Dominant Species
Kenneth James Crist
Rick Solomon awoke with a start, unsure for a
few moments of his
surroundings or his situation. He cautiously raised his head, making no more
movement than necessary to take in the immediate area. One of the things they
keyed on was movement. He had long since learned that sometimes, on a lucky
day, one could remain completely still and they would go right on by.
He saw the desolate, filthy apartment, the gray
light filtering in through
grimy windows and he noted that it was raining again. Good. The rain would hold
down their activities and keep his own scent from traveling so far. It would
also mask the sounds of his movements. With luck, he might get to live another
day.
He slowly and silently opened the sleeping bag
and crept to the windows to
look out upon the scene of absolute desolation. Though still largely intact,
the city was dead. No cabs cruised, no kids played at sailing boats in the
gutters, no commuters hustled to get in out of the rain. The only apparent
movement was from the trees, which were just beginning to leaf out on this
early spring day. There were no lights in the buildings and the traffic signals
were dark. Without maintenance, these devices failed rather quickly. The power
had been out for seven months.
Rick tried to think back to the last person he
had seen alive and found he
couldn't remember. Was it the woman who had beckoned to him from the second
floor window, her breasts so fetchingly revealed? She had seemed so alluring in
her last moments, then she had suddenly started screaming and even though Rick
could barely hear her screams from across the street, he could clearly see that
she had suddenly grown a gray, furry skirt, could see her flailing uselessly at
herself and then she went down and soon her screams stopped.
Maybe it was the man he had seen staggering from
the subway kiosk,
intentionally blinded, half his face chewed away, bleeding from thousands of
bites that had been inflicted, before he was left to stumble away and die.
Rick shook himself, shaking off the horror like
a dog drying itself after
a swim. He had been swimming in terror for so long now that it shouldn't affect
him, but it did.
He was in an abandoned apartment on the second
floor of a brownstone, and
he was getting nearer to the river every day. Each day, he spent his time
watching and listening, moving and foraging, always moving towards the river
and possible escape. He had been lucky, he thought, and he had picked up some
survival skills along the way. He had learned, for instance, never to stay in a
place more than two stories off the ground. If they came through the walls or
the door, trapping him, he would have to jump, and if he was too high, he would
be killed or injured in the fall. Injury meant the same thing as death in this
dead city. It just took a little longer.
His paratrooper experience had helped him some.
He knew how to land and
roll, so a two-story jump was no problem for him. He also knew his weapons. He
was carrying a "street sweeper", a drum-fed shotgun, designed for law
enforcement use. This one carried twelve rounds of number four shot, and it had
saved his ass twice. On his hip was a nine millimeter Glock. He also carried a
backpack for food, ammo and his other surprises. Other than these items, he
owned nothing. He was traveling light.
He had learned never to stay in the same place
two nights in a row, and to
avoid their sweeps, as they searched for humans and other prey. He was a small
man, with dark features and a thick, dark beard. His size and coloring were to
his advantage also. Being small meant he had more places to hide. Being dark
made him harder to see.
Other than life itself, the things he longed for
the most were a hot bath
and a shave, and another human to talk with. He would prefer a woman, but after
nearly a year, he wouldn't turn down a one-legged wino.
From his vantage point above the street, he watched
and listened intently
for any sign of the enemy. As surely and ruthlessly as any invading army, these
crossbred vermin had taken the city. Their viciousness, their overwhelming
numbers and the diseases they carried made them difficult to deal with. Their
immunity to nearly all poisons and their ability to communicate with each other
and to learn from their mistakes had made them the supreme beings in first one
borough (burrow?), then another, until they controlled all of New York City.
Lately they had been increasing their size as well as their numbers. Probably
because of the large food supply, Rick thought. Nine million people, that's a
lotta chow, and that didn't include cats and dogs. Rick hadn't heard a dog bark
in several months, and the last few...well, that hadn't really been barking.
More like screaming, really. He shook himself again, and with a last look up
and down the street, he decided it was time to get on with his job.
His job had once been as one of New York's Finest,
working plainclothes in
one of the Manhattan "flying squads". Now his job was survival. He
moved quietly to the door and eased it open a crack, scanning the hallway,
especially the shadows. He listened, and he sniffed the air. Finally he flicked
the safety off his shotgun and eased out the door and down the hall to the
stairs. Another day of adventure had begun.
When Rick's ordeal began, he had assessed the
strengths and weaknesses of
his adversaries. Their strengths included sheer numbers, climbing abilities,
the ability to survive on any food available, and to go almost anywhere unseen.
Their weaknesses included an inability to jump more than a few feet,
vulnerability to weapons, and a short lifespan. Even these new super rats lived
only three or four years. Their high numbers were ensured by the fact that they
could have five litters of pups a year and as many as twenty to a litter.
They had sprung from strong stock, the common
Norway rat, which had been
selectively bred to albinos for lab use. Then a certain geneticist, Dr. William
Gerber, had started using them for genetic alteration experiments. He had
perfected a smarter, tougher rat, and some had escaped into the city,
crossbreeding with their more common
cousins. Norway rats usually reach a length of fifteen inches, including the
tail. Rattus Giganticus, so named by
the press, was often twelve to eighteen percent larger, and therefore that much
more vicious. Most of the deaths in New York were due to the Plague and other
diseases, which had ravaged the city for months. As each day passed and the
human population became weaker and fewer in number, the rats had become bolder
and more prolific. Now they were downright deadly, running in packs and
stalking their prey. At first, they had feared firearms and dogs and had
shunned the daylight. They still preferred darkness, but they no longer feared
anything.
Over a period of months, Rick had worked out a
system for his own
survival. At first, he had tried using vehicles to move around, but the number
of serviceable cars and trucks had quickly dwindled, as the rats chewed up the
tires and wiring. Then, for a few days, he had tried boldly walking right down
the middle of the streets, depending on the rats' hatred of daylight and his
own proficiency with his weapons to keep him alive. Soon it became apparent,
though, that the rats hated him worse than they did the daylight. Lately, he
had come to realize that the rats knew
him, and that he was a marked man. He had decided he must get out of New York
and his best bet, he figured, was by boat. He needed to get all the way to
South Brooklyn, to the docks, and see what there was to steal.
He had adopted a method of furtive movement from
doorway to stoop, from
abandoned car to cellar steps, always alert for any movement other than his
own. On this day, he had made it less than a block, when he saw the first
flicker of gray in the shadow of a storm sewer opening on the opposite curb. He
moved quickly into a doorway and checked the door, to make sure it was
unlocked. He looked back out and saw something move, under a car, a half block
back. He didn't wait any longer, knowing to wait could be deadly. When they were
in position, they would all come in a rush. He had survived most of these
attacks by anticipating them and moving out of the area, leaving them no
target. He went inside and started up the stairs, first having to step over the
desiccated remains of a child in the hallway, a child in a pink dress,
clutching some old dried flowers. He tried his best not to look at her, but
went quickly on, pausing on the first landing to set the first of his booby
traps and moving quickly upward.
By the time Rick reached the roof access door,
he was nine stories off the
ground, just seven more than he liked. From far below, he heard a thump and
squeals, as a few specimens of Rattus
Giganticus died. The tinder-dry tenement building would go up in a hurry.
He could only hope he'd caught a few hundred of them inside.
Out onto the roof now, looking across at the next
building. A span of
maybe twelve feet. Rick looked around and spotted a plank laying on the roof.
He grabbed it and placed it with one end up on the roof combing. This would be
his launch pad. From below, more thumps and squeals, as his incendiary devices
went off. He took a deep breath and ran full-tilt at the ramp, running up and
jumping out and up, crossing the twelve feet of emptiness and landing, rolling
on the roof of the next building. He spent the rest of the day aloft, jumping,
swinging, crawling and shinnying drainpipes, working his way from building to
building. By nightfall, he had made it almost four blocks. He spent the night
on the roof of yet another tenement, cold, wet and miserable, with the access
door barricaded, and the shotgun close at hand.
Three days later, Rick Solomon was still alive
and he stood in a doorway,
looking across at the access ramp for the Brooklyn Bridge. He didn't like the
thought of crossing that span. It would be too easy to get trapped out in the
middle of it, with a long drop to the water. But he hated the thought of the
Brooklyn Battery Tunnel even more. It would have no lights and therefore no
survivability factor at all. It was nearly noon. He wouldn't get any better
daylight. The rains of a few days ago had passed and the weather was clear,
bright and blustery. Screwing up his courage and checking his guns, he set out
for Brooklyn.
The tugboat was an old one and it appeared that
it had damn near sunk at
the pier. There had been at least a thousand of these vessels working New York
harbor at one time, but as with many other businesses they had been somewhat in
decline, the last few years. The tug ran about sixty feet and had two husky
Cummins diesels and little else going for it. Rick looked at the stubby fantail
and read, "Bugaboo", and
below the name, "Port of New York". He climbed aboard and looked it
over, taking in rust and scabrous, peeling paint, faded, milky plating and
bearded ropes. The batteries looked like they were completely shot. He stepped
up into the wheelhouse and looked the controls over. It was all at least
vaguely familiar. He had worked as a hand on the Harbor Pride for two years, owned
by one of his more worthless
uncles.
He turned on the switches and watched the gauges
reluctantly climb. It had
fuel and there was some juice left in the batteries, or the gauges wouldn't
have worked at all.
He set the throttles to idle and cranked the port
engine. It turned
exactly twice and gave up. He was going to need to charge the batteries. He
went below and looked around and came back topside with a small Honda
generator. It had about half a tank of gasoline. It wouldn't be very noisy, but
he was still worried. He hooked up the cables to the batteries and started the
generator, letting it sit and do its thing, while he watched the pier for
company.
After about twenty minutes, he decided to try
to start up again. This
time, the engine cranked briskly, but gave no sign of wanting to run. He let
the batteries charge some more. Fifteen minutes later, he saw movement at the
shore end of the pier, nothing definite, just a moving shadow, but it was
enough. Just then, the generator died.
He hopped to the controls and again tried to start
the diesel. It still
cranked, but wouldn't start. He looked off the starboard side and saw rats in
the water. They were excellent swimmers, something he was not and now they were
coming down the pier, too. With every passing second he was seeing more and
more of them, sleek shapes in the water, moving to board the tug and end his
life. He switched to the starboard diesel and cranked it. If anything it
sounded worse than the other one, then without warning it coughed, caught, and
settled into a rough, hammering idle. Yes!
Thank you, Jesus! Rick thought, which was a mildly funny thing for a Jewish
guy to think.
As he pulled away from the pier and started out
into the river, rats were
climbing aboard by way of the bow netting and the old fenders made of tires
that hung over the sides. Rick lashed the wheel and ran the length of both
sides, shooting rats and cutting fenders loose, splattering furry bodies into
gobbets of flesh, cheerlessly blowing them into the water, which was littered
with refuse and human remains.
That evening, Rick had navigated out past Sandy
Hook Light, and he began
following the coastline south along the New Jersey shore. He worked on the
second diesel and finally managed to get it running. The tanks were more than
half full and morning found him passing Normandy Beach and Ocean Beach, small
communities on Long Beach, which sits off the main shore in a narrow strip of
tourist havens. Through binoculars, he looked for signs of human occupation,
for moving traffic, sunbathers, aircraft, anything to indicate safety. Once he
saw clothes flapping on a clothesline and he thought he had passed the danger
point at last, but through the field glasses he saw that the clothes were old
and tattered and bleached out by the sun.
He continued to sail a few hundred yards off shore
all day, watching for
signs of human life and seeing none. Near dusk, his fuel supply low, he put in
at Ship Bottom and found a dock where the lights still worked and the diesel
pump had fuel. There was no one around and he started filling his tanks. He had
taken on about forty gallons when he saw them coming down the dock. They were
so bold, so arrogant. This was their
dock and he was the invader. He quickly cranked up and pulled out, leaving the
fuel hose still pumping.
Rick approached the dock warily, engine on dead
slow, as he looked the
situation over. He had now been six days at sea and his port engine had failed
the day before and he was nearly out of fuel again. He had made the pass
through Oregon Inlet off the coast of North Carolina and he had by-passed
Roanoke Island. He was at a place called Stumpy Point. He was tired to the
point of exhaustion and he was distrustful. He had stopped for fuel several
times and at each place he stopped he had soon attracted the attention of the
rats. He was beginning to think they had taken over the entire world.
The dock lights were on and as he came nearer
he could see moths circling
the low-powered globes. He could see fuel pumps and that was good, but he
really needed food, this time. He was down to a can of Spam and one canteen of
water, and that was it.
When the figure stood up from the lawn chair and
moved into the light, he
was startled and he swung the shotgun automatically before it registered that
it was a teenaged girl, wearing cut off jeans and a tank top. She raised a hand
in greeting and deftly caught the rope he threw, snubbing it off to a cleat on
the dock. Rick shut down the engine for the first time in days and just looked
at her.
"What'll it be mister?" she said, and at the sound
of the first
human voice he'd heard in months, Rick found himself crying, tasting bitter
tears in his mustache and he thought of all the wasted humanity back in New
York. The friends he would never see. He swallowed a lump in his throat and
swiped angrily at his eyes with the back of one hand. He remembered he had some
money in his wallet and he stepped ashore. The girl stepped back as she took in
his appearance and he didn't blame her at all.
"My name's Rick Solomon," he said, "and I came
down from
New York."
"Ain't nobody alive in New York. Least that's
what we heard."
she said, in a soft, southern accent.
"And now, that's true." Rick said.
In the engine spaces of the Bugaboo,
nestled near enough to the big diesels to feel their warmth, two female rats
shared a nest and suckled their pups. The human had been within three feet of
them, but they had taken no action, preferring to wait and guard their litters.
With his inferior sense of smell, he had been unable to smell them over the
odors of diesel fuel and old grease.
Now the boat had
stopped and they both knew that soon they would each be able to spend time out
foraging, while the other guarded both broods. Soon their pups would be large
enough to go out with them and then there would come a time when they would be
able to link up with the nearest tribe. Then they would establish and rule
this, their new territory.
Black Petals-Oct. 1999 Feature
Short story
