Witch and Wizard - James Patterson [52]
I was safe for the moment. There was at least eight feet of space between me and them, and unless they were really good with cheerleader-squad pyramids, they wouldn’t be able to get anywhere near me.
I looked up into the shaft and spied a ridge, a seam in the metal where two sections had been welded together. It wasn’t much, but it might be enough to grip. And if there was another seam above that, and another above that…
I jumped desperately upward, my good foreleg out-stretched, and missed.
And that was too bad, because the clasps on the screen really weren’t ready for me to fall on them again, and they promptly gave way.
No, no, no!
The screen swung open and I fell backward, helplessly airborne once again, plunging toward the trash and the nightmare scrum of rats.
Chapter 84
Wisty
I THINK WE ALL CAN recognize that rats are not the cutest animals in the world. But until you’re one-tenth their size, you don’t really have a good sense of just how unsavory they are. To be as up close to them as I was right then… well, personally I’d rather face a tiger or a grizzly bear.
At least tigers and bears don’t nest in trash heaps. These prison rodents smelled as if they’d give you an incurable disease just by brushing against you, to say nothing of what would happen if they sank their bone-splintering teeth into you.
They quickly circled around me as I landed on the heap and gasped for breath in the suffocating stink. There was no spark of mercy in their lightless eyes. And judging by the drool coming out of their crooked mouths, I was clearly way more appetizing than whatever moldy items they’d been finding in this revolting pile of rancid kitchen grease, soup bones, shredded uniforms, soaked mattress stuffing, rat droppings, and unidentifiable brown-and-black sludge.
Not wasting a moment to think about spells—or germs—I leaped at the largest gap in their circling pack and sprinted as fast as my aching body, and the slippery, treacherous sludge pile, would allow.
It was no use. Even beyond the first ring of rats, more were swarming. In a moment they had seized each of my legs and had pinned me down in the slimy pile.
A lean, fanged creature the size of a small wildcat loomed over me, snuffling my fur and drooling like I was a fresh-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookie… a treat for the Rat King.
I clenched my eyes shut and, well, screamed my fool head off.
And wouldn’t you know it—right then, without any warning, I was sprouting like a charmed beanstalk in a fairy tale.
I’d become my full-size human self again!
Good news: the mouse spell must have worn off at just the right moment! And my human self wasn’t all busted and broken. Bad news: maybe the last shred of magic I possessed had just evaporated. Good news: Who freaking cares? I just escaped death by dismemberment. And digestion.
And then more bad news: my transformation back into human form had not been accompanied by a new wardrobe. There I was, lying in garbage, rats all over me, not a shred of clothing between me and them. I was stark naked.
A big pink rat chew toy.
But I’d suddenly become the largest creature in the trash, and the rats were pretty freaked out. They scurried up and over the top of the container.
I, in the meantime, quickly picked through the disgusting pile for an abandoned prisoner uniform to wear, and noticed the lettering on the back of each shirt:
NEW ORDER REFORMATORY
NO. 426
I finally found a uniform that fit and that wasn’t entirely soaked through with sludge. I numbly put it on, nearly oblivious to its smell and sickening dampness.
There was a set of steel rungs at the front wall of the container, and—having never wanted anything more dearly than to be away from this rat-infested garbage pile—I climbed them faster than a bionic squirrel… and vowed to never make another rodent-based metaphor ever again.
Next I lowered myself out of the container to the floor and squinted around in the dimly lit indoor