Read by Silas Hawkins
They say that in the City of London, you’re never more than 6ft from a rat.
Mine was called Boris.
When people said there was a rat following me, I didn’t believe them. I assumed it was an elaborate joke, the sort of thing my brother would orchestrate. I’d laugh, and they’d shake their head and swear that they were sure they’d seen SOMETHING.
Then I saw the SOMETHING they’d seen running along a countertop. I only glimpsed it out of the corner of my eye, but it was fast, and brown.
If you would like to read the rest of this story, please check out London Lies, the Arachne Press anthology in which it, and many other London-based stories from the League archives, appears.
I thought Mikey was taking things a bit too far this time. I mean a Rat! In the kitchen? Tame or not, the things aren’t sanitary. My Landlord, if he found out, would flip. There was a strict “No Pets!” policy; even goldfish were frowned upon.
But the sightings weren’t restricted to my flat. I saw a dark cable-like tail disappear into one of the pigeon holes at work. Only, when I tentatively pulled out all of the letters for the NW6 postcode, there was nothing there. It was starting to get to me; I was beginning to see things.
And feel things. I was having a quick drink after work in the Posties – you might know it as the Kings Head, but no-one ever called it that – when something scurried over my shoe and brushed against my ankle. I must have jumped a mile, spilling my pint far and wide in the process. I nervously apologised and ducked outside for a calming fag. As I sat on the wall overlooking the trucks in the depot, I cursed my fragile nerves. A falling letter, someone stretching their legs out under the table, and my mind had done the rest. I was behaving like... well, like a kid being tormented by his older brother.
So when my holdall started moving in the changing room at the council gym, I wasn’t scared. I worked it out. The locker was just large enough to hide in, if you were somewhat vertically challenged, and a length of cotton attached to the handles and gently pulled would make it twitch the way it was twitching now. But this time he’d been too clever - there was nowhere else to hide.
“Very funny. Come out Mikey, I know you’re there.” I called.
And a large brown rat strode nonchalantly from between my bag and the locker. “You got me,” it shrugged. “But the name’s Boris, not Mikey.”
I was gobsmacked. “You... You’ve been following me around?”
“Sure.” He nodded. “But I got tired of all the skulking. Decided to see what it would take for you to notice me. Quite a lot is the answer, you’re really not very observant, are you? Though – officially – you’re not actually supposed to see me. So do you mind if we keep this on the QT?”
And then he explained about the 6ft rule.
“Wow. I thought that was just an average, just a statistic.” I mused.
“Yeah,” said Boris. “A lot of people think that.”
I have to point out, because I haven’t had a chance to do so until now, that this was no squeaky voice that Boris spoke in. If I had to imagine a rat talking – and for the benefit of those who are going to doubt my sanity, this is not something I regularly did – it would be a high pitched “eee- eee” mouse sort of a voice, and not Boris’s rather soothing baritone. I suppose this should have surprised me more, but I was far too busy being astonished that he was talking at all.
Which prompted my next question.
“Of course I can speak!” he chortled. “I’ve been following you around for 38 years, and - and don’t take this wrong - you’re not exactly the strong silent type.”
I ignored the dig at my slight stature - it runs in the family - and latched onto the rest of his statement. “38 years? You’ve been following me since I was born?”
“Sure, like I said, one person, one rat.” He twiddled a whisker between his tiny fingers.
“But I thought that rats only lived for a couple of years. Five, at most?”
He rolled his eyes. “I take it you read that somewhere. And obviously you value something written by some know-it-all human over a rat’s personal experience. On the subject of rats. Sheesh.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” I apologised, feeling somewhat lost.
“Well.” He huffed. “You weren’t to know. There are a lot of things you don’t know.” He paused. “Like what Mikey keeps in the third drawer of his dresser.”
“Excuse me?” I said, baffled.
“Suffice it to say, the next time your brother plays a prank on you, ask him how he’s getting along with the deluxe model vacuum pump, and I guarantee that he’ll leave you alone for a while.” He winked.
“Ermm, thanks.” I tried to dismiss the images that this conjured up. They weren’t pretty. “How the heck do you know about that?”
He shrugged. “We rats talk. When you come close to another human, I come close to another rat. It’s kind of a rat grapevine. We gossip, discuss the news, chew the fat – literally, in some cases. It’s how we stay connected. Speaking of which, you should spend more time with Liz in Payroll.”
Again, I was baffled. I knew who he was talking about. Can’t say I’d ever spoken more than a dozen words to her, though, because I also knew when someone was out of my league. “Elisabeth Ramsden? Why?”
“Oh, her rat’s a real honey. Lovely glossy coat. Must be all of those Special K cereal bars.” He scratched behind his ears. “Though... I suppose that doesn’t really matter now.”
“Oh? Why’s that?” I wondered how Liz would react if her rat started talking to her. If she was anything like most women I’d known, she’d be a gibbering wreck spread-eagled on the ceiling.
He stared at me hard. “Look, you haven’t asked me the most important question.”
Now, there were plenty of questions that I hadn’t asked. Like how Boris could follow me on the Tube; or what happened when I went on holiday. But these didn’t seem like particularly important questions. So I gave in and asked him which question he had in mind.
Boris sighed. “Why do we follow you around?”
“Okay.” There was a long pause. “So. Why do you follow us around?”
“I don’t know.” He replied petulantly. “I used to think it was so that we could keep tabs on you – find out where you were storing your food, or where you’d put down the poison, that sort of thing. But now – well I don’t think they even bother to read my reports. So I have a new theory. I think they want us to stick close to you, simply because they want us close to you –as close as possible without being caught. Flea-hopping distance. How well do you know your history?”
“So – so” I admitted.
“Well, what about the botched attempt of 1665?” He asked.
“1665?” I scratched my head. “Ermm. Well I know about 1666 – the Great Fire of London?”
“Which didn’t help, but... come on man, what preceded that?”
I felt like I was back in school, with an exasperated teacher, and at that moment the penny dropped. Rats, plus the Great Fire of London. Equals ...
“The Bubonic Plague?”
He nodded slowly. “Close enough. Not actually Yersinia pestis – that had been around for centuries - but easily mistaken for it, and unlike Yersinia, not fatal to rats. Well, the old grapevine has been buzzing lately. Nothing concrete, just snippets of internal news – odd requisition orders, promotions in the Lab Rat divisions, sightings of Black Rats at HQ. Put them all together, and I think we might be getting ready to try again.”
“Try again? Try what again?” I asked, befuddled.
“Wipe out the humans, of course. Anyway the point is, me and some of my mates, we’re not exactly pleased with the idea. I mean, we do pretty well living under your feet, once you learn to avoid the traps. Your homes are warm, not so well maintained that we can’t get in, and the food! There’s always something new to try if you don’t mind wading through the garbage – and of course, we don’t. But despite all of that, someone has been rattling our cage, and I keep getting the feeling that we’re merely pawns in someone else’s game. Well - no longer. We’re deserting. We’re going somewhere we can live free with no orders, no schemes, and no rat poison. Basically, a very long way from here.”
“How?” I wondered aloud. It was a lot to take in, and I wasn’t doing a very good job of it, so you’ll have to forgive me if my questions seem to indicate I was missing the big picture. Chances are, I was.
“There are tunnels.” He said darkly. “Odd tunnels. All over London. Some of them pop up places you wouldn’t expect, much further away than you’ve travelled underground. Some of them ... go places.”
He stared at me. I stared back.
“What?” I’m afraid I still wasn’t getting the hang of it.
“Ah, you wouldn’t understand.” He waved his paw dismissively. “Ground dwellers never do. Anyway. Now that you’ve spotted me, I shall bid you adieu. And some advice - watch out for the Black Rats, I’m sure they’re behind this latest project, and rumour is, they’re callous bastards, with a score to settle. Which does not bode well for mankind. Oh, and if anyone asks, you ain’t seen me, right?”
Well, I guess you know the rest. The plague hit in the summer of the next year; the 100% mortality rate left millions upon millions of dead rats all over the city, though not one human fatality. Hardly even a sniffle. Seems Rat flu was peculiarly specific – we were more at risk because of all the corpses rotting in the summer heat. The clean up was massive. They called for volunteer squads, and I found myself working next to Liz Ramsden, collecting the decaying bodies and emptying them into the skips. Love blossoms in the most unlikely of places. Turns out she wasn’t squeamish at all. Turns out she had a heart of gold and a stomach of steel, and a soft spot for short men. We’re expecting our first child in the spring.
I do hope Boris made it out of the City, and I hope he took Liz’s rat with him. If he did, then I guess it’s an all’s well that ends well sort of story. Except for one thing.
All the rats that we cleaned up were brown.
Not a single Rattus rattus – the Black Rat.
But rather a lot of them have been seen recently. The scientists say that they’re opportunists, filling a niche, and filling it quick. Up to six litters of ten rats a year. Well, you do the math.
And I think back to Boris’s warning.
I looked it up. On Wikipedia. The Brown or Norwegian Rat, Rattus norvegicus, wasn’t native to this country, but once it invaded, it left little room for its competitor, the Black Rat, and the Brown Rat rapidly went on to become the second most successful mammal on the planet.
So, what if this wasn’t another botched attempt? Maybe it went perfectly to plan, except we weren’t the target, and it was the Black Rat who pulled the trigger? Revenge for nearly 300 years of oppression?
Because that’s the other thing I learnt. The clincher, if you will. Boris’s ancestors didn’t get to these shores until around 1728, more than 50 years after the Fire of London. Which means the Black Death could only have been spread by Black Rats.
I’ve stopped putting down rat poison, and convinced Liz not to get a cat. But still I worry. Because I now know the most important question that I should have asked Boris, and it isn’t the one he thought it was. It’s this :
Just how long does a rat hold a grudge for?
Rat by Liam Hogan was read by Silas Hawkins at the Liars' Leage Sex & The City event at The Wheatsheaf in London on Tuesday 10 November 2009
Liam Hogan spends most of his time not writing. When he does, it's usually for Liars’ League. He feels at home here.
Silas Hawkins is continuing the family voiceover tradition (he is the son of Larry the Lamb and Earnest the Policeman). Recent credits include the narration of a 4-part documentary on Latin music for the BBC and the voicing of a singing pink alien frog thingy for animated children's series Wonderpets. Voice Agent: [email protected] Acting Agent: [email protected]
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