Rats (The Zone Unknown)

by Paul Zindel

  “Tri … tri … triangulate,” Michael said, pleased he could retrieve the long, strange word.

  “Exactly.”

  Michael put the booster remote on the coffee table and lay down on the floor. He wanted to be certain about the direction in which the needles were pointing. One arrow pointed toward the living room wall. The other arrow froze at an angle that, if projected by imaginary lines, would cross the first one somewhere beyond the living room.

  “So, where is Surfer?” Sarah said.

  “The arrows show the signal is coming from … from somewhere beyond the living room wall,” Michael said. “From the backyard!”

  “Right.”

  Sarah followed Michael out onto the rear patio. The door had a dog port from the home’s first owners. Surfer had no trouble going in and out of the small swinging door. She watched Michael estimate that the arrows would cross down near the end of the lawn.

  “Here,” Michael said, running to the point where the grass met the asphalt seal.

  Surfer was sitting at the mouth of a piece of rusty drain pipe and gnawing on a scrap of wood. Michael let out a whoop and picked up his pet.

  “We’re going to watch TV,” Michael said, racing back into the house with Surfer. “He told me he wants to watch the news and a special on grizzlies and play Creature Feature on your laptop. He loves to dance to the background music.”

  “Tell me about it.” Sarah remembered how Surfer had liked to watch her play Creature Feature from the very beginning. She started humming the song from her computer game. Surfer used to look like he was dancing to the music. He’d spin around, like a waltzing mouse, and sometimes she even used to get him to come in from the dump just by playing the music. Other times, the music made Surfer dreamy-eyed, and he’d take a nap.

  For the first couple of years he seemed to like all the same computer games and TV shows she did, and listen to the Top Forty with her. Since Surfer had the transmitter on him, she always knew exactly where he was. He’d be in the backyard or running about on the dump. He was never gone very long. It was as if he’d disappear to hang out with the dump’s rats, and then come back.

  Sarah stayed out on the patio. It was almost five o’clock and the shadows from the huge asphalt mounds fell across the backyard. She dialed her father with the cell phone that she always wore clipped to the belt of her jeans. Her dad had bought the phone for her right after her mother’s death, and insisted she keep it with her. He wanted to be able to call her at any time. He wanted to be able to know where she and Michael were and that they were safe.

  “Hello.” Her father answered the phone at his landfill office.

  “Dad, it’s me.”

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Yes,” Sarah said. “Can you come home soon?”

  “I don’t know when I’m going to get out of here,” Mr. Macafee said. “Things are getting crazier.”

  “What else happened?”

  “There were rats at White Water Park this afternoon,” he said. “Kids on the water slides and in the main wave tank. Rats started coming out of the inflow pipes and drains. They were on the slides with the kids. Rats washing down the slides with little kids screaming. A couple of mothers fainted. I’m working with the police and the Health Department to contain it. We’re flooded with phone calls. Rats in cereal boxes. Rats in people’s beds. It’s going to be on the news tonight and we’re afraid of a local panic. I’ll come home as soon as I can.”

  Since her mother died, Sarah had tried to understand the tension that crawled in her father’s voice, even when he wasn’t under pressure. There was always a special type of strain she’d noticed whenever he talked to her. Something in his voice that made her feel as though she never said the right thing. Maybe she was too anxious, that she was trying too hard to be something more than a daughter.

  To look after him.

  Like her mother had.

  Maybe she was trying too hard to fill the emptiness her mother had left in all their lives.

  “You and Michael should spend the night at Aunt Betty’s,” Mr. Macafee said.

  “Dad, I don’t think so,” Sarah said. “We want to stay here and wait for you.”

  Sarah’s aunt lived in Bayonne, a short ride across the Kill Van Kull. Sarah was used to taking their outboard, a fourteen-foot AquaSkiff with a two-hundred horsepower Johnson engine on the back. As long as Michael could bring Surfer, she knew he’d go.

  “Are there rats in our house?” her father asked.

  “No.”

  “If they’re in everyone else’s house, they’re certainly going to be in ours. Watch out for them. They can fit through a hole as small as a quarter.”

  “We’re not afraid of rats,” Sarah said. It came out defensively, when what she had wanted to say was Dad, we love you and we want to be here when you come home.

  When she hung up, Sarah heard Michael laughing. The channels on the living room TV were being changed rapidly. She looked in through the open patio window and saw Michael sitting on the sofa next to Surfer. Surfer was up on his haunches and poised over the TV remote. The long whiskers on his tiny white face were flicking excitedly, his nose twitching and sniffing at the air.

  Michael was tickling him, but Surfer’s small red eyes were glued on the screen. Michael pressed in the button for a channel. There was a rerun of a talk show. Surfer shook his head like he had a chill—like he didn’t want to watch it. He pounced his front paws down onto the buttons of the remote, and a documentary on Komodo dragons flicked on the Science Channel.

  Michael punched the talk show back on. Surfer shuddered again and hit the button for the Komodo dragons to come back. Michael giggled and saw Sarah watching them.

  “He can’t stand talk shows,” Michael said.

  Sarah laughed. The way Surfer’s beady little eyes shifted from the TV to the remote made it look like he was really picking the programs. It looked weird, like something they should tape and send in to Funny Pet Videos or some program like that.

  Sarah noticed that their next-door neighbors Mr. and Mrs. Hettle had come home. They were a young Indian couple with a six-month-old baby. Their English was far from perfect, but they always had a smile and spent a lot of time tending to the squash vines they’d planted in their backyard. Sarah realized that they may not have heard about the rats.

  “Hi, Hettles,” Sarah called, starting across the lawn toward them.

  They smiled at her. “Hello, Sarah,” Mrs. Hettle said.

  Sarah waited until she was closer. “Where’s the baby?” she asked. They looked confused. Sarah mimicked rocking an infant in her arms. They understood and smiled again.

  “She was tired when we came home. I gave her a bottle,” Mrs. Hettle said. “She’s having a nap.”

  They saw a look of concern crawl across Sarah’s face.

  “Did you hear about the rats?” Sarah explained. “The rats from the dump coming into the houses?” She could tell from the look on their faces that they didn’t quite understand her English, didn’t know what she was talking about. “You’d better check on her.”

  The Hettle baby girl lay in her crib enjoying the warm bottle of milk her mother had given her. She stared up at the glow-in-the-dark constellation and planet stickers her father had put on the ceiling, and she felt comfortable and sleepy. She let her eyes drift to the familiar faces of teddy bears and brightly dressed dolls and shadow puppets sitting on shelves, when something moved down by her feet. Something tickling, creeping up the blanket.

  She tried to lift her head to see what it was, and for a few moments she expected to see the smiling face of her mother or father. Perhaps one of them was playing a game. They were hiding, tickling her with their fingers, and then they would appear above her and lift her up into their steady and safe arms.

  For a while the baby thought whatever it was had gone away. She felt the wetness of milk clinging to her lips. For a few moments she closed her eyes and thought she would drift off to sleep
. She waited for the pleasant feeling to grow, to spread across her chest and down to her legs. Her eyelids were heavy and starting to close, but the thing that was moving on top of her was closer now.

  Something was near her neck.

  There was a shadow, and then she saw a little face above her. It wasn’t a doll. It wasn’t anything she knew. It was a little brown twitching face with whiskers and small black eyes. A small hairy face—and the baby began to feel afraid.

  After a moment, she felt something on her chin and she could see the little face clearer now. The fur. The mouth. And its tongue gliding out from under two shining teeth. There came another little head next to the first.

  Rats.

  A pair of rats sat up on their haunches and began licking the milk from the baby’s lips.

  “Oh, God,” Mrs. Hettle said, freezing at the doorway. Mr. Hettle started into the room past her, but Sarah caught him. Stopped him. Her instinct was for them to freeze, to not frighten the rats into doing anything sudden. Anything vicious.

  The three of them stood still, the baby whimpering as the rats looked up from licking the baby’s lips. They stared at the intruders. Sarah’s mind raced through every book she had ever read about rats. Every program she’d ever seen. Every article and fact and rumor she’d ever come across. Her blood pounded in her chest, and she felt Mrs. Hettle trembling.

  CHIRRRRR. CHIRRR.

  Sarah recognized the chatter of a rat, the strange sort of squeaking sound rats made. But it was not coming from the rats at the baby’s mouth. The sound was coming from behind her. They were louder, more urgent rat sounds than any she’d ever heard. Sarah and the Hettles turned toward the sounds.

  CHIRRR. CHIRR.

  Michael stepped through the doorway carrying Surfer on his palms.

  “He’s been making these sounds,” Michael told Sarah. “He was freaking out. He wouldn’t stop, so I wanted you to see …”

  Surfer was staring straight at the dump rats, and he made the sounds again. He went up onto his haunches in Michael’s hands. The dump rats appeared to be listening to the sounds. Understanding them. After a moment, the pair of dump rats turned away from the baby’s mouth and ran along the edge of the crib.

  Sarah and the Hettles moved toward the baby as the rats leaped on to the sill of an open window, their hindquarters shaking in a fast waddle. Sarah watched them jump into the backyard. A moment later, the last of their segmented, glistening tails had disappeared among the cloak of giant squash leaves and twisting vines.

  5

  ENCOUNTER

  “Was Surfer talking to them?” Sarah asked Michael as they crossed the Hettle’s lawn back to their own house. “It looked like he was talking to the dump rats, telling them to skiddoo and leave the baby alone.”

  Michael didn’t answer right away. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “He’s been making sounds like that a lot lately.”

  They went in through the front of the house. “Surfer and I are going to play Dark Mountain and Creature Feature, and then watch a special on the difference between Nile and Australian crocodiles,” Michael said, heading for the living room. Sarah paused in the foyer. The vision of the rats at the baby’s mouth had burned its way into her brain. She felt creepy. Nervous. Her father’s words haunted her. If rats had gone into so many of the other houses—if they had drunk from a crying baby’s lips—then they could be anywhere.

  “I’ll bring you a ‘slops.’ We’ve got cream soda and I’ll use scoops of fudge ripple,” Sarah called to Michael, and she went into the kitchen. She halted in the middle of the linoleum floor and flicked on the bank of fluorescent lights on the ceiling. Her gaze moved over the L-shaped counter that fanned out from both sides of a deep aluminum sink, and stopped on the box of candy. She’d left it on the countertop when they’d come back from … Miss Lefkovitz. The top layer of candy bars had been disturbed. The wrapper on one had been ripped open, exposing the rich dark brown of chocolate. Whole chunks were missing.

  “Did you eat any of the candy bars?” Sarah called out to Michael.

  “Nope,” his voice came back. “Can I?”

  “In a minute.”

  The sun had started to sink behind the peak of the vast black mound behind the house. Its rays shot through the picture window that was sliced into the wall above the sink. What do I do now? Sarah asked herself. She thought about calling Michael in to show him what had happened to the candy, but he’d seen enough upsetting things for the day.

  Perhaps Michael had nibbled on the candy, had ripped the wrapper and tinfoil underneath, and he didn’t want to tell her. Perhaps he felt bad that he hadn’t asked permission. If that was the case, it’d be a first. She checked the floor. If there were rats in the room, she wanted to know. “You’re not taking over our kitchen,” she said softly. “If any of you rats are here, you’d better clear out. Out.”

  Her eyes followed the wildflower trim of the white linoleum. She knew every inch of it from having swept it and mopped it a thousand times. The floor in front of the dishwasher was weak and buckled from several overflows that had soaked into the cheap plywood beneath. She had often wondered what lived down below the rotting, what was hiding beneath the linoleum cover and the wood. Were there termites? Wolf spiders? Large, hairy centipedes appeared from out of nooks and crannies in the summer and marched across the floor until they were destroyed by heavy doses of bug spray.

  She thought she saw a movement in the space below the dishwasher. The machine had a black plastic front that had never been set to fit flush with the floor. The two or three inches of black void could shelter anything. There were plenty of places for rodents to hide beneath the washer and the stove. Once they found a family of mice that had come in for the winter and made a home in the stove. She remembered once when they’d made a roast chicken one Sunday. The smell of cooking mice was terrible. They had put down baited wire cages and spring traps and had to let the broiler burn for a whole weekend to get the stench out of the stove.

  Sarah’s attention returned to the candy box.

  There were hiding places behind the lineup of appliances on the counter. She checked behind the blender and microwave. She moved a popcorn maker and heavy-duty juicer.

  Nothing.

  There were holes in the baseboard. Rats could come in through any opening that was as big as their skulls. There were holes that had been drilled for the thick electrical 220 cables that had to be brought in to power the oven. Her gaze came back to a black hole in the center of the sink.

  A sound.

  A sound from the blackness.

  The garbage disposal. The black hole where they shoved the discarded trimmings of onions and carrots and the unwanted gristle from meats. The switch to turn the disposal on was on a slice of wall behind the sink. If rats were hiding in the black hole, she’d have to lean over and look into it.

  Another sound.

  “Get out now, you rats,” she said. “Now.”

  Her hands were shaking as she backed off and circled the floor trying to get a grip on her nerves. The sounds stopped. There’s probably no rat in there, she told herself. If there were, it would have cleared now. It would have gone out the way it came in.

  Instinctively, Sarah pulled open the storage drawer of the stove. There was nothing but a Dutch oven pot and its glass top. She stooped and tightened her grip on the transparent top, and lifted it like a gleaming shield. She held it in front of her face as she slowly straightened up and started toward the sink.

  Her eyes were riveted on the black hole. She felt a pain in her chest, a tightening as she tried to hold the heavy glass top steady. She knew Norwegian rats—the kind of rats from the dump—could easily jump six to eight feet.

  “I’m coming, you rats,” she said, holding the shield at arm’s length.

  The floor creaked. The ice maker in the refrigerator made clinking noises as it dropped ice and its feeder gizmo changed positions. Each sound sent chills up the back of Sarah’s neck.

&
nbsp; “Are you there, rat?” she said, trying to lighten up. Her voice cracked. “It’s me, Sarah.”

  Her throat tightened and she strained to see past the web of laser-sharp sun rays crashing in from the beveled window. Her belt felt crooked and tight against her stomach. She wanted to free up her hands to pull at her clothing, but she didn’t dare set the shield down. She tried to laugh at herself for being so afraid.

  A sound came from inside the disposal.

  Something had moved in the black hole. A click, as one of the crude metal blades of the rotors was tripped.

  Sarah leaned forward.

  For a moment she thought she saw the back of a small animal, but it was the rubber wedges that safeguarded the top of the grinder. If there was a rat in the hole, she knew it could leap out. It could come fast, and sink its teeth into her neck. It could cut an artery.