The Rat King's Apprentice

by Invisible Ranger (HBF), 2018

Brighton Beach, Brooklyn: December, 1994

"You sure you need another stick?"

"Rule number one. Dynamite is like garlic. Always use a little more than you think you need."

It was hard to say what the most disturbing part of the scene might have been: Kolya's ever-twitching hands, the lit cigarette dangling perilously from his lips, or the fact they were breaking at least six laws just by being here. Dangerous, hazardous, highly illegal. More fun than could be had anywhere in the city on a frigid Saturday night.

Just the way Kolya liked it. He lived, breathed, marinated in danger.

Taking a deep drag on the cigarette with his right hand, he deftly snipped at the end of the red wires with the pliers in his left. "This is gonna be a big boom once it's done. Can't wait to see it," he said, grinning. "You wanna stick around while I finish it?"

Vasya did, of course. Nikolay Grigorevich Volkov was the best kind of professor: chatty, engaging, and always hands-on, nothing like the rooms full of humorless, musty academics back at Cornell. He was the kind of man Vasya's parents would have dryly called "a negative influence." With his wiry build, spiky hair, permanent smirk, and penchant for invention, he seemed more like the coyote in those old cartoons than the wolf of his surname.

"Eat your heart out, Wile E.," Vasya said, returning the grin a wry half-smile. "Where'd you get all this stuff, anyway?"

Kolya's mock indignation darkened his handsome features. "A gentleman never tells, Mr. Fetrovski."

It might have well been the legendary Acme Products Warehouse for all Vasya knew. By now, he should have known to stop asking, but curiosity dogged him. From cases of imported vodka to contraband Cuban cigars and all the latest theatrical releases on VHS, it seemed there was nothing this crafty coyote couldn't get.

Vasya envied him.

"So, you coming back next semester?" Kolya said, still puffing away and making adjustments to his latest explosive masterpiece.

"Dunno yet." Three years at school and Vasya still couldn't answer the question. Near the top of his class at an Ivy League school, in a field where he had natural talent, with the potential of graduate school soon…and he didn't know. It wasn't the answer he'd have given his faculty advisor, certainly not his parents, but Kolya was a friend. It seemed wrong to lie to him. "I guess I want to see what my options are, you know?"

"You're in the biggest city in the world, my friend." Kolya clapped him on the back with his free hand. "America….it's the land of opportunity, remember?"

Vasya wished he could echo that sentiment. If only there were an opportunity he wanted. The last few summers he'd tried his hand earning money at everything from fixing neighbors' cars to selling snacks at Coney Island…and nothing had stuck. His father insisted he'd have top firms begging to sign him if he made it to graduate school on a scholarship, and that he shouldn't worry about working anyway while he still lived at home. If he made it through the gauntlet at Cornell, money would never be an issue, and neither would job security. He'd never have to peddle another oil change or bag of stale popcorn. And he could pick and choose where he lived. Maybe even somewhere in Manhattan.

And yet. "What about you? You got a job lined up after school?" he asked Kolya, changing the subject as he usually did when trying to avoid a sensitive issue.

"I'll get by. No need to worry about your dear Kolen'ka," the other said, not looking up this time.

Other than his explosive pursuits, and the occasional food delivery made on the battered Vespa he liked to ride, Vasya couldn't say he'd ever seen his friend actually work. Not for money, anyway. He was downright obsessive when it came to his favorite toys, and those lab rats he liked to write papers about for Dr. Hofstatler in Behavioral Psych, but an honest job? Kolya was like the coyote that way, too. Always looking to get rich quick with some crazy scheme, and back to fight the next day if it blew up in his face. Where he managed to find money for the gold chains, track suits, and Nike basketball shoes he favored, not to mention full graduate tuition, remained a mystery to Vasya.

Probably some rich uncle or cousin back in the Motherland who made it big after the fall. Lucky bastard. All I get is the occasional ten dollar scratch-off winner and leftover pieroschki for lunch. Anyway, none of my business.

"That ought to do it for now." Kolya stood back from his work, the cigarette in his lips burned almost all the way down. He pulled it out and flicked it into the rusty Hills Brothers can he used as an ashtray. "I could use a break, not to mention something to eat. I'm fucking starving. Making boom boom always gets me hungry," he said, the mischievous grin returning to his face. "Lemme put this away, Vasya, and we'll go grab something at that little Chinese place on Neptune." He paused, as if for dramatic effect. "The rats are gonna be wild over there; it's garbage day. Maybe I'll even spot the king rat this time."

It was what Vasya had been waiting to hear. He'd only been on a few excursions in and around the five boroughs observing Rattus norvegicus, the common brown rat, in perhaps its most natural of habitats…and he was weirdly fascinated by the whole thing. The sleek, docile, pink-eyed specimens in the lab were one thing, and these were something entirely different: feral, vicious, fast. Kolya conducted "stakeouts" on the beasts for his own purposes, maybe for academia's sake but more, Vasya suspected, for the fact that rats were such a worthy adversary. No matter how smart or clever or adaptive mankind pretended to be, the rats always found another way. They would persist long after humanity had exited the stage. Most New Yorkers avoided them, and for good reason.

The two of them sought out the rats. Vasya thought he knew why. Unlike many of the city dwellers who'd been born and bred in the comfort of American life, the two of them had fled the fallout of Chernobyl and the dying Iron Curtain.

Almost like rats themselves. They were survivors.

"Nobody's gonna mess with this, Vasya. I got it locked down," Kolya said, snapping a heavy padlock shut.

"Hmm?" He'd been lost in thought, thinking of the pile of scurrying brown bodies in an alley behind a Chinese restaurant. Right, the dynamite. "Yeah. Nobody but us comes in here. I'm sure it's all good," he replied absently. It was too bad writing papers about rat colonies was about as profitable as selling popcorn, because it was one thing that had grabbed and kept his interest this past year.

"C'mon, Vasya. Let's get some kung pao chicken into you. You're still growing, you know."

They left the warehouse as they'd found it; empty and quiet as a tomb. It would be there when they came back a day or two later. For now, the rats, and their nightly feeding frenzy, awaited.