James Axler – Rat King

opposite impression.

“Hmm… You wouldn’t be completely sane if you’d been through all the doctor has

been through. I guess a little insanity is excusable. Besides—and strictly off

the record—are we sure about the mental stability of each component in the

mechanism?”

Murphy shrugged. In truth he’d never even thought about it.

“But it’s their unity that gives them strength. The good doctor will actually

benefit from being joined to the mechanism. It will help him regain his

equilibrium.”

Murphy didn’t bother to answer. Doc shuddered involuntarily and tried to hide

the revulsion he felt.

“Let’s just get him prepared, then.” Murphy’s voice held a weary tone that he

couldn’t disguise. He pushed the muzzle of the blaster into Doc’s back. “Come

on— sir,” he said with a barely disguised irony.

They left Wallace looking at the rat king. Two tech in vacuum suits had entered

the chamber through a decontamination anteroom, and were busy unplugging the

dead component from the mechanism. Doc cast a sideways glance as he and Murphy

left the observation room.

The sight stayed with him as they walked down the corridor. The component being

removed wore a military uniform denoting high rank in the Marines. Like the

others, he was glassy-eyed, with skin stretched tight across his ancient skull,

clothes flapping loose on his limbs.

In truth the only thing to differentiate him from the others attached to the

mainframe was that the vital signs on his own monitors had ceased to function.

Just by looking at the once-human frame, there was no way of telling which of

the bodies attached to the mechanism were alive and which were dead.

As they left the room, Doc had caught a glimpse of one of the vacuum-suited tech

beginning to unplug the diodes and leads from the one-time Marine officer’s

skull, pulling the ends from the cerebral cortex and frontal lobes, small pieces

of decaying gray matter attached to their ends.

With a grim chuckle Doc hoped that they would clean the leads before they

plugged him in.

Murphy frowned when he heard Doc laugh.

“What’s so funny, you old bastard?”

“Nothing that would amuse you, my dear boy,” Doc said sadly. Then, taking the

opportunity of a conversational opening, added, “Do you really think that

Wallace’s plan will work?”

Murphy shrugged noncommittally. “Hell, we all follow regs. That’s all.”

“Is it really all? Do you not sometimes question a rule book that’s over a

hundred years out of date? Written for other times than these?”

Murphy allowed himself a wry twist of the lips that might have been a grimace,

might have been a smile. “Mebbe you aren’t such a crazy old fart after all. You

figure that me and the Gen don’t exactly see eye to eye on some things?”

“That’s a distinct possibility,” Doc said as Murphy led him into a lab and

gestured to him to sit on one of the chairs in the center of the room.

Murphy seemed to relax, but still kept the Beretta trained on Doc. “I guess

there’d be no harm in me telling you, as you’ll be chilled soon enough. Oh,

yeah,” he continued in acknowledgment of Doc’s raised eyebrows, “don’t think

that this bunch of inbreds and muties is going to be able to wire you up to that

thing.”

Doc mused that Murphy himself didn’t seem that stable or without the faults he

saw in his fellow redoubt dwellers, but decided it would be more diplomatic to

say nothing at this stage.

Murphy continued. “I think the Gen is barking mad. Not his fault, not after all

this time. But we’re getting nowhere stuck down here trying to keep all this old

tech going. The idea that the Reds will be back, shit that died with skydark,”

he said.

“Then why don’t you take over?” Doc asked with as much ingenuousness as he could

muster.

Murphy gave another of his twisted half smiles. It suddenly occurred to Doc that

these were a result of his own inbreeding flaws.

“There is a cabal of us who want to change things, get rid of the heredity shit

and try promotion on merit.”

Doc nodded sagely. He had no idea of the social structure of the redoubt, but