Claws

by Ricky Sides

  Jerry jumped back in his car. If he’d had time, he would have tracked the animal down and put it out of its misery, but men’s lives would be in danger if the giant rats weren’t dealt with in a prompt manner. He didn’t see the two giant cats that ran across the road in hot pursuit of the crippled deer.

  At the Alcorn manufacturing facility, Jerry saw a man waiting beside the door to let him in the plant. “I’m Al Hastings, shift supervisor,” the man said introducing himself.

  “Jerry Wilson. I used to be a guard. Robert called me in tonight,” responded Jerry.

  “He said to bring you to the nest. They’ve got the damned rats trapped for the moment.”

  “When are the police arriving?” Jerry asked as he followed Al through the facility.

  “They probably aren’t coming. The dispatcher said they’d have to check with their superiors about discharging their firearms to kill rats. The Athens City Police have rigid controls on even brandishing their firearms.”

  “Surely they’ll turn up when they hear shooting,” Jerry said in disbelief.

  Al shrugged, indicating he didn’t know one way or the other. “We’re almost there. Be ready. Some of them might bolt out of the nest. A couple tried that already, but Robert’s men got them.”

  As the two men stepped around a corner, Jerry saw Robert standing beside three of his men. The security chief nodded in his direction and turned to walk toward him. He hadn’t taken three steps when a rat bolted out the partially open door that the guards were facing. Jerry’s hand flashed to his holster, but one of Robert’s men killed the rat with a shot to the head before he completed the draw.

  “Thanks for coming,” Robert said, but then he added, “I was hoping you’d bring your boys with you. My men aren’t trained for this.”

  “My guys are out of town, and not due back for a few hours,” Jerry explained. “What have you got?”

  Robert pointed to the partially open door. “That’s a condemned lot holding area. Bad product is held there until quality control cuts the paperwork to dispose of it. We were looking for an explanation for how the rat that killed Gary got into the ductwork. When we went to enter that room, we found our answer.”

  “Tell me everything about that room,” Jerry said.

  “It’s a small storage room, about fifty square feet. The bad product is set aside in stacks on pallets and wrapped in plastic. The top of one of the stacks is adjacent to an exhaust grate in the air duct. The grating there has been damaged. I assume that’s how the rat got in and created the blockage that Gary was troubleshooting. A production lot of the experimental feed was condemned and stored there. The rats ate it, but left the normal feed. I think they were looking for a way inside the storage room where the remainder of that feed is stored,” Robert explained.

  “What’s their disposition in the room?” Jerry asked.

  “We only got a quick look, and then we backed out of the room. They were all over the place. They wanted out when we unlocked and opened the door. These aren’t as big as the one I killed in the grate. I don’t think they could make it to the grate.”

  “You mean to say that you’ve seen one bigger than that one?” Jerry asked, pointing to the rat the guard had killed moments earlier.

  “Yes. The one that killed Gary was twice that size,” Robert affirmed.

  “Alright, leave this to me. You’re right; your men aren’t trained for this. I’ll give it a go.”

  “Not without me. I’ve had combat pistol training. You’re not going in there alone,” Robert said with an air of finality.

  Jerry nodded his acceptance and said, “Alright, we go together, but we stay together and watch each other’s backs.”

  “That sounds good to me,” Robert said. He pulled his pistol from its holster and added, “Smith and Wesson P915. I have two extra magazines with me.”

  “Let’s hope we don’t need that many shots. How many rats did you see?” queried Jerry.

  “Things happened too fast to get an accurate count, but I’d say about twelve or thirteen that I saw. There could have been a lot more that were out of sight,” explained Robert.

  Nodding his understanding, Jerry said, “You need to have your people pull back so that they aren’t in the line of fire from the open door.”

  The security chief issued the orders that moved his men to a safer location from which they could still cover the doorway.

  Jerry approached the door with his pistol at the ready. He skirted wide around it with Robert behind him and a bit to his left. Jerry’s nerves were on edge. He looked through the partially open door and saw no rats in the immediate vicinity. The special ops leader decided to enter quickly before that changed.

  As he went through the door, Jerry moved to the right thus clearing a line of fire for Robert and permitting the man to enter the room. Jerry heard a rustling sound coming from somewhere above his head. He glanced up at the nearest stack of feed and saw one of the giant rats staring at him. He was bringing his pistol up to fire at the animal when Robert’s pistol discharged beside him. The rat pitched backwards and fell off the stack of feed, landing on the floor with a pronounced thud.

  “Nice shot,” Jerry said, complimenting Robert.

  “Thanks, but where are the others? A few minutes ago, this room was crawling with the rats.”

  “If they’re still in the room, we’ll find them,” Jerry said with assurance.

  They moved carefully to the right, circling the stack of condemned feed. Jerry cleared the corner of the stack first, and as a result, he saw the rats milling about on the floor beside the feed first and opened fire with his pistol.

  Robert couldn’t see what Jerry was shooting at, so he shifted his position, moving to stand to Jerry’s right. He had just gotten into position when Jerry yelled, “Out!” and began the process of ejecting his spent magazine and inserting another. Robert took up the slack, firing his own pistol in a methodical manner as the rats began to attempt to disperse. Then, Jerry saw one of the rats charge him.

  Robert calmly aimed at the rat and pulled the trigger, and missed for the first time that night. To make matters worse, his slide locked open, informing him that he’d fired his last round. “Out!” he shouted and stepped to the right to avoid the charging rat as he ejected the empty magazine.

  The rat turned in its charge, seeking to attack Robert, but Jerry’s pistol fired a single shot, killing the animal before it could attack the chief of security. “Thanks,” Robert said as he reloaded the pistol and chambered a round.

  In less than ten seconds, they had killed nine rats, but the rest had now gone into hiding. The two men found one rat wedged between a stack of feed and the wall. The animal was trapped by its own bulk, and unable to move forward or backward. Jerry dispatched it with a shot to the back of the head.

  The sound of a single pistol shot from outside the room told them that another rat must have bolted out of the room and been killed by the waiting security forces.

  “Do you think that’s all of them?” Robert asked ten minutes later, after they had searched the entire room with no further sign of live rats.

  “I don’t know, but we need to be certain, so let’s sweep the room again.”

  They searched the room thoroughly, but could find no more of the giant rats. “Was the one you killed earlier a female?” Jerry asked.

  “Yes, it was. You thinking these are her offspring?” Robert asked.

  “That would explain their size differential, but if I’m right, that means there should be a male rat close to her size, and all of these are about the size of the first one I saw your man kill.”

  “Then it could be in the air ducts, like the first rat we encountered,” Robert speculated. Then he said, “I can’t send a man in there, it’s too dangerous.”

  “No one’s going in the duct. There are better ways to flush out the rat. We can do it the same way we’d flush out a human suspect,” Jerry stated. “We’ll flush it out with smoke. We’ll open a servic
e port down line from the spot your man was working. I’ll guard that port. You can set off a smoke grenade in the section where you encountered the rat. The airflow through the duct will carry the smoke through to my end. If there’s a rat in it, he’ll be driven out by the smoke.”

  “How long will it take you to get the smoke grenade?” Robert asked.

  “It’s in my trunk in the parking lot.”

  “Alright, I’ll take the scissor lift to the storage room and take down the grate.”

  “It’d be best to take someone with you to watch your back.”

  “I was planning on it,” Robert said, grinning weakly. “The last rat I encountered in the duct scared the hell out of me.”

  “You’ve had someone watching that original opening all this time?” Jerry asked.

  “Yes. They’re supposed to radio me if they see anything,” Robert answered.

  “Alright, I’m going to get the grenade. I’ll show you how to use it when I get back.”

  Twenty minutes later, Jerry stood waiting on the floor of the storage room. He heard Robert announce on the radio that he was in position and about to pop the smoke grenade into the duct. He waited expectantly for several seconds, but nothing happened. Then he saw the first tendrils of smoke begin to emerge from the open port. Seconds later, a steady stream of the white smoke was pouring out of the open port. Jerry was beginning to think he had been wrong about the presence of the female’s mate when a dark blob dropped out of the open port. The shape became more distinct as it dropped out of the layer of smoke near the duct.

  By the time the rat struck the floor, it was clearly visible. Apparently injured by the fall, the giant rat staggered across the floor. Jerry sighted on the animal and squeezed the trigger, hitting it just behind its right front leg. The rat fell to the floor, twitched spasmodically for a moment, and then lay still.

  “I heard a shot, did you get it?” Jerry heard Robert ask via a security radio he had borrowed.

  Jerry grabbed the radio and was keying it when he saw another rat strike the floor. This rat was smaller than the smallest that they had killed in the condemned lot storage room, but it was still bigger than any rat Jerry had ever seen prior to that day. He shot that animal as it tried to run away. Like the larger rat, this one seemed to have been injured by the twenty-foot drop to the concrete floor.

  “I’m sending some men to check on you,” Jerry heard Robert say. He tried to grab the radio and tell the man that he was fine, but before he could even touch it several more rats dropped to the floor near the first two.

  The special ops man had his hands full shooting the rats as they tried to flee. He had killed seven of the smaller rats by the time two of Robert’s security men arrived.

  “Wait where you are. I’m not sure if they’ve all came out yet,” Jerry stated.

  The three men watched the opening for several minutes. One of them radioed Robert that Jerry had killed eight rats and gave him a brief description of their sizes.

  Finally, the smoke stopped coming out of the vent. “You men stay here. I’m going to the other room and enter the duct. We need to make certain that there are no more of the rats inside it.”

  “Better you than me,” one of the guards said dubiously.

  “I’m not exactly looking forward to it myself,” Jerry said with a frown, and then he started to leave the room.

  “Jerry, I’m entering the air duct now and I’ll be heading your way. You guys don’t shoot me,” Robert said.

  “I was coming to do that,” Jerry responded.

  “It’s my responsibility, but thanks. I don’t see any smoke in the section of the duct that I can see. Do you see any coming out of the service port now?”

  “No. The smoke stopped coming out a few minutes ago. I killed seven smaller rats in here, but there may be a few more in there, and they are still bigger than any rat I’ve ever seen. You take your time and be careful,” Jerry cautioned.

  “You think they are a second litter?” Robert asked.

  “That seems most likely. Patricia says that the first generation that had never actually eaten the food would likely be large, due to the mother’s milk, and would learn the aggressive behavior from the parents, but these may have been isolated to the point that they haven’t had the opportunity to witness their parent’s aggressive behavior. They may run from you, if given the chance. If you see any, just try to flush them out of hiding. They should run our way,” Jerry advised Robert.

  “Will do. I can’t talk while I’m crawling, so I’m going to radio silence.”

  The next six minutes seemed to last an eternity, but then the three waiting men saw Robert’s head emerge from the port. “Have maintenance bring the lift. I’ll be damned if I’m going to back all the way back to the other entrance,” Robert shouted.

  “I’ll go get them, boss,” a guard shouted up to the security chief.

  Chapter 17

  Rusty Talbot rolled off the dead woman and sighed in contentment. With hours to kill before time to board the cruise ship, the fugitive had picked up a prostitute. He’d had straight sex with the woman first, and then reenacted Clarisse’s murder. Talbot found the experience just as sexually stimulating as the original.

  He knew it was a dangerous addiction. If he tried it too many times, the odds were good that eventually he would be caught. There were things a man could do to reduce those odds, and there were places where people went missing on a routine basis. He vowed to himself that this woman would be the last until he worked out the means to minimize all the risks.

  Getting out of bed, the former president of Alcorn went to the bathroom to clean up. Later, he got dressed beside the corpse. Seeing her there naked on the bed caused him to wonder if he might not be wasting an opportunity. He stared at her body for several moments, but then he shrugged his shoulders and admitted to himself that thoughts of sex with the corpse did nothing for him. The power he wielded over their terrified bodies was what delighted him and intensified the sexual experience.

  Rusty took a step toward the motel room door, but then he stopped. “That’s it!” he thought excitedly. Once he was established, he could take a woman prisoner and keep her alive indefinitely. He thought it likely that the sex would be almost as good, the repetition factor was a big bonus, and he could always save the suffocation for when he tired of them.

  Rusty returned to the corpse. He turned the woman on her side, putting her back to the door, and he covered her up so that the motel cleaning staff wouldn’t immediately become alarmed. With luck, they would think she was sleeping and skip the room for hours.

  He was almost to the door when someone knocked loudly. “Angela, get your ass out here, woman. You know you need to be out hustling other tricks. You can’t spend all day with one customer.”

  Talbot felt a moment of panic, but then he pulled a wad of cash from his pocket and pulled out several hundred-dollar bills. He unbolted the door, but left the security chain threaded through its bracket so that the door could open only a couple of inches. He opened the door, but stayed behind it, and said, “Angela’s in the shower. When she gets out, we intend to go for another few rounds.”

  “Like hell you are. Look, buddy, I can appreciate that you’re having fun with my girl, but she makes a grand a day on the streets. Unless you get off some real money, she aint staying in a room with you all day.”

  “I know. She told me. I’ve got the cash for the whole day and I want her,” Rusty said.

  “Then you gotta pay up front. No one rents my girls for a day without paying up front.”

  “Alright, I’ll pay you. A thousand you say?”

  “Yeah, man, a grand. You pay, and then you can play.”

  Rusty counted out the money, folded the stack of bills lengthwise, and then stuck them in the slit between the door and the threshold. “I’ve got a plane to catch late this afternoon, so she’ll be finished here by then,” Rusty lied in the hopes of throwing the man off should he opt to try to find him late
r.

  “That’ll be fine. You have fun,” the man said through the door, and then he left. He wasn’t concerned about Rusty not showing himself at the door. Most patrons of prostitutes tried to avoid being seen by others.

  Rusty closed the door and locked the deadbolt. He moved to the window facing the parking lot and parted the blinds a crack so that he could see outside. Talbot watched as a large man walked to a black car and got in. A moment later, he watched as the black car drove away.

  Rusty waited anxiously for ten minutes, and then he left the motel. That had been too close. He vowed to himself that never again would he pursue his new sex interests unless everything was properly planned. He had taken unnecessary risks, and counted himself lucky that it had only cost him a little cash. He had several times the amount he’d need to reach Switzerland. Once there, he would be set for life.

  He drove the car to the airport and left it in the parking lot. If the authorities traced the car to him, they would naturally assume he had taken a flight. Retrieving his luggage from the trunk, Talbot walked to the taxi section of the parking lot and fell in behind a group of new arrivals who had just exited the terminal. Many of those travelers sought out taxis to take them to their destinations in the city. As far as the taxi drivers were concerned, Talbot was just one of the many arrivals that day. Nor was it uncommon for people arriving by plane to need a ride to get to a cruise ship.

  ***

  Since the attack on his poultry, Tom Barksdale had devised a plan to deal with the cats. He was sure the animals would return to continue their carnage. He had already suffered heavy losses and it had taken dozens of stitches to mend his hand and wrist. The farmer was determined to be ready if the predators returned.

  On any given day in the poultry business, there are dead losses, which are birds that die for numerous reasons. Usually, the farmer incinerated the dead foul, but Tom had saved the dead losses since the attack and piled them into the back of a small cart he pulled with his four-wheeler. When he was setting up his trap, Tom parked the cart in the open and moved the four-wheeler to a safer location. He then sat down inside the chicken house with one of the shutters cracked open. His twelve-gauge pump shotgun was leaned against the wall.