Rats

“Jenny! Jenny!”

Jenny rolled her eight-hundred-pound body into her father’s in-home laboratory in her custom scooter. “Yes Papa?”

“I got it! It works!”

“Really?”

“Yup. I’ve been force-feeding this rat for a month. It could barely walk. After just three days on the treatment it has lost a whole pound while I’ve kept its diet constant.”

“It’s only a pound Papa.”

“A pound is twenty-five percent less than what he weighed three days ago.”

“Wow. That’s great!”

“Are you ready to give it a try?”

“Oh, yes. Please.”

Papa handed Jenny a beaker with half an ounce of his latest attempt at creating a metabolism booster to help his incredibly obese daughter. Jenny weighed twenty-six pounds at birth, killing her mother in the process. She had grown fatter with every passing day.

“Bottoms up,” said Papa.

“You really think it’ll work?”

“I gave him quite a heavy dose. We’re going to start off slower with you. We don’t want to over do it. It’s not healthy to lose weight too fast.”

Jenny downed the liquid.

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The house shook fiercely. Pictures fell from the wall. Tables danced across the room. Drawers flew out of the dressers. Papa, trying desperately to remain upright, made his way to Jenny’s room as Jenny repeatedly cried his name. Papa found her lying on the floor, her bed’s legs had given out on one side, rolling her to the floor. Seeing she was fine, Papa said, “The lab!”

Jenny cried, “Don’t leave me Papa. I’m scared.”

It took Papa the better part of half an hour to get Jenny craned onto her scooter and another half hour to clear the hallways of debris strewn about by the earthquake.

                                                   #

In the lab, the thirty some rats had been thrown from their cages. The five-gallon carboy containing the metabolism booster had fallen to the floor, shattering. The rats had digested every drop of Papa’s concoction.

                                                   #

The door to the lab was wedged tight in its crushed frame. Jenny said, “I hope Melville’s okay.” Melville was Jenny’s pet. She wouldn’t let Papa perform experiments on him and since all the rats looked the same, Jenny had had Papa dye him pink to be sure he would be spared the fate which had befallen many of his fellow test subjects at the hands of Papa.

Papa had finally managed to kick the door open. He looked on in horror, his lab destroyed. On the floor, amidst the cages, broken glass and assorted laboratory paraphernalia were the lab rats, emaciated, nothing but skin and bones.

Jenny cried, “Melville! Get him Papa!”

Papa scooped up Melville, handing him off to Jenny. Jenny held the rodent up to her face. “You all right Melville?”

Melville devoured Jenny’s nose before she could toss him to the floor. In a matter of seconds, both Papa and Jenny were covered in voracious rats. In under a minute they were reduced to a pile of bones, not a shred of flesh left on either of their skeletons. Jenny had finally lost the weight she’d carried her entire, short-lived life.

Out in the streets, chaos. Buildings burned, cars burned, power lines danced in the streets. People ran around screaming and crying over lost loved ones. The rats, their metabolisms set so high, ate incessantly. Within a few hours they had devoured every living thing in the Haight. They ate people, cats, dogs, even a parrot with an unimaginable command of the English language who tried to talk the rats down, to no avail, lost.

News of the rats traveled fast. By nightfall they had made their way down Nineteenth, headed for the Golden Gate Bridge. The National Guard met the rodents on the San Francisco side of the historic bridge. The military personnel could do little. None of them were good enough marksmen to hit the small targets which dashed from one screaming tourist or commuter to the next as the traffic was gridlocked. Everyone was trying to get out of the city.

The mayor of Sausalito managed to get through to the president, telling him of the situation. The president sat with the chiefs of staff and decided to bomb the bridge in hopes of taking the rats down with it. An air strike was ordered. The Golden Gate Bridge was bombed, razed to the sea. Those who found themselves trapped in the Robin Williams Memorial Tunnel met the same fate as those on The Golden Gate but were spared the bombing, not that it mattered.

Shortly after the Golden Gate fell into the ocean, the mayor of Sausalito screamed into the phone at the president even as rats had eaten one of his legs. He didn’t get to finish his conversation before he bled out and was devoured.

Many Marin County residents clogged the 101, trying to flee north. Other’s thought the whole thing a hoax. Those who departed quickly, escaped. Many of those who worried about the family pets or personal things of value, didn’t fare as well. Most of the Marinites who thought the whole thing a farce, paid with their lives.

The President and his advisors weighed options. They received minute by minute updates. Many of Mill Valley’s residents had been killed. Reports came in. Deaths in Corte Madera, Larkspur, and then San Rafael. The rats were making their way north, eating through city after city at an unimaginable pace.

By the time the president was convinced nothing would stop them, the vermin had arrived in Novato.

The nuke detonated on the Marin-Sonoma County line, dead center of the 101. Everything for miles in all directions was flattened, all life destroyed.

The president held a press conference. He apprised the nation of the unbelievable occurrence, repeating over and over again that it wasn’t a farce, or that the government hadn’t accidentally nuked over a million people. It was something that had to be done.

Melville, munching the last bites of a raccoon in a bunker on top of the Headlands, was still famished.