S2W39: “Tailing Rats”

© 2022 Phylicia Joannis

I wasn’t sure what compelled me forward. The dark underbelly of the subway station forced memories in that I was still trying to forget. Rats with shining red eyes and slick bodies. Stale air, thick with moisture and mildew. I couldn’t stop the images from crowding in. Of before, of now, of what might be waiting for us down the way.

Marcos moved forward with deliberate steps and a steely resolve. We didn’t talk. Partly because we were both afraid. But I think, on some level, we realized that our sounds would travel and might give us away.

We didn’t know what we were doing. Had no idea what we were walking into. It was stupid, following a stranger, a dangerous one at that, into an area hidden from sight. But no one had ever accused us of being smart.

There were a lot of twists and turns in the access tunnels. Spaces were narrow and filled with hissing, clanking pipes and the hum of wires along the ceilings. Scarface was easy to follow. He wasn’t a graceful walker, and his two way radio constantly buzzed with chatter. Sometimes he’d reply with a grunt. Or a crude joke.

Then, suddenly, he vanished. Marcos and I entered an empty space with nowhere else to go but back the way we came.

“Where did he go?” I wondered. Marcos flipped on his phone’s flashlight and scanned the floor.

“There.” He pointed. I stared at the hatch at our feet and gulped. Beads of sweat tickled the skin around my face. It was hot in here, and there was no air circulating. A panic began to build, and I opened my mouth to protest.

“I think we should stop here.” Marcos made a face. “That metal hatch is heavy and loud. He’ll hear us if we go down there.”

“Right.” I nodded my agreement. “So what now?”

Marcos sent the flashlight around the room and shrugged. “See if there’s anything here, then head back the way we came?”

We began checking the space around us, but there wasn’t much to see. More pipes, more wires. The occasional rat. Lots of cockroaches.

“What’s this?” Marcos pointed to a small, rectangular object stuck between two pipes. I squinted and leaned in closer.

“Looks like a tiny radio.”

Marcos reached for it, but froze as the hatch pushed upward, then fell back down. A curse rang out from below us and we looked at each other.

He’s back! I mouthed silently. Marcos pulled me against him and wedged us both in a corner between two pipes. He slipped his phone into his pocket just as the hatch swung open. It made a loud bang as it hit the ground, and I nearly yelped. We slowed our breathing as Scarface climbed from the hatch.

“Gotta be around here somewhere,” he muttered. He spat on the ground, then pressed the receiver for the radio. “Eh, Greg, you got a spare for that detonator?”

There was silence for a long time. Then a voice crackled back. “Not a question I like hearing. You’d better be joking.”

“Just wondering.” Scarface mumbled his reply and put the radio away. He turned on a flashlight and began slowly scanning the end of the room opposite Marcos and me. I turned to Marcos, mind screaming. His eyes were wide with fear. We both knew if that flashlight came this way, we were in trouble.

“You’d think they’d have a backup or a spare.” Scarface continued to grumble. “Those bombs aren’t going off by themselves. Why not have another detonator, just in case?”

A bomb? Panic rose from my stomach to my throat, and I swallowed. Then it clicked. The tiny radio. Scarface was looking for the radio. It was only a few feet away from us.

I looked at Marcos, and he seemed to have the same idea at the same time. He tilted his head downward, softly kicking the stiff carcass of a dead rat, then motioned towards Scarface. I shook my head emphatically. His arms were pinned, and mine were free, but there was no way I was touching a dead rat.

He stared at me, eyes pleading. I sucked in a slow, quiet breath. Pushed down the squeals. Lowered my hands and wrapped them around the stiff body. I touched something squishy and bit my lip to keep from screaming. Then I chucked the rat over Scarface’s head and into the dark passageway. It hit the pipes with a sickening thud.

“Who’s there?” Scarface waved his flashlight down the hall, stepping out of the room. Neither of us moved again until the light disappeared.

“We need a better place to hide.” Marcos grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the hatch.

“What if he hears us?” I asked. But Marcos was already lifting the heavy door.

“He’ll be back, Miracle.” He set the hatch down gently, though it still made a scraping sound. I nodded in agreement and climbed down. He followed me, lowering the hatch slowly. But he’d been right. Like a thousand failed engine clicks, the sound of the hatch closing echoed down the narrow passageway, bouncing off the walls. We both looked up as footsteps sounded above us. Marcos reached the ground, and we pressed our bodies against the walls.

“Rats.” Scarface’s muffled curses sent me shrinking towards the ground. Marcos placed a hand on my shoulder and pulled me closer to him. “There you are.” Scarface chuckled. We stared at the hatch, waiting for the moment we’d be caught. But the moment never came.

His steps retreated and everything grew quiet.

“You think he’s gone?” I whispered. Marcos answered by pulling me further down the passageway. We took slow, quiet steps in the dark. I kept tripping over my feet, so Marcos turned on his phone’s flashlight again. The light illuminated our trembling bodies and something else. A door with a broken lock and a sign that read NO ACCESS. I opened the door to a large room with steel enforced walls swelling outward in a pentagon shape.

“What is this place?” Marcos walked up to a glass panel. One side was cracked, the other shattered. A few pieces of plastic and a white powdery residue rested on the shelves. There were several other panels in the same condition. Behind them lay a slew of equipment. Beakers and microscopes, cutting tools, machines I couldn’t identify, white smocks.

“Was this a factory or something?”

“Underground?” Marcos dipped a finger in the white powder and stared at it. “If it was, it wasn’t for anything legal. This looks like . . .” Marcos didn’t finish his sentence. He wiped the powder on his jeans and cleared his throat. “Let’s keep looking around.”

We walked around the perimeter, taking in the overturned tables and abandoned equipment. “Someone left in a hurry.” I noted.

“Well, if they were down here during the business with the sinkholes, I’d leave in a hurry too.”

It made sense. And it made me wonder. This location wasn’t too far from where I’d climbed out all those months before. Were people here when that had happened?

“Yeah, I’ll be out in about thirty minutes.” A gruff voice echoed from the passageway. I grabbed Marcos and pulled him behind an overturned table. Light from Scarface’s flashlight passed over the room in a haphazard motion. Another voice crackled from his radio.

“You’d better have that detonator.” The voice sounded angry.

“No, I got the detonator,” Scarface replied. “Just forgot something.”

A rat crawled into view, whiskers raised, and placed one of its paws on my shoe. I bit my lip and kicked gently to shoo it away. The rat continued crawling up my leg, unphased.

“Keys, keys, keys,” Scarface muttered, kicking objects as he walked around the room.

Marcos stared at the rat, then looked at me. It continued to crawl upward, and when it reached my neck, I reached my limit. Marcos placed a hand over my mouth with one hand as he clutched the rat with the other. He flung it in one quick motion, and it scurried across the floor with an angry squeal.

“Nasty rats.” Scarface growled. “Oh. There they are.” Something jangled in his hand, and he chuckled. “All good, Greg,” he spoke into the radio. “By tonight, it’ll be a pile of rubble.”

“And you’re sure you placed everything according to the instructions?”

“Yep. It’ll crumble from the middle and out.”

 “Nothing can trace back to us. You understand that, right?”

Scarface chuckled, nonchalant. “They’ll blame it on the sinkholes, and everything will be buried, anyway.”

“If anything goes wrong, you’ll be the one buried.”

Scarface spewed a litany of curses at the man on the other end, then pressed the receiver. “Sure, sure. You got it, boss.”

Scarface was long gone before I realized Marcos still had his hand on my mouth. I pulled his hand away. “Thanks. I almost lost it there.”

“Sorry.” He seemed in a daze. “Did you hear what he said?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“We should get out of here. Tell the cops there’s a crazy guy planning to bomb something.”

I nodded again, though I didn’t think for a second that anyone would believe us. “Yeah.”

We stood, dusting the debris from our pants, but something hanging from one of the tables caught my eye. I squatted to take a look and found a blinking light on a black box. Wires fed from the underside of the table to a series of cabinets on the far side of the wall. I opened one of the cabinets and sucked in a breath.

“Marcos?”

“Yeah?”

“I think I found the bombs.”