Rats (The Zone Unknown) Read online

  “The noises wake me up at night,” she had told her father. “There’s something wrong. I don’t know what the noises are, but they seem louder at night. Strange sounds. The rotting garbage is making methane. It’s got to be building up and expanding. The whole dump could become a big bomb.”

  “You’ve got quite an imagination,” her father said.

  “But Dad,” she had said. “There’s no way for all the gas to get out. The asphalt company didn’t leave enough vents. That dump probably needs thousands of vents. There’s never been a garbage dump this big in the world. Nobody knows what could happen!”

  Her father thought for a moment. “There’ll be cracks. The methane’ll leak out somehow,” he said, but she wasn’t sure he really believed that at all.

  “Can we bring Surfer with us?” Michael asked. “He always helps us sell more candy.”

  “Sure,” Sarah told him.

  She and Michael started their trek through their sprawling housing development. There was no end to split-level ranch houses lining the east border of the garbage dump. Richmond Estates was the next development to Springville Gardens—and that was all Cape Cod–style homes. The other major housing tract was Holly Farm Homes, the cheapest built of them all, on the south side of the dump. Sarah knew for a fact that the walls of the houses there were paper-thin.

  Sarah held tight to Michael’s hand as they walked up Wilde Circle. They noticed Miss Lefkovitz sitting in her vintage Toyota, warming up the engine. “Hi, Miss Lefkovitz!” Sarah called across the street to her. Sarah and Michael could see only the silvery wisps at the back of Miss Lefkovitz’s French twist. She didn’t turn around. “She can’t hear us,” Sarah told Michael. “She’s probably listening to the weather report or one of her oldies-but-goodies on the car radio.”

  Miss Lefkovitz had bought eight chocolate bars the day before as a treat for her summer English class at PS 18, so there was no point in bothering her again. She had been Sarah’s teacher for two years at the New Springville School, and Sarah loved her. She was the only high school teacher with a doctorate in Chaucerian studies, but she was the daughter of a rabbi and too sensitive for her own good. Whenever she read an excerpt from “The Miller’s Tale,” boys threw Magic Marker tops and chalk at her.

  “We’d better sell the candy bars before it gets too hot,” Sarah said, rearranging the chocolates in the box so their wrappers were all faceup and shining.

  “Right,” Michael said, clutching his pet rat to his chest. “Can we eat one later?”

  “Yes, Michael,” Sarah said. “Like we always do.”

  Sarah was proud of the way Michael had gotten over his fear of the rats at the dump. When the family first moved to Springville Gardens, Sarah had been terrified of the rats, too. She had been so scared of rats when she was ten years old that she wouldn’t go out of the house. That was when her father had sat down and told her all about rats. He explained how they’d always been around on Earth. How they traveled on ships. And how Sarah didn’t have to be afraid of anything furry. Not really. He taught her that it was fun to pet furry things. Cats and ferrets and gerbils.

  “But I’m afraid of rats,” Sarah had said to him. “Rats give me nightmares, and they’re horrible, and I think they want to bite me.” She had seen a show on TV about how rats can climb into cribs and bite babies who had milk still on their lips from their bottle.

  “Rats don’t usually attack humans unless they’re cornered,” her father had explained. And then he did the best thing he could ever have done. He took Sarah to Pet World at the mall. He let her touch the dogs and guinea pigs and the mice. He let her see how gentle they were. That was when she saw Surfer in a cage and fell in love with him. Surfer was a baby rat then, as white and tiny as a cotton ball. His two glistening pink eyes seemed to be staring at Sarah.

  “I want him,” Sarah had told her father. “I want the baby white rat.”

  “Then he’s yours,” her father said. “But you’ll have to take care of him.”

  “I will, Dad. I promise I will,” Sarah said. “He’ll be like a cousin to the big brown ones at the dump. He won’t ever be lonely. And he can watch TV and play computer games like Creature Feature and take baths with me.”

  “He’s going to get bigger, you know,” her father said. “At least six inches and a tail to match.”

  “Good,” Sarah said. “I want him big and strong and brave. Not afraid of anything.” They had picked out a habitat cage and exercise wheel and food pellets. Sarah remembered feeling like she was a mother to Surfer. She remembered holding the cute little rat for the first time, nurturing it. Now she was teaching Michael the same way she had learned.

  “Surfer is our friend,” she always told Michael. “We don’t have to be afraid of rats. Not at all.”

  Mrs. Carson looked out her picture window and saw Sarah and Michael down the block starting to knock on doors. Oh, God, more chocolate bars. She didn’t want to buy save-the-sanctuary candy. She didn’t want Girl Scout cookies or vegetable seeds or vitamins or to order anything from some kid’s Christmas catalog. She didn’t want to sign any political or environmental petitions. All she wanted was a little peace and quiet so she could finish toilet training her darling son, Kyle.

  “You need to use the potty?” Mrs. Carson asked Kyle. Kyle laughed, pulled at his diapers, and continued playing with his stuffed animals in his crib.

  She knew from looking at her son’s face that he had to go, so she scooped him up, ran with him downstairs, and took off his diaper.

  “Use the toilet, honey,” she told Kyle.

  Kyle laughed again. He watched his mother for a while. He knew there was something about the big white cold bowl that she wanted him to do. “Mama,” Kyle said, running to the toilet bowl. He heard something splashing inside of it.

  “Mama,” Kyle repeated.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Carson said. “Use the potty.”

  Kyle looked in the bowl and he saw something moving. Something looked back at him and dived under the water. It disappeared down into the bottom of the toilet.

  Kyle started to cry. He ran to his mother, wanting to tell her what was in the bowl. One of those things from the garbage dump, Mama, he wanted to tell her. There’s one of those things in the toilet bowl.

  Mrs. Carson looked up. “Don’t be afraid,” she told Kyle gently. She looked over to the toilet bowl and realized she had forgotten to clean it for him.

  She took a can of cleanser from beneath the sink cabinet and sprinkled a shower of its white powder into the bowl. She knelt down on her knees in front of the bowl and grabbed the gold-plastic handle of the toilet brush and began to thrust its bristles down into the water, prodding and poking at the stains. She was sorry she’d left her reading glasses upstairs. She leaned over the bowl now and scrubbed harder at a stubborn stain.

  Suddenly, she was aware of a brown shape beginning to swell up from the bottom of the toilet. At first she thought it was a wet rag in the eddies of the bowl. She had to get it out of the bowl before it completely clogged it. A voice from somewhere in the back of her mind said, Be careful … careful now … but she didn’t have time to really listen to it. Whatever it was, she wanted it out now.

  A moment later she had pried it loose enough to know it was something furry. A piece of a play fur or clump of lint from the drier. There were always hairy fists of lint collecting on the filters, easily flammable wisps that she had meant to place in a water trap or special sealed bag where a loose spark wouldn’t find them. She saw the piece of fur twitch, lifelike. So often she had mistaken pieces of lint for a spider or beetle or moth. She felt a little frightened that it might be something alive, but that didn’t make much sense. Whatever it was, it was too big—and it was loosening, starting to come up toward the surface.

  By the time it was clear that it was a living thing, it was too late. In a flash, Mrs. Carson’s instincts interpreted the movement as beyond the parameters of anything inanimate. Concern, apprehension, and even frigh
t raced electrically through her as the thing swam upward in the bowl. She felt her stomach turn and tighten, and a wave of coldness gripped her torso. Blood rushed to her head and her eyes focused sharply, suddenly, as whatever it was broke the surface of the water. Her heart shook as she realized a head with snout and teeth was exploding—erupting!—straight at her.

  Mrs. Carson jerked her head back and away, but the large rat had launched itself into the air now. Its body was sleek, with powerful legs and claws digging into the air. Mrs. Carson screamed, and swiftly slammed down the toilet seat. She had a single moment to push Kyle away from the bowl into a pile of laundry and get to her feet.

  She ran to pick him up, wanting to get him out of there, but the seat on the toilet was banged open. Before she could get to Kyle, the powerful and wet writhing body of the huge rat was half out of the toilet and heading for her. She held Kyle as the rat leaped from the bowl and charged at her. With her free hand she grabbed a broken mop and swung it with full force. At first she missed, stroke after stroke, and she settled instead for diverting the dark, snarling mass. It scooted like a shadow, a horrible stalking shadow that closed on her feet. She leaped and stepped to one side faster than she knew, and an innate ability to battle replaced any thought of fleeing. Blood rushed into her head, and her brain pounded as she brought the stick down on top of the rat. Again. And again.

  For a few moments the rat kept coming, but then she hit it so hard, it was knocked back toward the toilet bowl. Mrs. Carson was beyond thought. Beyond terror and rage. She began to kick at the huge rat, kick maniacally with Kyle screaming in her arms. She kicked and clubbed at it with the mop handle—wildly!—ferociously!—until somehow the rat managed to crawl back into the bowl. It was in the toilet, diving back down beneath the surface of the water, but Mrs. Carson raced to the toilet and thrust the mop handle after it. She screamed with outrage and fury—matching Kyle’s howls—as she thrust it like a sword, hard and deep, and only a long time later, when she realized and believed—truly believed that the rat was gone—only then did she let herself burst into tears.

  3

  INVASION

  Sarah and Michael were halfway around Wilde Circle when Mrs. Carson ran out of her split-level ranch house carrying her son. “Help,” she called, hoarse and dazed. She turned in slow circles, looking across the lawns and driveways and flower beds. She hoped neighbors would hear her and leave their elaborate gas barbecues and laughing guests and wicker gliders. She needed help. Advice. There was only Sarah and Michael on the blazing hot pavement. Sarah realized something was very wrong.

  “What’s the matter?” Sarah asked. She handed Michael the box of candy to hold and rushed to Mrs. Carson. “There are rats coming up out of the sewer. Out of my toilet,” Mrs. Carson managed to utter. Her breathing was shallow. Gasping. “There are rats in my toilet.”

  Next door to Mrs. Carson’s split-level ranch house, the Saturnawitzes’ children swam in their backyard pool. The surface was dark blue from the reflection of the sky on the chlorine-sparkling water and black bottom tiles. Jackie Saturnawitz, ten, the oldest boy, sinewy with trim muscles and long thin legs, was the first to notice the curious shadows venting from the side drains of the inground pool. At first he thought it was a cluster of magnified oak leaves caught in a backflow from the skimmer, or a shadow-string of geese passing over on the way to the Woodland Sanctuary.

  “Time us! Time us!” two of his younger sisters called from the far end of the pool. Before he could stop them, the girls had launched themselves into the air. They landed with big splashes. Sandra Saturnawitz was nine, stronger and older than Jennifer. The two of them raced with Australian crawls, heads submerged and executing wild, earnest strokes followed by a side toss of their heads to grab air, then submerging their heads once more.

  Linda, five, the youngest of the Saturnawitz children, watched from her perch straddling a plastic alligator float. She was filled with a strange mixture of envy and joy as she watched Sandra and Jennifer churning the water and racing toward her. She wished she was old and powerful enough to be racing with them. Old enough to go on sleepovers and tall enough to ride Montezuma’s Revenge and the Batman roller coaster at Adventure Land.

  The waves from the race began to toss her, to vibrate and shake the alligator, and she braced herself for more thrilling splashes and waves as her sisters neared her end of the pool. Something made her look at Jackie. She saw her brother wasn’t timing his sisters like he usually did. He was staring at the water in the far end of the pool, his eyes wide with what looked like surprise or wonder.

  “They’re racing!” Linda called to Jackie. “Why aren’t you timing them? Why?”

  She watched her brother move quickly along the side of the pool. The splashes of darkness in the water no longer seemed like shadows of birds or floating leaves. A moment more and he recognized the shape of the shadows heading straight into the paths of Sandra and Jennifer. His legs began to weaken and he felt his throat closing with fright. He fought to open his trembling mouth as a cluster of small brown heads broke the surface near Linda on the float.

  For a moment longer, Jackie wanted to believe that he was seeing things. He wasn’t at the pool at all. He was in a movie house. Or watching a video somewhere. Something he might have seen at the zoo or in the images from a program on India or a South American jungle. His mind had to be short-circuiting. A vision from a terrible dream. But he felt the wind in his face and the coldness of the tile trim beneath his feet. What he was seeing was real.

  “RATS!” he began to yell. “RATS IN THE POOL!”

  Linda saw them next from her perch on the alligator float. She had heard the words Jackie yelled, and thought it was one of his pranks. He always did things like this. Make fake bats out of crepe paper and set them above a closet door. And the badger in the cage. That was his most frightening trick: their mother’s foxtails hanging out of a wooden box with a spring that sprang open and the fox tails came hurtling out—and she screamed and screamed. But she knew in the pit of her gut this was not a joke.

  She knew from the terror in his voice, and the sight of the tiny heads with the big teeth heading for her. She shrieked and pulled her feet up out of the water so her entire body was atop the plastic alligator. Sandra, then Jennifer, glimpsed the swimming dark forms ahead as they raced toward them and the end of their water course. They saw them as blurred, wiggling shadows through their swim goggles. Water had seeped into the goggles through the cheap rubber trim, and a mixture of air and chlorinated water played havoc with their sight.

  The girls were in the middle of the shadows before they saw the brown oily bodies, glistening clipped fur, and savagely clawing feet clearly. They saw the tiny black eyes burning above flat, wide teeth and wriggling white underbellies. The sisters stopped, frozen in the middle of the school of rodents. They stood still in shock. The girls’ limbs strained against the pressure of the water, and dread rippled through their bodies. They tore off their goggles and began to scream. Sandra and Jennifer rushed toward the steps at the shallow corner of the pool, hitting at the rats to clear a path. Their fingers and hands smacked into the slippery bodies and ghastly, snapping faces as more—larger!—rats surfaced around them.

  Jackie was afraid for little Linda on the float. Several of the larger, aggressive rats had clawed their way up onto the alligator’s plastic tail. Linda’s pulse quickened, throbbed crazily, as the first of the rats made it up onto the float. It looked at her and began to scurry along a corrugated seam toward her. It was happening like slow motion, like the sun had become a stroboscope and her eyes could only bear to see half of what was happening. A moment later several more of the gasping creatures had left the water and were shaking themselves on the raft as they advanced.

  Linda felt her throat tighten and hurt as though her glands themselves had filled with fear. The rats reached her legs and began to bite at her rubber pool shoes. The creatures were close enough for her to see the pool dribble leaking from their mout
hs and strands of shiny, thick mucus sliding from their nostrils. Panic began to ride her, shake her to her marrow. The surface of her skin prickled, revolted, as though bathed in a nightmare. A nightmare beyond reason and thought and imagination. The dread of rats had been programmed into her young genes, into centuries of being human. Into mankind’s long evolution and deep, deep cry to survive.

  One of the rats jumped forward and landed on her shins. With its teeth snapping, it began to run up toward her face. Linda’s body trembled in a primordial reflex. She turned and looked dazed, helplessly, to her brother. Jackie had grabbed the long handle of the pool skimming net. She saw him swinging the net out at the plastic alligator and the rat that was on her chest now. The rat sprung again. Linda saw it in the air, its claws reaching for her face. But somehow it was in the net. Her brother had netted it, and hurled the rat like something in lacrosse. He swung the net and pole and knocked several of the other rats off of her and back into the water. But the attack was rough. Too sudden. Linda felt herself losing her balance and falling. She screamed as she went over and splashed down into the pool.