The Rats

’We’ve got to stop the bloody things getting up the stairs!’

Without further argument, the firemen began to descend.

‘Mr Harris, there is no need for one to lose one’s temper.’

Grimble’s head was sticking out from a nearby classroom window. ‘If we all remain calm...”Shit!’

Grimble’s head disappeared abruptly. Harris smiled to himself. At least he was getting some satisfaction from today.

He looked down to see the firemen talking to his superiors, pointing out his window. He saw them nod and the firemen run over to where two others were controlling a hose. The streaming jet of water died and the heavy hose was man-handled towards the base of the long ladder. The first fireman mounted the steps carrying the metal hose point over his shoulder, his colleagues paying it out as he ascended.

Harris noticed a white van bearing the name of ‘Ratkill’ had arrived. Men in white overalls were unloading several long silver cylinders. He assumed it was some sort of gas.

The whole street was blocked now by police cars, fire engines, ambulances, and the crowds were being held back by a cordon of policemen at both ends. He saw anxious parents, the women crying, pleading with the police to be let through.

As the fireman neared the top of the ladder, it was swung over towards Harris’s window.

‘Good,’ he said, helping the man into the room.

‘Which way is it?’ the fireman asked looking round, ignoring Ainsley and the Headmaster.

‘Straight through. Follow me,’ said Harris, pulling more of the hose through the window. He noted more uniformed figures were climbing up.

They both carried the hose through into the corridor.

‘Just a minute,’ said the teacher, halting in front of the door to the stairs. ‘Let’s just check first.’ He wondered if he would ever be able to open a door confidently again as he peeped through the merest crack. He opened it wide when he saw it was safe. They went down to the bend in the stairs and looked at the closed door below. The fireman looked at Harris as he heard the clawing noise coming from it.

‘My Gawd, is that them?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Harris. ‘It’s them. Gnawing their way through.

It won’t take them long either - they’ve got teeth like electric saws?

‘Well, the place seems to be filling up with water all right,’ said the fireman, removing his helmet and scratching his head.

Harris nodded. There were three or four inches of water at least at the foot of the stairs. ‘The basement must be completely flooded by now. Up to the windows anyway, and the jet from the hoses must be preventing any rats from getting out.’

They heard footsteps behind them. Three policemen, one a sergeant and two more firemen were coming down to join them.

Harris gestured to them to stay where they were. ‘The rats are trying to break through the door. If one of your men stands at the window, another by the study door and another at the top of the stairs, we can signal back for the right moment for the water to be turned on.’

‘The only trouble is, we’ll only be able to use half-power, because of the bends,’ said the fireman at his side. ‘If we use full power, the force will try to straighten the hose out.’

‘Let’s try and make all the curves fairly rounded then,’ said the sergeant. ‘No sharp turns.’

They formed the hose in a series of curving arcs around the various corners.

‘The force will throw it against the right hand wall, so I’ll stand there and hold it off. Harry, you get on the other side,’ said the fireman at the teacher’s side.

The sergeant ordered the other fireman back to the window upstairs, and his two men into strategic positions along the way.

’Right. Let the bleeders come,’ he said.

They waited in silence, watching tiny cracks grow larger in the door below.

‘Get ready up there!’ the first fireman bellowed. ‘It’s un- believable. Solid wood.’

‘Yes, and this is the second time this morning,’ commented the burly sergeant.

‘What do you mean?’ Harris asked.

‘They attacked a train-load of people in the rush-hour. We don’t know the strength of it yet, but it seems it was a massacre. Didn’t believe it, myself, ‘til I saw this lot.’

‘A train-load of people? They attacked a train?’ Harris stared incredulously at the policeman. ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Oh, it’s true enough,’ replied the sergeant. ‘As I said, we don’t know all the facts yet. It could have been exaggerated.

But we were called out last night as well, to Shadwell. Three people dead. We found what was left of the station-master which wasn’t much - inside a cupboard. The door had been cracked open. They were going to try and hush it up for a while, but you can’t keep something like this quiet.’

They heard the splinter of wood and a hole appeared in the door, spreading upwards as a large chunk was dislodged.

‘Right!’ shouted the fireman.

‘Right, right, right,’came the echoes from the other men.

A rat began to wriggle through the hole.

The lifeless hose stiffened as it filled with water and the fireman released the jet immediately, aiming it directly at the squirming creature. It hit the door a fraction of a second too late. The rat scrambled free just in time, its hind-quarters being knocked aside by the powerful liquid jet. The fireman aimed low, throwing it back against the wall.

‘The door. Concentrate on the door. Don’t let any more get through,’ shouted Harris, but it was already too late.

With lightning speed, another rat had leapt through the exposed hole. The fireman returned his jet to the door, completely covering the hole, and in fact, making it bigger by pushing the loose pieces inwards. The two free rats half-ran, half-swam towards the stairs.

‘I’ll deal with them,’ roared the sergeant, snatching one of the firemen’s small axes from his belt. He advanced to- wards the approaching rats taking care to keep out of the path of the cascading water. To gain him more time, the fireman lowered his aim for a split second, sending the two creatures sprawling back against the opposite wall.

The policeman jumped the last two steps and landed with a splash, brandishing the axe above his head.

He slipped, but lashed out at one of them as he did, managing to cut deep into its back. Once again, the child-like squeal of the injured monster. Without waiting to do further damage, he turned on the second rat, but only hitting it a glancing blow with the flat of the axe. It fell back, twisted round, and launched itself at the big man’s legs. The policeman cried out as the vicious teeth sank into his knee. He hit sideways at the tenacious beast, wary of cutting his own leg with his bloodied weapon, trying to dislodge it. In desperation, he fell to one knee, pushed the rat flat against the ground, and brought the axe down with all his might. He almost cut the black-furred body in half.

The other injured rat tried to make it to the stairs but

Harris ran forward and kicked it back as it mounted the first step. The policeman chopped its head off with one stroke.

Then he prised the jaws of the rat still clinging to his knee loose. He limped up the side of the steps, cursing loudly.

The fireman who had been stationed at the window came running down. ‘They’ve just brought the cylinders of gas into the playground. They’re going to feed it into the windows.

They said it’s harmless to humans providing you don’t get too much of it, but lethal to vermin - cover your faces with wet handkerchiefs to stop yourselves choking on it.’

‘Tell them to pour gas into the window around the side of the building. It’s the staff-room window - they may try to get back out that way? Harris shouted above the noise of gushing water.

‘Right!’ The fireman raced back up the stairs.

‘Think you can hold them?’ Harris asked the man with the hose.

‘No problem. Even if the door bursts open under the pressure, we can keep them off the stairs until the gas gets them!’

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 ofwater, 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 findhimself 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 ofFoskin,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 ofLondon’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 inLondon’sEast 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 theEast Londonboroughs 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. SodiumFluoroacetate andFluoracetamide were used after the normal poisons, ZincPhosphide andArsenious 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 bePoplarTown 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 fromLondon. 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 Blackhave 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 thegroup 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 turningEast Londoninto 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 aroundLondon.’

‘It’s worth the risk, isn’t it?’

More silence.

Then Foskins said: ‘You know, it might just work.’

The young researcher beamed a smile of gratitude.

‘Yes, it might,’ one of the scientists leaned forward enthusiastically. ‘They’re too bloody clever to be baited with poison - or they’re immune to it. But if we could infect them... ‘

‘Not with rats though,’ said another, the idea, perhaps out of desperation, beginning to catch fire. ‘Too much of a risk with other rats. Too unpredictable.’

‘All right, dogs then. Pups, to make it easier for the rats.’

Harris’s mind rebelled at the idea of feeding young pups to vermin.

‘Why not just infect raw meat?’ he suggested.

‘No, the virus would have to exist on living flesh.’

‘But how do we know what virus? We haven’t got a live giant rat in captivity. How do we know which virus would kill it?’ asked Foskins.

‘I have a pretty good idea already,’ said a bio-chemist.

‘We can test it on the normal Black rat - and hope it will work on its larger brother.’

The debate continued, arguments flared, solutions found.

Harris felt quite flattered to be involved in the centre of the operation, but his mind still nagged him about something forgotten.

‘Very well,’ Foskins finally drew the discussion to its noisy conclusion. ‘It shouldn’t take more than a few days to find the right virus. Although it must be tested thoroughly – I needn’t stress how thoroughly - we should be ready to put the plan into action by the middle of next week. In the meantime, Mr Harris and I, together with the Borough surveyor will work to find the most suitable locations for deploying the infected dogs. Mr Harris was brought up in this area, I might add, so I presume knows most of the likely places the rats might use as lairs. You will all carry on with your usual activities of laying poisons, using gas or anything else you may think of, and we’ll assemble every morning at eight-thirty to see how things are going. Are there any questions? No? Good. Let’s get on with it then.’

He turned to Harris, and said quietly, ‘Join me for a drink, Mr Harris.’

They crossed the road from the Town Hall and entered a pub just opening its doors for the early evening rush. Their eyes adjusted to the gloom reluctantly after the bright sun-shine of late afternoon. ‘What will you have?’ Foskins asked, reaching for his wallet.’ Keg.’

‘Pint of Keg and a gin and tonic, please.’

They found a quiet comer and relaxed into imitation leather seats.

‘Cheers,’ said Foskins.

‘Good health,’ replied Harris.

They drank in silence for a few moments, ‘I’m surprised,’ said Harris.

‘At what?’

‘That you’re still running things.’

‘Ah, that: As I explained over the telephone, Mr Harris, the public wanted somebody’s head, I was in charge,I was the only choice.’ He smiled thinly, his eyes examining the rim of his glass. ‘A scapegoat always has to be found - it’s the way things are.’ He quickly shrugged off his dejected mood, and smiled at the teacher. ‘But I’m too good at the job for them to do without me andthey the indefinable they are well aware of it. You see, the only mistake I made last fume was in underestimating the foe. A bad mistake, I grant you. It certainly had serious consequences. But under the circumstances, it was a natural error, don’t you agree? I mean, it’s not the sort of thing that happens every day, is it?’

‘I suppose not.’ Harris took a long drink, feeling Foskins eyes on him.

‘You were rather harsh on me yourself, last time we met,’

Foskins said.

It suddenly dawned on Harris why he had become involved in the operation. He wasn’t really that necessary he’d hardly call his help invaluable. Foskins had been mistreated by the public. Mistreated and unappreciated. They’d yelled for his blood and his superiors had given it to them.

On the surface, anyway. And he himself had scorned him.

So Harris, in a symbolic way, represented the public. He was Foskins’ actual contact with the people who had derided him. And now he was going to prove them wrong. Through him. Showing he was still in command, and very, very able. Good luck!thought Harris.

‘Well, it seems we’ve had quite a breakthrough today.’

Foskins settled back in his seat, a broad smile on his face.

‘Don’t know why we didn’t think of it before. Like another drink?’

‘Let me,’ said Harris, draining his glass and rising to his feet. ‘Same again?’

He brought the drinks back to the table, catching the other man deep in thought. Foskins looked up at him, almost as though he were a stranger.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Well, I think we’ve cracked it now, don’t you? Yes, things will soon be back to normal. You’ll be back at your school, I’ll be re-instated - not publicly, of course, or perhaps moved to another department. Not dishonourably though.’ He sipped his gin. ‘Tell me, what makes you teach in theEast End? There are more pleasant places aren’t there?’

‘Home ground.’

‘Oh, so you live here still?’

‘No, I’ve got a flat near King’s Cross.’

‘Married? Must be.’

‘No, not really.’

‘I see. I used to be.’

Foskins took a large gulp from his drink, his mind drifting away again. Harris began to get slightly irritated by the melancholy turn the conversation kept taking.

‘Do you think they’ll come up with the right virus in time?’ he asked, changing the subject.

‘Oh, yes. No problem. Those boys could come up with a way to make fleas catch GermanMeasles .

Time is the breed. Five to eight times a year. And their offspring can breed within three months. You’re a teacher, you work it out; if we don’t kill the bloody things soon, they’ll over-run the whole city. Have another drink?’

‘No, I’ve got to go,’ said Harris. ‘Someone waiting.’

‘Yes, yes, of course.’ Dejected once again. ‘Well, see you bright and early tomorrow then, eh?’ More brightly.

‘You want me to come along then?’

‘Why, yes. You’re involved now, old chap.Don’t worry about your people. I’ll clear it with them. As a matter of fact, I already have. Sure you won’t have another? Right. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Harris left the pub with relief. He wasn’t quite sure why he disliked Foskins - perhaps it was his unpredictable moods. One minute bright, hearty, efficient, the next - well, ‘hang-dog’ was the only expression that sprang readily to mind. Harris couldn’t wait to get home to Judy.

Foskins stared moodily into his glass. Mustn’t stay here too long, I suppose, he thought tohimself .

Wouldn’t do to have any of his staff pop in from across the road and catch him drinking by himself.

Wouldn’t look good, especially just now.

He wondered about the young teacher,Probably living with a girl - didn’t look queer. Sure of himself, self-contained. Young. Might be useful in this exercise, though, Not essential of course, but at least the teacher would learn just how difficult it was to organise a project like this. The experience would do him a lot of good - only wish more people had some idea of the difficulties involved, then perhaps they wouldn’t be so ready to cry for blood at the first crisis. They’ll soon see I’m not ready for the shelf just yet,

He ordered another drink - just a quick one, he told himself - and returned to his seat.

Funny how things turn out, he brooded. Always having to prove yourself to others. To some it comes easy, they’re born with the gift, but for the others it requires constant, hard work, not relaxing for a minute, never revealing your weakness to those who’d be only too pleased to turn it to their own advantage. That’s how it’s always been with me.

Work, leadership - they’ve never come easily. Always the struggle a well-guarded secret. If only they knew of the night hours spent in sheer slog, sheer tedious grind, to keep up with the work output. Not just keep up, but to be ahead of.

But Rosemary had found out. She had to of course – she was my wife. Any other woman would have offered consolation, but not Rosemary. She grew bored with the nights spent plodding through paperwork. And when she discovered that prowess in bed was also a task that didn’t come naturally to me - well, the disillusionment was too great. If we’d had children I suppose she’d have had something to occupy her, but she even blamed me for that. Nevertheless, it lasted for fifteen years so she must have felt some love for me. Even though I knew she was having the odd affair, it didn’t really matter as long as she was discreet Even her jibes in front of friends, and. colleagues, I could have survived by ridiculing her in return in that false-hearty way.

But when her affairs became much more frequent and much less discreet - and worst of all, much less discriminating, then it had to be brought to an end. But she jumped the gun by ending it first, walking out,running off with a bloody travel agent! A travel agent! Did my best to hush things up, but word always gets around, so there was nothing left but to work even harder, to become more successful, anything to cover the shame of being left high and dry by an unfaithful wife. And the double-shame of having been cuckolded by her and a damn travel agent! How could you retain your dimity after that? But I managed it, worked myself up into this position. Yes, there was the affair of the rats that had done some damage to my esteem, but my superiors wouldn’t let me go, would they? No they know my true worth.

Public be damned. And when this little episode is over, they’ll all acknowledge my worth. The fact of the matter is, the more power you have, the easier it is to find solutions to any problems. You merely surround yourself with the right people, the right brains - they come up with the answers and you take the glory. The hard part was to gain that position of authority, but once you had it, the rest was easy. I’ll just have one more drink and then perhaps I’ll go along to the club, tell the boys all is going well, drop a few hints about our idea, not too much, in case it doesn’t work, but enough to let them know old Foskins has done it again.

Feel better now, no point in going home to an empty house just yet. Theboys’ll be pleased to see me, I should think.

He drained his glass and walked out into the still bright sunshine.

Harris reported at eight-thirty every morning to the daily Town Hall meetings. He worked out with Foskins and the Boroughsurveyors ten key locations that they considered to be likely rat-infested spots.

By the end of the week, the bio-chemists had come up with the correct virus.

They laughed at the teacher’s admiration for their speed.

‘That wasn’t the problem,’ they told him. ‘You see, we’ve had the virus itself for many years. In fact, we inherited it from the Germans after the war. They’d been working on a way of killing off all our livestock by infection without harming the population and they had actually come up with the answer. Fortunately, for us, the war ended before they had time to use it and it’s been a well-kept secret, along with a few other nasty little items, ever since. The hard part - and this has taken the time - was to find an antidote to contain it. We don’t relish the idea of wiping out all animal life in the country. Well, we’ve found the antitoxin and it will be a simple matter to introduce it into our animals, either by injection or mixing it with their food or water. It’s already being produced in bulk, and, just as a safeguard, we’re working on another serum in case the first fails. As a safeguard, we must stress. We see absolutely no reason for the first to let us down.’

Foskins congratulated them on then’ fine work and they set a time to put the plan into action.

‘Very well, gentlemen,’ concluded the minister. ‘On Tuesday morning, at six, we’ll plant the first infected puppies.

We’ll go on to nine other locations throughout the morning, all key points, and leave the unfortunate but expendable animals to their fate. Any questions?’

‘Yes,’ said Harris, raising his hand but quickly dropping it realising he was emulating his absent pupils.

‘What happens, when we’re planting the pups, if we become the victims of the rats?’

‘Everyone is to wear protective clothing, Mr Harris. It’s standard procedure on any operation like this. I think you’ll find the suits adequate even if uncomfortable.’ Foskins looked around at the faces. ‘Any more questions?’

‘Yes,’ said Harris.

‘Mr Harris?’

‘What if it doesn’t work.’

‘If what doesn’t work?’

‘The idea.’

‘Then God help us, Mr Harris.~

The grey dawn cast a mist over the old canal. Not even a bird disturbed the chill morning silence. The dirty waters stirred occasionally in the slight dawn breeze, sending small ripples lapping lazily at the stone sides of the man-made river.

The silence was broken by a tiny yelp. Along the bank came five men looking like visitors from another planet.

They were covered from head to foot in a heavy, plastic like material and wearing helmets with large glass visors. Two of the men carried a large basket. The lid bounced now and again as if the occupants of the container were striving to get free. One of the men motioned towards a spot by the side of the canal and the basket was placed on the ground, ‘This should do for the first lot,’ said Harris, sweating inside his heavy suit. He lifted the glass visor so the others could hear him more clearly.

‘This is where we saw the rats last time. They were swimming along the canal up to this point. Then they climbed out and disappeared through that hole over there.’ He pointed towards the other bank.

The basket was opened and three small dogs were lifted out. Harris fondled one of them affectionately.

Poor little bleeder, he thought.

The young researcher, introduced to the teacher after their first meeting at the Town Hall as Stephen Howard, lifted his visor and wiped his brow with a gloved hand. ‘Well, let’s chain two down and let the other wander,’ he said. ‘That way, the rats are bound to get them.’

Harris watched as a metal stake was driven into the hard path that ran alongside the muddy canal and two of the pups were chained to it.

‘All right,little’n, off you go .’ He placed the pup he was holding on the ground and gave it a gentle shove, but it pushed back against his hand, licking it and looking up at him.

‘Go on, boy, it’s for Queen and country.’

The pup squatted on its haunches and looked up at him.

‘Oh Christ,’ muttered Harris, ‘it’s going to be more difficult than I thought.’

Howard reached into the basket and brought out some raw meat. ‘This should tempt him. It’s meant as rat bait, but I don’t see why these little blighters shouldn’t enjoy a last meal. I’ll entice him along to the bridge and leave him there with enough to feast on. Here boy, come on.’ He bumped the meat against the pup’s nose and trailed it along tantalisingly just above its snapping jaws.

’Don’t go too far!’ shouted Harris, as the strangely-clad figure disappeared underneath the bridge. He and the others began to scatter more raw meat around the two remaining puppies, feeding them a little to keep them happy.

They looked up at the sound of running feet to see Howard coming towards them, waving his arms excitedly.

At first, they couldn’t understand his shouts, but as he pointed back towards the bridge they realised why he was making such haste to get away from it.

In the gloom under the bridge they saw several black-shaped creatures surrounding the pup, which had begun to whine piteously. Harris made as if to move towards it, but a restraining hand was placed on his arm. He nodded, seeing the sense of it. What did it matter if a pup lost its life when countless people were to be saved because of it? But it was a horrible way for the poor little mite to go.

Suddenly they saw a line of rats break out from the dark interior of the bridge and streak out after the lumbering researcher. The leading rat swiftly caught up with the suit-clumsy figure and leapt at the plodding legs. It clung to the material of the suit but its razor-sharp teeth failed to penetrate. Howard continued to run, dragging the persistent creature along with him.

‘Your visor,’ shouted Harris. ‘Close your visor!’

Howard heard him and snapped the glass protection shut.

He stumbled as another rat attached itself to his other leg, but managed to keep on his feet. The group of men looked on in horror as another scaled his back and perched on his shoulder, snapping at his head covering. He went down heavily, one arm splashing into the canal water. He raised himself to his knees, rats swarming all over him now. He tried in vain to brush them off, but they clung to his body like giant leeches.

Harris saw what he feared most - a tear beginning to appear in the tough material. He ran forward, the three other men following. Reaching Howard, he began pulling at the rats which were now tearing at the cloth in frenzy, oblivious to the blows being dealt them. Harris kicked two into the canal, hoping they were stunned enough to drown, and ignoring the clinging creatures, he dragged the researcher to his feet and pulled him along the canal bank.

All the men were fighting for their own lives now as more of the rodents poured over them. They staggered on, hack towards the gap in the fence that would allow them to escape from the death-trap canal. Some of the pressure was taken off them as they passed the two howling pups and the littered raw meat, for the rats pounced on the easier prey with relish.

‘Back to the vans!’ Harris heard a muffled shout. ‘We’ve got the gas cylinders there!’

They kept going, the way easier now for most of the rats were converging on the animal flesh. Helping one another, they reached the gap and climbed through. Abruptly, the rats still clinging dropped to the ground as if they sensed the danger to themselves once outside the boundary to the canal.

Harris lunged at one before it could escape, ignoring the revulsion within him caused by the squirming creature. He held on to its neck with one hand, its back legs with the other and lifted it high into the air.

‘Here’s a live specimen for you?he cried, struggling to keep his grasp.

‘Good man,’ shouted Howard and dashed forward to help the teacher. The giant rat was immensely strong and struggled fiercely in their arms, but the two men held on grimly.

The other rats, which had not fled, but had remained on the other side of the gap, suddenly came through and began to attack the two men.

The other three kicked and pulled at the vermin, trying to beat them off but it soon became apparent that their efforts would be wasted unless they had more help. Their companions in the nearby vans started their engines and roared towards them, screeching to a halt by the side of the me1ee.

The back doors of the walk-through vans were flung open and the struggling men began to clamber in, the rats clinging to them and leaping into the two vehicles. The noise was deafening to Harris, even through the protection of the helmet; the pups in their baskets barking furiously, the vermin squealing in their peculiar high-pitched fashion, the shouts and cries of the men. He realised the driver of the van he’d made for wasn’t wearing his helmet or gloves. He shouted at the man to cover his head and hands but the driver failed to hear above the clamour. Two men were inside the first van now and were swiftly unpacking the gas tanks, kicking at the rats as they leapt into the interior.

Harris and Howard climbed in holding their captive between them, ignoring the pain of bites that did not penetrate, but squeezed their flesh in excruciating pinches. The van began to move forward, the rats chasing it and trying to leap through the open back doors, some making it, others being kicked back on to the road. The doors were slammed shut, jamming in the middle on the body of a rat which fell out again with the help of a sharp kick from one of the men.

The gas in one of the cylinders was released to deal with the vermin left inside the van and still persisting in their attack.

‘Not this one!’ ordered Howard. ‘Find something to put it in. We want it alive!’

A metal box of tools had its contents emptied and the frenzied rat was placed roughly inside. The lid clicked firmly shut. The van’s sudden swerving caused them to look anxiously at the driver. He was trying to shake off one of the black beasts from his exposed hand. A jet of gas was aimed at the rat and soon it flopped to the floor at the feet of the driver, whose arm now hung limply at his side. He kept driving, moaning with the pain, but steering with his right hand only. The gas was aimed around the large interior of the vehicle, dealing death within seconds to the vicious rats.

”Not too much gas!’ shouted Howard. ‘We don’t want to kill off the dogs as well!’

As the last rat staggered drunkenly then stiffened and died, the men removed their protective helmets and looked towards the injured driver, knowing he was doomed.

‘The other van is close behind,’ said Howard, peering through the back door window, ‘We’refar away enough now,’ he called to the driver, ‘so let’s pull up and we’ll deal with your wound.’ He looked across at Harris shaking his head in despair.

The van pulled over to the kerbside, the other stopping close behind. The doors were opened and the men wearily climbed out, glad to breathe the fresh morning air after the acrid fumes of the gas. Harris, feeling sick and slightly dizzy, leaned against the side of the van.

‘Too much of that gas can kill a man,’ Howard told him, ‘especially in a confined space like that. It was lucky we were wearing the helmets. The driver has just blacked out, not from his wound I suspect, but because of the gas - and he was near an open window.’

‘Does the poor sod know he’ll die?’ asked Harris, his mind still fuzzy.

‘Everyone knows about the disease now, Mr Harris. He was aware of the risk, he should have protected himself.’

‘Well maybe you haven’t been too lucky either,’ said Harris, pointing at the rip in Howard’s suit.

The researcher paled and put his hand to the bole. ‘I don’t think I’ve been bitten,’ he said, ‘but I’m bruised all over from their teeth. Oh Christ.’ He fumbled at the zip in the grey suit and managed to pull it down haltingly. To his relief, he found the clothes he wore underneath undamaged.

With a deep sigh, he too leaned against the side of the van.

After a while, he said, ‘Let’s take this poor blighter to the hospital, not that it’ll do him much good, and then get on with the rounds. Only this time I’m going to get us more protection from Foskin,~. I mean, this is only the first location. I hope you’ve chosen some safe places for us, Harris, in the next nine.’

Harris smiled thinly at him. ‘Are there any safe places around here any more?’

They suffered attacks from the vermin on three other occasions that day. Harris returned to the fiat in the evening completely exhausted, both mentally and physically, his nerves almost numbed by the terrors the operation had held. He sank into an armchair and told Judy of the day’s events.

‘The canal was about the worst. It shook us up pretty badly, especially the driver being hurt, so after that we were a bit more cautious. From there we went to the dock area - I’ve never seen the streets so deserted - left the bait and got out fast? He carefully avoided mentioning the pups, not wanting to upset her, knowing her love of animals.

‘But at one spot, we stopped the vans at the entrance of an alley leading to the river, got out and carried the bait to the end of it. We dumped it and turned to make our way back and found our exit cut off by the bastards. They were streaming from a basement grid. We didn’t stop to think Howard was off like a shot, right through them, and we all followed en masse, kicking and stomping, thanking God for protective suits. We bundled into the vans and got away fast.

‘It’s funny, but sitting there in the Town Hall, making plans, hearing all the reports, even my own first-hand experiences of the rats - we didn’t realise just how bad the situation was. It took today’s events to really bring it home. In the morning, the streets were practically deserted, and later on, people were only travelling around in groups or in cars and vans.

‘Anyway, after that we met up with our escort promised by Foskins. He’d brought the army into it. Two truckloads of troops armed with water-cannon, flame-throwers, gas,the whole bloody works. It certainly made us feel a bit better.’

’You should have started out with them,’ interrupted Judy, cross not with Harris but at Foskins, who was in control.

‘Yes, I know,’ said Harris, ‘but we’ve done it all along.

We’ve underestimated them. Despite all the reports, we’ve just thought of them as highly dangerous pests, not as the overwhelming force that they seem to be becoming. Even after the tram massacre and the attack on the school we didn’t expect to meet up with so many of them in one day.

True, I’d chosen the most likely places - I had to if our part was to be effective - but even I wasn’t prepared for the number of times we came face to face with them. I tell you, Jude, if this doesn’t work, that whole area will have to be razed to the ground.’

Judy shuddered. ‘What if it’s too late? You told me how fast they breed. What if they spread all overLondon?’

Harris was silent for a while, then he said: ‘Goodbye London.’

‘Oh, darling, let’s go now. You’ve done all you can, you’ve helped them as much as possible. You said yourself you’re not really necessary, you’re just there for Foskins’ ego. Well let them get on with it. Let’s go before it gets worse.’

‘Come on, Jude, you know we can’t. Where would we go?’

‘Aunt Hazel’s for a while. You could be transferred to a local school and I wouldn’t mind working in a shop for a while. With all the schools overflowing with evacuated kids they’re crying out for more teachers to come out ofLondon.’

‘No, love. I couldn’t leave now. You see, as we drove on today, dressed in those ridiculous space-suits, escorted by soldiers armed to the teeth, and I took them all to places I knew, places familiar to me, places that had been part of my life, I knew I had to see it through. If you like - and I know it may sound silly - it was my patch. The men with me were strangers to it. As far as Foskins and his ministry are concerned it could be a foreign land. Oh, I’m not saying I love the area or it’s in my blood. Nothing daft like that. But I do feel some responsibility towards it - like it’s my old school and it’s being demolished by age. See?’

‘Yes, I see.’ Judy smiled at him, holding his hand to her cheek. ‘You dope.’

He shrugged, smiling to himself.

‘Any more incidents today?’ she asked.

‘Yes. In a children’s school ground we saw a score of them attacking a dog, so we drove in and went straight through them, dropping the bait without stopping.’ Into his mind crowded the terrible sight of his companions dropping the pups from the vans into the midst of the rats, something he’d been unable to take part in. ‘Later we went into a bombed-out church and discovered the flesh-cleaned bones of two people. Who they were and how long they’d been there we couldn’t tell; the skeletons were too clean to have been there too long and there wasn’t a trace of clothing. The strange thing was that they were locked in a tight embrace like lovers. We began to unload the bait when we heard a scream. One of our men had a rat clinging to his neck and was running around like a madman. Fortunately, his suit saved him from serious injury, but his fear was contagious. We all made for the exit. Two men went to the attacked man’s aid but soon found they had their own problems. The three of them ran from the opening, rats clinging to their bodies and as soon as they were clear, the water-canon were directed at the gap to stop anything else coming through.

The soldiers helped the three men get free of the rats by using their bayonets. The army wanted to fill the place with gas, but Howard wouldn’t let them. It was the one time we wanted the rats to live, so they could spread the virus.

‘After that episode, we didn’t have too much trouble although we still made contact with them. We’d learned to be cautious and kept as close to the vans as possible, leaping inside at the first hint of risk.

None of us were very brave, I’m afraid. We were too aware of the consequences.’

‘I don’t want a dead hero, Harris,’ said Judy.

‘Believe me, you won’t get one.’

’So what happens now?’

‘We wait. We wait to see if the virus takes effect and if it does, then it shouldn’t take long for it to spread. They reckon within a couple of’ weeks we’ll know one way or another.’

‘,And if it doesn’t work, what then?’

‘Well it wouldn’t be just theEast End’s problem anymore.

They couldn’t possibly contain the rats in that area. They’d spread throughoutLondon. And if that happens, I don’t want to be around.’

Chapter Thirteen

The rats came out on to the streets to die. It was as though having spent their lives scuffling around in the semi-darkness they wished to breathe the fresh air of the upper world before they perished. They littered the streets, their corpses bloated in the sun, at first causing great alarm to the people who lived in the area. The alarm gave way to relief as the people realised the vermin were dying, the crisis was passing.

The diseased corpses were gathered up in bulk and loaded intolorries and taken to incinerators where they were reduced to harmless dust. It had taken only two days for first signs of the virus’ effect but it escalated rapidly in the week that followed. There were still attacks on people but they were far less numerous than before. And then a remarkable side effect of the virus was discovered.

A soldier was bitten by a rat he’d assumed to be dead because of its prone position. He shot it and reported to the hospital where he expected to die. It was extremely critical for three days but he managed to pull through, his survival being attributed to a reaction on the disease carried by the rat from the virus infecting it. The deadly germ had been halted.

Others bitten by the rats were not quite so fortunate. Some died in the usual twenty-four hours, others lingered on the edge for anything up to a week. Not enough people were bitten to allow any assumptions to be made, but the fact that one person had survived and others had lasted for almost a week was definitely encouraging. Tests were tried on animals but instead of dying from the disease caused by the rats, they died from the man-made virus introduced into the rodents.

After three weeks, the danger from the vermin was thought to be virtually over although only approximately two thousand bodies were found. It was assumed that the rest of the rats’ population was dying or dead below ground.

Life began slowly to return to normal. Plans were made to begin a massive clean-up operation onEast London’s older districts. Houses were to be pulled down, wastelands to either be utilised for building or flattened into concrete playgrounds or car-parks. The dockside areas would be renovated into modern open-plan blocks. Disused basements would be forever sealed, sewers and drains thoroughly cleansed or rebuilt. It would cost millions but a sharp lesson had been learnt. Stepney and Poplar would eventually become fashionable areas and their history of slums forgotten.

Foskins was completely exonerated of any blame for initial mistakes and reinstated publicly to his former position. He was congratulated personally by the Prime Minister and passed on the compliments to the team that had helped him accomplish his critical task. At a press conference he praised the specialists whose painstaking endeavours coupled with their dynamic ingenuity had finally, begun to defeat this fearsome mutant creature and the deadly disease it carried, whilst subtly implying all credit really belonged to him, as originator and organiser of the project.

They still held daily meetings in the town hall to discuss the progress of the operation but the urgency was no longer felt amongst the members. A serum was derived from the virus to be used as an antidote for the rat-bites which made the disease non-mortal although now such cases were becoming much less frequent anyway.

The danger had passed. So everyone thought.

Chapter Fourteen

Judy was in the bath, enjoying its cocoon warmth, when she heard the phone ring. Harris’s muffled voice came through the half-open bathroom door as it was answered. She idly wondered who the caller was.

After a few moments of one-sided conversation she heard the click of the receiver being replaced and footsteps crossing the lounge towards the bath-room. Harris came in with a wry smile on his face.

‘That was Foskins,’ he said, sitting on the edge of the toilet.

‘Ringing on a Sunday morning? He must miss you.’

‘Hardly. He’s given me the sack.’

‘What? Why?’

‘My services are no longer needed. “Thank you for your extremely valuable assistance, old boy, but the worst is now over and I think it would be unfair to you to take up any more of your valuable time.” “The old bastard.’

‘No, not really, I couldn’t have done any more. To tell you the truth it’s a bit of a relief; I’ve felt a bit useless the last couple of weeks.’

‘Yes, but to get rid of you now, just when it’s nearly all over.’

‘Well, he’s proved his point hasn’t he? He doesn’t need me to show off to now - he’s got the whole of the public.

Anyway, the kids will be coming back in a few weeks and then it’ll be back to the old routine.’

Foskins greeted them warmly when they arrived at his home the following Tuesday.

‘Hello, old boy. Ah, this must be Judy. Do come in.’

Half-plastered already, thought Harris, catching Judy’s eye and winking.

‘Most of my guests have arrived,’ said Foskins in an overloud voice. ‘Bathroom’s upstairs to the left, bedroom to the right.’

Judy disappeared up the stairs to attend her make-up and Harris followed Foskins into a room full of chatting people.

He saw Howard amongst one of the groups, his face flushed with the glory of the previous week’s events. ‘Hello, Harris!’ he called, waving a glass-filled hand and spilling some of its contents on a young woman next to him. ‘Come and meet everybody.’

Harris walked over, Foskins leading him by the arm, taking a Scotch from the waiter with a tray full of assorted drinks on the way. Howard introduced him to his group with an air of camaraderie he’d never shown in their working relationship.

‘Oh, you’re the teacher who saved all those little children at the school, aren’t you?’ the girl standing next to Howard said excitedly.

‘With the help of halfLondon’s police force and fire brigade,’ smiled Harris.

‘Now, my boy, mustn’t be modest,’ said Foskins, placing his hand on the teacher’s shoulder and shaking it heartily.

‘Fiona adores heroes,’ Howard laughed, putting a possessive arm around her waist.

‘Come along, you must meet everybody,’ Foskins tugged him away from the group. They were joined by Judy as they made their circuit of the room, smiling, shaking hands and being congratulated. After his third Scotch, Harris’ mood began to mellow towards the Under-Secretary as he watched him laughing and bantering with his fellow ministers, accepting their praise with mock modesty at one moment and skilful braggartism the next. He noticed Howard standing to one side, glaring at Foskins, taking no notice of the chattering Fiona at his side.

His thoughts were interrupted by Judy whispering in his ear, ‘So this is the jet-set?’

‘It could have been worse,’ he smiled down at her. ‘At least the booze is flowing smoothly.’

‘Old Foskins is certainly bathing in the glory.’

‘Of course. What do you think the party’s for? You can’t blame him though.’

‘Harris, for a belligerent man you’re very easy-going.’

He laughed, putting an arm around her shoulder and pulling her to him. ‘All right, he made a mistake once, but he soon made up for it.’

‘Yes, with the help of you and all the others!’ Judy said indignantly.

‘She’s quite right you know, Harris!’ Howard had crossed the room to join them, Fiona at his heels.

‘He’s busy taking all the credit - very modestly, I grant you - when after all, it was my idea.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Fiona, breathlessly.

‘And by the way,’ he added maliciously, ‘I’m sorry to see you’re no longer part of the team.’

Harris grinned at the researcher, refusing to be drawn out.

‘What does it matter? It’s all over now, anyway,’ he said, looking around for the waiter and his tray.

‘Yes, and we’re all going back eventually to our obscure little jobs whilehe ...’

‘Look, if you don’t like it, don’t tell me about it, tell him.’

Harris deftly grabbed a Scotch from the passing tray.

‘Right,’ said Howard. ‘I bloody will!’ and marched towards Foskins.

‘Harris, you’re evil,’ Judy admonished the smiling teacher.

‘Oh dear, he’s going to create a scene,’ wailed Fiona.

Just as Howard reached the jovial Foskins, the telephone rang in the hall and the Under-Secretary excused himself from his group, leaving the researcher standing open- mouthed and flat-looted.

Harris suppressed his mirth as he watched the researcher gather his wits and stride after him.

Two minutes later, Howard came back into the room ashen-faced. He rejoined them, slowly shaking his head, a look of disbelief on his face.

‘Darling, what’s the matter, what’s happened?’ asked Fiona, worriedly.

He looked at each of them in turn, not really seeing their faces. ‘That phone call,’ he started to say. ‘It was from our operations room.’

They waited in impatient silence.

‘There’s been another attack. Another massacre – inNorth London.’

Chapter Fifteen

Stephen Abbott sat in the darkened cinema and stole a quick glance at his girlfriend’s face, illuminated by the cinema-scope screen. He was bored with the film, partly because the big, craggy cowboy on the screen was now too old to act like superman, and partly because he wasn’t wearing his glasses. Vikki didn’t know he wore glasses sometimes and he thought it might spoil their relationship if she did. She’d probably go off him too if she ever found out about his two false front teeth; he had to be so careful in their ‘snogging’ sessions that her probing tongue didn’t dislodge the plate. She was very fussy. And she deserved to be, with her looks! Best looking bird in the club.

He had another problem too - he wanted to go to the toilet. He wasn’t desperate yet, but the thought of not being able to go was steadily making it worse. And he couldn’t go because he didn’t have his glasses and without them he’d never find his way back to the seat. It had happened to him once before; he’d wandered up and down the aisle in the dark until his embarrassed girlfriend had waved to him. And that was the last time he’d dated her.

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. His arm reached around her shoulders and she snuggled against him, one of her hands resting on his thigh. The area under her hand became the centre of his feelings until the weight caused stirrings elsewhere. He kissed her cheek softly and then her lips hard as she turned her head towards him, her fingers increasing the pressure on his leg. Well, he’d bided his time for two weeks now so as not to spoil things; maybe now was the time to make his move. His heart thumping, his head filled with concentrated love and the desire to urinate overpowered by a stronger desire, he put his free hand on her wrist and stroked the silky material of her blouse. He drew his trembling and cautious fingers to the centre buttons and poked a finger through an opening, giddy at the feel of the warm flesh of her tummy. After a few moments of making circling motions with his exploratory finger and waiting for the rebuttal, he withdrew it and moved his hand upwards towards her breasts. He found the gentle swelling and cupped it tremblingly. Her restraining hand rested on his and weakly, without conviction, tried to pull it away.

Instead he moved it along and slid it inside the opening of her blouse, getting it stuck between the buttons.

He wriggled it loose and undid one of them, hearing her gasp as his hand reached inside again for her.

My first one, he thought. My first proper good-looking bird! After all those fat ones, skinny ones, ones with big noses, ones with big teeth - at last a good-looking one! Ooh, I’m in love. Wait till I tell the boys she lets me have a feel!

His hand crept inside her lacy bra and felt her hard little nipple, squeezing it between his fingers, pressing it as though it were a button.

Suddenly she screamed and leapt to her feet, pulling his arm up with her.

‘I didn’t mean anything,’ he began to bluster, his face reddening as people turned to look at them.

‘Something bit me!’ Vikki cried. ‘There’s something there on the floor! It bit me leg!’

He looked downward but failed to see anything in the dark. He bent down, more to escape the accusing eyes of the cinema crowd than to discover the offending ‘something’.

‘There’s nothing there,’ he said miserably.

’There is, there is!’ She began to cry, backing away on to the lap of the person sitting next to her.

Someone in the next row flicked on a lighter and leaned over the back of his seat with it, holding a small flame towards the floor.

A large dark shape scuttled underneath the seat.

As Vikki screamed, a woman behind in the next row leapt to her feet and screamed also. Then pandemonium broke loose throughout the theatre. People jumped ,up and kicked out at or leapt away from something at their feet.

‘Rats!’ a terror-stricken voice echoed around the cinema, the cry being taken up by others equally frightened.

Vikki began to pound her feet hysterically up and down on the floor, as though contact with it would make her more vulnerable to the vermin. Stephen grabbed her shoulders and tried to calm her just as the house-lights came on. Then the terror really took grip as the people saw the horror between the seats.

Rats were flowing down the aisles, branching off through the rows of seats, pouring over the tops; leaping on to the panicking crowd. Women and men screamed as they fought each other to get free of seats, blocked in on either side by stumbling bodies. The exit doors became jammed, people falling over one another in their bids to escape the death behind them. The big cowboy in the film began his final shoot-out with the villains.

Stephen pulled a rat from Vikki’s hair and hurled it away from him, his hands torn by the creature’s gnashing teeth.

He grabbed her arm and pulled her along the row, pushing at the people ahead of him. Inexplicably, the house-lights dimmed and finally faded leaving the confused scene lit only by the light reflected from the huge screen. Something was biting into the boy’s leg and he tried to kick it against the back of a seat, but because of lack of space the rat was able to hang on. He bent down to pull it away and his hands were nipped at by another rat. In desperation, he sat on top of a seat back and painfully raised his leg on to the back of the seat in front, lifting the great black rat with it. Vikki ran from him and stumbled over a man in his last death struggles with three rats. She fell heavily, and was immediately en-gulfed in bristling bodies, her screams unheard amongst the screams of others.

Stephen grabbed the rat’s throat with his hands and squeezed with all his strength but still it clung to him.

He felt another as it landed on his back and bit into his coat which he quickly shed without thinking, dropping it and the rat into the row behind him. A man in front saw his plight and bravely grabbed at the rat clinging to his leg and pulled.

Abruptly, the creature released its grip and turned on the man, biting into his face.

He went down screaming in agony.

The boy looked over the seats and saw there was nothing he could do to save his rescuer. He looked around but seeing no clear line of exit, he jumped up on to the back of a seat and carefully began to walk along the rows, using peoples’ shoulders where he could, but mostly depending on luck to keep his balance, He slipped a few times but managed to spring upright again, the fear inside him giving him the extra strength he needed to keep going. The holocaust around him became unreal. It was a nightmare, the strange light from the screen heightening the unearthly effect.

A man in front lifted a rat above his head and threw it away from him, hitting the boy with its long body and causing him to slip between the rows again. He landed heavily on his back and lay there stunned for a few moments. Someone stumbled and fell across him, struggling with something in his arms. The rat was pushed into Stephen’s chest causing him to shout out in anguish. He beat at both rodent and man with his fists, cursing and crying at the same time. The weight was lifted from him as the man regained his feet and staggered on, the rat still clinging to his arms, another around his shoulders, chewing at his neck.

The boy got to his feet and climbed on to the seats again, continuing his hazardous journey across the sea of helpless people. Many were in the aisles now, their panic pressing them together in the confined space, preventing the use of speed as a means of escape. The doors were blocked with scrambling bodies and those that managed to get through were being chased into the foyer by the vermin.

An elderly couple near him clung together in a last desperate embrace, the vermin biting at their legs and buttocks, finally bringing them down to their .knees.

Another man sat rigid in his seat, eyes still on the screen as though watching the film, hands clenching the seat-arms.

A rat sat on his lap gnawing a hole into his stomach.

A group of teenage boys had formed a circle, back to back, and were slowly making their way up the aisle, kicking out at the vermin with their heavy boots. Unfortunately they could get no further than the thronging mass of people around the exit.

The people in the balcony above were no better off; they only had two exits of retreat and rats were pouring through these. They were forced back by the bodies of others and many were toppling over the rail into the theatre below.

Stephen went on, sobbing with fright, and at last reached the front stalls. It was comparatively empty of people and vermin, the sides and the exits of the cinema now being the main points of disorder. He leapt on to the floor and headed towards the stage. He managed to get one leg on to it, quickly finding his feet again. A stream of black, furry bodies emerged from the curtains at one side making straight towards him. He turned to run in the opposite direction but slipped in his own blood from the torn leg. The vermin were on him in an instant, smothering his body with their own foul smelling forms, biting into him, pushing each other aside to get at his flesh. His arms beat at them growing weaker and weaker at every effort until he finallylay them across his face for protection, allowing the creatures to gorge themselves on his body.

Raising one arm from his eyes, he stared up uncomprehendingly at the huge coloured screen above him.

His eyes read the words, and his voice spoke them faintly, but his brain did not understand. He whispered ‘The End’.

George Fox had worked at the zoo for twenty-odd years now. Unlike many of his comrades he had a deep regard for the animals in his care; he worried when one of his lions was unwell, pampered his pet gazelle when it was off its food and once even spent a sleepless night at the side of a dying snake.

When hooligans had broken into his bird-house and for no other reason than sheer bloodlust had slaughtered thirty of his exotically coloured winged friends, he’d broken down and cried for three days.

He had a deep sympathy and understanding of his animals, big or small, ferocious or docile.

Even when a monkey had bitten off half his ear a few years back he hadn’t reprimanded it, but gently put it down, ignoring the pain, and quietly left the cage clasping a blood soaked handkerchief to his injured part.

And tonight, he felt the zoo was restless. There wasa stillness in the air, a quietness unnatural toLondon’s large animal estate - but the animals weren’t sleeping. As he made his rounds he noticed the beasts prowling to and fro in their cages, the monkeys huddled together staring out nervously into the night, the birds silently blinking on their perches.

Only the lunatic laugh of the hyena disturbed the uneasy silence.

‘Easy now, Sara,’ he soothingly reassured Iris favourite cheetah in the large cat-house. ‘Nothing to be nervous of ?

Suddenly, the screeching of birds broke through the night.

Sounds like the aviary, he told himself, making for the door and running towards the tunnel that led under the public road to the canal where the fantastic bird sanctuary stood.

He was joined by another keeper at the entrance of the underground passage.

‘What’s up; George?’ the man gasped.

’Don’t know yet, Bill. Something disturbed the birds, sounds like they’re going mad.’

They plunged into the dark tunnel using their torches for added light. As they emerged on the other side they heard a squeal from the giraffe section. To their horror they saw one of the graceful creatures racing round its enclosure with large black creatures clinging to its trembling body. It plunged into the water acting as a moat around its paddock and thrashed about crazedly.

‘Oh my Gawd - what is it?’ asked Bill, unsure of what he’d seen in the night light.

‘I’ll tell you what it is,’ cried George. ‘It’s those bloody rats. The ones that are supposed to have been exterminated the giant rats!’ He took several steps towards the helpless animal but then turned back to Bill. ‘Back to the office, quick. Get on the phone to the police - tell them it’s an attack on the zoo by the rats! Tell them we need every avail-able help we can get! Hurry!’

He ran towards the giraffe again, knowing there was nothing he could do for the poor creature, but going on anyway. He turned as he heard a human scream coming from the tunnel and saw Bill emerge, swarming with black shapes and what must have been blood gushing from his head. He saw him go down, half rise and slump forward again.

‘God Almighty,’ he breathed. He had to get to the telephone. There was another ticket office in this section but would mean passing the rat-filled tunnel and crossing the bridge over the canal. And the canal must have been where they came from. Those bastards said they’d cleared out the rats, they were all dead or dying. But the vermin are killing my animals. My poor animals!

He moaned aloud, not knowing what to do. Finally, he decided on a plan of action, trying to ignore the cries from the rat-besieged animals in that section. He ran towards the fence protecting the zoo from the dividing road and scrambled over it in hurried clumsiness. He fell over on to the other side and as he sprawled there he saw the lights of an approaching car. Scrambling to his feet, he ran into the road, waving his arms frantically. At first it seemed as though the car was going to drive on, but the driver must have seen his uniform in the glare of his headlights. It screeched to a halt causing George to jump to one side to avoid being hit.

The excited keeper was shouting instructions even as the driver was winding the window down. At the uncomprehending look on the motorist’s face, George began again: ‘Call the police, tell them rats, hundreds of them, are attacking the zoo. If they don’t get here soon, the bastards will slaughter my animals! Move, man, move!’

As the car sped off a horrifying thought struck George.

When the police and the soldiers got there, the only weapon they’d be able to use would be gas. And gas would be just as lethal to his animals as it would be to the vermin. He cried out in despair and ran across the road to the main entrance of the zoo. Climbing the turnstile, he saw the figures of two other keepers on night duty approaching him at a run.

‘Is that you, George?’ one of them shouted, shining a torch into his face.

‘Yes, it’s me,’ he answered, shielding his eyes with his arm.

‘Get out, George, come on. The whole place is swarming with rats! Those giant ones. They’re after the animals.’

‘No, we’ve got to let them out, turn them loose - we can’t let them be slaughtered.’

‘Not bloody likely, we’re getting out, there’s nothing we can do. And you’re coming with us!’ So saying, he grabbed the old keeper’s arm and tried to pull him back towards the turnstile. George struck outblindly, knocking the torch from his colleague’s grasp and ran off towards the main office.

‘Leave him-, Joe,’ the other man said. ‘We’ll only get ourselves killed chasing him. Let’s get out of here.

George ran, his lungs bursting, ignoring the dark shapes that were streaming from the tunnel, and tore up the short flight of steps that led to the office where all the keys to the cages were kept. By now, the zoo had erupted into an explosion of sound. Roars, shrieks, squawks, bellows - all combined to create tumultuous pandemonium. He snatched as many key bunches from their racks as he could carry, knowing exactly which belonged to each section, and ran from the office.

He stopped aghast at the sight of the mighty gorilla, the old man of the zoo, recapturing its ancient primitive majesty, pulling the rats apart with its great hands, crushing their bones with its immense strength, tossing them away like limp rags. But even its might had to succumb to the unlimited number of razor-toothed vermin. They swarmed over the gorilla, enraged by its strength, and brought it crashing to the floor where it still fought bravely on..

George watched the impressive creature’s death-struggle in fascinated silence but movements around his legs brought him to his senses. Looking down, he saw the wretched-looking dark bodies flowing past him, inexplicably ignoring him. In a rage, he kicked out at them, but still they sped on, eager to fill themselves on the trapped animals.

The keeper ran with them, unlocking cages and swinging their doors open wide as he went. Many of the unfortunate animals merely crouched at the rear of their abodes whilst others saw their chance for freedom and hurled themselves through the open doors. The birds were the luckiest – they could take to the air. But for the other creatures, their only means of escape was speed. The prouder ones stayed to fight and killed many of the vermin before they themselves fell, but the majority chose to flee. When they reached the outer fences of the zoo, they threw themselves at it, going mad with the frustration of being trapped. Some managed to clear it - the apes or the more fleet-looted - but the others either cringed against it or raced around its perimeter.

The old keeper found himself at the big cat-house. Still he hadn’t been attacked by the vermin; his mind never questioned it, he was too distressed over the plight of his beloved animals to worry about his own safety. The roars were deafening as he ran for the iron cages, the cats snarling both in fear and defiance.

He reached the lions and unhesitatingly unlocked the metal doors.

‘Come on, Sheik, come onSheba,’ he called to them softly, urging them to come out. He raced along, unlocking all the cages, oblivious to the danger. The lion sprang forward with an angry roar as it saw several dark shapes coming through the doors of the cat house. It tore them into shreds, tossing them into the air with its jaws, ripping their bodies with its claws. As more poured in, the other cats joined with the lion in the slaughter of the vermin; the tiger, the leopard, the panther, the puma, the jaguar, and the cougar all joined in the fight against the common foe. Only the cheetah remained in its cage.

‘Come on now, Sara, you must come out,’ pleaded George, but the cautious animal merely snarled from the back of the cage, baring its teeth, raising a claw.

‘Please, Sara, there’s a good girl. There’s nothing to be afraid of. You’ve got to come out.’ In desperation, he began to scramble into the cage. ‘Come on, girl, it’s only old George. I’ve come to help you.’

He slowly advanced on the cheetah, hand outstretched, talking soothingly all the time. The animal crouched away, snarling more ferociously.

‘Only me, Sara, George, Good old George.’

The cat sprang at the old keeper and within seconds reduced him to a bloodied carcass, dragging the dead body around its cage in triumph.

Then it sprang from the cage and streaked towards the fight between cat and rodent, but instead of attacking the rodents, it leapt upon the back of the panther, sinking its teeth into its shoulder. Still the vermin poured in and the battle between might and multitude continued to its bitter end.

Chapter Sixteen

Harris drove through the clutter of military and police vehicles that jammedWhitehall. He was waved down several times by the police and asked to show his pass. When he did, they briskly waved him on, saluting curtly. He threaded his way through to the granite-grey Ministry of Defence building, now the operations’ headquarters. The drive through the deserted streets had been eerie to say the least; the only times he’d experienced anything like it had been in the pre-dawn hours, returning from a late-night celebration, when London’s concrete canyons seemed virtually devoid of life and the noises of traffic and people were something unreal, hard even to imagine. But even then, there had usually been the sight of another lonely car or perhaps a man on his bike returning from night work. But today there had been nothing. He hadn’t even seen any army scout cars that he knew were patrolling the streets, checking that the city was empty, that no unauthorised person remained. For the past two days, there had been a lot of trouble with looters - scavengers who saw the chance of a lifetime to fill their pockets without hindrance.

They had been wrong; security had never been tighter. To be inLondonnow, without authorisation, meant immediate arrest and the whole area was concentrated with police and army personnel with the express task of enforcing the government ban.

‘Will it work, darling?’ Judy interrupted his thoughts.

He turned towards her, smiling tightly, unable to hide his unease. ‘It’s got to, hasn’t it?’ he said. Stopping to allow an army lorry to pull out from a row of other brown vehicles all filled with soldiers wearing heavy protective suits and each carrying gas masks balanced on their knees, he reached out and squeezed her hand. As part of the newly reorganised ‘action committee’ he’d been able to use some influence to keep Judy with him instead of being shipped off to the country for five days. Not that he’d wanted her to stay, the danger involved today (and possibly the next couple of days) to anyone still in the city couldbe great.

The whole operation was unpredictable to a certain extent. But she’d insisted on staying with him and he had managed to get her dispensation from the ban, having her conscripted into the large administration organization necessary for ‘Operation Extirpate’.

‘Operation Extirpate’, as it was named was based on a simple plan put forward by Harris, and the idea that had placed him back on the committee. It was the sort of inspiration that could only have come from someone not used to or bogged down by the intricacies of a scientific mind, so bold and uncomplicated was its concept. After the initial shock of the rats’ counter-attack, the members of the original team had sunk into a state of confusion and despair; the vermin had swiftly become immune to the virus although the disease they carried had been considerably weakened. But they, themselves, had become stronger, almost as if they had a burning desire for revenge, and they wreaked havoc, not just in East London, but all over the city, leaving a trail of’ bloody slaughter wherever they emerged from then’ lairs.

There had been many attacks that fateful Tuesday night; a cinema, a hospital, an old people’s home -

even a public house. The animals inLondonzoo had suffered a terribly vicious onslaught, many escaping to the surrounding park and those that couldn’t be captured had to be shot. There had been mass individual attacks, people alone having no chance against the overwhelming vermin. Reports had come in throughout the night of destruction and bloodshed.

An emergency meeting was held between the committee and government officials. Foskins didn’t attend -

he had been dismissed from office by the P.M. instantly the news broke and wasn’t seen again in the hectic days that followed. New members were added to the original team but the new plan had been devised before the change had had time to take effect.

When Harris had thought of the idea, he’d blurted it out almost immediately without giving himself time to think. If he had, he reflected later, he would probably have held his tongue with the notion that it was too simple, too broad in concept, and that if it had any merit, then one of the shrewder, more scientific members of the team would have produced it.

The idea, stemming from a previous team meeting, was basically this: as gas was the only proven method of destroying the vermin, they had to be lured into the open for the gas to be effected upon them; this could be achieved by the use of ultrasonic sound beams set up at strategic points all over the city sending out sound-waves to the widest area possible, luring the rats into the open where the gas could be used.

To Harris’ amazement, the idea was agreed on in principle with only slight reservations; a few refinements to be thrashed out.Londonwould have to be evacuated. It was drastic, but then the consequences would be fatal if the necessary steps were not taken. Londoners would have to leave their homes and migrate to the surrounding countryside if they were to escape the effects of the vast quantity of gas that had to be used. Evacuation was essential anyway to avoid the attacks from the rats. Safety could not be guaranteed any more. Huge enclosures would be built in the parks, as many as possible in the time, and the transmitters placed inside where the high-frequency sound waves would be sent out. The right pitch could easily be found by testing captive black rats. Once inside the enclosures, the entrances would be blocked and the deadly gas poured in. Because of the danger to anyone on the ground, helicopters would be used to hover over the enclosures to drop the gas into them, and ground troops would stand by outside in heavily armoured trucks armed with water-cannons, flame throwers and more gas. The building of the compounds and the complete evacuation ofLondon(save for those people vital to the running of the city’s essential services) would have to be achieved within six days at the most - otherwise the risk of the fast multiplying rodents completely overrunning the city would be too great. It was no time to ponder over the very existence of the vermin; their size, their strength, where they’d originated from, how their numbers had grown despite the virus, why they were so much more cunning than the smaller of their species (what gave them the instinct tolie low while the infection was taking effect on their companions). All these questions would have to be answered later. For now it was a question of survival.

That day - the plan had to be created, devised and put into action throughout the night - the city was declared to be in a state of emergency. The inhabitants were informed they were to be evacuated in sections, although thousands left without any urging at all on hearing of the night’s events; village halls, churches, schools - all public buildings were to be used as temporary shelters; huge marquees and tents were to be erected in fields; people were asked to stay with relatives if they had any in other parts of the country; an order was made known that looters would be shot on sight; any unauthorised person found in London after the sixth day would be arrested (it was known that all the people living in the city would never be cleared but at least the emergency laws would keep them indoors and hopefully away from harm).

Mercifully, the area south of the river had not been affected as yet, but it was decided to clear the inner boundaries of the sprawling suburbs as an extra precaution.

Many people protested; they didn’t want to leave their homes, they weren’t afraid of the vermin. But they were given no choice - if they wouldn’t leave peacefully, then they were forced, there being no time for politeness or argument. The period of exile would be two weeks from the day of the first gas onslaught.

Time would be needed to ensure that every last rodent was exterminated; the sewers would be completely and utterly filled with gas; basements, tunnels, ruins - any possible place that could harbour the vermin would be cleared and thoroughly cleansed.

Whether the shame and the disgrace in the eyes of the world would ever be erased was another matter.

The barricades around the parks went up in remarkably swift time, then’ use being more to confine the gas in a more concentrated area than to contain the rats. The roads out ofLondonwere jammed with cars and coaches, and trains ran non-stop services into the neighbouring provinces. Troops poured in to patrol the streets and to train for the emergency. More protective clothing was mass-produced in a very short time for the police and army. Any public demonstration was quickly broken up and dealt with, peacefully if possible.

At first, it looked as though the city would never be ready for the oncoming battle but miraculously - and mostly due to the co-operation, caused by fear, of the public - on the fifth day the stage was almost set.

Last minute conferences were held, revisions to existing plans made, final instructions to helicopter crews and the army given, and then the long vigil through the empty night, waiting for the dawn and the deciding climax it would bring.

Harris and Judy had laid awake most of the night, making love, talking - trying to push thoughts of the on-coming day’s events from then’ minds. They’d finally fallen into fitful sleep as the grey dawn forced the night darkness aside, the sun slowly rising upon a strangely still city.

When they awoke, their tiredness evaporated instantly as thoughts of the day flooded then’ minds. Judy cooked a breakfast which was left almost untouched and they made ready to go out into the deserted streets. As they opened their front door they saw a black rat scurry across the road into the small square park opposite. They hurried to their car and drove off, Harris glancing into his rear-view mirror, almost expecting to see the road behind him filled with vermin.

They finally reached the Ministry of Defence building, parked beside a shining Rolls Royce, and made their way into the gloomy entrance showing their passes. On their way down the endless corridors to their respective operations rooms they encountered a beaming Howard.

‘Good morning! All set for the big day?’ he clapped his hands together enthusiastically.

‘Ready enough,’ smiled the teacher.

‘I’ve been here all night. Spent a few hours on a camp bed.

Everything’s set for the big operation. ‘Good.’

‘I’d better get to my room,’ said Judy ‘Locating sewer entrances from those old maps and positioning them on new street maps isn’t my idea of fun, but if it all helps the cause.’

They all turned at once as a familiar figure came striding towards them from the other end of the corridor, waving his arm at them. As the figure drew nearer they realised with shock that it was Foskins. Tieless, badly in need of a shave, but with an excited look in his eyes.

‘Good Lord, what are you doing here?’ asked Howard, looking incredulously at the ex-Under-Secretary.

‘I’ve been around since last Tuesday,’ he said, the excitement giving way to a look of bitterness. He pulled at his open shirt collar and buttoned his jacket. ‘Before our last,er , unsuccessful operation, I ordered a search through records of anyone entering the country within the past two to three years who’d come from a tropical zone.’

‘You mean the sort of country that would breed this type of rat - or at least something like it?’ said Howard. ‘Exactly. But unfortunately, because we thought the virus operation would be so successful, it was rather pushed aside.

I - I must admit, I forgot all about it in the excitement that followed.’

There was a slightly embarrassed silence which Harris broke: ‘So?’

‘So, after my dismissal, I gathered the information I’d asked for and began sifting through it myself.’

‘Why?’ asked Howard coldly.

‘Because, well... ‘

‘Never mind,’ Harris cut in, glancing at Howard disdainfully. ‘What did you find?’

‘There were many entries from the tropics, of course, but only a few that fit the bill for our purposes. I made enquiries

I still have friends in Civil Service departments and came up with one man.’ His hand shook as he held up a piece of paper.

‘This man. Professor William Bartlett Schiller - zoologist.

He’d spent several years inNew Guineaand the surrounding islands apparently investigating reports of mutant animals seen by the locals. It seems quite feasible, for an island in that area had been used for a nuclear test and some of the inhabitants had been affected by radiation. Of course, it was all hushed up, but somehow Schiller got wind of it and decided to do some investigating.’

‘All right,’ said Howard impatiently. ‘But what makes you think this professor has anything to do with the rats?’

‘Well obviously the fact that he’d been inNew Guineaand he’d been involved in the study of abnormalities in animals.’ In his irritation, Foskin almost became the man he’d once been - been in public anyway.

‘Added to that,’ he continued, ‘he took up residence in

London. Near the docks. In a house by a canal.’

‘The Canal!’ Harris exclaimed. ‘Of course I’ve been trying to remember. In the beginning, that’s where the rats were seen. Keogh saw them. I saw them! Near the old lockkeeper’s house. I used to play there when I was a kid but they closed the canal down and the lock-keeper moved on.

I bet it was his house the professor took over.’

‘This is the address,’ said Foskins, thrusting the piece of paper at him, ‘That’s it.’

‘Oh, come now,’ broke in Howard. ‘What does it matter how? So this lunatic professor smuggled in one of his mutant species and took it to his home to study... “And allowed it to breed...’ ‘Yes, allowed it to breed. But that knowledge doesn’t help matters now; the operation goes on as planned. Maybe later we can investigate...”But why not now?’

‘Because, Mr Foskins, there are too many more important things to contend with today. Or haven’t you heard of

“Operation Extirpate”?’

‘Yes, of course I have, but if you’re going to root them out..’

‘I’ve got no more time for this sort of discussion, Mr

Foskins, so ff you’ll excuse me...’

‘You bloody fool! You soon sink into the background when your last idea didn’t work.’

‘Huh! You were busy taking all the credit for it - I didn’t see why you shouldn’t take all the blame.’

Foskins paled and then his whole body seemed to lose its tautness.

‘Y-yes, you’re quite right. I accept the blame - but I implore you, learn by my mistakes,’

‘It isn’t important just now, don’t you understand? Good

God, man, we can make all the investigations we like after, don’t you see, but today, we’re going to wipe them out.’ He turned towards Harris, who had failingly tried to keep from sympathising with the ex-Under-Secretary. ‘Are you coming, Harris? We’ve plenty to do.’

’Right.’ He touched Foskins’ arm. ‘It’ll be looked into, don’t worry.’ And I’ll make sure he at least gets some credit for it, he thought.

They strode off towards the big operations room, leaving

Judy standing alone with the distressed man.

All thoughts of Foskins were pushed from their minds as they entered the bustling operations room. In the centre was a huge map ofLondon, with shaded green areas illustrating the parks and dead red lights indicating the positions of the transmitters. When they came into operation, the red lights would come on.

The position of the helicopters was shown by yellow arrows and the troop vehicles by blue. The room was crowded with people, most of them having a function, but many were there as onlookers. Harris noticed the Prime Minister discussing last-minute details with the Chief of Staff. One side of the room was devoted to radio and television equipment; the transmitters would be operated from here, instructions sent out to the troops and helicopters, everything is monitored by cameras aboard the helicopters and those set up in the streets. The whole event was to be televised nationwide, and relayed by satellite to other countries. The P.M. felt his presence was vital, not to the operation itself, but to his political career. To be seen at the head of such a vast life-saving exercise such as this – and seen all over the world - was a bonus few other leaders had shared. He disappeared into the adjoining room to be interviewed by the television networks.

Harris had barely begun to study the vast glass map when he saw Judy at the door talking excitedly to an army sergeant whose job it was to prevent intruders, pointing towards him. He went over.

‘What’s the matter, Jude?’

‘Foskins. He’s gone off to that house by himself.’

‘To do what?’

‘I don’t know. He just said he had to do something, something that would make amends - maybe he could find the nest.’

‘Oh, Christ. He’ll get himself killed!’ He went out into the hall, taking Judy by the arm.

‘What axe you going to do?’ she asked anxiously, suspecting what he had in mind.

‘I’ll have to go after him.”

‘No. No, please don’t, Harris.’

‘Don’t worry, Jude. I’ll beat him to the house - he’ll have to find his way there, I can go straight to it. At least I can stop him going in.’

‘But the sound-beams - they’re due to start any minute now.’

‘That’s all right. It’ll make it safer. The rats will just head straight for the parks.’

‘You don’t know, they might attack you.’

‘I’ll be safe in the car. I’ve got a gas-mask and a protective suit, remember - standard equipment. Please don’t.’

He held her to him. ‘I love you, Jude.’ He kissed her fore- head. ‘But I’m going.’

Chapter Seventeen

Harris drove recklessly, knowing there was no chance of meeting other traffic. He was stopped once by an army scout car and had to waste valuable minutes showing his pass and explaining his mission. The officer in charge regretted not being able to accompany him but he had his own duties to carry out. He wished him luck and waved him on.

As he drove through the city, the office blocks towering over him on either side, the feeling of being utterly alone became almost overpowering. He wanted to turn back, to be amongst people again, to feel the security of numbers, but he forced himself to go on, knowing he had to prevent Foskins from entering the house.

As he reached Aldgate he saw the first of the rodents.

They were running along the side of the road, a heavy black stream of bristling bodies. They were joined by others from buildings, flowing into the main stream, jostling and climbing over each others backs.

He turned his head sharply at the sound of crashing glass and saw the front window of a J’.Lyonsrestaurant cave in as -rats poured through it. They were all headed in the same direction and Harris guessed it was towards the park near theTowerofLondonwhere one of the transmitters was located. On he went, aware of the gradual build-up in the numbers of the creatures, but all mercifully ignoring the speeding car. As he turned intoCommercial Roadhe brought the car to a screeching halt. It seemed as though there was a huge moving carpet stretching before him - the broad road was wholly filled with black vermin, creating an undulating cover over the road.

His heart froze at the sight. They were coming mostly from a side street and disappearing into another on the opposite side of the main road. The whole dark mass seemed to be about fifty yards wide, without a single break in its length. Should he turn back, find another route? Or would other roads be similarly filled? And how much time would it cost him to find another way around? Should he drive straight through them? What if the car stalled and he was trapped in the middle of the flow? If they attacked, his protective suit would hardly withstand their onslaught. His instinct told him to turn around, to get back to the protection of the military, but as he looked through his rear window he saw other streams of rats, pouring from streets and buildings, like molten lava pouring from a volcano, forming tributaries around obstacles and joining again to form major streams. He realised the way back would be just as hazardous.

Something landed on his bonnet with a thump causing him to swing round to the front again. One of the giant rats was staring at him through the windscreen, its evil face almost level with his own, the distance between them only two feet, a thin sheet of glass his only protection.

It gunned him into action. He thrust the gear-lever into first and revved the engine, slipping the clutch to build up power. He moved forward, slowly at first, then eased his foot up gently to gather speed. The rat slithered across the bonnet trying to retain its grip with its long claws but the smooth surface of the car soon defeated it and it slid back on to the road.

Harris kept his foot firmly down on the accelerator, telling himself it would be just like driving through a flood-washed road and the trick was to keep going, slowly but steadily.

The car reached the edge of the stream and plunged into the surging bodies. It began to bump as it went over them, the crunch of bones and squashed bodies nauseating the teacher who could only force his eyes on the road ahead and will his foot to stay on the pedal. The rats seemed oblivious to the car, making no attempt to escape its crushing wheels.

Several leapt across the bonnet and roof - one jumped at the side window, cracking but not breaking it.

Twice the car slid on the wet blood its wheels were soaked in and Harris had to fight to keep it in a straight line, praying he wouldn’t stall the engine.

He felt a thump on the roof above his head, then a pointed head appeared at the top of the windscreen, its nose twitching from side to side, the tips of its claws spread flat against the glass.

Harris pushed himself back against his seat in sheer frightened reaction, almost allowing his foot to slip from the accelerator pedal but automatically dipping his clutch to avoid stalling. The creature flopped on to the bonnet, mainly because of the car’s jolt, and turned to face the man inside.

It seemed even bigger than the usual giant rat and Harris wondered why it wasn’t affected by the sound waves as much as the others. He quickly recovered his wits and drove on, trying to ignore the monster glaring evilly at him through the glass. The sharp squeals of the rats trapped between his tyres strengthened his hate for them and this spurred him on.

Suddenly the rat on the bonnet lunged at the windscreen, baring its teeth and using them to try and shatter the glass.

The glass held, but the teacher knew it wouldn’t stand up to too much pressure. With relief, he realised he was almost through the black writhing mass and he began to gather speed. The rat lunged again causing a large jagged scratch to appear across the windscreen. At last the car broke through the vermin river and Harris immediately pushed it into second then third gear. He knew he had to shake the monster off quickly before the glass shattered and he began to turn the wheel jerkily from side to side hoping to dislodge his unwelcome passenger.

But he was too late.

The rat took a final desperate lunge at the windscreen almost as though it knew it was its last chance and the whole of Harris’s vision became cloudy white as the glass shattered into a myriad of tiny cracks.

Harris found himself staring directly into the face of the rat. Its head had broken through and it struggled to enlarge the hole to accommodate the rest of its powerful body. It bared its bloodied incisors at the teacher, its eyes glaring and bulbous because of the restraining glass that pulled its skin back at the neck.

Harris knew it would be a matter of seconds before the glass gave and the creature plunged through on to his exposed face. He jammed on the brakes, knowing and fearing what he had to do next. As the car came to a skidding halt he pulled on the heavy gloves of his protective suit and opened the door on his side. He jumped out and ran around to the front of the car, grabbing at the loathsome body and pulling with all his strength. The sudden cold air on his face made him realise how exposed his head and face were and the panic gave him even more speed and strength. He pulled the rat free, the glass cutting into its neck as it thrashed from side to side.

He held it above his head and threw it towards the other side of the car, its weight taking him by surprise and weakening his throw. The rat’s body brushed the edge of the bonnet and rolled on to the ground with stunning force but it was on its feet immediately and tearing back underneath the car towards the teacher. Harris moved fast but hadn’t expected the rat to come from beneath the car.

As he jumped in and began to pull the door shut he felt an excruciating pain in his leg and he looked down and saw the rat clinging to a spot just above his ankle, the tough material of the suit saving him from serious injury. He tried to shake it off but it clung relentlessly increasing the pressure, trying to climb into the car.

Harris beat at it with his fist but to no avail. Bringing his foot back inside but resting it on the very edge, he grabbed at the door-handle with both hands and slammed the door shut with all his strength. The rat gave out a piercing shriek and loosened the grip on his leg. Its neck was trapped between the door and frame but it still thrashed around wildly, its eyes glazed and its mouth frothing. He pulled the door tighter, slipped a hand through the narrow crack for a firmer grip, and squeezed the life from the rat.

When its struggles ceased, he opened the door just enough for the body to flop on to the ground and quickly closed it tight. He sat there shaking for a few moments, feeling no relief because he knew he had to go on. It was only the sound of the roaring engine that brought him fully to his senses. His foot was resting on the accelerator pedal and because he purposely had not turned the ignition off, the engine was racing madly. He eased his foot off, made the hole in the windscreen larger, and engaged first gear, driving slowly at first then picking up speed as he remembered his mission.

He saw many more of the giant rodents, unhesitatingly driving through them without even reducing speed when they blocked the road. At least the idea of the ultrasonic sound waves seemed to be working, he thought. It had flushed the vermin from their nests. Maybe there was some truth in the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin after all. Maybe his pipes were tuned in to the rats’ frequency as well.

He looked up through the side window at the sound of a helicopter. It’s up to those boys now, he told himself. And their gas.

He turned off fromCommercial Roadand drove towards the disused canal, the rats now seeming to diminish in numbers. When he reached the street that ran alongside the old canal, it was deserted of any rodent life at all. He spotted a car halfway down the street and assumed Foskins had beaten him to it. He stopped at the place where he knew the house to be hidden behind a high wall and screened by wild foliage. Foskins must have parked his car and walked back looking for the house. He sat there for a few moments, listening for any sound, reluctant to leave the comparative safety of his vehicle. He reached for the glass visored helmet and got out of the car. He stood there and looked both ways down and up the street. Carrying the helmet in one hand, ready to don it at the slightest muse, he moved towards the boarded-up gap in the wall where the iron gates had once stood. Two of the heavy boards had been pulled aside leaving ahole large enough for a man to get through.

Harris stuck his head through cautiously and shouted,

‘Foskins! Foskins, are you there?’

Silence. Complete, utterly lonely, silence.

The teacher took one more look up and down the street, put on the helmet, hating the clammy, claustrophobia it caused him, and stepped through the hole. He pushed his way through the undergrowth, along the path that had once existed, viewing everything remotely through the glass visor.

He reached the old familiar house and stood at its closed front door. Taking off the helmet, he called out again:

‘Foskins, are you in there?’

He banged on the door but the house remained silent.

Hell, I’ll have to go in, he thought. At least, if there were any rats, they’ll have all cleared out by now.

He peered through the broken window but could see nothing through the gloom, the surrounding trees and undergrowth preventing a lot of the light from penetrating into the interior of the house. Returning to his car, he brought out a torch from the glove compartment then went back to the house. He shone the light through the window and saw nothing but two old mildewed armchairs and a heavy wooden sideboard. He drew back at the stench that wasn’t due entirely to the must of age. He tried to open the front door but it was firmly locked. He then went round towards the back.

What must have been at one time the kitchen overlooked the muddy canal and its door was slightly ajar.

He pushed it open gently, its creak the only sound that broke the uneasy silence.

He went in.

The smell that assailed his nostrils was even stronger than before and he quickly replaced his helmet in the hope that it would act as a mask. The kitchen still had crockery in its sink, now dusty with time; cobwebs hung across the windows and from the corners of the small room; ashes, still lying in the fireplace, uncleared from its last fire. Whoever had lived here had left in a hurry.

Harris opened a door and went into a dark hall, switching on his torch although he was still able to see enough without it. He stopped outside a door that, as a child, when the lock-keeper had let him and his friends visit, he’d never been allowed to enter. Not that there had been any mystery on the other side, but because the lock-keeper had said it was a private room, a room used for rest and reading the Sunday papers. He didn’t understand why, but the unknown room presented him with deep apprehension, fear looming up inside his very soul. Nervously he turned the handle and pushed against the door, slowly at first but then swiftly and firmly, letting go so that it crashed against the wall.

It was almost completely dark, the dusty lace curtains across the window no longer allowing light to pass through its fine mesh. He shone the torch around the walls, searching and dreading what he might find. It seemed to have been converted into a study; a round globe stood in one corner, a blackboard in another; on the walls were drawings of animals, bone structures, variations of species; a long book-case, crammed with huge volumes; a desk piled with maps and drawings.

Harris flashed the light back to the blackboard. The chalk drawing on its surface, faded and difficult to distinguish in the poor light seemed to be of a - he removed his helmet for better vision and moved closer.

The thin pointed head, the long body, heavy haunches, slender tail - yes, it was unmistakeably a rat. And yet - it was hard to see in the poor light there appeared to be something odd about it.

A noise from somewhere downstairs abruptly broke his thoughts.

‘Foskins, is that you?’ he shouted.

For a moment, there was silence, but then he heard another sound. A faint scuffling noise. He hurried back to the door and called Foskins’ name again. Silence and then a dull thump coming, it seemed, from the back of the house, below.

He edged quietly down the hall, one hand on the wall to steady himself. Opposite the kitchen was another door he hadn’t noticed before, but now he remembered it from his childhood. It was the door to the cellar and it wasn’t quite closed.

He pushed it wide and shone the torch down the steep flight of stairs but was only able to see a small area at the bottom.

‘Foskins?’

He took a tentative step down and almost retched at the nauseating smell. He saw that the bottom of the door had been chewed away. If the zoologist had brought mutant rats into the country, this must have been where he’d kept them, Harris told himself, allowing them to breed – encouraging them. But what had happened to him? Killed byhis own monsters? And once he was dead, there would have been nothing to control their rapid growth in numbers. But the cellar must be empty now - the sound-beams would have cleared them out. But what of the rat on his car? It didn’t seem affected by them. Perhaps there were others like it.

Turn back, or go on?

He’d come this far, it would be an utter waste not to continue his search. He descended the stairs.

As he reached the bottom, he saw there was a faint light shaft coming from some point ahead. He trailed his torch along the ground towards it and discovered many white objects littered around the floor. With a gasp he recognised them as bones - many resembling human bones. If this had been a rat’s nest, they must have dragged their human victims down here, to gorge themselves in safety, or perhaps to feed their young.

He flashed the torch from side to side and discovered cages set around the room, their meshwork of wire torn away, their bottoms filled with straw andmore white objects. He played his beam back towards the small shaft of light and then realised where it came from. It was another torch, the kind kept on key-rings, giving out a weak pinpoint of light, enough to allow a person to find a keyhole in the dark.

It was lying next to a body and with dread in his heart, Harris directed his torch over it.

The lifeless eyes of Foskins stared brightly towards the ceiling. He was hard to recognise for his nose had gone and one cheek was flapped open wide, but Harris instinctively knew it was the ex-Under-Secretary. The lower half of his face was covered in blood and there was something moving at his crimson, open throat. A black rat was feeding on him, drinking the red liquid with greedy gulping motions.

It stopped as the light was shone fully on it, two evil slanted eyes, yellow and malevolent, glaring directly at the bright torch.

As Harris took an involuntary step back, the broad beam took in the rest of the mutilated corpse. The clothes were in shreds, an arm seemed to be almost torn from the body. On the exposed chest, a hole gaped where the heart had once been. Another rat lay half across the corpse’s body, its head buried into the lifeless man’s intestines, oblivious in its greed to the presence of another human. In his other hand, Foskins held an axe in a death-grip, its head buried into the skull of another giant rat. Another of the vermin lay dead nearby.

It was as though the whole scene was frozen in Harris’s mind, as if his eyes had acted as a camera lens and had snapped the macabre scene into timeless immobility.

Although he couldn’t have stood there for more than two seconds, it seemed like an age, like a void in time that couldn’t be measured in hours or minutes.

Dimly, through his shock, something else registered in his mind. Something lurked in the far comer.

Bloated and pale.

Indefinable.

The paralysing catalepsy was suddenly broken as the rat at Foskins’s throat broke loose and leapt towards the light.

Harris stumbled backwards, tripping over bones, landing fiat on his back. He lost his grip on the torch and it went skidding along the floor, fortunately not breaking. As he lay there slightly stunned, he realised he was not wearing his protective helmet, and it, too, was lost from his grasp. He felt heavy paws clambering along his body, towards his exposed face. He managed to catch the rat by its throat as it was about to sink its teeth into his flesh. The fetid breath from the creature’s jaws, inches from Harris’s face, struck even more terror into his mind. The rat appeared to be even larger and heavier than the giant species, similar to the one on his car. He rolled over desperately, his feet kicking out and landing a lucky blow on the head of the other approaching rat.

Pushing the pointed head against the ground, he beat at it with his free fist, but the rat’s claws raked at his body, pounding in furious rhythm, preventing him from using his weight to pin it down. It snapped at the heavy-gloved hand as it descended again and caught the material between its teeth.

Harris felt something land on his back and a sharp pain as his head was yanked back by his hair. He rolled over again, trying to crush the rat on his back but losing grip on the other to do so. The trick worked but he felt his hair tear at the roots as he got to one knee, The first rat jumped up at his face but he managed to turn his head just in time and felt a searing pain as the razor-like incisors cut along his cheek. With his right hand he helped the rat in its flight with a hard shove at its haunches sending it sailing over his shoulder to crash into one of the scattered cages. He made a move towards the axe he remembered seeing in Foskins’s dead hand, stretching on all fours, becoming like the creatures he was fighting.

As he reached for the axe, lit by the eerie light from his lost torch, he discovered his hand was bare -

exposed to the flashing teeth and jaws of the vermin. He almost drew it back towards him, to protect it with his body, but his balance depended on his gloved hand. He stretched his arm again to reach the weapon his life depended on, but sharp teeth clamped down on his hand, shaking it furiously.

With a scream he scrambled to his feet, drawing the hand with him. The rat fell back to the ground, two of his fingers between its jaws.

Incredibly, he felt no pain, his mind too numbed by terror and shock for the message to reach his brain.

He staggered towards the door, intent on escape, no longer caring about Foskins, no longer concerned with the defeat of the vermin, only wanting to be free of the nightmare. He was knocked to the ground by one of the rats landing on his shoulder. He fell on to a cage and rolled over behind it, dislodging the rat as he went. The desire to cower, to lie down and die swept through his frenzied mind but with a roar, a scream, a cry of rage - he never knew which - he regained his feet, grabbing for the rat as he did so. He caught it by its hind legs and pulled it off the ground. The other rat had jumped at his thigh and Harris felt it biting through the material of the protective suit. As the blood flowed warmly and freely down his leg, he knew the teeth had penetrated the heavy cloth. It added to his fury, giving him extra strength - not a madman’s strength, for his mind was now cool and calculating, ignorant of the pain - but the strength of a man refusing to be beaten by an inferior and loathsome creature.

He twisted his body, dragging the rat in his hands with him, ignoring the one at his thigh. He lifted the struggling creature as high as he could, then swung it against the wall with all his might. The stunned creature emitted a high-pitched squeal, not unlike the scream of a child, but still twisted and turned in his grip. He swung again, this time grunting with satisfaction at the sound of crunching bones as the thin skull hit the concrete. He tossed it away from him, as far as he could, notknowing if it still lived.

Reaching down, he pulled at the rat at his thigh, but now the pain became unbearable. He lifted the writhing body and staggered towards the lifeless figure of Foskins. He sank to his knees, almost passing out with the effort and pain, but managed to crawl desperately on. But he could not endure the pain in his leg much longer. With one final supreme effort, he reached for the corpse and collapsed against it. His weight forced the rat to release him but it immediately launched itself into another attack. Harris rolled on his back, drew his knees up, and kicked out with both feet. The blow sent the rat scuttling across the room, giving him time to get to his knees.

He grabbed for the axe and pulled its head from the dead rat. To his horror, Foskins’s hand still held grimly on to the handle. He grasped the wrist with his injured left hand and wrenched the weapon free with his right. Turning sharply, he was just in tune to meet the charging black beast, its jaws frothing with blood and foam, its eyes bulging with hate. He brought the axe down to meet its flying attack, the blade cleaving fight through its pointed skull. It landed in a heap before him, dead already, but twitching violently. He had decapitated it.

Harris sank down, his forehead almost touching the ground but a slithering sound brought him to his senses.

Looking up, he saw the other rat, the one he’d tossed from him, the one whose skull he thought he’d fractured against the wall, crawling towards him. It was badly injured, almost dead, but still it found the strength and hate to move towards him, leaving a wet trail of blood in its wake.

He crawled towards it and the rat raised its loathsome head and bared its teeth, a sound like a snarl rising from its throat. Harris realised its back was broken, but still it kept coming, determined to destroy him.

When they were no more than two feet apart he raised himself to his knees, lifting the axe high above his head with both hands. The back haunches of the rat quivered as it tried to summon strength to leap, a feat it could never accomplish. The teacher brought the axe crashing down against the back of its neck, shattering its spine at the top, severing its arteries.

The exhausted teacher collapsed in a heap, He didn’t know how long he’d lain there. It could have been five minutes, it could have been five hours. He removed his gloved hand and examined his watch. It was impossible to judge accurately for he had no time-table of the horrifying events that had preceded his collapse. The pain in his hand was excruciating now, overpowering the throb of his thigh.

His whole body ached and his cheek was sticky with blood.

A sharp pain brought his good hand to his ear and he discovered with shock his ear-lobe was missing.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he muttered. But he was alive anda lightness filled his whole being. The shots I’ve had will prevent any disease, he reassured himself. All I need to do is get out of this bloody hole.

He sat up and his hand brushed against the dead Foskins.

Poor sod, he thought. He must have put up quite a struggle to kill two of the rats. Well, he discovered the nest all right; this must have been where they originally bred, the home-A sound made his body stiff. The fear came flooding back.

Oh, God, the thought, isn’t it over yet? He looked hurriedly round for the axe, found it still buried in the dead body of the rat, and retrieved it with a tug.

The sound was like a whimper, a strange meowing noise. It came from the far comer.

Suddenly, Harris’s mind flashed back to the moment he’d discovered Foskins’s corpse. The photograph his brain had taken. The pale, bloated image he’d seen in the gloom.

Now there were small scuffling noises.

He crawled desperately for the fallen torch, mercifully still working, but its beam gradually growing dimmer. Am I strong enough to defend myself against another attack? He asked himself. He doubted it.

His intention was to retrieve the torch and then get up the stairs and out into the street as quickly as possible.

But as he reached the torch and no attack came, he became curious. He shone the light in the direction of the noises. Something was there, something white or grey, moving slightly. Two eyes were reflecting back at him. Small eyes. Luminous. He moved slowly towards them.

As he drew nearer, his whole body trembled, repulsed at what he saw. He stopped when he was five feet from it, resisting the urge to run, forcing himself to look.

On the straw before him, tucked into the farthest corner, surrounded by human bones, lay the most obnoxious creature he had ever seen, either in dreams or in life. In some ways, it resembled a rat, a huge rat, bigger, much bigger than the others. Its head was pointed, its body long, though obese, and he could see a long, thick tail curling forward, from behind it. But there the resemblance ended.

Its whole body seemed to pulse spasmodically; it was almost hairless, a few grey threads clinging sparsely; it was completely white, or perhaps grey-pink, impossible to tell in the poor light, and its veins showed through obscenely, throbbing in time with the body movement. It reminded Harris of a huge, dismembered, bloodshot eye. He swallowed hard to stop the rising sickness.

He looked into the sightless eyes. There were no pupils, just yellow, gleaming slits. The head waved from side to side, seemingly sniffing the air, the only way he could locate him. The stench from the creature was foul, putrid - almost poisonous. A shape at the side of its large head puzzled Harris. Resisting his revulsion, he took a step closer, realising the creature was crippled by its own obesity.

The lump was almost as big as the head next to it and it, too, waved to and fro in the air. He peered closer, holding the torch nearer to it and saw what looked like - a mouth!

God! It had two heads!

Harris staggered back with a cry of horror. The second head had no eyes at all, but it had a mouth and stumps of teeth. No ears - but a pointed nose that twitched and sniffed.

The obscene creature’s mewing became louder as it thrashed ponderously around in its straw crib. But it was unable to move. It sensed the danger and it knew it was helpless. The giant rats Harris and Foskins had fought had been its guards. Guards to the king. But now they were dead, and it was unprotected.

Vulnerable.

With a sob, Harris raised the axe and stumbled towards the monster, frightened but knowing he had to kill it, knowing he couldn’t leave it to the authorities, knowing they would keep it alive to study its strangeness, its rarity, knowing he would never sleep peacefully again unless it were dead. And if it were to die - he must be its executioner.

He lunged forward and the sightless creature tried to back away. But its gluttony and reliance on its subject creatures defeated it. It was too heavy, it was too old,it was too helpless.

The body popped like a huge balloon filled with dark red blood. Harris became drenched in the thick, sticky fluid, but he hacked away at the pulsating flesh, in a rage he’d never felt before.

‘For the people who’re died because of you!’ he screamed at the dying creature. ‘For the good, for the bastards, for the innocent - for the rats like yourself!’ He hacked at the heads, killing the two brains that had dominated its fellow creatures.

‘And for me! So that I know that filth like you can always be erased!’

He plunged the axe deep into the creature’s sagging back in one final thrust, then he sank to his knees and wept.

Soon he wiped his eyes and got to his feet. Taking one last look at the heap of obscene flesh, he turned and staggered from the cellar glancing at Foskins’s body as he passed, feeling drained of emotion.

He wearily climbed the stairs and walked through the kitchen into the open sunlight. He stood at the edge of the canal for a few moments, seeing gas clouds drifting through the bright blue sky, secure in the knowledge that the gas would be fulfilling its deadly purpose. He breathed deeply, trying to lose the pungent cellar odour from his nostrils. He winced at the pain in his hand and examined the stumps of his fingers. His heart suddenly ached for Judy. And for people. He wanted to be back amongst them.

He turned and walked back down the path, his body no longer trembling, warmed by the sun. He stepped through the gap and into the street, climbed tiredly into his car and drove away from the old house.

Epilogue

The rat had been trapped in the basement for five days. It had crawled into a dark corner behind a row of shelves to give birth to its litter and when it had tried to follow the sound that had buzzed through its head, it had found the way blocked by a heavy iron door. The sound had continued for five long days, almost driving the mother-rat and its tiny offspring mad with its incessant, monotonous pitch. But they had found food in abundance in the basement, for the owners had ignored the government warning to leave all doors open so that every building would be cleared. They knew that when the city’s population returned from their short exile, food would be scarce for the first few days, and their shop would be ready to cash in on the shortage. The rat and its litter gorged themselves on the food, for the young ones seemed only to need their mother’s milk for the first three days then finding greater replenishment in the food around them. They grew larger and sturdier day by day, already dark brown, almost black hairs beginning to grow on their bodies.Except for one. Only a few white hairs sprouted on its pink, almost white body. It seemed to dominate the others which brought it food and kept its body warm with their own. A curious lump seemed to be growing on its broad lop-sided shoulder, next to its head.

Patiently, they waited for the people to return.