Desert Rats

Vol. 206: Do you have somewhere to go?

During her hiring process, Rachel had stressed that she was only available for the overnight shift, then requested that her two days off not be consecutive, and not a Saturday or Sunday.

“You don’t want a weekend off? Ever?” the manager of the grocery store asked with some disbelief.

“I need to take care of my kids after school,” she’d said, but that was a lie. She didn’t have anybody or anything that needed her. In fact, she needed to be invisible when she wasn’t at work.

Rachel paid Cindy every week in exchange for letting her sleep on the couch during the day and have a few inches in the fridge for her food, but the money didn’t buy much tolerance for Rachel’s predicament. Cindy’s husband,Tom, was especially annoyed with the very thought of Rachel being there and often threatened to raise her rent so she’d have to leave. It was cruel, but nobody worried about offending Rachel.

She clocked out just before 7 am and waited until Cindy’s house was empty, when she let herself in to do laundry before her rounds. She gathered the neighborhood dogs for their daily walk in the park, and this was as important to her as it was for the animals. Being with them was the only part of her day when she could shake her constant companion, fear.

When the family arrived at 5:15, Rachel’s blankets were stowed behind the end table and she was gone, her existence only noted by the lingering smell of laundry detergent. In the beginning, Cindy had invited Rachel to have dinner with the family, but that invitation had been phased out months ago. Rachel knew that soon Tom would berate Cindy to the point that the woman would throw her hands up and say, alright, I’ll tell her. The friendship was a thin one now, so Rachel did what she could to make herself scarce. One night a week, she found a quiet street and slept in her car. On the other night off, she filled the tank of her 2008 Buick LeSabre and drove until dawn.

Rachel had been raised by a single mother who couldn’t figure life out. Everything she did was temporary: living in motels, jobs that lasted only weeks before the fuck-its set in and she just didn’t show up anymore. Men who were introduced as boyfriends who were never seen a second time.

Rachel’s education ended the day after she turned sixteen, celebrated with Hostess cupcakes in the battered Mazda she and her mother were living in. That day, Rachel walked from school to Jefferson, their meet-up spot, but Mom and the Mazda weren’t there. Rachel sat on the curb and waited. As dusk fell, she knew. A homeowner called the police around 9pm. She had nowhere to go, but she’d smiled at the officer like nothing was wrong and walked away. The ensuing years were filled with temporary jobs and acquaintances kept at arms length until she needed help, which is how she ended up on Cindy’s couch. As temporary a situation as could be.

On the nights she drove, she covered the same path north through Cordes, then west through Spring Valley. She’d drive past the town of Prescott, a place that still clung to its Wild West heritage because the tourism was so profitable, and from there, she took Highway 89.

Minuscule towns spotted the highway but kept their distance from one another like angry gila monsters. These were places settled a hundred and fifty years ago, retaining the name of some man who had hammered in a wooden stake, carved his own name on it, and declared himself to be a founding father. Rachel wondered how these men, with their delusions of grandeur, would feel to see their towns inhabited by just a few dozen malcontents scratching out their survival like chickens pecking the dirt, but that thought was always followed by a stinging reminder that she was no better.

The broiling heat that extended into October had finally passed. There had been four merciful weeks of needing neither air conditioning nor the heater on her drives, but now it was December and the desert was bitterly cold. Rachel drove through the dark, always with a prayer that her old car wouldn’t break down because she had no one to call for help. She drove with a blanket around her shoulders and the heater turned on intermittently.

The desert roads have long stretches between signs of civilization. In winter, the saguaros develop a sheen of frost on their arms and the native reptiles burrow down to sleep through the starvation months. Rachel traveled through tiny towns with names like Wilholt and Peeples Valley, often getting all the way to Yarnell, and every once in a while, Congress. The drive took a second tank of gas and nearly nine and a half hours, keeping her away for the right amount of time. The money was wasted, but it was cheaper than a motel room and safer.

Declan drove Highway 89 at night, but sometimes he’d take the crooking finger of Kisman Road north into Kisman Junction, passing the big steakhouse that stood alone out there, smelling like a heaven that Declan knew he’d never enter. He always rolled the window of his rusty Tahoe down and breathed the smoky air even though it was pure torture and he’d end up shoving the rest of his potato chips into his mouth to quell his rumbling stomach.

He’d had a father at one time. Not a mother, but a father whose schizophrenia had progressed to such a point that Declan had stumbled into a hospital one night, bleeding and missing teeth, begging for someone to help his dad. The state took over immediately. Declan had just turned eighteen, so he was on his own from then on. He worked for minimum wage for too many years, always leaving a job when it became clear that he wouldn’t be allowed to move up and build a life there. To be able to support himself was all he’d ever hoped for, but his teeth and worn clothes kept him in low-paying manual work. Currently, he shared a rundown trailer with three other men who took turns sleeping and showering there, a situation that never lasted. He drove the highway one night a week, whichever night all the men ended up in the trailer. Declan didn’t bother asserting himself, he was too thin and tired to fight, so he left.

It was a Tuesday, 12:43 am. Declan had made one lap up to Kisman Junction and pulled in again at the steakhouse parking lot to take in the meaty scent. Turning the truck off and stepping into the night, he looked up at the stars. Out here, he felt the most alone, yet the most connected to everything that came before him. The tribes, the pioneers, the road crews, the snakes and creosotes. Most of all, the creatures who had learned how to survive on next to nothing. When Declan stood in the middle of nowhere at night, he felt the entire universe folding around him. Some nights that was uplifting. Other nights, it was crushing. In a world that had an infinite number of possibilities, as many as the stars, why was his life so empty?

His eyes dropped longingly to the steakhouse, wondering again if the building had a good security system, when he saw a shift in the blackness of the front porch, accompanied by an echoing noise like knives scraping across the wooden floorboards. He squinted. The boards creaked deeply under someone’s weight. Declan’s curiosity expired in seconds. He got back in the truck and slammed the door shut just as the thing launched itself from the porch, racing through the parking lot towards the truck. Declan stomped the accelerator, sending the truck into a fishtail that threw gravel into the attacking thing. He saw a familiar face in the red glow of his taillights, a face that he’d seen often enough in his years, but he didn’t believe his eyes.

Declan saw the LeSabre coming down the hill towards Kisman Junction. He and the woman who drove it had been passing each other at least once a week for months. Declan had always assumed she was a local coming from one of the factories, going home to a family. He’d never tried to wave as they passed, not wanting to frighten her, but now, he crossed the double yellow line to park his Tahoe across the two lane highway.

Rachel came over the hill and saw the Tahoe creating a roadblock. She hit her brakes while still on the decline, not about to pull up and talk to the scary looking man who was winding down his passenger window.

“Turn around!” the man screamed to her. “Rat!”

Rachel’s eyes were locked onto the man screaming.

“Go back! Giant rat!” the man screamed.

What? He had probably seen a coyote, so why-

A huge creature leapt onto the roof of the man’s truck, and even from her distance Rachel heard the roof caving from the weight. The hairy creature turned to face Rachel’s headlights, showing its twitching nose and glittering black eyes before skittering to the edge of the roof and diving into the open passenger window. The man roared in terror and fell onto his back to kick at the giant rat that snapped it’s jaws and squealed with excitement.

Rachel screamed, throwing her car into reverse as she hit the gas. The LeSabre shot up the hill backwards, Rachel not even looking through her rear window to navigate, so stunned by the sight of the man being eaten by a giant rat. She drove in reverse, screaming the whole way before doing a three point turn on the narrow road and flooring it to Turner’s Food & Gas, which sat alone four miles north of Kisman Junction. It was the only structure between the steakhouse and a trading post eight miles further north, a sun-faded convenience store with an old neon sign out front that the proprietor didn’t bother to turn on because the store closed before dark. Rachel pinned her hopes on getting inside Turner’s because gunning her car like this meant her fuel was disappearing fast. She’d never make it back to Younton and she wasn’t going to stop on 89 to pump gas with a seventy pound rat out here. She knew Turner’s would be closed, but she also knew that there was a house behind the shop, and a gray pick-up.

The LeSabre dove into the side lot of the store, where the gravel drive ran alongside the house. The miles and minutes had preyed on Rachel’s mind like the creature attacking the man in the truck. She was frantic now, sure of what she’d seen. A black rat the size of an adult pig. Teeth like knives. Claws stretching for the man. If it wasn’t for him, she would have been the one. That poor guy. He had to be dead by now, ripped into pieces. Probably remaining alive long enough to watch himself being eaten...

She braked alongside the front door of the house and slammed on the car horn. When that didn’t get an immediate response, she flashed the headlights. Now someone yanked open the front window.

“Goddammit, stop that!” a woman hissed through the screen.

Rachel turned her car off and jumped out. “Let me in! Hurry!”

“Go away. You’re gonna bring ‘em.”

“Let me in, please!”

“Drive back to Yarnell. You’ll be safe there. Go!”

“Nononono, please! Please! I’ll honk until you do!”

There was silence, then the sound of multiple locks being turned. The metal front door was opened, then the metal screen door.

“Get in, you bitch.”

Rachel sprinted through as the doors were again bolted. She entered a cave-like room lit by a single camp lantern. One beat-up recliner, a small table holding the lantern, and a wall of paperbacks were the only furniture. To the right was an entryway, probably to a kitchen. To the left was a hallway in total darkness.

“Are they chasing you?” the white-haired old woman angrily demanded. She looked ninety years old, but the people who lived out here, called ‘desert rats’, were hard to pin down age-wise. They were the hermits, the irredeemably poor and the crazies, the people who slunk into the crevices of the desert because suffering was in their genes.

“I...I, uh,” Rachel swallowed and tried to calm down. This woman seemed ready to toss her back out. “I don’t think so. They got...They? I saw one. There are more?”

“Of course there are more. They’re rats. You know, rats? You got one, you got a hunerd.”

“God. There was one in the road at the steakhouse.”

The old woman hobbled to the recliner, and Rachel saw now that she’d been holding a shotgun, which she laid across her lap before saying, “If you saw one, the others weren’t far behind.”

As if her first image of that man being torn apart by a giant rat wasn’t bad enough, now Rachel imagined the poor man being overwhelmed by a pack of squealing vermin in her mind. She whimpered as tears ran down her face.

“Don’t start that. Sit down and be quiet.”

“Why aren’t you calling the police?” Rachel asked.

“Don’t have a phone here. Where’s yours?”

Rachel’s face crumpled. “It was shut off.”

The woman ran her hand over a book that lay on the table next to the recliner. A Harlequin romance. She wanted to pick it up and read, to go back to normal, but didn’t dare now. Rachel sat on the floor, trying to control her sobs, when the metal screen door began vibrating. Both women jumped.

“Look what you did,” the old woman hissed as she pulled herself out of the recliner and braced the shotgun against her hip. The inner door transmitted the force of someone pulling at the screen door knob.

“Help me!” a man cried.

“Don’t say a word,” the old woman whispered to Rachel. She stretched her neck out, listening.

“Buick Lady, I know you’re in there...please help me!”

“Get out of the way,” Rachel said as she pushed the old woman aside and unbolted the locks. The man lunged inside and slammed the front door behind him. The old woman dared not open it again to secure the screen door, so bolted the locks.

“Thank you...I can’t believe...they’re huge! How could they get so huge?” Declan gasped.

“How d’ya think? They just eat and sleep and get fat,” the old woman answered as if she were talking to an idiot. “So you two have given them something to hunt, and you’ve brought them to me. That’s just great.”

“Not necessarily. The steakhouse is miles away.”

“Not far at all,” the old woman cut in.

“Okay. Well, maybe-”

“No maybe. They’ll follow. It’s how they find food. Coyotes, snakes, garbage. People. They eat anything. So now we wait for them to come. Damn you.”

The woman shuffled down the dark hallway. In her, alone and angry, they saw their future. Bare survival, nothing more. Rachel and Declan looked at each other. By the lantern light, they each recognized the other’s hard life that had taken away the softness of youth and left them as lean as ocotillos. They were afraid of what was coming and what might already be in the house. They had no idea if the old woman had gone to the bathroom, to take a nap, or to bring someone else out.

“Thank you for...for warning me. I thought I saw you right before...you know.”

“Yeah. I had a hunting knife in the truck and got in the eye.”

“You have a knife! Good.”

“Not anymore. The rat fell out the window with it. I rolled the window up and floored it.”

They heard the old woman creaking back towards them. Her wrinkled face emerged from the shadows first and it wasn’t until she was inches from them that they saw she held a machete in one hand and a .357 in the other.

“Who wants what?”

In a split second, they were pitted them against each other. “Gun,” they said at the same time. The old woman smirked and gave Rachel the gun while Declan was handed the machete.

“Don’t feel bad, kid,” the old woman told him. “Nose, paw or eye. It’s a good weapon. Now everybody shut the hell up.”

She sat in the recliner with the shotgun across her lap. Declan and Rachel leaned against the walls, shaking from the cold, sweating with terror. It was a short wait. The first warning was a high-pitched squeal from the highway. Quickly, the sound came closer and moved into the store parking lot, excited squeals and the shifting gravel under many clawed feet. They were searching. Declan trembled at the sound. The memory of frantic claws trying to drag him closer was fresh in his mind. He had spent his life at the bottom of every social order, but now he found himself at the bottom of the food chain. He didn’t think he’d ever recover.

The old woman was furious. She’d lived in this godforsaken place nearly her whole life. Her father had built the store and adjoining house back in 1952, when she was a little girl. Her mother instructed her because there was no schoolhouse for forty miles. Her playmates were children who stopped for fifteen minutes, then they got in their cars and left forever while she had to stay.

She’d begged to go to a real high school. Finally, at fifteen, her father taught her to drive so she could, and this opened up a new life with achievements and friends. She was accepted to a college in Phoenix, but her son-of-a-bitch father died right after she graduated high school, holding her here like her feet were buried in concrete. She and Mother huddled together at night, reading by candlelight and whispering in the dark. Listening for the rats. Mother wasn’t selfless, never told her to go live her life. No, she’d done everything she could to keep her daughter there, waiting on her as she aged.

They slept in burrows during the day. They appeared at dusk, famished and angry. In the last years that Mother was alive, when the daughter was nearing forty and weighed down with bitterness, she sometimes thought about shoving her frail mother out the door at night and locking it. Turning on the neon sign to draw them and going into her back bedroom to pretend she hadn’t done anything. She’d never got up the courage to do that, although she’d kept the dying woman at home longer than she should have, whispering in her ear that the rats were coming up the drive, were right outside the house...can you hear the scratching at the door, Mother?

The traveling nurse had been the one to call the ambulance, and so Mother died in a safe, clean hospital, while the old daughter, and she did see herself as old now, remained to run the shop. There was nowhere to go and nothing to go to.

“Alright,” the old woman whispered. Declan and Rachel gripped their weapons with white knuckles and trembled. Declan willed himself not to throw up. The squeals were close and there were many. Seconds later, the three inside heard the scraping of whiskered noses along the house, following the human scent to the front door. The squeals became louder and more excited.

“Do we shoot?” Rachel said out loud. She hadn’t meant to, but fear had made her practically yell.

The old woman frowned and shook her head. No, she mouthed. I’ll tell you.

The rats began clawing the house, searching for some way in. The old woman had some composure, knowing that the house had a steel frame bolstered by metal sheeting layered over with wood, plaster and insulation. It had been built to be both a cool cave in the heat, and a fortress. Her parents had realized fast why the land had been so cheap, and they had taken steps. Still, this was the first time the house had ever been swarmed. She truly didn’t know if it would hold up.

She down the hallway and lifted the blind of the barred bathroom window. She dropped it when a pink twitching nose rubbed against the glass. It had to be standing on its hind legs to reach that window, which meant that particular rat reached six feet tall. She returned to the living room.

“Lady, where’s your phone?” the man asked.

“Where’s yours?” the old woman barked back at him.

“I don’t own one. I can’t... anyway…” He fumbled to finish his sentence, then gave up and hung his head.

“Yeah, I get it. I have a landline in the shop, though.” She didn’t admit that she hadn’t had anyone call to ask about her in nearly twenty years. She couldn’t think of a single person who even called her by her name.

“Is there an adjoining hallway to the store or something?”

“Nope. And the rats have us surrounded, so don’t think you can run out the door. The only way would be up the chimney to the roof. Then you’d have to jump from the house to the shop roof and go down the chimney into the store.”

“There’s a fireplace in the store?” Rachel asked.

“Of course. I’m not putting central heating in there, I don’t care if my customers are cold.”

“Okay, okay. So somebody has to climb up the chimney and jump to the other roof.”

Both women looked at Declan, who shook his head. “I’m not doing that. And I have night blindness anyway.”

“You were driving at night,” Rachel pointed out.

“Yeah, but I shouldn’t be.”

Rachel crawled into the chimney. She owed Declan. And the old woman. She owed everybody. Cindy, for letting her take up space in her house. Ted, for hiring her when he could have gotten someone better. The world at large for not just stomping the life out of her when it could be done so easily. So she tucked the gun into her waistband and took the flashlight the old woman offered. She climbed into the chimney, then stood up and began feeling around for holds in the bricks for her fingers and toes. Once she was a few feet off the ground, Declan whispered good luck up the chimney.

Rachel made it to the top of the chimney and held herself there for a moment, listening until her thighs and biceps vibrated. She pushed the metal cover from the chimney top and pulled herself onto the roof, melting against the chimney stack. Her panting created a cloud, but she was alone on the roof, though the sounds coming from below were too disturbing to ignore. Her knit sweater wasn’t enough and she shook violently. She glanced over the roof edge. Enormous rats were scampering outside of the house and in the parking lot, climbing each other to dig their sharp nails into the plaster. They had already chewed gaping holes. Her appearance on the roof didn’t go unnoticed. One rat, standing between the back door and the wash line, spotted her and let out a piecing screech that alerted its family. Eighty of them, all standing on hind legs and stretching their mouths up, clicked their long teeth at Rachel with longing.

The shop wasn’t as close as she’d thought. Looking at the distance, in the black night with a horde of starving rats waiting for her fall, Rachel judged the shop roof to be at least a ten foot jump. Her only chance was to start running from the far side of the house roof, and when she came to the edge, launch herself across in a ball so that she’d hit the shop on her shoulder and roll like she’d learned in gymnastics at school. It was the only way she could cover that distance.

She intended to take big strides before launching herself shoulder-first, but as she began her run she could hear the scampering of clawed feet behind her. Working together, the rats had reached the house roof. She pumped her legs harder and launched herself to the shop roof, slamming down on her right shoulder and rolling until she slowed enough to stand up. Her shoulder was on fire and her arm bleeding from a nail sticking up from the shingles. The smell of blood would only make things worse. She looked behind her. In the bright moonlight, several rats crouched on the house, twitching their noses and rubbing their claws maniacally at her.

She turned every which way looking for the chimney stack, strobing the flashlight across the roof of the small shop. There isn’t a chimney! The rats saw the flashing light as an invitation to dinner and easily made the leap to the shop, while the hungry rats below stood on their hind legs and climbed the shrubs, piling onto each other to form a squealing, squirming hill that reached the rooftop, where they soon had Rachel fumbling in a tight circle, pointing the trembling gun and screaming, “Help me, you old bitch!” Surrounded on all sides, Rachel pulled the trigger over and over. The gun made a hollow click, click, click, click, click. Not a single bullet. When the rats understood that the human was harmless, they attacked.

A rat pounced, sinking its long teeth into her shoulder, peeling back flesh and the sleeve of her sweater in one vicious yank. Another rat lunged at her neck and bit deeply, causing Rachel’s blood to spray across its face, increasing its excitement. More rats bit her legs. She beat at them with the flashlight, but by her fourth strike, the flashlight was coated in so much blood that it slipped from her hand and rolled off the roof.

Inside the house, the old woman turned off the lantern. Tears ran down Declan’s face as they listened to the screams. The following silence was almost as bad.

“Stay quiet,” the old woman whispered. She sat down on the floor next to him and pulled his head against her shoulder. Declan whispered back.

“How did I never see them before?”

The old woman shrugged. “The desert holds secrets. She died a hero.” There was no chimney on the shop. The old woman had done what she had to. “They’ve gotten their kill and they’ll settled down now.”

They listened in the dark. When the sun began to rise they heard bodies moving over the gravel drive. The old woman said, “They’re going to their burrows. You rest in the back bedroom. The shop will be safe soon and I’ll call the sheriff.”

Declan was exhausted. He walked down the dark hallway, turning into a small room with a double bed. He fell into it and cried himself to sleep.

The old woman sat on the edge of her recliner, listening. She heard the young man crying, and heard when he stopped. She went to her bedroom and took out her father’s Army bag. Her knees hurt, but she got down and pulled a trash bag of cash from the bedsprings. That went into the Army bag, as did her toothbrush, a comb, and a car registration from Little Rock, Arkansas that had been dropped in the parking lot fourteen years ago. Her age was finally going to be a benefit.

She swanned back to the living room, dropping a scrap of paper on the floor as she picked up the car keys Declan had lost in the shag carpeting when the woman let him in. The Buick keys must be in the woman’s jacket, or down a rat’s throat, and that was a good thing. The old woman’s Chevy had stopped running ten years ago, so that would leave the man truly stuck, and with no phone in the shop, he wouldn’t be able to call for help. He’d have food, if he hurried. Winter days didn’t leave much time for an emotional breakdown…

She checked that the grounds were clear, then ran to the truck. When it rumbled to life, her heart leapt with a joy she hadn’t felt since she was a girl. Free! She backed down the drive and pointed the truck towards Phoenix. She’d decide what to do from there.

When Declan came out of the bedroom, dusk was settling on the desert. Panicked, he ran from room to room in the tiny house, whispering for the old woman who wasn’t there. In tears, he’d finally found the scrap of paper she’d dropped on the carpet.

If you have someone to go back to, wait til daylight and stand on the highway. If not, you belong here.

---

Most of the towns in Desert Rats can be traced through Yavapai County. And though I changed the name, there really is a steakhouse standing out in the middle of nowhere that’s been there for years. I used to drive past it in the middle of the night.

Thanks to Erica at Top in Fiction for recently featuring my story “Zombieland: Who Loves Ya, Baby?”

Next time: Being young and stinkin’ rich must be great.