an unpleasant story

an unpleasant story

fiction
edward w pritchard

I lived in a part of the City, trying to pass as a suburban neighborhood, quiet respectable, neat lawns with lots of older people. At 2;06 AM I awoke with a chemically induced sensation in my mind, caused by hearing and feeling an unnatural phenomena somewhere just outside my house , producing a terror that something was horribly wrong in my neighborhood. I was not having a nightmare but the sense of dread and foreboding was chemical in nature and I couldn't shake the horror, although I had done nothing to cause it. I knew that the solution to what was wrong was just outside my door.

A low rumble met me as I exited my house and at a guttural level I sensed the movement of thousands of animals. My neighbor rushed to me as I left my home to warn me that we were needed at the bottom of our street about a quarter of a mile east of my house. It was unseasonably hot and humid as i hurried South by East and the unnatural rhythmic sound and smell of the movement of animals became stronger as I entered the street.

Hundreds of thousands of rats were running through the sewer networks beneath our road and I was stationed at the sewer at the bottom of our hill, given a baseball bat and for the next four hours I clubbed hundreds and hundreds of rats who in confusion left the rush Eastward and attempted to exit into our neighborhood. My neighbor who also had a bat told me that rats were coming up into houses through drains and things and over a hundred thousand had exited the sewers at the small creek a mile or so east of the end of my street. After about four hours I collapsed from the labor and combat and was given a half hour break. In a minute or two I must return to work for it's my turn again to man the sewer opening with the bat.
end