Supers Box Set by Kristofer Bartol

Author:Kristofer Bartol [Bartol, Kristofer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Superhero Fantasy
Published: 2019-08-13T04:00:00+00:00

( II | VII )

Rats.

Robust and lumpy—larger and heavier than your head—with a greased pelt of short grey-brown hair, forever slicked-back like a football coach's mane. Typically matted, and nurturing a toxic fungus.

Crooked paddle paws. Calloused, flat, dirty pink nose. Black beady eyes offset; more accustomed to the dark underground than the wide world above. Thick, wide skull; vacant formless face.

Teeth—buck teeth, like orange pencils, or tarnished finger bones whiddled into chopsticks. Tainted brown calcium, the vermin's curved icicle fangs. Ideal for gnawing at tuber roots, bamboo shoots, and government-issued combat boots.

Rhizomyini: a tribe of four names and forty-million faces. Hefty, slow, and hiding—fearful; the oriental groundhog, foraging in burrows carved throughout East Asia. Eating, reproducing; scurrying, tunneling, and reproducing.

Rats, everywhere.

Invading American bases in greater numbers, greater frequency, and greater stealth than the Viet Cong. They chew through barrels and sacks, consuming food reserves without raising flags. Tunneling, down, beneath and through the trenches; destabilizing the integrity of defenses, and making residence in command centers.

Imagine waking-up to a hungry, greasy, nine-pound marmot sitting on your legs and chewing through your pants. Imagine its foul odor, empty eyes, and wicked teeth, gnawing on your forearm. Imagine dozens of them scurrying over your body as you lie on the trench floor, in the dark of night, as a firefight erupts overhead. The hoary rats flee the ruckus in droves—sixty, seventy, eighty—abandoning their burrow and using you as a bridge.

Pitter-patter, pitter-patter; the drumming of paddle paws and needle claws across your back and chest. Artillery sends them scurrying, and they seek refuge where you do: in the bunkers and the quarters, where it's warm, and dry, and comfortable.

They share your bed. They steal your meals. They chew your clothes. They consume the flesh of the dead, bloated and moist. And they swarm.

Rats.

When within in the tunnels of the Central Highlands—those subterranean trails bored by slant-eyed slopes—the hoary rats seem somehow twice as big, and twice as territorial. Oftentimes posing a greater nuisance than the primitive gook and his secondhand Soviet munitions.

Seventy-five miles of tunnel play a complex host to hundreds of bulbous rooms: the bunk chambers, the hospital, the storeroom; the kitchen with the thin air shaft, for ventilating smoke discreetly; and the conference room, where maps, radios, and officers converge in constant conversation. The limestone walls bear the scars of shovels, picks, and scoops—the white concave swoops and conical nicks.

Pharos leans against this shaved stone, nestling his shoulder into a groove as he cups the bell of his flashlight, concealing its glow. He peers around the corner, listening to the officers—three, he hears—discuss in their nonsensical tongue the logistics of what rages on the surface.

He suppresses his instinct to blast motherfuckers, instead drawing his knife from its sheath. Its cold hilt wraps around his fingers, granting him a sturdy set of gold rings as he brandishes the blade upright.

With toes first, he steps around the corner and into the conference chamber. The gooks have their backs to him, and their eyes glued to some parchment, lit only by a bare candle.

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