Oh, Rats!

by Tor Seidler

  High above them Junior was still clinging to the building. But without his cargo it seemed pointless to try for the cornice, so he started back down. Having to feel blindly with his back paws made it very slow going, and even without the extra weight his muscles began to give out. He started trembling again. When he reached the spot he’d fallen from the first time, he lost his grip.

  He landed on the sidewalk with the softest of thuds. The policewoman, who’d returned to the front steps, didn’t even glance his way, so Lucy led a squad of rats over and carried him into the gutter, where he sat up woozily. His right side, the one he’d landed on, was throbbing from head to tail, but all he could think of was apologizing to his father for his failure. He struggled to his paws and took a few limping steps toward the red sedan. But there was no one on the rear bumper.

  “Where’s my father?” he asked.

  The truth was, as soon as the stick of dynamite had hit the sidewalk, Augustus had jumped down off the bumper in disgust and headed back to Battery Park. All anyone could tell Junior, however, was that his father had left.

  “I had no idea rats could climb like that,” Phoenix exclaimed. “You nearly made it.”

  “I can’t believe how far you got!” Emily gushed. “What’s it like so high up?”

  “All a waste,” Junior muttered, eyeing the stick of dynamite miserably.

  Of the three elders, only the youngest had managed the trek to the substation. She asked Phoenix if he would make the attempt.

  “If the pier gets saved,” Beckett said, giving Phoenix a nudge, “Mrs. P. might have a nice surprise for you.”

  “What’s that?” Phoenix asked.

  “A pilatory.”

  “A what?”

  “Something to help your fur grow back.”

  In fact, the pleading look in Lucy’s eyes had already persuaded Phoenix that he should go, but the idea of getting some of his fur back was an added incentive.

  Junior watched unhappily as Lucy and Beckett cinched the dynamite and matchbox onto Phoenix’s back with rubber bands. For a moment he was afraid Lucy was going to give Phoenix a kiss good luck. But, even if she’d intended to, she had no chance before the elder hissed, “The human’s looking the other way! Go!”

  Phoenix hoisted himself out of the gutter and scampered across the sidewalk to the southwest corner of the building. As he started up the stonework, Lucy grabbed Beckett’s paw. Junior refused to watch—no way!—but soon found he couldn’t help himself. In fact, every beady eye in the gutter was glued to Phoenix.

  On his previous ascent Phoenix hadn’t bothered to rest, but the added weight and broadsiding sun doubled the degree of difficulty. When he took a breather at about the spot where Junior had released his cargo, Junior found himself half hoping Phoenix would do likewise. But at the same time he didn’t want to lose the pier. So he wasn’t totally crushed to see Phoenix continue up. When Phoenix made it onto the lower ledge of the cornice, Lucy squeezed her brother’s paw so tightly it was all Beckett could do not to squeal in pain.

  Phoenix inched over to the middle of the building and focused hard on the flagpole, turning the distant sidewalk to a blur. The dynamite had shifted a bit to one side, so he readjusted it before making the short jump. He landed nicely, but halfway out the pole he stopped in alarm. Unless his eyes were deceiving him, the support wire was gone! He gave the surveillance camera a sidelong look. Drat! The humans must have removed the wire after seeing the video of him climbing it. Without the wire there was no way to the top.

  He was surprised how devastated he felt. Somehow he’d gotten totally wrapped up in the fate of the rats’ pier. But all he could do now was climb back down.

  As he turned himself around, he heard a fluttering sound. A gust of breeze pushing at the flag, he figured.

  But that wasn’t it.

  18

  ROTTEN TOMATOES

  WHEN LUCY SAW A BIG bird swoop out of the sky and snatch Phoenix off the flagpole, she fell against her brother. Beckett wasn’t much support. He almost fainted himself. As for the other rats, so many of them shrieked at the sight of their last chance being carried away that the policewoman heard them and made her way curiously toward the curb.

  By the time she reached it, the rats were already scurrying off under the parked cars. Lucy was in such a state that she darted right out into the street without looking either way. It was sheer luck that there was no traffic at that moment and she wasn’t flattened.

  “He’s still alive!” Lucy cried, seeing the bird flapping off toward the river with Phoenix wriggling in its talons. “Come on!”

  She angled back to the gutter and raced toward the sinking sun so fast the bell around her neck tinkled and Beckett and the others could barely keep up. Her mad thought was that if Phoenix could squirm free of the bird’s grasp, they might be able to catch him. But they encountered countless obstacles, for it was the time of day when humans were coming home from work. And even if the rats hadn’t had to dodge taxis and hide under mailboxes, they would have been no match for the bird’s speed. By the time they reached the West Side Highway, the bird was well out over the river, wheeling north.

  The rats who’d remained behind in the pier were waiting anxiously just inside the sliding door. Even Helen, Junior’s mother, had descended from her crate. All they needed was one look at the faces of the returning rats to know things hadn’t gone well.

  “What happened?” the eldest elder asked, wringing his paws.

  Lucy didn’t even break stride, running straight to the back of the pier, out the crack, and onto the dock. A traffic helicopter was hovering over the river, but there was no sign of the wretched bird. The view north up the Hudson was mostly blocked by the end of the next pier.

  In her panic all Lucy could think to do was go to Mrs. P. The elderly rat was getting some much needed sleep, but Lucy gave her a violent shake, crying out that Phoenix had been snatched.

  “What do you mean?” Mrs. P. said groggily.

  “A bird grabbed him off the flagpole!”

  Blinking, Mrs. P. sat bolt upright on her cushion. “What kind of bird?”

  “A big one with claws!”

  “Great heavens! He’d been through so much already.”

  “And he was only trying to help us! The bird carried him upriver, but I can’t see where from the dock. I think he’s still alive!”

  Mrs. P. thought hard for a moment and said, “Do you know my old place?”

  Lucy shook her head. Mrs. P. heaved herself up and got to the door quicker than Lucy had ever seen her.

  “Highest crate in that stack,” Mrs. P. said, pointing. “Up top there’s a yardstick that reaches a hole in the roof. I used to go up when I wanted to get away from it all. You can see the whole river from there.”

  Lucy dashed away without even apologizing for waking her.

  Normally, Beckett would never have considered climbing a tall stack of crates, but when he saw his sister doing just that, he followed her. The crates were offset, so it was nothing like scaling the substation: more like climbing a steep set of stairs. Still, by the time Beckett pulled himself onto the top of the stack, he was panting. Lucy was frantically trying to maneuver the end of a yardstick into a smallish hole in the roof. Beckett caught his breath and lent her a paw. As soon as the yardstick was in place, Lucy scampered up. Beckett followed, but he slipped off halfway up. It took him three tries before he made it onto the roof.

  The view from up there was panoramic. You could see from the downtown skyscrapers to the ones in Midtown. To the south a regatta of sailboats raced by the Statue of Liberty. To the west, the sun was sinking over New Jersey. But Lucy stared north.

  “See that dot?” she said, pointing.

  Squinting, Beckett could just make out a tiny speck high above a barge. “Uh-oh,” he said.

  Moments later, the dot disappeared from view. Lucy gave him a despairing look. “What kind of bird was it?”

  “An eagle or a hawk, most likely. O
r maybe a falcon.”

  “What do they do to squirrels?”

  Beckett winced. “Nothing good.”

  They sat there a long, long time, staring grimly upriver. The only birds they spotted were gulls. Eventually the sun ducked behind a tall apartment complex in New Jersey. The wispy cirrus clouds on the horizon turned amber and pink. In the pale blue higher up, two jets left crisscrossing contrails, taking Lucy back to the day they’d gone to the dock to watch another sunset. It seemed unspeakably cruel that tonight’s was even more beautiful, since this time they had no chance of rescuing Phoenix.

  Suddenly Beckett jumped up. “Look!” he croaked, pulling Lucy up as well. “Is that the bird?”

  High overhead a large bird of prey was flapping north.

  “Can’t be,” Lucy said, seeing that its talons were empty.

  They sank back down on the roof. The sunset dimmed. The city brightened. Down below they heard rats bustling around, packing up last-minute items. Eventually, a gigantic ocean liner came steaming down the river. Beckett read out the name on the hull: BREAKAWAY. The Breakaway was all lit up, and when it came even with the pier, it totally blocked their view of New Jersey. It was so close they could hear the voices of the passengers leaning on the deck railings. They got a start when the passengers let out a communal gasp. The people were all pointing—right at them! Could the humans see them on the pier roof? But when Lucy glanced over her shoulder, she saw what the humans were really looking at.

  “How?” she cried, scrambling back up.

  The city had gone totally dark again! Beckett turned and stared at the blackened skyline in amazement.

  “Maybe that bird brought Phoenix back or something,” he said.

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  Nevertheless, they scurried off the roof and down the stack of crates. The floor of the pier was littered with bundles, but the rats were all gathered around Mrs. P., who was standing just outside her doorway.

  “No sign of Phoenix?” she called as Lucy and Beckett came up.

  “No—” Lucy began.

  “But the humans’ power is off again,” Beckett interrupted.

  “So I hear,” Mrs. P. said. “It’s bizarre. How do you think it happened?”

  The rats fell silent to hear Beckett’s theory. But all he said was, “It doesn’t really matter.”

  “What do you mean?” Mrs. P. asked.

  “Well, they read our warning. And now they’ve lost their power. They’re bound to think we’re responsible, even though we’re not.”

  “There’s something in that,” Mrs. P. agreed. “I just wish we hadn’t had to lose Phoenix.”

  Rats clucked their tongues tragically.

  “We owe that poor squirrel,” said the middle elder. “But should we evacuate or not?”

  “It’s unbearable, being so unsettled,” said the eldest.

  Junior’s mother announced briskly that she was staying put, refusing to abandon her beautiful crate. Some rats felt the same; more leaned toward leaving to be safe. When the youngest elder asked Mrs. P.’s opinion, she advised waiting to see what tomorrow brought.

  Comforted, if only temporarily, most of the rats drifted off to their crates, leaving their bundles out so they could make a quick getaway in the morning if necessary. Lucy and Beckett retreated to their crate too, but neither got much sleep. It was almost as if they’d traded natures. Lucy, usually the upbeat one, lay in her shoe conjuring up gruesome images of the things the bird of prey had done to Phoenix. Whereas for flickering moments Beckett actually let himself believe in his theory that the bird had brought Phoenix back to complete his mission.

  * * *

  First thing in the morning Beckett went out for the paper. The traffic was light, but when he got to the newsstand, the papers hadn’t arrived yet. After a while a van pulled up, and three bundles of papers came flying out the back. Beckett let the humans who’d been milling around grab their papers first before creeping over and stealthily peeling off a front page. It was another hot day, so he used the paper as a parasol on his return trip.

  As soon as he got back to the pier, rats streamed over to him. His sudden popularity still startled him, but he gamely held up the paper for all to see. The photo on the front page was so dark—it showed the lightless skyline against a night sky—that most of them had trouble deciphering it. He waited till Lucy arrived with Mrs. P. before lowering the paper to read the headline:

  BLACKOUT: THE SEQUEL!

  He flipped to page two and held up another photo. This one was of the notice with his message telling the humans it was their last chance. Rats chittered and slapped paws but calmed down when Beckett turned to the article.

  “ ‘At 8:40 last night the city suffered its second power outage in less than a week. But while the skyline went dark, we may not be in the dark as to the cause. When the demolition crew returned yesterday to what’s come to be known throughout the five boroughs as the Rat Pier, they were greeted with a postscript to the message they found prior to the first blackout (see photo). So once again we are confronted with the incredible possibility that a citywide blackout was the work of rodents—literate rodents to boot!’ ”

  During the reading rats were keeping watch under the sliding door, and just as Beckett was finishing the article, one of the lookouts cried, “Humans!” Everyone crowded over to look. Ten or twelve humans in street clothes had gathered on the other side of the fence. Two were carrying signs. Again the rats looked to Beckett.

  One sign read: THE RATS NEED A PLACE TO LIVE! WE NEED OUR POWER! The other: LEAVE THE PIER TO THE RATS! BETTER THERE THAN IN OUR APARTMENTS!

  “What are apartments?” a rat asked.

  “They’re like crates for humans, I think,” Beckett guessed.

  The signs were encouraging, and so were the rotten tomatoes the protestors lobbed at the heavy equipment. But ten minutes later a town car and a pickup pulled up. The crew chief got out of the pickup, and the driver of the town car opened the back door for Mr. Weeks. The protesters booed, especially when the crew chief pulled a box of dynamite out of the back of his truck. Mr. Weeks told them to get a life and led the crew chief through the gate.

  “Where’s that Sully?” Mr. Weeks fumed as the crew chief set the box down by the pier door. “I want these charges set. Every day’s costing me money.”

  “He just texted me,” the crew chief assured him. “He’s close.”

  “I want the rest of the crew here too.”

  * * *

  When the green van pulled up and Sully got out, the protestors booed, but Sully showed them a special edition of the paper he’d picked up, and that seemed to amuse them. It did not amuse Mr. Weeks. He demanded the paper, his face going an angry red as he scanned the front page. He crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it at the pier.

  “Get this stuff out of here,” he barked, stomping back to his car.

  A protestor tossed one last tomato at the car as it sped away, and it splatted on the rear windshield. The crew chief frowned, made some calls, then gave a shrug and lugged the box back to his truck. Sully followed him out the gate. They exchanged a few words, then Sully drove off and the crew chief hopped into his truck. But instead of starting the engine he leaned his arm out the window and chatted with the protesters. Several of the protesters high-fived each other before straggling off with their signs.

  Needless to say, the rats watched all this with intense interest. Soon another pickup arrived, and two members of the demolition crew got out and started ripping down the fencing. As they were piling it into the back of their pickup, three flatbed trucks pulled up. The crew chief supervised the loading of the bulldozer, the backhoe, and the dumpster. It was a good thing this was a noisy operation or the humans would have heard the rats going wild. After the flatbed trucks drove the heavy equipment away, the crew chief walked up to the pier door and pulled off the notice, perhaps as a souvenir, and finally left.

  Despite it being broad daylight, the rats flood
ed out of the pier. They could hardly believe their good fortune. The area was totally back to normal. The only evidence of the whole enterprise was the gash in the pier’s siding.

  Beckett located the crumpled paper and rolled it inside, everyone following him. He smoothed it out. The grainy photo on the front page was of Phoenix, with the dynamite and matchbox cinched to his back.

  “Where was that taken?” Lucy gasped.

  Beckett peered more closely at the photo. “Somewhere inside the substation, it looks like.”

  “But . . . that bird grabbed him before he got in,” Junior said. “Are you sure it’s him?”

  Junior’s fall had left an unsightly bump on the side of his head, and as everyone looked at him, he did his best to redirect their attention to the photo. It had been taken from above, and thanks to the dynamite you couldn’t see much of Phoenix beyond his head and his tail. But this was more than enough for Lucy and Beckett to make a positive identification.

  “That has to mean the bird didn’t eat him!” Lucy cried.

  “Thank heavens,” Mrs. P. said quietly.

  Beckett started reading the article, which told how the humans had installed a surveillance camera inside the upper chamber of the substation after the first blackout, and how it had captured the “perpetrator” moments before the second one.

  “But if he caused the blackout, why hasn’t he come back?” Junior asked. “It’s been almost a day.”

  This, no one could answer.

  “What does the headline say?” asked the youngest elder.

  “Um, I’m not quite sure,” Beckett said.