King Rat

  “More and more bodies jumping in to join them, more and more fur becoming waterlogged, feeling the tug of the river, slipping below the caps, raking their claws every which way in panic, tearing each other’s bellies and eyes, and dragging brothers and sisters into the freezing cold under the air.”

  “I kicked my pegs to get away. There was a frantic mass of us kicking up froth, an isle of rat bodies, fighting and killing to climb atop, the foundations dying and disappearing below.”

  “Water plugged my lugs. All I can hear is the in-out of my breath, panicked and disjointed, gulping and retching and breathing in bile. The waves are smashing me around, tossing me against rocks, and on all sides rats are dying in thousands and thousands. I can just make out the noise of the flute. It’s stripped of magic here in the Fisherman’s, just a whining noise. I can hear the splashes of more rats leaping in the water to die; it’s endless and merciless. Screams and choking are everywhere; stiff little bodies bob past me like buoys in hell’s harbor. This is the end of the world, I think, and the stinking water fills my lungs, and I sink.”

  “Everywhere are corpses.”

  “They move with the swell, and through my half closed eyes I can just clock them, all around me, suspended under the water, above me as I sink and below me too, blobs of brown approaching. And there in the murk, as the last bubbles of air spew out of me, I can see the charnel house under the river, the killing fields, those sharp black rocks an abattoir for ratkind, pile upon pile of cadavers, little skinless babies and old gray males, fat matron rats and pugnacious youth, the fit, the ill, an endless mass of death shifting with the torrent above.”

  “And I alone stared this holocaust in the face.”

  Drowned rats seemed to hover before Saul as he listened. His ears pounded as if his lungs fought for air.

  King Rat’s voice came back, and the dead tone which had crept into his descriptions had gone.

  “And I opened my eyes and said, ‘No.’”

  “I kicked suddenly, and left that cataclysm behind. I didn’t have no air, don’t forget, so my lungs were screaming murder, whipping me one stroke for every heartbeat, and I climbed out of the quiet into the light, and I could hear the cries through the river above me, and I moved out and away, and finally pushed my face into the air.”

  “I sucked it in like an addict. I was eager.”

  “I turned my Crust and it was still going on, the deaths still continuing, but the spume was a sight lower by now and there was no more ratkind falling out of the sky. I saw the man with his flute walk away.”

  “He didn’t see me watch him.”

  “And I decided, as I watched, that he had to die.”

  “I dragged myself out of the river, and laid myself down under a stone. The cries of the dying continued for a while, and then they went out, and the river swept all the evidence away behind it. And I lay and breathed and swore revenge for my Rat Nation.”

  “The poet called me a Caesar, who lived to swim across. But that wasn’t my Rubicon. That was my Styx. I should’ve gone. I should be a drowned rat. Maybe I am. I’ve thought of that. Maybe I never made it, and maybe it’s just hate that seeped into my bones that keeps me up and scrapping.”

  “I got some small satisfaction, the first part only, from the bastard sons and daughters of Hamelin. The stupid, stupid fuckers tried to put one over on the Piper and I had the pleasure of watching the gurning cunts, who’d clapped as we took our leave, screaming in the alleys, stuck like glue while their Kinder pranced away to the tune of the flute. And I had the small joy of smiling when the queer cove made the mountain split open for those little Godfers, and they skipped on in. Because those little Dustbins went to hell, and they hadn’t even died, and they hadn’t even done any wrong, and their bastard parents knew that.”

  “That was some pleasure, like I say.”

  “But it was that damnable minstrel himself I wanted. He was the real culprit. He’s the one who has a certain reckoning due.”

  Saul shivered at the viciousness of King Rat’s tone, but he stopped himself from remonstrating about the innocence of the children.

  “He sucked all the birds out of the sky and taunted me, till I grew mad in my impotence.” Loplop was speaking in the same dreaming tone as King Rat. “I fled to Bedlam, forgetting myself, thinking myself nothing but a madman who thought himself King of Birds. For a long time I rotted in the cage, till I remembered and burst away again.”

  “Him clear all the scorpion and my lickle pickneys from the palace in Baghdad. Him call me in with him piccolo, and my mind was gone, and him rough me, mash me up, hurt me bad. And all the lickle spiders them saw.” Anansi spoke softly.

  The three were emasculated, casually stripped of power by the Piper. Saul remembered the contempt, the spitting of the rats in the sewer.

  “That’s why the rats don’t obey you,” he murmured, looking at King Rat.

  “When Anansi and Loplop were caught, some lived to see them suffer, saw Loplop lose his mind, saw Anansi tortured. They bore witness to the martyrdom of the monarchs. It was plain for every Jack with eyes to see.”

  “My rats, my troops, they saw nothing. Every one was taken. And drowning leaves no marks, no scars or stripes to illustrate engagement. Word spread to the towns and dews-a-vill around that King Rat had run, left his people to the swollen river. And they dethroned me. Stupid shits! They’ve not got the nous to live without me. It’s anarchy, no control. We should run the Smoke, and instead it’s chaos. And I’ve been without my crown more nor half a thousand years.”

  When he heard this, Saul thought of the entreating, pleading rats who circled him below the pavements. He said nothing.

  “Anansi and Loplop, they still rule, bloodied maybe, bowed and cowed, but they’ve got their kingdom. I want mine.”

  “And if,” said Saul slowly, “you can defeat the Piper, you think the rats will come back to you.”

  King Rat was silent.

  “He roams around the world,” said Loplop flatly. “He has not been here for a hundred years, since he cast me into the birdcage. I knew he had returned when I called all my birds to me a night not long ago, and they did not come. There is only one thing can make them deaf to my command: the damnable pipe.”

  “Sometimes the spiders rush away from me like them do another’s bidding. The Badman back in town, fe true, and him want the rattymon bad this time.”

  “None’s ever escaped, you see, sonny, except me,” said King Rat. “He let Loplop and Anansi go, after shaming them, letting them clock who’s the bossman, he reckons. But me, he wanted my hide. I’m the one that got away. And for seven hundred years he’s been trying to make good his mistake. And when he found I had a nephew, he came looking for you. He’s on the skedge for you now. Anything to square accounts.”

  Anansi and Loplop looked at each other, looked down at Saul.

  “What is he?” breathed Saul.

  “Him greed,” said Anansi.

  “Covetousness,” said Loplop.

  “He exists to own,” said King Rat. “He has to suck things in to him, always, which is why he’s so narked at me for having pulled a disappearing trick. He’s the spirit of narcissism. He’s to prove his worth by guzzling all and sundry in.”

  “Him can charm anything,” said Anansi.

  “He’s congealed hunger,” said Loplop. “He’s insatiable.”

  “He can choose, see?” said King Rat. “Will I call the rats? The birds? The spiders? Dogs? Cats? Fish? Reynards? Minks? Kinder? He can ring anyone’s bell, charm anything he fancies. Just choose and he plays the right tune. Owt he chooses, Saul, except nor one thing.”

  “He can’t charm you, Saul.”

  “You’re rat and human, more and less than each. Call the rats and the person in you is deaf to it. Call to the man and the rat’ll twitch its tail and run. He can’t charm you, Saul. You’re double trouble. You’re my deuce, Saul, my trump card. An ace in the hole. You’re his worst nightmare. He can’t play two t
unes at once, Saul. He can’t charm you.”

  “No, you he just wants to kill.”

  No one spoke. Three pairs of unclear eyes transfixed Saul.

  “But no need to panic, sonny. Things are going to change around here,” King Rat suddenly spat. “See, my mates and me are pissed off. We’ve had enough. Loplop owes the Piper for his brain-box that was Tea Leafed off him. Anansi here got tortured, still feels it sore in all his pegs—and in front of his own people. And me… I owe the fucker because he stole my nation and I want it back.”

  “Revenge,” said Loplop.

  “Revenge,” said Anansi.

  “Revenge is right,” said King Rat. “Piper-man fucker better steel himself for some animal magic.”

  “The three of you…” said Saul. “Is that how many there are? To take him.”

  “There are others,” said Loplop, “but not here, not to do the job. Tibault, King of the Cats, he’s trapped in a nightmare, a story told by a man called Yoll. Kataris, Queen Bitch, who runs with the dogs, she’s disappeared, no one knows where.”

  “Mr. Bub, Lord of the Flies, him a shifty murderer and me can’t work with him,” said Anansi.

  “There are others but we’re the ones, the hard core, the sufferers, who’ve scores to settle,” said King Rat. “We’re bringing the war back to him. And you can help us, sonny.”

  T

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  What woke Kay was the drumbeat of blood in his head. Each stroke that landed on the back of his skull sent vibrations of pain through the bone.

  His eyes cracked a seal of rheum. He opened them and saw nothing but black. He blinked, tried to focus on the vague geometry he could glimpse in the shadows. He felt that something stretched away in front of him.

  Kay was freezing. He groaned and raised his head, a motion accompanied by a crescendo of aches, rolled his neck and tried to move. His arms hurt and he realized they were stretched out above him, held fast, and stripped of clothing. He opened his eyes more and saw coils of thick dirty rope around his wrists, disappearing into the gloom above him. He was suspended, his weight dragging him hard, pulling the skin of his armpits taut.

  He tried to twist his body, to investigate his position, but he was suddenly constrained, his feet refusing to obey. He shook his groggy head and looked down. He saw that he was naked, his cock shriveled and tiny in the cold. He saw the same rope around his ankles, spreading his legs. He was caught tight in a petrified star-jump, he was an X hovering in the dark, the pain in his wrists and ankles and arms beginning to register. Gusts of wind pulled at him, raised goosebumps.

  Kay winced, blinked hard, tried to work out where he was, lowered his eyes again to his feet. As the cold air began to cut through the muck of pain in his head he became aware of the dim diffuse light around him. Shapes clarified in the shadow below his dangling toes: sharp lines, concrete, bolts, wood. Railway tracks.

  Kay’s head wobbled up. He tried to throw it behind him, to see over his shoulder.

  He gave a yell of shock which bounced back and forward in its enclosed environs.

  Behind him, illuminated by half-hearted little bulbs dribbling beige light, stretched an underground platform covered in dust and small pieces of rubbish. The darkness before him stopped sharp above Kay’s head, where the bricks of the tunnel began. Those bricks arced down on both sides of him. To his right was a wall, to his left the platform edge. The ropes which bound him stretched out to that arch, wound around huge nails driven roughly into the old brickwork.

  He hung cruciform at the entrance to the tunnel, from where the trains emerged.

  Kay’s scream echoed around and around him.

  He shook ineffectually, tried to wriggle from his bonds. His fear was complete. He was utterly vulnerable, suspended nude in the path of the locomotives.

  He screamed and screamed, but no one came.

  He twisted his head around as far as he could. Kay’s eyes frantically skipped from surface to surface, searching for some clue to tell him where he was. The trimmings of the station were black; the line above the poster spaces—all empty—was black. This was the Northern Line. At the edge of his limited field of vision he saw the curved edge of an underground sign, the tell-tale red circle bisected by a blue line containing the name of the station. He pulled his head over, ignoring the pain in his neck and skull, trying to push his shoulder out of the way with his chin, desperate to see where he was. As he vibrated to and fro the sign moved in and out of his view. He caught glimpses of the two words it contained, one above the other.

  gton ent…ington scent…rnington rescent…

  Mornington Crescent. The ghost station, the strange zone between Euston and Camden Town on the decrepit Northern Line: the odd, poky little tube stop which had been closed for repairs sometime in the late Eighties and had never opened again. Trains would slow down as they passed through, so as not to create a vacuum in the empty space, and passengers would glimpse the platform. Sometimes posters would apologize and promise a swift resumption of service, and sometimes obscure pieces of equipment to cure ailing underground stations lay scattered on the abandoned concrete. Often there was nothing, just the signs proclaiming the name of the station in the faint light. It lived a half-life, never being finally laid to rest, haunted by the unlikely promise that it would one day open for business again.

  Behind him Kay heard footsteps.

  “Who’s there?” he yelled. “Who’s that? Help me!”

  Whoever it was had been standing on the platform, out of his sight when he had tried to turn round. Kay’s head was twisted as violently over his left shoulder as he could manage. The steps approached him. A tall figure strolled into view, reading something.

  “Alright, Kay?” said Pete without looking up. He chuckled as he read. “My God, they’re not averse to a bit of pretension, this bunch, are they?” He held up what he was reading and Kay saw it was Drum ‘n’ Bass Massive 3!, a CD Kay had just bought. Kay fought to speak but his mouth was suddenly dry in terror. “‘Rudeness MC sends shouts to: the Rough an’ Ready Posse, Shy FX,’ blah blah blah, ‘an’ Boys from da North, da South, da East, da West, remember… It’s a London Something! Urban-style ghetto bass!’” Pete looked up, grinning. “This is drivel, Kay.”

  “Pete…” Kay finally croaked. “What’s going on? Get me down, man! How did I get here?”

  “Well, I needed to ask you some questions about something. I’m concerned about something.” Pete moved off, still reading. In his other hand he held Kay’s bag. He replaced the CD and brought out another. “‘Jungle versus the Hardsteppers.’ Cor! I’ve got a lot of lingo to learn if I’m going to get in with Natasha, haven’t I?”

  Kay licked his lips. He was sweating even as he shivered. His skin felt slick with terror.

  “How did you get me here, man?” he moaned. “What do you want?”

  Pete turned to him, replaced the CD, squatted down on the platform to his left. His flute, Kay saw, was thrust through his belt like a saber.

  “It’s early yet, Kay, probably not yet five o’clock. The Northern Line doesn’t start for a while. Just thought I’d let you know. And, yes, what I wanted…well. When I came out of the pub I headed for Natasha’s flat as well, a little after you, wanted to have a word or something. See what you got up to. I’ve been very interested in all these stories I keep hearing about your mate who’s in trouble, and I wanted to maybe get you on your own—see what you could tell me about him.”

  “Then, as I come towards you, downwind, I smell a very particular scent, one that someone wore once who I’m trying to track down. And it occurs to me that maybe your mate knows the bloke I’m after!” He smiled reasonably and put his head on one side.

  “So. You did bump into your mate last night, didn’t you?”

  Kay swallowed. “Yeah…but Pete…let me down…please. I’ll tell you all about it if you’ll just…
please, man…this is really freaking me out.”

  Kay’s mind was racing. He could not think for the pain in his head. Pete was mad. He swallowed again. He had to make him take him down, he had to do it now. Kay could not formulate his thoughts clearly, so overwhelming was the adrenaline rush brought on by fear. He was trembling violently.

  Pete nodded.

  “I’m not surprised it’s freaking you out, Kay. Where’s your mate?”

  “You mean Saul? I don’t know, man, I don’t know. Please…”

  “Where’s Saul?”

  “Just get me fucking down!”

  Kay’s control broke and he began to cry.

  Pete shook his head thoughtfully.

  “No. You see, you haven’t told me where Saul is yet.”

  “I don’t know, I swear I don’t know! He, he, he said he was…” Kay thought desperately for something to tell Pete, something that might save him. “Please let me go!”

  “Where’s Saul?”

  “The sewers! He said something…he stank. I asked where’d he been, and he was on about the sewers…” Kay’s waist twisted, legs yanking violently at the strong cord.

  “Now that’s interesting,” said Pete, leaning forward. “Did he say anything about where in the sewers? Because I’ve often suspected that…this guy I’m after uses them.”

  Kay was sobbing.

  “Nah, man, he didn’t say nothing else…please…please…he was weird, his voice was weird, he stank…he wouldn’t tell me anything… Please let me down!”

  “No, Kay, I won’t let you down,” Pete’s voice was suddenly shockingly vicious. He rose and stalked towards him. “Not yet. You see, I want to know everything you know about your friend Saul, because it’s important to me. I want to know everything, Kay, capeesh?”

  Kay gabbled, tried to think of what he knew. He screamed about sewers, repeated that Saul had stunk, that he was hiding in the sewers. He ran out of anything to say. He whimpered and twisted where he hung.

  Pete had been taking notes, nodding with interest now and then, writing carefully in a little notebook.