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The agent drew back, and the gun clicked, echoing in the
vast tunnel.
Sharp, wet claws scratched Benny’s hand. Another rat
fleeing the tunnels.
Benny snatched it up and shoved it in the face of the
agent.
“Hey, Tony, I got- ahh,”
he screamed. “A friggin rat.”
The rat shrieked and bit the agent in the face.
The side of Benny’s hand crushed the agent’s throat.
Small gurgling sounds came from the agent. He gagged, his eyes wide in the light
of his lamp. One hand on his collapsed throat, he reached for Benny. Benny
stepped away from the groping hand. With a small grunt, the man went to his
knees. Water splashed up, and Benny took the light from him. The agent slid
down, eyes staring, his mouth forming words he would never utter.
The voice of the other agent was stronger now. Benny could
feel the dying presence of this one, and his partner.
Turning his back on the man, Benny slogged through the
muck. Behind him, he could hear the other agent calling his partner. All around
Benny rats darted away from the light.
A quarter mile away, Benny chanced opening a street grate.
People hurried passed. Some looked, then glanced away. All of them ignored him.
He dug the lighter out of his pocket, them picked up a
scrap of paper. Lighting the paper, he dropped it in the grate and backed up a
few hurried steps.
All along the street fire erupted from the sewer.
A woman started screaming and fell against the wall of a
building. She glanced at the muddy, grotesque apparition on the street.
Cocking his head, Benny grinned.
“Sewer gas explosion. I hope to freek nobody was down
there. Bet they’d be burned to a crisp, y’know? You can always tell when
there’s a lot of gas down there by the rats. They know, and they run from
it.” Studying the woman for a moment, he gave a slow, lazy wink. “Yo, like
are you . . . busy?”
Jogging around the corner, he hid in an alley until
nightfall. There was no longer a house where the Downeys had lived.
Benny stopped an elderly man.
“Sir? What happened to the people here? They were friends
of mine.”
“Friends to most people here ’bouts, young man.” The
old man patted Benny’s shoulder, then glanced at his hand and wiped it off.
“No offence, young man, but you’re a mess.” The old man grinned. “But
they’re all right. Seen them run out of there not a few minutes before the
whole place went up. Them idiots who did it, they died in the fire, I’d
expect.”
Benny grinned his relief and ran around the still
smoldering house to the shed in the back.
He threw open the doors and there she was, the Red Sun.
Dragging his bum leg over the saddle, Benny kicked her down
and they roared out onto the street. A patrol car’s lights flickered at him.
Benny went down a side road and flipped the Red Sun around. The patrol car
squealed down the alley. Benny opened her up, leaned into the wind, and the car
jerked to a halt with two shocked faces staring at him. One started screaming.
Benny yanked the front tire over the low bumper of the patrol car. His rear tire
shrieked a line of black from the front bumper, over the hood, ripped off the
wiper blades, then smashed down on the trunk.
He zipped out of the alley and hung a right, his middle
finger saluting the men in the car.
Five blocks roared passed, crowds of people, traffic jams,
and the piles of uncollected trash spilling out into the street slowed the cops.
Benny slid down one alley, then across the road. No sign of the boys. He grinned
and rolled down the street to a block of abandoned tract houses.
The fences behind them were
tumbled down and he rolled the motorcycle in through a patch of tall horse weed
and to the back door.
The door had been jimmied a long
time ago, probably by TG-sters—tiny gangsters—and druggies. He pushed the
Red Sun in the kitchen. Phew, but he stank. In the back of his head, Grampa Waya
was muttering and scowling. Checking out the bathroom left him half-sick. The
skeleton of a person, a man, from the looks of the rat-gnawed bones, decorated
the tub.
Let’s
get out o’ here, kid.
“Nah. I’m . . . OK.”
Feeling just a hair queasy, Benny
tried the knobs in the kitchen sink. A thin trickle of water slid out, red and
flecked with rust, around flecks of toilet paper and other, worse things.
Not so hot, but it would do. The sink was scraped and
scoured with a handful of sandy soil. He plugged the sink with a rag found in
the kitchen, and stripped out of his clothing.
They got washed first, then hung up to drip on the floor.
He drained the sink, cleaned it, and washed himself as best as he could.
Benny lay down, shivering in the hard draft that skittered
across the filth caking floor. Not exactly the temperature controlled waterbed
like at the Manse, but no spy-eyes watched him, either, recording his every
move.
It was past midnight. His eyes watched the hands of a
built-in clock trace the hours.
In the tub, the skeleton began to
take on flesh. Grandfather Grey inched from the tub. He rooted in a pile of
trash and came out with a rusted axe that had dried blood and human hair on the
blades.
A high-pitched laugh came from outside the house.
Knife in hand, Benny got up, stole to a broken window.
A pack of four or five kids was standing outside, passing a
joint, bragging about the girls they had. The smoke held an ugly pinkish tinge.
The herb was gene spliced with something weird. He could see them in the
moonlight, rubbing their arms, stamping their feet against the damp chill.
“Why we standing out here, ‘manos? Less go on in and
use the house.”
Benny’s teeth glowed for a brief moment in the dark. The
boys came up to the door, bold as brass, and the door creaked open. In him the
wolf snarled.
They paused, uncertain.
“Come on, you afraid of the dark, Joy-boy?” one of them
jeered. The kid in the lead snapped a sharp curse and stumbled in. He looked at
the motorcycle, and the knife and tried to back out. His friends crowded in
around him.
Benny held up one hand. “I
ain’t looking' for trouble, bros. Just some rest.”
“Maybe you found it, pretty boy.”
Benny smiled at him. A hard feeling of joy swelled.
They circled. Benny slid into a corner and bared his teeth.
The first feinted and cried out as the tip of his finger
parted from his hand to smear red on the wall. A rat whispered. Others joined
it.
“He cut me, he cut me,” the boy cried.
The other two jumped him. Benny dropped and rolled,
knocking them to the floor. He flipped and came up on his feet and the heel of
his foot caught the first in the face. Bones made a delicate ‘crunch,’ and
the kid flopped back, stunned or knocked out.
“This our joint,” one cried, pulling a gun. It shook in
his hands. Then he smiled and Benny dived to one side. The gun popped, loud in
the tiny apartment, and a sizzle of the laser backup made fire lick up the
walls.
Scowling and staring, the two saw a red glow spread over
the plaster.
“Hu, no,”
Benny shouted. He grabbed his clothes and the Red Sun, heaving the motorcycle
out the door. “Friggin wastes. Now we both lost a rest.” He kicked the
starter and stuffed the clothes in the saddlebags.
Rats screamed, pouring out of the building. Flames licked
the roof. Benny hesitated. Smoke was pouring from the open door and shattered
windows. None of the kids had moved.
With a curse for his own stupidity, Benny jumped from the
Red Sun to dart into the house.
The carpet was smoldering around the one he downed. Benny
shouted at the other two, shocking them into moving.
One ran out shrieking while Benny
dragged the unconscious one over into the horse weeds. He checked for a pulse.
Already the flesh was cooling, the eyes dull and empty of life.
‘Benny?’
"Yeah, Grampa?”
Grampa muttered, It
ain’t me, kid.
‘Bennnny?’
Benny glanced up to see a half-rotted corpse inching
towards him dragging an axe. From one hand dangled a head held by plastic gold
earrings.
’I love you,
Benny.’
The axe came up and Benny yelped, diving under
the swing. He darted by the corpse of Grandfather Grey to the Red Sun and was on
before he knew it. Rotting concrete spurted from under the rear wheel and the
motorcycle shot away with Grandfather Grey howling and shaking the head.
©2003 StoriesByEmail.com
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