Sewer Rats Read online

  It was a big system, a whole maze of tunnels.

  The main purpose of the tunnels is to collect water. When it rains, water drains into street gutters. The small streams in the gutters reach grates and drop into the tunnels below the streets.

  A one-hour rainstorm might not sound like much, but after a few minutes thousands and thousands of little streams empty into the tunnels.

  It adds up. Fast. In fact, after a couple hours of rain, the main tunnel that drains into Bell Park is a solid pipeline of fast-moving water as high as a person’s waist.

  That’s why we never have paintball wars when it looks like it might rain. We don’t want to take the chance of getting caught in a flood in the tunnels.

  Saturday, though, looked like a great day. The wind was blowing, but there were no clouds. And it didn’t matter that the wind was cold. In the tunnels, you only hear the wind when it blows through the grates above.

  “Guys,” Micky said as we began to walk along a path to take us toward the middle of the park. “Last night, me and Lisa figured on the mousetrap plan. We’ve heard these Medford guys think they are real commandos. So it only makes sense that we play the waiting game.”

  He flashed us the big Micky grin. “If they’re half as cocky as we’ve heard, they’ll come looking for us. And we can let them walk right into our sights.”

  “Makes sense,” I said. The way it worked in our paintball wars was simple. Each team had a flag. Each team planted it in one spot. The team who reached and took the other team’s flag was the winner. “Are we going to use that spot by the underground phone lines?”

  “You got it,” Micky said. “Sooner or later they have to pass through that area. Me and Lisa mapped out everyone’s ambush spot.”

  Usually, we left the Cooper twins to guard our flag while the rest of us went looking for the other team’s flag. With the mousetrap plan, though, we played it different. Even if it took hours without moving, all of us would wait in our hiding spots and gun down the other team’s soldiers as they moved in on our flag. Not until most of them had been shot would we go hunting for the other team’s flag.

  “Remember, it’s dark,” Micky said. “Don’t make any guesses. If you see someone coming and they don’t give the password, gun them down.”

  During our paintball wars, everyone wore helmets with visors for protection from paint bullets. In the dark tunnels, it was hard to tell if a person was an enemy or a friend.

  “Today’s password?” Al Cooper asked.

  “Stinkpot,” Micky said.

  “Stinkpot?” both twins asked.

  Micky grinned. “In honor of Carter’s fall into the sewage lagoon.”

  The twins grinned back. Carter grinned too. Lisa didn’t.

  Micky tried to get her to grin. “And Lisa, make sure you don’t get lost.”

  We always teased Lisa about the fact that she wasn’t good with directions. Actually, I thought Lisa was brave to go into the tunnels even though she might get lost. The only reason I could face going in the tunnels was that I always knew exactly where I was.

  Lisa stuck her tongue out at Micky and that seemed to make things better among us.

  We walked in silence for the last five minutes. We reached the drainage ditch. There were trees on both sides. It was dry. We walked along the bottom of the drainage ditch toward the big hill.

  We had to step over things that got left behind when the floodwater dropped. There were dolls without heads, old shoes and plastic pop bottles. There was plenty of garbage. All of it had washed from the streets and floated out through the tunnels.

  At the tunnel entrance there was a door made of iron bars welded together in squares of about two feet. Dried grass and weeds were wrapped around the bars on the bottom half of the door. They got stuck on the bars as the water flowed through.

  The door was attached to the top of the tunnel on large hinges. It was supposed to be locked, but the lock was old and had been loose for as long as we could remember. To get into the tunnel, all you had to do was jiggle the lock until it popped. Then you just lifted the door and slipped inside.

  Micky moved to the door. He slapped the lock a few times until it opened. He tested the door by pulling it back. It creaked on rusty hinges.

  “Where are they?” Lisa demanded. “You don’t think they chickened out, do you?”

  Before any of us could answer, there was movement in the bushes above us.

  “Chicken? I don’t think so,” a voice called out.

  The Medford school warriors stepped into sight. They had flashlights attached to their belts, their paintball guns ready and their helmets hanging from their hands.

  Six of them. Big kids. None of them smiled as they looked down on us.

  chapter five

  It didn’t bother me that the Medford warriors were big. Tunnel war was the only place I wasn’t scared of big kids. Size worked against them. Skinny, small and fast was much better. And, like I always said, a paintball bullet brought big guys down the same way it brought down anyone else.

  “Hey,” Micky said. “Come on.”

  They waited until the guy in front nodded. He had a crew cut and the beginning of a mustache. He looked like the kind of guy who had an army recruiting poster in his bedroom.

  Mr. Army marched the rest of the kids toward us. They followed him in single file. When Mr. Army stopped, they stopped. They stayed straight and unmoving with their feet close together and arms at their sides. “At ease, men,” he said.

  All at the same time, they relaxed and moved their feet shoulder-width apart.

  At ease? What kind of freaks were these guys?

  Micky stepped over and shook Mr. Army’s hand.

  Micky always surprised me when he did things like that. Around adults, Micky had attitude. With anyone our age, though, you’d think he was running for student council.

  “You know the rules,” Micky said.

  “Let’s go over them again so everyone here knows,” Mr. Army said. It sounded like he was clipping his words off with scissors.

  “Jim,” Micky said to me. “The trophy.”

  I opened my duffel bag. Beside my paintball gun was our small flag. It was attached to a short wooden pole. I lifted it out and waved it.

  “Our flag,” Micky said. “If you capture it, it’s yours. It will make you kings of the tunnel. No other school has taken our flag since we began the game last year.”

  Mr. Army spun and pointed to one of his guys. The guy saluted. I mean, actually saluted. Then he reached inside his jacket and took out their team flag.

  “Good,” Micky said. “We both put our flags somewhere in sight. The war is over when one team takes the other’s flag and makes it back here. If we take your flag, we add it to our collection. You can try to get it back next time. But there’s a lineup to take us on. Might be a couple months of Saturdays before you get a chance.”

  “Whatever,” Mr. Army said. “I’m not worried. Our guys are tough.”

  I wondered if they were tunnel tough. It’s a different world in there, with the smallest sound echoing in every direction.

  “No paint bullets above the shoulders, right?” Mr. Army asked. It was their army against ours. As we tried to take their flag, we would also be trying to put their soldiers out of the game.

  “Right,” Micky said. “Someone shoots you high, they’re out, you’re still in.”

  We were crazy but we weren’t stupid. Paintball bullets hurt badly enough anywhere else on your body. The last place you want to get hit is in the throat.

  “Arms and legs are half hits?” Mr. Army asked.

  “Yup,” Micky told him. “It takes two shots in the arms or legs to put you out. But a shot to the stomach, chest or back is an instant kill. Dead soldiers come out here and wait for the game to end.”

  “We got it,” the Medford guy said. “What else?”

  Micky looked at his watch. “You guys are the challengers, so you get to set up first. We give you thirty minut
es to hide your flag before we go into the tunnels. Then you wait where you are and give us twenty minutes. If you head in now the war will start at eleven o’clock. After that, anyone moving in the tunnels is fair game.”

  “Any boundaries in there? In Cadets, they limit the size of the field for war games. Otherwise we could be down there for hours.”

  “You’ll find out soon enough that the boundaries are set by the size of the tunnels. Most of the sewers are too small to move through.”

  “Got it,” Mr. Army said. It looked like he wanted to salute.

  “Good luck,” Micky said.

  Mr. Army rubbed at his mustache. “We don’t need luck.”

  “If you say so,” Micky said. He pointed at the sky. “One other thing. It’s clear now, but you never know in an hour or two. If it starts to rain and you see any water in the tunnels, the game is off. No matter if one team is up by five warriors. Everyone leaves the tunnel and we come back to fight another day. Got it?”

  “Got it.” Mr. Army turned and faced his gang.

  “Men, prepare for battle,” he barked.

  They all put their helmets on at the same time. They looked like robots.

  “About face,” Mr. Army barked.

  They all turned toward the black hole of the tunnel. They didn’t move toward it though.

  “Move out, men,” Mr. Army said.

  The Medford guys began to march. The guy who reached the tunnel first held the door open so the others could slip inside. One by one, they stepped into the darkness of the tunnel. Each one of them had to crouch to move inside.

  When they were all inside, Mr. Army barked out again. This time his voice had a weird echo from the concrete walls of the tunnel.

  “Let the operation begin,” he said.

  All together, they began to march forward. The echo of their footsteps continued to reach us long after they had disappeared into the darkness.

  And then there was silence, broken only by the whistling of the wind in the trees.

  chapter six

  We waited ten minutes to open our duffel bags and take out our paintball guns. There was no sense in having all the stuff out in the open, just in case somebody wandered along and decided to ask questions.

  We loaded our paintballs. Think of gum balls filled with paint. That’s what a paintball bullet is. An expensive paintball gun is accurate up to one hundred feet away.

  Does it hurt when a paintball hits you? It’s about the same as getting hit by a tennis ball, a really fast tennis ball. That’s why we wore layers of clothing for protection: sweatshirts with jean jackets over top. We also made sure our necks were covered with scarves. Get hit there, and you’d have a bruise for weeks.

  All of us had pump-action guns. The semi-automatics fired paintballs faster, but none of us could afford the more expensive guns or all the ammo they wasted. Not even the Cooper twins, because, rich as their parents were, they hated giving money to their sons.

  Once the paintball guns were loaded, we took our helmets from our backpacks. We put the helmets in place, visors up. We checked our flashlights. Then we were ready. We counted down the final seconds.

  Exactly thirty minutes after the Medford gang had gone into the tunnels, we followed. Micky held the gate open for us to go inside. He let it fall behind him. We all stepped forward into the darkness.

  Twenty steps into the tunnel, we stopped. We waited for our eyes to adjust to the dark. We had not put the visors down on our helmets yet. There was no need. We had a half hour of our own to get ready for battle.

  As we waited, I took a deep breath. Like always, the approaching panic felt like a ball of spiders in my stomach. I reminded myself who I was.

  Zantor, soldier of the galaxy. His nerves are steel cold bands as he plunges deep into the alien nest. Upon him depends the freedom of the entire galaxy. Zantor will defeat the enemy. Zantor has never failed. Women of great beauty wait to adore him upon his return. Women of great great beauty. Women who will—

  “Jim,” Micky whispered. “Take us there, buddy.”

  “Sure,” I said. I told myself I would get back to Zantor and his beautiful women as soon as I had a chance.

  I moved to the front of our short line and began to lead. They followed. All of us wore Nike’s with soft soles. I was the only one who didn’t have to duck as we walked through the cool darkness of the tunnel. That was one thing that really helped me in the tunnels.

  The other thing was my mind map. I knew exactly where to go.

  For some reason, I am good at making maps in my head. All I do is pretend I’m a bird looking down. I keep track of turns and twists, and I never get lost in the tunnels.

  Not that getting lost for long is something anyone would have to worry about. For one thing, it’s not totally dark. Every forty or fifty steps, there are grates above. Or, in some tunnels, manhole covers. These openings not only let in water, but light.

  Also, there is a difference in size between the main tunnel and all the others. The main tunnel is big enough to walk through nearly standing. The tunnels that feed into the main tunnel are a foot and a half smaller. You have to crouch to get through them. These connect to even smaller tunnels that you need to crawl through.

  So if you ever want to get out, you just follow a small tunnel to a bigger tunnel, and a bigger tunnel to the main tunnel.

  How do you know which direction to go?

  Easy. Drop a marble.

  All of the tunnels slope toward the main tunnel. If they didn’t, the water would never drain out. Watch which way the marble rolls, and you’ll know which way to go.

  Of course we didn’t want out. We wanted to reach the central part of the tunnels. Which is why my mental map was so helpful. I knew exactly how to get us there.

  I turned my flashlight on and hung it from the back of my pants. The sunlight from the grates was enough to allow me to see where I was going, so I didn’t need the flashlight myself. By hanging it behind me, I made it easier for everyone else to follow me.

  At each grate in the gutters above, we passed through beams of sunlight. It was colder in the tunnel than it had been outside. Mist seemed to hang in those sunlight beams. Our breath made a weird soft sound as it bounced off the concrete walls. The tunnel smelled like a mixture of dirty socks and rotting tomatoes.

  Even with my mental map, I didn’t like it much here. Above were buses and cars. The concrete of the tunnels was old and cracked in places. It had rained a lot over the last month. I wondered if the dirt was heavy with water and ready to cave through the old concrete.

  Then my mind really started working. I told myself it could rain hard and fast and trap us with floodwater. Rats could swarm us. Or maybe pythons had escaped from pet stores and found a place down here. And a guy always heard about alligators loose in the sewer tunnels below New York and—

  STOP! I told myself.

  This was Zantor, galaxy soldier, leading his troops. He feared nothing.

  I turned my mind back to getting us to our mousetrap spot. It was far ahead in the semi-darkness, where three tunnels joined the main tunnel, like spokes at the center of a wheel.

  In the center of the main tunnel, a manhole cover gave good light. That’s where we would plant the flag. It would be easy to see and would draw the Medford guys like mice to cheese.

  And we would be hiding in the side tunnels, ready to gun them down.

  That, at least, was the plan.

  chapter seven

  Ten minutes later, we arrived at the place we called the mousetrap. Above was the manhole cover. The light coming through the circles in the cover made ghostly white plates on the tunnel floor. The rumble of cars overhead was hardly louder than the sound of someone clearing their throat.

  For a few seconds, none of us spoke. Something about the tunnels always made a person quiet.

  “All right,” Micky finally whispered. “Jim, buddy, you plant the flag.”

  There was a ladder leading down from the manhole. I climb
ed halfway up the ladder. With an old shoelace, I tied the flagpole to a ladder rung. The shaft of light fell on the edge of the flag.

  I climbed back down.

  “Good,” Micky said. “Now we guard it. Lisa, you get everyone in the positions we went through last night.”

  “You both packed blankets, right?” she asked the Cooper twins. “After Micky called you last night.”

  “Right,” Al said. “He said we’d be on the ground.”

  “Exactly.” Lisa pointed down at the first small tunnel. “Both of you take that tunnel. Follow it until you come to the cross tunnel. When you get to there, lie on the ground feet to feet, with one of you facing each direction. Your blankets should help you. And remember, no noise.”

  They left, ducking to move through the smaller tunnel.

  “Carter...” She spit on the ground. She could have been clearing her throat. But I didn’t think so. Not by the tone of her voice. “You take the far tunnel. If you go about fifteen steps up the tunnel, you’ll find a big breaker box. You can hide behind it.”

  Not only were these tunnels used to drain water, they held a lot of underground pipes and wiring.

  “Sure,” he said in a cheerful voice. It sounded like he was going to do his best to remain sweet, no matter how Lisa treated him. “A breaker box?”

  “For telephone wires,” Micky said. “There’s no danger from electricity.”

  “Cool,” Carter said.

  Lisa spit on the ground again. “Take your spot. Wait and don’t move until me or Micky calls you out. Don’t even scratch your nose. Your best chance is if they don’t know you’re there.”

  “Gotcha,” Carter said. “Whatever it takes.”

  He disappeared into the darkness of the far tunnel.

  “Micky’s got the third small tunnel,” Lisa told me. “And I’m going back up the main tunnel. They might try to sneak in behind us.”

  “I take my usual spot?” I asked.