The Sewer Rats Read online

  The girls stood by the tracks pausing for a moment to marvel at the distant pencil-thin glow from the skytugger wires as they dangled from the space platform orbiting thousands of kilometres above their world. High in the heavens the skycart shone as it climbed its wires upwards reflecting the light from a sun no longer visible from the ground. Gazing in awe the girls watched as it carried its cargo into space.

  “I wish I could travel up into the sky like that,” Heen gasped.

  It was a fantastic sight but tonight Carina knew she needed to keep her eyes firmly on the ground.

  “Come on Heen. I wish you would stop dreaming. Have you forgotten Tapper already? We need to hide.”

  Staring into the darkness Carina thought she glimpsed something moving between the trees. For a long moment she strained her eyes against the near darkness, but she caught no further movement. Maybe it had been the afterglow from the skycart affecting her eyes. She shivered a little, partly due to the cooling night air, and partly for the fear of being caught, but mostly for the responsibility of keeping her younger sister safe.

  They walked a short distance beside the tracks until the bank took a steep dip. It was as if someone had gouged out a large chunk of ground leaving a dark secluded hollow in its place. A barbed wire fence protected the entrance to a tunnel barely visible at the bottom of the hollow. Composing herself Carina followed Heen until they stood with only a bracken-filled ditch between them and the fence and a sign that read

  TRAMWAY POWER STATION

  Authorised Personnel Only

  - Intense Magnetic Field -

  – Danger of Death –

  DO NOT ENTER

  – You have been warned! –

  Heen crouched ready to jump onto the wire.

  “Heen, what are you doing? You’ll end up in hospital. To prove her point Carina pulled a nearby stalk from the ground and reaching over the ditch swished it against the wires. Each time the stalk touched the razor sharp metal it was cut cleanly in two, and where the stalk touched the barbs it shredded into rough thin strips.

  “There you are. That would have been you Heen. If you really want to hurt yourself just go and find Tapper! Anyway I came prepared. Open up my backpack and pass me the wire cutters and my torch.”

  Carina examined the fence while her sister fumbled inside her backpack. The top five rows appeared old, rusty and worn, but still sharp enough to tear the skin from any careless passer-by. The bottom two wires were shiny and new suggesting that someone else had recently been this way trespassing on the tramway’s private land. Robots were quick to repair any breaks, and Carina shuddered at the thought that the previous trespassers might still be around.

  Holding her torch between her teeth Carina grasped hold of the sign with one hand and clutching the wire-cutters in her other. Carina swung forward making a couple of snips each time she reached the wires. Twice the metal twanged missing her shoulders by millimetres as she swung back from the fence. One more swing and a jump sent her sailing through the gap. She hit the soft earth with a squish and rolled along a soggy bank covering her hair, bare flesh and clothes with thick black mud. Turning around she caught hold of Heen as she too leapt between the ends of the broken wires still waving menacingly at the intruders.

  Carina pulled a roll of sticky tape from her backpack, and standing on tiptoes stuck the broken wires back together, she hoped it would take more than a quick glance to discover they had been cut. Then she pointed her torch ahead of them, but its feeble beam failed to penetrate the darkness. The girls now preoccupied with the dangers that lay ahead soon forgot about the fence. On a concrete post hidden from view a red warning light flashed.

  Crawling on their hands and knees they squeezed passed the mud-lined tunnel into a narrow passageway that opened into a compact rectangular alcove whose walls caught and amplified the magnetic waves coming from the tram tracks overhead into a low pitched hum. As they ventured further inside the noise grew to an angry buzz reminding Heen of a colony of bees swarming around their queen. The pulsing beat drowned out their nervous breaths as they sensed it throb angrily throughout their bodies. Soon their insides began to tingle and their heads feel fuzzy.

  “I bet it won’t be so bad once we’ve got used to it and this is the best hiding place, honest,” Carina forced her mouth into an encouraging but obviously fake smile.

  “OK, but we mustn’t stay long, remember dad’s story!” Heen shouted her reply, while placing her fingers in her ears desperately trying to block out the noise. She shut her eyes, but that just made the contents of her stomach jump up into her throat.

  Chapter 3

  Dad’s Warning

  The girls loved to listen to their father’s bedtime stories. When they were tucked up in bed he would begin, “when I was a young boy many, many years ago, soon after people landed the first spaceship on this world...” It made the girls laugh. They knew their dad was old, but not THAT old.

  Carina and Heen often protested, but their father swore that every story he told about his boyhood days were true. If they were, he must have been the most popular boy on the planet and Carina doubted that. Maybe she was a little jealous after all she was thirteen and so far she had led a hideously boring life. But true tales or not, it didn’t really matter, she loved to hear her father tell his stories.

  Sometimes he would take off his shirt revealing brightly coloured tattoos covering his arms, chest and back. Each tattoo had a story or ten to tell. The colourful mermaids on his left arm could lead to tales of pirate treasure, and at other times of gangs stealing rare animals to sell on other worlds. A tattoo on his back, a claw holding five cards, told of the time their father won a game of cards against the wealthiest man on their planet. If that were true, Carina wondered, why weren’t they rich? Carina’s favourite tattoo, wound around her father’s wrist, and the story that often went with it was a picture of a dragon that lived in a hollow below the lasertram tracks.

  Their father would take a sip from a glass, which he claimed contained story telling water, but it smelt more like the contents of a whisky bottle that sat on their living room dresser. After a few more sips he would begin his story.

  “When I was a young boy, many, many years ago, soon after people arrived on this world, and I was the same age as Carina is now I had a huge argument with my father. I was supposed to go to the shops to pick up a bag of anti-slemon pellets but instead I went fishing with my mates. I was so mad with him that I ran away from home. In my imagination I saw myself taking a tram ride to the skytugger depot and then sneaking onto the skycart for a ride into space. I was convinced I could make my fame and fortune travelling to other worlds.”

  “Oh, not that old story again Rigel, you will give the girls ideas,” their mum would roll her eyes and complain.

  “Don’t worry Capella! I know my girls are sensible, and I trust them to learn from my mistakes.” Then he would make the girls promise never to go to the tram tracks alone, before he would continue his story.

  “While I waited for the tram the constant buzzing coming from the tracks made me feel sleepy. I opened my rucksack. I had a couple of sandwiches, a sleeping bag, a few coins for the tram fair, a lamp with a spare battery and some wire cutters. I foolishly didn’t expect to need anything else until I found work on a new world.

  “It began to rain so seeing a dry hollow on the other side of a wire fence I cut the wires and jumped through. Then I crawled along a muddy tunnel that turned into an alcove. It was dark so I switched on my lamp then I ate my sandwiches and lay listening for the tram ready to run and jump onto it before it sped away. It was late at night and I was tired but the buzzing and the vibrations made me extra tired. I settled into my sleeping bag and dozed off.

  “When I woke it was totally dark. My head throbbed and my throat was raw. I frantically flicked the lamp’s switch on and off, but the battery was dead. I fumbled in my rucksack for the spare but pulled my hand out quickly when I felt h
undreds of tiny legs crawling over it. I had no idea who the legs belonged to but it made me shake with fear. Eventually I managed to steady myself enough to grab hold of the spare battery - it was covered in slime. In the seconds it took to insert the battery into the torch my imagination came up with dozens of answers as to what was living inside my rucksack. Anyway I switched on my lamp, and there swarming over my sleeping bag, and snuggling down eating into my sandwiches, and running around the walls and above my head was a seething carpet of bugs. They were minute, small, medium, large and giant sized creatures that wriggled, crawled, hopped, flew or slithered towards the lamp.

  “I stood up and shook thousands of them from my clothes. I turned to escape, but hovering over the exit I saw a bright green star which appear from nowhere, it didn’t come from my lamp and it wasn’t in the sky (remember I was underground). It just hung there in the air. I blinked, but still the star shone against the muddy walls. I tried to touch it but it kept out of reach. I tossed some bugs at it but they didn’t disturb it in the slightest. I closed my eyes but the light shone through my eyelids. I turned my head and it moved with me, following my gaze.

  “Suddenly the star split into a dense cloud of tiny dancing fire-flies. Swooping closer they became a swarm of tiny fire-breathing dragons proudly flashing their rainbow scales as they circled menacingly above me. Then they froze, maybe sensing they were being watched. Their red eyes filled with hate as they swooped towards me, and breathing fire at me I swear I could smell their stinking breath. Yet as the flames were about to scorch me the dragons vanished and the cave returned to darkness. I was left with the loud thumping of my heart and the buzz of the tram tracks.”

  At this point in the story their dad’s face would grow red with embarrassment as he described the pools of sweat that covered his body and the fountain he knew was pooling in his underpants. When the girls giggled their father would frown and remind them never to visit the tramway alone.

  “Desperate to escape I grabbed the wire cutters and lamp leaving all the rest behind. I crawled through the tunnel as fast as I could. I emerged into a bright red sunrise and a flash of movement by the fence. Suddenly there was a mechanical growling sound much louder than the hum of the tracks. Sparks flew as I watched a maintenance robot weld on a new piece of wire repairing the fence and trapping me on the wrong side. I was wet and covered in mud but I had to remain hidden until the robot finished its job. The robot would have had no hesitation in reporting me to the police.

  “At last the robot left and I cut the wires again. I walked along the tram tracks trying to work out a plan. Resigned to returning home I sat on the steep bank and tried to gather up the courage to confront my father. I must have been there a while because the next thing I knew the sun was setting. Some policemen found me staring at the sky, mumbling nonsense and drooling from the mouth.

  “I was grounded for months afterwards and I promise both you girls the same fate if you ever go near the tram tracks alone.”

  He sighed as he recalled, “In the days that followed I suffered horrible headaches they were so painful it made me wish I was dead. My dreams were haunted by monsters, but the real pain was when my mother grumbled, ‘Rigel I’ve a good mind to make you scrub these pee-stained clothes yourself’”.

  “Later I learned my tiredness, the imaginary star and the visions of strange creatures were caused by the tram track’s strong magnetic field. A few days later the police visited my school with the warning that going near the tracks could cause permanent madness or death, so I suppose I was lucky.”

  Carina knew how good her dad was at making up stories. Sitting with his friends, drinks in front of them, they would try to outdo each other with their creepy tales. Sometimes Carina’s mind would drift away and she would wonder what it would be like to visit this magical alcove. It might be quite exciting, or at the least she could use it to have a little fun scaring her sister. If they went together they wouldn’t be breaking their promise not to go alone.

  ****

  “Well done Derain, good tracking,” Tapper and Gibran had been following behind, but now joined their friend at the tunnel entrance. To show their appreciation they slapped Derain hard on his back.

  “Who would have thought that those two girls would break the law? Hiding on tram land, now that’s naughty. Shall we go and teach them never to do it again?” Tapper laughed.

  Chapter 4

  Discovered

  The darkness offered a brief escape, and for the moment the girls were safe. Carina wished she hadn’t spotted something moving between the trees, but whatever it was she was sure it hadn’t followed them inside. Maybe it had been a large cat stalking a rabbit, appearing much larger than it really was by a trick of the twilight. However Carina had one of those horrible feelings that niggle at the back of the mind. What if it had been Tapper or one of his mates?

  Feeling the way with her fingertips the walls were smooth and wet to the touch. Switching on her torch Carina aimed it at her feet. Heen gasped. Just like in their dad’s story they were walking on a carpet of assorted mini-creatures. Out in the open and in daylight the bugs would be slithering or scuttling along, but all appeared to be hypnotised by the pulsating sound made by the tram tracks. Most of the bugs were tiny but some were bigger than Heen’s head. A few had pincers and some had stings in their tails. Many had long dagger-like spikes protruding from their shells.

  Amongst the mayhem large carnivorous billipedes, which usually spent their entire lives in a mad rush of killing and feasting, were slowly walking in circles. Three tiny ciri lizards whose scales normally a vivid green in bright sunlight were ugly, dull and tattered. Heen thought they must have been there a weeks to look so scruffy. Using their torches as brushes the girls nervously swept a pathway through the creatures.

  Poking their heads out of neatly excavated holes in the walls were kaimons the only creatures that appeared immune to the magnetic trance. Kaimons had eight legs like spiders, but resembled ants. Their bodies were made of four grape-sized bulbous segments finishing with a much larger head. The smaller sections each had two legs attached, and immediately below the head two spindly but powerful arms grabbed hold of anything that dared come too close. Two tiny crimson eyes sat below a larger third that perched on a long pencil-thick stalk. Below the eyes tiny chisel-teeth munched at the end of a slug-like sucker.

  “Rowool grow row grow ooool,” the kaimons moaned for having their meal interrupted.

  The girls picked up an assortment of bugs and tossed them towards the kaimons. Heen laughed as she spun a large circular bug like a flying disc. Each time they scored a hit a grateful kaimon barked its thanks, and snatched the gift before disappearing into its hole.

  They sat for several minutes trying to ignore the drone coming from the tracks. Despite covering her ears and raising her voice as loud as she dare Carina felt drowsy. She knew she had to remain alert, the catchers might appear at any moment, but she could feel her eyelids getting heavier and her head was beginning to throb. In the confusion she wondered if she would meet the dragons from her father’s story.

  There were no sounds from outside and apart from the kaimons and the girls’ deep breaths there was no movement. Looking toward the tunnel entrance Carina noticed that all the pieces of tape she had used to mend the broken fence wires now lay in a knotted heap on the ground. She thought she remembered tying the ends together, or had she? It was hard to concentrate in this strange place. Had someone slipped into the grotto while they were busy feeding the kaimons?

  The novelty and excitement she had experienced as they had entered the grotto had gone. She had expected the adventure to be fun, but now the whole experience was getting scary.

  The girls switched off their torches to save power. In the darkness most of the kaimons stopped their barking, but a few nearby still directed an occasional angry grumble at Carina.

  “I don’t want to stay here any longer. I want to go home,” Heen yawne
d.

  Maybe they should run back across the bracken and rejoin the game. Taking Heen’s hand they crept towards the tunnel and the open air, but as the pounding magnetic pulses continued she felt Heen’s grip relax as she fell asleep.

  “Carina,” a small gnat-like voice murmured inside her, “it’s so easy to go to sleep forever. You can join your sister among all the other creatures. We kaimons promise not to wake you. Our teeth are tiny and our suckers smooth. We will be gentle when we eat you.”

  Carina’s heart was racing. Shaking her head vigorously she was able to keep awake for that little bit longer. She tried to carry Heen in her arms but ended up dragging her across the bug infested ground.

  Kaimon (Eridanus Kaimonus) – ‘a vicious little beast that shows no sign of intelligence’

  “Only a few more steps,” Carina reassured herself. “We’re almost there”.

  Her feet were heavy and each step grew shorter. She desperately needed to do something to break the spell, but like the assorted creatures beneath her Carina’s feet refused to take another step. Tears flowed from her eyes as she knelt down. Cradling Heen’s sleeping body in her arms Carina drifted into her dreams.

  ****

  “I know you’re in here,” the loud voice came from nowhere and then mingled with the background buzz. Strong beams of light hit the walls narrowly missing the girl’s faces. Disturbed by the noise the kaimons resumed their angry barking.

  TAP, TAP, TAP, TAP.

  Carina shook herself awake. She could hear several people speaking and lots of laughter echoing around the room.

  “Come out. You’re caught. Come and meet your doom. We won’t hurt you - much.”

  More laughter followed.

  “Bring out your possessions, they’re ours now.”

  The voices started smug and confident yet soon grew noticeably slower, as if their owners were falling asleep.