“So what are we looking for?” asked Keane. He was perched on a rusted-out hulk that had once been some piece of construction equipment. It was now host to an ecosystem of plants and insects that had infested its limbs and guts and built kingdoms of their own. It was almost like a little hill, this so-called “Caterpillar” entrenched in earth somewhere in the former Manhattan.
“Anything,” answered Alex, balancing his axe on his right shoulder while trying to sort through the torches under his left arm. “Anything we can use.”
“Or eat?”
“If you want to hunt, let’s hunt. I don’t know if we’ll find anything edible in these streets, but let’s hunt.”
“Well, I am hungry.”
“Why’d they only send three of us?” asked Jarrett.
“Because this is pointless. All of this,” said Keane, gesturing to the ghost city around them, “and there ain’t shit worth taking. Not anymore.”
“At least it’s empty,” Jarrett said.
“We don’t know that,” warned Alex.
“If there are any rotters here, they’re starved down to fuckin’ skin and bones. They gotta eat just like us, and just like us, they don’t eat.” Keane held an aluminum bat, a relic from a time when there was play. It was caked with rust, and other things rust-colored, and he wielded it like an extension of his arm. “All right. Look, Alex, we know this city’s been stripped bare… If there’s anything here, it’s under.”
“Under?”
“Ol’ New York is supposed to have a whole other city beneath it — train tunnels, sewers, basements and connections that ain’t on any of our maps. There might be some real worthwhile stuff down there. Stuff locked up even before Plague Year. Hell, there could be a goldmine down there.”
“We’re just looking for basic supplies—”
“Yeah, I know,” Keane snapped. “We’re just trying to get by. Make it to the next day. Is that livin’? C’mon. What if we could bring back more than some goddamn salt and paper? What if we brought back books? Booze? Fucking juice! I don’t needa get drunk, if I could taste apple juice just one more time—”
“Don’t start,” Alex shook his head. “Just don’t.”
“Yeah, you hate to think about it, but what if it’s really fuckin’ down there? What if, Alex? C’mon, we’re otherwise basically wastin’ our time in this ghost town, why not just go look? Jarrett, whaddaya think?”
The smallest and youngest of the three, Jarrett stared at the dead city with wonder. He still had dreams, Alex knew, he still had an idea that life was more than breathing and eating and outlasting the rotters. He had a concept of the future.
“I wonder what’s down there,” Jarrett said.
Keane slapped his knee and held the bat up. “Let’s just poke around this block, huh? Just see what’s under this block. Under this hill here, Caterpillar Hill. If we find somethin’ interesting, we’ll head back to camp and they can send out a real salvage team.”
Alex shrugged. “You know, there could be rotters down there. Preserved somehow, away from the hot and the dryness. It could be bad.”
Jarrett suddenly looked pale. Keane popped his neck with a snap of his head and sighed. “I’ll take point. We’ll sweep every room before we start shopping. Okay? I’m not gonna take any chances with you guys. C’mon.”
“What the hell,” Alex said. “Might as well make something of this trip.”
“Wait!” Jarrett said. He pointed, hand trembling, at something approaching the hill.
It lurched forward, the gaunt, thin-limbed thing, still partially hidden in the shadows of the buildings but beyond all doubt a rotter. Its stilted, insane run, its head thrusting downward with each step — it was alien and horrifying and yet they’d seen it a thousand times before.
But this one was a little different.
It ran like a bird, its arms held behind its back and its gray head making rude pecking gestures. As it came into the light, Alex saw the reason for its bizarre posture: it was handcuffed.
They’d never know why. They’d never know if this man had been some sort of prisoner, or if he’d been placed under restraint due to infection. They’d never know why he, or it, a starving scavenger just like them, was prowling the streets of Old New York alone and in old-style police handcuffs.
“Buzzard,” Keane breathed, following the rotter’s movements. “I mean, we call ‘em that, the lone ones… but never seen one that really was.” And with that, he descended the hill and, with a powerhouse swing, decapitated the rotter. Its body ran past him, scrambling halfway up the hill before collapsing and rolling back down to the street.
The head, its few teeth gnashing madly, lay in the grass. Keane stomped it to dust.
“Still want to go poking around?” Alex snapped, heart racing, face flushed. He looked at Jarrett, expecting to see terror in the boy’s eyes; but he only saw morbid fascination.
Alex knew he’d been outvoted.
“You feel that?”
“What?”
“Like a little quake. Just now.”
“No.”
They had gone into a corporate tower whose windows were long gone and whose floors had been given over to the local flora and fungi. Sunlight streamed in from all four sides — high noon — and Alex watched as rats scrabbled down into their burrows, going under the floor.
“Think they’re infected?”
“We can’t ask. Just kill ‘em if they get too close.”
“I feel bad for them,” Jarrett said. “They don’t know. They’re just living, like us.”
“It’s nature,” Alex said in an attempt at a calming tone. “We have to protect ourselves. Nature understands.”
“The rats don’t.”
“Ever hear of a rat king?” Keane muttered. He was using his bat to clear a closet of debris. “It’s an Old New York legend. Rats, they live under the city, millions of them. Some of ‘em get mashed up together and twisted — tangled, their tails, their legs — and they just go on like that. They become this one thing that just goes around taking care of itself. A rat king.”
“You mean like a huge ball of rats?” Jarrett sputtered.
Keane nodded. “It probably happens.”
“It probably happens that they get all tangled up and can’t separate,” Alex said, “but I don’t think they become one entity or whatever. They just struggle and die.”
“Why not?” Keane asked.
“Because all every rat cares about is taking care of its own self.” Alex found a brittle sheaf of papers; they could be moistened and used as bandages or cloths down the line. Maybe he’d even do a little writing. “Each rat for itself. Rat king wouldn’t work. It’s not nature.”
Jarrett looked troubled. Alex gave him an inviting smile, wanted him to speak up; but he didn’t.
The basement was a parking garage, empty. Beyond that was sewer access.
“I say we check it out,” Keane said.
“What’re we gonna find? Hundred-year-old crap.”
“New York sewers aren’t just pipes, man! There could be another fucking building down there. Let’s just look for fuck’s sake.”
“Okay. Lay off the ‘fucks’?”
“Why? No one’s around.”
“I’m around.”
“It’s just a word.”
“I’m tired of words that mean things like fuck and shit and all of that. If you’re in a good mood then talk like it, okay?”
Keane shrugged at Alex. “Right. All right.”