Rats (The Zone Unknown) Read online

  Cockroaches and rats, which survive anything. Parts of the colony always live.

  The guttural sounds began again, with Surfer rushing to the mouth of the largest hollow. Sarah lay still as a massive, murky shape emerged toward the dimming light of the lamp. At first it was a silhouette, a dark shape the size of a mastiff dog with bright, watering green eyes. A chill began to creep back into the base of Sarah’s spine as a monstrous rat form dragged itself toward her. God, what is it? she thought. It moved like a lizard, with long hair and a head of barklike skin.

  “Don’t make a sound,” Sarah told Michael. He was frozen at the base of the far wall, rats covering him like a damp, shaggy rug.

  The murky shape snorted, and in the full light of the lamp it was clearly a rodent. Three—four feet long. Bigger than a capybara. Bigger than any kind of rat she’d every heard about. The emperor rat, Sarah thought—he’s a mutant king, fed and grown in an underworld of waste fowl and suet and filth and gas. The creature’s jaws were thicker, more pronounced than the other rats, with the teeth and musculature of a predator. He came closer to Sarah.

  Closer.

  His hot, stinking breath stung in her nostrils as he neared. The smaller rats nervously made way for their leader to approach. He moved his snout to Sarah’s feet, and a hot froth of saliva vomited out of his mouth and onto her legs as it slowly, carefully, sniffed at her.

  “If you ask me, the rats are in New York Bay, and heading north,” Macafee told the commanding officer. Captain Ragan looked up from a desk in the officer’s room on the Coast Guard cutter, and stared at him coldly.

  “Our sister cutter has spotted rats retreating in the Kull.”

  “It could be decoys,” Macafee said. “Whatever we think they’re doing, it turns out to be something else.”

  The captain turned his attention back to his notes. “If they’re going to go anywhere, it’ll be Newark Bay. It’s closer for them. They’ve got to be hungry. Desperate. A slick of them has been seen in Secaucus. That means the Meadowlands and outlet stores. Probably Giants’ Stadium and the racetrack.”

  “It’s almost two o’clock in the morning,” Macafee said, trying to keep his temper and sanity. “There’s not going to be any food there. A couple of horses in a stable can’t be what they need to move a colony like this.”

  “I’ve got orders to lay down an oil slick off Newark. When the rats hit it, we’ll set it on fire.”

  Macafee’s cell phone rang. His sister was talking too fast. Too disturbed. He caught that there had been rats in her car, that she had almost crashed. And he heard the words, “The kids are at the dump. The kids are there. You’ve got to stop the planes. The kids are there!”

  The blood drained from Macafee’s face as he finally understood—finally believed what he was hearing. He was off the phone now, shouting, “OH MY GOD, CALL OFF THE AIRCRAFT. STOP THE FIREBOMBS. MY KIDS ARE OUT THERE. THEY’RE AT THE LANDFILL. GET ME THE COLONEL ON THE RADIO. GET HIM. GET ME OFF HERE. GET ME OFF THIS SHIP NOW!!”

  The swollen eyes of the emperor rat moved in their wet, grainy sockets. It stared at Sarah as he sniffed at her feet and legs. Sarah glanced up to Surfer, who was chattering softly from his ledge. The monster rat was examining her like she used to examine and exhibit Surfer. Like Surfer at school when he was her experiment.

  Surfer squeaking—chirring—as though telling the king rat what to do. How to do it.

  Now she was their experiment.

  The mutant moved up along her body, until his snout was in her hair. He’s gathering information, Sarah told herself. He wants to know where I’ve been, what I’ve been doing—what I’ve been touching.

  What I’ve been … eating.

  He began to hiss and open his mouth. Sarah felt his tongue on her brow. It was rough, like a cats. A tongue licking salt from her, checking her … rats with sensitive tongues and whiskers and snouts that can feel everything, that can find their way in the dark and …

  CHIRRRRR. CHIRRR …

  Surfer still chattering, advising, as the emperor slid his tongue over her closed eyes.

  Several miles away, the tide had begun to recede off a mud bank, and where no one could see them, the leaders of the main rat horde paused and listened. There came the urgent call, the high, delicate shrieking they’d been listening for.

  The hungry and loyal horde turned, began dashing decisively to execute the final order. The final solution. The vast wave of fur and pattering feet raced along the dark shoreline. In front of them, across an expanse of New York Bay, was the shining skyline of Manhattan.

  The sickening stench of the carnivore filled Sarah’s lungs. An omnivore, she corrected herself. A thing that would eat anything. When she opened her eyes, the emperor rat’s gray flaring nostrils were inches away. The hissing was coarse now, like a cobra’s, and his tongue slid out onto her lips. She felt his tongue prying her lips apart, and she began to cry. She wept and shook, but she wouldn’t scream. She wouldn’t do anything to make it angry.

  Nothing to make it kill her or Michael or …

  His tongue passed between her lips now, checking her teeth. Its roughness flicked up to inspect the roof of her mouth. The rat’s snout was against her face, pressing his tongue so it could sense, examine, know everything she had tasted or swallowed or …

  She began to gag and try to move away, but the king crawled up onto her, pressing her shoulders back with his paws. He wasn’t finished with her mouth, and as his tongue slid up her chin toward her lips again, she remembered the laptop.

  The laptop.

  She moved her hand slowly to the metal catch on its side and unzipped the cover.

  The giant rat felt her motion and retracted his tongue. He looked at Sarah curiously, watched her gently slide the black plastic shell of the computer out of the case. She lifted its lid slowly and pressed the oval ON button.

  There was an initial chime, and Sarah booted up the Creature Feature game. The king and all the rats—all of the hierarchy stared as the screen lit up and the background music began to play. “You’ll like this,” Sarah said nicely to the emperor. She spoke to him softly. Sweetly. As if he could understand what she was saying. She saw that the rat looked interested.

  All the rats.

  Interested in the bright colors of the computer game on the screen. There were twirling red circles and animals dashing through loops. A jungle of neon and Day-Glo crazy images.

  CHIRRRR. CHIRRR.

  The king’s sounds became a purring. A low vibrating sound. The images were mesmerizing the rats. Sarah kept talking. It didn’t seem to matter if what she said made sense. She simply spoke kindly and gently through her terror.

  Cordially.

  Speaking any gentle nonsense that came into her head. “You see, you can learn a lot from this, dear rats. These are beautiful drawings of kangaroos and birds flying, and they can tell you the mystery of how to get food and how to shop and where to go on Saturday nights and … Watch closely. You’ll see strange candies and evil leprechauns, and some day I’ll take you all to the movies and you’ll see hot-dogging and learn how to rock ‘n’ roll and …”

  Only Surfer chattered nervously.

  Telling.

  Squealing.

  “Come on, Michael,” Sarah said softly, as she slid away from the king rat. Slowly, she stood up. Carefully, she lifted the laptop with its glowing screen. In a moment, Michael was on his feet, too. His hand was in his pocket, and before she could stop him, he had taken out Surfer’s leash. He snapped it onto Surfer’s collar before the rat knew what was happening.

  The white rat sounded ticked off as Michael stuffed him into his jacket pocket and snapped it closed. Sarah moved with the computer open, keeping the screen facing the rats. The ones blocking the doorway looked dazed by the light and the moving, bright images.

  Sarah moved steadily forward.

  The swarm of rats parted, made room for her to pass. When Sarah and Michael were nearly clear and back in the massive dank drai
nage pipe, the laptop began to make whirling and clicking sounds.

  It switched automatically into its power-saving mode.

  The images and sounds of the game faded and the screen went dark. The rats began to chatter angrily.

  “RUN!” Sarah shouted at Michael, snapping the laptop closed. “RUN!”

  Michael sprinted from Sarah’s side as she shoved the laptop into its case and flung the strap over her shoulder. They left the Coleman lamp behind, but she turned on the flashlight. She felt the strain of the incline now, the tilt that made the water flow down into the depths of the mound.

  “They’re going to firebomb,” Sarah shouted to Michael. “Planes are going to bomb the dump, unless Aunt B got through. We have to get out.”

  The sounds behind them now were savage and reverberating. CHIRR. CHIRR. CHIRRRRR. The racket was a pulsing now. Unified cries of a horde coming after them through the pipe. There was splashing and a violent high pitch, rats modulating sounds higher and higher until the volume was earsplitting.

  Michael was faster than Sarah. As they neared the end of the huge pipe, they both could smell the fresh air.

  Bracing, cool air.

  Air with less gas than below.

  Air with less methane and other gases that poison and burn. The mix of oxygen and the hydrocarbon gases below had been barely enough to stay alive. It was just enough to breathe and scream and run.

  Enough oxygen and methane to …

  To ignite.

  Sarah remembered the booster remote in her jeans pocket, and the transmitter around Surfer’s neck. The remote and the transmitter—and the sparking that would happen if she pressed the remote more than once. The charge that would spark and fire.

  The shrieking of the rats was nearer—closing. Sarah knew the bigger rodents could reach the top, dash out of the pipe and other fissures in the mounds, and overtake them in the swamp. The rats would divide and ambush and kill. There was the sound of something very large coming through the water. Something enormous and blustering behind them.

  “Let Surfer go,” Sarah told Michael. “Let him go.”

  “No,” Michael said. “He’s mine. You gave him to me. He’s my friend.”

  Michael saw the booster remote in Sarah’s hand.

  He saw it and heard Surfer squealing in his pocket, and he remembered the gas below—and understood what Sarah planned to do. The sounds from behind them in the pipe were chilling. Primordial. The rats were coming, and Michael knew what would happen if …

  “Please, Michael,” Sarah said, gasping for breath. She began to struggle, to find the water rushing against her legs too powerful—crippling. She slipped on the silt. The terrible, angry guttural sound was right behind her now.

  Michael stopped near the opening of the pipe. He reached into his pocket, and felt a sudden pain. He pulled out his hand and saw a trickle of blood on his finger.

  “Surfer bit me,” Michael said as Sarah caught up to him.

  “I’m sorry,” Sarah said. She saw the hurt and anguish in her brother’s eyes, and knew that he at last understood what Surfer had become. Michael let Sarah take the white rat out of his pocket. She set him down and unhooked the leash.

  “See you, Surfer,” Sarah said.

  “Good-bye,” Michael said softly, sadly.

  Surfer stared at them for a moment—as if trying to understand what they were up to—then ran back toward the shrieking and the gnashing and the subterranean sounds of fury. Michael grasped Sarah’s arm, helped hurry her along the last few feet to the end of the pipe. They ran away from the pipe and across the mound.

  “I’m sorry, Michael,” Sarah said, as she pressed the button on the remote. She pressed it hard a second time, and yet again. She held it until …

  … there came a sound.

  A whooshing.

  Sarah had read about that sound. The whooshing of fumes igniting. Men cleaning giant gasoline storage tanks in Bull’s Head. There had been fumes in the tanks—the survivors spoke of the whooshing sound that meant death.

  The sound of flames moving swiftly.

  “Come on,” Sarah said, running toward the pier. She could see the moored watercraft and the skiff, as a thick blue flame thrust out of the massive drainage pipe.

  In the sky, there came the roar of jets. Five or six sleek black silhouettes passing right over them. Jets flying low over the fractured mounds as tongues of blue flames flew out of everywhere now. Fissures glowing from a deep inferno.

  The jets were over them again, surveying at only five hundred feet. Sarah saw the firebombs and missiles strapped to the underbellies and spare gasoline storage cylinders on the wing tips. The pilots didn’t seem to see Sarah or Michael, as the planes passed lower still. Trial runs, Sarah thought. She’d read about the trial runs before an actual bombing. Even if she and Michael made it to the watercraft—it was the fastest—she knew they wouldn’t be out of range in time.

  Suddenly, there came a different roar.

  It sounded like the bellow of an angry monster. Its huge dark form began to lift above the horizon of a ruptured mound. An Army helicopter that was lit like a spaceship rose and hovered above the pier. Shafts of white light blasted down from floodlights mounted on its sides, and there was a familiar face among the soldiers in its open bay.

  “Dad!” Sarah yelled.

  Michael called with her, and ran ahead. In a few moments their father and the two crew soldiers had pulled them into the chopper’s bay. They were aboard, and the pilot was lifting them away and into the night sky above the Kull. The squadron of missile jets waited for the helicopter to clear and then did a final pass over the landfill, dropping their pay-load of fire. The first of the surface explosions came and, for a moment, the landfill blazed like a volcano.

  “Thank God, you reached us,” Sarah said, hugging her dad.

  Michael had buried his head in his father’s chest and was crying. Finally, the three of them looked out through the chopper’s windows. There were several smaller blasts at the surface of the dump. Fireballs rolled across the mounds and spit up from the tunnels below like eruptions from a Roman candle. When the final explosion came, it filled the sky with bright yellow tongues of fire—and the chopper shook.

  15

  FINAL ORDEAL

  “It’s not over,” Sarah heard her father shout over the din of the choppers rotors.

  “I know,” she said.

  The chopper shifted, and Macafee put one arm tightly around his daughter, the other around his son. They held fast in the rear on hard seats of plastic and woven bamboo—behind the jump seats of the two young soldiers. The pilot banked the helicopter sharply and followed the Kull north. One of the soldiers was on the radio. There was static and loud voices on the speaker.

  Then a frantic officer’s voice:

  “THE RATS ARE ATTACKING. THE RATS ARE ATTACKING!”

  There was more static and garbled shouting on the speakers. The radioman switched the signal to his headphones. He turned around to Macafee. “They’re attacking people on the Manhattan Sports Pier. They’re after people Rollerblading. Bowling. Everything they’ve got there. The rats have trapped them—there’s a dance—some kind of charity—at least a thousand people are trapped out there!”

  Michael began to tremble. “Are the rats going to eat more people?”

  “I don’t know,” Sarah said. “People eat people, if they get hungry enough.”

  Her father had leaped up next to the radioman.

  There were screams on the speakers now. A man shouting again. Shrieking. “THE RATS ARE CLIMBING OVER EVERYTHING. THEY’RE BITING. OH, GOD …” The man’s voice was breaking.

  Sobbing.

  The helicopter roared through the sky over the Jersey Naval Yard. Wall Street and the West Side Highway were a blur. Within minutes, the roof-landing pad of the Manhattan Playland and Sports Pier was dead ahead.

  The pier stretched out into the Hudson River, thousands of pilings reaching up from the black water like da
rk fingers clutching the main pier and its extensions. The beginning of the pier was covered with a flow, like dark lava. Sarah stared down from the chopper window at the lights and vast nets of the golf range. Everything was ablaze with floodlights except for the amusement park annex. Its metal-tube roller coaster, Ferris wheel—all the rides—sat in darkness like the skeleton of a leviathan carcass.