Plot Medics 

“Disgusting little bugger,” the owner said, peering into the box.  “Thought there’d be more of ‘em.  You sure you’ve got them all?”

“You can never be completely sure,” Rob Stevens said.  It was what the firm told them to say, but it was also true.  “But if you take the precautions in the leaflet, and notify us straight away if you see any of the signs, then you shouldn’t have such a problem again. I’m just going to check the back.”

He went through to the rear of the building.  It was a lowering day, the light already seeping away, faster here among the blank windowless walls and seeping pipes. 

Rob had been an exterminator for going on twenty years.  He had developed a high tolerance for unpleasant smells, a respect for his prey’s amazing survival capacity, and an almost telepathic awareness of the dogs, druggies and rough sleepers he encountered on jobs who occasionally decided to make his life difficult.  Something tugged at this sense now, and he stood for a moment, head cocked, his heavily gloved hand unconsciously tightening on the rod he carried. 

Nothing.  No snoring breathing from behind the bins, no low growl or rattling chain. 

He poked the rod at a patch of shadow under the bin, but it crumpled.  Cloth.  He shook off his nerves, thinking it must just be the weather, the nights drawing in.  He started picking up the traps.  Heavy, heavy, heavy…light.  He checked.  Empty.  So were a couple more.  Surprising in this area; he got called out here so often he knew every yard, backdoor and bin store. 

The phone buzzed.  “Hi, Molly.”
“Rob.  Just to remind you about that four-o’clock in the City tomorrow, you up?”
“Yes, I’m just finishing here.” 
“Good to get another one so soon, it’s been thin lately.”
“It has.” Rob knew he was lucky to still have his job.  “Everyone’s trying to save money, I s’pose.”
***
The place in the City was one of those monumentally impressive structures built in a rush of monetary optimism.  Successive recessions had taken some of the shine off.  Rob shook his head at the damage to the wiring. 

“Tell me about it,” the maintenance manager said, gloom pulling his heavy features down like extra gravity.  “I told ‘em.  Rats, I said, do you a thousand quidsworth of damage overnight.  Ounce of prevention, I said.  But no, would have made that quarter’s budget look bad.  Well, wait till they see this quarter’s.  I told ‘em.”

Rob was used to the scutter and whisk of them all around him, especially on a late job like this, when they started getting active as the day faded.  But as he laid his traps and patched entry holes, he realised it was oddly quiet. 

He shone his torch into the corners, eventually highlighting a familiar double gleam, but the rat was already dead, buck teeth pathetically comic in its half-open mouth, paws scratching stiffly at the air.

“Where’s all your mates, eh?”  If there’d been a level under this one he might have suspected they’d all retreated down there, but there was nothing under him but earth.  Unnerved, he forced himself to finish up neatly, to do the job properly, but he was glad to get back in the van.

Headquarters was in Greenwich, right down past the Dome, near the Thames Barrier. It was crowded with operatives at the end of their shift, come to hand in report sheets and get their assignments for the next few days.  But the atmosphere was a little twitchy, the laughter a little too loud.  Rob trudged up the stairs to the office, but kept finding himself looking about, as though a savage dog or drugged-up yob was going to leap out of one of the cubicles. The place was a maze of them, and all of a sudden he felt like a rat in one of those old experiments, and felt an intense desire to get out of there.  They had the windows open, as it was a warm night, but he felt he couldn’t breathe.

He’d hand in his sheets on Monday.  Molly would scold, but she’d sort him out.

Rob was heading for the door when he heard a noise outside, like heavy rain, or gravel pouring down a chute.  It was a sound he’d heard a few times in his career, but never this loudly.  His first thought was that someone was mucking about, playing one of the training films at top volume.  But by the window one of the men was standing agape, his hands flapping like broken-winged birds.   Feeling as though his feet were caught in strange, electric glue, Rob walked to the window, and looked out.

The street was moving. 

It was black with rats, charging singlemindedly along the road, a great squeaking skittering tide of rats.  Rob’s gaze, as though tugged on a string, moved up.  From here, he could see a good stretch of the peninsula and its scatter of industrial buildings; and all across it, under the streetlights, he could see that same, relentless, pouring tide. 

Unwillingly, Rob’s gaze moved further up, towards the rest of London, but it was hidden behind the dome, only the hazy orange glow of light-pollution betraying its presence.  Even if he could have seen it, he wouldn’t have known what it was they knew, and why, as one, they were heading for the sea. 

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