Littergrad

I. And Then, Rats

Private Boots McStray didn’t remember the last time his fur had been dry.
The trench had become his second skin, soaked and clinging, a ribbed coffin that breathed and shivered under the grey sky. Every plank creaked like a dying thing, every corner smelled of rusted tin and wet fur, and somewhere in the dark, something always dripped.
He had once been a farmer. The memory hovered like a ghost in his spine-- a wide plain of golden grass, sun on his whiskers, and the low groan of the barn door as it swung open every morning to greet the dew. Back then, the only thing he feared was a poor harvest or a fox sniffing 'round the hens. Now, the hens were gone, the farm was ash, and he had a rusting rifle with a name etched on the stock: Gertrude. He didn't know who Gertrude was. Maybe the cat before him had, and maybe he'd died loving her.
Boots didn’t ask questions anymore. He sat hunched against the trench wall, boots deep in cold sludge. The mud sucked at his legs when he shifted, like some hungry creature below the earth wanted him ankle-first. His tabby coat, once bright as sunrise wheat, was dulled with soot and grime. His helmet sat crooked on his head-- too big, always too big. Standard issue from the Union Quartermaster's tent, handed out by a sleepy cat with one eye and no tail.
“You got the face of a survivor,” the Quartermaster had said, then laughed for six minutes straight. Boots hadn’t known how to answer. He didn't want to, really.
Now, a month later, survival looked like this: endless watches, lukewarm rations, and listening to Scruff talk in his sleep about peaches and his mother’s chicken stew.
Scruff was beside him now, snoring gently into a ration tin he had mistaken for a pillow. His fur was a dirty white, patched with grey like someone had spilled graphite across his head and tiny ears. The kit had no business being here. Too young, too light, too bright-eyed. But he had forged his enlistment papers with shaky paws and a heart full of fire. That had been two weeks before their transport was shelled on arrival. Boots hadn’t asked his real name. Nobody did. Names were dangerous things out here. Names meant you could be remembered. Scruff was his name. That's what he'd be known as.
A voice broke the silence above.
“Clawmir wants a patrol,” muttered Sergeant Twitchclaw, emerging from the fog. His uniform was half-buttoned, and he smelled like blasting powder. “Out to the ridge and back. Check for rats. The real kind. Not the traitor kind. Well-- maybe both. Don't need vermin in our stocks, rodents or cats.”
Boots stood. His knees popped, his tail stiff from the cold. Scruff stirred beside him with a petulant, sleepy noise.
“I’ll go,” Boots said. “Let the kid sleep. Stars know he needs it.”
Twitchclaw grinned with his crooked teeth.
“You’re a noble one, McStray. Or damn stupid. Can’t tell the difference these days.”
Boots didn’t respond. He climbed the ladder slowly, like a cat walking into his own grave.
Above, the world was a wasteland of smog and barbed wire. The sun was a sickly thing behind the clouds, pale and thin as a sick kitten. He moved between shattered trees that looked more like claws than trunks, eyes scanning the ridgeline. Somewhere beyond the haze was enemy territory-- the Free Confederation trenches, run by noblebloods who hissed about glory and genetic purity as they shelled orphan hospitals and kissed the banners of the old empire.
Boots paused at a shattered lookout post. The sandbags were torn. Flies buzzed lazily around what had once been a tail.
He lit a cigarette, paw shaking just enough to need both paws. Smoke curled into his nose. Reminded him of his barn burning. Reminded him of his father’s old pipe and the last thing his mother said before the conscription trucks came:
“You stay quiet, Boots. Quiet cats live longer.”
She had been wrong, but he liked to pretend otherwise. Minutes passed. Nothing moved. Nothing except the flies and the wind. And the distant, rumbling thunder of something mechanical, far off over the ridge.
Boots stared into the fog with an unreadable look in his green eyes. He thought about home. About the windmills. About his brother, Tobias, who had stayed behind with a limp and a bad eye. About the warm hay                                                                              in summer and the way his paws used to feel in dirt that didn’t try to eat you alive. Then he stubbed out his cigarette on a corpse’s helmet and turned back to the trench.
Boots lowered himself into the mud once he returned, feet sinking into the muck with a wet sigh. Scruff stirred at the disturbance, big eyes widening momentarily.
“See anythin’?” The kit asked, rubbing his face with muddy paws. His voice carried a light optimism, one belonging to somebody who had not seen enough bodies.
“Fog,” Boots replied, then his ears twitched and his gaze dropped briefly as something rustled against his foot. He lifted it slightly, and saw a slick shape wriggle across the planks.
“And rats.”
Scruff blinked those green eyes of his.
"The traitor kind?"
Boots took a paw and held it out carefully, before taking the rodent by the tail. It squealed, thrashing, its whiskers slick with grease. Just a trench rat, grey and fat, belly bulging from grain sacks and-- Boots suspected-- flesh. There were rumors the rats here were bold enough to gnaw on corpses, dragging whole ears away like trophies.  This one looked guilty enough.
He held it up, and Scruff wrinkled his scarred nose.
“Ugly bastard. Thought they were supposed to run from us, not into us.”
Boots examined it silently. The creature kicked, claws scratching lamely at his fur. He’d trapped plenty back on the farm, but those had been clean creatures, bright-eyed, wary, almost noble. This thing was swollen, slick, obscene. Yet it stared back at him with the same hunger that lived within the trench itself.
“Eat it,” came Twitchclaw’s voice. He’d materialized from a dugout, eyes glinting with mischief. His paws were blackened, as always, from fiddling with weaponry. He grinned with that smile of his, missing one of his fangs.
“That’s what the Union says, right? No waste. Rat’s as good as rabbit if you’ve got salt. Maybe better if you don’t.”
Scruff gagged and covered his muzzle.  “Stars, Twitch, shut up.”
“Shut up, he says,” Twitchclaw chuckled arrogantly. “Give it a week and you’ll be biting tails like jerky.”
Boots ignored them both. He lowered the rat toward a dented bucket half-filled with rainwater. The surface was already scummed over, oily with whatever had dripped from the trench wall. The rat squealed louder as its paws touched the water, then it wriggled free from his grip and dropped in with a splash. It swam frantically in circles, sending ripples across the filth. Scruff leaned forward. Twitchclaw licked his teeth, disappointed.
“Consider it checked,” Boots muttered. He wiped his paw on his trousers and pulled a cigarette from the breast pocket. The match flared, smoke curling around his whiskers and joining the heavy air.
From farther down the trench, Captain Felix Redclaw was watching. He stood slouched against a post, his pale siamese fur dulled with soot, his uniform buttoned but disheveled, and eyes sharp despite the weariness looming in their depths. He’d once been noble, or so they say, but the war had stripped that away, leaving only scars and a darkness in his consciousness.
Redclaw nodded at the bucket.
“Wars nothing but rats, McStray. Big ones, small ones. Some chew through our grain, and some chew through our orders, while some sit behind desks and fatten themselves while we kill ourselves out here.”
The rat swam slower now. Its eyes, round and dark, darted towards the rim of the bucket but it was far too slick to escape. Scruff frowned.
"So what are we, then? If they’re rats too?"
Redclaw’s mouth curled into something between a smile and a grimace.
“We’re the ones chewing last. That’s all the difference there is.”
They stood in silence, listening. The rat scratched, and scratched, then slipped under, leaving only bubbles. Scruff stared at the ripples until they faded. Twitchclaw yawned and wandered back into the shadows, muttering to himself. Above them, the fog thickened. A low rumble drifted through it, metallic and patient, like a sleeping beast turning in its den. Boots’ ears flattened. He knew that sound.
“Thunder?” Scruff asked.
“Maybe,”
Redclaw straightened, eyes narrowing and ears pricking.
“Thunder ain’t got treads.”
The trench grew still. Every cat along the line felt it, the vibration in the boards, the tremor in the mud. Somebody whispered a prayer, and someone else lit another cigarette. Boots smoked in silence, staring unblinkingly as the last bubble popped in the bucket.