A Tale of the Old Rats
"You what?" Black Rat asked.
"Knocked him right out. WHUMP! Just like that. And I got these." Gold proudly handed the three documents to Black. Black looked at them with disbelief, and opened them up, spreading them out on the snowy ground. He tamped down the corners with snow.
"These are for the biggest concentration camp here!" he exclaimed. "The one run by General Shzavich."
The other rats [sic] looked at each other and shook their heads. They al knew that General Shzavich was Black's worst enemy, even worse than Dobermann. Black had nearly driven himself crazy trying to protect the Trench Rats from him, but Shzavich wouldn't give up. During their first raid of his camp before Black was injured, Black had shot out his eye. General Shzavich swore revenge, saying if he couldn't kill Black, he would kill the one closest to Black. [Note--General Shzavich, who is still present in the current version, has since had his incomprehensible name respelled as Schavich (but which still doesn't sound quite German enough, seeming more Russian to me). Note that the characters pronounce it Zha-vich, rather than the more sensible Ska-vich. Don't ask me. Interesting tidbit, Black is still responsible for Schavich's missing eye in the newest version of the story (see Part 11).]
"It's a good thing you got these, Gold," Black said, staring at the foreign words. "These will make it a lot easier." He rolled them up again.
Gold went inside. Red and several others followed, like the rats following the Pied Piper. After straggling through the door, they walked off their own ways.
Gold moseyed along, kicking occasionally at the ground. Then it came. Clang, clang. From inside the wall. Clink! Clang. Clang.
Leaning to the side and pressing his ear against the stone, he listened. "Hello?"
"Hello out there!" a cheerful voice replied.
Gold pulled away.
"Is that you, Doomsday?"
A stone hatch sprung open about three feet ahead of him and a rat crawled out. Dusting off his army clothes, he said, "Please, call me D-Day."
"Okay," Gold said. He stood to the side while D-Day, a dusty grayish-brown in color, continued his rubbing and preening so he would look decent. He was the rats' [sic] chief engineer, able to fix just about anything. He was always doing odd little jobs around the trenches but he was hardly ever seen. He had the brightest red eyes anyone had ever seen and was much smaller than most of the rats [sic]. Right now the top of his head came to Gold's forehead. The Trench Rats thought of him as a hybrid mouse-rat, probably an albino mouse mother and a brown rat father. He said that he'd used to live in a lab (that's why he knew so much), and that his mother was probably a lab animal and his father, wild. He was with the rats [sic] even before Black joined, and he loved to tell stories of the old Trench Rats. Gold mentally flashed back to when D-Day told them the story about the fate of the original rats [sic].
"It was years ago, lots of years ago," D-Day had said. "Real long ago. So long ago, in fact--"
"Oh, get on with it!" Red had pleaded.
"Anyways (D-Day had continued), these rats [sic], most of them, that is, didn't have real code names. Only a few, like Brown, Burgundy, Purple, and Blue. The other rats [sic] just wore camouflage. We didn't know Dobey exactly then. They were a scruffy bunch. There weren't as many as you. Only about half. Well, these rats [sic] were marchin' along one of the outside trenches--y'know, the ones filled with water and bugs--they were marchin' along, splish splash, splish splash, when they all smelled this terrible smell. Real sweet and awful. Some of 'em dropped dead right there. Lucky me, I had a gas mask and I ran to tell somebody. Some other rats [sic] scrambled out, their splashing sounding like eggs fryin' in a fryin' pan. Get it, scrambled? Eggs? Never mind. I ran into our trenches, but they were deserted. I ran back. There were dead rats [sic] everywhere. In our trenches, in the outer trenches, on the ground. I grabbed some other masks and managed to save a handful of 'em, but most were gone. When Black joined the First Battalion, he must've been surprised to see it had only about twenty rats [sic] or something. Then a bunch began enlisting or getting drafted. Now there's hundreds of us. And that's what happened to the Trench Rats!" D-Day had slapped his legs and grinned. [Note--D-Day's accent and mannerisms when speaking are inexplicable. He does NOT have an accent in the current story.] Gold's thoughts faded, and he saw that D-Day was tying his bootlaces. He was one of the few rats [sic] (or whatever he was) that wore a complete suit. Another was Mam Rat, somewhat like a nursemaid to the refugees' children. [Note--the rather racist-seeming character "Mam Rat" no longer exists.] Most other rats [sic] just wore capes and German-style helmets like the ones from World War I, with the little spikes on top.
"Well, I'll see ya later," Gold sighed, and he continued on his way.
"Maybe," D-Day replied, climbing back into the hole.
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