Rat Duty

Jacob walked with the practiced ease of a man who learned his environment from years of repetition. He knew when to duck beneath hammocks, when to suck in his belly to get through tight hallways piled high with equipment, and when to keep his hands on his belongings to stave off pickpockets. Jacob was skinny enough to make traveling in the tight confines of the bunker easy, yet tall enough that he had developed a stoop to avoid hitting his head against the ceiling. His beard had grown beyond military discipline, but it was a minor protest they allowed so long as he completed his duties. He’d been a librarian before the bombs fell, but the powers that be assigned him to a life of rat duty. Day-in and day-out, rodents were chewing their way through the steel walls of the bunker, and it was Jacob’s role to keep them out.

The grow house was at the top of his priority list. As Jacob walked inside, he filled his lungs with the clean air and held in the sweet aroma as if it was morning coffee. Crop specialists in matching aprons walked along rows of the soilless crops with heat lamps raining down on them. It was a humid environment, but the artificial sunlight and damp surroundings were a relief compared to the dry and stale air permeating everywhere else in the bunker.

Jacob lowered his thermal goggles over his eyes and found a cluster of heat corralled against the steel wall. He applied a teardrop of lubricant and slowly drilled through to protect his tools. Replacements were hard to come by as expeditions to the surface were returning with diminishing results. Jacob slid his hose through the wall and gummed up the sides to create a seal. As if he was about to lob a grenade, he announced, “Administering gas!” The callout was so commonplace that none of the lab coats paid him any attention. He squeezed the trigger, and a slow hiss spread to the other side of the wall.

Jacob listened for the familiar sounds of rats fighting each other, but the pitter-patter on the other side sounded like footsteps. He leaned his ear against the bunker wall. The voices on the other side were faint, but Jacob could hear the words, “They’re gassing us! Blow the wall now!”

Jacob dived away from the wall as a breaching charge on the other side erupted. Dust and debris scattered across the room in a disorienting cloud. Some of the glorified gardeners ran for the door, but most were too concussed to do anything but stand there and take the onslaught to come.

The outsiders charging through the opening were coated in a thick layer of desert dirt that made the patchwork of rags they wore look like dried burlap sacks. Each had been marred by burns that crept over their bodies like a network of vines. They were weathered with skin as coarse as leather. The outsiders cleaved through the agricultural scientists responsible for the bunker’s food and recycled air in a rapid spree. They stripped the clothes from the eviscerated bodies of their victims and used the lab coats as bundles to haul out everything within reach.

One of the barbarians hauled Jacob from the ground and held a sickle to his throat. She was bald except for a few strings of hair floating beside her like whisps. Her curved blade had been sharped until it shined. Jacob only had his drill as a weapon. He prepared to swing, but his eyes fell on the chain necklace she wore that led to a heart-shaped locket. Time and the elements had worn down the intricate detailing, but Jacob remembered the gift he had purchased long ago.

“Monica!” Jacob yelled.

“Jacob?” Monica said as she kept her blade along his throat.

A faint ghost of recognition lit her eyes. The monster she had become ebbed away, and the partner he had lost when the world fell apart was looking back at him. Meanwhile, her cohorts were hacking into the men and women he called friends. Shots rang out from the exterior hallways, followed by the screams of soldiers torn apart.

“It’s me! Have you been out there this whole time?” Jacob asked.

“It was the wrong weekend to go camping with the ladies. How’d you become a mole person?” Monica asked.

“The military sent busses to Flagstaff after Phoenix was hit. I waited for you as long as I could, but the buses were leaving, and I got on. Did you just call us mole people?” Jacob asked.

“You live underground with your big protective suits and your guns, invade our territory, and steal our supplies! Yeah, you’re a mole person,” Monica said.

“You won’t be able to take the bunker. Better soldiers than me will be arriving soon, and they’ll have guns. You gotta get out of here!” Jacob said.

Monica searched the carnage of the grow house, weighing her options with the rabid passion of a hungry animal. She looked to Jacob and said, “I’m not losing you again.”

She smashed Jacob in the forehead with the handle of her sickle. She kept hitting him until his body went limp. With strength she had accumulated since the collapse of the world, she hauled him over her shoulder and began a steady march out of the bunker.

The tunnel was dark, with only the dim light of an occasional torch held high as they moved with the group. The outsiders ran with their bundles of stolen goods, or with dead scientists and soldiers, slung over their shoulders. Monica never slowed her stride or stopped for water. The trek was entirely uphill, and it never slowed them. As Jacob bounced along her shoulder, he felt the tension from her taut muscle underneath.

The tunnel opened into a cavernous metro station. Outsiders too damaged or too sick to make the journey through the tunnel were waiting for them. They walked with crooked limbs from injuries that never quite healed. Then there were those with mountainous infectious rising from their torsos in sections too central to be amputated away.

Monica set Jacob down beside a firepit. She kept her hand on his knee. Part of her gesture was endearing, but Jacob figured she was making sure he wouldn’t run away. Meanwhile, butchers processed the dead. They separated meat from bone with practiced ease as if working on livestock rather than fellow humans. Teenagers hoisted an iron grill over the fire, and the butchers threw cuts of arms, legs, backs, and buttocks over the fire.

The radiated survivors gave Jacob constant attention and odd looks. The only thing saving him seemed to be their fear of Monica. She kept her shoulders tense, with her glare jumping to anyone whose attention lingered on the odd couple for too long.

After maybe ten minutes of cooking, Monica grabbed a sharpened skewer and impaled what Jacob unfortunately recognized as a section of a bicep muscle. She handed the skewer to Jacob.

“Thank you, but I’m not hungry,” Jacob said as he fought off nausea bubbling in his throat.

“You eat, or you go on the grill. Your choice,” Monica said.

She thrust the skewer into his hands. Others were watching, waiting to see if Jacob would become friend or food. He tepidly raised the meat to his lips and took a small bite. Had it been disguised in his meal, he probably wouldn’t have been able to sort it out from any other meat, but he knew it was human, and he fought his mild-mannered conscience to chew through the small nibble.

“Mmmm,” he said, acting as if he enjoyed it.

“More,” Monica said.

Jacob took a bigger bite. He was ashamed to say that he had missed having meat in his diet. He ate from the skewer until it was bone dry and stuck the stick back into the flames as if sanitation would undo the unforgivable act he had committed.

Jacob cautiously wrapped his arm around Monica’s knotted shoulder. She leaned her scarred head topped with wispy hair into the crux of his shoulder. As they sat by the fire, he remembered the Saturdays they used to spend binging television. They’d never reach that ideal from the time before ever again, but this was his life now, and he realized he could get used to just about anything.