Biohazard

6

I took the lead. Janie was right behind me with Morse. Price was in the back. I had three rounds left in my Beretta and that was about the only safety net we had. Scared? No, I was absolutely fucking terrified.

I was thinking hard about Carl and the others. I wondered what they were doing and I prayed they were still alive. But I knew Carl. It would have taken quite an assault by the Scabs to take him out. He was a survivor as they all were. I was surprised that he hadn’t tried to come after us, but maybe he had. I just wanted to link back up with them.

Des Moines by night was dark and forbidding.

The moon was still pretty bright above, but shadows were everywhere, circling, shifting, tangling in the streets. As we rounded the corner from the department store, I could see the vague hulk of the dealership in the distance. On a sunny day it was a short, pleasant hop in the old days. Now, by darkness, it was a slow, hellish crawl through no man’s land. The air was damp, acrid-smelling. Off to the west I could see a flickering red glow. I assumed parts of the city were still burning or had been ignited anew. I could smell a slight odor of smoke, other things I didn’t like to think about. We moved on very carefully. I scoped out the car lots across the way, looking for anything moving out there. I heard a brief, shrill squealing in the distance. Like the sound of an insect…only it was a big, scary sound.

Just relax, I told myself again and again. It’s really not that far.

In the phosphorescence of the moonlight, everything was forbidding and ghostly. Buildings rose like defiled tombs and haunted monoliths. Parked trucks looked like ghost ships rising from the gloom. The skin at the back of my neck was crawling, moving in subtle prickling waves. Something was out there, something was moving around us in the shadows and I new it.

“What was that?” Janie said, suddenly stopping.

The sound of her voice in the stillness made me seize up. “What? I didn’t hear anything.” I wanted it to be true, but I knew it wasn’t. There had been a sound. Something.

Price said, “I would advise a bit of haste on our part, people. Survival by night in the streets of Des Moines is rather minimal at best.”

There he went being clinical again, couching everything in his uppity verse. What he meant to say was, we don’t haul ass, motherfuckers, ain’t gonna be nothing but a stain out here come morning. I ignored him. I stood there with Janie, tensing, my hand greasy on the butt of the Beretta. I decided to start moving when I heard it very clearly this time: a squeaking sound. This was followed a strong odor of decay, of dampness and subterranean dank. The way a sewer might smell, I suppose.

I had smelled it before. I knew what we were up against.

“This is disturbing,” Price said.

“It’s okay. Nash won’t let anything happen to us,” Janie told him like he was some kid in need of reassuring.

Morse circled around us, snapping off shots.

“Knock it the fuck off,” I told him.

What we were facing, if I was right, was something that not even good old Nash could do anything about. I moved forward slowly and I made it maybe six feet before I saw the first of our visitors.

A rat.

It was about the size of a tomcat, its entire body swollen and misshapen with bulging pink cancerous growths that rose from the sparse gray-black fur like fleshy bubbles. In the moonlight I saw them moving.

Every time I saw one I remembered that monster in the storm drains of Cleveland.

“Stay put, don’t panic,” I told the others. “This is probably a scout out scavenging ahead of the main pack.”

Click-click, went Morse.

The rat’s snakelike, scaly tail twitched on the concrete like it knew what I was saying. Its eyes were fixed, blood-red, shining like wet marbles. Its jaws were open, loops of saliva hanging from them. I knew from experience how fast these bastards were. I brought up my Beretta very slowly, very calmly, and drew a bead on old Mr. Rat.

He made a sudden high-pitched squealing sound.

I shot him in the head and he pitched forward, blood running from him in a scarlet pool. I could see the fat, grub-like parasites jumping in his hide.

I pulled Janie away and our chain was on the march again. I knew we were in terrible danger; I just didn’t know what to do about it other than continue on. Maybe, possibly, somehow, we’d make it through. We started to cross the street in the direction of the dealership which looked huge and tomblike in the moonlight, just crawling with shadows. We hadn’t gone far before the rats came out of their hides. They’d been waiting amongst the cars, the main pack, and now here they came. I heard Janie make a disgusted sound in her throat. The rats were everywhere with more arriving all the time. They were huge, absolutely huge. Some of them were the size of full-grown German Shepherds. And all of them dirty and stinking, eyes shining in the darkness, drool running from their jaws, noses twitching.

I knew then that the squealing noise the other rat made was either a cry for help or a warning to the others.

Well, they had the advantage now.

They crept out of the shadows, mutant horrors with growths and white twitching things coming out of their flesh. I did not look too closely. They had closed in on us and there was no way in hell we were going to make the dealership. Going back was out of the question, too, because more rats were filling the streets behind us. Our only avenue of escape was into the buildings behind us. But Janie and I had checked the doors pretty carefully in our run from the Scabs.

There was only one possibility and it was slim.

A narrow dead-ended alley cut between a couple buildings. I saw a fire escape hanging down. The ladder was pulled up, but if it wasn’t rusted too badly, I might be able to pull it down.

“Okay,” I said. “Price, slowly lead us into that alley. That’s where we’re going.”

He didn’t argue. I think by that point even his arrogance had somewhat paled. He led us to the fire escape and the rats moved in, taking their time, closing off any avenue of escape like soldiers in battle formation. They had us and they knew it.

The fire escape. I leaped up, grabbed it and pulled down with all my strength and weight. It slid down an inch, two, then seized. I threw everything into it, flopping and twisting, wishing I still had my beer belly. Janie jumped up and grabbed me around the waist and we swung together like a couple acrobats and I could feel my pants pulling down and I had sudden ludicrous vision of how ridiculous I’d look with my pants around my ankles when the rats feasted on me. Particularly with our crazy photographer taking pictures of my torment.

The ladder let go and let go fast. Next thing I knew we were on our asses in the alley. I got Janie onto the ladder. “Go, go, go!” I told her, the rats moving now, sensing something was terribly amiss with their midnight snack.

Morse went up it like a monkey and Price moved pretty quick and then I was climbing. A rat leaped and seized the toe of my boot. I shook him free and kicked another away and I made the platform above. Two rats were climbing. I stomped one on the snout and he fell, the other was too big so I shot him in the head and down he went. And by then, the alley was a sea of mulling rats. We slid the ladder up and there wasn’t a damn they could do about it.

They were squealing and squeaking, feeding on the one I’d shot, but mostly just pissed off. A few of them tried climbing the alley wall, but only made a few feet before they fell back. I waited there until they grew bored and left the alley.

We made it.