Strange Highways (42 page)

“You don’t think they’re still in the ventilation system?”

“No, they must’ve gotten out at some point, into the walls.”

“But how? PVC pipe is used for the ductwork, pressure sealed with a high-temperature bonding agent at all joints.”

Ben nodded. “We think they chewed up the adhesive at one of the joints, loosened two sections of pipe enough to squeeze out. We’ve found rat droppings in the crawl-space attic … and a place where they gnawed through the subroof and the overlying shingles. Once on the roof, they could get off the building by gutters and downspouts.”

John Acuff’s face had grown whiter than the salt part of his salt-and-pepper beard. “Listen, we’ve got to get them back tonight, no matter what.
Tonight.
”

“We’ll try.”

“Just trying isn’t good enough. We’ve
got
to do it. Ben, there are three males and five females in that pack. And they’re fertile. If we don’t get them back, if they breed in the wild … ultimately they’ll drive ordinary rats into extinction, and we’ll be faced with a menace unlike anything we’ve known. Think about it:
smart
rats that recognize and elude traps, quick to detect poison bait, virtually ineradicable. Already, the world loses a large portion of its food supply to rats, ten or fifteen percent in developed countries like ours, fifty percent in many third-world countries. Ben, we lose that much to
dumb
rats. What’ll we lose to these? We might eventually see famine even in the United States—and in less advanced countries, there could be starvation beyond imagination.”

Frowning, Ben said, “You’re overstating the danger.”

“Absolutely not! Rats are parasitical. They’re competitors, and these will be competing far more vigorously and aggressively than any rats we’ve ever known.”

The lab seemed as cold as the winter night outside. “Just because they’re a bit smarter than ordinary rats-“

“More than a bit. Scores of times smarter.”

“But not as smart as we are, for heaven’s sake.”

“Maybe half as smart as the average man,” Acuff said.

Ben blinked in surprise.

“Maybe even smarter than that,” Acuff said, fear evident in his lined face and eyes. “Combine that level of intellect with their natural cunning, size advantage-“

“Size advantage? But we’re much bigger

Acuff shook his head. “Small can be better. Because they’re smaller, they’re faster than we are. And they can vanish through a chink in the wall, down a drainpipe. They’re bigger than the average rat, about eighteen inches long instead of twelve, but they can move unseen through the shadows because they’re still relatively small. And size isn’t their only advantage, however.
They can also see at night as well as in daylight.”

“Doc, you’re starting to scare me.’

“You better be scared half to death. Because these rats we’ve made, this new species we’ve engineered, is hostile to us.”

Finally Ben was forming an opinion of Project Blackberry. It wasn’t favorable. Not sure he wanted to know the answer to his own question, he said, “What exactly do you mean by that?”

Turning away from the wall vent, walking to the center of the room, planting both hands on the marble lab bench, leaning forward with his head hung down and his eyes closed, Acuff said, “We don’t know why they’re hostile. They just are. Is it some quirk of their genetics? Or have we made them just intelligent enough so they can understand that we’re their masters—and resent it? Whatever the reason, they’re aggressive, fierce. A few researchers were badly bitten. Sooner or later someone would’ve been killed if we hadn’t taken extreme precautions. We handled them with heavy bite-proof gloves, wearing Plexiglas face masks, suited in specially made Kevlar coveralls with high, rolled collars.
Kevlar!
That’s the stuff they make bulletproof vests out of, for God’s sake, and we needed something that tough because these little bastards were determined to hurt us.”

Astonished, Ben said, “But why didn’t you destroy them?”

“We couldn’t destroy a success,” Acuff said.

Ben was baffled. “Success?”

“From a scientific point of view, their hostility wasn’t important because they were also
smart.
What we were trying to create was smart rats, and we succeeded. Given time, we figured to identify the cause of the hostility and deal with it. That’s why we put them all in one pen—‘cause we thought their isolation in individual cages might be to blame for their hostility, that they were intelligent enough to need a communal environment, that housing them together might—mellow them.”

“Instead it only facilitated their escape.”

Acuff nodded. “And now they’re loose.”

6

HURRYING ALONG THE HALL, MEG PASSED THE WIDE ARCHWAY TO THE living room and saw Tommy struggling up from his chair, groping for his crutches. Doofus was whining, agitated. Tommy called to Meg, but she didn’t pause to answer because every second counted.

Turning at the newel post, starting up the stairs, she glanced back and could see no rats following her. The light wasn’t on in the hallway itself, however, so something could have been scurrying through the shadows along the baseboard.

She climbed the steps two at a time and was breathing hard when she reached the second floor. In her room, she took the shotgun from under the bed and chambered the first of the five rounds in the magazine.

A vivid image of rats swarming through the cabinet flickered across her mind, and she realized that she might need additional ammo. She kept a box of fifty shells in her clothes closet, so she slid open that door—and cried out in surprise when two large, white rats scuttled across the closet floor. They clambered over her shoes and disappeared through a hole in the wall, moving too fast for her to take a shot at them even if she had thought to do so.

She had kept the box of shells on the closet floor, and the rats had found it. They had chewed open the cardboard carton and stolen the shells one at a time, carrying them away through the hole in the wall.

Only four rounds were left. She scooped them up and stuffed them into the pockets of her jeans.

If the rats had succeeded in making off with all the shells, would they then have tried subsequently to find a way to remove the last
five rounds from the shotgun’s magazine as well, leaving her defenseless? Just how smart
were
they?

Tommy was calling her, and Doofus was barking angrily.

Meg left the bedroom at a run. She descended the steps so fast that she risked twisting an ankle.

The Labrador was in the first-floor hall, his sturdy legs planted wide, his blocky head lowered, his ears flattened against his skull. He was staring intently toward the kitchen, no longer barking but growling menacingly, even though he was also trembling with fear.

Meg found Tommy in the living room, standing with the aid of his crutches, and she let out a wordless cry of relief when she saw that no rats were swarming over him.

“Mom, what is it? What’s wrong?”

“The rats … I think … I
know
they’re from Biolomech. That’s what the roadblock was all about. That’s what those men were looking for with their spotlights, with the angled mirrors they poked under the car.” She swept the room with her gaze, looking for furtive movement along the walls and beside the furniture.

“How do you know?” the boy asked.

“I’ve seen them. You’ll know it too, if you see them.”

Doofus remained in the hall, but Meg took small comfort from the warning growl he directed toward the kitchen. She realized the dog was no match for these rats. They’d trick or overpower him without difficulty, as soon as they were ready to attack.

They
were
going to attack. Besides being genetically altered, with large skulls and brains, they
behaved
differently from other rats. By nature rats were scavengers, not hunters, and they thrived because they skulked through shadows, living secretively in walls and sewers; they never dared to assault a human being unless he was helpless—an unconscious wino, a baby in a crib. But the Biolomech were bold and hostile, hunters as well as scavengers. Their scheme to steal her shotgun shells and disarm her was clear preparation for an attack.

His voice shaky, Tommy said, “But if they aren’t like ordinary rats, what
are
they like?”

She remembered the hideously enlarged skull, the scarlet eyes informed with malevolent intelligence, the pale and plump and somehow obscene white body. She said, “I’ll tell you later. Come on, honey, we’re getting out of here.”

They could have gone out the front door, around the house, and across the rear yard to the barn in which the jeep was parked, but that was a long way through driving snow for a boy on crutches. Meg decided they would have to go through the kitchen and out the back. Besides, their coats were drying on the rack by the rear door, and her car keys were in her coat.

Doofus bravely led them along the hall to the kitchen, though he was not happy about it.

Meg stayed close to Tommy, holding the pistol-grip, pump-action 12-gauge ready in both hands. Five shells in the gun, four in her pockets. Was that enough? How many rats had escaped Biolomech? Six? Ten? Twenty? She would have to avoid shooting them one at a time, save her ammunition until she could take them out in twos or threes. Yes, but what if they didn’t attack in a pack? What if they rushed at her singly, from several different directions, forcing her to swivel left and right and left again, blasting at them one at a time until her ammunition was all gone? She
had
to stop them before they reached her or Tommy, even if they came singly, because once they were on her or climbing the boy, the shotgun would be useless; then she and Tommy would have to defend themselves with bare hands against sharp teeth and claws. They’d be no match for even half a dozen large, fearless—and smart—rats intent on tearing out their throats.

But for the wind outside and the tick of granular snow striking the windows, the kitchen was silent. The cupboard stood open, as she had left it, but no rats crouched on the shelves.

This was
crazy!
For two years she had worried about raising Tommy without Jim’s help. She’d been concerned about instilling in him the right values and principles. His injuries and illnesses had scared her. She had worried about how she would handle unexpected crises if they arose, but she had never contemplated anything as unexpected as this. Sometimes she had taken comfort in the thought that she and Tommy lived in the country, where crime was not a concern, because if they had still lived in the city, she would have had even more to worry about; but now bucolic Cascade Farm, at the hayseed end of Black Oak Road, had proved to be as dangerous as any crime-riddled metropolis.

“Put on your coat,” she told Tommy.

Doofus’s ears pricked. He sniffed the air. He turned his head side to side, surveying the base of the cupboards, the refrigerator, the unlit open cabinet under the sink.

Holding the Mossberg in her right hand, Meg speared her own coat off the rack with her left, struggled until she got her arm into it, took the shotgun in her left hand, shrugged her right arm into the second sleeve. She used just one hand to pull on her boots, refusing to put down the weapon.

Tommy was staring at the rat trap that she had left on the counter, the one that she had taken from under the sink. The stick that the rats had used to trip the mechanism was still wedged between the anvil and the hammer bar. Tommy frowned at it.

Before he could ask questions or have more time to think, Meg said, “You can do without a boot on your good foot. And leave your crutches here. They’re no good outside. You’ll have to lean on me.”

Doofus twitched and went rigid.

Meg brought up the gun and scanned the kitchen.

The Labrador growled deep in his throat, but there was no sign of the rats.

Meg pulled open the back door, letting in the frigid wind. “Let’s move, let’s go, now.”

Tommy lurched outside, holding on to the door frame, then balancing against the porch wall. The dog slipped out after him. Meg followed, closing the door behind them.

Holding the Mossberg in her right hand, using her left arm to support Tommy, she helped the boy across the porch, down the snow-covered steps, and into the yard. With the windchill factor, the temperature must have been below zero. Her eyes teared, and her face went numb. She hadn’t paused to put on gloves, and the cold sliced through to the bones of her hands. Still, she felt better outside than in the house, safer. She didn’t think that the rats would come after them, for the storm was a far greater obstacle to those small creatures than it was to her and Tommy.

Conversation was impossible because the wind keened across the open land, whistled under the eaves of the house, and clattered the bare branches of the maples against one another. She and Tommy progressed silently, and Doofus stayed at their side.

Though they slipped several times and almost fell, they reached the barn quicker than she had expected, and she hit the switch to put up the electric door. They ducked under the rising barrier before it was entirely out of their way. In the weak light of the lone bulb, they went directly to the station wagon.

She fished her keys out of her coat pocket, opened the door on the passenger side, slid the seat back all the way on its tracks, and helped Tommy into the front of the car because she wanted him beside her now, close, not in the backseat, even if he would have been more comfortable there. When she looked around for the dog, she saw that he was standing outside the barn, at the threshold, unwilling to follow them inside.

“Doofus, here, quick now,” she said.

The Labrador whined. Surveying the shadows in the barn, he let the whine deepen into a growl.

Remembering the feeling of being watched when she had parked the jeep in the barn earlier, Meg also scanned the murky corners and the tenebrous reaches of the loft, but she saw neither pale, slinking figures nor the telltale red glimmer of rodent eyes.