There was something strange, Saul realized, about the sound. He listened. Unconsciously he braced himself against the tunnel walls, spread his arms, one above him, one to his side, his legs slightly parted, each climbing the gentle incline of the cylindrical tunnel. He was framed by the passageway.
The flute trilled on, and now Saul could hear something else, a voice raised in anguish.
Loplop. Squawking, emitting meaningless, despairing cries.
Saul moved forward, tracking the sounds through the labyrinth. They remained where they were. He wound his way through the dark towards them. Loplop still shrieked intermittently, but his cries were not pained, not tortured, but miserable. Loplop’s voice rose above the scrabbling — an orderly scrabbling, Saul realized, an unearthly timed scratching.
The sounds were separated from him now only by thin walls, and he knew he was there, around the corner from the congregation. The tremors had returned to Saul’s body. He fought to control himself. Terror held him hard. He remembered the numbing speed with which the Piper moved, the power of his blows. The pain in his body, the pain he had managed to forget, to ignore, reawakened and coursed through him.
Saul did not want to die.
But there was something not right about this sound.
Saul pressed himself hard against the wall and swallowed several times. He edged forward, to the junction with the tunnel which contained the sounds. He was very afraid. The mad piping, Loplop’s random cries, and above all the constant, orderly scrabbling against brick — everything continued as it had for minutes. It was loud, and so close it appalled him.
He looked around. He did not know where he was. Deep somewhere, buried in the vastness of the sewer system.
He steeled himself, drew his head slowly, silently around the edge of the brick.
At first, all he could discern were the rats.
A field of rats, millions of rats; a mass that started a few feet from the entrance to the tunnel and multiplied, bodies piling upon bodies, rat upon rat, a sharp gradient of hot little bellies and chests and legs. A moving mountain, replacing those that fell with new blood, defeating the urge of gravity to level its impossibly steep sides. The rats boiled over each other.
They moved in time, they moved together.
All together they pushed down with their right forefoot, then all together with their left. Then the back legs, again in time. They clawed each other, ripped each other’s skin, trampled on the young and dying — but they were one unit. They moved together, in time to the hideous music.
The Piper was nowhere. On the other side of the rat mountain Saul could see King Rat. Saul could not see his face. But his body moved on the same beat as those of his rebellious people, and he danced with the same disinterested intensity, his body stiff and spasming in perfect time.
Loplop cried again and again, and Saul glimpsed him, a desperate figure before King Rat, his fists flailing against King Rat’s chest. He pushed King Rat, tried to move him back, but King Rat continued with his stiff zombie dance.
And behind them all, something hanging from the ceiling… something emerging, Saul saw, from a shaft to the pavements above. A black box, dangling at a ridiculous angle, its handle tied to a dirty rope…
A ghetto-blaster.
Saul’s eyes widened in astonishment.
The fucker doesn’t even have to be here, he thought.
He stumbled into the tunnel and approached the seething mass. The flute was ghastly, loud and fast and insane like an Irish jig played in Hell. Saul edged forward. He began to pass straggling rats. The ghetto-blaster swayed slightly. Saul waded into the mass of rats. So many already, all around him, and he had at least six feet to walk. It seemed as if every rat in the sewer had found its way here; monstrous foot-long beasts and mewling babies, dark and brown, crushing each other, killing each other in their eagerness to reach the music. Saul pushed forward, feeling the bodies squirm around him. A thousand claws ripped at him, never in antagonism, only in the ecstasy of the dance. Under the rats he could see were layers that moved sluggishly, tired and dying; and below them were rats who did not move at all. Saul walked knee deep in the dead.
King Rat did not turn, stayed where he was, dancing at the head of his people once again. Loplop saw Saul. He shrieked and pushed past King Rat, launched himself through the living wall towards Saul.
He was ruined. His suit was filthy, and in tatters. His face contorted, rage and confusion fleeting across it.
He waded forward two, three steps, then stumbled under the weight of enthralled bodies. He went under, drowning in the seething mass. Saul ignored him, contemptuous of him, disgusted.
But he too found it difficult to move; he pushed through the rats, killing, he was sure, with each step, unwillingly but inevitably. He swayed, regained his balance. The cacophonous flute was utterly deafening. Saul went down suddenly on one knee and the rats used him as a springboard, leapt from him, tried to fly to the dangling stereo.
Saul swore, struggled to regain his feet, went under again. He became enraged, surged to his feet, spilling rats as he rose. A few feet away he could see the pitiful sight of Loplop’s body bobbing below the surface of the rats, trying and failing to stand.
Saul shook himself and brown bodies spun through the air. He could not reach the boombox. He tugged hard with his feet, which seemed stuck as firmly as in quicksand. He roared, suddenly livid, pulled inexorably through the mass of rats, stumbled again, yanked and forced his way through, past King Rat, to the point where the rats thinned out and the stereo hung six feet from the floor.
He reached up to it, and saw King Rat. He stopped moving, shocked.
King Rat stood in thrall, his face slack, his limbs swinging vaguely, stripped of dignity, a string of drool stretching and snapping from his lower jaw. Saul stared, fascinated and horrified.
He hated King Rat, hated what he had done, but something in him was appalled at seeing him so shorn of power.
Saul turned and grasped the swinging box, pulled hard, snapping the rope.
He smashed it hard against the wall.
The music stopped at the instant of impact. Metal and plastic spattered out of the broken casing. He slammed it twice more against the brick. Its speakers burst out of their housing. A tape flew from the ruined cassette deck.
Saul turned and looked at the assembled multitude.
They stood still, confused.
Understanding and recollection seemed to well over them all simultaneously. In a panic, a terrified flurry, the rats emitted a communal hiss and disappeared, scampering over each other, made clumsy by the fallen.
The mountain crumbled and disappeared. Lame and ruined rats tried to follow their fellows. The first wave was gone; then the second wave, limping after them; and the third wave, the dying, hauled themselves away, sliding on blood.
The ground was covered with bodies. Corpses lay two, three thick. Loplop crawled into a corner. King Rat stared at Saul. Saul looked back at him for a moment, then returned his attention to the ruined stereo. He fumbled in the mud until he found the tape.
He wiped it, examined the label.
Flute 1, it said. It was handwritten. It was Natasha’s writing.
‘Oh fuck,’ Saul shouted and pushed his head into the crook of his arm. ‘Oh fuck, oh leave them alone, you fucker,’ he breathed.
He heard King Rat move forward. Saul looked up sharply. King Rat looked uneasy. He moved with a deferential cast to his limbs, resentment curling his mouth. He was intimidated, Saul realized.