Pasta Heroes (3) - A short novel about noodles, rats and courage

Mutated rats with a taste for gourmet food escape from a laboratory in New York. While fast food chains remain untouched by the rats, restaurants like Pasta Heaven are getting overrun. Time for it's owner, Vincent, and his employees to grab a gun and go to war.

Part 3

Vincent opened the door just a little bit and quickly squeezed himself through. He was now in the room that they called the storage room, though it was rather one big pile of odds and ends. No one but Lenny knew how to find anything in here. At least there was a free passage from the door to the stairs leading to the apartments and up to the roof.
"Why do you have a slingshot?" was Vincent's first question when he arrived on the roof.
"For stuff like that," Lenny said.
"You have a slingshot to shoot rats?"
Lenny did a lot of strange things, for example he always went to the movies and sat with the back to the screen to watch people's faces, and he often slept here on the roof and always called NBC News the next morning when it had rained contrary to the forecast. But he was too goodhearted to torture animals.
"Not for normal rats," said Lenny and took a small stone out of a bucket next to him. “But I always thought what if something like that happens in a science lab and then they come and attack." He placed the stone with two fingers on the small piece of leather that was in the middle of the rubber band, pulled it back and released it. The stone flew through the air with a swooshing sound.
"So you always had a slingshot in your apartment in case of an invasion of mutant rats?"
"Yeah," said Lenny and looked at Vincent as if that was as normal as washing your clothes once in a while.
"I assume you're also prepared for a zombie attack?"
"Not real zombies of course, but I got a shotgun buried in my parents garden, they live on Long Island. Just in case something happens, and you know I'm not really allowed to possess a gun."
"Yeah." Vincent didn't know exactly why Lenny had a record since he refused to talk about it, he just kept saying that it had been a crime of passion, which in Lenny's case could mean a lot of things.
"I can get the shotgun tomorrow if you want, this thing here with the rats might get worse. They said on the TV that if they start breeding this could become a really big disaster, everywhere in the world."
"Sounds pretty bad, but at least one of us is prepared."
Vincent couldn't believe that a guy who constantly forgot to pay his bills and just last month had spent two days looking for his car, which had been parked just a few blocks away, was prepared for an invasion of mutant rats. But maybe those things fit perfectly together.
"Those bastards can come," Lenny said and sent another stone down in the alley. Something squeaked, followed by a "whooohooo" from Michael.
"Holy crap, you hit a rat," said Vincent.
"Sometimes I practice. I just choose a target, like the drain pipe or the right corner of the container, and keep shooting until I hit it."
"That's good, that's really good. Any chance you have other things to shoot with?" Vincent didn't want to say it, but he was dreading having to go down there and club rats with a bat and have the blood splash in his face. He would very much prefer a ranged weapon.
"No, I'm sorry, but as I said, I can get the shotgun. Should I do that now?"
"No, I think it's best to leave the shotgun buried."
"You can use the slingshot and I can go down. Michael can't attack them, he has to stay close to the window."
"I'm going to do that," said Vincent and tried not to think too much about what he had to do, "you are quite the shooter with your slingshot, and this is my restaurant so I should be the one doing the dirty work."
"Okay then, good luck. Just imagine the rats are rabbits for the risotto."
"We don't have any rabbit meat on the menu, the risotto is with beef."
"Ah right. In that case just imagine it is ground meat."
"I'll try that," said Vincent but knew exactly when he was walking down the stairs that this wasn't going to work. The ground meat they used in the kitchen didn't have eyes and didn't make any squeaking sounds when you pounded on it. That thought reminded him that ground meat didn't grow on trees either and cows did have eyes and probably made a lot worse sounds when you hurt them. Vincent usually tried to ease his conscience by having a lot of vegetarian dishes on the menu and only buy meat from animals who had, unlike most, seen the sun. Maybe he should work on new vegetarian recipes he, thought, maybe a zucchini lasagna. But then he was already downstairs and could no longer suppress what he had to do now. He looked around the storage room and found a board that was almost as long as he was, offering less precision but a bit of a distance. He opened the door and nodded to Michael.
"You or me?" asked Michael.
"I'm gonna do it," Vincent said and started walking towards the rats which immediately started running. A huge weight fell of his chest, but then he realized that they were running around him and trying to get past Michael who raised the oven peel. It clanked and blood splashed. Vincent chased the rats and managed to hit one with his board, which snapped into two pieces. The rats apparently changed their mind and split into various directions, but Vincent saw one that climbed up the wall and through the broken window.
"I'll make them keep running!" shouted Lenny from the roof and disappeared to the other side.
"Keep guarding the window, I'll try to find the rat that went inside," said Vincent and opened the door to the storage room. He immediately realized that if the rat was hiding in here, he would never find it. But if those rats were after cooked food like they had said on the radio, the rat would have gone into the kitchen. The storage room was were they kept the trash before bringing it out, and the smell hat attached itself to the walls like cigarette smoke to curtains.