Sewer Rats (2 page)

“And please,” she said. “Nothing else, all right? If I have to call you in the office again, there will likely be social workers involved.”

Not good.

I decided not to mention we had another paintball war in the sewer tunnels the next morning.

Five Sewer Rats met after school. We stood outside the Seven-Eleven. There was Lisa, Micky, the Cooper twins, Al and Dave, and me. The Cooper twins are tall, skinny, redheaded and hardly ever speak.

Their mom and dad are both doctors. You'd think this would be good, but their parents are always either working or on vacation, leaving the Cooper twins with
the nanny who has raised them since they were babies.

“It's like this,” Micky said to Lisa. “Maybe we should lay low for a while.”

“We?” she asked, kicking at a chocolate bar wrapper on the pavement.

“The Sewer Rats. Maybe we should hold off on tomorrow's paintball war against the guys at Medford school. If anything happens and Old Bean Pohl brings in social workers...”

“No way,” she said. “Not a chance. We're Sewer Rats. Not sewer chickens.”

Her tone didn't scare Micky like it did me.

“Look,” he said. “Yesterday—”

“What about it?” she snapped. “Some stupid kid fell in a lagoon and had to be rescued by security. It's not our fault.”

I shook my head at the reminder. The guard had pulled Carter from the lagoon. Both of them dripped head to toe with brown, gucky water. Their clothes had slimy lumps all over. The gross part was when the guard had given Carter mouth-to-mouth.

“Not our fault?” Micky said. “Who started with the air horn?”

“Part of the test,” she said. “He failed. That's no reason for us to chicken out of the tunnel fight tomorrow.”

“But what I'm trying to say,” Micky said, “is that everyone in the school—the teachers, Mrs. Pohl—knows why Carter was in the lagoon.”

“That just makes us cool,” Lisa said. “Now they know if you want to be a Sewer Rat, you pay the price. Besides, everyone thinks it was funny. I bet even Old Bean Pohl giggled when she saw the video.”

Micky started to say something, then shut his mouth as a man in a suit walked past us. The man frowned at us. Once the man was inside the store Micky said, “Even if they think it's funny, they—”

“The teachers can't do nothing to us,” Lisa told him, crossing her arms. The paintball wars aren't on school property.

“But—,” Micky tried. It was like trying to stop a hurricane.

“Do you think I care what the teachers
think?” Lisa asked. “They think we band together because no one else likes us. And we're proud to agree with them, aren't we?”

Micky shrugged. When people called us losers, it just made our group stronger.

“It's the Medford gang I care about,” Lisa continued. “The Sewer Rats have never lost a paintball war and we're not going to chicken out now.”

“Hey,” the Cooper twins said together. They pointed down the street.

It was Carter on his mountain bike. Headed toward us. The wind blew his blond hair backward.

“What's he doing?” Lisa asked. “Who told him we were going to meet here?”

“I did,” Micky said.

“He's not a Sewer Rat!” Lisa was angry.

“After what he went through yesterday, he is,” Micky said, crossing his own arms. “You heard him try to take full blame this morning in Old Bean Pohl's office. If he's not in, I'm not in.”

Lisa glared at Micky. Micky calmly stared straight into her eyes.

“Come on,” I said. “You guys are friends. Think of all the times you've helped each other in the tunnels.”

They kept staring at each other.

Carter pulled up, doing a brake slide as he stopped.

“Hey,” he said.

The Cooper twins started to sniff the air.

“Very funny,” Carter said. “The stuff washes out. Really.”

He grinned. “Of course, it took three bottles of shampoo to get clean.”

The Cooper twins laughed and gave him high fives.

“What's with those two?” Carter asked me.

Micky and Lisa were still staring at each other.

“Not much,” I said. “Any second they're going to kiss and make up.”

Finally Lisa uncrossed her arms.

“Are we on for a war with the Medford gang tomorrow?” she asked Micky.

“Sure,” he said after a couple of seconds. “With Carter, our new Sewer Rat?”

“Come on, Lisa,” Dave Cooper said.

“He passed the test,” Al said. “After that, he should be a Sewer Rat.”

Lisa darted a dirty look at Carter. “I guess so.”

Carter smiled at her.

That was the end of our meeting.

It wasn't until that night as I fell asleep that I began to wonder about Carter.

Because of Lisa's air horn, Carter had fallen into the lagoon. Because of Lisa, Carter was in big trouble. Yet he had ridden up to us as if nothing had happened.

Why wasn't Carter mad at Lisa?

On Saturday morning, the Sewer Rats met in the tall trees at the edge of Bell Park. Now there were six of us: me and Lisa and Micky, the Cooper twins, and Carter.

All of us carried duffel bags that held our helmets and our paintball guns. We knew people would never stop us to ask about our duffel bags because they could have been for soccer or baseball. On the other hand, plenty of people would have had
plenty of questions if we walked around with paintball guns over our shoulders.

And what we were doing, of course, was something we didn't want to be asked about.

Running through the middle of Bell Park was a drainage ditch that led to the river. At the bottom of the big hill that looked down on Bell Park, a big tunnel emptied into this drainage ditch. The tunnel was connected to the entire drainage system below the streets.

It was a big system, a whole maze of tunnels.

The main purpose of the tunnels is to collect water. When it rains, water drains into street gutters. The small streams in the gutters reach grates and drop into the tunnels below the streets.

A one-hour rainstorm might not sound like much, but after a few minutes thousands and thousands of little streams empty into the tunnels.

It adds up. Fast. In fact, after a couple hours of rain, the main tunnel that drains
into Bell Park is a solid pipeline of fast-moving water as high as a person's waist.

That's why we never have paintball wars when it looks like it might rain. We don't want to take the chance of getting caught in a flood in the tunnels.

Saturday, though, looked like a great day. The wind was blowing, but there were no clouds. And it didn't matter that the wind was cold. In the tunnels, you only hear the wind when it blows through the grates above.

“Guys,” Micky said as we began to walk along a path to take us toward the middle of the park. “Last night, me and Lisa figured on the mousetrap plan. We've heard these Medford guys think they are real commandos. So it only makes sense that we play the waiting game.”

He flashed us the big Micky grin. “If they're half as cocky as we've heard, they'll come looking for us. And we can let them walk right into our sights.”

“Makes sense,” I said. The way it worked in our paintball wars was simple. Each team
had a flag. Each team planted it in one spot. The team who reached and took the other team's flag was the winner. “Are we going to use that spot by the underground phone lines?”

“You got it,” Micky said. “Sooner or later they have to pass through that area. Me and Lisa mapped out everyone's ambush spot.”

Usually, we left the Cooper twins to guard our flag while the rest of us went looking for the other team's flag. With the mousetrap plan, though, we played it different. Even if it took hours without moving, all of us would wait in our hiding spots and gun down the other team's soldiers as they moved in on our flag. Not until most of them had been shot would we go hunting for the other team's flag.

“Remember, it's dark,” Micky said. “Don't make any guesses. If you see someone coming and they don't give the password, gun them down.”

During our paintball wars, everyone wore helmets with visors for protection
from paint bullets. In the dark tunnels, it was hard to tell if a person was an enemy or a friend.

“Today's password?” Al Cooper asked.

“Stinkpot,” Micky said.

“Stinkpot?” both twins asked.

Micky grinned. “In honor of Carter's fall into the sewage lagoon.”

The twins grinned back. Carter grinned too. Lisa didn't.

Micky tried to get her to grin. “And Lisa, make sure you don't get lost.”

We always teased Lisa about the fact that she wasn't good with directions. Actually, I thought Lisa was brave to go into the tunnels even though she might get lost. The only reason I could face going in the tunnels was that I always knew exactly where I was.

Lisa stuck her tongue out at Micky and that seemed to make things better among us.

We walked in silence for the last five minutes. We reached the drainage ditch. There were trees on both sides. It was dry.
We walked along the bottom of the drainage ditch toward the big hill.

We had to step over things that got left behind when the floodwater dropped. There were dolls without heads, old shoes and plastic pop bottles. There was plenty of garbage. All of it had washed from the streets and floated out through the tunnels.

At the tunnel entrance there was a door made of iron bars welded together in squares of about two feet. Dried grass and weeds were wrapped around the bars on the bottom half of the door. They got stuck on the bars as the water flowed through.

The door was attached to the top of the tunnel on large hinges. It was supposed to be locked, but the lock was old and had been loose for as long as we could remember. To get into the tunnel, all you had to do was jiggle the lock until it popped. Then you just lifted the door and slipped inside.

Micky moved to the door. He slapped the lock a few times until it opened. He tested the door by pulling it back. It creaked on rusty hinges.

“Where are they?” Lisa demanded. “You don't think they chickened out, do you?”

Before any of us could answer, there was movement in the bushes above us.

“Chicken? I don't think so,” a voice called out.

The Medford school warriors stepped into sight. They had flashlights attached to their belts, their paintball guns ready and their helmets hanging from their hands.

Six of them. Big kids. None of them smiled as they looked down on us.

It didn't bother me that the Medford warriors were big. Tunnel war was the only place I wasn't scared of big kids. Size worked against them. Skinny, small and fast was much better. And, like I always said, a paintball bullet brought big guys down the same way it brought down anyone else.

“Hey,” Micky said. “Come on.”

They waited until the guy in front nodded. He had a crew cut and the beginning of a
mustache. He looked like the kind of guy who had an army recruiting poster in his bedroom.

Mr. Army marched the rest of the kids toward us. They followed him in single file. When Mr. Army stopped, they stopped. They stayed straight and unmoving with their feet close together and arms at their sides. “At ease, men,” he said.

All at the same time, they relaxed and moved their feet shoulder-width apart.

At ease? What kind of freaks were these guys?

Micky stepped over and shook Mr. Army's hand.

Micky always surprised me when he did things like that. Around adults, Micky had attitude. With anyone our age, though, you'd think he was running for student council.

“You know the rules,” Micky said.

“Let's go over them again so everyone here knows,” Mr. Army said. It sounded like he was clipping his words off with scissors.

“Jim,” Micky said to me. “The trophy.”

I opened my duffel bag. Beside my paintball gun was our small flag. It was attached to a short wooden pole. I lifted it out and waved it.

“Our flag,” Micky said. “If you capture it, it's yours. It will make you kings of the tunnel. No other school has taken our flag since we began the game last year.”

Mr. Army spun and pointed to one of his guys. The guy saluted. I mean, actually saluted. Then he reached inside his jacket and took out their team flag.

“Good,” Micky said. “We both put our flags somewhere in sight. The war is over when one team takes the other's flag and makes it back here. If we take your flag, we add it to our collection. You can try to get it back next time. But there's a lineup to take us on. Might be a couple months of Saturdays before you get a chance.”

“Whatever,” Mr. Army said. “I'm not worried. Our guys are tough.”

I wondered if they were tunnel tough. It's a different world in there, with the smallest sound echoing in every direction.

“No paint bullets above the shoulders, right?” Mr. Army asked. It was their army against ours. As we tried to take their flag, we would also be trying to put their soldiers out of the game.

“Right,” Micky said. “Someone shoots you high, they're out, you're still in.”

We were crazy but we weren't stupid. Paintball bullets hurt badly enough anywhere else on your body. The last place you want to get hit is in the throat.

“Arms and legs are half hits?” Mr. Army asked.

“Yup,” Micky told him. “It takes two shots in the arms or legs to put you out. But a shot to the stomach, chest or back is an instant kill. Dead soldiers come out here and wait for the game to end.”

“We got it,” the Medford guy said. “What else?”

Micky looked at his watch. “You guys are the challengers, so you get to set up first. We give you thirty minutes to hide your flag before we go into the tunnels. Then you wait where you are and give us twenty minutes. If
you head in now the war will start at eleven o'clock. After that, anyone moving in the tunnels is fair game.”