The Corpse-Rat King

The still. The means by which the owner of the tiny bar made her alcohol. He stooped and ran fingers across it, defining its shape in the semi-darkness by touch. A wooden cask the width of a man’s chest, banded by iron hoops, and full of alcohol that even now dripped onto the floor in an invitation for the fire to drink. The rest of it was pouring out of the broken pipe in the bedroom. Any moment now, the front edge of the fire would meet the pool of alcohol on the floor and come racing across the ground faster than any man could move. All the way back to the source. The still. The one he was standing next to. Marius took a step away from the offending barrel, then checked himself. The heat from the fire was washing across him. There was no time to hide. There was nowhere to hide. Nothing to crouch behind. Nothing to raise in front of him as a shield. Moment by moment, the light from the approaching fire illuminated features of the room that he had not previously seen. He could now see, down at floor level, the flap by which the bar owner had slipped in and out from the bedroom. Marius stared at it in sudden comprehension. There was no need for an outside door. He was trapped. Marius glanced up. The fire had spread to the walls now, eating away at the dried daub faster than he could track it. The bedroom was engulfed in flame. He dropped to his knees. He should be coughing, shouldn’t he? The smoke that rolled around him should be choking him, forcing his eyes to weep as he squeezed them shut against the irritation. Instead, nothing. Marius bumped his head against the floor. Of course. He was dead, at least, his body bore all the signs. It would stay this way until he really was dead. Which meant that he would lack the blessed release of unconsciousness as the flames ate his up clothes, then his hair and flesh. Asphyxiation would provide no relief. He would feel every moment of his immolation. Marius covered his face with his hands. A dull whoompf washed over him as the fire caught the edge of the alcohol and the bedroom became an inferno. Flames licked at the edges of the hole. A wall of heat buffeted the room. Marius pushed away from the approaching fire, screaming as he fell against the barrel. The damn thing was red hot, and the bands of metal around its girth pressed against the skin of his back. The pain forced his attention away from the fire and back onto himself.

The still.

It was the only object in the room. Marius reached out a hand and pushed against it, wincing as the hot wood seared his palm. The heavy cask refused to move. Marius closed his eyes. That much liquid, in a barrel that solid, must weigh almost two hundred pounds. It was his only recourse. There was no time to think about it. Marius frowned, recalling the ease with which the dead warrior had lifted him from the ground. He must weigh nearly as much as the barrel, yet the soldier had hefted him without an ounce of effort. The dead had their own strengths, the soldier had said. And he was dead, was he not? At least, his body was. It bore all the hallmarks of being so. Perhaps it had the same strengths.

Without thinking, he rose to his knees and drove his shoulder against the rough side of the cask. It gave not an inch. He wrapped his arms around it, ignoring the pain that seared his flesh, and heaved upwards, pushing one leg underneath him and the next. The still resisted, but slowly, as Marius screamed, it shuddered, just the merest of movements, but enough for him to rock back and drive his shoulder into it again. Somehow, from some combination of strength and the crazed energy of the desperate, it loosed its hold upon the floor. Marius drew it up onto his shoulder in one sweeping movement, alcohol spraying outwards as it tore free of the drainpipe. It fizzed out of the opening, and the fire roared in response. Marius staggered under the sudden weight, the iron band scorching a line of pain across his cheek. The air was full of the smell of burned flesh, and mud that bubbled and charred under the all-consuming flame. He locked his knees, screamed again, lumbered forward at the wall. Two steps, three, and then the pain and effort became too much and he half-fell into the fire-laced structure of the outer wall. The wattle and daub split apart under his assault and he collapsed forward onto blackened, fire-eaten grass. Sharp stubble tore at his face. He lost his grip on the still. It fell away from him, bounced once, and rolled back against the wall. Marius stared at it in dazed incomprehension. The fire reached towards it, licked at the edge of the barrel, and then leaped upon it. Marius blinked, then somehow found the strength to raise himself to his hands and knees and crawl five feet away, ten, every inch a victory through blackened earth that burned his skin as he touched it. A ditch ran across the back of the yard. He dipped his head over the edge. The combined effluent of the village trickled passed his eyes, a brown sludge barely held together by the dribbles of water that survived the journey past house, well and fields. Marius retched as the fumes rose up around him, a miasma that stank like a million years of broken privies. He slid into it face first, just as the fire ate its way through the heavy wood of the still and the alcohol inside exploded. Marius had been wrong on one count, at least: he happily lost consciousness, oblivious to the sounds of screaming villagers, and the crash of the bar finally falling in upon itself.

SIX

The sky was the deepest black a sky had ever been, and magical pixies flitted about – red and yellow and white – hopping and skipping this way and that in time to their own unknowable rhythms. Marius smiled as he watched them dance. They came close, only to disappear as he reached for them with a hand that wavered in and out of focus as he swung it. He giggled. The stars shone with white disapproval. One by one, a pixie floated up to cover them, until the whole sky twinkled with warm red stars, showering love and approval down upon him. Marius felt his skin bead with moisture. His very skin was crying with gratitude.

“Thank you,” he sang. “Thank you thank you thang yew.”

A pixie floated into his vision. Marius waved a finger in greeting. The pixie waved back, and came closer, closer, until it hung less than an inch from the bridge of his nose. Marius crossed his eyes as he tried to keep the beauteous creature in focus. Still it descended. Marius held his breath, hoping, hoping… land, little creature. Let my flesh join with yours. Just one touch… The pixie ended its descent, and touched down less than an inch from his eyes.

“Fucking hell!”

He leaped from the trench. The spark buried itself deeper into his flesh. He swatted at it, scraped with ineffectual fingernails, and finally, cross-eyed with the pain, flung himself back down, face first into the water. The pixie died with a hiss. Marius lay face down, hoping against hope that the soft thing gently bumping its way down the side of his face hadn’t been someone’s dinner twenty four hours ago. This was it, he decided. There could be no lower point in his life. Dead, face down in a ditch, with a suspicious by-product kissing his cheek. Nothing could make life worse.

“Enjoying your drink?”

Marius wasn’t proud of his scream, but at least he didn’t have time to feel ashamed. The scream was followed by an instinctive inhalation, drawing mud and water directly into his lungs. He reared up, choking, spraying gritty brown phlegm onto the grass, the speaker and himself. He lurched forward. His knees struck the edge of the trench and he pitched forward. His face struck the ground. His hands left his throat and clawed at the scraggly grass. Prickles sank into the soft flesh of his palms but he didn’t care. A ton of silt was caught in his throat, a great mass of riverbed balled up, an impassable dam, denying the passage of water, air, life…

Something hard thumped the middle of his back. Marius shuddered. His head snapped forward. Something loosened itself from his throat and hit the ground with a wet slap. Marius dragged in great lungfuls of air, heaving about the blackened grass like a surprised fish. When he had regained some semblance of control, he squinted past tears at the amused face leaning over him.

“Forgotten that you don’t need to breathe, then?” Gerd asked, smiling. The smile disappeared as Marius drove a fist into his exposed groin. Gerd slid gently sidewise to lie in a foetal curl.

“Forgotten,” Marius croaked, “that you don’t need your balls?”

When both men were able to stand, they made their way to the edge of the smoking bar house, and peered around the corner at the main street.

“Where are they?”

“The lower edge of the village.” Gerd pointed the way Marius had first come. “There’s a grove down there, a little spring. It’s where they draw their water.”

“Bit late now, isn’t it?”

“There’s a patch of ground on the other side where they bury their dead.”

Marius turned his stare onto his companion.

“What?”