When they were no more than two feet apart he raised himself to his knees, lifting the axe high above his head with both hands. The back haunches of the rat quivered as it tried to summon strength to leap, a feat it could never accomplish. The teacher brought the axe crashing down against the back of its neck, shattering its spine at the top, severing its arteries.
The exhausted teacher collapsed in a heap, He didn’t know how long he’d lain there. It could have been five minutes, it could have been five hours. He removed his gloved hand and examined his watch. It was impossible to judge accurately for he had no time-table of the horrifying events that had preceded his collapse. The pain in his hand was excruciating now, overpowering the throb of his thigh.
His whole body ached and his cheek was sticky with blood.
A sharp pain brought his good hand to his ear and he discovered with shock his ear-lobe was missing.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he muttered. But he was alive and a lightness filled his whole being. The shots I’ve had will prevent any disease, he reassured himself. All I need to do is get out of this bloody hole.
He sat up and his hand brushed against the dead Foskins.
Poor sod, he thought. He must have put up quite a struggle to kill two of the rats. Well, he discovered the nest all right; this must have been where they originally bred, the home-A sound made his body stiff. The fear came flooding back.
Oh, God, the thought, isn’t it over yet? He looked hurriedly round for the axe, found it still buried in the dead body of the rat, and retrieved it with a tug.
The sound was like a whimper, a strange meowing noise. It came from the far comer.
Suddenly, Harris’s mind flashed back to the moment he’d discovered Foskins’s corpse. The photograph his brain had taken. The pale, bloated image he’d seen in the gloom.
Now there were small scuffling noises.
He crawled desperately for the fallen torch, mercifully still working, but its beam gradually growing dimmer. Am I strong enough to defend myself against another attack? He asked himself. He doubted it.
His intention was to retrieve the torch and then get up the stairs and out into the street as quickly as possible.
But as he reached the torch and no attack came, he became curious. He shone the light in the direction of the noises. Something was there, something white or grey, moving slightly. Two eyes were reflecting back at him. Small eyes. Luminous. He moved slowly towards them.
As he drew nearer, his whole body trembled, repulsed at what he saw. He stopped when he was five feet from it, resisting the urge to run, forcing himself to look.
On the straw before him, tucked into the farthest corner, surrounded by human bones, lay the most obnoxious creature he had ever seen, either in dreams or in life. In some ways, it resembled a rat, a huge rat, bigger, much bigger than the others. Its head was pointed, its body long, though obese, and he could see a long, thick tail curling forward, from behind it. But there the resemblance ended.
Its whole body seemed to pulse spasmodically; it was almost hairless, a few grey threads clinging sparsely; it was completely white, or perhaps grey-pink, impossible to tell in the poor light, and its veins showed through obscenely, throbbing in time with the body movement. It reminded Harris of a huge, dismembered, bloodshot eye. He swallowed hard to stop the rising sickness.
He looked into the sightless eyes. There were no pupils, just yellow, gleaming slits. The head waved from side to side, seemingly sniffing the air, the only way he could locate him. The stench from the creature was foul, putrid–almost poisonous. A shape at the side of its large head puzzled Harris. Resisting his revulsion, he took a step closer, realising the creature was crippled by its own obesity.
The lump was almost as big as the head next to it and it, too, waved to and fro in the air. He peered closer, holding the torch nearer to it and saw what looked like–a mouth!
God! It had two heads!
Harris staggered back with a cry of horror. The second head had no eyes at all, but it had a mouth and stumps of teeth. No ears–but a pointed nose that twitched and sniffed.
The obscene creature’s mewing became louder as it thrashed ponderously around in its straw crib. But it was unable to move. It sensed the danger and it knew it was helpless. The giant rats Harris and Foskins had fought had been its guards. Guards to the king. But now they were dead, and it was unprotected.
Vulnerable.
With a sob, Harris raised the axe and stumbled towards the monster, frightened but knowing he had to kill it, knowing he couldn’t leave it to the authorities, knowing they would keep it alive to study its strangeness, its rarity, knowing he would never sleep peacefully again unless it were dead. And if it were to die–he must be its executioner.
He lunged forward and the sightless creature tried to back away. But its gluttony and reliance on its subject creatures defeated it. It was too heavy, it was too old,it was too helpless.
The body popped like a huge balloon filled with dark red blood. Harris became drenched in the thick, sticky fluid, but he hacked away at the pulsating flesh, in a rage he’d never felt before.
‘For the people who’re died because of you!’ he screamed at the dying creature. ‘For the good, for the bastards, for the innocent–for the rats like yourself!’ He hacked at the heads, killing the two brains that had dominated its fellow creatures.
‘And for me! So that I know that filth like you can always be erased!’
He plunged the axe deep into the creature’s sagging back in one final thrust, then he sank to his knees and wept.
Soon he wiped his eyes and got to his feet. Taking one last look at the heap of obscene flesh, he turned and staggered from the cellar glancing at Foskins’s body as he passed, feeling drained of emotion.
He wearily climbed the stairs and walked through the kitchen into the open sunlight. He stood at the edge of the canal for a few moments, seeing gas clouds drifting through the bright blue sky, secure in the knowledge that the gas would be fulfilling its deadly purpose. He breathed deeply, trying to lose the pungent cellar odour from his nostrils. He winced at the pain in his hand and examined the stumps of his fingers. His heart suddenly ached for Judy. And for people. He wanted to be back amongst them.
He turned and walked back down the path, his body no longer trembling, warmed by the sun. He stepped through the gap and into the street, climbed tiredly into his car and drove away from the old house.
Epilogue
The rat had been trapped in the basement for five days. It had crawled into a dark corner behind a row of shelves to give birth to its litter and when it had tried to follow the sound that had buzzed through its head, it had found the way blocked by a heavy iron door. The sound had continued for five long days, almost driving the mother-rat and its tiny offspring mad with its incessant, monotonous pitch. But they had found food in abundance in the basement, for the owners had ignored the government warning to leave all doors open so that every building would be cleared. They knew that when the city’s population returned from their short exile, food would be scarce for the first few days, and their shop would be ready to cash in on the shortage. The rat and its litter gorged themselves on the food, for the young ones seemed only to need their mother’s milk for the first three days then finding greater replenishment in the food around them. They grew larger and sturdier day by day, already dark brown, almost black hairs beginning to grow on their bodies.Except for one. Only a few white hairs sprouted on its pink, almost white body. It seemed to dominate the others which brought it food and kept its body warm with their own. A curious lump seemed to be growing on its broad lop-sided shoulder, next to its head.
Patiently, they waited for the people to return.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapt
er Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Epilogue
James Herbert, The Rats
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