It was family to me.
Suddenly, the floor began trembling, a vibration that traveled up through my cowboy boots and into my muscle-clenched stomach. My vision began to shudder, as if an electric toothbrush had been jammed into my brain. A new smell rose up from the swimming pool drain, something I couldn’t recognize—ancient and foul, it made me think of rotten corpses. It made me want to run screaming.
And through it all, the cat’s low purr of satisfaction filled the room.
I squeezed my eyes shut and switched the flashlight to full power.
I could only hear (and feel) what happened next: a thousand rats panicking, pouring out of the pool to race for the dark corners of the room, flowing past my legs in a furry torrent. Hundreds more scrambled to escape down the drain and into the darkness below, their claws scraping the broken concrete as they fought to flee the horrifying light. Bloated rat king bodies flopped from the diving board and landed on the struggling mass, squealing like squeaky toys dropped from a height.
I fumbled a pair of sunglasses out of a pocket, got them on, and opened one eye a slit: The cat was unperturbed, still curled at the end of the diving board, eyes shut against the light, looking like an ordinary cat lying happily in the sun. It yawned.
The trembling of the floor had begun to fade, and the traffic jam of escaping rats was starting to break up. The drain hole looked to be more than a yard across; the deep end of the pool had cracked open, crumbling into some larger cavity below. The rats were still roiling, disappearing into it like crap down a flushing toilet.
Squinting up at the cat again, I saw that it had risen to its feet. It was stretching lazily, yawning, its tongue curling pink and obscene.
“You just stay there, kitty,” I called above the din, and took another step toward the drain. How deep was the hole? Cat-size? Peep-size? Monster-size?
I only needed one glimpse and I was out of there.
Between my blazing flashlight and the squeaks and scrambling feet echoing off the sides of the pool, I was almost blind and practically deafened. But the weird smell of death was fading, and just as the last rats were finally clearing out, I caught the slightest whiff of something new in the air. Something close …
A sharp hiss sounded behind me, someone sucking in air. As I spun around, the flashlight slipped from my sweaty fingers…
It cracked on the swimming pool floor, and everything went very dark.
I was completely blind, but before the flashlight had died I’d glimpsed a human form at the edge of the pool. Following the bright image burned into my retinas, I ran the few steps up the slope and leaped from the pool, raising the camera like a club.
As I swung, I caught her smell again, freezing just in time.
Jasmine shampoo, mixed with human fear and peanut butter… and I knew who it was.
“Cal?” Lace said.
Chapter 10
MONKEYS AND MAGGOTS…OR PARASITES FOR PEACE
Howler monkeys live in the jungles of Central America. They have a special resonating bone that amplifies their cries—hence the name “howler monkey.” Even though they’re only two feet tall, you can hear a howler monkey scream from three miles away.
Especially if they’ve got screwworms.
Meet the screwfly, which lives in the same jungles as howler monkeys. Screwflies look pretty much like normal houseflies, except bigger. They aren’t parasites themselves, but their babies are.
When it comes time to have baby flies, screwflies look for a wounded mammal to lay their eggs in. They’re not picky about what kind of mammal, and they don’t need a very large wound. Even a scratch the size of a flea bite is plenty big.
When the eggs hatch, the larvae—also known by such charming names as “maggots” or “screwworms”—are hungry. As they grow, they begin to devour the flesh around them.
Most maggots are very fussy and only eat dead flesh, so they’re not a problem for their host. They can actually help to clean the wounds that they hatch into. In a pinch, doctors still use maggots to sterilize the wounds of soldiers.
But screwworms—screwfly maggots—are another matter. They are born ravenous, and they consume everything they can get their teeth into. As they devour the animal’s healthy flesh, the wound gets bigger, luring more screwflies to come and lay their eggs. Those eggs hatch, and the wound gets even bigger…
Eww. Yuck. Repeat.
At the end of this cycle is a painful death for many a howler monkey.
But screwflies also bring a message of peace.
Like all primates, howler monkeys want mates, food, and territory—all the stuff that makes being a howler monkey fun. So they compete with one another for these resources—in other words, they get into fights.
But no matter how angry they get, howler monkeys never use their teeth or claws. Even if one of the monkeys is much bigger, all it ever does is slap the other one around and (of course) howl a lot.
You see, it’s just not worth it to get into a real fight. Because even if the smaller monkey gets its monkey ass totally kicked, all it has to do is get in one tiny scratch, and the fight becomes a lose-lose proposition. One little scratch, after all, is all a screwfly needs to lay its eggs inside you.
Many scientists believe that the howler monkeys developed their awesome howling ability because of screwworms. Any monkeys who resolved their conflicts by scratching and biting (and getting bitten and scratched in return) were eaten from within by screwworms. Game over for all the scratchy and bitey howler monkey genes.
Eventually, all that was left in the jungle were non-scratchy monkeys. Survival of the fittest, which in this case were the non-scratchiest.
But there were still mates and bananas to be fought over, so the non-scratchy monkeys evolved a non-scratchy way to compete: howling. Survival of the loudest. And that’s how we got howler monkeys.
See? Parasites aren’t all bad. They take primates who otherwise might be killing one another and leave them merely yelling.
Chapter 11
MAJOR REVELATION INCIDENT
“What are you doing down here?” I yelled.
“What are you doing down here?” Lace yelled back, grabbing two blind fistfuls of my hazmat suit in the darkness. “Where the hell are we anyway? Were those rats?”
“Yes, those were rats!”
She started hopping. “Crap! I thought so. Why did it go all dark?”
“I kind of dropped my flashlight.”
“Dude! Let’s get out of here!”
We did. I could see only leftover streaks etched into my retinas by the flashlight, but Lace’s eyes weren’t as sensitive as mine. She pulled me stumbling back up the stairs, and as we squished through the poisoned-peanut-butter hallway, my vision began to return—light was pouring in from the health club through the open locker door.
Lace squeezed out, and I followed, slamming the locker shut behind me. Fluorescents buzzed overhead, and the basement looked shockingly normal.
“What was that down there?” Lace cried.
“Wait a second.” I pulled her away from the security cameras and over to a row of weight benches. Sitting down, I tried to blink away the spots on my vision. Lace stayed standing, eyes wide, nervously shifting from one foot to the other.
“What the hell?” was all she could say.
I stared at her, half blind and still astonished by her sudden appearance. Then I remembered the doorman setting the elevator’s controls, leaving them unlocked so that I could return to the ground floor.
I hadn’t paid close enough attention. It was all my fault. I’d blown the first rule of every Night Watch investigation: Secure the site. But I was positive I’d closed the locker door behind me…
“How did you get down here?” I sputtered. “I thought the health club was closed at night!”
“Dude, you think I came down here to exercise?” She was still shifting from foot to foot. “I was headed out and Manny said, ‘You know that guy you came in with this afternoon? He’s he
re spraying for rats.’ And I’m like, ‘What?’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah, did you know he was an exterminator? He’s down in the health club right now, looking to kill some rats!’ ” Lace spread her open palms wide. “But you told me you were looking for Morgan. So what the hell?”
I didn’t answer, just sighed.
“And when I came down here,” she continued in a breathless rush, “the lights weren’t even on. I thought Manny had lost his mind or something. But when the elevator closed behind me, it was totally dark.” She pointed. “Except suddenly that locker was doing this … glowing thing.”
I groaned. On its killer setting, my Night Watch flashlight had been visible from up here.
Still hyperventilating, Lace continued. “And there was a hidden hallway, and the floor was covered with weird goo, and there were stairs at the end, with this insane squeaky pandemonium coming up from below. I called your name, but all I heard was rats!”
“And that made you want to go down the stairs?” I asked.
“No!” Lace cried. “But by then I figured you were down here, somewhere, maybe in trouble.”
My eyes widened. “You came down to help me?”
“Dude, things didn’t look so good down there.”
I couldn’t argue with that. No one else could have messed this up quite as totally as I had. Things were bad enough, with a great big rat reservoir bubbling up from the Underworld, along with a weird peeplike cat and something big enough to make the earth shudder. And right smack in the middle of it all, I’d managed to insert Lace—a Major Revelation Incident.
I was screwed. But I found myself staring at Lace with admiration.
“All those rats…” A note of exhaustion crept into her voice as hysteria subsided. “Do you think they’ll follow us?”
“No.” I pointed at her shoe. “That stuff will stop them.”
“What the …?” She stood on one foot, staring at the bottom of her other shoe. “What the hell is this crap anyway?”
“Watch out! It’s poisonous!”
She sniffed the air. “It smells like peanut butter.”
“It’s poisonous peanut butter!”
She let out a sigh. “Whatever—I wasn’t going to eat it. Note to Cal: I do not eat stuff off my shoe.”
“Right. But it’s dangerous!”
“Yeah, no kidding. This whole place should be condemned. There were, like, thousands of rats in that pool.”
I swallowed, nodding slowly. “Yeah. At least.”
“So what’s the deal? What are you doing here, Cal? You’re not an exterminator. Don’t tell me that you investigate STDs and spray for rats.”
“Um, not usually.”
“So does this building have the plague or something?”
Rats and plague did go together. Would Lace believe that one? My mind began to race.
“No, dude,” Lace said firmly, rising to her feet and putting a finger in my face. “Don’t sit there making shit up. Tell me the truth.”
“Uh … I can’t.”
“You’re trying to hide this? That’s nuts!”
I stood and put my hands on her shoulders. “Listen, I can’t say anything. Except that it’s very important that you don’t tell anyone about what’s down there.”
“Why the hell would I keep quiet? There’s a swimming pool full of rats in my basement!”
“You just have to trust me.”
“Trust you? Screw that!” She set her jaw, and her voice rose. “There’s a disease that makes people write on the walls in blood spreading through my building, and I’m supposed to keep it a secret?”
“Um, yes?”
“Well, listen to this, then, Cal. You think this should be a secret? Wait till I tell Manny what I saw down there, and Max and Freddie and everyone else in the building, and the New York Times and the Post and Daily News, for that matter. It won’t be very secret then, will it?”
I tried to pull off a shrug. “No. Then it’ll just be a building in New York City with rats in the basement.”
“Not with that thing on my wall.”
I swallowed and had to admit she had something there. With Morgan’s gristle graffiti added into the mix, the NYPD would have a reason to reopen apartment 701 ’s missing persons case, which might lead them in all sorts of uncomfortable directions. The Night Watch was usually pretty good at making investigations go away, but this one would be tricky.
Which meant I was supposed to call the Shrink right now and tell her what had happened. But the problem with that was, I already knew what she’d tell me to do. Lace would have to disappear forever. All because she’d tried to help me.
I stood there in silence, paralyzed.
“I just want the truth,” Lace said softly. She sat down heavily on a weight bench, as if her nervous energy had run out.
“It’s really complicated, Lace.”
“Yeah, well, it’s pretty simple for me—I live here, Cal. Something really hideous is going on under our feet, and something insane happened right in my living room. It’s starting to freak me out.”
On those last words, her voice broke.
She could smell it now. With all she’d seen, Lace could feel the capital-N Nature bubbling up from below—not the fuzzy Nature at the petting zoo, or even the deadly but noble kind on the Nature Channel. This was the appalling, nasty, real-world version, snails’ eyes getting eaten by trematodes; hookworms living inside a billion human beings, sucking at their guts; parasites controlling your mind and body and turning you into their personal breeding ground.
I sat down next to her. “Listen, I understand you’re scared. But knowing the truth won’t make it any better. The truth sucks.”
“Maybe. But it’s still the truth. All you’ve done is lie since you met me, Cal.”
I blinked. She didn’t. “Yeah,” I said. “But—”
“But what?”
At that moment, I knew what I really wanted. After six months of the natural world getting steadily more horrible, of my own body turning against me, I was just as scared as Lace. I needed someone to share that fear with, someone to cling to.
And I wanted it to be her.
“Maybe I can explain some of it.” I breathed out slowly, a shudder going through me. “But you’d have to promise not to tell anyone else. This isn’t some journalism class project, okay? This is deadly serious. It has to stay secret.”
Lace thought for a few seconds. “Okay.” She raised a finger in warning. “As long as you don’t lie to me. Ever.”
I swallowed. She’d agreed way too fast. How could I believe her? She was studying to be a reporter, after all. Of course, my only other choice was the phone call that would make her disappear.
I stared into her face, trying to divine the truth of her promise, which probably wasn’t the best idea. Her brown eyes were still wide with shock, her breathing still hard. My whole awareness focused itself upon her, a tangle of hyped-up senses drinking her in.
My guess is the parasite inside me made the choice. Partly anyway.
“Okay. Deal.” I put out my hand. As Lace shook it, a strange thing happened: Instead of shame, I felt relief. After keeping this secret from the whole world for half a year, I was finally telling someone. It was like kicking my boots off at the end of a really long day.
Lace didn’t let go of my hand, her grip strengthening as she said, “But you can’t lie to me.”
“I won’t.” My mind was clearing, beginning to work logically for the first time since the earth had started to tremble, and I realized what I had to do next. “But before I tell you, I have to sort out a couple of things.”
Lace narrowed her eyes. “Like what?”
“I need to secure the basement: Chain up that big door behind the wall and lock that locker.” I could leave my duffel bag downstairs, I realized. The rats wouldn’t steal it, and I’d need the equipment right where it was the next time I went down. But there was one last thing I had to get before we left. “Um, do you have a flashli
ght? Or a lighter on you?”
“Yeah, I’ve got a lighter. But Cal, tell me you’re not going down those stairs again.”
“Just for a second.”
“What the hell for?”
I looked into her brown eyes, wide with rekindled fear, but if Lace wanted to know the truth, it was time she found out how nasty it could be.
“Well, since we’re already down here and everything, I really should catch a rat.”
“Okay, I’m tracking a disease. That part of my story was true.”
“No kidding. I mean, rats? Madness? Bodily fluids? What else could it be?”
“Oh, right. Nothing, I guess.”
We were up in Lace’s apartment. She was drinking chamomile tea and staring out at the river; I was cleaning poisonous peanut butter out of my boot treads, hoping the task would distract me from the fact that Lace was wearing a bathrobe. A rat called Possible New Strain was sitting under a spaghetti strainer held down with a pile of journalism textbooks, saying rude things in rat-speak.
I’d caught PNS at the top of the stairs, snatching him up in a rubber-gloved hand as he sniffed one of Lace’s peanutty footprints.
Lace cleared her throat. “So, is this a terrorist attack or something? Or a genetic engineering thing that went wrong?”
“No. It’s just a disease. The regular kind, but secret.”
“Okay.” She didn’t sound convinced. “So how do I avoid getting it?”
“Well, you can be exposed through unprotected sex, or if someone bites you and draws blood.”
“Bites you?”
“Yeah. It’s like rabies. It makes its hosts want to bite other animals.”
“As in ‘So pretty I had to eat him’?”
“Exactly. Cannibalism is also a symptom.”
“That’s a symptom?” She shuddered and took a sip. “So what’s with all the rats?”
“At Health and Mental they call rats ‘germ elevators,’ because they bring germs that are down in the sewers up to where people live, like this high-rise. A rat bite is probably how Morgan, or someone else up here, got infected in the first place.”
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