by Hunter Shea
For a second, I thought she was serious and was about to lob a few choice words her way. Working together while in the midst of a divorce was a bitch, which is why I tried to keep things light. I’d learned to suffer Benny’s slings and arrows with aplomb.
Telling me to eat poison would have been out of character, even for Benny.
“It can’t be more toxic than those microwave burritos you eat,” she said, the barest trace of a smile on her face.
“Those are strictly emergency rations.”
“That’s not what your latest blood work said.”
“It’s nice to see you care,” I said.
“I didn’t say to stop eating them,” she said. “You have been keeping up on the payments for your life insurance, right?”
“Come on, I have two more bags of the stuff and three more stops.”
Our bosses in City Hall had mandated that we start using the Degenesis ASAP. I wanted to get this done so I could take a power nap back at the office. I’d been up late watching a Thin Man marathon on TCM and my second wind of the day was flagging.
Benny jumped liked she’d stepped on the third rail when a fat, furry body darted out of one of the burrows and slipped behind a dumpster.
A healthy fear of rats kept exterminators exterminating.
“It’s a little early for foraging,” she said.
She was right. Rats were not known for their early-afternoon snacking. Not when the sun was up and people were around.
Though lately, I’d noticed the rats growing more brazen. It was almost as if they no longer perceived people as a threat. We were put on this earth to provide garbage, which sustained the rat population.
To them, we were nothing more than oversized chefs.
“That’s our cue to leave,” I said. I unclipped a metal funnel from my belt and poured the remaining Degensis into one of the burrows. With any luck, it would make its way into the central nest and the dozen or so rats currently lounging about would take a bite or four.
Chapter 3
“I told you that shit wasn’t going to work,” Benny said colorfully as she tried to make sense of our accounting ledger. She was slightly better at the books than me, but she hated it with a passion.
I had just gotten in, my morning spent moving my remaining things to my new apartment in the Bronx. It was actually a studio. Cheap and small and old, just like the one I had when I was twenty. Sometimes, reliving your youth is not a good thing.
She was dressed in her standard uniform of tight but well-worn jeans, light blue button-down shirt with the logo of our company over her left breast (and it was a very fine breast), scuffed boots, and her hair pulled through the back of her Red Sox baseball cap. Not many women could dress like a man and exude pure woman.
It was one of her many special qualities. Qualities I missed more than I would dare to let on.
“That Dr. Finch is supposed to start his rat-population survey next week,” I said, my muscles aching. For some reason, I had decided I didn’t need movers. Tony and I carried shit up and down stairs for the entire weekend. Lesson learned—I was too old for moving.
Benny’s eyelids fluttered. She was not happy. “I don’t need Ratticus to tell me that his Degensis flopped.”
Dr. Finch’s real first name was Randolph, but in our circle, it was just too damn easy not to refer to him as Ratticus Finch. At least behind his back.
Degenesis was his toxic baby. It had been three months since we and the other contract exterminators had been using the poison.
A mama rat can have up to ten babies per litter and a new litter every month. Their ability to procreate is astonishing and makes it impossible to keep up with them. Degensis was supposed to put a dead stop to future generations from squirming about. Once the existing rat population was either killed or died from natural causes, the future would be a lot less furry.
At least that’s what Ratticus had promised.
Then again, he was a lab monkey. He’d never been in the field. What the fuck did he know?
“I stopped at that Italian restaurant over on Fifty-ninth this morning,” Benny said.
“Seems a little early for fettuccini carbonara.”
With a quick eye roll, she said, “The number of droppings has increased exponentially. None of the traps were touched. I think that stuff is helping them hump and pump more than ever.”
“Your romanticism is what swept me off my feet,” I said, picking up the digital camera we used to catalog our progress. I clicked through the pictures Benny had taken.
Jesus, there was shit everywhere, like the remains of some kind of rat Roman orgy.
“Maybe they invited company for dinner,” I said, staring at each photo.
“We should get a camera deep in there and see.”
“You just don’t want to do the books.”
“No, I don’t. You care to give it a try?”
“I’ll get the camera and gear.”
* * * *
It was going on dusk when we got to the restaurant. Business at Pasta 13 was light at the moment. Restaurants didn’t get humming until at least seven on weeknights. I called the owner ahead of time and we met him out back by the dumpster. It wouldn’t do him good for his diners to see a pair of exterminators come strolling inside.
“You were here already today,” he said to Benny. The man was tall and thin everywhere except his hips. He looked nervous, but then he always looked nervous. Owning a restaurant was not for the fainthearted.
“We need to take a closer look,” she said, nodding toward the suitcase in my hand.
“Yes, but please, be discreet.”
“We take an oath of discretion,” I reassured him. He didn’t look reassured.
“Come directly to me if you need anything. My staff doesn’t need to know.”
I opened my mouth and closed it.
If his staff didn’t see the piles of rat shit everywhere, they were either blind or willfully ignorant.
“Let’s go down that one,” Benny said, pointing to the largest burrow. The edges were fuzzy, having snagged copious amounts of hair. That meant it was the road most taken for this nest.
“As you wish, Alice.”
I opened the case and assembled the camera. It looked like a snake that plumbers use to clear drains, with a fish-eye lens on the end. It hooked up to a small monitor so we could see into the den.
This time of day, the rats should have been starting to get restless, but they were more than likely still in the main nest.
“You want me to do the honors?” I asked, the camera poised over the hole.
“By all means.”
I once had a rat jump out of a burrow just as I was about to drop the camera down. It landed on my chest, desperate to find the soft tissue of my face. Thankfully, Benny had swatted it away with a spade she’d been using to cover up some of the burrows. She’d managed to slice it in half like a samurai. Warm rat entrails soaked through my shirt, but thanks to her, I was still pretty.
“Get ready,” I said.
Sometimes, when we went exploring like this, the rats would pour out of the other burrows and swarm around us in a frenzy. Our pants were tucked into our tough leather boots. Benny gripped what she called her swattin’ pole. It had once been a nine iron, the head replaced by a wood block, held on with a half mile of duct tape. What it lacked in esthetics it more than made up for in efficiency.
I slowly snaked the camera into the hole. With night vision activated, we watched the black-and-white monitor.
What we saw was very similar to the video from a colonoscopy. Just traveling down a winding, dark tunnel.
A normal rat’s den contained seven or so rats. We had caught three with snap traps last week. Their dwindling numbers, especially if the Degenesis was working, couldn’t account for the growing feces.
“Expect anything,” I said.
“What?”
“Just ruminating.”
I pushed the camera deeper, kicking up a puff of dust deep in the burrow.
A rat’s twitchy face sprang into view. I instinctively recoiled, then recovered in as manly a way as possible.
“Say cheese,” Benny said, standing over me.
“You talk about my tired old witticisms.”
The rat retreated, tunneling backwards down the hole.
I knew I had to hurry up. The other rats would be ready to scatter.
Working the cable as fast as I could, I remotely spelunked, wondering just how far down they had settled in.
In my periphery, I caught a rat leaping from a burrow to my left.
Benny gasped.
“What?”
She pointed at the screen.
“Holy shit!”
I let the camera cable drop as if it were a poisonous snake.
We watched as dozens and dozens of rats writhed over one another. Every inch of the nest was packed with vermin bodies.
“Pull back a little,” Benny said.
“Yeah, yeah.”
I tugged slightly on the cable so we could get a better view.
“Look at all the babies,” Benny said.
“It’s like the maternity ward in Shanghai,” I said.
We were either looking at multiple litters or the granddaddy of all litters.
“What do you think? At least twenty?”
Benny peered at the monitor. “I’d second that. And they all look like they’re from the same generation.”
“I guess there’s no point in saying how impossible that is.”
“You guess right again.”
More adult rats were scurrying out of the holes around us. From what I could see, several had stayed behind in the nest to guard the babies.
“I don’t like this at all,” I said, moving the camera some more to get a different angle. All of it was being recorded.
“They like it less,” Benny said.
The camera’s intrusion had brought about sweeping panic in the nest. I almost felt sorry for the little critters as they sought refuge around the adult guardians.
“I think we’ve seen enough,” I said, pulling the camera out. “I’ll send the file to Ratticus, see what he thinks.”
“Stop, Chris.”
“Fine. Dr. Finch.”
“No. Put the camera down.”
“Why?”
I looked to Benny, whose eyes were wide and darting about. Following her gaze, the camera slipped from my suddenly milquetoast grasp.
We were surrounded by rats. A dozen pairs of marble black eyes locked onto us.
They weren’t running away.
And they were sure as shit not afraid.
Chapter 4
“Heyah!”
I waved my hands in the air and stomped my feet.
The rats didn’t even flinch.
Benny grabbed the back of my arm.
“Let me try,” she said.
She took out her cell phone and did a lot of swiping until she tapped the screen. The wail of an air horn cut through my skull.
That got the rats moving a bit, but they quickly resettled into their flanking position.
“I don’t think they’re impressed with your air horn app,” I said.
“It’s not an app. Just a sound board.”
“Hand me your swattin’ pole.”
“Are you crazy?” Benny hissed.
“Once I start swinging, you run for the exit.”
“Nice of you to be chivalrous when it means you’re the one holding our only weapon.”
“Do you think I’m that much of a shit heel?”
She arched an eyebrow.
“My pole,” she said, choking up on it like Ted Williams in his prime.
There was no sense arguing the point because the rats were closing in. They were pretty damn good leapers. In a few seconds, we could be batting them away like gnats.
The exit from the narrow alley was covered by four fat rats that looked like linemen in training for the New York Jets.
“I hope you’ve been to the batting cage lately,” I said, scooping up the case with the camera equipment. If anything, I could use it as a shield.
“I was just down at Chelsea Piers last week,” Benny said.
“Who’d you go with?”
“Really. Is that something you want to get into now?”
I eyed the rats. Then looked inward. As a matter of fact, it was, but logic dictated I shut up.
I pointed at the door leading to the restaurant’s kitchen.
“The owner is not going to give us a good rating on Yelp,” I said.
“Fuck Yelp. Go!”
We dashed toward the door. The rats, sensing we were about to get away, kicked into high gear, squealing out a spine-chilling war cry.
Yes, a war cry.
For the uninitiated, rats are not known for their war cries. Or battle maneuvers.
Benny grunted and I heard the swattin’ pole connect with something heavy. A rat bounced off the back of my thigh. I jumped and almost lost my footing.
Stumbling into the door, I fumbled for the knob and yanked so hard, it nearly came off its hinges. One foot over the threshold, I spun and grabbed Benny. She swung the pole back and forth, connecting with a rat in midair. It spun end over end until it hit the opposite wall with a dull crack.
Pulling my ex-wife as hard as I could, we collapsed atop one another. The heavy door slammed behind us. We heard the rats launch their bodies against the door.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
When I looked up, the entire Latino kitchen staff had stopped what they were doing and were staring at us.
The owner came rushing in, his face flushed.
“What’s going on?” he shouted.
One of the dishwashers pointed at Benny and me.
“I told you not to use the back entrance.”
I so wanted to kick him in his lady hips.
Benny used my ribs to push herself up. My lungs were compressed like a bagpipe.
“You hear that?” Benny said.
The rats continued to pound at the door.
“You feel free to go out and use the side entrance,” she spat. I had a feeling she would introduce him to the business end of the swattin’ pole if he said the wrong thing.
The man withered under her glare.
I suddenly sympathized with him.
* * * *
“Take this,” I said, handing the bottle of Jameson to Benny. She took a long pull and collapsed in her swivel chair.
I snapped my fingers. “Don’t bogart the booze.”
“What the fuck happened back there?”
“It was like that movie 28 Days Later, only with rats.”
“I never saw it,” she said.
“Yes, you did. I took you to the Regal in Brooklyn when it came out.” The whiskey burned beautifully in my trembling gut.
“Wasn’t me. You must have taken some other woman.”
I bit my tongue. I wasn’t in the mood for the same old argument. She knew I never cheated on her, just like she knew accusing me of doing so was a big button to push. I hadn’t so much as asked for another woman’s number since our separation, though I often wondered what Benny had been up to those nights she came home late.
And now who accompanied her to Chelsea Piers? Was I a cuckold if I was no longer technically married? Maybe not, but I was simmering with a need to know what the hell had happened.
“No,” I said pleasantly instead. “It was you. It was always only you.”
She gave me her back. “Well, I don’t remember. We should make sure we at l
east recorded everything.”
I opened the case, plugged the USB cable from the recorder to my computer and waited for everything to boot up. It took two more drags from the bottle of Jameson before everything was ready to rock and roll.
Benny swiped the bottle from my desk. We watched the first rat pop up on the screen. Once it got to the squirming nest, Benny shut it off.
“Too bad we didn’t record the attack,” she said.
“I don’t think either of us would have had a steady hand to get a decent shot.”
“You should send that to Ratticus now. His poison is doing great wonders.”
I pointed at the slow-moving bar on my computer screen. “Downloading as we speak.”
“What do you think he’ll say?”
I gave a soft chuckle. “That we must have done something wrong. It can’t be his Degenesis. After all, it was tested in his lab.”
“Yeah, well, we tested it in our lab and it sucks.”
True, it appeared that there were more offspring than ever. In my nonscientific opinion, Degenesis was an epic fail.
But a poison made to sterilize the rat population didn’t account for their pants-filling show of aggression.
Did it?
“And sent,” I announced, eyeing the bottle of booze.
The phone started ringing. We ignored it. Benny took the Jameson with her as she walked out of the office.
I could have called out to her to bring it back, but I didn’t feel like ducking bottles.
Not today.
Chapter 5
Dr. Randolph “Ratticus” Finch stormed into our office looking like he had a world-class hair up his ass. His normally well-coiffed thick black hair looked as if he’d stepped out of a wind tunnel. He was tall and picket-fence thin, with a pinched face that didn’t help any case not to call him Ratticus. Beads of sweat dotted his upper lip. Dark circles were under his eyes.
The last time I’d seen Ratticus was a year ago when he gave a lecture about upcoming advances in controlling the rat population. It hadn’t been named Degenesis then. It also hadn’t been a colossal failure then, either.
“Please tell me this is a joke,” he said. Exchanging pleasantries was beyond his purview at the moment.
