by N M Tatum
“You almost sound like you admire these things,” Joel said.
“I admire any creature that can adapt and evolve to survive situations that would normally be insurmountable.”
He thought of Sam and her story. As he listened, a bubbling started in his gut, like he might be sick. To think of that dog, tied up, alone, starved. Only to be killed as some kind of twisted test. He was angry at Sam. He didn’t want to believe she was capable of something like that.
But then he thought of twelve-year-old Sam. Just a kid. Alone, starved, tied up in a different way. The choice she was given was no choice at all. Kill or be killed. Be brutal or get brutalized. She adapted because she had to. But that’s not what impressed him. He sympathized for that little girl. He felt sad for her.
He was impressed with how Sam was adapting now.
She was noticing that those attitudes and behaviors no longer suited her. Not only were they not necessary, but they were a roadblock to getting what she wanted. She was moving beyond those earlier adaptations. Adapting again.
It was easier for children to change. They were malleable. But adults, they rarely changed on such a level. This was no easy thing Sam was doing, and he wanted to remain cognizant of that.
“I admire Godzilla,” Joel said. “Now that’s some worthy adaptation. He was just a tiny lizard. Then he grew, like, a trillion percent and laid waste to an entire country.”
“He’s also fictional,” Cody said.
“The best mutants are. Those are the ones that don’t try to eat me.”
They trekked another fifty meters of rat tunnel before stopping to give their backs a break. Joel found himself wishing Peppy was there. He’d sent Peppy back to the ship to get some rest. He’d done more than his share of rat killing. The team could handle a nest without him.
The truth was, Sam’s story got him thinking about his own. Nothing quite so dramatic or outright horrific, but it stuck with him. He’d had a dog when he was little. His father gave it to him. Not so much out of love or caring, but to get Joel to shut up. Joel’s father worked a lot, and his mother was gone, so Joel spent a lot of time alone.
He never thought he was a lonely kid. Not at the time, anyway. He’d had Cody and Reggie, even then. But looking back, he realized he absolutely was. Whenever he was home.
Cloud fixed that. He was the best. A chocolate lab, beefy, had a tongue that never stayed in his mouth. Loved to chase sticks. They went everywhere together. Spent hours running through the woods, lost in fantasy worlds. Cloud would lay his head in Joel’s lap as he played video games. Joel shared his dinners with Cloud on the nights his dad worked late, which was most nights. Grilled cheese and Doritos for the both of them.
But Cloud was a chewer, and Joel’s dad hated having his shit destroyed. He didn’t make Joel kill Cloud. He just made Joel get rid of him. Joel had to strap the leash on his dog’s collar and walk him down to the shelter by himself. He handed Cloud over, scratched behind his ears one last time, then went home, crying all the way back, up to his room, and all night long.
His dad told him, “Suck it up. It’s just a dog. I’ll get you a guinea pig or something.”
Joel saw Cloud when he looked at Peppy. And he heard his dad when he heard Sam calling Peppy a mutt and complaining about him. He felt the pang of losing Cloud all over again.
Peppy and Sam seemed to have mended their fences, but the possibility of losing Peppy in the field was ever present. As proud as Joel was of his dog-thing for saving their job and their lives, he was happier knowing Peppy was safe on the ship right now.
Cody arched while sitting, trying to stretch his back, then resumed the search.
They didn’t move far before finding something. Cody shined his light on the wall of the tunnel. A hole had been chewed through it. Cody laid down and did his best to forget about the fact that he was probably smearing rat feces and infinite bacteria all over the front of him.
“This is it. But there’s no way we’re fitting through here.”
The hole opened into another narrow space, not a tunnel or intentional space, more like the absence of something, a space created by happenstance.
He raised the level two plans on his wristcom. He enlarged their location on the map.
“According to this, there isn’t anything over there. The architect probably didn’t bother to map it out, since it’s unused space.” He traced his finger along a dark section of the map. “But, if I backtrack along this area, assuming the rats stuck to the unused space, we land here.” He pointed to a large, round area that looked to be mostly empty. The perfect place for a monstrous rats’ nest.
Joel pointed to a tiny space elsewhere on the map. “Are you sure we don’t land there? In that itty-bitty area? Where there’s maybe, like, four rats?”
Cody shook his head as he raised Reggie and Sam on comms. “I think we found it. Sending you the location now.”
“I agree with Joel,” Reggie said. “I think we should investigate the tiny nest.”
“There is no tiny nest,” Cody said.
“We can neither confirm nor deny that,” Joel said, “until we investigate. I volunteer.”
Reggie raised his hand to second.
Sam grabbed his wrist and pulled his arm down. “How many rats do you think we killed in the ballroom?”
Cody looked off as he performed some mental calculations. “If the nest is in this area here, and it’s as big as I hypothesize, I’d say we killed at least seventy percent already.”
Sam spread her arms to Reggie and Joel like she’d just presented them with a gift. “See? Most of them are already dead.”
Reggie rubbed the back of his head. The nanites had patched him up and healed his concussion, but the area where he’d smashed his skull against a solid granite column was still a bit tender.
“Yeah, but that still leaves thirty percent of them alive,” he pointed out.
Joel chimed in. “And we’re still at least twenty-five percent dead from that attack. And we don’t have Peppy. He was, like, sixty percent of the reason we’re alive at all. So, by my math…” He ticked each finger as he silently counted. “That means there’s a fifty-five percent chance there’s going to be super-duper rats in the nest, and we are going to die.”
Sam shook her head. “I don’t think that’s how math works.”
“Whatever,” Joel said. He threw his arms up in surrender. “I know I’m not winning this. You two have unresolved anger issues.” He pointed to Sam and Cody. “That’s why you’re always so determined to go kill things.”
Sam drew her sword and took some practice swings, testing her shoulder’s mobility. “That first part is very true. But we’re always killing things because that is literally our job.”
“Semantics,” Joel said as he drew his pistols.
Cody nodded at Reggie. “When did we switch roles? Aren’t you typically the one who’s all gung-ho and ready to charge in guns blazing? I’m pretty sure I’m usually the one who’d rather be reading a book back on the ship.”
“I like books,” Reggie said, looking down at his feet. He felt Cody’s eyes burning into him. “I hate rats! I hate them so freaking much. They’re disgusting. And they almost just killed me. I’m getting used to facing my own mortality, but I will not be killed by rats. Do you know what they’d do to us after they killed us?” His whole body quivered.
Cody rested a reassuring hand on Reggie’s shoulder. “If you want to sit this one out, you know…” He looked off to the side. “You can’t, actually. We need you.”
Reggie deflated with a heavy sigh. “Fine.” He hoisted his semiautomatic and checked the magazine.
The nest was located in a technical space above the auditorium. It was full of wiring for the lighting and sound systems used by the concerts and plays hosted below. But it wasn’t a tight space like the rest of level two. Due to the architecture of the auditorium, the space was almost shaped like an eye, as seen from the side. The ceiling was a dome about ten f
eet high. The floor also bent up to accommodate the domed ceiling. The entire area was fifty feet in diameter. It was one of the biggest areas on level two.
The only access to the area, aside from the hole the rats had chewed that was way too small for any of the team to fit through, was through a metal panel that had been screwed on.
Cody removed the screws and let them fall to the floor. He nodded to the team.
Sam took one last practice swing with her blade before sheathing it. Reggie stretched his neck, slung his blaster over his shoulder, and checked his gloves. They were fully charged. Joel looked at each of them. He shook his head.
“You know, there was a time in my life when battling super smart rats would have been totally out of the ordinary. Now, it’s just a Tuesday.”
“It’s Thursday,” Cody interjected.
Joel pressed his index finger to Cody’s lips and shushed him. “My point is, there aren’t any other people in the universe I’d rather be doing this whacky shit with. And no one I’d rather die with and lie beside while my corpse is defiled by filthy garbage creatures.”
“And you ruined it,” Cody said as he pulled off the metal plate.
Joel was the first one on his belly, the first one to crawl in. “Let’s fuck shit up.”
As soon as his feet were in the crawl space, Sam followed. Then Reggie. Then Cody. The tunnel was only ten meters long, but with their weapons, it was slow going. When the end was close, Joel reached back and plucked his last remaining grenades from his belt, a firebomb and a Pyrethrum X-735c. The combination would be interesting.
“Fire in the hole,” he said. “And chemicals, I suppose.”
He activated them and rolled them into the rats’ nest. He waited until he heard the pops and felt the rush of heat. Then he crawled in.
The rest of the team funneled in after. Dozens of rats were already dead, burned or frozen from the pesticide. Some of them crumbled into tiny rat cubes when Joel stepped on them. The others turned to ash.
The team didn’t need to communicate or formulate a plan. They didn’t know what to expect when they entered the nest, but they knew how to react. They fanned out.
Cody dropped a shield projector in front of the hole they’d just crawled through, trapping them inside with the rats. They unleashed a barrage of blaster fire on the frantic beasts. The creatures ran in circles, tripped over each other. They seemed to have completely lost their superior intelligence—they were acting like simple rats now, controlled by the base instinct to survive. Just scurrying, dirty rats.
Joel dropped to one knee to get a better angle. He picked them off one by one. Sam walked through the area at a steady pace, swinging her sword like she was walking through a wheat field with a scythe. She looked like a reaper.
In less than two minutes, the rats were dead, and the area was littered with their corpses. The last of them.
At least, that’s what they thought.
Until they looked at the nest in the center of the room. It looked to have been built out of scraps culled from throughout Malibu. Pieces of cloth, old furniture, bath robes. All piled together and wound around each other into one massive, tangled mess.
It started shaking. Trembling. Roaring.
“I knew it,” Joel said. “I knew there would be some kind of goddamn rat monster.”
Reggie urged him to remain calm. “We don’t know that. It could just be—”
The nest exploded. The scraps flew everywhere and came down like a rain of garbage. In the place where the nest had once stood, was a rat the size of a basset hound. It was a beefy, stubby, red-eyed monster.
“And there it is,” Joel said. “The rat king.”
Sam lunged forward, trying to drive her sword through the beast before it could act. She moved like lightning, but she was too slow.
The rat king’s super-size did nothing to hinder his super speed. Or his strength. He launched himself like a bullet straight at Sam, slamming into her chest, driving the air from her lungs. If not for her body armor, the hit would have shattered all of her ribs and probably punctured several major organs. Instead, it just launched her into the wall. Her vision went black the moment she hit the floor.
The rat king moved like a pinball. It ricocheted off Sam and shot at Reggie. Some of Reggie’s shots hit, spraying red into the air, but they did nothing to slow the beast. Reggie pivoted just in time to avoid a direct hit. The rat king hit his blaster instead, knocking the semiautomatic out of Reggie’s hands.
The rat king finally lost its momentum and landed two meters from Reggie. Pounding his knuckles together, Reggie stepped toward the rat. He drove his fist down and clipped the rat king. The gloves released a pulse of kinetic energy into the rat. The crack that rang out from the rat’s shoulder was sickening. Reggie tried to follow up the attack, but the rat king slashed at him with his good arm then scurried away.
Cody tracked the rat king with his scatterblaster, firing several shots as it retreated and landing a couple. Like Reggie’s shots, they definitely caused damage, but didn’t slow the creature at all. It did appear to piss him off, however.
The rat king snarled and shook. It looked to be having a seizure, every inch of it shaking. Its shoulder popped back into place. Its claws extended. Its teeth grew to pointed fangs. Its fur changed from dark brown to black. Its eyes looked like blood.
“God dammit,” Joel said. “We weren’t even fighting its final form.”
The newly transformed rat king tore tracks in the floor as it propelled itself toward Joel with its vicious claws. He would have torn through Joel if Sam hadn’t shoulder charged the beast, hitting it square in the ribs. Even so, her effort only served to move the rat king slightly off course. He raked his claws across Joel’s arm instead of driving them straight through his heart.
The rat king hit the floor and immediately launched again, this time at Reggie. Reggie was ready for him. He caught the rat king with an uppercut to the jaw, sending another shockwave into the king’s face.
The rat king did a backflip as it shot backward and smacked into the wall. It scurried back to its feet, snarling and spitting, its jaw dangling from its face. Joel and Cody walked toward it, unloading their blasters. Sam yelled for them to step aside as she ran at it.
Reggie dropped to one knee in her path, cupping his hands. As Sam stepped in his hands, she felt the shockwave from his gloves rocket her into the air. She flipped, twirled her sword, and came down on top of the rat king, driving her sword through its back.
The beast shrieked its death knell. It swiped its claws, not at any target in particular, but at the world, at everything. It staggered through the room, moaning, until it finally fell and did not move again.
The team stood over the dead beast, perhaps waiting to verify that it was truly dead, maybe just lost in the moment, relieved for it to finally be over. Maybe waiting for a poignant word to signify their victory.
“Fuck,” Joel said.
It may not have been poignant, but it accurately conveyed what they were all thinking. The awe the creature instilled, the fear, the feeling of walking the edge of death. The finality.
“So…that’s that, then? Let’s dispose of the carcass.” Cody shrugged. “Then let’s go get paid.”
The excitement and relief that washed over them died in an instant when the floor beneath them began to creak.
Cody’s eyes darted across the floor, picking up signs they hadn’t noticed seconds earlier. The floor of the room wasn’t a proper floor—it was little more than a sheet of metal meant to hold the guts of the lighting and sound systems. It wasn’t built to support much weight. It certainly wasn’t built to continue supporting weight after it had been torn up by a monster rat and blasted with firebombs.
Cody gestured to the hole they’d come through and tried to tell the team to move slowly, but with Joel’s first frantic step, they went careening downward through the floor.
Chapter Nine
Reggie had never been a fan of opera
or theater or anything like that. He was a simple man from a simple family. School, football, work. That was the progression of his life, broken up by simple pleasures. Video games, food, the occasional beer.
Still, there was always a part of him intrigued by the theater. The costumes, the lights, the audience, the thrill of putting yourself up there, in front of anyone, becoming someone else. In another life, he thought he could have pursued the stage.
This wasn’t how he imagined breaking into acting.
The Notches plummeted twenty feet through the auditorium, past the murals of angels and naked people dancing through vineyards, past the rich folk clutching their pearls, and slammed onto the stage.
They all felt newly concussed and broken. Bones screaming, vision swimming, sick feelings in their guts. Cody was fresh out of medical nanites. They’d have to wait until they got back to Ragnarok before they could get patched up, which meant suffering through Miss Millicent Musgraves’s outrage even more than they normally would.
She marched across the stage, kicking debris out of the way in her open-toed high heels, which impressed Sam. She’d worn them a few times when undercover to catch a mark, and she could barely stand in them. Millie must have ankles and toes of steel.
Though Millie’s face was red and pulsing with anger, she kept her voice to a muted fury so her gala attendees couldn’t hear. “What in the holy moly heck is this? Are you determined to put holes in every ceiling in Malibu? Or just the ones directly above my head? You could have killed me or any one of my guests. And, worse, you’ve completely ruined my gala!” The last syllable spiked, and her voice echoed through the auditorium. Not that every eye in the room wasn’t already on her.
Millie straightened her body, her dress, and her hair, as though composing herself outwardly would do the same for her mood. She couldn’t hide the rage in her eyes.
“Your company has utterly devastated my station, ruined my event, tarnished my reputation and violated the terms of our agreement. Therefore, you will receive no compensation, and I will be reporting you to the Better Business Bureau.” She jutted her chin up and out and suddenly looked like a self-righteous statue.
