The Rats (12 page)

Harris helped the sergeant with his torn knee up to the second floor. As he limped along, the policeman said: ‘I’ve been told these bites can be dangerous. Didn’t the kid who died from one last week come from this school?” ‘Yes, he did. His name was Keogh.’

‘That’s right. He must have been pretty badly bitten, wasn’t he?’

‘I don’t know,’ Harris lied.

He took him into the Headmaster’s study and sat him on a straight-backed chair.

‘Oh dear. Have you been wounded too?’ Ainsley asked querulously, reaching for the medicine box.

‘Only the one bite, sir. Nothing much. Just stings a bit,’ the policeman told him.

Harris went along to the next-door classroom and rapped on the door.

‘It’s all right,’ he called out. ‘Let me in.’

He heard the grating of furniture being dragged back and the door was opened to him. The room was completely full now with teachers, pupils, policemen and firemen.

He raised his hand for the children to be quiet. ‘Everything’s under control now. The stairs are being blocked by water, and gas–harmless to us–is being pumped into the classrooms downstairs. We should be able to leave fairly soon.’

‘Thank you very much for your appraisal of the situation, Mr Harris,’ Grimble said acidly. ‘I’m sure the Chief-collrse .’

There’s one rat the gas won’t destroy, Harris thought.

The rats in the school were slowly exterminated. The ones not drowned in the basement were finished off by the gas.

The others on the ground-floor scurried around, swimming through the rising water, frantically looking for a means of escape. They climbed on top of radiators, gnawed through doors into classrooms and tried to escape through the windows only to be stopped by the meshwork grill fixed to the outside frames. They jumped on to desk-tops, cupboards, anything above ground level, to escape the torrent of water. Then gas seeped through and one by one, convulsing violently, rearing up on their hind legs, they finally dropped, some into the water, others sprawling on the tops that might have saved them from drowning.

Many tried again and again to crawl through the hole in the door at the end of the corridor, but were beaten back by the powerful jet of water, Their panic caused a madness in them. They fought amongst themselves, whenever they collided or whenever more than one tried to reach the same point of safety.

Then a pack would single out one particular rat for no apparent reason, and attack it, killing it in a matter of seconds because no resistance was offered. Then the pack would pick on one of its own members and destroy it. Thus the numbers were depleted.

Soon, they were all dead.

Chapter Twelve

It became known as ‘Black Monday’ for Londoners. Reports came in at regular intervals all day long; reports of deaths and injuries. The Underground tragedy was the major disaster, the school had almost been the second. Deaths occurred in bizarre ways: the man who went to get his car out and found his garage full of the vermin; the baby left in his pram in the morning sun, laughing at the black creatures, to be dragged out and killed; the priest saying his morning devotions, alone in his church; the two electricians rewiring an old house for new tenants; a pensioner, living in the top of a new council building, opening her front door to take in her milk; the dustman who took off a dustbin lid to find two creatures lurking inside.

There were miraculous escapes too; a postman delivering letters to a basement flat turned to find three sets of evil-looking eyes staring at him from a coal bunker–the rats made no attempt to attack him as he stumbled backwards up the stone steps; a gang of dockers were trapped by rats in a dockside shed -

they escaped by climbing stacked crates, through the skylight and across the roof; a milkman warded off two black rats by throwing milk bottles at them; a housewife found her hall filled with the creatures – she ran upstairs and jumped from a bedroom window into the street.

But perhaps the most fantastic escape of all was the newspaper boy, on his early-morning round, who took a short cut across debris to find himself in the midst of thirty or forty giant rats. Amazingly cool for a fourteen-year-old boy, he calmly walked through them, taking great care not to tread on any. For no apparent reason, they let him pass without harm. The boy would never have been believed save for the fact he was seen from the road by two men on their way to work. There was no explanation for the phenomenon, no logical reason.

People in Stepney, where most of the incidents occurred, were in a state of fear–and anger. They blamed the local authorities for the whole situation, insisting that proper sanitation for the area had never been maintained to its full and proper extent. Old bomb-sites had been neglected since the war; houses that were condemned for years still remained standing; garbage from markets and rubbish dumps were never cleared soon enough. All breeding places for filth–all sanctuaries for vermin. The local councils blamed the government, implying that the investigation carried out by the Department of Health was not thorough; that not enough money had been allotted to the task of destroying the pests; that too little tune and labour had been allowed on the project; that not enough care had been taken to ensure the total extinction of the vermin. The government ordered a public inquiry in which the ultimate responsibility was laid squarely and irrevocably on the shoulders of Foskin,s the Under-Secretary of State.

He accepted responsibility and resigned, knowing it was expected of him. The Ratkill organisation came in for stiff criticism too. They were accused of negligence and publicly reprimanded by the government but claimed they were dealing with an unknown and unpredictable species of rodent.

They asked to be given another chance to tackle the menacing problem and were informed that virtually every pest-control organisation in the country was in fact to be brought in to deal with the situation, and all were to work strictly in conjunction with each other.

It became a political issue, the Labour Party claiming the Conservatives, the party in power, never really cared about the living conditions of the working-class people and had neglected to clear slums, allowed filth to pile up in the streets and had never implemented proposed plans (proposed by Labour when they were in office) for a completely new net-work of sewers to cope with London’s vast waste problem.

The Conservatives replied that the living conditions of London’s working class had not suddenly degenerated when their party had taken over Parliamentary power, but had been allowed to deteriorate by the previous Labour Government. They quoted statistics of huge new development areas, not just in London’s East End, but in every poorer section of the city. Pollution, they said, was being rescinded dramatically.

All eastern regions of the city’s Underground were temporarily shut down until a full purge of all tunnels had been completed. However, most people declined to use any section of the Tube system and rush hours became chaotic.

Dockers came out on strike, refusing to work in dockside areas where the menace seemed strongest.

Dustmen refused to risk their lives clearing rubbish that could contain the deadly vermin. Troops were called in to deal with the problem–rubbish could not be allowed to accumulate at such a precarious time.

The municipal workers who maintained the sewers naturally resisted any persuasion to continue their work.

When news of the deaths from the disease carried by the rats became known, matters became even more critical.

People living in the East London boroughs demanded immediate evacuation. The government urged them to remain calm–the situation was firmly under control. Parents refused to send their children to school.

The war-time measure of child evacuation came into being once more and the children were shunted off to all parts of the country.

Poisons were laid in cellars, gardens and dustbins, killing small rats, mice and many household pets.

Restaurants were mistrusted and not used. Many butchers decided to close up shop for a while–the thought of being amongst all that raw meat proved to be too uncomfortable. Any job that entailed working beneath ground was turned down. Any job that involved night-work was refused.

The attacks continued and more people died from injuries or disease, or both.

Although the pest-control companies were meant to be working together on counter measures against the apparent rat invasion, each tried to out-do the other in finding the solution. Poisons proved fairly ineffectual for the rats seemed to feed mainly on human or animal flesh. Sodium Fluoroacetate and Fluoracetamide were used after the normal poisons, Zinc Phosphide and Arsenious Oxide, had failed, but these too seemed to have little effect.

Gas, as had been proved in the attack on the school, was the effective answer, but the rats had to be caught in a confined space. It was poured into sewers and basements of old buildings but when teams of men wearing protective clothing were sent down to investigate the results, they found many dead normal-sized rats but only a small number of dead giant rats.

Harris was staring out of the window of his flat when the phone rang. He’d been gazing at the small private park set in the square, surrounded by tall, terraced houses, magnificent in their Regency days but slightly dilapidated now. The teacher was waiting to be assigned to another school now that St Michael’s and others in that area had been shut down until matters were improved. His mind always became more relaxed when he studied the peaceful little park, and after the ordeal in the school, his taut nerves needed all the relaxation they could get.

He answered the phone, its shrill cry stirring up the tension again.

’Hello, Mr Harris? Foskins here.’

After this initial surprise, Harris answered. ‘Hello, Foskins. What can I... ?’

‘We wondered if you could help us in a small way, old chap?’

‘Well, of course, I... ‘

‘Just a few questions some of our boys would like to ask you. Nothing much, shouldn’t take long. You see, it turns out that you’re one of the very few people that have had actual contact with these killer rats and lived. If you could come along this afternoon... ?’

‘Right. But I thought you’d been... ‘

‘Dismissed? On the surface, I have, old boy, had to be.

Public demand. But I’m afraid the Ministry rather needs me at this particular time, so don’t believe everything you read in the papers. Now, here’s the address I want you to come to.

He was greeted by Foskins himself when he arrived at the address he’d been given. It had turned out to be Poplar Town Hall, a natural enough base for operations, he supposed. Foskins led him to a large assembly room, the walls covered with enlarged maps of the area, diagrams of the Underground and sewage networks, blow-ups of the giant rats themselves vivisected as well as whole, even photographs of their spoors.

The room was a hive of activity but Foskins took him over to a group of men gathered round a table in quiet, unexcited discussion.

‘Gentlemen, this is Mr Harris, the teacher I told you of,’

Foskins introduced him. ‘This is our team of experts. Researchers from the major pest-control companies, biologists, sanitation experts from our own department–even a couple of chemical warfare chaps? He nodded hello.

‘Let me just briefly bring you up to date and then we’ll put some questions to you,’ said Foskins. ‘We’ve examined these monsters thoroughly and haven’t really found anything unusual about them apart from their size of course and their slightly larger brain. Their teeth are bigger, but only in proportion to their body. Their ears, which seem peculiarly long at first because of their nakedness, are also in exact proportion to their body. But the Black rats normally have longer ears than the brown species. Which brings us to an interesting point. ’ He paused, indicating that Harris should take a seat, then went on: ‘The Brown Rat seems to have vanished from London. Since the Brown rat is unable to climb as well as the Black, over the years it has had less chance to survive in the city. Whereas the Black rat is able to scale walls and leap across rooftops, the Brown has found it increasingly harder to gain access into premises that have barriers against them. For years, the two species have been battling for superiority and now it appears that the Black have won.

We’ve found no trace of the Brown, not even its spoors which are quite different from those of the Black.’

‘It’s natural to assume that the introduction of the freak giant Black rats tipped the balance,’ interrupted one of the group of men.

‘Yes, rather like a small country acquiring the Hydrogen bomb,’ continued Foskins. ‘Well, it seems they completely vanquished the Brown rat. One of our younger members,’ he looked at the man who had just spoken, ‘came up with the idea of bringing back multitudes of the Brown to do battle with the Black, giving them the advantage of numbers. Needless to say, we have no intention of turning East London into a battleground for vermin. The consequences could have been disastrous.’

The young researcher turned a deep red and studied his fingernails intently.

‘So this is the villain we face.’ Foskins held up a photograph of a large, but dead, rat. Rattusrattus . Black rat.

Or Ship rat. There are some of the species known to be this size in tropical countries. We think a member, or members of that species came over in a ship and bred with our own common variety.

Because of the difficulties involved, we suspect they were brought over secretly. The zoos claim no knowledge of such an undertaking and as the whole idea would be illegal anyway, we don’t expect an individual to come forward to admit it.’

‘Now what we want from you, Mr Harris, is information,’ said another member of the committee.

‘Anything at all that might tell us more about these creatures. You see, we haven’t managed to capture any alive yet and you are the one person that has had close contact with them on more than one occasion and lived. We don’t know anything of their behaviour pattern, where they go after they’ve attacked, why sometimes they won’t attack at all, and what’s caused their hunger for human flesh. The slightest peculiarity you may have noticed could be of invaluable help to us.’

Harris told them of his experiences with the rats; about Keogh, one of their first victims, and how they had chased the boy along the canal, scaling a six-foot wall but letting him escape; the episode with Ferris, the little man from Ratkill, and of their first sighting of the vermin, swimming in a kind of formation; how one had stopped on the opposite bank of the canal to study him, suddenly disappearing through the fence.

‘Did you frighten it, is that what made it go?’ he was asked.

‘No, No. It wasn’t fear. It seemed to raise its head, as though it had suddenly heard something, almost as if it had been called. But I heard nothing.’

One of the researchers spoke up. ‘They do have an acute sense of hearing, as do many animals or mammals. Rats can locate their offspring in a field of corn by its high-pitched whistle. Nothing unusual. In fact, my company is working on a method of rooting out rats from buildings by the use of ultrasonic sound beams. It’s in its early stages as yet, but it certainly seems to work.’

’Well, maybe that was it. But it is unusual the way they study you. It’s happened more than once, almost as if they’re reading your mind. It’s uncanny.’ He went on to tell them of the battle in the school, relating every detail he could remember. When he’d concluded there was silence around the table.

‘Sorry, it’s not much help to you,’ he said, feeling he’d left something out, his mind groping unclearly towards it.

‘On the contrary, Mr Harris,’ smiled Foskins, ‘it’s been quite useful. Now if you leave us to digest the information you’ve given us... ‘

The young researcher whom Foskins had caused to blush earlier sprang to his feet excitedly. ‘Infect them,’ he cried.

All eyes turned towards him.

‘Look, we can’t poison them because they only want human or animal flesh. But we could infect them.’

‘How exactly?’ asked the sceptical Foskins.

‘We inject a group of animals–dogs, cats–what about Brown rats?–with a virus, something highly infectious, deadly to rats–our bio-chemists could easily come up with one–set them loose at certain points that Mr Harris could show us–that section of the canal, for instance–the infected animals are attacked by the Black rats, they themselves are infected, they spread it amongst their own kind.

They destroy themselves!’

There was silence for a few moments.

‘It could infect people. It could cause an epidemic,’ someone ventured,

‘Not if we used the right virus.’

‘It could kill all the animals in and around London.’