The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

THEN BE NOTHING!

Keith blinked. He had his hand on the latch of one of the rat cages.

The rats were watching him. All standing the same way, all watching his fingers. Hundreds of rats. They looked… hungry.

“Did you hear something?” said Malicia.

Keith lowered his hand very carefully, and took a couple of steps back. “Why are we letting these out?” he said. “It was like I'd been… dreaming…”

“I don't know. You're the rat boy.”

“But we agreed to let them out.”

“I… it was… I had a feeling that—”

“Rat kings can talk to people, can't they?” said Keith. “Has it been talking to us?”

“But this is real life,” said Malicia.

“I thought it was an adventure,” said Keith.

“Damn! I forgot,” said Malicia. “What're they doing?”

It was almost as if the rats were melting. They were no longer upright, attentive statues. Something like panic was spreading through them again.

Then other rats poured out of the walls, running madly across the floor. They were much bigger than the caged ones. One of them bit Keith on the ankle, and he kicked it away.

“Try to stamp on them but don't lose your balance, whatever you do!” he said. “These are not friendly!”

“Tread on them?” said Malicia. “Yuk!”

“You mean you haven't got anything in your bag to fight rats? This is a rat-catchers' lair! You've got plenty of stuff for pirates and bandits and robbers!”

“Yes, but there's never been a book about having an adventure in a rat-catcher's cellar!” Malicia shouted. “Ow! One's on my neck! One's on my neck! And there's another one!” She bent down frantically to shake the rats loose and reared up as one leapt at her face.

Keith grabbed her hand. “Don't fall over! They'll go mad if you do! Try to get to the door!”

“They're so fast!” Malicia panted. “Now there's another one on my hair”

“Hold still, stupid female!” said a voice in her ear. “Hold quite still or I'll gnaw you!”

There was a scrabble of claws, a swish and a rat dropped past her eyes. Then another rat thumped onto her shoulder and slid away.

“Right!” said the voice at the back of her neck. “Now don't move, don't tread on anyone and keep out of the way!”

“What was that?” she hissed, as she felt something slide down her skirt.

“I think it was the one they call Big Savings,” said Keith. “Here comes the Clan!”

More rats were scrambling into the room, but these moved differently. They stayed together and spread out into a line that moved forward slowly. When an enemy rat attacked it, the line would close up over it quickly, like a fist, and when it opened again that rat was dead.

Only when the surviving rats smelled the terror of their fellows and tried to escape from the room did the attacking line break, become pairs of rats that, with terrible purpose, hunted down one scurrying enemy after another and brought them down with a bite.

And then, seconds after it started, the war was over. The squeaking of a few lucky refugees faded in the walls.

There was a ragged cheer from the Clan rats, the cheer which says “I'm still alive! After all that!”

“Darktan?” said Keith. “What happened to you?”

Darktan reared up and pointed a paw to the door at the other end of the cellar. “If you want to help, open that door!” he shouted. “Move it!” Then he darted into a drain with the rest of the squad pouring in after him. One of them tap-danced as he went.

CHAPTER 11

And there he found Mr. Bunnsy, tangled in the brambles and his blue coat all torn.

—From “Mr. Bunnsy Has an Adventure”

The rat king raged.

The watching rats clutched at their heads, Peaches shrieked and stumbled back, the last flaring match flying out of her hand.

But something of Maurice survived that roar, that storm of thought. Some tiny part hid behind some brain cell and cowered as the rest of Maurice was blown away. Thoughts peeled back and vanished in the gale. No more talking, no more wondering, no more seeing the world as something out there… layers of his mind streamed past as the blast stripped away everything that he'd thought of as me, leaving only the brain of a cat. A clever cat, but still… just a cat.

Nothing but a cat. All the way back to the forest and the cave, the fang and the claw…

Just a cat.

And you can always trust a cat to be a cat.

The cat blinked. It was bewildered and angry. Its ears went flat. Its eyes flashed green.

It couldn't think. It didn't think. It was instinct that moved it now, something that operated right down at the level of its roaring blood.

It was a cat and there was a twitching squeaky thing and what cats do to twitching squeaking things is this: they leap…

The rat king fought back. Teeth snapped at the cat; it was tangled in fighting rats, and it yowled as it rolled across the floor. More rats poured in, rats that could kill a dog… but now, just for a few seconds, this cat could have brought down a wolf.

It didn't notice the crackling flame as the dropped match set fire to some straw. It ignored the other rats breaking ranks and running. It paid no attention to the thickening smoke.

What it wanted to do was kill things.

Some dark river deep inside had been dammed up over the months. It had spent too much time helpless and fuming while little squeaky people ran around in front of it. It had longed to leap and bite and kill. It had longed to be a proper cat. And now the cat was out of the bag and so much ancestral fight and spite and viciousness was flowing through Maurice's veins that it sparked off his claws.

And as the cat rolled and struggled and bit, a weak little voice right at the back of his tiny brain, cowering out of the way, the last tiny bit of him that was still Maurice and not a blood-crazed maniac said, “Now! Bite here!”

Teeth and claws closed on a lump made up of eight knotted tails, and tore it apart.

The tiny part of what had once been the me of Maurice heard a thought shoot past.

Noooo… ooo… oo… o…

And then it died away, and the room was full of rats, just rats, nothing more than rats, fighting to get out