sound. There it was again! Two animals running east to west along the passage. Where were they going?
Saracen got up and followed the passage along to the last chamber. It was at the North-West corner of the cellars and seemed to have been some kind of wash or bath house for there were five large stone troughs standing in line, each with its own spur to a main water channel. A rat scurried across the floor and over Saracen’s feet making goose flesh spring up on his neck. He swore to maintain his fragile courage and break a silence that threatened to smother him. Another rat shot across the floor going in the opposite direction from the one that had hurdled his feet. He squatted down cautiously to see if he could see where it had come from.
Saracen’s pulse raced as his torch beam picked out an opening in the wall under the end trough. It was not difficult to work out what the opening had been for; it was the drainage channel for the troughs but it was much bigger than it had to be for the volume of water it had been liable to encounter. It was about two thirds of a metre high in the centre and slightly narrower in width. At a pinch a man could crawl inside and escape to the outside world. This was the decoy tunnel!
As yet another rat flew from the mouth of the drain Saracen knew that he had found the primary entrance and exit that the rats used and the thought filled him with dread. He had found his way out but it was going to be full of rats. Once committed there would be no room for manoeuvre inside the channel because it was too narrow and his body would practically fill it. Rats would be coming towards him and up behind him. The image of Claire’s face after the rats had finished with her haunted his subconscious like a vision of hell. Did he have the nerve?
Saracen sat down with his back against one of the stone troughs and took deep breaths. He moved his head restlessly from side to side as variations on a nightmare invaded his mind. But it was the only way. There was no alternative.
He crawled back to the entrance to the drain and rested his hand on the stone above it. Was it his imagination or was the air sweeter here? Fresher? The thought of sky and fresh air stiffened Saracen’s resolve. He would do it. He had to. But first he would do something about improving the odds. If he could somehow block up the entrance to the wash-house he could eliminate the possibility of rats coming up behind him in the tunnel when he could not turn round. That would leave the ones coming towards him but for them he would have the gun. He would hold the lamp in one hand and the gun in the other as he wriggled along on his belly. There might even be a chance that oncoming rats would turn and flee when they saw him coming and that would be much better than having to use the gun.
He set about blocking up the entrance to the chamber with whatever came to hand and discovered that it was difficult because anything that remained in the cellars after all these years tended to be hard, wood, stone, iron. There was nothing soft that he could use to plug up small gaps with. He did what he could with the materials to hand and consoled himself with the thought that the barrier did not have to last long, just until he had crawled along the length of the drainage channel. He tried not to dwell on the fact that he had no idea of how long that was going to be.
Saracen’s throat was tight as he checked the pistol for the last time and dispensed with the remaining cartridges because, once inside the drain, there would be no room to draw his arms back to re-load again. He could feel the blood start to pound in his temples as he knelt down in front of the channel entrance and, frightened to delay too long in case his nerve snapped, he slid his arms into the mouth and wriggled inside. Almost immediately he hit trouble; his face visor prevented him from raising his head to see where he was going. He withdrew and tore it off to throw it across the chamber in anger, venting his pent up frustration with every obscenity he could think of and several that didn’t make sense.
As he calmed down and steadied himself on his emotional tightrope he could hear scratching at the barrier he had erected. The rats were trying to get through it already. He went over to it and shouted and banged to scare them off then all went quiet and he entered the drain again.
He had moved forward about twenty metres when he had to stop because his elbows and knees demanded a break from the pain of continual bruising against the unforgiving stone. He comforted himself with the thought that, as yet, he had seen no rats. On the other hand there was nothing but blackness ahead of him in the tunnel. How long was the channel going to be and what if the exit should be barred with an iron gate? It was the first time he had considered this possibility and it ate at his stomach like acid. He had rested enough. He gripped the lamp and the gun and started crawling again.
The lamp picked out two eyes in the darkness; there was a rat five metres ahead! Saracen’s sense of fear was already on overload so he could find no extra emotional response. He stared at it then yelled at it and the creature turned and fled. He crawled on for another ten metres. Another two eyes, no this time there were four. He shouted again and two disappeared but two remained.
Saracen yelled again but the eyes did not move. This was a braver rat. He inched forward but the animal held its ground so Saracen’s fingers left the lamp and moved across in front of him until he held the gun in both hands. He looked along the barrel and held the front sight between the glowing embers. The index finger of his right hand squeezed harder and harder until a deafening report pained his ear drums and the rats head exploded on impact.
Saracen coughed and spluttered in the acrid gun smoke. The paroxysms had the side-effect of relieving some of the tension that had built up inside him and made him feel marginally better although his ears were ringing painfully. He edged forward again until he encountered the carcase of the rat and found a new problem. There was no room to push the corpse behind him. He would have to push it along on front of him with the heels of his hands. The smells of its innards together with the gun smoke and the ever encroaching claustrophobia of the drain as he edged in ever deeper conspired to push Saracen once more to the verge of hysteria. No vision of hell could have outdone the situation that he now found himself in.
The merest suggestion of a movement in the air caressed Saracen’s cheek. There was still no light ahead but there was definitely a faint breeze, he was sure of it and it rescued his sanity. But elation was to turn to despair when the tunnel ahead of him filled with eyes.
Terror became blind fury as Saracen fired three times in rapid succession and ignored the agony in his ears. He was waiting for the smoke to clear when a rat loomed up in the torch beam and he fired again but only to miss in his panic. The rat launched itself at him and he dipped his head to protect his face. He felt the rat’s paws scratch on the back of his head as it struggled for balance and he waited for its teeth to gnaw into the back of his neck but it didn’t happen. The animal had found enough space between the top of his body and the roof of the tunnel to be able to pass along. He felt it run down the centre of his back and leave him. Another rat followed, using the same route and Saracen felt this one pause for one dreadful moment on the back of his upper thigh but then it too continued on its journey and scampered down over his ankles and away. The way ahead was now clear.
Desperately calling on what little energy he had left Saracen wriggled forward, ignoring all pain as he pushed a pile of rat corpses ahead of him using his forearms as angled blades. The drain channel curved to the right and he could see daylight. Five metres…four…three…two, one and he was free of his stone prison. He raised himself painfully to his knees and took great gulps of fresh air for a full half minute before he even thought to look around. With a final super-human effort he pulled himself up a two metre bank and found himself on a hillside. He was on the hill behind Skelmore Municipal Rubbish Dump and rubbish had never smelt sweeter.
Saracen lay on his back for a moment and looked up at the drifting clouds taking pleasure from the feel of the watery sun on his face. He gripped handfuls of coarse grass and rejoiced in its feel before throwing it to the breeze as pale rays of sunshine broke through the clouds like a poster on a Sunday school wall. He wanted to sleep; he desperately wanted to sleep but there was no time. He had to tell Beasdale how to get at the rat colony.
In the distance Saracen heard an engine. He got up and saw that a military vehicle was coming down the road towards the dump. He yelled out but the truck showed no signs of stopping until he pulled out his pistol and emptied it into the air. The truck stopped and a soldier jumped down. Saracen waved his arms and saw the soldier put his weapon to his shoulder and point it at him. “No!” he cried. “For God’s sake no!”
It was Saracen’s protective suit that saved him for the soldier saw it at the last moment and realised that any person wearing it must have an official role to play. The man lowered the weapon and Saracen stumbled down the hill to say who he was.
“Christ, you were lucky sir. I nearly…”
“I know what you nearly did,” said Saracen wearily. “Call Col. Beasdale, will you.”
