by Hunter Shea
Stepping out of the room, I found a hall closet. A rat scampered my way. Ratticus aimed his light at it.
It was a big bastard, maybe eighteen inches long, including its tail. And it was coming right for me.
I gripped the doorknob and opened the door a crack, standing my ground.
“Keep the light on it,” I said.
Ratticus’s light bounced up and down as if he were standing in one of those inflatable jumping castles.
The rat got close enough to take to the air. I slammed the door into it with a bone-crunching thunk.
It lay on its back, dazed and twitching.
“There’s more,” Ratticus said.
I followed his shaky light.
Crap. They had chewed the hole open wide enough so they were coming in by threes.
“The closet,” I barked. Ratticus swept the light into the stuffy room.
Jackpot! This must have been where the former tenants stored their old, unwanted junk. I found a Louisville Slugger and what looked to be a flagpole. It was solid, not hollow, so no matter what it was initially designed to be, it was going to end its life as a battering ram. I tossed the bat to Ratticus. He dropped it and almost dropped his phone.
A dozen or more rats shot down the hallway. Now they were squeaking and making all sorts of disturbing noises. Sounds were coming out of them I’d never heard before. They knew there was no need for stealth.
What the hell did that Degenesis do to them?
We slammed the bedroom door behind us and started bashing the wooden planks over the window. For each whack we gave, it was met by a rat launching its body against the door.
The bat gouged out a chunk of wood. A pinprick of daylight shot through the hole like a laser.
“Stand back,” I said.
I glanced at the door. It was shaking, the decayed hinges sounding as if they were ready to give way. If they did, we were good and royally screwed.
Ramming the end of the pole into the hole, I pushed on it until I could feel the veins in my neck about to burst.
“Tut’s tomb wasn’t sealed up this tight,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Let me help.”
We put our chests into it, legs straining. The wood started to crack.
“Don’t let up,” I said, hoping it was the wood in the window and not the door behind us.
The board gave way and Ratticus and I slammed into the wall as the pole slipped out of our grasp and out the window. It clanged when it hit the courtyard. I hoped no one was down there.
“Chris, look!”
Perfect timing.
The rats had managed to break the door down, their collective mass more than it could handle.
“Time to go.” I pushed Ratticus out of the window and onto the fire escape. The ancient metal creaked but held.
“Get out of the way,” I said as I wedged myself out of the window. Ratticus clambered down the rickety stairs with me inches behind him. I kept expecting to feel rats hammering down on me like hail.
I had to reach around a fumbling Ratticus and unhook the final ladder so we could climb the rest of the way down. We hit the concrete right next to the pole.
Looking up, I beheld the stuff of nightmares.
The rats had piled on top of one another so they filled the opening in the window. They stared down at us, noses and whiskers trembling, silent as the night.
Plucking a panting Ratticus by the elbow, I moved to the left.
Dozens of rat heads turned to the left.
Experimenting, now that we were safely outside, I took three steps to the right.
Their heads moved to the right, as if they possessed some kind of hive mind.
“They’re watching us,” Ratticus said.
“No shit.”
When we got back to my car, I got my cell phone out of the center console and called Benny. She didn’t answer. That cockroach job wouldn’t have taken long. She’d been checking on the Degenesis sites every afternoon.
I shot Ratticus a look that may not have been able to kill, but at least maim.
“If anything happened to Benny, you and I are going to have more of a problem than we do now.”
I gunned the car, the old Spanish ladies watching us retreat just like cockroaches.
* * * *
The office was empty. I called Benny again, got her voice mail.
“We should have captured one of those rats so I could bring it back to my lab,” Ratticus said, pacing.
“Did you see me stopping you from getting up close and personal with one of them?”
He didn’t know how close he was to getting his nose flattened.
Benny could be at one of the locations where we’d used the Degenesis right now, hurt or worse. Before I got back in my car and started searching each one, I decided to try her phone a few more times. She often worked with earbuds plugged into her head, listening to eighties pop music. I hoped she was jamming to “Electric Avenue” and not running from crazed rats.
After the third try, I kicked my chair over. Ratticus narrowly dodged it as it skipped across the floor.
“What the fuck did you put in that poison?” I said, trying my best to keep from screaming.
“It’s…it’s proprietary. I can’t just tell you the chemical components. Not that it would help you anyway.”
“You mean not that I would understand it, right?”
“That’s besides the point. We don’t know that the changes we just witnessed are the result of Degenesis.”
“I’ll bet my right and left nut that they are.”
Ratticus winced when he said, “We’ll need exhaustive tests to prove it either way.”
I balled my fist, then stuffed it deep in my pocket.
“Shit.”
The doctor stepped clear of me as I walked to Benny’s desk and grabbed her chair. I considered throwing it but sat down instead.
“I left my camera and gear back at the apartment building,” I said.
It was in the basement. I’d dropped it when I fell on Ratticus. At the time, I didn’t have the presence of mind to save a camera.
“I’ll make sure the city reimburses you,” Ratticus said.
“Or, I could have you go find it.”
“Threats aren’t going to help the situation.”
“Who said it was a threat?”
“Someone is going to have to go back there,” he said. “Prepared appropriately, of course.”
“I’d guess that someone won’t be you.”
“It’s clear I’m better served in the lab.”
“What is clear is that you fucked up big-time and I’ll make sure you’re the one who has to clean up this mess, in the lab or in the fucking sewers.”
I turned my back on him and called Benny.
No answer.
“Benita, it’s me. Call me as soon as you get this message.”
I searched for the log of addresses where we’d used Degenesis. “I’m going to have to call the other exterminators,” I said. “And City Hall.”
“You can’t do that. You’ll start a panic. City Hall leaks like a sieve.”
“I think panic is an appropriate response to what we just saw.”
The door swung open.
“Panic? What the heck are you talking about?”
The only time I’d been happier to see Benny was when she stood on the altar, gorgeous in her wedding dress. I ran over and hugged her, burying my face in her hair, which smelled musty from whatever basement she’d been rooting around.
She didn’t wrap her arms around me, her back going stiff.
“What did I miss?”
I sat her down and told her. She didn’t interrupt, didn’t ask questions. She just let it all tumble out, and tumble it did.
“Chris,
this is so not good,” she said when I was done and spent, leaning against my desk. Ratticus had been smart enough to stay silent.
“Understatement of the year.”
Chapter 8
Ratticus left to consult his notes or whatever egghead scientists did when their great discovery went tits-up. I was happy to see him go. I think he was equally happy to be out of my range of fire.
“We have to check with everyone,” Benny said. She’d been chewing on a blue pen cap. The gnarled piece of plastic twirled in the corner of her mouth.
“At the very least to warn them.”
“At the very least.”
“Want to split the list?”
There were nine other exterminators who shared the city contract. They could have had a hundred of us and it would never be enough. The pests were just a human calamity away from reigning supreme.
“I’m sorry about the hug before,” I said.
“Huh?”
“I was all keyed up from the fiasco at the apartment, then I couldn’t get ahold of you. When you walked in that door, it was like…well, like…”
“You don’t have to apologize for a hug,” Benny said.
“I just don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”
“I wasn’t. Just…surprised.”
“Pleasantly?”
She turned away, but I thought I caught a glimpse of a smile. “It wasn’t unpleasant.”
“Hugging was always my specialty,” I said.
“Yes, it was.”
I sighed. She was right. We’d always been very affectionate with each other. We weren’t like crazed newlyweds, horndogging on one another twenty-four seven. That kind of passion was impossible to keep up, especially for two decades.
Somewhere along the line, I’d stopped reaching for her hand when we walked down the street. Or pressing my body against her back when she was cooking. Or pulling her close to me when we watched TV.
There was no watershed event that made me pull away. It wasn’t that I no longer desired or loved Benita. Like most middle-aged men, I got too comfortable. And lazy. Benny had always been there and would always be there.
Except I hadn’t counted on my wife wanting more. By the time I realized it, it was too late. There was too much resentment, too much a feeling of abandonment. We’d tried therapy. I got angry that she was angry, forcing me into therapy, kicking me out of our marital bed. Every step of the way, I made things worse.
I never said I wasn’t a world-class dumb-ass.
Maybe I had managed to show her that I still loved her. Every dumb-ass has his day.
“We should get cracking,” Benny said.
“I’ll give Rico a call first,” Benny said.
“Guess I’ll reach out to Walter,” I said, searching for his number in my cell phone. My screen was cracked to hell, which made seeing the display difficult. Plus, if I was being honest, it was probably time I went to the eye doctor and got a pair of glasses.
Vanity can be a cruel mistress.
Benny was just about to pick up her phone when it rang. She answered right away. I watched the pen cap fall from her mouth. She scribbled on one of the pads we’d picked up from a vacation in New Hampshire many moons ago. Each page had LIVE FREE OR DIE emblazoned on the top. Benny’s mother was from Cuba. She’d come over on a boat barely fit for a dip in a pond, much less the Atlantic. The phrase was very popular with her family.
“We’ll be right there,” she said.
“Right where?”
“A brownstone on Ninety-fifth and Riverside.”
“By the health-food store?”
She nodded gravely.
“We dropped the Degenesis there, what, three weeks ago?” I said.
“Four. I was just there last week. I didn’t see any rats…in the usual places, at least.”
“What’s going on at the brownstone?”
“That was the police. They got a call about rats invading someone’s house.”
“Jesus.” My stomach felt hot and sour.
“The cops are there now. They can’t get past the rats.”
We jumped into the van. There was no way we were taking separate cars now. I wasn’t going to let Benny out of my sight.
“Did they get the family out?”
Benny stared off into the distance. “That’s the problem. The mother and one of her sons are out. But she has two other kids that are trapped.”
* * * *
We pulled up to a street lined with expensive identical brownstones on either side. It was easy to tell which one was our destination. The stoop was filled with cops. A woman paced in front of the steps, mascara streaking her face, a young boy clinging to her leg.
“You the exterminators?” a cop asked. He was real young. I had concert T-shirts older than him.
“That’s us.”
The crying woman was pushing forty, her pale skin sporting dark patches from years of sun damage. I could tell she was normally put together, but at the moment, her New York housewife façade had taken a hike.
“You have to save my babies,” she said, grabbing hold of Benny’s arm.
“I promise, we will,” Benny said, taking the woman by the shoulders. Her son, who could be no more than four, stared wide-eyed at the gathering of police and shining lights.
“Where are they?” Benny asked.
“The…the back bedroom. We’re on the first floor. I tried to get them, but—but—”
I noticed the bloodstained gauze wrapped around both of her ankles. I breathed a quiet sigh of relief when I didn’t spot any on the boy. No child should have to get rabies shots.
“Just sit tight and we’ll have them out soon.”
“Chris.”
I turned to see my high school buddy Spence Dunnings. He was now Detective Spence Dunnings, his once-flowing locks traded in for a crew cut, broken nose tilted slightly to the left. He never let me forget I was the one who’d broken it. You throw one stuffed Wiffle ball bat in frustration and spend a lifetime apologizing.
“What’s the deal?” I asked while Benny tried to extract herself from the woman’s grip.
“It’s unfuckingbelievable. The whole house is swarming with rats. I never seen anything like it. I’d throw tear gas in there if it weren’t for the kids.”
“Have you tried to go inside?”
“Take a look for yourself and tell me. This is more your line of work.”
“Have you tried getting the kids out through the window?” I asked.
Detective Dunnings looked like he’d just swallowed something that had expired a year earlier.
“Both kids are in the crib. One is a year old, the other five. The older one jumped into the crib when the rats came in. So far, they’re being left alone. Whenever I send someone to the window to check on them, the rats head right for the window. It’s unfuckingbelievable.”
“You said that.”
“You ready?” Benny said. She looked as nervous as I felt, and she hadn’t seen what I had at the apartment building.
I didn’t have the heart to say out loud that I was pretty sure we couldn’t do squat. I set down traps and laid out poison. Benny and I did not don battle gear and engage in hand-to-paw combat.
“Maybe you should bring a bat,” Dunnings said.
I sighed.
The cops made way for us as we trudged up the steps. The front door was closed.
“Should we keep it open?” a burly cop with a porn mustache asked.
“Probably,” I said. “Might be a good idea to clear everyone out of the way. Just in case we manage to chase the rats out. They need a place to escape.”
“Tell your men to give a wide berth to the sewer catches,” Benny added. She had her swattin’ pole out, along with a can of pepper spray. I wished I had my old Wiffle ball bat.<
br />
The cop was quick to get everyone back. In seconds, Benny and I were alone at the threshold to madness.
“You ready for this?” I asked.
“No. You?”
“Not a chance. If there weren’t kids involved, I’d just as soon stay out here.”
“But there are.”
“Yep.”
“Let’s take a quick look and see what we’re dealing with,” Benny said.
I turned the knob and opened the door just enough for us to pop our heads in.
“Motherfuck,” Benny hissed through her teeth.
The rats were everywhere. The floor was alive with their crawling bodies. They were perched on every table, counter, and lampshade. The stench of their urine was overpowering. Aside from driving the people out, they were doing a bang- up job marking their newfound territory.
Pulling the door shut, I took a deep breath of quasi-clean New York air.
“Got any ideas?” I said.
“Just that my pole is like bringing a straw with some spitballs to an Uzi fight.”
“We can’t fight our way through them.”
“And we can’t do anything that might harm the babies,” Benny said.
“That leaves us with only one option.” I looked at the crowd that silently watched us, waiting for us to somehow save the day.
“What’s that?”
“Operation Pied Piper,” I said.
“You have a flute I don’t know about?”
“Just the skin flute I was born with.”
“Then how do you propose we lead them out of there? Maybe we could get one of those big, smelly wheels of cheese from a deli.”
I knew she was being facetious. I loved that about her. If you weren’t adept at sarcasm, you weren’t made to live in New York.
“I don’t think they’re here because they’re hungry. If they’re anything like the ones Ratticus and I came across, they’re just plain aggressive.”
“So just our being there should be enough to get their full attention?”
“It worked in the Bronx. They chased us up the stairs and out a goddamn window.”
“I wonder why they haven’t attacked the kids.”
“Too small to be a threat?” I said. I thought, but refused to say out loud, that they could be a snack the rats were saving for later. To say it would make it too real. “Look, I’ll go in and run for the kitchen. I saw a door back there. I’ll lead them out the back while you get the kids.”
