The War for the Lot

by Sterling Lanier

  "Look what I have here," came the quiet voice in his mind, a hint of laughter in it. "What do I do with them?"

  Out of the bushes had emerged a dozen low, waddling, light-gray forms, their eyes gleaming, their long, naked tails curling like pink snakes. It was the opossums, who had come after all!

  "Take them with you and put them with the others," said Alec. "Can they talk to me?"

  "We can talk," came a slow, grating voice in his mind. "What can we do? We hate the brown rats. They eat our food."

  "Do what this skunk says," said Alec. "Come on, we have to cross the road right now!"

  "Do what this skunk says," repeated the slow voice. "Do you hear, you others? Do what this skunk says. What do you say, skunk?" Opossums are literal-minded to a fault.

  "I say, cross the road," said Stamper. "Follow me, all of you. I'll tell you more about what to do later."

  Alec and Worthless were the last to run across the highway and enter the noise and murmur of the black wood ahead. They soon caught up with the others and saw Stamper put the opossums in a group at the center of the line they were building. On the left flank, furthest away from the road, were the skunks, strung out and waiting. On the right of this line, with the end animal almost at the road's edge, were Stuffer and his clan of woodchucks. Now Alec put himself in the center, with the opossums and woodrats. Stamper stayed with him and Worthless crouched at his feet, opening and shutting his claws in convulsive movements. All of them faced south and waited. Overhead, thunder roared and cracked out steadily and the lightning flickered and flashed. A gale-driven mass of forest litter was blown through the air by the gusting wind, now growing colder. Leaves, twigs, and occasionally even heavy sticks whirled through the tree trunks.

  Alec crouched down beside Worthless. There was nothing more they could do now except wait. In the midst of all this noise and turbulence, he wondered how anyone could hear the rats coming, or give warning if he did hear them.

  "Look up, look up!" came a voice in his mind. He did so and saw Soft Wing battling the wind just a few feet over his head, wings beating frantically as the owl fought to maintain himself in one place.

  "They're coming! They're coming!" came the bird's voice. "We've managed to turn them this way! Cousin Death Grip and the foxes and raccoons are driving them. It looks like there's a million of them, though! Look sharp, I'm heading back!" His wings beat harder and he flew off to the south, back the way he had come.

  "A million?" thought Alec. Soft Wing had to be exaggerating!

  Stamper's voice exclaimed, "They're coming! All of you in line! Get ready!"

  Now, even above the voice of the gale, the boy thought he could hear another sound, high-pitched and shrill, rising and falling. In another second he was sure the sound of a thousand squeaking, angry voices was coming down the wind, the enraged squealing and chattering of a host of angry rats!

  He rose to his feet, gripping his shovel tightly. Worthless, his teeth bared and ears flattened, stood up as they both peered through the trees.

  And then they saw the enemy.

  A flood of close-packed gray-brown bodies, looking almost like water in the uncertain light, was pouring over the ground not fifty feet away and coming straight toward them. Hundreds of eyes gleamed red in the lightning's glow.

  "Here they come!" screamed the boy and swung his shovel back over his shoulder. He saw Worthless gather himself and then the rats were upon them.

  The line of skunks and woodchucks charged, growling and biting ferociously. The squat group of opossums scuttled at the nearest enemies, snapping with their long, sharp fangs. The little group of woodrats fought alone, giving no ground to their hated cousins from the dump. Alec glimpsed Wandertail in one lightning flash, his teeth in a brown rat's throat.

  Alec swung his shovel hard, the flat side down, smashing a big leader rat with the first blow. Worthless pounced, dropped a limp body and pounced again. Red war raged along the line. And still the mass of rats came on.

  Into Alec's brain now came a wave of terrified mind pictures from the rats in front of him, as they realized that new enemies were squarely in their path.

  "Stop! Look out! A human is killing us! Turn back! A terrible cat is fighting here! Skunks are killing us! A thousand strange animals are attacking here in front! A giant human is crushing us flat! Help! Send more fighters this way! We're being killed! We're being surrounded! Go back!"

  Those rats who were in the front ranks were now trying to draw back and get away from this fresh group of attackers who had suddenly appeared. But the pressure of the others behind was too strong. Those to the fore were pushed further forward still in spite of themselves, and realizing that they had to fight, they came ahead again. And brown rats are good fighters, especially when afraid. "Fighting like a cornered rat" is not just an idle phrase.

  A huge rat leaped straight at Alec's face, screaming shrilly with rage and fear. Coldly, as if on a batter's plate, Alec slashed with his shovel, chopping at the rat and catching the dirty brown body in midair, hurling it back into the seething horde behind. At his feet the big cat was now snapping and clawing in a frenzy of rage. Stamper was not a yard away, his tough black-and-white form almost invisible. He was crunching grimly, ignoring his own wounds, tearing at rat throats and crushing rat limbs with each bite. The opossums, now far from sluggish, hissed as they clamped their long, punishing jaws on rat bodies.

  Out on the flanks, the skunks, woodchucks, and other animals fought desperately, each defender faced with at least a dozen seasoned rat warriors. Some of the defenders were badly wounded and fell back, while those remaining fought harder than ever.

  But the enemy still came on, their fear and determination making a silent mind-shout that assaulted the brains of the defenders. All of Alec's army had by now sustained wounds, including the boy himself, whose legs were now bleeding freely from several bites.

  Down the wind from the south came a long hooting cry, echoing even over the noises of wind and storm. At the sound, the rats seemed to redouble their efforts to get forward and away from what lay behind.

  "That's Death Grip, the horned owl," came Whisperfoot's voice in Alec's brain. "They're more afraid of him than anything in the world!"

  And then the long-built-up storm finally broke. Thunder exploded overhead with the noise of a hundred cannons. The skies opened and a crushing downpour of rain fell onto the woodland below. The next lightning flash showed Alec only those animals less than a yard away. The rain was so intense that it blotted everything else from sight behind a silvery-gray wall of water.

  The animals, both brown rats and defenders, ceased battling for a moment in response to this new shock of the elements. And that brief time was exactly what Alec needed. Raising his shovel and screaming wordlessly, he charged the cringing enemy line. All the skunks, opossums and woodchucks, soaked and drenched as they were, followed the boy. Worthless, infected by the madness of battle and needing only the example of a leader, came first in Alec's wake.

  "Turn to the left, turn away from them! Go to the open side! Make for the human road, there are no enemies there!" came a clear, brutal voice. The leaders at once began streaming west across the road as they saw no signs of any other foe before them.

  Before Alec's eyes the rats vanished from in front of him, so that he stood with uplifted spade and nothing left at which to strike. He was dazed for an instant and again completely forgot that everything going according to his plan and that the next step was now in order. But one small, cool mind did not forget, and once more the tiny deermouse, clinging to his jacket, helped direct the battle.

  "Follow them, follow them," came Whisperfoot's voice in the hoy s brain. "It's going to work! Close in behind them. Quick, or they'll turn back! They're half of them across the road already!"

  The instructions cleared the muddle from Alec's head. He wheeled and shouted aloud for Stamper, but could hardly hear his own voice through the mingled noise of thunder and rain. He remembered then that only men
tal speech made sense to animals anyway, and called out with his mind.

  "Stamper, Stuffer! Get all your people together! Follow the rats to the road and over it! They're running! We beat them down! They're heading for the pond now, so drive them on!"

  Ignoring the pain of the bites on his legs, and followed by Worthless, who was now limping, he ran through the woods in the drenching rain, over leaf-mold and sodden plants toward the road. He could hear no response to his calls but he pressed on, sure that the others would follow.

  As he neared the road, he saw in a lightning flash the shapes of a raccoon and a big red fox, their tails dragging and wet, but their bodies dancing and leaping as they snapped and bit at the hindmost rats. The other, southern side of his two-pronged attack had finally caught up to him and was now fighting alongside him in the rear of the enemy. At the same time, in front of the two he could see a mass of brown-and-gray rat bodies closely bunched, some of them turning to fight, but most of them with their backs and naked tails to him, trying to get away.

  On either side of Alec, more animals were coming into position. He caught a glimpse of two more foxes to his left, and a skunk ran past him almost underfoot to join in the fighting. He moved forward himself, shovel at the ready, to add his weight to the battle line. At the same time, he sent out a desperate message to the most powerful ally, and the only one not there.

  "Mowheen! Mowheen! Come quick! I'm just above the road! Come and help now!"

  He heard no answer and grimly attacked the nearest rats with his spade, pounding away at the scurrying bodies, yelling with the excitement of physical combat. A few of the bigger rats snapped back half-heartedly but there was no real resistance for a moment. Then out of the rain, in a particularly brilliant flash of lightning, there appeared a huge rat, one nearly as big as Worthless, with many more behind him almost the same size. The wedge of dreadful brutes came charging right toward him, actually scampering over the backs of the smaller rats who were facing the other way. It was Notch-Ear coming back to do battle with his picked troops, hardened warriors trying even now to save the rat army from destruction.

  And behind Notch-Ear was something even worse! Lightning briefly showed a tangled mass of rat bodies, dozens at least, pulling and hauling something in their midst. Here was the reason for the sudden rat counterattack! The Rat Kings! Helpless now that battle was joined, blind and still hideously twined together, the loathsome rulers of the rat empire were being carried to their expected new conquest, borne on the very backs of their swarming subjects!

  "There's only one human, a small one!" came the voice of the female leader in Alec's brain. "Kill him, and the others will run! Kill the human!

  The huge Notch-Ear, red eyes alight and dirty teeth glistening, rushed at the boy, who braced himself for the impact.

  Squealing with fury, Notch-Ear hurled himself through the air at Alec's throat. Then the boy fell, brushed aside by a vast, black shape rushing from behind him. So great was its power that Alec was spun away several feet, where he landed in a pile of wet leaves.

  A gigantic paw, armed with four-inch claws, caught the big rat general in midair and smashed him into a tree trunk. Every bone in the tough, wiry body was shattered by the frightful blow. Simultaneously, the terrible, bawling roar which means killing to a bear rang out through the wood, carrying even over the noise of the rain and storm. Mowheen, last of the mighty three, had come!

  Moving more like a giant cat, the great creature rushed into the brown rat army, battering them to earth with his front paws in movements so quick the eye could hardly follow them.

  A combined squeal of despair and terror rose from the rats.

  "Fly, run! A demon has come! A black monster is killing us all! Fly! Run for your lives! Cross the road and hide! Run, fly, escape!" The rats now fled in disorder, scuttling, scrambling and scurrying over the ground, biting and clawing those of their own kind who got in the way.

  "After them, Mowheen! Go after em!" shouted Alec aloud over the hissing, rattling noise of the rain. He was on his feet again and charging behind the vast bulk of the raging bear.

  "Come on, you foxes! Come on, raccoons and skunks! Let's chase 'em into the pond!"

  Led by the great bear and Alec, the defenders of The Lot; woodchucks, raccoons, foxes, skunks, opossums, and woodrats, poured out of the forest and onto the road, snapping and harrying the fringes of the rat host. Behind them, a grim windrow of silent brown rat bodies, large and small, testified to the fury of the battle.

  Across the Mill Run road, black and shiny with rain, and into the trees of the lower slope the woods animals and the boy pursued the fleeing brown rats. There was no thought of mercy in any defender's mind. The rats had come to conquer The Lot and all in it. Mindless with fear, instinctively following their fellows in front, the demoralized rat army tumbled down the slope, heading straight for the pond. There were still many thousands of them, a vast and formidable enemy.

  Alec had not noticed in the press of the battle that the rain was slackening and the wind dying down. The great storm was fast passing on. Thunder was now rolling far ahead to the west and starshine was already coming through gaps torn in the thinning cloud wrack.

  The boy emerged from the trees at the top of the bank overlooking the pond just in time to see the vanguard of the dump invaders reach the water's edge. Just as he had hoped, the rats, faced with a short stretch of water in front and stark terror behind, elected to swim. The leaders leaped in and began paddling across the deeper arm of the pond, their V-shaped wakes spreading out from side to side. With each second, more and more of the panic-stricken rats launched themselves into the water and struck out for the other side, swimming strongly, heads held high.

  Alec waited tensely. Rats were still leaving the bank. Many were still on land, and none were really close as yet to the far side. It was not yet time. Breathing hard and leaning on his spade, he waited, while around and below him the slaughter never ceased as his four-footed allies tore into the rear ranks of the rat horde. With the simultaneous death of Notch-Ear, their war leader, and the arrival of the great bear, all discipline and controlled power in the rat host had vanished. And so they died by scores, even as they still struggled to move forward and gain the imagined safety of the water.

  The starry sky was quickly shedding its clouds and the rain was completely gone. Only faint lightning on the horizon showed where the storm had passed on, that and the sodden, dripping leaves and the squelch of water underfoot. Now the main host of swimming rats was a vast oval out on the shimmering pond. The leaders were within thirty feet of the far bank.

  The time had come. "Slider, Slider!" Alec's mind-message was clear. "Go get 'em! They're all in the water!"

  The surface of the pond boiled in answer. The big dog otter had been as crafty a tactician as the boy himself. He had led his own family, and the muskrats as well, in a loose circle underwater until they ringed the front half of the brown rat host, cutting them off from the far bank and on both sides but remaining completely undetected in the process.

  Now, at Alec's signal, the otters and muskrats struck. Coming from underneath, like sharks after helpless swimmers, they bit hard once and then went down, appearing seconds later under a new rat target.

  Brown rats can swim well and even dive, but compared to otters and muskrats, they were as unevenly matched as a human skindiver would be against a sea lion. The mind-voices of the dump rats were now without any sense or sanity at all. Alec could hear a wild and confused screaming in his brain. It made no sense, being only the expression of the frenzied terror of hundreds of once-cunning minds, completely given over to the madness of fear.

  The swimming rats were now milling about in circles, many trying to climb onto the floating bodies of their own comrades. It was a terrible sight and might have caused the boy to pity them. But Alec, remembering the implacable menace of the Rat Kings, simply felt a grim satisfaction as he watched the fury out on the star-shot water.

  All of the bro
wn rats on the near bank had now succumbed. Some of the raccoons had entered the water and were snapping and diving at the tails of the last rat swimmers, still struggling to reach the distant, unattainable shore.

  As the boy somberly watched the end of the battle, a great shape loomed in front of him. Alec saw the old bear standing against the bank before him looking up with faintly gleaming eyes.

  "Was I in time?" came the message from the old, tired mind.

  Alec reached one hand down to pat the silvery muzzle. "You were in time, Mowheen," he said. "We finished the whole crowd of them. And we couldn't have done it without you."

  "Good, good," said the big beast. "The old bear was some use after all. The Rat Kings are dead, you know. I saw to it. Never even got a bite from the filthy vermin. You did, though," he said, eyeing the boy's legs, which were covered with blood, now mostly dried. "Better go rest and lick your wounds, little human."

  His long tongue shot out and touched Alec's knee. "We will not meet again, Watcher, not again. I am going for a long walk. The old bear will go far up into the hills of the west and north. I don't think he'll come down again. Too many aches, too many seasons. This is the last. Good-bye, Watcher. Remember the old bear who came when he was needed."

  The great black shape swung off down the shore and vanished into the darkness of an alder thicket. Alec felt tears come to his eyes. He suddenly felt more tired than ever before in his life.

  Then a thought touched his mind and he realized that Whisperfoot was still on his shoulder. Through all the battle and the chase, the storm and the rain, the deermouse had been steadfast. Now she was sitting up, dressing her wet fur and cleaning her whiskers with her tiny front paws.

  "Well, that was a thoroughly messy business," her thought came briskly. "Look out at the pond, Watcher. Nothing left!"

  The deermouse was right. As Alec looked, he could see the war was indeed over. The first light of midsummer dawn showed the ripples of swimming muskrats and otters, but of the brown rats there was not a living one. All had died, many by tooth and claw, many by drowning, and some from fear alone. Of the great army which had set out from the Mill Run dump, not one remained. The menace to The Lot and its creatures was ended.