Dead Rat Walking

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Cyrus Grant tumbled blindly through the storm sewer, fighting for his life. Somewhere beneath the streets of Chicago, his animal form agitated round and round like a balled-up sock in a washing machine.

He couldn't see anything. Not since he had shifted into a rat. The pitch blackness of the storm drain combined with a rat’s legally blind vision made sure of that. The drain was too small for him to shift back into human form. If he did, he’d block the flow of water, break his back, and drown. Hell of a way to go. So he had to ride this death river, and he was certain it would be the last thing he ever did.

He broke the surface of the cold, foamy water violently and oxygen rushed into his lungs.

Liquid sewage effervesced around him. His body twisted as the current yanked him under. His whiskers rubbed against something that sent a constellation of smells to his brain that he knew without knowing. A messy soup of garbage: a condom—old, sagging, and reeking of latex—a hand sanitizer bottle with traces of aloe gel, a disintegrating banana peel, shards of glass, an empty pack of cigarettes, and the soggy remnants of a Chicago deep-dish pizza crust.

And, of course, human s**t. A whole crescendo of it underscoring the darkened landscape. Creamy, wet, stinking s**t. It was more than he wanted to smell and taste right now, but his rat brain never stopped discerning scents, even on the verge of death.

He flipped wildly around, gasping. His tail, as if it had a mind of its own, sliced through the sludge like a rudder, always righting him just before the current dragged him under again. But even his tail was losing strength now. He slammed against the wall. His high-pitched squeaks were lost in the chaos.

Nothing could survive down here. Not even a rat.

He was fighting to live because he had crossed the members of his mischief and they’d attacked him. He fled into the sewers, and now here he was, ready to die any minute.

An alcove in the wall spilled a column of filth onto him. The intense cold knocked the wind out of him. The jet of water buoyed him up and then pushed him down, down, down into even deeper darkness than he thought was possible.

Just as his head broke the surface again, the water’s deafening roar relented.

Though he couldn’t see it, his whiskers swept back-and-forth across the water, confirming that something was ahead. Whatever it was, it smelled different…like air.

Fresh air.

With newfound energy, he pedaled like he'd never pedaled before. The current jerked him under one final time before he rocketed out of the water, into the night, into the stars.

Time must've slowed down. With his terrible eyesight, he gazed at the blurry face of a crescent moon ringed with storm clouds. Even in low definition, the sky was so beautiful, in a tragic sort of way, as if it were the last thing he might ever see.

Then time snapped back to normal and Cyrus crashed into the frigid Chicago River.

The river carried him solemnly, and he regarded the night sky, regaining his breath.

The roaring sewer current faded into a melody of cricket song, cars zipping over a nearby bridge, and the rumblings of a storm dancing somewhere over the suburbs.

The sky. The air. Instinct took over as his whiskers swept the water again, steering him toward a hazy gray line that blunted the side of the river. A shore.

If there was anything Cyrus learned since he had become a shifter, it was that shifting hurt. Bad. As his claws dug into sand and rock, his bones popped like old suction cups. His spine lengthened. He screamed as his rat hair burned away into wet, stinking skin. His incisors shrank into his jaws as if tiny humans inside his skull were reeling them in with pulleys.

The face of the moon, originally blurry, sharpened into high definition and full color, surrounded by stars. His eyes shook in their sockets. As he grew, the rocks scratched his knees, and his tail slapped sediment on his chest as it receded into nothingness.

Gasping, he lay on the rocks, his clothes covered in thick, disgusting excrement. He stared up at a graffiti-strewn, twinkling bridge that divided the navy sky into diagonal halves.

Just yesterday, he had been sleeping on his sister’s couch, homeless and looking for a new job. Now he was a rat, running for his life on the shores of the Chicago River.

He was supposed to be playing video games or going on a date or sitting on a rooftop brooding over his ex-girlfriend instead of this. Anything but this.

Everything came rushing back to him. He had crossed his mischief, gotten into a rat fight with Zane, the self-proclaimed alpha, and Zane pushed him into the current as punishment.

If Zane found out he was alive, he’d come hunting for Cyrus to finish what he’d started.

Even though every bone in Cyrus’s body ached, he had to keep moving. He couldn’t stay here.

He pulled himself into a shamble toward a grassy clearing knotted with streetlights. Beyond that, a cluster of brick apartment buildings loomed beyond the trees. He had no idea where he was, but he couldn’t have been far from downtown.

It was going to be a long night. He’d have to shift back into a rat at some point. If he didn’t get hunted by his old friends, run over by a car, or attacked by a pack of wild rats, maybe he’d have a chance at staying alive.

His thoughts swam as he fell into the grass on his knees. Then he got a whiff of himself and vomited. The stench was unspeakable; normal to a rat but stomach-churning in his human form.

He had been turned into a rat. A f*****g rat.

There was only one man who held the answers to his transformation and the possible cure. And with the mischief hunting him now, he wasn’t long for this world…

He had to find Dr. Thurston.