China Miéville - King Rat

A child’s voice.

Saul froze, aghast. The Piper was still. He did not release Saul’s gaze. He did not stop smiling. The split behind his back was a foot wide now, and he began to wriggle his way into it, holding Saul’s eyes all the time. The pathetic wail stopped abruptly.

And just as abruptly a chorus of terror welled out of the darkness, hundreds of tiny voices screaming, stripped raw, mad with fear.

The lost children of Hamelin could see the light.

Saul fell back in a paralysis of horror.

His mouth was stretched wide but only tiny noises burst out. He reached out to the split in the wall, powerless, useless.

The Piper saw him crumple, and winked.

Later, he mouthed, and put his hands to each side of the split, gave a little wave.

A growling thing shoved into Saul at a fierce speed and tore the flute from his hands.

King Rat gripped the flute with both hands and leapt at an impossible angle from Saul’s lap to the Piper’s side. His teeth were clenched, his feral roar barely contained. His overcoat whipped in the vortex of wind. The Piper looked up at him, stupid and confused.

King Rat’s growl burst, became a frenzied bark, he drew back his arms, holding the flute like a spear.

He punched it into the Piper’s body with an animal strength.

The Piper gave a shout of amazement, ludicrously bathetic with the music and the wails of the children behind him.

The flute punctured him like a balloon, shoved deep into his belly. His face went white under the blood, and he gripped King Rat’s arms, clinging to them with all his might, holding the hands that held the flute close to him, staring into King Rat’s eyes.

Everything was poised, for a moment. Everything hung in the balance.

The Piper fell backwards into the dark.

King Rat fell with him.

All Saul could see was the curve of King Rat’s back, which lurched forwards and stopped abruptly. The slit was suddenly closing around him; the voices of the children were more and more plaintive and distant.

King Rat’s back wriggled and his arms emerged above his head, holding the great rent open for half a second more as he braced himself and shoved back from the brink, falling across Saul.

The two sides of the rip met and resealed with a faint crunch.

The Piper had gone. The cries of the children had gone.

Only the Drum and Bass could be heard.

Saul lay still, exhausted, listening to King Rat breathe.

He rolled away, crawled across the stage. He surveyed the room.

The disco lights still spun and stuttered pointlessly. The wreckage of the hall did not seem real. It was a carnage of blood and sweat, dead rats, crushed spiders, collapsed dancers. The walls were foul with a thousand different stains. The floor was slippery and vile. The dancers shuffled like revivified corpses from side to side, ruined, their eyes closed, shifting their weight from foot to foot, as the beat of Wind City droned on, and the flute continued to degrade. All over the hall dancers were falling.

Saul stumbled across to the decks and ripped the lead from the DAT player. The speakers went dead. Instantly, all around the room, the dancers dropped, fainting where they stood, as still as the dead. It looked like the aftermath of a massacre.

The spiders and rats still dancing when the music stopped were still for a moment, then bolted. They quit the hall and disappeared into the London night.

Saul looked around the hall, searching for his friends.

There, under the heavy body of a huge dancer, lay Natasha. He tugged her free, crooning.

‘Tash, Tash,’ he whispered, wiping the blood from her face. She was scratched and ripped, her skin welted with the poison of a million tiny spiders, covered with bruises and rat-bites, but she was breathing. He hugged her very hard as she lay there, and squeezed his eyes tight closed.

It had been so long since he had held one of his friends.

He put her gently down, searched for Fabian.

Saul found him lolling out of the hole King Rat had pushed through the stage. He almost wept to see him. He was badly damaged, his face crushed and broken, his skin as ruined as Natasha’s.

‘He’ll live.’

Saul looked up sharply at King Rat’s harsh voice.

King Rat stood over him, taking his weight on his left leg, regarding Saul’s ministrations to Fabian.

Saul looked back down at his friend.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘His heart’s beating. He’s breathing.’

It was difficult to talk. His throat was constricted with emotion. He looked up at King Rat, gesticulated at the wall.

‘The children…’ he couldn’t say any more.

King Rat nodded sharply. ‘The little fuckers whose parents clapped us out of town,’ he spat.

Saul’s face twisted. He could not speak, could not look at King Rat. He shook with anger and disgust, clenched his fists. He could still hear the pathetic cries echoing up from the dark.

‘Fabian,’ he whispered. ‘Can you hear me, man?’

Fabian moved gently but did not respond. It’s better, thought Saul suddenly. I can’t talk to him now, here, I can’t explain all this. He needs to be out of this. He mustn’t see this. Saul could not bear the loneliness. He wanted his friend so much, but he knew that he must wait.

Time enough soon, he thought and tried to be brave.

He stood, limped his way to King Rat. The two looked warily at each other, then fell forward, catching each other’s forearms, gripping each other. It was a long way from an embrace or a reconciliation, but it was a moment of connection. Like exhausted boxers leaning on each other, still enemies, but each granting the other a moment’s respite, and each grateful.

Saul breathed deep, stepped back.

‘Did you kill him?’ he said.

King Rat was silent. He turned away.

‘Did you?’

‘I don’t know…’ The words lingered in the silence of the hall. ‘I think so… the flute was deep inside him, his throat was crushed… I don’t know…’

Saul ran his hands through his hair, looked down at his heavy torso, smeared with the muck of combat. He felt winded by anticlimax and uncertainty. But, then, he thought suddenly, it doesn’t matter to me. He can’t touch me. He’s dead, or dying, or fucked and wounded, and if he ever comes back, I’ll be whatever I am now, only infinitely more so. He can’t touch me.

‘He can’t touch you,’ said King Rat and licked his lips.

Anansi’s body had gone. King Rat was unsurprised. He looked from side to side at the carpet of crushed spiders on the stage and the dancefloor.

‘You’ll never find him,’ he mused.

Saul looked at him and stared around the room. He was trembling violently. The stench of rat-blood was heavy in the air, and with every step Saul walked on the bodies of Anansi’s dead. Some of the dancers were beginning to stir.

Blood decorated the walls like abstract art.

‘I have to get out of here,’ Saul whispered.

Without words Saul and King Rat climbed to the attic. King Rat went before him. Saul untied his prison shirt and draped it across his back before jumping and grasping the edges of the hatchway, hauling himself up and out.

He looked back once, stuck his head into the huge, silent room.

Red and green and blue lights spun on intricate axes, flashing at random now that the beats had gone. The floor was littered with bodies, a few twitching gently. Saul looked at the stage where he had arranged Fabian and Natasha. They looked as if they were sleeping peacefully side by side. Natasha moved her arm dreamily and it fell across Fabian’s chest.

Saul’s breath caught. He could not look on any more.

He followed King Rat, emerged blinking from the skylight, sucked at the cold fresh air. It seemed days ago that he had entered by this route, but the sky was still dark and the streets as deserted as they ever were.