Matt lowered the binoculars. “I can’t see anything moving, around the nest or anywhere else.”
The group was huddled behind tall hedges in the same playground they had staged out of for their previous visit. The mid-morning sun shed bright light over the dew-covered field, and on any other day this would have been pristine and beautiful. Today however, the ugly scar which was their target overshadowed any aesthetic pleasure.
The gaping maw of the tunnel leading down to the rat nest was surrounded by piles of displaced dirt and rubbish, as before. The King George V Recreation Ground was on top of an old landfill site, and the excavation of the nest had left obvious signs of this in the flashes of faded colour in the dirty brown piles of earth.
Crouching down next to the others, Matt joined them in checking through their gear for the umpteenth time. Nerves weren’t just starting to creep in – they had been very established since leaving the house – and now the group were as jittery as children on Christmas Eve.
The time Matt had spent on the previous day had been well-spent. Each of them was wearing a jacket or hoodie with what Alan was calling the “Hedgehog” armour patch, as well as a new light patch which should both illuminate their way and hopefully dazzle any rats directly in front of them. Next to these a plain patch with no discernible colour would encase them in pure air, no mean feat with the smell they had encountered in the upper reaches of the nest last time.
Alan carried his staff, while the other three each had a spear with one of Matt’s poison patches attached to the shaft. During the attack in their road, these had proved extremely effective at debilitating the rats they had wounded. With the additional power from his third attunement, they might make the difference they needed to keep the swarm’s jaws from closing on them – physically and metaphorically.
“Everyone ready?” Alan asked, his voice clipped.
No-one trusted themselves to speak without a tremble right then, so his response was a round of jerky nods.
“Right then, let’s do this.” He said, before adding quietly with a wry smile. “Leeeeerrrroooyy Jeeeenkiiiiiins!”
Matt shook his head, hoping desperately that invoking the Jenkins had not cursed their mission. With one final check around, the group broke cover and hurried toward the nest entrance.
Parting had been difficult that morning. Always before the trips away from home had been a purpose other than direct confrontation of any kind, but today it was a certainty. Kira had clamped onto her parents so hard and refused to let go, until Alan played dirty with some rib tickles.
Now she lay, head in Lara’s lap on Carry’s spare bed, tears all spent and a gaping hole inside threatening to engulf her world. She never enjoyed separation from either parent, but deep down she knew that each day away, business trip or sleepover was a temporary absence. Faced with the very real prospect of not seeing one or both parents again, she struggled to hold herself together.
After nuzzling and yowling quietly to her brothers, Nala leapt up on the end of the bed to keep a watch over the troubled young girl, while Lara stroked her hair robotically. As her best friend experienced in part what she had already suffered, Lara’s thoughts were drawn back to the terrible night when her world had been shattered.
Her lucky escape had led to several days trapped in a dark, dusty hole. It had become a reflection of the emptiness she felt inside after her family was suddenly and cruelly ripped away. With only faint light and occasional drips of rain or dew entering through the small hole in the roof, life had become bare existence. A series of empty moments with no purpose and no hope for the future.
She had only barely been aware of Matt’s arrival, his care and then the desperate escape from the overgrown serpent. It had seemed like an end to a terrible nightmare, until waking on the Brands’ sofa to an overwhelming array of emotional stimulus. Like a person leaving a silent, pitch-black cave onto a busy city street, the cavalcade of memories had caused such pain that all she could do was vomit them forth in a grief-stricken wail.
Awakening for the second time felt very different, the reassurance of her group of saviours giving her – if not a platform to stand on – a sure footing on the riverbed to push up from. Becoming immersed in the daily rituals, and above all the familiarity of her friends had made it easier to focus on the changes outside of her personal tragedy.
She looked down at Kira’s closed eyes, crossing fingers, hoping and praying that that tragedy was not to be repeated today.
She looked up and around the room. “Oswald, where are you?”
Darkness…writhing….flesh…hot…hunger…hunger…hunger…subservience…effort…command…tearing…ripping…pain…pain…twisting…gagging…heaving…
Even as the group approached the gaping maw of the nest, a foul smell assaulted their noses. More potent even than their previous visit, the air was thick with the stench of sickness, faeces and bile.
“Oh…wow…yuck. Have you ever heard someone say ‘it smells like something crawled up your arse and died’? This is what they meant.” Matty said quietly, choking back nausea as they all were.
“Hit your air and armour patches, we’re going in.” Matt said, not waiting as he did so. After a few seconds the stench was pushed away, and the sweet purity of country air filled their lungs with each breath. There was a slight scent of fir trees and grass. Must be a result of the air scent in our garden, Matt thought absently as they entered the tunnel and started cautiously down the slope.
As they had planned previously, Alan took the lead and Arlee at the rear of the group tapped the light patch on her chest. Enough light filtered past to show Alan the way forward, without announcing their presence to anything further down the tunnel. It was between five and six feet wide and high – only just enough for two people side by side. Alan and Matty frequently stooped or muttered curses under their breath when something rubbed against their heads.
Creeping forward, the group was silent, feet placed carefully to avoid kicking loose debris. Even with this caution, they flinched at each scrape while all the time hearing a growing susurrus from further in. The faint green glow appeared ahead of them, as the tunnel turned a corner opposite a seam of chalk.
Alan held up a hand to the others, creeping forward to peer around the corner with the utmost care. Even without light, there was a feeling of emptiness ahead, filled with the faint green miasma which settled around his calves. He could see where the tunnel ended and widened into maybe a cavern, or maybe just split off in different directions. They would need proper light to see more.
More clearly now the sound of movement was obvious, and the staccato chittering that froze the blood. Absent for now was the pattering of many feet, but in the distance there was a dragging, scraping noise, and a horrible, slick squelching that sounded totally disgusting. Dripping liquid could be heard, though the echoes were confusing and he could get no sense of direction.
Now almost a veteran of anti-rodent warfare, Alan shook off the chilling feeling, gathering as much information as he could before slinking quietly back to where the others nervously waited. Huddled close, he set forth a plan to kick off the most dangerous activity that any of them would hopefully ever encounter.
Creeping up to the corner, Alan peeked around again before slowly making his way down a short slope to where the tunnel widened out. Knowing they had only moments before their presence was known, they worked quickly.
Air…scent…movement… effort…struggle…pain…pain…command…struggle…light…no light…LIGHT…
Matt and Alan stood guard on either side of the tunnel where it opened up, while behind them Arlee started dragging jerrycans from her bag. Facing the wall to mute the light of her patch, she handed them forward to Matty, who unscrewed the lids and started piling up the cans against the tunnel wall. With a sufficient stock was ready he moved forward, Arlee continued pulling cans out of her bag, unscrewing the caps and making ready to resupply him. Tapping the two guards on the shoulder, Matty gave a thumbs up in the dim glow and the others nodded grimly.
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Scent…new…strange…strange…dangerous…gagging…pain…move…MOVE…
Rolling his shoulders to loosen them out, Matty grabbed the first opened can and launched it between the two men as far as he could on a shallow arc. Without waiting to hear the results, he grabbed the next and repeated the action, releasing it as a heavy thud and loud squeal heralded the landing of the first.
“Now Matt!” Hissed Alan, gripping his staff in white-knuckled hands.
Matt reached under his top and pulled out a frisbee. Praying not to hit a low ceiling only a few feet away and guided by the trajectory of Matty’s thrown cans, he tapped the patch on it, throwing it away into the darkness. The burst of bright light dazzled him briefly, but after a moment of blinking he wished it had stayed dark.
The frisbee soared on a slight curve and everywhere along its path, a nightmare of un-nature was revealed. A large cavern - roughly the size of the pairs of tennis courts lying unused on the park above them – opened up into vivid clarity as the flying orb of light crossed most of the width. From where they stood in the tunnel entrance, they could see a shallow slope falling before them into a rough bowl, as overhead the ceiling reached maybe double their own height.
Writhing clumps of matted grey-brown fur twitched as if shocked, large rodent heads flinching to follow the flight. Everywhere it passed, movement erupted on the floor or emerged from a series of alcoves, burrowed into the dirt. Scraps of dirty and faded human rubbish lay everywhere, gouged out of the walls.
As the frisbee reached the extent of Matt’s throw it fell to the ground and bounced – the light dancing chaotically – until it settled, luckily the patch facing upwards and illuminating a good portion of the chamber’s rear area. Revealed in the glow were two monstrous sights.
Mounds of bloody human remains were stacked haphazardly against the back wall, the ground stained darkly all around. Only Matt and Alan were in a position to see this and they blanched at the terrible abattoir. The silky-wrapped larder of the station spiders had been bad, but this laid bare the brutally cruel ending that so many had met at the jaws of this nest’s inhabitants.
Lying next to one of these mounds was a hulking rat, enormous even next to its grossly enlarged kin. Fully the size of a small car, gaping jaws the size of a tyre were ripping away chunks of a corpse before gulping them down a gaping gullet. Around a distended belly, a revolting scrum of hairless, slime-glistening infant rats struggled against each other to reach the rows of her teats
“…a Malicious Mother, which rules the colony…”
Matt remembered Kira’s words and knew that they were staring at the ruler of this nest, the source of the swarm and top candidate for ‘Thing Which Absolutely Has To Die 2025’. As the light stilled it reared up, that awful chittering cutting through the other sound.
All this took only a handful of seconds, and Matty was continuing to launch opened jerrycans as far as he could into the nest. Streams of petrol rained down under their paths and wherever they landed, clumps of rats jumped back, hissing and chittering.
Looking around, Matt and Alan could see the effects of their earlier conflicts. Here and there amongst the swarm were rats burned free of fur, red and weeping flesh contrasting starkly against the muted colours of other rats. In other places, single rats and even groups lay on their sides, green foam bubbling around mouths, or coating the jaws of contorted rat corpses. The poison worked! Matt thought with a shard of relief amidst the fear.
The lull could not last. The rasping chitter of the Malicious Mother echoed around the chamber, and as one the rats leapt to attack. A sea of heaving fur rippled toward them.
Crouching side by side, Matt and Alan waited as the voracious tide approached. As the leading edge got close, both tapped the patch in the flame tubes held in armoured hands. Twin jets of flame erupted into the oncoming beasts, before fanning left and right, crossing over each other and back again, immolating the front rows and breaking their momentum. Clouds of greasy smoke rose and hisses of agony sounded from all angles. There was a brief pause as the onrushing middle of the pack piled up behind the roasted front ranks. Then the wave crested and a fresh rank of vermin sprang closer.
Alan stepped forward, needing more space to swing his staff. The tips of spears glowed with the same sickly green as Matt and Arlee thrust around his sides, trying to prevent any rats from flanking him. While they couldn’t put much force behind these pokes, as long as they planted the glowing tips into a furry body, that rat quickly seized up, falling away to writhe on the floor, body contorting as the poison took hold. All the while, Matty took every opportunity to launch a jerrycan over Matt’s crouching form, trying to avoid Alan’s swinging staff.
Even with their defensive position, the press almost overwhelmed them in the first wave. Burned and broken rats dragged themselves forward to snap at legs, while fresh targets clambered over furry backs to lunge at faces and arms. Ripples appeared at various points of Alan’s body as his armour absorbed vicious bites and raking claws, and Matt could see it dimming slightly already.
“Matt - light!” Roared Alan mid-swing, before delivering a one-handed prod to a rat face with a crunch. His other hand quickly tapped the last patch on his chest. Bright light erupted from both him and Matt, searing the darkness-loving eyes of the rats, causing them to fall back briefly.
“Going long!” Matty yelled out in the brief break between attacks. A pair of jerrycans were sent tumbling almost the full length of the cavern, to crash down in front of the hulking matriarch and her gristly larder. She hunched back, sniffing and chittering loudly and her brood attacked again. Their eyes squinted and blinked, their strikes ill-aimed.
“I’m getting the rest of the cans out!” Arlee shouted over the sounds of violence and pain. Falling back, she reached into the bag and started replenishing the much-reduced pile of jerry cans. In front of her, Matty stretched his back and shoulders, feeling the effect of the awkward nature of his job.
In the tunnel opening, Alan’s arms burned as he swung his staff methodically, crushing skulls and spines. He wanted to go full Hudson, spitting curses and insults at their foes, but the breath rasping into his lungs was too precious to waste. They heaved in an effort to drag in the gasps that powered his arms, but even his work-honed endurance was being pushed to the limit.
The growing fatigue made itself known as his foot slipped on the surface, wet from blood and gore. Falling onto his back, one leg struggled to hold his position while the other flailed out to the front, and the rats pounced. Claws raked across the guttering surface of his armour, blood spraying from the spikes. One jaw clamped down, the rat squealing its pain as the spikes shredded its tongue and palate. Another followed, Alan roaring in pain as his armour gave way, and the teeth sank through his leg to the bone.
Matt’s arms were burning, but seeing this he thrust his spear forward like a sewing machine, stabbing wildly to clear his friend’s body. Over and over the tip plunged home, the rats contorting, muscles spasming and Alan shrieked as jaws clenched and further shredded his leg.
Matty flung the jerrycan he was holding, leaned down to grab Alan’s collar and hauled him back from the tunnel mouth, pained screams erupting at every movement. Arlee moved forward enough to aim one of her flame-tubes through the tunnel mouth and activated it, spraying fire in a wild fan and pushing back the squealing onslaught for several seconds.
Matty knelt at Alan’s side, pulling his multi tool and slitting the ruined trousers up to the knee. He paled at the sight, as mangled flesh and muscle quivered half-way up what had been Alan’s shin. Chunks of broken bone were visible and blood ran freely.
Grabbing his belt, he thrust it into Alan’s mouth. “Bite down, this is going to hurt like a bastard!” Taking off his hoodie, he saw the armour field fade away, and he wrapped it tightly around the ruined lower limb, trying to ignore the frenzied sounds of agony from around the muffling belt. These suddenly stopped as Alan fell into a dead faint from the pain.
Matty laid the end of Alan’s staff alongside the makeshift bandage, grabbed the belt from Alan’s now slack jaw and wound it tightly around the hoodie and oversized splint. Fitting it as snugly as possible, he fastened it and propped the staff up against the wall, trying to reduce the blood flow to the leg.
“Matty, is Alan…?” Arlee’s panicked voice was shrill.
“He’s out for the count, but we need to get him somewhere else before he bleeds to death.” Matty shouted back. “We can’t wait around!”
“Okay! Dump the rest of the cans inside the nest and it had better be enough!” Matt shouted back, spear still jabbing wildly to hold back the oncoming vermin. He and Arlee stood side by side, spears stabbing repeatedly, a growing pile of twitching, debilitated rats hampering the remaining attackers.
“Arlee, help him!” Matt yelled, stepping into the middle of the tunnel. The other two started grabbing cans and throwing them into and over the pile of twitching bodies. It took only another thirty seconds or so to dispose of the remaining cans, during which time Matt stabbed robotically at anything which moved above the parapet of poisoned rats.
“That’s it, we’re done, time to go!” Matty yelled over the chorus of squeals and chittering cries.
“Grab Alan and go!” Matt yelled, still stabbing anything that moved. “I’ll give you as much head start as I can before setting it off!”
Matty didn’t argue, carefully manoeuvring Alan’s body into a seated position, before turning to Arlee. “Arlee, help me! You’ve got to keep his leg steady while I get him up!”
Arlee looked torn, eyes pleading with Matt.
“Go!” Matt said, I’ll catch you up, but it’s going to take a while to lug that big lump up the tunnel, and I don’t know if this is going to burn or explode.
She blanched, reaching out a hand helplessly, before turning and assisting Matty to get Alan into a fireman’s carry. She held the staff steady, concerned as blood started dripping from the bottom of the bandage almost immediately. As soon as he was in place, Matty started back up the tunnel, making sure every foot was placed surely before continuing.
Back at the tunnel mouth, Matt was more pushing back the growing wall of convulsing bodies than stabbing. Wherever there wasn’t a mouth, he pushed his forearm and shoulder into the pile, his armour enchantment cutting deep gashes into the helpless bodies. Whenever he saw eyes or teeth, he jabbed the spear forward with his other hand, held just behind the head to improve his aim, arm shaking with fatigue.
Glancing behind, he could no longer see the light from his comrades, and he gave a grim smile. This was erased as a loud chittering sounded right behind the pile, and a huge, vicious claw raked a cluster of bodies aside.
There lurked the giant Malicious Mother, eyes squinting in the bright light as her smaller kin fell back to her sides. Jaws gaped slowly as she took in the sight of the lone attacker. The light from the frisbee way behind her made the silhouette even more imposing, and Matt was briefly frozen – prey before a much larger predator.
As the hulking beast swept yet more bodies aside, he raised the last flame-tube and aimed at the feet of his foe, where a pile of leaking and spilt jerry cans lay.
He said nothing as he tapped the patch, his family’s faces seared into his mind’s eye.
You will not have them!
Have the action scenes in this chapter and throughout the story been well written?
