Safari - 02 (25 page)

As he thumbed the third shell into the weapon, the door quivered.

“Nobody told you about me, eh?” Gus snarled as he shoved home the last shell. “I got a reputation around these parts.”

He pulled the door. With a battle cry, he unloaded the shotgun, wrecking terrible wounds in the tide. No sooner did he kill, however, then more rats rushed in, crawling over the devastated corpses of their brethren and immediately filling the small areas where he’d gotten glimpses of the floor.

Gus stomped, crushing twos and threes with each strike. Each time he lifted his leg, rats fell from his lower shin. The sound of their bodies rustling against each other chilled his blood, that low droning whisper telling him of the increasing volume of vermin in his house. So
many
! There were so goddamn
many
.

He lashed out at them, feeling several behind him now mounting an attack at his calves. He crushed bodies, skulls, and limbs. Rat tails spiked the mass and bobbed crazily, yellow and sick looking. The footing became treacherous as the pulped bodies of the undead rats began to pile up, becoming slippery lumps of mashed guts and flesh. His boot slipped at one point, and he stumbled against the wall. He straightened, surprised to feel a rat clamp onto the material covering the V of his bent knee. More snapped at the Nomex, struggling to climb up his lower legs. Gus violently brushed them off and crushed them underfoot. He grabbed a fistful of tails and whipped three of the creatures into the wall, their heads exploding. That one gesture threw him off balance, and he almost lost his grip on the Benelli. His back slapped up against a wall, and he had to steady himself before shuffling back into the garage, reluctantly abandoning the captain.

He tried to close the door, but rats jammed into the closing crevice. Gus dropped the shotgun and kicked at the rats, but the bodies were legion, and with every boot he gave them, more struggled into the shrinking gap. Crouching and pressing his shoulder into the door, he felt the wood shake from the weight of the onslaught, and darkly realized that he
might
have a problem.

He quickly extracted his Bowie knife from his left boot. He slashed downward, decapitating the heads of several, sawing his way through the rest, still pressing his bulk against the door to force it shut. The rats seem to have no fear of being cut or pinched in half by the closing door, and again a stab of alarm burst within Gus.

With a final shove, he sealed the door, nipping off several heads and snouts. Twitching whiskers lined the wooden seam. Shutting the door gave him no respite as the rats inside the garage still gnawed on the Nomex, gnashing at the protective material sheathing his legs and lower body. The ferocity of their attack momentarily stunned him.

But only for a second.

He did a maniacal jig, flattening the rodents as they crowded around his feet. His strength ebbing, he aimed his boot heel at the last remaining few and, one by one, crushed the unlife from their small bodies with angry grunts.

The door shook from the pressure beyond. Gus reloaded the Benelli, thinking about the outside gate, the house, and the rats that only a door’s thickness kept at bay. He held the shotgun at arm’s length and realized it was next to useless. His boots were doing much more damage, but he couldn’t kill the army like that without exhausting himself. Watching the door crumbling second by second, its base thrumming from the monstrous assault, Gus knew that all the doors in the house would suffer the same fate. That thought alone made his anger and hate resurface, swamping his doubt.

He went to the outer garage door, gripped the bottom, and hoisted it up. Rats crawled in as he looped underneath the gap and closed the door behind him, trapping some inside the garage. The rest came at him, but he kicked them away. In the diminishing sunlight, he jogged across the grounds, toward the wall. The rats coming under the gate flowed toward the house. A few stragglers broke away from the column and came after him, but he ignored them as he stood back and examined the holes in the gate. Gus threw himself at the ragged openings, crushing heads and bodies as they struggled to enter the compound.

“Little shits. Little fuckin’
shits!
”

He flattened an untold number of rats, squishing them as they pulled themselves through the tunnels in the wood. Sweat ran down his face and his sides, but he kept killing. When he directed his attention at one section, rats clawed away the dead and forced their way through. The rats already inside the gate stopped marching toward the house and attacked him from behind, nipping at his heels and lower legs with feral abandon. The Nomex held, and he squashed even more until he looked up from killing and spied a ladder against the wall.

Gus bounded over the furry corpses and scampered up the ladder rungs, thinking to drop his load of Molotovs on the invaders on the other side of the wall. He reached the top of the wall and pressed his chest against it.

And gasped.

A tsunami had come up the side of the mountain. An unholy wave of fur and white stringy tail and tooth and claw surged around the husks of unmoving cars, pushing against the wall and gate. The rodent army reached at least as far back as the treeline, where shadow melted their hides into the darkness. The scope of the assault paralyzed Gus and made his mouth hang open.
Millions
, his mind whispered.
Millions
.

A crack of wood hooked his attention. The base of the gate bulged in places and Gus thought he saw a puppy-sized head spear through the wood in a burst of splinters—a rat’s head, a
big
rat’s head.

He fumbled at the ruck sack and pulled out a Molotov. He got out his lighter and lit the fuse. Taking aim, he slung at the mass below the wall where it exploded in a wave of flame, illuminating countless rats. He lit another and threw it, the firebomb erupting in a swirl of fire on the road, dead on target.

“Yeah,” Gus growled, regaining some of his lost confidence while lighting another. He tossed the third. The bottle shattered, and a puddle of fire enveloped a section of the creatures. The snap and crackle of burning flesh rose above the almost electrical hum coming from the army of rats. He threw the last four Molotovs at the dead in rapid succession, lighting up the night when the firebombs crashed into their targets.

The rats burned. Some of the smaller ones winked out of sight, smothered by the larger bodies of their brethren, while several stopped in their tracks and died in tiny blazes.

Others, however, forged ahead blindly until the gate stopped them.

Gus felt his stomach drop when several fiery corpses smacked into the gate’s wooden base and ignited others. In seconds, a fire rose and grew as a steady stream of burning flesh fed the conflagration.

“Oh, dear Jesus.”

He couldn’t believe his eyes, couldn’t believe that his bombardments just might be the key to bringing down his best defense.

And he had inadvertently caused it.

Feeling sick, Gus hurried down the ladder. He needed more firebombs from the garage. His only chance was to lob Molotovs upon them when they got inside the wall. Laboring through the rats already inside the compound, he returned to the house and, with a heave, opened the garage door just enough to get through, then closed it behind him. Once inside, he dispatched the rats that had followed him with his boots, and crushed the ones trapped inside from when he first opened the garage door.

He paused for a few moments to gather his strength, then made his way to the Molotovs and refilled his pack. Once ready, he went to the door leading into the house and placed his back to it. Sounds of the rats’ incessant gnawing made him set his jaw. The door wasn’t going to be there much longer. They would chew their way through it as they had with the outer gate.
High ground
, blared through his head, and he thought of the attic. The wood pressed against his shoulder vibrated with growing intensity. If he was going to get going, he had to do it right then.

He threw open the door.

Rats fell into the garage, almost knee high. For seconds, Gus could only stand and stare, mouth dropping open at the sight before him. Rats covered everything. They filled the mudroom, the hall, and the floor beyond. They crawled over each over and attacked his shins. The thought of actually pushing his way through that many rats almost made him retreat back into the garage, but that wasn’t where he wanted to go. He wanted to go
up
.

He kicked and stomped on rats as he struggled to close the door behind him. Closing the door seemed important, as it was one less place the rats had penetrated. Once he shut it, he turned around. Holding the Benelli in front of him, he waded forward, stepping with caution and placing a shoulder against the nearby wall. The weight of the rats sucked at his boots like quicksand. Twice, he almost fell, his feet slipping from under him and only saving himself by flinging his back against the wall. He got past the mudroom and into the hall, trudged a few more feet, and turned the corner into the living room. The rats covered the floor, and a grinning captain came into view, still on the sofa, as if everything was just jolly
rosy
.

Gus lunged for the stairs, fastening a hand on the railing and pulling himself from the thrashing floor. Rats, their jaws clamped onto loose folds of the Nomex, went with him. He slapped most away and rolled his lower back against the bannisters, scrubbing off any clingers. A quick glance to the side showed him the rodents had toppled the Christmas tree. That infuriated him, and he crushed any trying to scale the lower steps. Seconds later, he turned and fled up the stairs, vowing to return for the old sailor.

He reached the top and saw the dangling string of the attic stairway. He grabbed it and pulled. The door came down with a metallic yawn. He unfolded the steps and bolted up into the attic. He turned to pull the steps up behind him and froze.

Rats were slinking up the stairwell to the second floor. Beyond them and rising like a writhing, black surf were hundreds more of the undead vermin. He quickly brought up the folding stairs, then pulled the chain for the single light bulb. The skylight beckoned, the night beyond beginning to deepen. He threw open the latch and pried open the window. Stars shone through wisps of smoke from the city. The incline of the roof was perhaps forty degrees and coated with red-brown shingles. He twisted around and saw the peak of the roof six or seven feet away. He crawled through the window, then climbed until he reached the apex.

On the other side of the house, the snow had melted enough so that he couldn’t distinguish between what was rat and what wasn’t.

Then he heard the crack.

He looked toward the gate and saw the glow of the fire on the other side. He heard another snap and felt his stomach lurch. The rats, being undead, were no longer afraid of the open flames, and while a section burned, there were still enough holes in the base for the creatures to worm through.

With another deep crack, a section of timber buckled inward. A virtual deluge of indistinct blackness gushed inside the stone walls. More timbers surrendered to the jaws gnashing away at them; another gout of foulness erupted inside the compound. Flames flickered through the breach and burned at the edges as the second river of invaders merged with the first.

All flowing toward the house.

“You
fuckers
!” Gus straddled the rooftop, pulled off his rucksack, and opened it.

“Ready, boys?” he asked the captain’s marines.

Hooah
.

He pulled out one of the bottles and his lighter. He lit the wick, and a high flame split the night. He heaved the firebomb toward the gate. Its flame fluttered as it fell about twelve feet in front of the wall. The ground erupted in a flash, throwing back the dark and revealing an area teeming with rats. The fire flickered and dimmed as the invaders ran over them, quickly dousing the fire with their bodies. Gus lit a second Molotov and heaved it. The bomb fell about ten feet short of the gate, but ignited more surface area, and more rats. Some of the creatures caught fire and streaked away from the impact zone, like bright rays from a dying sun.

“
Fuckers
!” Gus lit and flung the rest of the Molotovs, one by one. The fifth one actually made it within feet of the gate, and Gus almost wished it hadn’t for it only revealed the army rushing inside the wall. The sight paralyzed Gus for seconds until he shook free of it, lit the sixth firebomb, and sent it sailing through the night sky, the burning wick fluttering. That one landed short, too, but went up with a
whoosh
, setting vermin ablaze.

Too many
, Gus thought dismally,
too goddamn many
. He threw the last bomb at the ground, knowing he would only kill a mere handful. Even as his last bomb went up, the second and third fires were suppressed by the sheer unflinching mass of the attacking rats. The seemingly unending torrent ripped through the growing holes in the wall, and he felt a fresh stab of fear. An
ocean
had come for him.

“Jesus.” Gus had about two dozen more Molotovs in the garage, if he could
get
to them, but not even that many would stop the unholy force that had come seeking his flesh. The futility of his situation hit hard.

How had they found him? They were fucking dead rats, for Christ’s sake!

Then, he remembered the poor dead bastard out on the highway.

“
You’re my marker.
”

He recalled the way the rats branched out in search of meat, how they had sniffed him out. They had smelled the meat on the highway, all those corpses he’d left as an experiment, drawing them closer to his home.

The bodies outside the wall
… He’d left the bodies of the first wave of gimps to rot; the fire hadn’t destroyed all of them, then the snow had come. Later, the snow had melted enough for the stench of rotting meat to be carried to the noses of the hungry rats. And when they came, no doubt coaxed on by the burning city, they
all
came to feast, just like a
Connect the Dots
puzzle.