Revolt of the Rats - Reed Blitzerman (early readers txt) 📗

THE FIRST TIME IT HAPPENED, Kahle wasn’t alone. He dodged the screaming killdeer with his brother, Noyce. They flew low overhead, their white stomachs invisible, blending into the light blue sky. They banked and prepared for another pass, conspicuous with their brown speckled backs.

“Come on,” Noyce said. He broke ahead, long legs easily carrying him along. Kahle followed, struggling under an oversized sweatshirt. They sheltered beneath an expansive oak, long branches providing cover from their airborne attackers.

Flying patrols circled wide, surveilling them for further movement. A barbed wire fence flecked with rust just beyond it separated their yard from the cornfields. Their border to the savage lands. No going there. They were hemmed in.

“Got here first,” Noyce said. He loved games. Even games that involved running from maddened birds. Though they were fraternal twins, Noyce towered over him. Many times those same legs had carried Noyce between Kahle and the bad boys or run to the house for his forgotten inhaler.

Kahle couldn’t catch his breath to reply, was bent over involuntarily whooping. The air avoided him as if the atmosphere were water. He fished in his pocket for his inhaler and it hung up on the edge of his jeans pocket. He stood in order to free it and swooned.

Too Fast. Mars. He was on Mars where the air was thinner. He was Space Ghost. No, he was Buck Rogers. Another attempt and it came free with a fistful of dander. He jammed it in his mouth, depressed the plunger to erase the ache in his ribs. Spots of light danced, flitting on a breeze that was too cool for a spring day. Before he could think, he was mumbling. “Tinkerbell.”

Noyce came closer and placed his hand on his brother’s back. “What? You okay?”

“I’m okay.” He didn’t feel okay. In his ears, a thread was pulling with each breath as if string connected them to his lungs. He sat heavily on the ground heedless of ants or spiders. His eyes roved the yard behind. Spring winds twisted patterns in the grass, passing through brown shoots with the consistency of a wave, turning in time to an unseen tune.

Sleepy. He felt so sleepy. Something resembling black smoke caught his eye. He closed his eyes and reopened them. The image was still there. He went up like a sleepwalker: his arms, and legs liquid or the flexible cartilage of sharks on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. The pain persisted, but was pushed out by the new thing.

Then the killdeer descended, their moving bodies surrounding him in a halo of feathers. He ignored their pointed beaks and keening cries, his original fear forgotten. Hidden among the stalks of twisted grass was a bird’s nest, the black smoke emanating from the bodies inside.

Their heads lolled to the side, their eyes closed, the lids bruised a mottled grey. The air around them coalesced from black to the washed out shade of dishwater, the tendrils of color leaching away.

“What do we do?” Noyce took several tentative steps backward.

Kahle picked the nest up with shaking hands. “They need help.” With Noyce trailing him, he slid open the screen door and they stepped inside.

Before his mother turned around, Kahle had an irresistible feeling that he knew the answer. He looked into the nest again, and one of the birds was staring at him, its mouth open, its eyes glazed with defeat.

He resisted the desire to drop the nest, run for his bicycle and be away somewhere else. The light in its eyes was retreating, drawing away, headed for a destination he could not anticipate. What he saw around the birds wasn’t smoke.

She turned and her eyes tracked to the nest in Kahle’s hands where they changed from curiosity to concern. She accepted it gravely but nearly dropped it when he asked:

“Am I going to die like the birds?”

Edie Desireau inhaled as if a bucket of cold water had stolen her breath and said the first thing she could think of. “How do you know they’re dying, honey?”

“Their color is washing out,” Kahle said. “Around them. The color is washing out of their air.”

She froze. In her nursing career, there were stories she’d assumed were exaggerations: interns who could read auras, nurses who saw ghosts, hospice patients who talked to the dead. Now the possibilities confronted her out of the mouth of her own child; a river of black water coursing toward her, threatening to overflow its banks. For a moment fear mastered her. She only nodded, not trusting her voice to speak, and her boys began to cry.

Kahle asked, “What about Noyce, will he die?”

This is unraveling. Noyce’s eyes pleaded as if she had the power to change the outcome. She struggled for the words to reset the conversation, the sort of things adults used with curious children, and found none. “Yes.”

Tears welled up in Kahle’s eyes. He hugged his brother, pulled him close, and their weeping fell faster, their emotions feeding off of each other. By now she had a chance to compose herself. She seated the boys at the kitchen table, set the nest on the glass tabletop.

“Boys, understand. The birds are going to die but we are not birds. You’re both going to live a long time. Okay? You’re going to be fine. Everything’s going to be okay.”

She looked from one to the other, holding their eyes with her pauses and nods. Liar, liar, pants on fire. She did not believe in half-truths but these were five-year-old boys after all, and she’d seen enough dead five-year-olds in the emergency room to dread those mandatory shifts.

“Everything we see is in a process of change. The world will eventually be dust, but the human spirit lingers on. Do you understand?”

At least that's what she'd told her patients. Until now she's never questioned if she truly believed it. Last month it had been an old woman, her skin dry as chalk. Her hands were warm and she smiled until she passed away with a sweetness that seemed knowing. All the walls she had created in order to function, her child skirted as if her barriers were merely a doorway.

Exhaustion overcame her. What she needed was a few hours somewhere packed with living souls. The Duster had a full tank of gas. Glenn was working overtime at the plant, but it would be lunch break soon.

She examined the birds in the nest. They were motionless. Without checking, she knew they were gone. She got her car keys and with a gentleness she reserved for the living, placed the nest on the shelf in the garage. We’ve got today. That’s right.

“Come on boys. Let’s go see your father.”

After dinner, they conducted a back yard ceremony. Glenn gave a passionate speech about how God was in all things, and the birds with nest were interred in the earth, inside a Christmas paper wrapped cigar box.

That night in bed, she stared listlessly out the window and then checked her bedside clock. She heard her son climb out of bed and sneak down the hallway: probably to make sure his brother was still alive. She heard Kahle go back to bed. Then she dropped off to sleep and into a nightmare, drowning beneath a black tide.