Hurt World One and the Zombie Rats (27 page)

‘Doors and air vents. And I would not like
the sort of death that would be had if they caved in under the
weight of rats. Trapped in a room to be eaten alive would certainly
lack honour. What our enemy has is numbers and plenty of them and
so what we’ll need is resupplies and reinforcements. That means sky
drops.’

‘Sir, the Conservation Centre is not
responding,’ said the communications officer, hunched over his
transmitter.

‘They may have their hands full,’ said Emsly
grimly. ‘Forget it. Contact the Artic Command Centre in Alaska.
Inform them of our circumstances. Tell them we have a code
red.’

*

The Peace Keeper magno-chopper was skimming
in fast towards the military base. A young Marine acting as lookout
on the parade ground nervously took aim with his Led Tex Rifle.
Major Emsly rushed forward and snatched
the
rifle
out of his
hands. ‘That’s not our enemy, son,’ he said. ‘In fact, if not for
the people on board
that
craft, we
wouldn’t have the early warning that might just give us half a
chance.’ He handed back the rifle.
‘Fetch
them
when
they
land
and bring them here.’

‘Yes, sir,’ replied the soldier
emphatically.

‘Your name is John, isn’t it?’

‘
No
,
sir
. James Murley.’ The
young
soldier stiffened
into
a
salute and
started to
run
in the direction of the magno-chopper. Emsly, however,
grabbed
him
quickly
with
a
restraining
hand
. ‘Hold on a moment. Let’s see where it finishes
up
, Murley.
It’s
liable
to
bounce around
awhile
before
it’s
done
.’

The magno-chopper was now well over the
island
.
Only a few
miles
away from the Marine base. Black smoke continued to
pour from its catastrophically damaged tail. Its altitude continued
in steady decline, dropping below
the
distant
hills. A plume of smoke and dust
marked its impact with the ground
a
moment
later.

Emsly turned back to the young private.
‘Pretty good fIying. I would rate that crash as survivable. Take my
Poison 130 Fast Tank and go get them. And if all you get is a dying
breath, make sure that breath is spent on the subject of rats. I
want to know if our missile misfire was sabotage. I want to know if
someone intended for us to be trapped within our building with
thousands of human eating rodents pouring in.’

Private Murley nodded and ran hard towards
the motor-pool.

Emsly watched the smoke rising above the
hills a moment longer, mulling over the extraordinary circumstances
that were fast unfolding; he was reminded of what his first
instructor told his class on their first day at Quantico: ‘War
never gets old.’ He turned back to the defensive position being
hastily assembled at the flagpole.

*

‘Davey!’ screamed the bald headed scientist.
‘Davey!’

His beloved eight year old Siberian husky had
run off into the ruins of the old quarantine
building
not
far
from
the
Polar
Bear
Conversation
. The building had crumbled into piles
of rubble with only the corners still standing. The scientist
slowed down as he entered the ruins, treating the fragments of
brick littering the ground with the caution afforded a minefield,
for a twisted ankle now would take his chances of survival to
virtually zero. Nonetheless, he loved his dog enough that he could
not shake the instinct to pursue him.

‘Davey,’ he said, trying to moderate his
voice – no easy task considering his heart was thumping his ribs,
adrenaline flooding his system. The rat storm through the camp had
been a horror
beyond
compare. Years of
patient, dedicated research had been lost in a moment as the
rodents feasted with manic ferocity on the polar bears and their
handlers. Even the dominant male polar bears had been defenceless
against them, bucking and fighting until the weight of numbers
finally became too much to bear. The scientist’s name was Len
Carlisle and he had been lucky to be on the far side of the camp
when the attack came. He could have made Dr Flist’s all-terrain
tractor, only Davey had been spooked and ran off. And when Davey
ran, it sometimes took the end of the island to stop him. Anyway,
once he had the lead on, that’s where they’d go. He needed time to
think, to take in what had happened. He was an Associate Professor
of Zoology at Chicago University, he had the deductive skills to
understand a rat plague, to survive it. There would be precedents
and theories. And opportunities: tragedies had led to some of the
very best science.

He stepped into the centre of the ruins and
looked around him. ‘Davey?’ There came the noise of scurrying from
amidst knee-high rocks at what appeared to be a lost doorway. To
his disappointment it wasn’t his Siberian husky that came running
but rather a giant rat. It ran up to his feet and started sniffing
inquisitively. It might have looked cute if not for the blood on
its
teeth
and
the tip of its nose. It was quickly
joined by another and then another and they were also both sporting
blood. Dr Carlisle turned and started to run but tripped over and
cut his hands on the brick shards and when he looked up all he saw
was rats, hundreds of them. He screamed and tried to fend them off
as they leapt up onto his face and neck. But then they were biting
his
hands as well. And all he saw was
rats.

*

Clorvine fell out of the twisted wreckage of
the magno-chopper, landing flat on her stomach. The ground was
rocky and cold and she lay there a protracted moment before
murmuring, ‘I can feel vibrations on my face. I think they’re
coming. Bring the guns and you’d better hurry, it sounds like a lot
them.’

The tank driven by Private Murley pulled up
alongside her. Murley emerged from the top hatch and dropped nimbly
down to the ground. Clorvine could see her reflection in his shiny
black boots.

‘Are you hurt?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Clorvine replied. ‘How does
it look from up there?’

Murley looked over her a moment. ‘You’ll know
more on your feet.’ He patiently helped her up.

Her weapons bag was meanwhile tossed through
the shattered windscreen of the magno-chopper and Kaptu emerged
after it with a knife between his teeth.

‘Are you a Marine?’ he muttered.

‘I’m a private but the tank belongs to the
base commander. He has invited you back there.’

‘Are you sure there is still a base? We saw
the explosion.’

‘It’s
damaged
, but
plenty worth defending. Marines do not get eaten by rats.’

‘Then we’ve come to the right place, but why
would the camp commander spare his tank to come rescue us?’

‘Because the Major thinks you know who sent
the rats against us.’

Kaptu picked up the weapons bag and headed
for the tank. He looked over the cannons, missile launches and
saturation guns. It was a Poison 130 Fast Tank, probably a leftover
of the Artic Wars. Dated but it would do. ‘While we’ve got the use
of the Major’s wheels,’ Kaptu said, ‘we can investigate the more
pressing question: why?’

‘I could not even begin to contemplate that.
The Marine Corps consider this deployment as nothing less than the
world’s highest butt-hole. The nearest things to action in these
parts are the marches and boot shining.’

‘Do you have any classified installations?’
queried Clorvine, finally getting her breath back.

‘I’m only a private,’ replied Murley.

‘A private on a very small island. You must
know something.’

‘There’s the army base, the polar bear camp
and a weather monitoring station. And that’s it. Didn’t you see?
You were above the island long enough before you crashed into
it.’

‘What do you know about the weather station?’
asked Kaptu.

‘I have never been there. It’s off-limits.
Apparently, it has sensitive equipment on site.’

‘Perhaps more sensitive than you can
imagine.’ Kaptu gazed hard at Clorvine. ‘The Artic War Peace Treaty
required all combatant nations to remove their weapons of mass
destruction from within their protectorates. It seems most nations,
however, settled merely for removing them from sight. You cannot
blame them, I suppose. There is never a lot of trust after
wars.’

The weather station’s satellite and antennae
towers were just visible in the distance.

Kaptu murmured, ‘When the missile in the base
misfired, you lost a roof. If the missile under the weather station
misfires, the damage could be cataclysmic.’

‘I don’t much know what you’re talking
about,’ snapped Murley. He jumped up onto the tank and swung his
legs into the hatch. ‘But it is my job to find out.’

Kaptu motioned to follow him, only for
Clorvine to grab his arm. ‘Are you sure you aren’t simply trying to
take my mind off the rats?’ she queried dubiously.

‘This is bigger than rats,’ Kaptu
replied.

*

Dr Flist screamed as a rat sank its teeth
into his neck. He ripped it away and flung it out of the tractor.
It landed amongst a thousand other rats all trying to get on board.
They were running at phenomenal speeds and the rocky ground was
preventing him from picking up the speed necessary to shake them.
He had already pushed the tractor through a number of bumps that
had sent his heart into his mouth. This was no place to break
down.

There was crying behind him. Flist would have
ignored it if only it hadn’t been accompanied by the smell of shit.
He glanced over his shoulder at the eclectic mix of kids in the
backseat. There were the offspring of scientists, scouts, and
soldiers. And the one grown up amidst them was an environmentalist,
Jackie Kaur. ‘Everything is going to be alright,’ he said in as
reassuring a voice as he could manage - which was not very
reassuring with his neck having been ripped open by a rat. It
certainly didn’t stop the crying. He took the hunting knife from
the vacant front passenger seat and handed it to the young girl
directly behind him. ‘Use this if you like.’ She took it, but it
was almost bigger than she was. Jackie Kaur promptly snatched it
away with a disparaging glance Flist’s way. Flist mostly just
noticed the empty seat. It was even more so with the hunting knife
gone. Carlisle should have been sitting there. Why couldn’t he have
just left that stupid dog alone? Flist wondered if he should have
gone after him in his tractor, but dismissed that thought in an
instant: there was only one place to be with a marauding army of
rodents in pursuit, and that was amongst the greatest concentration
of weapons available.

At last the tall wire fence of the Marine
base was coming into view. Flist gathered all his attention upon
it, hitting hard the embankment leading in. ‘Get ready,’ he called
out to his passengers. ‘I’ll park alongside the fence and we’ll
climb into the base from there.’

‘Are you crazy?’ cried Kaur. ‘The kids will
never make it.’

Flist glanced at her in the rearview mirror.
Her eyes were wide open and bloodshot. Flist recalled first being
introduced to her – he had been busy collecting ice samples at the
time and had barely even looked up. Now he could see how dangerous
she was: an ardent conservationist who would place principles above
her own skin - not a good idea when the rats had such a taste for
it.

‘They’re not about to open the gates for us,’
he yelled pleadingly, ‘not with the uninvited guests we’re bringing
along. And if I smash down the gate that will defeat the purpose of
having come here in the first place.’

‘Don’t you see it won’t matter what we do,’
Kaur cried back at him. ‘Nothing is going to stop those little
buggers. Including that fence. It isn’t even electrified.’ She
pointed to where the fence was wilting precariously as the rats
piled on top of each other all the way to the top. ‘They can climb.
And you can bet that they dig.’ She strained to see beyond the rats
to the military base beyond the fence. ‘It is presumptuous anyway
to think anyone would be alive in that base unless they are in a
nuclear bomb proof bunker. And if they’ve got one of them, I doubt
we will be invited. The only thing that’s certain is that on this
side of the fence we get eaten sooner.’

Flist frowned. ‘Alright, damn it. Let’s just
hope the Marines don’t mistake us for one big rat.’ He veered the
tractor sharply into the fence, crushing a whole section under its
wheels. The manicured lawns of the base, genetically modified
Tennessee blue grass, were instantly inundated by the rats,
swarming in and out of the tractor wheels and veering away as an
even stronger scent of human propelled them in a different
direction.

Major Emsly was watching the breech from his
position by the flagpole. He sucked in a calming breath through
gritted teeth. As the rats poured into the base, he turned his
attention to the defensive perimeter of soldiers, realising now
against what standard it had to be measured. Thirty soldiers
heavily armed in a tight circle to take on thousands of rats. He
had no idea if it could be done. This was not the kind of battle he
had analysed at Quantico. But perhaps one day it would be, and his
name would be at the forefront. ‘Do you want me to smoke that
damned tractor too, sir?’’ cried on of his soldiers, aiming his
rifle.