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Short Stories

RIVER RATS by Bram E. Gieben

Skitter waited in the rank darkness, trying not to move, trying to ignore the various itches upon his prone body. His singlesuit was zipped close, the hood pulled tight over his face. He could feel the feather touch of the larvae and maggots which had made their way through the suit’s seams, and even now wriggled and crawled on his skin. As he waited he listened; could sense the engine’s thrum and shudder as it began to switch gears. They were approaching land, had drawn level to port. Skitter exhaled through pursed lips, shucking off the damp cardboard boxes and blankets which swaddled his body, throwing them away from him into the total darkness of the cargo bay. He tried to ignore the buzzing of flies and the rustling of larger creatures in the darkness, closer than the engine sounds, and held his breath, waiting for his moment. Eventually, he heard the slap-slap of a Janitor’s feet cross the deck above him, moving off towards Port side. He had had enough of the rancid blackness. He felt about blindly, found the emergency release lever and pulled it towards him, the huge iron doors grinding noisily as they slid open. When he could see a shaft of brighter air emerging, he halted the doors, leaving them open just a sliver.

He clambered over the lip of the cargo bay, pushing off from a solid piece of junk in the midden-heap. Slithering on his belly, keeping low so the Janitors wouldn’t see him, he reached back down through the bay doors into the midden and hauled up the wooden crate, its bark scraping his fingers. He lay low and still, listening, as the Janitors slopped disinfectant nano-wash across the main deck. Their flat-soled shoes slapped in time against the wet metal, the nano-particles in the wash crackling and fizzing behind them like spilt soda.

The smell of the midden filled his nostrils – a foul, acrid reek of festering matter, rust and rotting meat. Glancing back the way he had come in the half-light, his sharp eyes picked out movements among the twisted, skeletal junk. Slick, moist, black-bodied creatures traversed the piled wreckage and rubbish, picking through the rot for scraps of edible matter. The barge rats were lithe and muscular, moving incredibly fast in the darkness. With cunning borne of his years spent growing up on the Raft, Skitter sensed the attention of the rats. He noticed them noticing him: his skinny, dirt-streaked leg hanging over the lip of the bay doors like a treat proffered. He was aware of multitudes of eyes tracking his movements from the filthy dark, calculating the odds: a swarm of freak barge rats against a tired, garbage-streaked twelve year old human. No contest.

Gingerly, he drew his leg onto the main deck, and reached back to pull the release lever, snatching his hand back quickly through the gap. He held his breath as the heavy doors clanged shut, waiting for a shout from the deck crew, but the Janitors’ damp footfalls were far off to Port side now, facing away from land. Cautiously, Skitter raised his head and crawled to the edge of the deck. The midden smell’s potency decreased a little, and in the night air his nostrils caught far more pleasant scents: factories and cars belching out smoke, cooking smells from hobo kitchens on the banks of the river. Living smells, not the dead, putrefied smells of the midden. Much better than those dead smells, which followed him around the ship while at sea with the rest of the Raft, like a low hum of background noise.

He gained the edge of the deck and risked a glance above the safety rail. For a few seconds he watched the city glide past. They were drifting past Bayonne, having rounded Staten Island while Skitter was hiding in the midden. Jersey City’s lights glittered in the rear distance, while up ahead, New York’s megalithic structures towered and shone. The skyscrapers were vast cliffs, the occupied rooms lit, like carnival lights stringing the vast edifices. Gas boiled and raged from outlets on the city roofs, vomiting roiling orange clouds of flame into the sky. As night fell on Ellis Island, the thick smog cloud hanging over New York State smothered the towering spires of the city, gun-metal grey and thick as concrete mix. Old Lady Liberty seemed downcast, her head hanging in shadow, torch held high like an impossible burden, civilization’s flame guttering in her hand. The barge passed Fort Jay on Governor’s Island, the Brooklyn Bridge looming out of the smog, strung with scaffolding and razor wire.

Skitter pulled the crate towards him, checking over the guard rail as the ship veered towards the series of piers jutting out from Brooklyn Sound. Squinting towards the docks, he saw the first guide towers emerging through the smog before the Bridge - their searchlights mute, cyclopean, scanning the murk.

He had to throw the crate now, or there was a chance the Harbour Patrol or some night-shift longshoreman would see movement and send out a boat. From his filthy backpack he took a thick blanket matted with dirt, and carefully wrapped the crate in it, reinforcing the weakest parts. Using all his strength, he heaved the crate over the guard rail. As it left his hands, he felt the weight inside it shift against the motion of his throw; felt the thing inside claw and scrabble for purchase, panicking. He winced as he watched the crate tumble towards the black docklands. If he threw short, he would hear a thick splash as the waters of Brooklyn Bay claimed his precious package. It would all have been for nothing. The months spent stealing scraps from the galley, weeks spent making up excuses to visit the thing in the crate and throw it live prey to chase, not to mention the frequent beatings intended to keep it mean… and of course this whole horrible day, spent hiding in the midden with it, waiting for the Janitors to finish their shift, his eyes closed against the millions of grubs and insects his singlesuit could not keep out, waiting for this moment, this throw.

He heard the crate hit concrete and split with a reassuring crunch. If the metal cage inside held, the crate’s living cargo would be unharmed. The thing in the crate was a tough bastard. Now all Skitter had to do was pass Quarantine and make it shoreside, and he would see exactly how tough.

* * *

As a dirty dawn rose, streaking the grey sky with burnt orange, Skitter watched the crew line up on the shore. White-suited Hazmat Technicians beckoned them through the chemical shower unit in groups; the unit looking like an oversized refrigerator sat on the dockline, ringed with razor-wire.

“Thought you’d have joined the line already.”

Skitter turned at his father’s voice. The old man stood there, roll-up smouldering in his clenched fist, his salt-and-pepper beard matted and tangled.

“You already gave permission,” said Skitter, bunching his own fists in preparation for an argument.

“And I can fucking take it back again.” Skitter’s Dad smiled a grim, sick smile. “What biz you got Shoreside anyway, runt? You’re a river rat, born and bred.”

“Biz,” replied Skitter noncommittally. “Said I’d bring back a cut, didn’t I?”

“Aye, but if I dinnae ken what you’re up to, that’s no good to me, is it? Could be anything.”

Skitter glared at his father, locking his eyes onto the older man’s rheumy, yellow piss-holes. He saw in macro detail the grime caked into his father’s crow’s feet, ground into the crennelations around his eyes. He traced the shattered, burst veins around his nose, surrendered long ago to home-brewed poteen and misery. Skitter said nothing; just blazed his eyes back at the wreck of a man. He was a river rat, not Skitter. A fucking human midden-heap of sorts: a walking, talking, drinking accumulation of trash and detritus.

“Cut will have to do.” His father spat a stream of brown saliva onto the deck at Skitter’s feet. “You’ll come back with ponce notions, and nae sea legs. No good will come of it. Have to drown you like your cunt sisters.” The older man turned on his heel and walked away, vanishing below decks through one of the many stench-holes with a swinging motion. Only the vinegar stink of him remained, like a ghost, the smell of malice and despair.

Skitter kicked the wall of the boat a few times and walked sullenly to the gangplank. He shifted the weight of his backpack a little, and felt the customary seasick wobble in his knees as his feet first touched land.

The chemical shower loomed before him. Razor-wire fence closed the unit in on either side, guarded by slate-faced contractors with automatics, faces masked against the biohazard the river rats presented. The lifeless crew of the barge stood lined before the shower unit like refugees awaiting entrance to the fabled West. A white-suited Hazmat Tech strode up and down the line with a bullhorn clamped to his lips, shouting the odds.

“Listen up, river rats. You all know the rules, but here they are once again for anyone with a selective memory. The NY State landfills are full, which means no offload bonus for any of you dirt-poor motherfuckers.” He smirked as he said this – it was a familiar refrain to river rats like Skitter. The Raft carried garbage from around the world, a multi-national floating convoy of effluent and filth. Occasionally, the World Government would examine landfill quotas; divert certain boats from the convoy towards ports where they could supposedly offload. However, when the barges de-coupled from the Raft and headed for land, the Hazmat Techs would hastily adjust their figures to prove their State Landfills were in fact full, and the hapless river rats would have to re-join the Raft with their festering cargo still intact.

“Tomorrow night,” the Tech continued, “Your barge leaves to rejoin the Raft. As you all know, although we cannot schedule your offload at this time, we’re obliged to give you a day’s shore leave.”

The Hazmat Tech reached the end of the line as Skitter joined, standing next to a family from his barge’s Galley crew. Skitter tried to blend in with them, to appear part of the larger group without alerting them to what he was doing. The two boys of the galley crew family looked with mute indifference at Skitter, the family’s daughter hiding shyly behind her mother’s leg, her innocent eyes cornflower blue. The Hazmat Tech regarded them all suspiciously.

“Now,” he boomed. “Here’s the fun part. You rats have been so long at sea with your filth on board that you are effectively immune to the plethora of unique, highly evolved and mutated viral infections and diseases carried aboard your ships. We New Yorkers however, are not so fortunate. If even one infected human being, even one scummy insect or God-knows what were to enter the city, it could wipe out half the population, maybe more.”

Skitter couldn’t hep but smile at the ironies. The ‘filth’ was in fact theirs; the shore-dwellers’. Skitter and his ilk contracted its disposal for cash. They carted other people’s shit and rejected rubbish around the world, but the association was inevitable. As soon as it hit their midden-heap, it was their rubbish, their filth. And why not see it that way? River rats smelled of rubbish lived in junk and filth and refuse. Was it not inevitable that the shore-dwellers would see the two as inextricably bound? And as for New Yorkers being fortunate… Skitter suspected that the Tech might not see it that way after a month aboard one of the highly toxic Faecal Ships, which carried the majority of the bacteria and diseases he was talking about. The Faecal Ships carried nothing but human excretions – galleys full of shit and piss, swarmed by fat black flies, a living and breathing Petri dish of infection, viruses spawning and mutating faster than scientists could measure them. On board the Faecal Ships, more river rats died young than became immune. Survival was a matter of luck, or perhaps fate.

“Allow me to spell it out,” continued the Tech. “You enter the chemical shower and strip – to your bare asses. You wash,” he shot a look at Skitter and the other boys of the Galley family, “Behind the ears! Under your ballsacks!” He glared at the girls now. “Lift those saggy tits and buttocks! I want every crevice blasted! Then – and only then – we will allow you to enter the great city of New York to do… whatever it is you rats do when you hit shore,” He grimaced up and down the line, his contempt palpable. “Enjoy your stay.”

The line moved slowly, but soon Skitter and his unaware cover-family reached the front. Two more Hazmat Techs ushered the family through, the little girl keeping her eyes on Skitter until the door closed, blocking her view. Skitter watched the pneumatic doors of the shower unit slide shut. When the seals locked, he tugged at the sleeve of the nearest Tech.

“Mister, mister!”

The Tech looked down at him, only his eyes visible over his oxygen-filter. “What do you want, Short Round?” His nose wrinkled underneath his mask – Skitter smelled even worse than the other barge-folk, having spent the whole of the last day in the midden heap, waiting to throw his cargo ashore. “What did you do kid, roll in a dead body? Eat vomit for breakfast?”

“My family,” said Skitter, ignoring the man. “They went through without me.”

“Aw great, that’s just… great. Fuck.” The Tech sighed and clicked his teeth. “Smith! Johnny, where the fuck is Smith? Got a stray here.”

As the Tech looked for his superior, Skitter stole a quick look at his datasheet. He read the name of the last family: McCain. One daughter, two sons.

“I’m John Junior,” said Skitter, “John McCain Junior.”

“Okay wiseass, hold your horses.” The Tech conferred with an identical looking man, his superior. They checked and double-checked the datasheet.

“Only two listed here, two boys.” The Tech tapped the datasheet imperiously.

“Only my sister and George went through,” whined Skitter childishly. “Please mister – they’ll think I went back to the ship. I wanna see the Huge Apple!”

“It’s Big Apple, kid. The Big Apple.” The Tech clicked his radio on. “Johnson, you still covering the Brooklyn exit? A family just went through. How many kids with ‘em?”

The radio popped and clicked; then a man’s voice came through, a thick Brooklyn accent just audible. “You think I give a fuck? We had dozens through. What, you think I count ‘em all? ID-ing them’s your job, you’re the fuckin’ HazTech.”

The Hazmat Tech clicked the radio off and muttered: “What I thought you’d say, you lazy prick.” Then he clicked his send button again. “Roger that Johnson, thanks for the assist. One kid comin’ through, solo.” He thumped the switch on the front of the chemical shower unit, and the door slid up soundlessly. “Go through, kid. Try not to be such a fuckup next time, okay?”

Skitter nodded silently and walked through the door alone, hearing just a faint hiss as it slid shut behind him. The interior was a blank, white cube, completely featureless except for a curved surface extending out in front of him, a shallow bowl at waist height. A screen flickered on at eye level, and a computerised female voice issued from a small grille on the wall. At the same time, her instructions flickered on the wall in front of him in Han, Standard English and Portuguese.

“Please disrobe and place all clothes in the bowl in front of you.” Skitter did as instructed, amused by the fact the robot voice was so much politer than the Hazmat Techs. He pulled his filthy singlesuit off, bidding it good riddance as the machine sucked it away to be incinerated. He was looking forward to being rid of the midden smell.

“If you have baggage with you requiring disinfection, please place it into the bowl. Please note: if your belongings cannot be sterilised and disinfected, they will be destroyed. By placing your items into the bowl, you submit to our terms and conditions, forfeiting all rights to your items and absolving all responsibility therefore from the City of New York.”

In mute agreement, Skitter placed his small backpack into the chute, hoping that everything would get through okay. The bag was mostly empty, and he had scrupulously cleaned all the items inside it, but it was difficult to get anything particularly clean on the barge. There was a loud hum and a click, and his backpack disappeared from view.

“Items disinfected. They will be returned to your possession after your mandatory shower. Please assume the position and wait for the shower to commence.” A diagram flashed on the wall, a stick man standing with his palms against the wall, legs apart. Skitter made a star shape and leaned forward, arms outstretched, fingertips apart. This time he remembered to close his eyes at the right time, but he still staggered slightly as powerful powder blasts erupted from the walls, covering him from head to foot in tiny, germ-seeking nano-particles.

His skin itched and tickled unpleasantly. Eyes still screwed shut, he flipped and flexed, allowing the nanites to cluster inside all his most inaccessible cavities and orifices. After what seemed an eternity of itching, just as he was sure the chemicals in the nanite powder were beginning to burn his skin, he braced himself gratefully as high-powered jets of warm water hit him from all sides, rinsing the now dying nanites from his pale skin. As the powder sluiced down the drain, it carried with it weeks and months of black grime and stench. When he opened his eyes, he saw that his skin had become a raw, blotchy pink, like a newborn baby. Feeling the stubble on his head, he noted with regret that his hair had been taken by the nanites too. Hair was a protein, and as such was prone to a whole host of infections and diseases. Still, Skitter didn’t relish the idea of leaving the showers looking like an oversized infant.

“Shower complete,” trilled the computer. “Do you require clothes? Please respond.”

“Yes.”

The chute in front of him opened – on it were a set of grey paper slacks, a thin, white cotton vest and some cardboard-soled sandals.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Skitter asked the machine. “It’s January. It’s fucking cold out there.”

“Shower complete.”

“Don’t you have a jacket or something?”

“Shower complete. Please exit to the right hand side of the cubicle.”

“Automated bitch,” muttered Skitter, pulling on the thin, meagre clothes and leaving the booth. Outside, a gruff Hazmat Tech passed him his backpack, tied up inside a black refuse sack. Skitter grunted and took it, tearing away the plastic and slinging the bag over his shoulder.

Through the thick iron gates if the Quarantine Centre, he saw the Manhattan skyline, an ordered chaos of megastructures and skyscrapers. In the centre of the vista, the Nano Works Twin Towers rose from ground level, impossibly tall, dwarfing the other structures, tapering into the clouds and smog. Near the topmost visible levels, nano-drones swarmed like clouds of immense metal bees, guiding the microbial builder particles into shape, putting the finishing touches to the upper levels of the monstrous towers. Skitter had been told that the Twin Towers were visible from space - as though New York were the eye of the world, and the towers two immense needles jutting from its’ iris.

Skitter’s cardboard sandals began to disintegrate as his feet hit the wet pavement. He cursed under his breath, walking away from the Manhattan skyline into Brooklyn, ignoring his shaven-headed reflection in the puddles and shop-windows which guttered the city, refracting its clustered mass.

* * *

Coming into Brooklyn on Atlantic Avenue, Skitter walked until he found the corner of Lafayette and Flatbush, feeling every step on the cold pavement through his thin shoes. He dug in his backpack, pulling out a handful of credits: some Armenian chips he had bartered from a kid on the Raft, exchanging them for twine and candles that he had stolen from his own barge’s stocks. Rattling the plastic chips in his hand, he found a Salvation Army clothes store, and bought himself some sneakers and a hooded top, ignoring the looks of distaste he got from the store clerks. This meant he would have less money to use, which pissed him off, but he was grateful as his toes started to warm up inside the thick sneakers.

Feeling the cold a bit less, he crossed the heaving, screaming lanes of traffic on Pacific and Third, and walked along Fourth Avenue for a distance. The people here seemed happy – they walked along the pavements eating hotdogs, drinking soda, smiling and joking and laughing as though that was all their lives consisted of. Skitter wondered what it must be like, to always walk along beneath the shadows of tall buildings, clustered in on either side, bounded in by the concrete realities of city life. His walls were the sea and the sky, and the slippery, treacherous edges of the barge. Their element was the city-smog, his the foul reek of the Faecal Ships and the junk barges. These people seemed happy, but Skitter couldn’t help feeling claustrophobic.

When he reached Union Street, he followed it all the way along back to the docklands, crossing Henry and Clinton and passing under the roaring freeway. Reaching the docks, he kept to the shadows, slowly wandering closer and closer to the razor wire fence that bounded the piers from the warehouses. Once past the first watchtowers he had seen from the boat, he counted slowly under his breath as he walked, trying to gauge where the crate might have landed. All the piss-weak daylight filtering through the clouds of smog was swallowed up by the long shadows cast by shipping containers and warehouses. The docks were gloomy, an eerie silence pervading everything. Today was Sunday, and many of the longshoremen would be home with their wives and kids. This suited Skitter. Cracking an illumination tube from his backpack, he sneaked around corners, searching the dockside on the other side of the fence in the yellow ghost-light.

Eventually, he found the crate he had flung just the night before, lying splintered and cracked a few feet beyond the fence, the ragged blanket still partially wrapped around it. He pulled a set of home-made bolt-cutters from his backpack, bent down, and quickly broke a few links of the fence. He knew he had just a minute or two before the breach in the fence was detected, so he moved fast; scrambling through the small gap and cursing as his new sweater tore on the sharp edges.

The crate was thick wood, and although the structure was largely intact, its sides had split. Carefully, Skitter lifted the crate and peered inside. In the darkness, two jet black eyes peered back at him. The creature hissed and threw its bulk against the bars of the wire mesh cage inside the crate. Skitter startled, nearly dropping it. He was glad the plan had worked so far, but he had no time to gloat.

Kicking the crate through the gap he had cut, he slithered through after it and picked it up, tucking it under one arm, careful to keep his fingers away from the gaps in the broken crate. He moved quickly and quietly back the way he had come, sticking to the shadows. No patrols passed him and no alarms sounded – he thanked an unimagined and absent God for his good fortune. His assumption had been correct – the fences beyond the Quarantine Station were mostly for show, not linked in to the Sense grid that covered Quarantine and the commercial quays.

Soon he was back on the corner of Lafayette and Flatbush, crate under his arm, looking for a cab to take him to Bedford Stuyvesant. Dozens of yellow cars flashed past, but none heeded his stuck-out arm, no matter how he flailed and yelled. Finally, he resorted to stepping blindly out into the traffic, making one cabbie swerve into a hasty stop to avoid him, traffic screaming and blaring its horns behind him. Before the driver could speed on, Skitter clambered in the back of the cab with his precious cargo.

The cabbie was a dark-skinned man in a turban, Eastern religious trappings hanging like carnival beads from his rear-view mirror.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the cabbie asked incredulously.

“What’s with the elephant? Why’s he got lots of arms?”

“That’s Ganesh,” replied the cabbie, adjusting the figurine on his dashboard lovingly. “You stopped my cab to ask about Ganesh?”

“I want to go to Bed Stuy. There’s an old warehouse there, on Bainbridge and Stuyvesant. Off Malcolm X Boulevard. I can pay.” Skitter rattled his Armenian credit chips in his hand enticingly.

“I don’t take those,” said the cabbie anxiously.

“Motherfucker, you ain’t even seen them,” said Skitter resignedly. He brandished the Armenian chips at the driver, leaning close across the front seats. “See, Armenian. Valid creds.”

“I don’t take them,” the cabbie repeated.

Skitter pulled a slim shank from his backpack, a toothbrush he had sharpened to a thin point. He pressed it to the driver’s neck. “You do now. Please. Look, I’ll pay, I don’t want to hurt you. But man, you need to get me to Bed Stuy right fucking now. For the good of your health.”

“You’re just a kid,” murmured the cabbie, sweat staining his turban.

“A river rat,” said Skitter, trying to sound as dangerous as he could. “A river rat with some place to be.” He handed over a scrunched-up piece of paper with the Warehouse address on. “Now drive.”

The cabbie surrendered, pulling out into the roaring, screaming stream of early morning traffic. As they moved deeper into Brooklyn, Skitter noticed the disrepair and dirt beginning to creep along the streets like spreading mould or cancer, eating the scenery. They drove away from the residential districts, Skitter watching the corner boys as they stood mute sentry, passing pills and vials to their clientele in the jaundiced sunlight. Eventually, even the corner boys vanished, and they were driving through half-demolished wastelands of abandoned warehouses and boarded-up storefronts.

“Here,” said Skitter, noting a warehouse number. Gratefully, the cabbie pulled over and let him out, snatching the Armenian credits from Skitter’s outstretched hand and accelerating into the distance as if pursued by his multi-armed elephant god. Skitter shook his head ruefully and picked up his crate, pocketing the last of his credits and entering through the rusted doors of the warehouse.

The inside of the warehouse was dank and empty, weak sunlight streaming in shafts through broken windows. Over in the far corner, a crowd of hoodied-up men crowded around a small space, boarded by abandoned tables and packing cases. Skitter approached nervously, clutching his crate. As he drew closer to the group of men, the sound of their yelling got louder and louder. Over their rough, staccato shouts, he could hear the growling and snapping of the dogs as they fought to a bloody standstill.

Setting his crate down, Skitter pushed through the crowd. Inside the circle, two dogs yapped and tore at each others’ throats. The dominant mutt was a Pitbull bitch – her jaws snapped and tore at the larger dog, which was some kind of mongrel German Shepherd, as far as Skitter could tell. The larger dog was panting raggedly – white foam and blood flecked its jaws. It feinted, trying to use its size to jump on top of the vicious bitch, but the smaller creature was faster, stronger, and meaner.

It moved with lightning speed, homing in on the Shepherd’s jugular and clamping down with its’ powerful jaws. The larger dog whimpered and fell, blood streaming from its’ throat. It limped for a few steps and lay down in a pool of its own bodily fluids. The crowd roared in triumph and defeat – one large, fat man in a blue parka stepped into the ring and muzzled the Pitbull, petting it lovingly and wiping its jaws with a dirty towel. The Shepherd was dragged from the makeshift ring into the shadows. The sharp crack of a pistol registered, as its owner put the beast out of its misery. Skitter’s heart raced, staring at the slowly-clotting blood on the floor of the ring.

A heavy hand clamped itself down on his shoulder – the fat man in the parka, the owner of the Pitbull bitch.

“Fuck you doin’ here, whiteboy?”

Skitter looked up into the face of the man. He was huge; muscles honed from many hours in the gym beneath the bulky fat of his middle, clad in a tight black vest and baggy sweat pants beneath his thick parka. A thick scar traversed his face like a dividing line between his eyes, which were filled with cold fire.

“Lookin’ for Eddy. I got a fighter.” Skitter exhaled nervously, his breath misting in the cold air.

“You got a fighter? Sheee-it.” The large man spat. “Boy, you a long way from home.”

“Where’s Eddy at?”

“Eddy, he that brotha with the no-talent Shepherd mutt?”

“Think so…” Skitter shifted and squirmed, but the man had him clamped tight.

“White Eddy? That the motherfucker you mean? Eddy’s ass over there, in the losing corner.” The man waved towards the dark corner of the warehouse, where the Shepherd had been shot moments ago. “Motherfucker wouldn’t know a sure thing if it stepped to him and bit his ass.”

Skitter smiled. “That your Pitbull? She’s beautiful.”

“Yeah, she mine,” the man said, looking proud. “Bitch is cold. She fuck up anything on four legs, no doubt.”

Skitter grabbed the man’s hand. “She fight good, alright. Let me holler at Eddy, and we’ll see just how good.”

The large man smiled a broad smile, gold teeth glinting in the half light. “Shorty, you got some heart, I give you that.” He turned and cupped his hand to his mouth. “Yo Eddy! Get your bitch ass over here, man. Gotta whiteboy here reckon his dog can whip my Susie in the ring.”

A man emerged from the crowd in the corner, a weasel-faced white guy with a pencil moustache, wearing a shabby white suit, smudged with dirt and blood spatter from the fight. He approached Skitter and his new friend, smiling a broad, shit-eating smile.

“Skitter! How’s my favourite river rat?”

The man clutching Skitter’s shoulder released him suddenly, wiping his palms on his parka. “Shit, Eddy, why’nt you tell me the shorty was a fuckin’ river rat? Unclean motherfucker.”

Skitter ignored him, glad to be free of the man’s crushing grip. “Eddy, what’s up man.” They shook, Eddy bending down till he was level with Skitter.

Eddy turned to the larger man. “DuPree, give me a minute with my boy?”

DuPree spat on the dirty floor. “I’ll give you a minute, but your ass better pay up, man. I want my money, whiteboy.” Eddy reached into a pocket and pulled out five large-cred pieces, US Dollar from what Skitter could see. He handed them over to DuPree with a grunt. “That’s what I’m talking about,” DuPree said, seeming satisfied. He walked off to rejoin the crowd around the ring, ready to lay bets for the next bout.

“So how you doin’, Skits?”

“Skitter. I’m okay. Made port, beat Quarantine, got the package, so I’m not gonna complain.” He shrugged. “Nearly had to shank a fuckin’ cab driver to make it down here.”

Eddy laughed, his weasel face crinkling unpleasantly. “Yeah, that sounds about right. Okay Skits, here’s the deal. Let me do the talking, right? We don’t want anyone to know what we got in that crate until the last moment, or the bets will work against us. How’s he lookin’?”

“He’s looking mean,” replied Skitter, glancing at the crate. “Motherfucker nearly bit me through the bars when I picked him up offa the docks.”

“Good,” laughed Eddy. “Good work. You been beatin’ on him like I told you?”

“Yes sir.”

“You feed him up good?”

“Yes sir, I did.”

“Good kid.” Eddy ran a hand over Skitter’s newly shorn scalp, and walked off to talk to the bookmaker, a tall man in a long black overcoat, stood at the front of the crowd, writing on a hand-held datasheet. Skitter took a deep breath. Now it was crunch time: he had to trust Eddy if this was going to work, but Eddy was a shiftless, crafty piece of shit.

Eddy was a Grifter – one of an international crew of drug dealers and fixers who plied their trades on the Raft. The way it worked was, every time a barge pulled into port, it would take a Grifter with it. The departing Grifter would trade places with another coming on-shift, and the new guy would spend a few months at sea. The new Grifter’s goods would be locked up tight inside a crate, along with a bunch of landfill from the port they had docked at. The river rats were obliged to add to their middens, having touched land. Once aboard, the Grifter would retrieve his goods from the midden-heap, and would make sure all the junkies of the Raft were fixed for a few months. Then he jumped ship at the next available port, swapping with another Grifter. That was how Eddy hat met Skitter: Skitter had helped him retrieve his cargo crate from the midden, and as a consequence they had begun discussing the barge rats. Then Eddy had told him about the dog fights in Brooklyn.

“A man could make a lot of money there,” Eddy had told him. “All you need’s the right fix. Remember that kid – there’s always a fix. Just gotta find the right one.”

Eddy looked over at him and beckoned him to come forward. Skitter grabbed the crate and approached the crowd. The faces in the group were mostly black, apart from himself and Eddy – they looked with mute disgust at the pale, shaven-headed whiteboy approaching them, crate under his arm.

“Okay, listen up everybody,” Eddy began. “I gotta bet for ya that’ll really wake this crowd up.” The crowd murmured in disagreement, but Eddy shushed them, holding up his hands. “This kid’s a river rat, case you couldn’t tell by the smell.” A ripple of laughter moved through the crowd, Skitter shot daggers at Eddy, who ignored him. “This kid’s been breedin’ a creature on board the ship that could put all your skanky mutts in a shallow grave. Ain’t that right, boy?”

“Yeah,” said Skitter, trying to sound as hard as he could. “Meanest motherfucker on four legs.”

The crowd erupted, the dog owners shouting the odds, their muzzled dogs barking and growling in cacophony.

“Now… the question is, are you boys afraid to bend the rules a little, and let this kid have his fight?”

“What rules, motherfucker?” DuPree shouted above the hubbub. “My Susie will straight fuck up any raggedy-ass dog that whiteboy puts in the ring. Word.” He traded high-fives with his small crowd of supporters, who all fixed Skitter with their iron glares.

“Ain’t a dog, is all,” said Skitter simply. “It’s a rat.”

The whole crowd erupted in gales of laughter. DuPree clutched his friends, barking out his hilarity in rasping gasps. “Shee-it, boy. You do know that’s how we train these dogs, right? Every one of these mutts is a stone-cold, rat killin’ motherfucker. Bring yo’ rat over here to the ring, boy, and you gonna see some blood.” His homeboys laughed in approval.

“That’s what I hoped you’d say,” interjected Eddy. “Now, I’m so confident of how this is gonna go, I’m gonna lay 500 credits on the rat. Gravedigga?” The man in the black trenchcoat grunted noncommittally. “Graves, what odds you gon’ lay against this boy’s rat here?”

There was a hubbub and noise as the crowd clustered around the man called Gravedigga, pressing credits into his hand and arguing about the odds. Skitter breathed deeply and evenly, hoping he could trust Eddy not to fuck him on the deal. As Eddy pulled himself through the crowd away from Gravedigga, Skitter caught his arm.

“Fifty-fifty,” said Skitter grimly. “That’s what you said, remember?”

“I got you boy, don’t worry now.” Skitter smiled a gap-toothed smile. “Hell, I board ship with you tomorrow. I ain’t gonna be able to skip on you while we in the middle of the ocean, am I?”

“You better not, you Grifter motherfucker,” muttered Skitter quietly. He picked up his crate, and walked through the centre of the crowd towards the ring. This time, the crowd cleared to let him through, all their eyes trying to peer into the crate and the cage inside. DuPree stepped to the ring, patting Susie on the back, whispering comforting things in her tiny ears. Laughing and joking with his crew, he placed the dog in the ring and un-muzzled her. The Pitbull ran around the ring, sniffing at the bloodstains from the last bout.

Very gently, Skitter pried open the broken crate. Inside, the wire cage was slightly dented. He placed the cage in the ring, and opened the door, pulling his hand back quickly.

The rat stepped from the cage. It was huge, the biggest rat anyone in the crowd had ever seen – it towered over the Pitbull, beating it for height, length and width. Its black fur was matted and patchy, pink skin showing through. Its snout was long and tapered, but broad too: it turned and faced the crowd clustered around the ring, baring a huge set of sharp, yellow teeth.

The Pitbull whimpered and withdrew to the corner of the ring, smelling the powerful reek of decay and filth from the over-sized creature. The rat’s arms looked almost human – bunched and corded with thick muscles. Its powerful haunches and hind-quarters were squat and thick, its claws sharp and long, caked with yellow dirt.

“Sheee-it,” said DuPree. “Is that a fuckin’ rat, or a baby gorilla?”

“Little bit a’ both,” cracked one of his crew.

The rat circled the small ring, hissing and spitting in an unearthly fashion. Susie the Pitbull, regaining a little of her confidence after the shock of the thing’s stench, circled the opposite way, sizing the beast up.

Susie feinted to the left and dove at the creature, her jaws bared. The rat anticipated her feint, sidestepping, and raked its evil yellow claws down the dog’s exposed flank. Susie whimpered and backed off a little, but already the rat was turning in towards her, seeking a throat to gnaw and rip. The rat’s tail flicked and swished like an enormous pink snake, dragging through the matted blood on the ground.

“Come on Susie!” yelled DuPree. “Take that nasty motherfucker out!”

Susie, rallying to her master’s voice, crouched back and leaped at the rat. It saw her coming, turned and seized her in mid-air with its powerful arms. In a flash, Susie was on her back, and the rat was in at her stomach, tearing and ripping with its terrible jaws.

As blood spurted from the wound, Skitter caught sight of the animal’s eyes: bitter, black and hard, a creature of pure fury and hate. The rat tore at the hapless bitch’s stomach, opening her up from sternum to throat. Several members of the crowd retched as Susie’s entrails spilled on to the ring, blood showering in all directions. Some stained Eddy’s already filthy white suit, and he smiled an odd little smile. Susie whimpered and died, but the rat was no fighting dog: it was a hungry barge rat from the depths of hell. It burrowed inside the dead bitch’s carcass, feasting noisily, as gobbets of guts and blood rained down around it.

DuPree looked stunned, hurt, shocked. He watched Susie being devoured by the monstrous rat with a look on his face like grim death. The crowd had lulled to shocked silence, but all of a sudden it erupted: Skitter was pulled this way and that by rough hands, shoving him from body to body. Over the melee, he could hear Eddy yelling about payment, could hear Gravedigga trying to quiet the mass of angry men. Skitter didn’t care. The hot flush of victory suffused him completely. The rat hadn’t just fought the dog, it had eviscerated that bitch!

Suddenly, above the noise of the crowd, a gunshot went off. Skitter broke free of the crowd and saw DuPree standing over the twitching body of Eddy the Grifter. Eddy had a hole where his right eye should have been; his limbs jerked spasmodically as his life ebbed away.

“There’s your payment, motherfucker.” DuPree spat on Eddy’s corpse, turned back towards his crew.

Skitter thought fast. Without Eddy, there was no way he could collect his winnings. But on the other hand, without Eddy, there was no need for a fifty-fifty split, either. Skitter could keep the whole stack for himself. That was a lot of chips.

Moving fast, Skitter ran to the edge of the ring, where the rat was still feasting on the bloody remains of the Pitbull. “Yo, DuPree!” he yelled. “You ain’t gonna pick up your bitch? What’s left of her, anyways.”

DuPree turned, his crew behind him. He paused for a second, then approached the ring. “What the fuck you say?”

“I said, ain’t you gonna pick up little Susie?” Skitter smiled. “Shit, I expected a longer fight than that.”

DuPree pulled his gun. “Motherfucker, I’ll show you a short-ass fight.”

Skitter leaped into the ring, the rat looking up at him, its jaws bloody. Skitter crossed the ring as quickly as he could, throwing his entire weight against the boards that enclosed the circle. The ring broke and moved, and Skitter rolled out through the gap, winding DuPree, who doubled over, almost dropping his gun. Before DuPree could right himself, the rat was on him: it crouched on its squat, powerful haunches and leaped straight at the large man’s throat.

DuPree straightened, his gun firing wildly, the rat fastened to his neck with a vice-like grip of its jaws. Stray rounds hit one of his crew, who toppled to the floor with blood gushing from a hole in the side of his head. The rest of the crowd, seeing the commotion and hearing the gunshots, ran from the warehouse as quickly as they could. Taking their cue from Gravedigga, they all decide in a split second that it was better to run than to become another body on the cold warehouse floor.

Skitter straightened up, rubbing his elbows where he had scraped them, and watched as the rat tore strips from DuPree’s throat. The man struggled and tried to scream. As the rat ate through his Adam’s apple with its yellow, diseased teeth, all he could manage was a thin, reedy gurgling sound, like water running down a drain.

“There’s your payment,” panted Skitter. “Motherfucker.”

Skitter grabbed the wire cage and crept up behind the rat. It was busy, feasting on DuPree’s face now as his last breaths ebbed from him. Skitter slammed the cage down over the rat, surprising it. It leapt and turned, trying to fight, but Skitter was too fast. With difficulty, he slammed the cage shut. The rat threw itself violently against the bars, trying to escape, furious that it had been denied a particularly large and appealing meal.

Ignoring it for the time being, Skitter took all the creds from DuPree’s pocket, patting down Eddy’s corpse too, and finding a large stack of USD chips in his left shoe. Even DuPree’s unlucky homeboy had a few chips on him. Looking at Eddy and DuPree’s corpses eventually turned his stomach. He retched quietly, eventually slowing his breathing.

He sat watching the creature for a while as it hissed, writhed and squirmed inside the cage. It had a right to be angry, he supposed. Although it had won the day for him, its victory feast had been snatched from its jaws. Just like DuPree had tried to snatch Skitter’s profit.

“The world ain’t fair,” Skitter told the rat. “Get used to it.”

* * *

Skitter carried the cage at arms’ length, the cord from his hoodie tied around the top of the bars to keep his fingers away from the snapping jaws of the rat. The light was fading now, and as he began to cross residential streets, he noticed the corner boys staring at him wide-eyed – a blood-spattered whiteboy, carrying the biggest fucking rat any of them had ever seen.

As he walked, Skitter thought about the life of a Grifter. He reckoned he could handle that: regular shore leave, and enough money to get off the Raft permanently if he wanted. Enough money to get him out from under his father’s grasp, even. He knew what Eddy’s cargo crate would look like – even now, it would be tumbling into the midden-heap inside his barge’s cargo hold, ready to be picked up. But Eddy wasn’t coming for it. So Skitter would, sure as shit.

He rattled the plastic USD creds in his pockets. He’d made more money than he’d ever really imagined having, already, just from the fight. The sun was setting over the Manhattan skyline, violent shades of pink and red streaking the grey like glistening wounds. Skitter thought about the arrogance of the shore-dwellers; their assumption that they could just pass on their waste, their unwanted shit, their physical excretions to people like him, and then just forget about it. They should be grateful, he thought to himself. Grateful that there are people out there willing to shoulder their filthy burden.

He considered DuPree’s actions – robbing a Grifter of the proceeds of a fair bet; willing to kill over a handful of credits and the life of some mutt. As Skitter had told the rat, life wasn’t fair. You never knew when it was going to turn round and bite you in the ass. Never knew when that fatal hand would fall, a finger squeezing infinitesimally on a trigger and putting out the lights, just like that.

Skitter considered the city folk, across the bridge from Brooklyn. The bridge was defended heavily; razor wire fences breaking off humanity from humanity, denying the poorer Brooklynites access to the riches and wealth of Manhattan. The Twin Towers sat like squat idols on the horizon, the clouds of nano-drones ringing them like flocks of birds. They had no problem using nanotech to build ever greater edifices to their own money and power, but they never sent them across the water. Never re-built the crumbling warehouses and factories of Bed Stuy and Harlem, Glasgow and Minsk, Rotterdam and New Barca, and all the other ports he had seen. They were the richest people on the planet, and the most respectable… and they were the real thieves.

Skitter reached the Brooklyn Bridge, and ran his eyes across the armed contractors guarding the thoroughfare. The sharp fences; the searchlights ready to sweep across the water, in search of insurgency. Coming to a decision, he opened the rat’s cage, and backed away.

The rat left the cage quietly, glancing back over its shoulder at Skitter. A look of mute understanding passed between them. The rat melted into the shadows, making its way along the drainage culvert beneath the bridge, headed for Manhattan, perhaps Broadway. Skitter remembered the words of the HazTech on the docks that morning:

“You rats have been so long at sea with your filth on board that you are effectively immune… We New Yorkers however, are not so fortunate. If even one infected human being, even one scummy insect or God-knows what were to enter the city, it could wipe out half the population, maybe more.”

“No,” said Skitter. “Not so fucking fortunate after all.”

He whispered goodbye to his fellow rat, and headed back to Quarantine, the stench of the barge already in his nostrils, like a low background hum.

By Bram E. Gieben, 2008. All rights reserved.

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