Herdenmord - ONC2021

Piper

The soldiers barricaded the entrances and moved everyone in the main bunker through steep tunnels into the vast storerooms, far below the reach of tree roots. But they weren't fast enough.

We heard the soldiers whispering. The roots had forged through the cracks they made and grew thicker, until they were the thickness of a wrist, then an arm, and finally, a thigh. Cracks appeared in the roots. Soldiers had watched, horrified, as teeth gnawed at the cracks and a whiskered snout pushed its way through. A rat dropped to the floor of the tunnel.

A quick thinking soldier pressed his helmet to the hole in the root, but another rat dropped further up the tunnel. Then another. Roots bulged and thrashed as rats surged through them. Dozens, and then hundreds. 

The soldiers couldn't gas them without poisoning all of us, but they burned, shot, stomped on them and shut them into the tunnels they'd broken into. 

Nothing stopped the rats. They walked through rivers of flame, their eyes bright and hard. They rose like tides up the walls of the tunnels, staining the concrete with the greasy brushes of their fur. When they reached the barricades, the sound of gnawing commenced. We knew it wouldn't be long. We waited, soft, hairless rabbits cowering in the depths of our warren, our soldiers outnumbered.

Though Quan's arms were warm around me, and the storerooms muggy with the heat of thousands of bodies, I shivered. I looked at Dimi, Jamie's arms linked around her rising belly. I looked at Aaden's family, and Quan's. For once, I couldn't take any comfort from their presence. Not when I knew this ending.

I saw it so many nights. I woke up seeing it. Central Park and the rats. It'd been one of the clips they played again and again. A writhing carpet of greyish vermin, sweeping across the park, rising and falling in waves as they swarmed over the people fleeing before them. And somewhere under that carpet, my mother and father struggled and suffocated and died. When the foul wave receded, the bodies lay exposed to the sun, their skins no longer black or white or brown but a uniform red.

"Breathe," Quan whispered in my ear, pulling me back against him. I took a deep breath, holding it for a few seconds before releasing it. The air was fetid with the smell of sweat, partially washed bodies and shared breath. I wanted to be back in my house, hiding in my car. Anywhere but here, with rats massed at the barricades, sharpening their teeth on wood and steel.

I don't know how the first barricade broke, but one minute we were waiting quietly in the storerooms and the next a squealing tide of brown and grey rushed toward us.

The soldiers closest to the tunnels swept at them with flamethrowers, but they didn't stop. Small, burning bodies ran into the crowd, setting flammable clothing alight. People screamed and slapped their own legs and arms, trying to put fires out. And the rats just kept coming.

Everyone surged back from them but I couldn't move. They flowed around my feet, around Quan, over Dimi's belly. Huge, bristling, scaly-tailed rats, their needle claws piercing my skin.

I shuddered from head to foot, waiting for them to sink incisors into me. Screams rose in the enclosed space, beating at my ears, making my heart speed. We were going to die.

And then they stopped moving.

Jamie inhaled sharply and spoke into the sudden silence, her voice lifting with wonder. "The music-maker."

I heard it then. A sweet, low piping travelled through the caverns. It made me think of the warm, spring sun on my face. Of simply stopping, to enjoy the moment. One of my last moments. I opened my heart to it, letting it flow through me. The crowd around me stopped moving too, stopped screaming. We all stood, caught in some final bliss.

The music lilted and danced, growing louder as the piper drew closer. I heard hard feet rapping the concrete floors. The light dimmed as rats swarmed to the music, rising almost to the roof. The story of the pied piper leading the rats into the mountain flashed through my mind and I realised we'd never been safe. 

Light flared green in black eyes and caught on a twisted horn rising above the massed rats. A voice cried from the crowd. "It's the devil!"

The music rippled like laughter and the rats shifted, squeaking softly.

"That's no devil," Dimi's mother responded. "It's the great god Pan." 

Jamie's voice rose too. "The piper has come."

She began pushing toward the wall of rats. I caught her arm but she pulled it gently from my grasp. "It's okay," she told me, "I'm chosen." She turned and the rats parted before her like waves before Moses.

Others joined her. Among them I recognised the dark-haired girl, Dimi's mother, and the soldier who'd carried me through the doors the day Aaden died. They came together in a group and turned to face us. The rats formed a great semi-circle behind them, a dark, pulsing figure at their heart. The music changed, growing slow and deep and sonorous.

The chosen gazed at us for long moments, their faces totally impassive, and then their mouths moved in eerie unity.

"Hear me, traitors. I speak through these, my chosen—those in whose hearts is a sweet wildness. You will listen, and take heed.

"You have forgotten the old ways. You have destroyed the wilderness, defiled earth and sea, and taken all for yourselves alone."

The music took on a darker note. "You do not deserve to be called shepherds. You broke our contract, so I have taken back the world.

"You will return to the old ways. You will sow and reap, raise only that which sustains you, build only that which will shelter you. The technology that has destroyed the world will be abandoned. You will let it rust in the field. You will not use it to transport yourselves, or to contact each other, or to build, or you will be culled yet further.

"This is the whole of my law. If you do not accept this, you have seen your fate."

The speakers waved their hands at the rats around them. "I will watch you through their eyes. If you seek to rule nature again, their judgement will fall upon you and I will play the tune to cull you all."

The music rose to a threatening pitch, thrumming through our bodies and infecting us. My heart pounded and a great terror swept through me. I cried out, the sound lost in the screams of others around me. Quan caught my hand, squeezing my fingers, but I pulled free. I pushed my palms against my ears, trying to block music that was already inside me.

Rats squealed and raced between us, crawling over our feet and placing small pink forepaws on our legs, looking up with eyes that flared red and green. My panic rose, until I was ready to stomp madly on the rats around me and run screaming through the horde. At the precise moment I started to move, the music softened and my panic receded as quickly as it had arisen.

"My chosen are your guides. They know my will. Listen to them."

The music faded as the piper retreated. One of the commanders forged through the crowd, shouting for the piper to wait.

"What about medicine? We need medicine."

The music rose up in a dangerous wave and the rats squealed and shifted forward, their tails lashing.

"You are subject to natural law," the group before us intoned. "You will no longer escape the dictates of nature. You have your guides. Trust them."

The rats swept forward as one, climbing over each other, rising higher and higher, squealing and twisting. All I could see were beady eyes, sharp teeth, needling claws and the stiff grease of their fur. They squealed shrilly as one, sending ice through my spine.

And then the music receded and the rats turned and followed, just like the old story. I watched them go, breathing more easily with each moment. Light glanced across curling horns as the piper paused. The music trilled and a deep voice, so resonant I felt it in my core, sounded within me.

That is of no use at all.

The pipes played, piercing sweet, and the rats of my nightmares followed their god.

(20,075 words)