Night Shift (8 page)

He slept as soon as his head hit the pillow, but his sleep was broken and restless: he dreamed of rats.

One
A.M
., Wednesday.

It was better running the hoses.

They couldn't go in until the crap crews had finished a section, and quite often they were done hosing before the next section was clear—which meant time for a cigarette. Hall worked the nozzle of one of the long hoses and Wisconsky pattered back and forth, unsnagging lengths of the hose, turning the water on and off, moving obstructions.

Warwick was short-tempered because the work was proceeding slowly. They would never be done by Thursday, the way things were going.

Now they were working on a helter-skelter jumble of nineteenth-century office equipment that had been piled in one corner—smashed rolltop desks, moldy ledgers, reams of invoices, chairs with broken seats—and it was rat heaven. Scores of them squeaked and ran through the dark and crazy passages that honeycombed the heap, and after two men were bitten, the others refused to work until Warwick sent someone upstairs to get heavy rubberized gloves, the kind usually reserved for the dye-house crew, which had to work with acids.

Hall and Wisconsky were waiting to go in with their hoses when a sandy-haired bullneck named Carmichael began howling curses and backing away, slapping at his chest with his gloved hands.

A huge rat with gray-streaked fur and ugly, glaring eyes had bitten into his shirt and hung there, squeaking and kicking at Carmichael's belly with its back paws. Carmichael finally knocked it away with his fist, but there was a huge hole in his shirt, and a thin line of blood trickled from above one nipple. The anger faded from his face. He turned away and retched.

Hall turned the hose on the rat, which was old and moving slowly, a snatch of Carmichael's shirt still caught in its jaws. The roaring pressure drove it backward against the wall, where it smashed limply.

Warwick came over, an odd, strained smile on his lips. He clapped Hall on the shoulder. “Damn sight better than throwing cans at the little bastards, huh, college boy?”

“Some little bastard,” Wisconsky said. “It's a foot long.”

“Turn that hose over there.” Warwick pointed at the jumble of furniture. “You guys, get out of the way!”

“With pleasure,” someone muttered.

Carmichael charged up to Warwick, his face sick and twisted. “I'm gonna have compensation for this! I'm gonna—”

“Sure,” Warwick said, smiling. “You got bit on the titty. Get out of the way before you get pasted down by this water.”

Hall pointed the nozzle and let it go. It hit with a white explosion of spray, knocking over a desk and smashing two chairs to splinters. Rats ran everywhere, bigger than any Hall had ever seen. He could hear men crying out in disgust and horror as they fled, things with huge eyes and sleek, plump bodies. He caught a glimpse of one that looked as big as a healthy six-week puppy. He kept on until he could see no more, then shut the nozzle down.

“Okay!” Warwick called. “Let's pick it up!”

“I didn't hire out as no exterminator!” Cy Ippeston called mutinously. Hall had tipped a few with him the week before. He was a young guy, wearing a smut-stained baseball cap and a T-shirt.

“That you, Ippeston?” Warwick asked genially.

Ippeston looked uncertain, but stepped forward. “Yeah. I don't want no more of these rats. I hired to clean up, not to maybe get rabies or typhoid or somethin'. Maybe you best count me out.”

There was a murmur of agreement from the others. Wisconsky stole a look at Hall, but Hall was examining the nozzle of the hose he was holding. It had a bore like a .45 and could probably knock a man twenty feet.

“You saying you want to punch your clock, Cy?”

“Thinkin' about it,” Ippeston said.

Warwick nodded. “Okay. You and anybody else that wants. But this ain't no unionized shop, and never has been. Punch out now and you'll never punch back in. I'll see to it.”

“Aren't you some hot ticket,” Hall muttered.

Warwick swung around. “Did you say something, college boy?”

Hall regarded him blandly. “Just clearing my throat, Mr. Foreman.”

Warwick smiled. “Something taste bad to you?”

Hall said nothing.

“All right, let's pick it up!” Warwick bawled.

They went back to work.

Two
A.M
., Thursday.

Hall and Wisconsky were working with the trucks again, picking up junk. The pile by the west airshaft had grown to amazing proportions, but they were still not half done.

“Happy Fourth,” Wisconsky said when they stopped for a smoke. They were working near the north wall, far from the stairs. The light was extremely dim, and some trick of acoustics made the other men seem miles away.

“Thanks.” Hall dragged on his smoke. “Haven't seen many rats tonight.”

“Nobody has,” Wisconsky said. “Maybe they got wise.”

They were standing at the end of a crazy, zigzagging alley formed by piles of old ledgers and invoices, moldy bags of cloth, and two huge flat looms of ancient vintage. “Gah,” Wisconsky said, spitting. “That Warwick—”

“Where do you suppose all the rats got to?” Hall asked, almost to himself. “Not into the walls—” He looked at the wet and crumbling masonry that surrounded the huge foundation stones. “They'd drown. The river's saturated everything.”

Something black and flapping suddenly dive-bombed them. Wisconsky screamed and put his hands over his head.

“A bat,” Hall said, watching after it as Wisconsky straightened up.

“A bat! A bat!” Wisconsky raved. “What's a bat doing in the cellar? They're supposed to be in trees and under eaves and—”

“It was a big one,” Hall said softly. “And what's a bat but a rat with wings?”

“Jesus,” Wisconsky moaned. “How did it—”

“Get in? Maybe the same way the rats got out.”

“What's going on back there?” Warwick shouted from somewhere behind them. “Where are you?”

“Don't sweat it,” Hall said softly. His eyes gleamed in the dark.

“Was that you, college boy?” Warwick called. He sounded closer.

“It's okay!” Hall yelled. “I barked my shin!”

Warwick's short, barking laugh. “You want a Purple Heart?”

Wisconsky looked at Hall. “Why'd you say that?”

“Look.” Hall knelt and lit a match. There was a square in the middle of the wet and crumbling cement. “Tap it.”

Wisconsky did. “It's wood.”

Hall nodded. “It's the top of a support. I've seen some other ones around here. There's another level under this part of the basement.”

“God,” Wisconsky said with utter revulsion.

Three-thirty
A.M
., Thursday.

They were in the northeast corner, Ippeston and Brochu behind them with one of the high-pressure hoses, when Hall stopped and pointed at the floor. “There I thought we'd come across it.”

There was a wooden trapdoor with a crusted iron ringbolt set near the center.

He walked back to Ippeston and said, “Shut it off for a minute.” When the hose was choked to a trickle, he raised his voice to a shout. “Hey! Hey, Warwick! Better come here a minute!”

Warwick came splashing over, looking at Hall with that same hard smile in his eyes. “Your shoelace come untied, college boy?”

“Look,” Hall said. He kicked the trapdoor with his foot. “Sub-cellar.”

“So what?” Warwick asked. “This isn't break time, col—”

“That's where your rats are,” Hall said. “They're breeding down there. Wisconsky and I even saw a bat earlier.”

Some of the other men had gathered around and were looking at the trapdoor.

“I don't care,” Warwick said. “The job was the basement not—”

“You'll need about twenty exterminators, trained ones,” Hall was saying. “Going to cost the management a pretty penny. Too bad.”

Someone laughed. “Fat chance.”

Warwick looked at Hall as if he were a bug under glass. “You're really a case, you are,” he said, sounding fascinated. “Do you think I give a good goddamn how many rats there are under there?”

“I was at the library this afternoon and yesterday,” Hall said. “Good thing you kept reminding me I was a college boy. I read the town zoning ordinances, Warwick—they were set up in 1911, before this mill got big enough to co-opt the zoning board. Know what I found?”

Warwick's eyes were cold. “Take a walk, college boy. You're fired.”

“I found out,” Hall plowed on as if he hadn't heard, “I found out that there is a zoning law in Gates Falls about vermin. You spell that v-e-r-m-i-n, in case you wondered. It means disease-carrying animals such as bats, skunks, unlicensed dogs—and rats. Especially rats. Rats are mentioned fourteen times in two paragraphs, Mr. Foreman. So you just keep in mind that the minute I punch out I'm going straight to the town commissioner and tell him what the situation down here is.”

He paused, relishing Warwick's hate-congested face. “I think that between me, him, and the town committee, we can get an injunction slapped on this place. You're going to be shut down a lot longer than just Saturday, Mr. Foreman. And I got a good idea what
your
boss is going to say when he turns up. Hope your unemployment insurance is paid up, Warwick.”

Warwick's hands formed into claws. “You damned snot-nose, I ought to—” He looked down at the trapdoor, and suddenly his smile reappeared. “Consider yourself rehired, college boy.”

“I thought you might see the light.”

Warwick nodded, the same strange grin on his face. “You're just so smart. I think maybe you ought to go down there, Hall, so we got somebody with a college education to give us an informed opinion. You and Wisconsky.”

“Not me!” Wisconsky exclaimed. “Not me, I—”

Warwick looked at him. “You what?”

Wisconsky shut up.

“Good,” Hall said cheerfully. “We'll need three flashlights. I think I saw a whole rack of those six-battery jobs in the main office, didn't I?”

“You want to take somebody else?” Warwick asked expansively. “Sure, pick your man.”

“You,” Hall said gently. The strange expression had come into his face again. “After all, the management should be represented, don't you think? Just so Wisconsky and I don't see
too
many rats down there?”

Someone (it sounded like Ippeston) laughed loudly.

Warwick looked at the men carefully. They studied the tips of their shoes. Finally he pointed at Brochu. “Brochu, go up to the office and get three flashlights. Tell the watchman I said to let you in.”

“Why'd you get me into this?” Wisconsky moaned to Hall. “You know I hate those—”

“It wasn't me,” Hall said, and looked at Warwick.

Warwick looked back at him, and neither would drop his eyes.

Four
A.M
., Thursday.

Brochu returned with the flashlights. He gave one to Hall, one to Wisconsky, one to Warwick.

“Ippeston! Give the hose to Wisconsky.” Ippeston did so. The nozzle trembled delicately between the Pole's hands.

“All right” Warwick said to Wisconsky. “You're in the middle. If there are rats, you let them have it.”

Sure, Hall thought. And if there are rats, Warwick won't see them. And neither will Wisconsky, after he finds an extra ten in his pay envelope.

Warwick pointed at two of the men. “Lift it.”

One of them bent over the ringbolt and pulled. For a moment Hall didn't think it was going to give, and then it yanked free with an odd, crunching snap. The other man put his fingers on the underside to help pull, then withdrew with a cry. His hands were crawling with huge and sightless beetles.

With a convulsive grunt the man on the ringbolt pulled the trap back and let it drop. The underside was black with an odd fungus that Hall had never seen before. The beetles dropped off into the darkness below or ran across the floor to be crushed.

“Look,” Hall said.

There was a rusty lock bolted on the underside, now broken. “But it shouldn't be underneath,” Warwick said. “It should be on top. Why—”

“Lots of reasons,” Hall said. “Maybe so nothing on this side could open it—at least when the lock was new. Maybe so nothing on that side could get up.”

“But who locked it?” Wisconsky asked.

“Ah,” Hall said mockingly, looking at Warwick. “A mystery.”

“Listen,” Brochu whispered.

“Oh, God,” Wisconsky sobbed. “I ain't going down there!”

It was a soft sound, almost expectant; the whisk and patter of thousands of paws, the squeaking of rats.

“Could be frogs,” Warwick said.

Hall laughed aloud.

Warwick shone his light down. A sagging flight of wooden stairs led down to the black stones of the floor beneath. There was not a rat in sight.

“Those stairs won't hold us,” Warwick said with finality.

Brochu took two steps forward and jumped up and down on the first step. It creaked but showed no sign of giving way.

“I didn't ask you to do that,” Warwick said.

“You weren't there when that rat bit Ray,” Brochu said softly.

“Let's go,” Hall said.

Warwick took a last sardonic look around at the circle of men, then walked to the edge with Hall. Wisconsky stepped reluctantly between them. They went down one at a time. Hall, then Wisconsky, then Warwick. Their flashlight beams played over the floor, which was twisted and heaved into a hundred crazy hills and valleys. The hose thumped along behind Wisconsky like a clumsy serpent.

When they got to the bottom, Warwick flashed his light around. It picked out a few rotting boxes, some barrels, little else. The seep from the river stood in puddles that came to ankle depth on their boots.

“I don't hear them anymore,” Wisconsky whispered.

They walked slowly away from the trapdoor, their feet shuffling through the slime. Hall paused and shone his light on a huge wooden box with white letters on it. “Elias Varney,” he read, “1841. Was the mill here then?”