King Rat (29 page)

Page 141

Loplop cried again and again, and Saul glimpsed him, a desperate figure before King Rat, his fists flailing against King Rat’s chest. He pushed King Rat, tried to move him back, but King Rat continued with his stiff zombie dance.

And behind them all, something hanging from the ceiling ... something emerging, Saul saw, from a shaft to the pavements above. A black box, dangling at a ridiculous angle, its handle tied to a dirty rope ...

A ghetto-blaster.

Saul’s eyes widened in astonishment.

The fucker doesn’t even have to be here, he thought.

He stumbled into the tunnel and approached the seething mass. The flute was ghastly, loud and fast and insane like an Irish jig played in Hell. Saul edged forward. He began to pass straggling rats. The ghetto-blaster swayed slightly. Saul waded into the mass of rats. So many already, all around him, and he had at least six feet to walk. It seemed as if every rat in the sewer had found its way here; monstrous foot-long beasts and mewling babies, dark and brown, crushing each other, killing each other in their eagerness to reach the music. Saul pushed forward, feeling the bodies squirm around him. A thousand claws ripped at him, never in antagonism, only in the ecstasy of the dance. Under the rats he could see were layers that moved sluggishly, tired and dying; and below them were rats who did not move at all.

Saul walked knee deep in the dead.

King Rat did not turn, stayed where he was, dancing at the head of his people once again. Loplop saw Saul. He shrieked and pushed past King Rat, launched himself through the living wall towards Saul.

He was ruined. His suit was filthy, and in tatters. His face contorted, rage and confusion fleeting across it.

He waded forward two, three steps, then stumbled under the weight of enthralled bodies. He went under, drowning in the seething mass. Saul ignored him, contemptuous of him, disgusted.

But he too found it difficult to move; he pushed through the rats, killing, he was sure, with each step, unwillingly but inevitably. He swayed, regained his balance. The cacophonous flute was utterly deafening.

Saul went down suddenly on one knee and the rats used him as a springboard, leapt from him, tried to fly J to the dangling stereo.

Saul swore, struggled to regain his feet, went under again. He became enraged, surged to his feet, spilling rats as he rose. A few feet away he could see the pitiful sight of Loplop’s body bobbing below the surface ofll the rats, trying and failing to stand.

Saul shook himself and brown bodies spun through the air. He could not reach the boombox. He tugged hard with his feet, which seemed stuck as firmly as in quicksand. He roared, suddenly livid, pulled inexorably through the mass of rats, stumbled again, yanked and forced his way through, past King Rat, to the point where the rats thinned out and the stereo hung six feet from the floor.

He reached up to it, and saw King Rat. He stopped moving, shocked.

King Rat stood in thrall, his face slack, his limbs swinging vaguely, stripped of dignity, a string of drool stretching and snapping from his lower jaw. Saul stared, fascinated and horrified.

Page 142

He hated King Rat, hated what he had done, but something in him was appalled at seeing him so shorn of power.

Saul turned and grasped the swinging box, pulled hard, snapping the rope.

He smashed it hard against the wall.

The music stopped at the instant of impact. Metal and plastic spattered out of the broken casing. He slammed it twice more against the brick. Its speakers burst out of their housing. A tape flew from the ruined cassette deck.

Saul turned and looked at the assembled multitude.

They stood still, confused.

Understanding and recollection seemed to well over them all simultaneously. In a panic, a terrified flurry, the rats emitted a communal hiss and disappeared, scampering over each other, made clumsy by the fallen.

The mountain crumbled and disappeared. Lame and ruined rats tried to follow their fellows. The first wave was gone; then the second wave, limping after them; and the third wave, the dying, hauled themselves away, sliding on blood.

The ground was covered with bodies. Corpses lay two, three thick. Loplop crawled into a corner. King Rat stared at Saul. Saul looked back at him for a moment, then returned his attention to the ruined stereo.

He fumbled in the mud until he found the tape.

He wiped it, examined the label.

Flute 1, it said. It was handwritten. It was Natasha’s

writing.

‘Oh fuck,’ Saul shouted and pushed his head into the crook of his arm. ‘Oh fuck, oh leave them alone, you fucker,’ he breathed.

He heard King Rat move forward. Saul looked up sharply. King Rat looked uneasy. He moved with a deferential cast to his limbs, resentment curling his mouth. He was intimidated, Saul realized.

Saul nodded.

‘It’s just noise to me,’ he whispered. He nodded again, saw King Rat’s eyes widen. ‘Just noise.’

With a shriek Loplop saw Saul, ran towards him flapping his rags and his arms, stumbled as he ran.

King Rat started. Saul stepped smartly out of Loplop’s way and watched as the Bird Superior slipped in mud, went over in a half-controlled fall and banged his head against the wall.

Saul gesticulated at King Rat, danced back a few steps.

Page 143

‘Keep that motherfucker under control!’ he shouted.

Loplop still shouted, still yelled his incoherent cries as he tried to stand. King Rat strode to where Loplop slithered in mud, and gripped his collar. He tugged him, pulled him along the slippery sewer bottom. Loplop struggled and whimpered. At the entrance to the tunnel King Rat crouched before him, held his finger before Loplop’s face. Saul could not tell if he was speaking to Loplop, or merely holding him still, with those eyes. Some kind of communication passed between them.

Loplop stared past King Rat at Saul. He looked afraid and enraged.

King Rat regained his gaze and seemed to say something, gesticulated. Loplop’s eyes returned to Saul, and the same rage filled him as before, but he backed away, moved away through the tunnels, disappeared.

King Rat turned back to Saul.

As he walked back through the bodies of the rats, Saul saw that King Rat had regained his furtive swagger. He had composed himself.

‘Back, then?’ King Rat asked casually.

Saul ignored him. He looked up into the shaft from which he had pulled the stereo. Several feet above, a grille was visible, and above it the drab orange-shot black of the city night. Something was affixed to the inside of the narrow shaft.

‘So what you here for, then, chal?’ asked King Rat, his insouciance wearing and affected.

‘Fuck you,’ replied Saul quietly. He stood on tiptoe, reached up into the vertical tunnel. He could feel a corner of paper flapping in wind. He gripped it, pulled gently, but succeeded only in tearing the corner away.

He looked down briefly. King Rat stood near him, his hands held uncertainly to his chest.

Saul looked around him at the corpses.

‘Another fine display of leadership skills, then, Dad.’

‘Fuck you, you pissing little half-breed, I’ll kill you...’

‘Oh give it a rest, old man,’ said Saul, disgusted. ‘You need me, you know it, I know it, so shut up with your stupid threats.’ He returned his attention to the tunnel. He jumped up and grabbed the top of the paper, pulled it down with him when he fell.

It came away in his hands. He spread it out.

It was a poster.

It was designed by someone with Adobe Illustrator, a sixth-form aesthetic and too much time. Garish and jumbled, a confusion of fonts and point sizes, information crowding itself out and details fighting for space.

Page 144

A line drawing took up most of the sheet: a grotesquely muscled man in sunglasses standing impassive behind a twin-deck turntable. He stood with his arms folded, as the chaotic writing exploded around him.

junglist terror!!! it exclaimed.

One night of Extreme Drum an’ Bass Badness!

10 pounds entry, it exclaimed, and gave the address of a a club in the Elephant and Castle, in the badlands of South London; and a date, a Saturday night in early December.

Featuring da Cream of da Crop, Three Fingers, Manta, Ray Wired, Rudegirl K, Natty Funkah. ..

Rudegirl K. That was Natasha.

Saul let out a little cry. He bent slightly, his breath pushed from him.

‘He’s telling us,’ he hissed to King Rat. ‘He’s inviting us.’

Something was scrawled on the bottom of the poster, an addendum in a strange ornate hand. Also featuring a special guest! it proclaimed. Fabe M!

Jesus he was pathetic! Saul thought. He sank slowly back against the wall as he grasped the paper.

Fabe M! Look, he’s trying to play games, thought Saul, but this isn’t his environment, he doesn’t know what to do, he can’t play with these words. ..

It made him feel obscurely comforted. Even in the misery of knowing that his friends were in the hands of this creature, this monster, this avaricious spirit, he felt a triumph in the ineptitude with which his foe stumbled on jargon. He was trying for nonchalance, scribbling an addition in Drum and Bass style, but the language was unfamiliar and he had stumbled. Fabe M! It sounded stupid and contrived. He wanted Saul to know that he had Fabian, that Fabian would be at the club, but he was not on his home ground, and his clumsy affectation showed that.

Saul found himself chuckling, almost ruefully.

‘Bastard can’t play no more.’ He crushed the paper and threw it at King Rat, who had been hovering nervously, resentfully. King Rat snatched it out of the air. ‘Fucker’s telling us to come and get them,’ said Saul, as King Rat opened out the sheet.

Saul pushed past King Rat, kicked his way through the bodies of the rat dead.

‘He’s operating like a fucking Bond villain,’ he said. ‘He wants me. Knows I’ll come for him if he dangles my friends in front of me.’

‘So what’s a rat to do?’ said King Rat.

Saul turned and stared at him. He knew, quite suddenly, that his eyes were as hidden to King Rat as King’ Rat’s were to him.

‘What am I going to do?’ Saul said slowly. ‘A trap is only a trap if you don’t know about it. If you know about it, it’s a challenge. I’m going to go, of course.’ I’m going to Junglist Terror. To rescue my friends.’

Page 145

He could feel that sentiment within him which had disturbed him before, a part of him saying fuck it, don’t go, it’s not your problem any more.

That was King Rat’s blood. Saul would not listen to it. I am what I do, he thought, furiously.

There was a long silence between the two of them.

‘You know what?’ said Saul finally. ‘I think you should come too.

I think you will.’

Squadrons of rats spread out across London. Saul harangued them in foetid alleys, behind great plastic bins. He raged to them about the Piper, told them that their day had come.

The massed ranks of the rats stood quivering, inspired. Their noses twitched; they could smell victory.

Saul’s words broke over them like tides, swept them up. He communicated with them by his tone; they knew they were being commanded, and after centuries of furtive skulking they became brave, puffed up with millennial fervour.

Saul ordered them to prepare. He ordered them to search out the Piper, to bring Saul information, to find his friends. He described them, the black man and the short woman being kept hostage by the Piper.

The rats did not care about the people being held. They represented nothing except a task set by Saul.

‘You are rats,’ Saul told them, sticking out his lower lip and jerking his head back like Mussolini. They gazed at him, a shifting mass of followers, peering out from all the nooks and crannies of the building site which they had congregated. ‘You’re the sneakers, the. creepers, the rat-burglars. Don’t come to me afraid of being seen, don’t come to me with fears of the Piper’s revenge. Why will he see you? You’re rats... if he sees you you’re a failure to your species. Stay hidden creep in the spaces in between, and find him, and tell me where he is.’

The rats were inspired. They longed to follow him. He dismissed them with a wave and they scattered hr short-lived bravado.

Saul knew that beyond the range of his voice, the rats’ fear would quickly return. He knew that they would hesitate. He knew they would slow down as they scaled walls, look around anxiously for him to shout them on, and that they would fail. He knew: they would slink back to the sewers and hide until he found them and urged them out again.

But maybe one would be brave or lucky. Maybe one of his rats would scale the walls that divided the Piper’s sanctuary from the outside, and pick a way through the barbed wire, scamper along the pipes and the cables, cross the wasteland, and find him.

Somewhere, squeezed into the air-conditioning housing on the top of a financial building in the heart of
Page 146

the City, or in a bitumen-sealed hole under a suburban railway bridge, or in a room with no windows in an empty hospital beyond Neasden, or in the high tech vaults of a bank to the west of Hammersmith, or in the attic above a bingo hall in Tooting, the Piper was holding Natasha and Fabian, waiting out the week before Junglist Terror.

Saul suspected that the Piper would avoid the gaze of rats and spiders and birds. He was not afraid of his adversaries, but there was no point advertising his presence. He had issued his challenge, had told them the night that they would die. The Piper had issued them with invitations to their own executions.

It might be that he was only concerned with Saul, with the half-and-half, the rat-man he could not control, but he must suspect that Anansi would be there, too, and King Rat, and Loplop. They were not brave or proud. They were not ashamed to turn down challenges. But they knew that Saul was the only thing that the Piper could not control, that Saul was the only chance they had, and they knew they must be there to help him. If he did not survive, they could not.