Tony Daniel Read Online Free Page A

parting, and my feet dig deep, deep.
    Shakes me again and I can only smell my own blood and her spit and then sharp, small pains at my back.
    The baby rats. The baby rats are latching on to me, trying to help their mother.
    Nothing I can do. Nothing I can do but dig with my rear paws. Dig, dig. I am swimming in her guts. I can feel the give. I can feel the tear. Oh, yes!
    Then my breastbone snaps, and I fly loose of the doe’s teeth. I land in the babies, and I’m stunned and they crawl over me and nip at my eyes and one of them shreds an ear, but the pain brings me to and I snap the one that bit my ear in half. I go for another. Across the warren cavern, the big doe shuffles. I pull myself up, try to stand on all fours. Can’t.
    Baby nips my hind leg. I turn and kill it. Turn back. My front legs collapse. I cannot stand to face the doe, and I hear her coming.
    Will I die here?
    Oh this is how I want it! Took the biggest rat in the history of the Met to kill me. Ate a whole bag of money, she did.
    She’s coming for me. I can hear her coming for me. She’s so big. I can smell how big she is.
    I gather my hind legs beneath me, find a purchase.
    This is how I die. I will bite you.
    But there’s no answer from her, only the doe’s harsh breathing. The dirt smells of our blood. Dead baby rats all around me.
    I am very, very happy.
    With a scream, the doe charges me. I wait a moment. Wait.
    I pounce, shoot low like an arrow.
    I’m through, between her legs. I’m under her. I rise up. I rise up into her shredded belly. I bite! I bite! I bite!
    Her whole weight keeps her down on me. I chew. I claw. I smell her heart. I smell the new blood of her heart! I can hear it! I can smell it! I chew and claw my way to it.
    I bite.
    Oh yes.
    The doe begins to kick and scream, to kick and scream, and as she does the blood of heart pumps from her and over me, smears over me until my coat is soaked with it, until all the dark world is blood.
    After a long time, the doe rat dies. I send out the grist, feebly, but there are no outriders to face, no tries at escape now. She put all that she had into fighting me. She put everything into our battle.
    I pull myself out from under the rat. In the corner, I hear the scuffles of the babies. Now that the mamma is dead, they are confused.
    I have to bite them. I have to kill them all.
    I cannot use my front legs, but I can use my back. I push myself toward them, my belly on the dirt like a snake. I find them all huddled in the farthest corner, piling on one another in their fright. Nowhere to go.
    I do what I told the doe I would do. I kill them each with one bite, counting as I go. Three and ten makes thirteen.
    And then it’s done, and they’re all dead. I’ve killed them all.
    So.
    There’s only one way out: the way I came. That’s where I go, slinking, crawling, turning this way and that to keep my exposed bone from catching on pebbles and roots. After a while, I start to feel the pain that was staying away while I fought. It’s never been this bad.
    I crawl and crawl, I don’t know for how long. If I were to meet another rat, that rat would kill me. But either they’re dead or they’re scared, and I don’t hear or smell any. I crawl to what I think is up, what I hope is up.
    And after forever, after so long that all the blood on my coat is dried and starting to flake off like tiny brown leaves, I poke my head out into the air.
    TB is there. He’s waited for me.
    Gently, gently he pulls me out of the rathole. Careful, careful he puts me in my sack.
    “Jill, I will fix you,” he says.
    I know.
    “That must have been the Great Mother of rats.”
    She was big, so big and mean. She was brave and smart and strong. It was wonderful.
    “What did you do?”
    I bit her.
    “I’ll never see your like again, Jill.”
    I killed her, and then I killed all her children.
    “Let’s go home, Jill.”
    Yes. Back home.
    Already in the dim burlap of the sack, and I hear the call of TB’s grist to