The Rats of New York City

by Mitchell Mendlow

  ***

  In his shock Darius figured he would keep recording observations of the city. 

  "This is Darius Halliday, and I am completely serious when I say that people all over New York are being swarmed and... and murdered by packs of killer rats."

  In the forefront of his mind, Darius was confident in believing that he and the helicopter pilot were currently the luckiest people in the city. 

  "I'm now flying over the Manhattan Bridge.  It is in total chaos.  The traffic heading into the city has caught on to what's happening and now everyone is attempting to turn around on the bridge at the same time.  Several cars have already gone over the edge."

  As the pilot took them closer to the city, Darius noticed a dark shadow beginning to spread across the bridge. 

  "The rats are now on the bridge!  Looks like millions of them.  I can't yet tell if they're after the people in the cars or if they're all just evacuating the city." 

  He was wrong on both counts, for this is where the cheese came into play.  The cheese was never meant to be used for directly attacking people.  Packs of gnawing rats were effective enough for that sort of direct combat.  The cheese was intended for cutting off people from entering or exiting Manhattan Island on a permanent basis.

  In perfect synchronization, the cheese-carrying rats emptied the vials across the bridge.  Darius was completely baffled by the image.

  "There's some sort of substance pooling up across the lanes!" he said to the camera.  "The rats brought it there, I have no idea why."

  Not more than a minute passed when Darius looked down and saw the Manhattan Bridge crumble apart and sink into the water.  The Brooklyn Bridge followed shortly afterwards. 

  Huh, wonder how they did that?

  Once the cheese was released there wasn't even enough time for the cheese-carriers to get clear before the bridge collapsed, and so millions of rats took the plunge as well.  Those who survived the fall promptly swam over to where a bunch of people were congregating in small boats.  These people, who thus far felt assuredly safe on the water, had spent their last few moments recording and uploading to YouTube various videos of shoreline rat-attacks.  Before the videos had finished rendering, the boats were swarmed and chewed to bits.  A small patch of the East River was turned red, but it dispersed before Darius Halliday got to include the image in what would eventually become the most valuable historical document of the attacks.

  "Take us over the city," said Darius.  "Let's go to Times Square." 

  The pilot did as ordered. 

  Human commotion had dwindled to nothingness at this point.  Times square was simply a mess of rats and car crashes.  Darius immediately noticed the strangest thing of all.  The Jumbo-tron screen was playing a horrifying video clip of a rat-covered individual flinging themself off the Manhattan bridge just moments before it collapsed.  Darius recognized the cell-phone like quality of the video as having been captured by someone from the boats.  Evidently one of the graphic clips had managed to finish rendering to YouTube before the boats went down.  The rat computer-techs found the clip and decided to link it up to the jumbo-tron where it would play on an indefinite loop.  It was a threat for anyone watching from the skies.  There were also threatening messages spelled out on rooftops via the precise arrangement of many severed limbs.

  Suddenly Darius noticed the last vestige of human life on Manhattan island.  Walking safely through the deep pool of rats was a small group of people clad in some sort of protective metallic suits.  It was like a science-fiction movie to Darius.  Rats furiously tried to find some weak point they could gnaw themselves through.  They even attempted using cheese to melt through the suits, but what had easily taken down a major bridge was entirely useless here.  The figures brandished weapons which when turned on the rats proved to be powerful flame-throwers.  Hordes of rats were sent fleeing from the danger.  Scout rats with camera attachments were sent in stealthily one at a time to properly assess the protective suits.  It appeared that a single-grooved line framed the edge of the suit as if it clicked open neatly in half like a sarcophagus, which in fact it did.  Just how exactly did one make this happen was the question being currently pondered over by millions of brilliant rats watching on their monitors within the ORT chamber. 

  "...They don't seem to be able to penetrate the armor," explained Darius happily.  He wanted to feel optimistic about this group of apparent saviors.

  Darius would not be let down by witnessing the inevitable failure of the armored humans, for it was here when the chopper began to completely fill up with rats.  Rat-scouts had of course learned and reported meticulous schedules of any aircraft that would be above New York at the moment of the attack.  The less-used compartments of these crafts had thus been filled up the night before with especially lethal, stowaway rats.

  The improbability factor of a pack of rats suddenly appearing in a helicopter actually came as a comforting realization to Darius Halliday, for it was at this moment when things became so impossible that he realized he must be dreaming.  As the chopper dived, Darius didn't even notice that his shoes, socks and feet were missing.

  ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY-THREE YEARS LATER

  "Tonight," said the narrator of the documentary movie, "we are proud to present the fascinating story of the Rats of New York.  Every detail of the Uprising will be discussed with clarity.  The mysteries you've long pondered over will at last be solved.  How did the rats manage to convert ordinary cheese into a crude sulfuric acid capable of tearing down all the major bridges?  Just what exactly was recorded on the infamous broadcast of Darius Halliday, the only known victim to have documented the attack as it was underway?  What structural changes have occurred to Manhattan Island during 193 years of continual rat-ownership? All this and more on the revealing story of how the devastating rat attacks paved the way for a new Utopian age of humanity in tune with nature..."

  If programs of the future had continued with the practice of funding themselves through the calculated placement of advertisements for random and unnecessary products, then there would have been a commercial break at this point in the usual form of televised storytelling.  Instead there was only a brief fade in/out.  The actual commercials were long gone, but the notion of a commercial break had been ingrained strongly enough in the minds of network executives as to have become a permanent fixture for all of human history.  The totally unneeded sporadic fade in/out was kept around as a comforting formality and really only added a few hours to the total amount of time one would spend watching television in a lifetime anyway.

  "Welcome back," said the narrator.  He was not at all sure why he welcomed people back from a two second fade in/out, but it seemed like the appropriate thing to do.  "Before we discuss aforementioned and very popular topics, like cheese and the collapse of the Manhattan Bridge, it is time for the very important part of the show that talks about The MARTYRS.  The name of this group, of course, stands for The Militia Against the Rat Takeover by Young Resilient Saviors. 

  'From what we know about the history of New York, it was such a random city as to have a group of people for pretty much everything.  Amongst all the obvious groups was a less obvious subdivision of apocalypse-survivalists.  Each different organization strongly believed in their own specific and sometimes obscure version of how humanity would perish. They had therefore made particular plans in accordance with whatever future threat they would assuredly find themselves pitted against.

  'We, as future historians, are fortunate that the Martyrs carefully documented the entire proceedings of their prophetic operation.  It is now known the origin of the Martyr's rat-apocalypse theory came from the leader, Eugenio Boudreau, having taken a biblical quote completely out of context.  Eugenio became obsessed with the fact that the bible had predicted the inevitable takeover of NYC by an army of highly organized rats.  He recruited a team that was the perfect synthesis of overly brainwashed, right wing, christian gun nuts and LSD consum
ption.  Over the years the team appeared to perfect the art of anti-rat technology by constructing many different highly expensive gadgets and devices, most of which was funded by Eugenio's considerable inheritance peppered with the fraudulent skimming of millions from various fundraisers involved with the Martyrs.  

  'One of the most important aspects of the Martyrs, and also the reason they were able to function over the years without being known about by the millions of Scout-rats, was that their operation was completely situated in New Jersey.  Eugenio had purchased a nondescript house outside Jersey City and equipped it with a soundproof underground bunker.  From the bunker the rest of the Martyrs then tirelessly and ingeniously dug themselves an underground tunnel all the way into the heart of Manhattan.  The underwater portion of the tunnel, which ran just south of the Holland tunnel, had taken twenty years and cost such a fortune as to bankrupt the entire group.  

  'Of all the gear invented by the Martyrs, by far the most famous and fascinating is their anti-rat suit.  Looking like a cross between medieval armor and futuristic diving gear, the Martyr suit boasted the pinnacle of rat-repelling technology.  Not only were the suits completely impervious against biting, clawing and gnawing, but they were also impervious to the sulfuric acid-like effect of the cheese that was powerful enough to take down every bridge into and out of the city.  On the evening of the attack, after word had spread about what was happening in New York, the Martyrs promptly donned their suits and armed themselves with a plethora of flame-throwers.  They bravely ventured into the now totally rat-owned Manhattan Island. 

  'We know that the last thing Darius Halliday saw was of the Martyr's brief, yet furious, Battle of Times Square.  Let us take a look at the last moments of video from aboard Traffic Chopper 43."

  The narrator vanished and was replaced with the iconic images of Darius' cinematography.  The footage was maddeningly shaky.  The deafening rustle of the wind made it so that Darius had to yell into the microphone.

  "I've just spotted possibly the most insane image of today," announced Darius.  "There is a whole team of people down in Times Square wearing some sort of full-body armor.  I'm not sure what the armor is but I've never seen anything like it.   They are the only living people to be seen, yet they appear to be waging quite the effective counter-attack.  Every time the rats try to move in the people drive them back with flame-throwers.  Burning rats are scampering everywhere looking for the refuge of puddles and sewer drains.  The rats managing to escape the fire aren't exactly much of a threat... they don't seem to be able to penetrate the armor..."

  Suddenly there was the sound of a helicopter filling up with rats.  This was followed by the sound of a pilot screaming.  The explosion did not follow, for at that point the camera had already cut out with an anti-climactic blip.

  "There we have it," said the narrator.  "Darius Halliday did not see the failure of the Martyrs, which we surmise came shortly after the end of the recording.

  'The Martyrs, despite their brilliance with technology, had been forced to cut a few corners after the unfortunate bankruptcy scenario.  The locking mechanisms of the armor had always been designed to function off battery power, yet the team had felt pressured into buying nearly the cheapest of battery cells.  The power to the suits lasted barely an hour after they'd finished tunneling from Jersey.  When the locks failed, the armor clicked open and the rats prevailed.  Even though some of their choices were unfathomably idiotic, the Martyrs exemplary display of bravery and prophecy has ensured them a place as the most commemorated heroes in all of history.  One example of this is how the phrase 'bridge and tunnel' has come to be defined as a compliment of the highest order, whereas we know that Pre-Rat Takeover it was actually used as a derogative term. 

  'We may have heard the chilling last piece of recording out of Traffic 43, but there is still much more to come after this." 

  There was a brief fade in/out, but the story never stopped.

  THE END.