James Axler – Rat King

He held out his hand in a gesture of supplication.

“Do I have any choice?” Doc asked.

“Only the choice of making it difficult or easy.”

Would Ryan lead his friends back to rescue him? Were they even still alive? Doc

had every confidence in their ability to survive, but not so much in their

ability to reach him. Indeed, as there was no time as such inside the rat king,

he had no idea how long he had been inside the brain of Moebius, and how long

the brain of Moebius had been inside him.

“I acquiesce,” Doc said quietly. “I will join with you, if not willingly then

with no resistance. I fail to see what else I can do.”

He moved toward the outstretched hand, and as his fingers touched those of the

Air Force general, he felt a charge shoot through his whole body…or his psyche,

represented as his body.

The universe became a blur of color, too fast for him to assimilate detail.

Inside his head ideas and images whirled too quickly for him to grab hold of

them. It seemed that everything was passing him by, and he was marooned in a sea

of thought.

The blur stopped. A whirling kaleidoscope of color was fixed and fused in front

of him, frozen in a moment of time. It stayed for what could have been a

fraction of a second, what could have been a month or a year, beautiful and

solid. Then it melted, slowly dissolving to reveal a whiteness born of a

brilliant light. A light that gradually decreased in intensity, that gradually

dimmed until Doc was able to make out details.

The first thing being that instead of facing the group of men who comprised the

rat king, he was now one of them. He stood in the middle of the group and could

feel his links to them in this physical representation. It was as though they

blurred into one, visually, from the waist down.

More disturbing was the fact that he could feel them inside his head. He had

memories and thoughts bubbling to the surface that weren’t his own; a kitchen in

Washington, arguing with a beautiful woman who was about to throw a juicer at

him, crying and asking why he had to volunteer for a mission that would take him

away again; a childhood that wasn’t his own, riding a bike through suburban

streets, disco music blaring from a radio hanging off the handlebars, people

washing cars and trimming lawns shouting greetings to him; a fight in a bar,

himself and two other grunts holding a long haired and bearded man over a pool

table, taking turns to smash a pool ball into his face, his mouth a bloody mess

of broken teeth and pulpy flesh.

DOC RECOGNIZED the area. It was Washington, D.C., and he rounded the corner with

the rest of the rat king, adopting the shuffling walk that kept them all

together. They were on Pennsylvania Avenue, heading for the White House.

The air was still, almost static and charged with lack of motion. Doc listened,

but there were no birds singing. A creeping horror made him feel nausea rise

from the pit of his stomach. Still he kept moving with the others.

They turned into the driveway that led up the immaculately manicured grounds to

the White House. There was no sign of guards. The immaculately trimmed lawns

were dead and brown, scorched beyond redemption. Looking up, Doc could see that

there were no windows left in the White House. Glass and frames were all gone:

the building was nothing more than a shell, a faint black-and-brown patina

covering the surface of the stone.

Without having to ask, Doc knew that they were examining the damage caused by an

initial nuke hit. He knew without question that the shadows scorched into the

ground were all that remained of the sec men who had guarded the White House, a

futile gesture in the face of such destruction.

“As expected. An initial target. Compute follow-up damage from a series of hits

at such strategic points. There will be some disturbance of the land—”

“Some?” Doc interrupted. “Half of the continent is unrecognizable out there. The