run over and he throws himself on top of me. “We did it! We won! We—”
“Need to get out of here,” I finish.
The cat thrashes her head, howling wildly. “She’ll get that out eventually,” I say breathlessly. “We don’t want to be here when she does.”
I spot an air vent. It’s much too small for a cat to fit through. “Perfect,” I pant. We squeeze through the vent. On the other side is a row of cinder blocks.
“I can’t believe we did it!” Oggie exclaims as we shimmy through the cinder blocks. “Did you see the way I caught the ball? And how I threw it right into the cat’s mouth?” We emerge into another tunnel. Water runs through it, guiding our way. I take a quick glance around. There are still no exits. But at least I don’t see any eyes here, or any tails. We’re safe, for now. “Tail ball champions forever!” Oggie cheers.
I’m wobbly and still breathing hard, but I can’t help but laugh. “We were pretty amazing,” I admit. We follow the tunnel around a sharp bend. “Just wait until Lulu hears about—”
SNAP.
Something slams down on my leg. White-hot pain explodes through my body.
“Ow!” I rear into the air, but something yanks me back. Black spots flicker in my vision. I try to move again, but the pain is too much. A whimper escapes me as I look down. I’m on a flat wooden board. A metal bar is pressed tightly over my leg.
A sob shudders through me. I’m caught in a rattrap.
CHAPTER
43
Bull’s-Eye
Pain reels through my body. It turns the world to fire. It burns inside my bones. It hurts to move. It hurts to breathe. It even hurts to twitch my whiskers.
“Raffie!” Oggie cries. “No no no no.”
I look at Oggie. He swims in and out of focus. “You’re going to have to pull the bar up, Oggie,” I groan. “Just enough for me to get out.”
“Okay,” Oggie whispers. He wraps his front paws around the metal bar. With a grunt, he throws himself backward.
The bar doesn’t move.
I grit my incisors against the pain. “Again,” I say. “Use your teeth too.”
Oggie gnaws at the bar, but nothing happens. It’s too thick. He wraps his paws even tighter and pulls with his whole body.
Nothing.
He pulls again, and again, and again. His fur rips. The metal digs into his paws. He gasps in pain, but he keeps pulling. Still the bar doesn’t move. He tries again. The bar slips out of his grip, and he goes stumbling backward.
“I can’t.” He collapses on the ground, panting hard. “I’m too small. I can’t do it.” He curls up in a ball and hides his snout. Loud, heaving sobs rip through him. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll never be unstoppable.”
I look around desperately, hoping for inspiration. But none comes. All I see are crumbling walls and rusty tracks and an old, black grate, high up in the ceiling—I gasp. An exit! Through it I spot a sliver of sky. Soft morning light streaks across it, brightening the darkness. I blink in surprise. There’s no water rushing through the grate, no wind howling above. The storm is over.
If I weren’t trapped, we could finally leave the Roadway.
The world spins around me. I close my eyes and fight the dizziness. Even my mind is spinning: images and dates spiraling together. Kaz and Marigold and Rex and Walter and Sabrina and Kaz’s dad … day bl
eeding into night back into day … and now the sun is rising again outside. We must have passed a full night in the Roadway. That makes it three whole nights away from my family, and now night giving way to a third day … a third day …
A third day!
My eyes pop open. “Oggie,” I say slowly. It hurts to even say a word aloud, but I talk through the pain. “Do you know what today is?”
Oggie peeks out from under his paws. “The day I failed you?” he says between sobs.
“No.” My leg throbs, but I ignore it. “It’s your birthday.”
Oggie sits up. He’s still crying, but I see the tiniest flash of excitement in his eyes. “It is?”
“And you know what I always do on your birthday?” I continue.
Oggie sniffles. “You tell me my birthday story,” he whispers.
“Exactly.” I think of the story I told Kaz back in the pipe behind Rex’s wall. Oggie’s birthday story. Slowly, a fuzzy plan takes shape in my mind. “Since we’re stuck here anyway, why don’t I tell you your story?”
Oggie scoots closer. He hiccups as he fixes his round, wide eyes on mine. “You have a story for me?”
“Of course I do,” I tell him. “I always have a birthday story for you.”
Oggie stops crying. His body relaxes. Seeing that helps my pain recede, just a little. “Once upon a subway station,” I begin, “it was Raffie the Unstoppable’s favorite time of day: before humans start their rush hour, but after the other rats drag their forages home behind the wall. Raffie the Unstoppable was alone on the subway platform.”
Already the story is taking over, pumping through me. It makes everything else feel distant, even the pain. “Raffie the Unstoppable was enjoying a relaxing forage when he heard a noise. It was a buzzing sound, a loud one. He turned and saw them. Bees. A whole swarm.”
As I talk, the tunnel disappears. The rattrap disappears. It’s just me and a swarm of killer bees. The story pours out of me: how the bees attacked, how Raffie the Unstoppable tried to battle them, how there were too many, how the bees were winning. Then the voice across the tracks, tempting the bees away. It belonged to a small, lithe rat named Oggie the Brave. I explain how this young rat tricked the bees, how he risked his life for Raffie the Unstoppable.
“ZAP! ZAP! ZAP!” I finish. “One by one, the track’s electric third rail zapped the bees down, until not a single buzz rang through the air. Oggie the Brave had beaten the bees and saved the life of Raffie the Unstoppable.”
I blink. The tunnel comes back into focus. Oggie is leaning in close, his snout hanging open. “The end,” I say.
“Oggie the Brave,” Oggie breathes. “I like the sound of that. It makes me sound unstoppable. Just like Raffie!”
“Don’t you see, Oggie?” My pain resurfaces, shooting from my paw all the way up to my ears. I grit my teeth against it. “You can be.” I think of what Kaz said before I left the park to find Oggie on my own. The words that got me all the way here. “Just be you and you’ll be unstoppable.”
I drop my head. The pain is too much. It burns through me, making me cry out. The story took everything I had left. I squeeze my eyes shut.
I hear sounds: shuffling, scraping, gnawing. I try to open my eyes, but the pain is too great. I’m slipping under it, drowning in it. Blackness creeps in …
THUD!
The sound shakes me awake. Vibrations shimmer through me. I wrench my eyes open. Oggie is slamming something against the bar of my trap. Slowly, my vision sharpens. It’s a brick. Oggie has gnawed it to make it resemble a hammer. He slams the hammer into the trap again and again. Fiery pain burns through me, but it’s working. The bar is cracking.
“I might not be very big,” Oggie pants. He slams the hammer down. “And I might not be very strong.” Again the hammer comes down, rattling the trap. “But it’s like you always tell me: I’m a very, very good gnawer.”
SLAM! The hammer collides with the bar.
THUD! The metal bends under the pressure.
CRACK! The bar splinters apart.
My paw comes free.
“You did it!” I limp out of the trap. Oggie wraps his paws around me. He’s panting and heaving, but he’s never looked so happy in his life. “Oggie the Brave!” I say.
Oggie presses his snout to mine. His whiskers tickle my fur. “Just like Raffie.”
CHAPTER
44
Till the Cows Come Home
Oggie scurries up to the grate in the ceiling. It takes me longer. I lurch along slowly, dragging my injured leg behind me. “Ow,” I mutter with each step. “Ow. Ow. Ow.” Finally, I reach Oggie. One by one, we squeeze through the grate.
We’re aboveground, on a street. The sky is streaked with colors, and the roads are mostly empty. It’s morning, but just barely. I blink in the pale light. I see a row of short, squat buildings. I see a single human, biking down the street. I see—
I blink again.
That can’t be right. I rub my paws over my eyes. After the blackness of the Roadway, the sunlight is playing tricks on my vision.
“What do we do now?” Oggie asks. I ignore him and limp closer.
A square of dirt on the edge of the sidewalk … A thin tree sprouting out of it … A tiny wooden fence, with a small sign hanging on it … I slide down to my belly in front of the sign. Lulu could have read it in one second flat, but it takes me a minute to spell it out.
Florence’s Fairy Garden.
I peek through the fence. It’s all there. Two tiny stools. A little bridge. A rock pathway leading to a tiny door at the foot of the tree. “This is it,” I gasp.
Oggie scampers up behind me. “This is what?”
“The last time Dad took me out for my sidewalk survival lessons, we had one close encounter. A man was taking a puppy on a middle-of-the-night walk. They got so close I could smell the kibble on the dog’s breath. Dad told me to remember the three Ds: duck, dash, and disappear.’”
Oggie stares at me blankly.
“This is it, Oggie,” I explain. “This is where we disappeared! Florence’s Fairy Garden. Dad joked that the fairies were ‘just our size.’ We sat on those stools!” I get more excited with each word. “We climbed that bridge! We tried to open that door—it doesn’t really open, by the way. We were right here. Which means…”
Oggie’s eyes meet mine. They’re extra wide. His whiskers quiver hopefully.
“We’re close to home,” I say. “We’re really, really close.”
I drag myself back to my paws and balance on three legs. I turn in a slow, wobbly circle. “Yes,” I murmur. “There’s the store that Dad said Lulu loves, the one with all the human accessories. And there’s the bush that’s filled with bees—that’s where I got the idea for your birthday story, Oggie. And there’s the pizza place that smelled so good…”
I hobble down the empty sidewalk over to the pizza place. The smells pouring out of it are so scrumptious that Oggie squeaks with delight. I sniff eagerly. It’s not just any pizza. It’s our pizza. The one Pizza Girl brings to the subway every afternoon. The one she throws in the treasure chest. The pizza that started this all.
“When I went out with Dad, I begged him to stop here. But he said no, a rat who listens to his stomach is a rat who doesn’t make it home. Then he dragged me down this sidewalk…” I limp my way slowly along the sidewalk. Oggie runs in circles around me to keep my pace. “… Then down this block.” I pant loudly. It’s exhausting to walk on three legs, but I keep going. “And around this corner…”
I stop short. Up ahead, a stairwell rises up to meet the sidewalk. A sign hangs on its railing. I can’t read it from here, but I know exactly what it says. Subway. “Our station,” I whisper.
“We’re here!” Oggie squeals. “We’re really, really—uh-oh.”
I hear the human footsteps a beat after Oggie. They’re making their way down the sidewalk. Straight toward us.
Oggie shoves me behind a tree. I land in a heap, my hurt paw crumpled beneath me. “Ow,”
I groan.
Oggie throws himself on top of me. “Oggie the Brave to the rescue!” he says.
“Thanks,” I moan. Soon the footsteps are right next to the tree, then past it. I wait a minute before peeking out. The street is empty now. “Let’s try that again,” I say.
Oggie sticks close to me as I limp down the sidewalk. We pause at the top of the stairs. The familiar smell of stale subway air blasts up. Down below, a train roars into the station on the other side of the tracks. The ground rumbles beneath our paws. A few pairs of human footsteps patter softly in the distance. With a screech, the train takes off again. And then there’s only silence.
My stomach flips. “Ready?” I ask.
Oggie presses close to me. “Let’s go home,” he says.
Side by side, we climb down the stairs.
CHAPTER
45
Like Ducks to Water
We scurry around the ticket teller’s booth and under the turnstiles. I slow to a stop on the platform. My chest squeezes. Everything looks exactly the same. The shiny steel tracks. The stain-splattered floor. The wad of gum mashed into the scratched wooden bench. I spot my favorite treasure chest, empty from the thief’s last visit.
It’s all exactly the same, but it’s different, too. This place used to be the whole world to me. But the world is a much bigger place than I ever knew. It’s streets and parks and sky and grass and dark, lethal tunnels. It’s dogs and pigeons and squirrels and, of course, humans. It’s good, it’s bad, it’s everything in between. “The station seems smaller,” I say.
Oggie leans against me. I wobble a little under his weight, but I don’t shrug him off. “Thanks for saving me, Raffie,” Oggie says quietly.
I wrap my tail around him. “Don’t forget you saved me too.”
The ground rumbles beneath my paws. The air changes: loosening, swirling around us. A train is nearing the station.
“Come on,” I say. I’m jittery with excitement. I can’t wait one more second to see my parents and Lulu.
Raffie on the Run Page 16
