The Rats That Ran Away

The Rats That Ran Away

By Paul McCann

There were too many heroes in the ghetto and too many busy business people in the fight to stay alive .There was too much love at all left for the kids in Nitty Gritty Lodge who were lived on the edge of sanity .
Nitty Gritty Lodge was originally a large hospital that now was deserted by its owner who left his home and business for a better life in the tropics .
After the Nitty Gritty kids moved in they made contact with the owner and he said they could have the old place if it helped . It was warmer that a cardboard box and safer than under the bridge .
The kids in Nitty Gritty Lodge had come from different areas of the City .
All homeless and hungry they learned to stick together and fight for survival like a rats in the gutter . Every rat pack had a leader and the first leader of this pack had been thrown from the roof of the hospital . The second was very badly burned and the third one still ruled at Nitty Gritty . His name was King Rat and if you never wanted to stay under his code you were pushed back out into the rat race of cardboard city were anarchy ruled . The going was too hard out there so most people stayed under the roof of Nitty Gritty Lodge .
Everything was much the same on the streets of the City .
Business people came and went with their briefcases and business suits .
The daily grind seemed to spit out abuse towards the Nitty Gritty kids .
Rejected from society they begged and stole money ,clothes and food .
Like rats they returned to their hole each night and shared what they had with King Rat . There was talk of trouble again and King Rat suspected a plot to overthrow him . That’s why he put burnt the building to the ground .
As he stood outside on the pavement he watched the flames leap from the building into . All the kids ran away . Some were wrapped only in a blanket .
Some others were naked . Police cars were everywhere and at least three fire engines blocked off the road . It was too late to save the building .
It was gutted . King Rat had spoken and now it was time to pay the cost .

He went looking high and low for all those he considered guilty .
One by one he sniffed them out from cardboard city and their squats .
Word was on the street and everyone knew King Rat meant business .
The guilty pack was found and justice came down .

With his enemies taken care of King Rat went out looking for the rest of the Nitty Gritty kids who had scattered themselves like wild flowers in and around the ghetto . There was no time to loose with the winter on its way .
He had decided to make a new Nitty Gritty Shelter underground in the City Sewer tunnels . A meeting was held and everyone agreed that it could be done .. The only problem were the rats and the stench . King Rat went to it like always fuelled with alcohol and madness .

He sent teams down into the underground with petrol and timber . The sewer rats ran for their life as the fires engulfed the tunnel systems . In a few weeks every rat that had been either burnt or captured . The Nitty Gritty Kids shook the City inside out . They had built themselves a comfortable shelter in a month . Word was out and if you were need of help King Rat would help .
At first there were a hundred kids in the shelter . Within a month when the snow came the number inside the shelter grew to three thousand . It was warm and dry underground . Some of the rats even returned but they never bothered anyone .
Now the Nitty Gritty kids have an army and the shelter has become an underground city where King Rat rules . No one has questioned his reign .

 The people who live in the shelter live a different life . They fight to exist before they have the want to survive . Then these survivors look after those who have no will to live .
Never fear my friend there is always a bed there . If you’re on the streets just ask for King Rat .

By Paul McCann
THE END