Doctor Rat

by William Kotzwinkle

  “No, you don’t!”

  A Growth Hormone goon leaps in front of me. The bastard’s bigger than a Gambian Pouched Rat. But I arch my back and begin tooth-chattering (cf. “Rat Rage,” Broome and Poole, Psy. Post, 1967).

  His back raises up, his hair is bristling. He snaps at me, misses, and I sink my teeth into his tail. “Back, you mangy overgrown mouse! Cf. Territorial Defense, Sloan and Wilson, 1960.”

  He bites again, but I charge him head down and drive into his gut, bowling him over. Doctor Rat is light, fast, and blessed with hysterical energy, my friend. You don’t take him without a fight!

  A scalpel lying here on the floor. I pick it up quickly and wave it wildly, chasing off the goon.

  But other swordsmen are gathering, armed with picks, chisels, drill bits. “Disperse at once, you rabble!”

  I have no fear of them, I, a Learned Mad Doctor with high scores in Competitive Behavior. “Come on, fellow rats. I shall be happy to initiate you into the mysteries of my slogan. Death…is freedom!”

  Fighting them off, clanging here, beating there, I move backward up the clothes tree, fighting on the edge of this carved-claw foot. Very well, if I must die here I shall, but I’ll take some of these bastards with me…beat…parry…thrust…

  Sweet Suffering Pack Rats! (genus Neotoma) Advancing upon me are the ring-collared females. Oh, they’re a hideously vicious bunch. By fastening a ring to their necks we were able to keep them from washing themselves, thus producing an experimental psychosis. When they had their babies, they refused to wash them and, instead, ate them.

  And now they’re trying to eat me! Son of a titmouse!

  “Back…back, you bitches!”

  Too many of them. But I refuse to die such an ignominious death as being eaten alive by these lunatics. I turn, leaping up the clothes tree, clambering toward the white uniform hanging there.

  Quick, into the pocket!

  Down here in the dark—only a temporary respite. They’re rocking the clothes tree. They’ll knock it over. What is this envelope in here, a government grant, perhaps?

  Hmmmmm, it’s filled with a strange white powder. I’ll just have a look at this paper and see what it says…

  Cocaine! Pure-grade government research lab cocaine! I’ve never had it before, but I’m familiar with the literature and I know what to do!

  Snort snort

  Snort snort

  BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG

  Let me at them! I’ll tear them to pieces, where are they—I’m crawling out of this pocket and leaping…

  DOCTOR SUPER RAT!

  Landing in the midst of the enemy, knocking them right and left. Wheels going off in my brain. Doctor Rat is on!

  Power, raw burning Peruvian power. Racing toward the Chemical Closet I make my bid. The rebel guard is changing, saluting with their tails, Social Behavior, etc., and I rush them.

  Snarling, biting, kicking, there, take that, you…years of frustration…punishment…stimulus…

  “Stop him, bring him down!”

  “You sniveling rat’s asshole, I’ll…” Incentive for correct response, socking, nipping…modification kick in the balls… Turner and Murdock…enlarged adrenals…knocking the bastards aside, fighting my way into the depth of the Closet.

  “Call for reinforcements! It’s Doctor Rat!”

  Motivating factors, punch in the eyeball…reward… Blumfield and Coltz diffusion panels crash…nobody fucks with Doctor Rat…bite off your tail…midsagittal section of the upper incisor…berserker rage…multiple lefts and rights, fast combinations, bowling them over… Christ, here come the hooded rats, and those boys are really frustrated, Five Hooded Rats in the Discrimination Box, Drake and Akins.

  Bite him in the guts…gotcha, you hooded freak…interspecific conflict, seizing and biting, cf., watch out, over there, leaping and biting intervals, Boxing Rats, Geoffrey and Doyle…getting close to the chemical shelves…if I can only…mixing aggression with attempts at coitus, that really spooks them, fucked by a Mad Doctor, come on you sons-of-bitches, Doctor Rat’s got something for you…hair raised, urinating and defecating, the works, moving round them, back maximally arched, holding them off as I edge to the shelf.

  “Get him! Don’t let him up there!”

  Rapidly striking with the forelimbs, scratching with the back paws, pain-causing stimulus evoking flight amongst my enemies, now!

  I’ve made it to the first shelf. Quickly, then, to the top, to the top secret chemical warfare bottles. Thanks to all this superb research, seventy-six enemy children died in Rattankirir Province near the Vietnamese border. Ha ha! Twisting my tail around the dinitrophenol, I let it fly!

  Die, you goddamn gooks! Die in the name of Claude Bernard and Uncle Sam!

  “Man is coming! Look, banana mice, man is coming through the trees!”

  How suddenly he has appeared. Why does he wear the bushes of the jungle on his head? Now he approaches us, like a tree that walks.

  But the meeting is complete! We’ll surge together with man. We’ll know the wonderful moment of all hearts beating as one!

  Look overhead! Man has sent his great lifeless birds to greet us! How loud they are! How they roar, these lifeless birds. But don’t run, animals. Be steady. Now our meeting can truly begin.

  The gorillas walk forward with hands raised over their heads in the gesture of receiving.

  The dinitrophenol explodes magnificently on the floor, its spirit ascending into the air, the spirit of our laboratory, defending me. How wrathful she looks in her yellow gown, with her long vicious teeth shining. Wildly she sweeps over the rebels and they fall, covered with burns, blinded, vomiting. What a terrible smell, worse than a starved monkey’s fart.

  Over go some more bottle bombs—dinitricorte, acid disclophenocyncetic, arsenic anhydride, calcium cyanide. Every pregnant rat in the laboratory miscarries immediately. Fewer rebels to swell the ranks! I’ve got you now, you chinky bitches! (cf. The Women of Lam Dong Province, Medical Diary of Dr. Nguyen, Russell War Crimes Tribunal)

  I’m defoliating their ranks now, thinning them out with a few more bombs, chlorophenyl-dimethylurea and dichlorophenyl-dimethylurea, go, boys, go! Down they sail, end over end, and burst open. Sending out the death cloud (cf. The 18,000 Inhabitants of Da Nang, Natus Disease, 1,000 Dead, Japanese Science Council Report, 1967). Terrific! This is real power now! Doctor rat has saved the day!

  I wonder what special tranquilizing gas the army is using in its huge maneuver?

  “This is Able Baker One to Red Fox Two. Do you read me, Red Fox Two?”

  “Go ahead, Able Baker.”

  “This is General Denver. I want machine guns sweeping that far ridge…”

  Run, cub, run!

  “Momma… Momma…”

  She’s fallen, she cannot run. The ground all around us is exploding. The terrible insects of man are whizzing through the air. Get up, cub, get up!

  “…help me…help, Momma…”

  The insects have bitten her. Blood flows from her side. I shall carry you, little cub, in my teeth. You aren’t heavy.

  Many have fallen. The deer, the moose, the foxes—all dead, stung by the loud flaming insects of death. I’ve got you in my teeth, little one. How light you are…

  The crying, such crying, as a great moose charges toward the men, his horns lowered. I must reach the trees. What is the sting of a bee—nothing, nothing compared to this. The ground is writhing with stung rabbits and raccoons. The bobcats are crawling, screeching. Such confusion, rolling clouds, which way… I’ve lost the forest! The cloud parts, a giant shadow steps before me.

  “This way…”

  Through the cloud I plunge, to follow him. So we meet again. Where are the spring flowers? Men everywhere, with their stinging lights, the deadly bees who bite deeply. A proud stag falls, tumbling through the ashes of this dump, and we leap over his twisting legs.

  I follow the large dark shape of my husband, and we run, fear
and death screaming beside us. The great shadow of my mate turns to me.

  “Your cub is dead. Release her.”

  How heavily her head hangs. Her eyes stare into mine, but she has left them.

  “Come!” He sinks his teeth into my shoulder, tearing me free from the cub.

  Running together, our bodies touch, as when we ran through the meadow. The porcupines are squealing, rolling in the ashes, their bellies ripped open. We run through them; why did we come here? I can’t remember now. It’s all gone. The terrible stinging has pierced our reason; we are maddened and bleeding. Quick, husband, I’m beside you. We’ll find the forest and go deep, never venturing here again.

  Flames ahead! We whirl, leaping this way…

  He roars, rising on his back legs, spinning in a tall overwhelming dance. Red words burst from his tongue and I too have been stung. But run with me, run!

  Our paws meet in the air. His eyes gaze into mine. We are upon the spring meadow, my love, dancing in the warm light. Do you hear the swallows singing sweetly and can you smell the honeycomb?

  “…Ed Hanson for CBS here in the stockyard. The entire area is marked off into combat zones, and the dogs and steers are being driven toward blind alleys and walls. Police are being assisted by armored cars. An armored car to the left there…you can see it nosing out of the alleyway. Six stampeding steers trying for the main street! The gunfire from the armored car reaches them, and the steers are down! There are dogs on every side of us, snarling, attacking everything in sight. The street is running with blood… I think we can make a switch now…can we switch over to John Cooke… John, take it from there…”

  “…in what police have designated as the southeast quadrant of their massive encircling maneuver. I’m with Captain Arthur Briscomb, who’s in charge of the operation. Captain, what’s the situation right now?”

  “We’re evacuating all the buildings in this area. Some of the steers are inside. They broke through doors and windows. There’s heavy gunfire, with the use of gas rifles. We want all citizens to stay clear of this area and to avoid contact with any dogs.”

  “Has the force suffered casualties, Captain?”

  “We’ve got ambulances and medical people all around here.”

  “The number of dead animals…”

  “The job isn’t a pretty one.”

  “Thank you, Captain. This is John Cooke for…”

  Doctor Rat wins! Yes, Humaniacs, take a little bit of this! Down go the special Army Mixtures, Agent Blue, Agent Orange, and Agent White. Down, down, down, the secret chemical agents float, exploding open. Ha ha, look at the rebels backing away from the rainbow of death! They can’t escape. What horrible shapes I’ve released, one after another, morbid and foaming, fists of steel knocking the rebels over. Agent Blue is spreading everywhere with his secret commando corps, their fangs dripping, claws sharp and shining. I’ll get the Distinguished Service Medal for this day’s work! Memo to the Defense Supply Agency:

  Gentlemen:

  Thanks to our suppliers—Dow, Diamond Alkali, Uniroyal, Thompson Chemical, Monsanto, Ansul, and Thompson Hayward—I have managed to contribute my share to our lasting peace.

  Dead rebels everywhere, males, females, ratlings. Look at them crawling and gagging. There’s no escape, you Commies! Your colony has been wiped out, and your cages contaminated for years to come. This is what you get for your rebellious activity, for sympathizing with those dirty dogs on the treadmill. Aiding and abetting the enemy. Well, take this!

  Down go the bottle bombs, how wonderful they look when they burst open and spread. God is on our side, and this is the proof of it. Those pantywaists at Harvard and MIT who protested chemical agents should see what happens when you let a revolution get ahead of you. This is big business, gentlemen; we’re talking about five hundred million dollars’ worth of contracts. I regret a few noncombatants got smoked out. So we killed a few rabbits and some cats. What can I tell you? All these gooks are alike, if you ask me.

  “From the Halls of Mus Musculus

  to the shores of Y-Maze-D…”

  Singing and fighting I carry on. Upon the battlements I stride, one rat alone. Fighting for international goodwill and a better world, I dump enough defoliants to burn the hair off a brass monkey’s balls, taking care to select those areas in which most harm will be done to the guerrillas and least harm to local populations, covering everything in sight.

  My shell has been crushed. A giant rumbling thing passed over me and I lie broken in the dust. Now the riddle is in pieces, the lines of fate and fortune marred, distorted, and the meaning of my life a-jumble. I am a shellful of blood.

  The sound of men’s voices fill the air. They rolled over me.

  I crawl feebly, a ruined oracle in the animal’s graveyard. There is no future for us. My broken lines indicate extinction; I saw it as I split in two. I feel the shattered network of our kingdom. The mutilated lions moan their secret names, crying out that which they’ve long held secret. Now my legs refuse to move. My blood trickles from the living cup, and stains the sand.

  Man came to the meeting. He attended in great numbers.

  I must find shade, but it’s impossible to withdraw into my shell. The dome is wrecked and does not admit me any longer. What a fine home it was; what peaceful dreams and meditations I had inside there, securely enclosed, protected. The finest of homes is eventually undone.

  Men’s voices nearing, and their shadow falls upon my cracked carapace. I’m lifted, tossed into a dark sack. The sack swings back and forth. The shade I wanted is mine, but with it is blended the design of man.

  The sack swings back and forth, back and forth. In the distance the monkeys scream their curses; but man answers with his more powerful curse, the ear-piercing whine and clatter. And the monkeys are silent.

  The lowing of the hippos takes up the dying chant—the deep ba - ho - ho - ho which we have heard on peaceful nights. We hear it now, in the burning day, and man replies, and we hear it no more. Man’s voice silences all.

  The sack is opened, I am falling to the ground. I can’t withdraw into the shell. Men’s laughing voices. There is the sound of fire. They hold me now.

  Pounding me with stones. Sharp through the roof. Cracking completely open. My body is naked. They tear me from my shell. They hold me up, laughing at my puny nakedness. I don’t care, for my only interest is to turn, to squirm, to see the shell at last, to see its outer surface.

  They toss me through the air, through steam—burning water! Naked, boiling, I flounder…salt fire…trying to rise…the cup… I drink the fire…

  “…John Cooke for CBS News here in Chicago, at the outskirts of the city, where the sanitation department has started bringing the carcasses from another day of slaughter. A huge incinerator is spewing forth the smoke from thousands of burning bodies. The sky has been darkened by the smoke…a truck coming now…the carcasses are all mangled and crushed…giant claws and shovels scoop out piles of bullet-riddled dogs and cattle.

  “Flesh and bones, oozing tangles of intestines, with horned heads and matted tails strung on them. Hoofs and stiffened legs are sticking out between the great iron teeth of the machinery. The huge fork moves—the head of a dead beagle is speared right on the end of one of the fork’s tines.

  “And the incinerator continues to belch forth flames as the bodies are dumped into it, here in the city where the animal uprising may have had its first beginnings. Now the mass exodus, as it is being called by the biologists, has spread everywhere. Scenes like this are being enacted around the globe, as the hysterically surging animal nation undergoes its most terrible hour.

  “John Cooke, CBS News, Chicago…”

  Yikes! The rebels are regrouping and advancing again. Look at them coming, with their dogs and monkeys. They’re approaching stealthfully, and I must stand here alone, defending the nation! Very well, if I must I will. Doctor Rat is no pantywaist. He’ll fight the guerrilla forces with everything at his disposal. Telegram to Edgewood A
rsenal, Dover, New Jersey: Keep it coming, Fellow Patriots!

  I see that still stronger measures are called for. So over to the most devastating collection of bottles known to man, over here, at the far end of the shelf, to Defense Department Contract AD-13-045-AML-164. We’re getting 350 million bucks a year for this one, friends, us and fifty other American universities—see Viet Report, 1969. It’s high-class stuff, the cream of the crop, good old bubonic plague!

  Go, bub, go!

  Down he goes, crashing open on the floor, a masterfully developed strain resistant to all antibiotics! We’ve been working on it for years. Look at it spreading. Hurray, hurray! (cf., twenty-two out of twenty-nine provinces north of Saigon hit by plague)

  Oh, this is great stuff. Those bacilli are tough little bastards. The Learned Professor and I have been developing them now—go, go—for ten years, highly pathogenic.

  Thanks to the cooperation of Cornell, we’ve determined the most effective way to deliver these agents (see Science Mag., Feb. 23, 1967).

  “Gimme a B, gimme a U, gimme a B, gimme an O, gimme an N, gimme an I, gimme a C! Bubonic, bubonic, bubonic, go!” Look at him charging through that line, Cornell defenders all around him, trampling over the rebels. Touchdown!

  My old tusks are lowered, the mighty shivering instinct is upon me. I feel young again. I shiver among the other bulls. We make a mighty charge. Forward, bulls, we must charge through them to the jungle. I know a river we can all go to.

  Beware men’s tusks of fire. His tusks speak fire and thunder. Our leader moves us forward and we turn as he turns. Largest animal on the plain, great bull, lead us to the jungle. As in the old days, the grand days of my youth, I am beside you again.

  We see and smell the distant forest and we’ll eat there tonight. We’ll stand beneath the trees at twilight and munch down the green leaves. Don’t stand in the way of our dinner, little pygmy, or we’ll shatter you down. We are the mustering!