“Shit, fucking rats!” That beast ran so close to my feet that I nearly face-planted into the filthy sidewalk. After finding my balance, my eyes chased the dirty fella into the pile of overflowing trash on the curb. He was just hungry. That feeling of immediate regret slid up my spine.
“Sorry big guy. I know you’re just after that free meal.” I felt better for apologizing.
Something in the swish of its tail reminded me of Hagrid. The thought of my sweet but slobbery 200-pound Great Dane squeezed my heart. It’d been ten months since I ditched him at my parent’s house and took off for my bright future in the big apple, but I missed him every day. I hardly fit into my closest-sized studio, so the two of us squashed in there would’ve been torture. I made the impossible choice to give him a better life with my parents and lots of running around room. I tucked both hands into my pockets and kept on toward my favorite deli with Bushwick’s best Sausage, Egg, and Cheese.
Hagrid circled my head like a cartoon bird. I pictured him chasing rabbits through the yard, maybe catching a few, and flying back inside with his signature train of saliva cascading from his flopping tongue. My mom was probably pacing the length of the house with her phone in hand, and my number pulled up ready to dial. She was horrified when I announced my move out here. “What about the crime? What about the trash? What about the bears?” she asked repeatedly, but I brushed her off.
For the second time, I nearly ate concrete as my feet lost traction and flew in opposite directions. My hands barely escaped my pockets in time to grab the empty air and steady me. I froze, waiting to gain confidence in my feet. Oh so slowly, I slid one foot forward, and then the other. Cautiously skating across the puddle, my feet latched onto the rough sidewalk clear of whatever mess spilled around me. My muscles relaxed from head to toe as I took a deep breath and turned to see what had nearly toppled me.
My brain shuffled through its Rolodex of substances: oil, grease, BBQ sauce, oil, soy sauce, blood, oil, toxic sludge, unknown, unknown, unknown. I tiptoed closer and bent over, turning my face away to keep my favorite senses protected. I couldn’t believe I was about to do the thing I’d watched countless idiots in all those horror movies do that had me screaming at the TV. I was going to touch this mystery goo. My fingers hesitated, then reached forward.
Blood. My mental Rolodex stopped shuffling. I hadn’t quite touched it yet, but some things don’t require that kind of physical proof. I saw it in that dark maroon color and the viscosity that wasn’t corn syrup thick or water thin. I smelled it in that coppery penny flavor that slid down my nostrils to the back of my tongue. Mostly, it was the way I followed it back toward the building where it oozed from some faceless guy’s open skull.
I didn’t jump and start running, screaming the whole way like some common horror bimbo. My body certainly reached that flight or fight response, except I discovered a new option: freeze. I was the idiot that stuck around to poke the dead thing, or the sad sack too frightened to save themselves. Normally, I’d laugh and roll my eyes at those characters.
“Nope,” I said with less confidence than I intended. With much force, I pulled my brain back to reality. My eyelids blinked, squeezing the fog out and clearing my vision. As my hearing sharpened, it recognized a soft noise close by. I destroyed my hearing as a teenager listening to the Spice Girls at volume 100, so I know if something is loud enough for me to hear it is a minimum volume of 30.
Suction on wet material and slapping or slurping repeated, nearby. The gushing skull next to me twitched and then rolled onto its ear. A tiny wave of gelatinous flesh pumped from inside and floated down the red river a few inches. That’s when I jumped, and nearly emptied my stomach.
From above I saw the whole story. If you asked for a number, I might’ve guessed one hundred, but regardless it was too many. A mountain of rats gnawed and ripped at the body’s lower half, jerking its top half back and forth as they tore through it. The chomping of those sharp rat teeth on human flesh was all I heard. Where the heck was the usual noise of a busy New York City street on a Saturday? I looked around to find someone else to see and hear the same thing as me, but the streets were bare.
“What the fuck?” My hushed voice betrayed how close I was to crying, a feeling I didn’t realize was brewing right underneath my astonishment. I was ready to be that horror bimbo running through the streets and screaming.
I was too breathless to scream, so all I did was run. At the end of the block rested my original destination, a sausage egg and cheese sandwich. I mean, my bodega. Forgetting the iPhone in my pocket, I thought they’ll have a phone, no problem. I shoved through the glass door without slowing down and pushed it closed behind me, checking for anything that might’ve followed at my feet.
“Hey, call 911. Someone’s down the block being eaten by…” Spinning around to meet the old lady behind the counter, I was confused by her absence. She’s never abandoned her station, as far as I’ve seen. Dull thumps near the back drew my attention, but that could’ve been another customer or the deli guy, or more rats. My stiff lungs rattled in my ribcage, doing a piss poor job of circulating my breath. I wiggled my fingers to make sure I had control of at least one body part and felt my feet skating again, sideways on the slick floor to see the back corner without getting too close. Did the slurping sound follow me? I tilted my ear toward the sound and focused so hard that I missed the door open behind me.
All they did was walk past me quickly, they didn’t bump me or push me, but it felt like an attack considering how on edge I felt. My muscles shuttered, but none as hard as my heart. I grabbed my chest to avoid a painful heart attack and took a minute to steady my nerves. They didn’t notice.
“Hey, where’s the guy?” they asked me, pointing toward the deli station. I shrugged, unable to speak yet, and watched them walk toward the back unaware of the muffled things I’d heard. They said something, but I wasn’t listening anymore. All my attention focused on regaining bodily control and standing upright.
They screamed a kind of bloody murder you never hear in real life. Even in the worst parts of New York City. A hopeless kind of scream that’s so high-pitched and shaky it escaped the throat before the person had a chance to inhale first. I peed a little.
I clearly heard them screaming for help from the floor as I watched the dirty red polar bear drag them off. It might’ve been quick, but nobody seeing that would need more time to confirm what they saw. The sounds grew so loud I couldn’t guess their actual volume under my deaf ears. While my cheeks pinched tears from my eyes, I noticed for the first time the bloody streaks across the top and sides of the counter. My Rolodex answered confidently, there was no more questioning what that stuff was.
Crunching and gurgling sounds sent my stomach rumbling, and the soft growl from the polar bear sent my feet scrambling. Outside on the pavement, I finally threw up. A thick string of bile dribbled down my chin, but I left it while I dry heaved. Nothing moved around me that I could tell through the blur of tears. Blinking them away didn’t reveal much either. After clearing my face, I stood up and looked back. I wasn’t even sure that massive bear could fit through the door, but it got in there somehow.
A fucking Bronx Bear, in Brooklyn. My mom was right. All her warnings about what she called Bronx Bears had gone in one ear and out the other, but she was right after all. We’d watched global warming push the polar bears deeper inland and farther south until they started nesting in the Bronx. I rolled my eyes when I reminded her for the hundredth time that technically Brooklyn is an island, and those Bronx Bears would have to not only conquer Manhattan but cross the bridges or learn how to use the subways to reach me in Brooklyn. I guess they did.
Maybe I should’ve rushed straight home, but that didn’t feel right. There was a hospital a couple of blocks down, that did feel right. I wasn’t sure if running was smart, out in the open that’s probably the biggest bait move around polar bears. I only have a few bear survival facts jotted down on my mental Rolodex, and all I have for polar bears is: “They’re fast”. Slowly moving from hiding spot to hiding spot felt like my safest option.
Darting across the road and slipping into the shadows, I hated my plan. “That’s fine, this is your only option and it’s just what you’re doing. So go.” I brought out my confident voice. At least it got me moving, even if I didn’t fully believe it.
I moved. People were gone, or eaten, I guess. What a bizarre statement. How could everyone in Brooklyn disappear this quickly? Had I slept through the apocalypse? Polar bears, that was the apocalypse? I’d already forgotten about the rats, but they were fast to remind me. As if they’d read my panicked thoughts, several dashed across my path in a train, each a deep red kind of slick color. Yep, still blood. I watched their progress toward a lump at the curb on the other side of the street. A lump I assumed was trash. The almost comical way a handful of rats pulled a thick tube-like thing from the lump released a nervous chuckle from my clenched cheeks. Definitely rats eating someone’s intestines. I took a closer look at the ground and felt my insides tighten and cling together for safety when I realized all the corners and edges slithered with movement and sharp chirps. Bloody rats littered the city in a different way.
“Fuck this!” I ran so fast I practically flew over the rats hunting at my ankles. When I reached the hospital I paused, just to take in my surroundings before blindly bolting inside. I should’ve blindly bolted.
From the direction I had just come from ran what I guessed was the bodega bear. Or another blood-soaked polar bear, how would I know? It was still far off, but my Rolodex reminded me: “They’re fast”. Down another street, my heart plummeted to my stomach and I nearly vomited it up, at least five bloody bears hurried my way like Vikings mid-pillage. Their fur glistened as if to tell me the human they just ate wasn’t enough, but maybe I could be dessert. My Rolodex again: “They’re fast”.
I launched through the automatic doors, cursing their wideness, and took off down the first narrow hallway. It didn’t stretch as far as I would’ve liked, but I was out of options. At the end of the hallway, I picked the door I expected a huge polar bear would have the hardest time wriggling into and quietly shut it behind me. Of course, no lock. This time when I slipped and slid over the puddle of blood I kept moving. Hard onto my knees, the fall didn’t stop me from ducking under the desk and holding my breath while I listened for approaching bears.
I think I peed again. I’d never know, my ass was soaked in the blood that covered the floor it all felt the same. I think the body it belonged to had been tucked in a corner, I’d flown in so fast and ignored the corners again, I couldn’t say for sure. Although, if that was the case, then didn’t it mean that polar bears could reach this office? No, it means I forget to check the corners again. Damnit, fucking rats. My suddenly superhuman hearing turned on and listened while I held my breath.
For what could’ve been one minute or one hour, I shivered in silence. Rats and bears alike seemed to have reached their fill in this hospital, so for the time being I felt safe. It struck me for the first time that I had a tiny computer in my pocket, if it hadn’t been lost or broken in the Survival 3K. It seemed fine, so I jumped on Google and asked my burning question: “What’s going on? NYC”. It bothered me that the first several news sources weren’t NYC stations, but Chicago, Philadelphia, and the BBC.
“Global warming seems to have pushed the polar bears into Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn…”
“Polar bears roam New York City, leaving the streets bloody…”
“Piles of rats found eating the human carcasses left over by polar bears…”
“It seems like the polar bears have hunted down most of the New York City population, and what the bears can’t get, the rats are happy to eat…”
Mom was right. These damn Bronx Bears will be the end of me. I’m glad Hagrid is safe.
I stopped reading. My Rolodex started shuffling for a new answer: stay here and wait for polar bears or rats to find you, run until polar bears or rats find you, stay here, run, stay, run, grab a weapon and run, unknown, unknown, unknown.