The Great & the Small

by Andrea Torrey (A. T. ) Balsara

  The cobbled pavement around their burrow was cold to the paws now. Winter was on its way. But it didn’t matter to Fin.

  Zumi loved him.

  Every moonrise they set out foraging, side by side, their breath puffing into the air like icy swans. Sometimes Zumi asked Fin why he had left the Tunnels, or why he wasn’t in the war, or if he missed his uncle. But always he’d steer the conversation away. “Don’t worry about that now,” he’d say, nipping her ear and tackling her. Rolling down the alley in a big furry ball, they’d scratch and bite at each other like two pups.

  Fin had never felt so happy, so in love. For the first time in his life, Fin felt confident and content. There was no talk of being a leader, no talk of what good Tunnel Rats do or don’t do.

  There was only him and Zumi.

  FORTY-FOUR

  “The cemeteries overflowed, but still there were always more dead. Trenches were dug and bodies were placed in, layer upon layer.”

  Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-75)

  Winter arrived.

  There was a chill in the air that cut through small fur coats, cut into thin bones. Food became even more scarce, forcing Fin and Zumi to forage farther out of their range.

  One moonrise, they decided to forage along the wharf, by a section of warehouses they’d never been to before. Fog hung thick over the pavement and wrapped around the dark buildings. The cobblestones were slick with frost.

  A light snow fell, landing on their ears and whiskers. Fin had never seen snow before and had looked forward to it. Now, all he felt was cold.

  “I don’t like it down here,” said Zumi. “Two-legs don’t live this far down, and the streets are deserted. I don’t think we’re going to find food.” She sniffed the air warily.

  Fin looked at her. Her once thick coat was a little shabby, and her cheeks were sunken. She needed food. Fin did too. He’d never known hunger before. This constant gnawing in his belly was new.

  Not for the first time Fin wished he was more like his powerful uncle. Papa would have found a way to get food. He wouldn’t have let his mate starve. At the thought of his uncle, Fin’s heart ached.

  “Fin!” Zumi was staring at him. “Are you listening?”

  “Of course I am,” he replied. “You said no two-legs live down here and you don’t like this place.”

  Zumi nodded but eyed him suspiciously.

  Closer to the waterfront Fin caught a whiff of fish. “See? What did I tell you?” They followed the trail to a dark warehouse where a splotch of fish guts had frozen onto the cobblestones. Two-legs must have spilled them there earlier that day. Most of the guts had been scraped up, but there was still plenty for two small rats.

  After a few mouthfuls, Zumi’s eyes got their old sparkle again. It made Fin feel proud. Even if he was a puny little mouse-rat, he could take care of his mate.

  The two of them laughed and joked and gorged themselves on fish. After Fin’s belly was as round as an egg, he chortled, “So, Miss Zumi! Who was right this time?”

  “You were,” sighed Zumi. “For once!”

  “Ha!” said Fin. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

  Zumi was sniffing the air, frowning. “Can’t you smell it?”

  “No, what—ugh!” An odour had drifted overhead on a slight gust from the harbour. Heavy, cloying, the smell squeezed out the aroma of fish, leaving only itself. Fin and Zumi stared at each other, their eyes wide.

  It was the smell of Death.

  Whatever had died must be huge. The smell was everywhere now. Like a gossamer snake, the foul odour coiled and glided deep into the alley. Fear bristled along Fin’s spine.

  “What do you think it is?” asked Zumi. She huddled close to him.

  “I don’t know,” said Fin.

  They crept forward together, ears swivelling, noses twitching.

  The fog grew thicker as snow began to dust over the cobbles. The scent trail led to a warehouse, its metal doors chained and bolted. A swirl of the sickly-sweet odour eddied around its opening, confirming that the doors had rolled open that day.

  The stench came from inside.

  Dread seeped into Fin. He could sense the clinging smell of many dead things—not just one. “Let’s get out of here!” he said.

  Zumi stared at the door. “Fin, I know what’s in there. Balthazar saw it.”

  “Balthazar? Balthazar? What’s he got to do with—Zumi, no!”

  Zumi had darted under the doors. Into the warehouse.

  “Come back! Zumi, come back!”

  She didn’t answer. The doors loomed overhead.

  Fin approached the doors. His whole body shook.

  He crawled under.

  Inside there was darkness. Strands of putrid odour leaped at him, clawed his nose. Using his whiskers to feel his way, he took a step. The smell was so thick it smothered his senses. He felt blind. Sounds were deadened, like something was blocking them.

  There was a flutter of muffled weeping. “Zumi?” called Fin. “Are you okay? What’s the matter?”

  From far away, he heard her sob, “He was right! He was right! Oh, Fin! They’re everywhere.”

  Fin’s eyes bulged. He swivelled, looking behind himself. Where? What? I don’t see—

  Look! Open your eyes! They’re all around you! Why can’t you see them?

  Wide columns began to emerge from the dark. One was directly in front of Fin. He’d almost walked into it. He took a step forward and sniffed along the bottom.

  It wasn’t a column. It was a stack.

  Long objects lay one on top of the other, wrapped in bags. The sweet, foul odour of death wound around each bundle like a shroud.

  “Wh-what are they?” asked Fin, and then his heart began to race. He knew. He knew what they were. Horror pumped into his veins. His teeth began to chatter.

  “Not what,” came Zumi’s voice. “Who. They are two-legs, Fin. Dead two-legs.”

  The room swam. Stacks sagged and whirled around him as if he were tumbling through the air. “Two-legs?” he croaked. His voice sounded strange, like it belonged to someone else. “Two-legs?”

  The face of his little one rose before him.

  Bubbling stench filled his nose. His pounding heart muffled his ears.

  The words of Balthazar sprang up. Over the mountains and across the sea there came a terrible scourge…a scourge that would deal death not only to the Old Ones, but to ALL.

  He panted, “I need to get out…Zumi…need to go…now!” Anguish twisted his heart. He couldn’t breathe. “Zumi…”

  The two-legs cast themselves out into the ocean of blood…

  Another stack emerged before him. Bodies of two-legs lay sandwiched on top of each other. No bags on these. A pair of small feet stuck out from the jumble. A little one.

  Two-leg children cried out, calling for their parents…but we do not care about two-leg little ones. Do we…?

  The door! Squeeze under…cool air…he is free! Running…running back, through the dark alley, over damp pavement where snow has gathered. But always, always, the face of his little one hangs before him.

  Zumi calls to him from behind, pleads for him to wait.

  His legs do not, cannot, listen.

  Hurtling through the drainpipe, he dives into the nest, burrows into the rags. But still the voice of Balthazar can be heard.

  It is told that the two-legs wept.

  FORTY-FIVE

  “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”

  Vladimir Lenin

  The season’s first snow swirled outside Ananda’s hospital room window. Out in the hall, her father peered through the small rectangle of glass on the door that separated him from where she lay in a coma. He hadn’t been allowed to get near her. Not since that day.

  Perrin had been hysterical, and Tom could only piece together what had happen
ed. Perrin had been inside, working. Hadn’t realized Ananda was outside until she heard the screaming.

  She’d run outside. What she described then sounded impossible: rats swarming over Ananda’s body. Grabbing a piece of wood, Perrin had beaten them off. She was in quarantine now. So far she showed no symptoms.

  Not so with Ananda. After Perrin had done away with the rats, Ananda began vomiting. A specially-equipped ambulance had rushed her to a quarantine ICU at the hospital, but by then she was unconscious.

  Lumps the size of eggs swelled Ananda’s eyes shut, making her look like she’d been molded from clay. The lymph nodes around her neck and under her armpits were as hard as baseballs. Even unconscious she moaned and cried out.

  A nurse rushed by, heading down the hall. “That’s my daughter in there,” Tom said to her. “Nobody’s telling me anything!”

  “Let go of me, sir,” said the nurse. Tom looked down and realized he was gripping her arm. He let go and stepped back. The nurse was dark-skinned and young, her eyes bloodshot with exhaustion. “I’m sorry, sir. That’s not my patient, but I have dozens of others that are just as sick.”

  “I’m sorry…” said Tom to her back. She had already hurried away.

  He’d found Ananda’s bag of long overdue library books on the Black Death. The people who’d written the eyewitness accounts had all turned to dust ages ago, but he felt close to them.

  One man stuck out to him. The man had lived 650 years ago in Italy with his wife and five children. When the plague came, it took everything he had: his work, his city, and his entire family. He’d buried his children with his own hands and had written a chronicle of everything he’d seen. Tom could feel the man’s anguish through the pages, and strangely, felt comforted. He wasn’t alone. Others had gone through this.

  Tom didn’t even know how long he’d been here. How many days. It had been a long time, going back and forth between his daughter and his wife, catching a few naps hunched in a hospital chair, brushing his teeth in a public restroom. He hadn’t been home since this happened. Hadn’t been to the lab…the lab!

  Had anyone taken care of the rats? Were his assistants still working? He fumbled with his cell phone, but the battery was dead. Should he go?

  No, it was too late. In his heart he knew it had been too long.

  The rats were dead.

  The floor seemed to tip toward him, and he sagged against the door. He could feel tears pushing up, trying to burst through. He swallowed. They were rats, for heaven’s sake! He’d dissected them! But that had been for something, to fight cancer. Their deaths now? Needless.

  It was too much. Too much death.

  He broke down and, like a dam that had finally been breached, sobbed into his hands. He slid down onto the floor, and in the antiseptic light of the hospital ward, he bellowed out tears until strings of snot dripped through his fingers and his mouth felt frozen into a cry.

  He felt a hand on his back. “It’s going to be okay, sir.” He looked up, blinking through bleary eyes, and saw the same nurse crouched next to him. She held a wet washcloth. “We’ve got to be brave. They need us to be brave.” She pointed with her chin at the hallway lined with doors, behind which lay countless other souls fighting for life.

  He nodded and took the washcloth. Wiping his face, he choked, “Thank you.”

  She held her hand on his back for another moment, looking into his eyes, and then stood up and walked away. On to the next crisis.

  Tom watched her, a small woman, her head high and her shoulders back, although she carried the weight of the world on them. He breathed out.

  Slowly, he rose to his feet and looked through the glass in the door again.

  Breathe in. Breathe out.

  Wiping away tears that would not stop, Tom Blake prayed for his little girl and for all of the doors that stretched down the long hallway.

  FORTY-SIX

  “The town is only recognizable through the buildings and homes which still stand. The people who teemed through its streets are all gone.”

  Jean Baptista Spinell, Naples, Italy, July 10, 1656

  Julian! Come in! Come in!” said Papa heartily. The Councillor’s eyes darted nervously around the Chairman’s burrow. “What?” said Papa. “You don’t trust me, old friend? Ha, ha!”

  Julian frowned. “I know you are angry,” he said. “But you must understand, I am only acting for the good of the Tunnels.”

  Papa stopped him. “First, a nibble between friends, and then we talk.” Bustling to his reserve of forage, Papa carried a chunk of apple fritter back in his mouth. Its smell filled the burrow. “Guests first,” he said, pushing it toward Julian with his nose.

  Julian raised his eyebrows. “I’m…not hungry.”

  Chuckling, Papa ate the fritter until the sweet aroma was all that remained. He smacked his lips. Then he began to groom himself. He pulled first one whisker through his moistened paws, and then another. And then another. Papa glanced up at Julian and flashed him a brilliant smile.

  Julian watched warily.

  Papa sat across from him. “Old friends should never doubt one another. I trust you, Julian.”

  At this, Julian’s grizzled eyebrows rose in surprise. “You do?”

  “Yes,” said Papa. “We have our differences. What friends—what brothers—do not?”

  Julian nodded. “Yes, I have considered you my brother, Koba. But I was not sure you felt the same since I called for an end to using Plague Rats.”

  Papa began to pace. “We go back a long way, Julian. Back to when the two-legs ruled with cruelty and without justice, when we huddled in dripping sewer pipes, when we made plans for a new way. You and I, Julian.”

  A smile transformed Julian’s face. “I am relieved to hear you speak like that, dear, dear Koba. So glad! May I speak to you now, then, as brother to brother? The market has become a ghost-town. And so many Collections from the Lowers! The Tunnel Rats are becoming rebellious. Change is needed, dear Papa, change is needed now. That’s why I said that the death squads must cease. It is not because I love you any less as my brother.”

  Papa sighed. “Yes, change is needed. And right away. A change is essential.”

  Julian nodded his head, his watery eyes round with joy. “Really? Oh, I’m so happy, so relieved.”

  “My first allegiance is to the Tunnels,” said Papa. “I pledge to do whatever is necessary to protect them.”

  Julian said, “This is good news.”

  “Yes, Julian. It is.”

  The Councillor sat up on his haunches, a grin gathering his drooping skin into furrows. “Every rat is equal!”

  “Every nest for all,” answered Papa.

  They touched noses in farewell. Julian moved toward the nest opening, then stopped. “You are wise, my brother,” he said. “Very wise indeed.” Julian hobbled out into the tunnel.

  Papa gazed after him, listening. A breath of movement, scuffling, a muffled shriek. Silence.

  “Ah, Julian,” he sighed.

  He would miss the old goat.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  “You who had been given so much, who had countless joys and pleasures…now you are headed to the same tomb as those who had nothing.”

  Gabriele de’ Mussis, 1348

  Councillor Tiv yawned and stretched, arching her back. The Council Chamber was empty, with the only sound a drip-drip-drip from a leaking pipe in the corner.

  A shift in the air riffled her fur.

  “Hello, I’m waiting!” she called. No answer. She sighed, shaking her head. Licking her paws, she pulled them over her velvety ears. First one and then the other. She sank her paws into the fur on her ample belly and combed them through, pausing to nibble at a fleck of dirt.

  A noise made her freeze. She sniffed the air. Then shook her head again. “At last you show up!” she said. “I have been waiting.�
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  The figure standing in shadow at the entrance said nothing.

  “What is this all about?” said Tiv. “What was so very important, so secret, that it couldn’t wait for Council?”

  “Don’t you know? Haven’t you guessed?”

  A smile pulled up one side of her mouth. “Oh, I’ve got my ideas about it, I admit.”

  She took a step toward the dark opening, whiskers twitching. “Why are you hiding? There’s no one else here. Now tell me, what did you have in mind?” She shook out her fur, smoothing it.

  “Come here, lovely Tiv.”

  She scanned the air with her nose, sniffing the darkness.

  The figure chuckled. “Don’t worry! There’s no one else here. Now come to me.”

  “You’d better not be trifling with me.” She took another step. Leaning forward, she closed her eyes, a smile on her lips.

  The movement from the shadows was swift.

  Before Tiv could make a sound, her spine was bitten in two. Tiv’s eyes flew open. Her body slumped onto the ground.

  “Goodbye, my lovely Tiv,” murmured the voice.

  Tiv blinked once, then closed her eyes.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  “Alas! God of all mercy, when will you help me in my misery?”

  Heinrich Suese, fourteenth-century German mystic

  Fin didn’t move when Zumi came in. He could sense her standing next him, waiting. The only sound was the faint hum of a two-leg machine outside.

  “I know you’re awake.”

  Still he said nothing.

  “You left me. I was scared, Fin, and you left me.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “No. Why did you run away?”

  The face of the little two-leg sprang to Fin’s mind, its brown eyes, its big nose—so different from a rat’s delicate point—the snorting laughter that came from its mouth…those things that had terrified him at first but that he had grown to love. He squeezed his eyes shut against tears.