Scritch, scritch.

The rat eyed them from atop an upturned bathtub. Its whiskers looked suspiciously like piano wire, and tinkled slightly when it wrinkled its nose to gnaw at the nickle clutched in its paws.
“I guess there’s life here after all,” said Peter. Startled by his voice, a flock of something with wings beaten from soda cans flapped lumberously away behind a shipping container.
“Of a sort,” said the rat. Alice stifled a giggle.
“Do you know, I wonder,” asked Peter, “if there is any place interesting around here?”
“There’s an alley over yonder,” the rat twitched its nose. “Back of a bar. Some good scraps there.”
“No, not an island,” says Alice. “What about in the junkyard?”
“There’s nothing in the junkyard. It’s all more of the same, isn’t it?”
They turned to leave.
“Except for the church, of course.”

A flutter of metal rang out — one of the soda can birds back to make a meal of the rat. With a scritch scritch it was away under a pile of shopping carts.