by Hunter Shea
“Try the other way around.”
“Not a chance.”
Benny said, “Exactly. Not a chance if we’re depending on you running.”
“I’m not that out of shape,” I protested.
She looked at me as if I had just said the moon was made of napkins.
“I go to the gym every day,” she said. “Cardio is my game.”
“When did you start going to the gym?”
She rightly ignored me.
“Meet you out here in a few. You better have those kids.”
Before I could stop her, she threw the door open and ran into the house. The rats turned as one in her direction the second she stepped inside. She gave a swift kick to the ones by her feet. One rat went as high as the chandelier in the hallway, latching on to the cut glass.
“Heeyah!” she shouted as if she were herding cattle. Swinging her swattin’ pole like an angry blind woman, she scattered rats out of her way as she dashed to the kitchen.
Just like back in the Bronx, the Borg-like rats stampeded in her direction like cattle. I watched all of this through a thin slit in the door, careful not to tip off my presence. I heard a door slam open and saw Benny leap outside.
It took several seconds longer for the rat horde to make it out back.
Christ.
The house had been destroyed. Feces and urine were everywhere. Anything made of cloth was ripped to shreds.
There was no time to admire their handiwork. I ran to the back bedroom, my lungs already feeling the burn. Maybe Benny had been right after all.
I found the baby girl sitting in the crib, her cheeks red as apples, tears spilling from her eyes. She was in full silent-scream mode. Her older brother sat beside her with his arms around her. It was incredibly touching. He’d been crying, too.
“It’s okay,” I said in as soothing a voice as I could muster. “Those bad rats are gone. Let’s get you to your mommy.”
My heart sank when I saw small bite marks on their legs and feet. I scooped them into my arms. I assumed they were both on all-natural, gluten free, vegan diets. Their combined weight was less than my tool belt. They trembled in my arms.
Turning to sprint out of the house, I stopped dead in my tracks.
“Ah, shit.”
Chapter 9
A trio of fat rats stood in the doorway. They were enormous and mangy and looked like the embodiment of animal savagery and disease. A strong, deep sewer stench rolled off their moist bodies.
They were either some kind of rat council of elders, or the rodent world’s version of a repugnant Moe, Larry, and Curly.
I looked past them. The other rats were still out chasing Benny.
I guessed the Stooges had stayed behind to make sure no one stole their booty. Which got me to wondering what they had planned for the children. Which got me to worrying that the rats could now strategize and plan ahead.
It was hard to find a silver lining at that moment.
“You might want to step aside,” I said. For all I knew, Ratticus’s Degenesis had gotten them to the point where they could understand English.
One of them actually hissed at me like a cat. I’m man enough to admit it unnerved me. Its teeth were so long they no longer fit in its mouth, and were as yellow as spoiled mustard.
They took a step toward me.
I looked around for a weapon. The best I could come up with was a rocking horse. Having only the one hand free, the clunky plastic horse was difficult to hold. It was also covered in rat piss and slippery as hell.
The five-year-old saw what I was doing and cried out, “Don’t hurt Buttercup!”
“Buttercup will be fine.”
I hoped.
I stepped toward the rats.
They took another step forward.
No shock there. I already knew the Degenesis rats were unafraid of humans.
I lifted Buttercup over my head, struggling to keep a tight grip. A rivulet of pee ran down my arm. My flesh wanted to crawl away. The rat pee’s pungency was second to none.
Letting out a cry that had me sounding like a crazy person, I advanced on the rats.
To my horror, two of them scampered up the sides of the doorway. The third one turned and ran away, as if daring me to follow.
As I ran through the doorway, the children now screaming because I had added to their scares, I swung at the rat on my right. The rocking horse broke its back. I knew it from the sound its bones made just before it flopped to the floor, twitching like it was on a hot plate.
The rocking horse slipped from my hand. I was too busy running to admire my handiwork or wonder where the rat on my left had gone.
Galloping down the hallway, I spied the open front door. Just as I was about to get there, the third rat scurried out from under an ottoman and put its bulk directly in my path.
I tripped.
I screamed.
The kids wailed.
Somehow, I managed to twist my body in mid-fall, bearing the brunt on my back and keeping the kids plastered to my chest.
The rat that tripped me came loping toward my face. I’d swear on a stack of Bibles that it was grinning.
Hurrying to my feet—which was no easy task, considering I was clutching two kids—I spotted daylight. Freedom never looked so wonderful.
The rat somehow got ahead of me, stopped at the doorway and turned to me.
I was tired of being scared.
I pulled my leg back and pretended I was kicking a sixty-yard field goal in Giants Stadium. The feeling of my toes connecting with that big bastard was almost better than sex.
Almost.
The rat spun over and over in the air, sailing over the expectant crowd. It landed in a steel garbage can. I heard someone yell, “Three-pointer!”
“My babies!”
The police tried to hold her back, but they were powerless before a mother separated from her loved ones. I happily handed them over.
“We need to get as far from the house as possible,” I said to her, my hand at her back and ushering her into the street. She was too busy sobbing and kissing their heads to speak.
“Where’s Benny?” I asked Detective Dunnings.
He stared at me.
“Spence. Where’s Benny?”
“Don’t fucking move,” he said.
“What?”
That’s when I felt it. Sharp claws digging into my shoulder. Something wet and fidgety poking my neck.
Fuck.
That other rat had climbed aboard for a ride.
And I just knew it was going to bite me.
“How do I get it off?” Dunnings said. Several stunned cops had gathered round.
“Tell it to heel,” I said. “Shoot it for all I care! Just get it off.”
The rat rasped right by my ear, its thin, hot breath tickling my eardrum. Now that I no longer had the kids in my arms, I registered the impossible weight of the thing.
One of the cops actually went for his gun. I knew he’d blow my head off before the rat caught a bullet.
I was about to go into a full-panicked dance with much flailing and panting when someone started to scream.
The mother popped free from the crowd, her face twisted in a mask of anger and hate. I was suddenly more afraid of her than the rat.
She swiped the beast from my shoulder, slamming it onto the sidewalk. It was stunned but far from dead. She knew it too, which is why she stomped its head until it popped like a water balloon. A collective groan went up from the crowd.
“I need a plastic bag to save the body,” I said. Dunnings ordered one of the uniformed cops to grab an evidence kit.
I pulled the woman away from the rat.
“I don’t know whether that was very brave or very stupid,” I said to her.
She look
ed at me with glassy eyes. “Fuck them.”
A baggie was shoved into my hand. I bent down and pulled the rat’s tail until the whole body was in the bag. It barely fit. Ratticus would give me a gold star.
“I know people talk about rats the size of dogs, but Jesus, I never saw one that big,” Dunnings said.
“Better call Guinness.”
“Oh shit, here comes Benny,” Dunnings said.
My ex-wife came sprinting out of the alley between two brownstones five houses away.
“Run!” she shouted. Her Sox cap was gone, her hair flowing wildly in the wind.
People screamed as if it were a proper monster movie. Even a few cops let out sounds that were less than cop-like.
Behind Benny were hundreds and hundreds of rats. They skittered under and over cars, around the skinny trees surrounded by low metal fencing, and up the expensive porches of the rich and nameless.
The crowd didn’t need to be told twice. They scattered, the police anxious on their feet but standing their ground, guns drawn. I didn’t think they’d listen to me if I told them their bullets were close to useless.
Benny’s eyes locked onto mine. I wasn’t going anywhere. Not without her. I held out my hand like a runner waiting to be handed the baton.
The sidewalk was crammed with rats. They spilled into the street.
“Chris!”
“Benny!”
As soon as her fingertips touched my hand, I held her tight, pulling her along with me. The fact that I could pull her meant she was starting to tire out.
Shots rang out.
Cops fired into the mass of undulating bodies. Some rats exploded on impact, but not enough to even make a dent in the charging rodents.
Benny and I ran across the street.
“Stop shooting and run,” I yelled. No one paid attention. Cops never take orders from exterminators.
“Look,” someone barked.
The rats had diverted. They found a sewer catch and started pouring into it, slipping into the dank darkness. We watched the vile tide wriggle through the grate. It took several minutes before they were all gone.
Benny was out of breath, bent double, clutching her knees.
“Why…did…they do…that?”
My own legs were feeling boneless. The phantom weight of the rat was still on my shoulder, inspecting my neck.
“Guess they don’t like guns,” I said. Staring into the sewer from a safe distance, I added, “Good thing the little monsters are liberals.”
Chapter 10
The rat was most certainly out of the bag. You couldn’t turn on the news or pick up a paper without a recounting of the “horror by the Hudson,” as the incident had been named.
Benny and I had just gotten off a four-hour conference call organized by the mayor’s office. Every exterminator under contract was there, each one recounting their follow-up on Degenesis locations. I normally despised conference calls, or any kind of meeting, but this one had my full attention.
While no one had come across angry hordes of rats like we had, there had been an interesting and unpleasant development.
“I’m starving,” I said, rubbing the sweat from my ear. My neck and shoulder where I’d cradled the phone felt as if the bones had been fused together.
“Even after that?” Benny had worn foam-padded earphones during the long call. I’d cast her many envious looks that she’d ignored.
“My stomach doesn’t have ears.”
Benny’s stomach gave a slight gurgle.
“I guess mine doesn’t either.”
We went to Toro, a Mexican restaurant a couple of blocks from our office. I ordered the steak taco platter with extra refried beans. Benny had the tilapia with a side salad. We both ordered margaritas.
“Are you bothered by the latest development?” Benny asked. She speared a chunk of tilapia.
“How could I not be?”
“I don’t like the fact that we can’t find them.”
I dipped a taco in the refried beans. “They’re up to something. That much I can guarantee.”
While every exterminator had reported a marked increase in the rat population at each Degenesis site for the past several days, all of the rats were gone. They’d literally vanished overnight. All they left behind was their waste, and a lot of it. Smarter people were trying to calculate the current rat population by examining their shit.
Early numbers were frightening.
It took a mama rat a month to pop out a new litter. We didn’t have much time until reinforcements came.
“How could Finch not see this coming?” Benny said. She finished her margarita, motioning to the waiter she needed a refill. He looked at me and I swapped my margarita for a cold Modelo.
“Maybe his lab rats were made of weaker stuff.”
“City rats are tough bastards.”
“Very much like the people,” I said.
“We’re going to have to find them.”
I pushed my plate away. The beans were expanding in my gut. “If by we you mean a damn army, that is correct.”
“They’re in the sewers and other places that will be hard to get at,” Benny said, elbow on the table, her hand cradling her chin.
We both hated going in the sewers.
“We could get lucky and they set up camp in Bryant Park,” I said.
“We’re not that lucky,” Benny said.
I drained half my beer. “No, we’re not.”
The lunch crowd had thinned until it was just Benny and me. Busboys put fresh linens on the tables for the dinner rush.
“How are you?” Benny asked.
“Stellar as ever.”
“No, I mean how has it been for you…you know…”
“Living like a postgrad bachelor? It’s the stuff of dreams.”
“Are you sleeping?” Benny said.
“Not much. I think it has a lot to do with our rat problem.”
“That’s what I keep telling myself,” Benny said.
“Gun to my head, it is weird being alone. Even though we were in separate rooms, you were at least in the same house.”
Benny nodded, her fingertip circling the salty rim of her glass. “It’s going to take a while to get used to the new norm.”
The last thing I wanted to do was dredge up one of our old fights. But, I had to ask anyway.
“How did we get here?”
“I don’t have all the answers. Most days, I don’t have any.”
“We don’t hate each other,” I said.
“Not now.”
“Did we change that much?”
“I sometimes think maybe we didn’t change enough,” Benny said.
“You ever think we made a mistake?” I asked. The waiter handed me the bill. I slipped him my credit card.
“I can’t think that way now.”
“We’ll have all the time to think soon,” I said.
“After we find where the hell the rats went,” Benny said.
“Definitely after that.”
* * * *
For three nights, Benny and I patrolled the streets, loitering around the piles of trash set out for collection the next morning. The way the city handled garbage pickup was a big part of the reason it was impossible to get ahead of the rat population. The little fuckers needed to eat in order to survive and thrive. Because businesses and residences insisted on putting their garbage out the night before, they provided all the food needed for a growing rat population. Those midnight snacks are what build an army.
The next time you walk past a mound of black garbage bags in the city, stop a moment and see how many of them are moving. Rats love to dive right in like they’re swimming pools filled with yummy yummies.
Benny kicked a particularly foul-smelling stack of bags. We we
re outside a fish market.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Less than that.”
Usually, you kicked a bag, the bag kicked back. A few rats might scurry out, heading for the safety of the sewer.
Not tonight.
“Where the fuck are they?” she said.
I crouched down with a flashlight, trying to peer within the mound of garbage. These rats were getting clever. They might have learned not to fall for the old kick-the-bag trick and were waiting us out in the shadows.
“Anything?” Benny asked. She had her swattin’ pole at the ready.
“Nada.”
“Well, they have to be somewhere with a food source.”
“Maybe they all moved to Jersey. A lot of diners out there and space to move around.”
“Yeah, but it’s still Jersey.”
“True,” I said.
“So we both agree they’re still in a Manhattan zip code,” Benny said.
“Just someplace where the mail can’t be delivered.”
We went back to the van. Benny had a thermos of coffee waiting for us. It was going on eleven and I was tired. I remember when eleven was when the night started.
I turned on the police scanner and kept it low.
“You always preferred police dispatch over the radio,” Benny said.
“It’s way better than talk radio or the crap music they have on.”
“Maybe we should call it a night.”
We listened to a 10-38, which I had learned meant they had pulled over a suspicious vehicle. Ever since 9/11, there were a ton of 10-38’s.
“Bet it’s an unmarked white van,” I said.
“I’ll go with a tractor trailer.”
Seconds later, I won.
“Never bet against the unmarked white van,” I said.
A few minutes later, a 10-45 came across the wire.
“What’s that one?” Benny said.
I sat up straighter in my seat. “Animal carcass.”
Someone reported a large animal carcass by the Seventy-ninth Street Boat Basin. It was partially in the traffic lane.
