Hurt World One and the Zombie Rats (26 page)

‘And you may be dead if she is.’

‘That is another reason why it should be me
that goes. I have already sent one soldier to his death in the hunt
for Mas. It is time for me to do some of the dirty work.’ He put on
his helmet and gave a thumps up.
‘Let’s
see
what’s
down
there
.’ He
slid open the magno-chopper’s side door and rolled backwards into
freefall.

Kaptu leaned out after him, training his
sniper rifle in that direction.

‘Brave,’ said Clorvine.

‘I hear he hadn’t left his office since his
man got blown up in Las Gabos. Maybe this will
get it
out of his system.’

‘I’ll bring us closer,’ said Clorvine,
manipulating the joystick, ‘just in case he runs into some
trouble.’ She
picked
up
the hand grenade belt lying on the seat
where
Rojas had
been
sitting
.
‘For someone so interested in insurance, he should have taken
this.’

Rojas was descending fast despite the windy
conditions. It was
gnaw
ing at him being
dismissed as merely an analyst by Kaptu. He had been a field agent
in the Brazilian Military Intelligence. He had the training,
experience and mettle to handle the situation and he would show
those who cared to watch. He landed on the deck, barely
acknowledging the bucking of the waves as he threw off his jetpack.
He walked the deck with his pistol
drawn
and
his
senses
attuned. ‘Hello,’ he shouted. ‘Is
there anyone here?’ He was not expecting a reply. The deck
underfoot was spongy with rot, the paint on the cabins and
containers worn through to rust. Rojas considered it quite possible
no one had been on the boat for a good fifty years after all. A
plutonium cell would power the engines a hundred years and even a
rudimentary hazard-evasion system could keep it roaming the ocean
without ever touching dry land. Rojas, however, had known all these
things from the safety of the magno-chopper. It was below deck that
he had come to see. He pointed his life detection unit at the cabin
door and looked for readings. The sensors, however, were not
penetrating the thickened steel. Rojas needed to get beyond the
threshold at least. He fired a series of shots into the door lock.
He tried the door handle to see if it was giving. Yes, the door was
ready to open. ‘I am going inside now,’ he said into his collar
mike.

‘Alabama Island is five miles dead north,’
replied Clorvine
into
his earpiece.
‘Shall I contact the Americans? They will be wondering who we
are.’

Rojas glanced past the ship’s cabins to the
distant shoreline gradually taking shape. It seemed closer than
five miles, the crisp Artic air so crisp and pure. ‘Hold off a
moment,’ he said. ‘It won’t take long to find out if it is merely
an abandoned boat from another time
or
a
poacher’s up to date hideout.’ He
pulled the cabin door fully open and peered into the dark narrow
passageway. There was
a
pungent
gamey smell that immediately had him
spinning away. ‘Woah. Even locking myself away in a closet for
weeks at a time didn’t prepare me for a stink like that.’ He
clipped a flashlight attachment onto his pistol and stepped back
into the doorway. The small, intense beam of light cut deep into
the darkness of the passageway, revealing closed doors on both
sides and a stairwell at the end. A rustle of movement caught his
attention and he flicked the torchlight down in its direction.
Hundreds of sharp angry eyes were staring up at him. He recoiled
back in horror, his hand fumbling for the door. It was too late.
The rats pounced as one, furiously tearing into his flesh, too
strong and heavy to be ripped off, too hungry to stop.

Kaptu and Clorvine watched on stunned. Kaptu
aimed his long rifle out the door, seeing Rojas disappear
underneath a mound of feasting rats.

‘Oh my God,’ cried Clorvine. ‘What can we
do?’

Kaptu looked for any movement beneath the
sickening mound of gorging rats and when there was none he opened
fire into it. His bullets had virtually no impact.

‘You don’t have enough ammunition to shoot
all of them,’ said Clorvine murmured.

Kaptu finally pulled the gun away. ‘It wasn’t
the rats I was shooting at.’

‘Attention,
Mango
-chopper TO18,’ came a voice over the radio.
‘This is United States Marine
Base,
Alabama Island. You have entered the five kilometre no fly zone as
proclaimed in the Artic War Two Peace Treaty. Identity yourself at
once.’

Clorvine went straight to the mike. ‘This is
TO18. We are Hurt World officers investigating the cargo ship
Kudos
for criminal activity. The vessel
is infested with rats and is on a direct path for the south coast
of Alabama Island.’

A warning alarm lit up on the cockpit
console. Clorvine reflexively yanked on the joystick, screaming,
‘That’s the weapons system detector. We’re under attack.’ Her
vein-bursting turn squeezed the magno-chopper past the main
concentration of fire streaming out of the twin rapid-fire guns
that had emerged on swivel bases from the top of a centrally
positioned container. The guns followed the magno-chopper as it
dived and spun in a wild series of evasive manouvres until it was
out of range.

‘It’s an old anti-piracy weapon system,’ said
Kaptu, peering at it through his sniper scope. It has probably been
sitting dormant for fifty years and it didn’t take five minutes for
you to set it off. Nice flying to get away from it though.’

The magno-chopper shuddered before he had
even finished saying it. More alarms sounded and then there came
the pungent fumes of acrid smoke.

‘You might have spoken too soon,’ said
Clorvine, fighting with the joystick to retain some semblance of
control. ‘The tail-rotor
just
got
shot off.’

‘How much time do we have?’

‘Emergency thrusters have been activated.
Enough time for a crash landing on Alabama Island.’

‘That’s good, but we’re not going to Alabama
just yet.’

‘What?’

‘Take a wide sweep of the island. Let’s see
if there is anything out there.’

Clorvine wrenched her gaze away from the
chaotic controls to look at him hard. ‘You mean Mas?’

‘Could be. Rojas mentioned in his report on
the Las Gabos operation that there had only been rats on the
industrial site. Very big rats.’

Clorvine pondered this a moment before
cajoling an already screaming engine into gaining more altitude.
The thick black smoke trailed behind.

‘Attention Mango Chopper T018,’ came a new,
harder voice over the speaker. ‘This is Major Mark Emsly. Your
identity has been verified. Emergency landing on Alabama Island is
granted.’

‘Granted?’ returned Kaptu. ‘Your island is
not as safe as you think. The
Kudos
is on
a direct course with a bio-weapon on board.’

There was a pause. ‘What kind of
bio-weapon?’

‘Thousands of human-eating rats.’

There was an even longer pause. ‘How can you
be so sure?’

‘Because our colleague just stepped aboard
the
Kudos
and got ripped to the bone.
These are no ordinary rats. I fear they have been bred with the
sole purpose of consuming every living thing upon your island.’

‘Can you sink it?’

‘We’re a United Nations peace keeping
magno-chopper with our tail shot off,’ snapped Clorvine. ‘No, we’re
not going to sink it.’

‘In fact,’ added Kaptu, ‘it seems we’re going
to take up your offer and crash into that island of yours.’

Clorvine flicked off radio contact and looked
at him anxiously. ‘Do you really think that is what’s happening? An
army of rats?

‘Why not? Soldiers mean governments and
declarations of war, whereas rats are just rats. Nasty and dirty
but as a tool very clean.’ Kaptu could see on the horizon to the
south east the specs of a fleet of boats. ‘I’d like to sink those
boats too.’

‘Do you think they’re involved?’

‘Let’s put it this way, from a legal point of
view, an island is considered uninhabited if everyone on it is
dead. So, I don’t those boats are drifting as aimlessly around the
Artic like the Kudos is supposedly doing.’

The engines sputtered and the magno-chopper
began to lose altitude.

‘The thrusters are spent,’ said Clorvine. ‘We
can ditch in the sea.’

‘We won’t float. There are too many holes. In
such icy water it will be certain death. The island is at least a
chance. The American base may even have bunkers. It’s a
protectorate after all.’

‘Let’s ask.’ Clorvine went back to the radio
but was stopped by a large explosion emanating from the island. It
was the military base, flames spitting high into the air.

Kaptu shook his head. ‘A bomb and an army of
rats. Mas is definitely here.’

Clorvine pointed the magno-chopper that way.
‘Alright, to hell with it.’

*

Alabama Island had been well chosen for the
attack. Its small size and pureness of air meant the scent of its
human inhabitants was rich in the air. And its isolation meant no
help would be coming soon. The
Kudos
ran
aground on the island’s rocky southern shore and the rats came
pouring out from the hold. Thousands of them in an immense, hungry
wave. They locked onto the most proximate scent and charged that
way at a furious speed. Within minutes they were upon the three
Marines sent to sink the
Kudos
before it
made landfall. The Marines were travelling in a light armoured jeep
with mounted cannons and missile turrets. The weight of the
weaponry and the inaccessible rocky terrain made for slow progress.
But also there was an overriding skepticism that burly Marines,
battle hardened veterans of the Artic War, could ever be troubled
by a few rats scurrying about. The rats that swarmed the jeep,
however, were full of intent and immediately sniffed out the access
points in the gaps in the gun turrets and up through the
undercarriage. They lunged upon the Marines in a mass of vicious
teeth, flaying them into strips.

The Marines’ hideous screams were relayed
back to the busy Action Centre of the Alabama Island Marine Base
where the base commander, Major Emsly, and his second in command,
Lieutenant Beamy Carlitto listened on ashen-faced.

‘What shall we do, sir?’ queried Carlitto,
her voice wavering.

The screams lasted a while longer and when
finally they ended they were replaced by the grotesque sounds of
rodents feasting. Emsly strode angrily to the communication
controls, pushing away the communications officer and cutting off
the line. He puckered, sucking his lips into his well-trimmed
goatee. ‘We can have jets scrambled from Alaska in ten minutes. But
they will have no weapons against this onslaught. Nothing short of
firebombing the whole island.’

‘The reconnaissance drone has arrived on the
scene,’ said the communications officer, returning to the controls
unfazed at being manhandled. He put on the large central screen the
live feed of the massive army of black rats surging across the
island.

‘The Polar Bear Conservation Centre will be
next in their path,’ said Carlitto. ‘Then us.’

Emsly nodded and turned grimly to the
communications officer. ‘Put us through to the Conservation Centre
on the emergency channel.’

‘Yes, sir.’

The door to the action centre opened to the
198cm tall Sergeant Hex Carter fully utilising his gaping stride.
‘The source of the explosion has been confirmed, sir. It was the
Fork 20 Missile itself. It must have misfired just as it was being
fired at the
Kudos
.’

Emsly took in the news bitterly.
‘Casualties?’

‘Four dead. Twelve wounded, five
seriously.’

‘Damage?’

‘Extensive, sir. A Fork 20 will always mean
business.’

The next question was vital, so Emsly said it
very clearly: ‘Can the central building still be sealed?’

‘Large sections of the roof and wall have
been lost. So the answer is no, sir.’

Emsly nodded stiffly. ‘Do what you can on
scene.
Prioritise
preparing the wounded
for evac.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Carter and stomped his way
out of the action centre.

‘Evacuation with what?’ murmured Carlitto.
‘We only have the one attack chopper on base and it will not carry
all of us.’

‘All of us, unfortunately, is a dwindling
number.’

‘It must be sabotage. Fork Missiles do not
misfire.’

‘We do not have the luxury of being able to
draw conclusions. We are under siege and we have decisions to make.
Do we use the chopper to evacuate what wounded we can or do we use
it for offensive purposes, and that means assuming that we are
indeed under attack?’

‘Hundreds of Marines were lost in the
securing of this island. If we evacuate, the United States would be
technically foregoing its protectorate status. Other nations will
file claims and it will take years to run through the courts. That
might be what this whole incident is about.’

‘I get that. But death in battle has never
been less honourable than by being consumed by rodents.’

‘We do not have the luxury of drawing
conclusions,’ Carlitto fired back.

‘Touché.’ Emsly smirked and activated the
base intercom system. ‘All personnel are to assemble on the parade
ground,’ he gnarled into the mike. ‘That includes the sick and
wounded. And empty out the armory. We are under attack and by the
flagpole is where we’ll fight.

Carlitto waited until he was off coms before
murmuring, ‘Outdoors we will be completely exposed. Indoors, such
as in this room, we will only have doors to defend.’