Rats in the Cellar

1...

Thousands of Rats scurried on the streets of the Surface, a mass of farmhands and day laborers returning home from the surrounding fields. Four youths in torn, ragged clothes, their faces shielded with thick ash-gray bandannas, flittered among the other rodents, waiting for an opportunity to break from the crowd and duck into one of the less surveilled capillary alleyways that snaked and coiled through the upmost settlement. A malfunctioning sun cast down heavy rays, amplifying the stench of trash and sulfuric air. The leader of the youth, Heidi, signaled to her gang with a whistle, and the PESTS made a left on Babylon Boulevard onto an unnamed backstreet.

The air was cooler there; the heat weakened by the shade of crumbling houses and dilapidated canvas awnings. In the darkness, the teenage punks assumed their positions: Saylor on watch, stanced up nonchalantly on a stoop, Donya and Greg in front of an empty wall on an abandoned storefront, and Heidi overseeing the other three.

Heidi gave the signal. "Now!"

Donya reached into Greg's knapsack, producing two cans of spray paint and a pair of red paint markers. She passed the spray paint to Heidi, a paint marker to Greg, and kept the last marker for herself. The trio looked toward Saylor, who gave a nod in the affirmative.

Heidi started first, her left hand moving with grace as she outlined PESTS in an aggressive, angular font with black paint. Meanwhile, Donya and Greg tagged two dirtied windows. Donya's grip trembled, paranoia overloading her novice muscle memory. She steadied herself on the third letter of her scribble, producing the remainder of VAGRANT in blocky, neat handwriting. Greg worked calmly, his one-liner TEMPTEST a flurry of lines in a cursive script.

With her tag in place, Donya swapped watch with Saylor, passing her marker to their lookout man. Saylor darted to the window, scribbling underneath Donya's tag, FUCK TIGERS—NUKE WHAT IS UNDERNEATH. An admittedly juvenile slogan. With such limited opportunities on the Surface, it was a miracle Saylor could spell a three-syllable word at all.

His contribution complete, Saylor slunk out the opposite side of the alley, making sure the escape route was clear. Greg grabbed the can of white spray paint at Heidi's feet and began to fill in her letters. The siblings worked with harmonic precision. Just as Greg was finishing the fill, Heidi was done with the detailing. The pair took a step back, admiring their best work yet.

There is an inherent dignity in vandalism. A ‘fuck you’ thrust into the aether, swirling in the mists of oppressive decorum, bounding out of the limitations of a squalid life. It says, ‘We are here, and we won't let you forget.’ The Rats of the Surface, their lives shortened by the harsh environment, their lungs charred and skin marred, felt it only just to remind their slavers they were not completely controlled.

2...

The PESTS stayed too long. Donya whistled; a Rooster from Underneath was approaching, making his way down Babylon in an armored car, honking furiously at the pedestrians who slowed his patrol. In a few moments, sensors on the car would hone in on their Asocial Act. They were particularly powerful at detecting vandalism.

The group bolted. Heidi's bandanna slipped off her face as she led the group on their escape route, revealing famished cheekbones dirtied with soot. Her matted brown hair bounced behind her with each step. She was the eldest of the four, and the hostile air of the Surface left its poisonous touch on every inch of her 20-year-old body.

The chase excited her—a game of Rooster-and-Rat she was more than capable of winning. Two more blocks on Sunrise Street, alley on the right, into the warehouse...

The lights in the warehouse sprang to life as the crew pulled themselves through a hole in the wall.

"What the hell do we do now?" said Saylor.

"This way," Heidi pointed to a spiral staircase in the corner. They could not stay here long. Even among their fellow Rats, there was no love for street urchins and squatters.

The four of them stood hypnotized at the top of the staircase. Heidi took the first step, clutching Donya's hand as she led the PESTS into the unknown.

The stairs went down and down. It was dizzying. Heidi never ventured this far under, and she wondered if they were still technically on the Surface. Breaches in the Floors like this were supposed to be impossible, but by her estimate, they were a solid five stories down and approaching Floor 9, the first true level of the Underneath.

They heard no one following, and their pace slowed.

This is crazy, Heidi thought, marveling at the deeper subbasements. Each was a carbon copy of the warehouse's ground floor, but devoid of anything except the musky air.

After what felt like an hour (but was surely not), the staircase came to its final floor. It was again, much like the others. Dim fluorescent lights hummed, breathing ragged breaths. "Let's put some shit up down here," Greg said. "Why not?"

Heidi agreed, because why not? They got to work once again, this time able to focus on more than the fundamentals. Heidi decided on a large mural covering an entire wall. They drew together, each bouncing ideas off each other as they worked.

Donya drew the fields of the Surface, bathed in the mechanical sun. Her mother died in those fields; under an earlier sun, her corpse composted for the crops that would fuel the Underneath. She placed skulls in the fields, femurs and rib-bones, rotting flesh feeding the world.

Saylor sketched the buildings of the Surface looming over the farms. The crumbling slum shacks where they lived were home. These tin coffins were unsuitable for habitation, rusty and mold-filled, unsealed, and opened to the elements, with fertilizer-infused rain collecting in buckets where leaks dripped death.

Greg and Heidi drew the Rats. The cast-off masses of chaff, thousands of them working to keep the hundreds of Roosters and Monkeys and Goats and Tigers in the Underneath clothed and fed. They detailed their faces, sunken and heavy; their hands, calloused and scraped; their backs, scarred and reddened; and their souls on their sunken sleeves, hungering for salvation.

The flickering lights above cast intermittent shadows across the group’s painted vision.

Constrained by their tools, the end result was almost abstract. Lacking color—just the blood red of their people and the blackness of their hearts—the piece was a cry from the mouth of hell.

3...

With the mural finished, the PESTS delved deeper into what they eventually surmised was a smuggling route, discovered only when Saylor went to relieve himself.

The surface dwellers hit every spot they could on their route downward, tagging derelict air shafts and chiseled out tunnels through the metal shell of the world. Leaving reminders of their humanity through the halls of the beast. They were unbothered on their descent, finding only traces of previous smugglers: a discarded bottle, a moldy blanket, unidentifiable stains on a wall.

Donya, the softest of the four, only 15 years old, still girlish in body and immature in mind, sang a lullaby in her head as she walked. She imagined sinking into her straw-stuffed bed and forgetting the world, yet the pain kept her awake. With every wince, a red mechanical sun rose behind her eyelids.

In their tiredness, the PESTS realized the gravity of the situation pushing down on them.

"Heidi," Greg said as they paused to rest. "Are we lost down here?"

Heidi abhorred the indignity of impulse and prided herself on stoic decision-making. But something had come over her when she stood above that smuggling tunnel in the warehouse basement.

"No," she said. "We just need to go down."

Her followers gave each other looks of exasperation, their feet sore, their blood burning.

"I have a plan," Heidi continued. "We're going to the vaults."

Greg nodded. Saylor shook his head. Donya winced.

But they all listened.

"This tunnel can only end in one place, and that's the vaults. We're going to find the vaults, take as much as we can, and vandalize the hell out of the place. We're going to make them angry. We're going to force them out of the ground to confront us like the Worms they really are. And then," she paused. "We're going to fight."

4...

They saw little of the Underneath on their journey, but slits through the walls in their route gave them glimpses of another life. The air was fresh and clean, and the Rats drank it in at every opportunity.

From one peephole, they observed a massive public square. Trees and flowers danced in an artificial breeze. A Monkey trimmed the hedges, two Goats enjoyed a conversation on a bench, and a Tiger sipped tea on a blanket in the grass. The underworlders appeared antlike from this vantage point, each merely a dot of their caste colors.

Saylor spit out the peephole.

Further down, their world's metallic shell rumbled with the whir of machines, and the rhythm of automation drowned out any other sound. The PESTS rested for a short time in this censorious commotion.

They were adjacent to a factory, one of the treasures of the superior castes. Here, almost every atom of matter was recycled into much-needed goods. Waste into food, sludge into plastic, and broken machines into base metals. Without the factories, humanity would have perished centuries ago.

The Rats knew only vaguely of such things. On the Surface, possessing even a single new piece of clothing was a luxury. Most Rats were pockmarked with sun damage and spots of dead flesh where the holes in their rags let the punishing light of the mechanical sun lance upon them. Heidi rested her back on a vibrating wall, letting it massage her sore body. A tear in her shirt grew larger, snagged on a screw.

Descending further still, their bodies close to giving out, the PESTS met their first obstacle. A locked wooden door.

It was a double door with two plain, iron handles that clashed with the otherwise intricate carving and detailing that composed the woodwork. The handles refused to budge, even with everyone pulling at once. The PESTS considered their options.

"You know what?" Saylor said. "Let's knock."

Heidi organized the group into an ambush position, with Saylor and Greg armed off to the sides with sharp pieces of scrap metal and Donya in the rear with the group's preferred weapon, a slingshot.

Heidi knocked, banging three times with her remaining strength.

A scratchy voice came forth, muffled by the thick wood: "You're early."

5...

Heidi appraised her potential responses. We had to rush because... too complicated. And what do you care? Too hostile?

Fuck you. Definitely too hostile. We can always come back. That one sounded okay in her head. But she could do better. We made good time. Hmmm.

"Pssssttt," Greg called to her, motioning for her to respond.

"Well, let me open up for you," the voice said.

"Thank you," Heidi finally managed. She braced herself. Greg and Saylor inched closer. Donya readied the sling.

A short, elderly male Monkey, servant to the Tigers, stepped out from the doorway, clad in the orange vestments of his kind.

He spoke. "Ah, a new one. Welcome, welcome. You can tell Christopher, we appreciate it, that Andre fella these last few weeks has been just completely inept. He dropped a wine bottle on the floor last time. The other guards would have had him shot!"

Heidi flashed a glance at Saylor and Greg; neither moved, waiting for her call.

"I'll let him know."

"Come on in; we have some delectable new items for our friends on the Surface. Just let me know what you're looking for, and we'll see what we can—"

The Monkey fell dead, a fist-sized rock taking a chunk out of his scalp. Donya dropped her slingshot. It landed with a soft thud, a whisper.

The girl didn't feel bad. She felt powerful. She felt alive.

She felt human.

Heidi didn't flinch. "Good shot," she said. Saylor and Greg patted Donya on the back. Donya walked forward to the corpse of the Monkey and kicked his head. Blood pooled beneath him. Saylor spat on the corpse.

Heidi frisked the Monkey's body, yanking a silver necklace off his neck. In his left pocket, she found a handgun, weathered with age. She raised it triumphantly in the air. She saw a weapon like this only once before, in the hands of a Rooster crashing into her childhood squat, searching for her father.

The PESTS entered the vaults, weapons in hand, leaving the door open for a quick getaway. There was no one around. The space was tremendous, lit from above with blinding yellow light. Crates and crates of goods were piled on pallet racks, each labeled with its contents. Heidi could recognize only a few of the terms.

WHISKEY. PAPER. TOBACCO. GAUZE. ADHESIVE. AMMUNITION:.45 ACP.

Saylor opened the WHISKEY container, pulling out a glass bottle of brown liquid. He opened the bottle and sniffed, then recoiled from the smell. Greg, more adventurous, dared to take a sip. He gagged. "Tastes like shit."

The two chuckled, then continued to pry open the crates on the bottom levels of the racks. They knew what the GAUZE was from the meager medical stipend afforded to the Surface and put some into their sack.

Heidi was on the search for weapons, taking Donya with her. They skipped past everything else. They wanted guns, bombs, anything. Tucked away in a neat corner was a pallet full of what they recognized as the Rooster's primary firearm, a long gun of forgotten origin.

They grabbed four guns each, two under each arm, and returned to rendezvous with the other PESTS.

6...

RATS IN YOUR CELLAR!

"This look good, Heidi?" Saylor said.

"Perfect. Anyone else want to leave a note for these shitheads?"

Donya kicked the body of the Monkey once again.

Greg took out his marker and scribbled WE'LL BE BACK! near the door. "This should scare them a bit," he said. "I hope the next guy to come down here shits himself."

"You know," Heidi said. "We're as good as dead now, right?"

Donya laughed. "We already were Heidi, and you know that better than anyone."

But in the back of Heidi's mind, she believed they might live. And when they reached the Surface and stepped into the infernal mechanical sun, the red haze overhead reminded her of the roses in the garden Underneath.

She smiled, the gun in her hands comfortably heavy, and the friends at her back ready for war.

Illustration by Pedro Becker.

Graffiti by Brat and Skunk.