With five years in the making, Manrattan, the sequel to my homage to New York’s least finest, Rattus New Yorkus, will be hitting the streets and sewers on July 11th! This time, the rat problem is bigger, badder and deadlier than ever.

Exterminator duo Chris and Benita Jackson are sucked into the madness once again as the underground denizens of the big city are transformed by generations of Degenesis and something new (and more hideous) into your worst nightmare. New York is the city that never sleeps – because the streets will run red with blood, filled with the cries of chaos.

Here’s a little sneak peek at chapter one. There ain’t no lollygagging in this tale of nature gone mad.

Chapter One

            I was attempting to make a grilled cheese sandwich in our new air fryer when the phone started ringing. The whole air fryer experience was about as exciting as watching my toenails grow. I couldn’t even see if the damn thing was working. It just hummed away as the digital timer counted down.

            “You going to answer that?” Benny said from the living room. She was working on her laptop with the television on mute, some daytime court show on in the background.

            I looked over at the kitchen island. My phone was lit up and singing away.

            “I’m at lunch,” I said, both to the phone and Benny.

            “Just pick up the phone,” Benny said irritably. “It’s not like you’re out having tacos and margaritas at Paco’s.”

            Sighing heavily, I swiped the phone off the counter. This whole working from home bullcrap was getting to me. The line between work life and home life had been obliterated and I hated it. I was grateful when we got a chance to get out and traipse into a roach-filled building.

            “BC Pest Control,” I answered, keeping an eye on the air fryer.

            “Hey, Chris, how you been?”

            Wonderful. The last person I wanted to speak to at the moment was Creed. To be fair, I’m not sure what moment I wanted to talk to Creed. When he called, it was always because he needed something from us.

            “What is it now, Creed?”

            “You act like I’m calling to pester you.”

            “Because that’s exactly what you’re doing.”

            “That’s very presumptuous of you.”

            “How long have you been waiting to use that word?”

            Creed had a word a day calendar on his desk and saved the good ones for special occasions.

            “Maybe I just called to see how you and Benny are doing.”

            The air fryer dinged. I pulled the tray out as the fan died down. The bread was barely toasted and the cheese had leaked all over the place. “I’d rather not go through the whole song and dance routine. Just tell me what you need and I’ll tell you to hop in front of the nearest bus. My time is as precious as it is limited. I have a grilled cheese to somehow save.”

            Creed sucked on his teeth and I jerked the phone away from my ear. I just knew he was trying to extract bits of that homemade deer jerky he was always munching on. The last piece he gave me had fur on it. “Well, since you put it so nicely. I got something real weird at this apartment building in Mount Vernon.”

            “We don’t do weird.” Anymore, I neglected to add. Ever since the whole rat nightmare in New York City several years ago, my wife and I had reconciled our relationship but refused to return to the big, rotten apple. We’d experienced a lifetime of weird and had no desire to reacquaint ourselves with it.

            “Look, my partner Vince is out on account of he hurt his back. And this thing, shit, this thing I can’t take on myself.”

            I shoved the grilled cheese back into the air fryer and added five more minutes. At that point, I didn’t expect a delicious lunch anymore. I was just curious to see what would become of it, like a science experiment. The leftover pizza in the fridge was about to be called to the plate.

            “What are we talking about here?” I asked.

            “It’s a rat.”

            “Creed, you know we don’t do rats.” Anymore, I again neglected to add.

            “It’s just this one.”

            “You need help with one rat? Have you been hitting that cheap vodka again?”

            “After what I saw, as a matter of fact, I did. But I ain’t drunk. I just need a little help.”

            “Nobody needs help taking on one rat,” I said, thinking, as long as it wasn’t one altered by Degenesis. They were all gone now, though the nightmares Benny and I shared persisted.

            “They do if it’s almost four feet long and about two feet high.”

            Benny came into the kitchen wearing her sweats and a baseball cap. Even dressed down, she still got my troops assembling for action.

            “What’s Creed want?” she whispered.

            “He says he needs help with a four-foot long rat.”

            “There’s no such thing.”

            I held the phone out to her. “You want to tell him?”

            She took it from me and said, “Creed, there’s no such thing as a four-foot rat.” She tapped the speakerphone icon so I could hear.

            “Yeah, well tell that to the big bastard I gotta get out of the basement.”

            “You get a picture of it?” I asked.

            “I was too busy running to ask it to say cheese.”

            Funny, that exterminator humor.

            “I looked it up and I think it could be one of those capybaras,” Creed said.

            “Capybaras live in South America. How the hell is one in a basement in Mount Vernon? New York is a long way from Brazil and I’m pretty sure they’re not giving out passports to capybaras,” Benny said.

            “Maybe if you come with me, you can ask it,” Creed said. “All I know is that it’s there and I gotta get it out.”

            “Text us the address,” Benny said, cutting off the call before Creed could say anything else.

            “What the heck are we going to do with a capybara?” I said. “If that’s what it really is. Knowing Creed, it’s probably just a big dog.”

            “I don’t know. But aren’t you curious?”

            “About a giant South American rat? No, not really.”

            “They’re more related to guinea pigs. And the good thing is, they’re very docile. But don’t think about petting it. Their ticks give all kinds of nasty diseases.”

            “You are just a font of knowledge today.” The air fryer dinged again. I pulled the drawer out and showed her the abortion that was my lunch. “Anything in that beautiful mind of yours knows how to make this edible?”

            She patted my cheek. “I’ll pick you up McDonald’s on the way. Come on, I need to get out of the house. The capybara was probably someone’s exotic and illegal pet that grew too big and was cast aside. I kind of feel bad for it. Plus, I’ve never seen one in person. Remember when we went to that beaten down zoo in the Catskills?”

            “Vaguely. Was it the one where I was attacked by the baby goats?”

            Benny smirked. “That’s the one. They had a capybara, but it never came out of its shelter. Now’s our chance.”

            “I never realized I was missing a chance to see a giant rat.”

            “Guinea pig…ish.”

            I took a moment to appear that I was contemplating saying no way, Jose, sighed, and then said, “Your wish is my command.”

            I didn’t want to go at all, but things were finally good with us, and I was too weak from starvation to argue. With any luck, there was a McDonald’s nearby.

            “Is our van going to be here when we get back?” I asked Creed when we pulled up to the apartment building. Half of it appeared to be abandoned, the other half looked as if it wished it were. This was not one of Mount Vernon’s finest areas. A few people were out and about, and I didn’t like the look of any of them. I still had half of a quarter pounder in my hand.

            Creed was dressed in the filthiest overalls this side of the Mason-Dixon line. He was younger than Benny and I by about a decade, but looked at least that much older than us. He chain-smoked, drank Milwaukee’s Best Ice tall boys like they were the secret to eternal life, and lived with two mutts that hadn’t been bathed since their momma had licked them clean at birth.

            “What would anyone want with your van?” he asked. His eyes were glassy, and I smelled booze on his breath.

            I gave Benny an I told you this was nothing look and wolfed down the rest of my burger before Creed’s appearance and wet dog smell made me lose my appetite.

            “Just show us where it is,” I said.

            “You look beautiful as always, Benita,” Creed said with a bashful smile. The man’s open longing for my wife did not endear him to me.

            “The capybara?” Benny said to get him back on track.

            “Oh, yeah. Follow me.”

            We walked up the stained cement steps and through a set of double doors that had lost their glass probably back when Bill Clinton was playing hide the cigar. I heard a woman and man shouting at each other on one of the upper floors. The lobby was littered with old mail, food wrappers and little plastic baggies that drug dealers used. It smelled like mildew and foot odor. The quarter pounder rumbled in my stomach. I couldn’t guarantee it would stay there.  

            “This way,” Creed said, his voice echoing throughout the decrepit building. I wondered who had even asked him to come here. It didn’t look like anyone gave four farts about the place.

            He pushed a heavy door open, and we descended into the basement.

            My nose was sucker punched by a funk pungent enough to make me wince. “What the hell, Creed?”

            “There’s a lot of water down there, too,” he said.

            “Why didn’t you tell us before?” The last thing I wanted us to do was breathe in a ton of mold. Our ventilator masks were in the truck.

            “Just show us quick and we’ll decide what to do,” Benny said sharply. She was inching toward my way of thinking that this was Creed leading us on a mission to nowhere.

            “Lights don’t work down here,” he said. He tugged a long flashlight out of his overalls pocket.

            We made our way down rickety wooden stairs until he motioned us to stop well before we got to the bottom. I heard something big splashing in the water. My scalp tingled and my gut churned that quarter pounder around.

            “You hear it?” Creed asked.

            “We’re not deaf,” Benny said.

            “Check this out.” He swung the light around until he found the thing making the splashing noises.

            I didn’t know whether I wanted to scream, vomit, shit myself, or run up the stairs like a man on fire.

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Hope you like what you read. Like I said, this sucker never lets up on the gas. If you’re in need of a rollercoaster creature feature with a sick sense of humor, MANRATTAN was written just for you. Big shout out to my daughter who came up with the title. I liked it so much, I just had to write a sequel. Big thank you to the team at Severed Press for everything they do to make my madness a reality.

And if you haven’t read Rattus New Yorkus yet, grab a copy now. It’s usually 99 cents, at most $1.99.