China Miéville - King Rat

At that moment, the bassline of Wind City burst into the room, pared down and simple. And riding it, sailing over the troughs and peaks of beat and bass, was the flute.

The dancers moved as one.

They moved in time, dancing again, an incredible piece of choreography, every right foot raised together, coming down, then every left, a strange languorous hardstep, arms swinging, legs rigid, up and down in time to the beat, obeying the Piper’s flute. And every step aimed at a rat.

This was war.

The rats were righting now, leaping onto bodies and backs. The dancers unearthly unity slowly dissolved as they fought their small, vicious enemies without that dislocated look ever leaving their eyes.

The spiders had reached the stage now, with the vanguard of the rats, and both armies swarmed towards the Piper. Anansi rose behind him and lurched forward, slamming his arms into the Piper’s back, but his power was diminished by the men who leapt forward to hold him. They did not look at him. They held their heads to the side to hear the music, and they did what the music told them. With a strength that was not theirs they hurled Anansi backwards into the wall. He shouted at his troops, gesticulated.

Saul slithered across the floor towards the decks, the DAT player, the source of the music. Instantly Natasha turned and stamped on his hand with her long heel. He screeched in pain, slithered away again, tried to get past her, but she stamped again and again, faster and faster, until it seemed impossible that she remain standing.

Someone behind Saul grabbed him and pulled him up and with a sudden surge of righteous anger he elbowed them in the face. The head snapped back and lolled, the body staggering but somehow kept standing by the music. Saul turned, his hands claws, and his rage dissipated in horror. His assailant was about seventeen, a chubby Asian boy dressed in his Jungling best, now spattered with blood. His nose was a mess in the middle of his face and still he tried to keep time to the beat.

Saul pushed him away hard, out of the fight.

He realized that the dancers were slowly approaching the stage, fighting and scratching, hurling rats and spiders against the walls, ripping at them with their teeth, all the while cocking their heads thoughtfully to hear the notes of Wind City. The fucking flute!

It was multilayered, alienating, frightening, a cacophonous backdrop.

More and more dancers leapt onto the stage, their clothes clogged with blood, rat and human, with fragments of fur, their faces shredded by tiny claws. Saul could taste the rat blood on the air. It flooded him with adrenaline.

Spiders and rats covered the stage, swarmed up the legs of Fabian and the dancers. Fabian tugged at the fat bodies of rats and slammed them underfoot where their legs and spines and skulls cracked and they crawled off to die. He slapped at himself and danced from leg to leg, smearing spiders into the wood.

Saul could hear Anansi bellowing.

Saul turned and made for the decks again. Fabian kicked him in the crotch from behind and Natasha stamped at his shoulder. He moved, avoided being impaled, but hands grasped his legs and tugged him violently across a floor slippery with rat blood and crushed spiders, slid him away from Natasha and the DAT player, slammed him into a wall. Bodies fell across him, inhumanly strong knees crushed his back, he was pinioned by a score of arms and legs.

Saul could hear Anansi shrieking.

He looked up, saw the Piper bent over Anansi, the spider-man held down by several dancers. With his head low against the boards, all Saul could see of the dancefloor was the bobbing heads of the dancers.

It was a vision of hell, rats and spiders and blood swarming over the damned.

Fabian stumbled into his view, and Saul looked up at him and back at Natasha. They were invisible beneath a second skin of spiders, a thick skittering mass. The tide of spiders spilled towards the Piper. Anansi kept shrieking.

The Piper looked up, caught Saul’s eye, and looked briefly at the spiders approaching him.

‘Shall I show you my new party trick?’ he said. His voice sounded close and intimate in Saul’s ear, whispered through the Jungle and the flute.

The Piper flickered his eyes briefly at the decks.

Something changed in the flute.

The samples were looped and laid one on top of the other, and as he listened Saul realized that one of the layers was soaring, changing, becoming staccato and breathless. Anansi was suddenly silent.

As it reached the Piper’s feet, the tide of spiders stopped dead.

He’s changing the music! He’s changing his choice! thought Saul. He’s going for the spiders instead!

But the dancers kept dancing, even as the spiders began to move together, incredibly, undulating with the beat. The circle of spiders around the Piper’s feet expanded, gave him space.

Still the dancers did not stop dancing. The spiders coating the bodies of the dancers dripped off them and scuttled onto the stage. Natasha and Fabian were uncovered, their skin covered in tiny welts and sores, dead spiders dropping from their clothes and mouths. They resumed their war against the rats.

The Piper began to leap, higher and higher, from one foot to the other, without taking his eyes from Saul’s. Saul looked down at the Piper’s feet. As he jumped, a little group of spiders would dance out, in time to the music, and stand below him, arranging themselves into the shape of the underside of each shoe. They would wait patiently as he plunged through the air and destroyed them exactly, the carnage of each step pre-empted by the spiders themselves, queuing up to die.

‘You see, Saul?’ whispered the Piper across the slick, stained stage. ‘That’s the joy of Jungle. All those layers… I can play my flute as many times as I want, all at once…’

The dancers kept dancing, and the spiders still waited to die.

Anansi sat up, his eyes glazed with delight at the spider music in Wind City. An idiot’s grin spread across his face. His left arm was missing at the shoulder, his side awash with blood, his shoulder a mass of ruined flesh and bone.

The Piper watched Saul’s face.

‘Yes, cruel, I know, to pull the legs off spiders, but this one had caused me no end of trouble.’

He pushed Anansi’s head back to the stage.

Saul’s shout was drowned in the Drum and Bass and flute. He struggled violently, but was held fast by the dancers. He could feel them move slightly with the beat as they leant on him.

The Piper leapt up, pulled his legs up hard and stamped down with all his strength.

Bones crunched and split in Anansi’s head.

Saul collapsed with a howl.

The wood of the stage heaved and buckled. Something burst through the boards in front of the Piper. Saul caught a momentary glimpse of a back, of wiry arms snapping out like whipcord and grasping the Piper’s ankles, then tugging sharply and disappearing back under the stage.

The Piper was gone. The music still blared, Saul was still pinioned, the rats still fought and bit and scratched, the dancers still fought back and massacred rats and danced, but the Piper was gone.

Saul could feel the vibrations of some huge battle being waged under him. He tugged at the arms holding him. They were obscenely strong but quite still. They held him tight but did not punish him for his pointless struggles.

The wood under his stomach lurched as something was thrust against it. A little to one side of him he heard a systematic pounding, something slammed again and again into the wood. Splinters of wood that fringed the hole in the stage spilled gently into the darkness below.

Spiders poured into the hole, and Saul saw the back of a nearby dancer lowering himself into the dark.

Saul pounded suddenly at the wood under his body, thrust his fingers into the tiny gap between two planks, ignoring the skin he left behind. He had no leverage, this was the wrong angle, but adrenaline gave him strength, and he tugged and ripped at the boards beneath him. His fingers shoved into the small cavity and scrabbled for purchase. He was straining, shoving upwards, feeling the board resist, then relax as old nails sprang from their moorings and the board went flying away.