The Bialy Pimps (58 page)

His paralysis broke and suddenly things were crisp and present again. The bomber was harmless. The partygoers were draped in moving felt. And there were many, many rats.

(That’s RATS. Not The Rat.)

He reached under the counter and slapped a button. The Plexiglas partition began to descend from the ceiling with a dull whirring sound.

Outside, on the other side of the counter, the rats were absolutely everywhere. They were even in the ceiling, presumably having climbed up through the air ducts. They were dropping on people’s heads like vipers, jumping with surprising agility from the tops of the candy machines. Near the other end of the counter, they were atop the tables.

The sneeze shield was halfway down.

Three rats had leapt from the tables and were scouting the top of the counter, looking at the employees with their beady red eyes. Nick and Dungeonmaster Eric thought fast, each grabbing a yellow Nerf bat from the Ghost Employee pile and beginning to swing, ringing rats up and sending them streaking into the back wall.
 

The shield was nearly closed, but now they were coming faster.

Rich and Tracy grabbed bottles of the Purple Stuff and began spraying the rats as they mounted the countertop. The East German cleanser turned out to be a deliriously effective rat killer. Each rat that took a blast of the stuff canted onto its side, stone dead, and rolled down into the make table or off into the dining room. A few simply died on the spot without rolling, so Beckie picked up a spatula and began to push them off. Whenever she could, she stunned live newcomers with the spatula’s flat edge.

When the Plexiglas seated home on the counter with a dull thud, the screams and activity in the dining room suddenly became muted. Without the sounds of screaming and the banging of furniture to accent the visual, the whole scene became distant, as if it were something on TV. Which, Philip realized as he noticed the lights still lit atop the cameras, it actually was.

Once they were safe behind the shield, the employees could appreciate the details of the battle raging in the front room. Dicky was still writhing on the ground, and a dune of rats had piled on top of him. Some of the partygoers looked like they’d heard the new year’s clarion call to party and were dancing up a storm, slamming into the walls and each other with rats in their hair like stylish accents. A number of the rats, content that the battle was won, had taken leave of the fighting and were gnawing hors d’oeuvres which the partygoers had abandoned. Mike noticed with a fair degree of amusement that many of the rats appeared to be urinating on people.

An amazing, disturbing thought ran through Jenny’s mind as she watched:
Oh my God. They’re knee-deep.

And they were, though the flow of new rats from the doorway had finally dwindled to a trickle. They drifted in the corners to waist-level and thinned out to just a few rats high in the middle.
 

Dungeonmaster Eric ran out from the back room.
 

“I just tried the door, and of course it’s locked,” he said. “Is there any way to break the code?”

“You can try all of the combinations,” Rich suggested.

The Anarchist pressed his face against the Plexiglas, inviting vain attacks from leaping rats on the other side. He looked at Dicky – or, more correctly, the screaming, thrashing dune of hair that used to be Dicky. “Or,” he said, “you could ask that guy.”

“Exactly,” said Eric, indicating the front door panel where Dicky had entered the new code. “
He
changed it. So
we
should be able to change it back.”

“The system was authorized when he did it,” said Philip. “It’s not now.”

“Our alarm could be reset by anyone at any time when it was authorized?” said Eric.
 

“It also locks us in with fires,” said Philip. “I turned down the module that punches your mom in the face when there’s a burglary, though.”
 

The Anarchist had been at the phone. He set the one he’d been holding back on the hook and gave Philip a sign. “I’d like to announce that the phone has re-earned the name ‘Ghetto Phone.’ I don’t suppose anyone has a cell?”
 

“Angela does,” said Beckie.
 

Rich yelled through the sneeze shield at the blob that seemed most likely to be Angela. Angela-thing did not respond. “Bitch,” he said.

Slate was still watching the scene in the lobby. “Just
look
at what’s going on out there,” he said.

“Wow,” said Smooth B., who was looking at a magazine that Darcy had left on the back counter. “Celebrities really are just like us.”
 

Tracy held a hand in the air. “I just want to make sure I understand the situation,” he said. “The doors are locked. We don’t have the code. Our phones are out. So basically, what you’re saying is that we’re safe, but we’re trapped?”

The Anarchist looked up at the ceiling tiles. Some of them were beginning to bulge with rat-weight. “Well, trapped, anyway.”

“Okay,” said Darcy, “I give up. Who wants head before we all die?”

Several hands shot up.

Jenny turned to Smooth B. “I’m sorry I made fun of you for getting those gay whipped mochas,” she told him, keeping one eye on the firestorm of rats outside.

“Fucking right you’re sorry,” said Smooth B.

Rich was twiddling his thumbs. Beckie was petting Swannie and cradling the sloth like a baby. Mike was saying how he wished he’d banged the hot little Diet Coke girl while he had the chance, and in the best-case scenario, before she had gone anorexic.

The Anarchist ran over to Slate. He admitted that Slate was clearly the better Scrabble player, and added that he had cheated in the past and had refused to honor legitimate defeats. He begged forgiveness.

“There there,” Slate cooed to the slicer.

The ceiling tiles were cracking. Rat paws reached through.
 

Mike looked up, then sighed and said, “Well, if this is the end, I’m going to finally fill the steamers with piss.” He grabbed a funnel.

But then the Anarchist startled everyone into silence.

“Oh, come on!” he yelled. “Have you forgotten what this place is all about?”

“Farting?” said Rich. Then he farted for emphasis, a small squeaker.

“Ghetto!” shouted the Anarchist. “Come on, this place is ghetto as hell! Have you all forgotten the Ghetto Phone? The Ghetto Toaster with the broken switch? The steamers that spray the sandwiches with water? The rickety tables, and the booths with the springs sticking out of them?”

Beckie shrugged. “What are you getting at?”

“Do you all really think that this place is so tight that we’re actually
unable
to leave? Have you all forgotten the time we found that Chinese family living in the basement? Have you forgotten how the safe wouldn’t lock for a while, and that Danny kid kept stealing fifties? Hell, this place couldn’t lock out Pissy Pete. Do any of you really doubt that you could get in here with a coat hanger if you wanted to?”

“This place sucks!” Philip shouted, suddenly inspired.

“And that alarm. How ghetto is that piece-of-shit security system Philip bought? Do any of you think that you couldn’t outsmart our alarm?”

“Our alarm
sucks!”
Philip hooted.

“I’ll bet we can just... turn it off!”

Smooth was skeptical. “I don’t know, man. Kind of defeats the point of having a code if you can just turn it off, you know?”

“Yes, but this is
Bingham’s!
This place
sucks ass!”

Smooth shrugged. He even put down his magazine. “Give it a shot, man.”

The entire crew ran to the back. Behind them, rats were beginning to break through the ceiling. For the time being, Rich was keeping them at bay with a carbon dioxide tank he’d rolled out, laid flat, and kept nudging toward them. They seemed wary, as if they remembered the thing from somewhere.

Near the back door, the plywood that had fallen over the stairwell was rattling ferociously. Most of the rats had poured up into the lobby from the front staircase, but some had gotten curious and run back down to try this way up. As the crew approached the back door, the rats were trying to climb around and over it with no real success. But they had begun to lift its leading edge, and snouts and eyes were visible below it.

Nick stomped on the plywood and there was a chorus of squealing, but it began to rise again almost immediately.
 

At the door, Philip was gaping at the open alarm panel.

He said: “You have
got
to be kidding me.”

“That is the most ghetto thing I have ever seen,” said the Anarchist.
 

“You have fucking
got
to be kidding me,” said Philip. “I can’t believe it.”

“Believe it, baby! We just found the one thing in the world more ghetto than the Ghetto Phone!”

Philip had opened the alarm casing, which was forbidden. The technician who had installed the system had told him
never
to open the casing, because he might disturb the delicate circuitry.
 

Does it have a battery backup?
Philip had asked the technician.
 

Yes
, the technician had replied.
 

Could somebody bust it open and just unplug it, negating the whole system?
Philip had asked.
 

No way,
the technician had told him.
This here’s Fort Knox.

“Fort Knox my ass,” Philip muttered.

Rich looked over his shoulder. “Who knocks your ass?”

Behind the panel were two wire junctions and a toggle switch. The toggle switch’s function was not ambiguous. It was currently flipped to ON.

“I don’t believe those bastards,” Philip huffed. “Lying, conniving sons-of-a-...”

The Anarchist couldn’t stop grinning. He slapped Philip on the shoulder. “Own it, brother! This is Bingham’s, the motherfucking
home
of ghetto! You thought you’d seen it all with the Ghetto Phone, but the Ghetto Alarm just saved our lives!”

Rich yelled that he couldn’t hold the rats off for much longer. Nick yelled that he couldn’t either.

The Anarchist threw his hands in the air like a runner crossing the finish line. “This place
blows!”
he yelled.

Then, as the situation was reaching a head, Philip turned off the alarm, unlocking all of the doors, and walked outside.

By the time the crew reached High Street, the front door (which thankfully opened outward) had been nearly torn off of its hinges in the rushed egress. The hydraulic closer had broken off and lay on the ground, shattered. The door, unsecured, hung open and flapping as the last of the night’s guests ran past it.
 

Screams filled the air as the rat-laden gala-goers sprinted north, south, and directly west, through the midnight traffic. A stream of rats followed them for a few yards and then stopped. The scene was distinctly that of shopkeepers chasing troublemakers just far enough with their shotguns to show them who was boss.
 

They didn’t want the humans. They only wanted Bingham’s.
 

And with that thought, Philip realized that rats and the crew were more alike than their frequently lethal encounters had heretofore suggested. Both considered Bingham’s to be theirs and wanted the intruders to get the hell off of their turf. The only real difference was that the rats had accomplished in minutes what the crew had been unable to do in months.

The rats clung to the fleeing glitterati for a block or two and then, once they were certain that the humans wouldn’t turn around, dropped off and walked back to Bingham’s. Philip watched the rodents with new respect. They were almost chit-chatting in their ratlike way, almost high-fiving each other in jubilation as they walked back to the deli victorious. Inside the deli, however, nothing was “almost.” Everything was definite and full-on. The thousands of rats danced on the tabletops, leaped from chair to chair, befouled and desecrated the entire lobby. Philip found that he didn’t care. The decorators had given the place such a high gloss over the past few days that very little of the original Bingham’s was still in there anymore, anyway.

Appropriately enough, the House of Pain album was still blasting from the stereo.
 

As Philip watched the rodents returning from battle, a particularly large rat walked through the front door and took up station on the sidewalk. It looked down the street, watching the last of the humans vanish into the first night of the year. It greeted the returning warriors, touching whiskers with them and seeming to welcome them back.
 

Then the big rat turned and looked at the crew.
 

“That’s him,” Beckie whispered.
 

The Rat watched the group of humans for a few seconds, neither afraid nor with malice. His red eyes were like fireflies under the streetlights,. One by one, those small red eyes met each of their own.
 

The Rat seemed to nod to the crew, then followed the others inside
 

A short while later, the lobby began to empty as the rats walked back down into the basement – to retrieve their furniture for the move upstairs, no doubt. Officer Greene’s semiconscious form appeared as the brown tide retreated. He raised his head, looked around, and then crawled out on his hands and knees, seemingly unhurt but completely befuddled.
 

Philip felt a tap on his shoulder. It was the police sergeant. At the sergeant’s side was Jenkins, the other policeman. Bricker stood beside Jenkins.

“You folks okay?” said the sergeant.

Philip and the others murmured that they were fine.
 

“Where’s that kid? And where’s the guy with... I assume he had a bomb?”

The Anarchist filled the officers in on the full story. They had seen it all through the windows, but hadn’t been able to hear. He told them about the madman with the supposed bomb, then the absence of an explosion. He told them about the rats, and what the crew had done to escape them.