Wes Whitehouse - The Scurrying

[dem bones]

"There is no such thing as a sewer rat: it is simply a rat. It can live equally above or below ground. Many rats choose to live underground because its safer and more equable. But if things get difficult below, it will come up ..."

Wes Whitehouse - The Scurrying (Futura, 1983)

Blurb:

In the reeking dark of London's sewers, Man's most ancient enemy, the rat, lives and breeds, competing savagely for the scraps from the human table. Only an unrelenting campaign waged with ever more sophisticated poisons maintains a precarious balance.

But what happens when council parsimony and adverse weather conditions swing the battle the rats' way? When they breed and breed without check? When their food supply is cut off? When in their starving millions they are forced to emerge onto the streets in search of food - any food?

NIGHTMARE. STARK, SHUDDERING NIGHTMARE.

THE SCURRYING — THE TERRIFYING REALISATION OF MANKIND'S MOST PRIMEVAL DREAD

Made a start on this one last night.

We begin down in the sewer with Bill Gardiner, veteran pest-controller, as he makes an alarming discovery; the rats have grown immune to warfarin. Bill, the most diligent worker on the three man team, alerts Environmental Health chief Dr. Jim Fleming. Fleming trusts Gardiner. He may be a pessimistic bastard, but if he says they are facing an alarming overnight explosion in the brown rat population, then measures must be put in place for a mass extermination programme.

Fleming submits a report to his formidable sparring partner, Miss Edwina Hayden, chairman of the Public Health Committee. Miss Hayden detests Fleming on the grounds that she suspects him of closet Toryism, but this is not her overriding consideration in ignoring his findings. This being an Election year, the council are committed to slashing budgets, so there will be no squandering vast sums on trivialities.

Meanwhile Gardiner consults Henry Stilton, his Ratkill Xtermin8 counterpart in the neighbouring borough. Stilton shares his concerns, but is too much in the pocket of his Bolshie Union paymasters to do address them.

Torrential rain sweeps Britain. Below ground, the rodent population multiplies at an alarming rate. Starvation drives the alpha rats to lead small raiding parties to the surface. In West London, five plucky rodents break into a cluster of Government research laboratories. Their leader sniffs out others of his kind, imprisoned in glass containers. He slips beyond a door marked: "Danger. Rabid rats. Positively no admittance."

George Ricketts, a night-watchman at the Wembley municipal refuse incinerator, quits his job with immediate effect after a vermin army invade the site.

The Chrismas party at the Town Hall is disrupted when two rats are discovered feasting on mince pies.

Author Wes Whitehouse - a former editor of long gone freebie newspaper The Londoner - is not one to be rushed. Up to p.72 and only the one rat-related death to report. Sewage worker Eustace Green suffers a fatal heart attack when chased by the rodent hordes while performing a routine maintenance check on the sewage pipe linking St. Pauls to Blackfriars. Slim pickings on the BAD SEX front, too. We can only hope that Dr. Fleming's grapple with Melanie 'Melons' Trowbridge, office dollybird and wannabe Page Three stunner, is a foretaste of orgies to come.


TBC

[dem bones]

"Hold it there a minute. You're not going to tell me that he was by rats? Not devoured completely, bones and clothes and all. I don't believe it."
"That's the theory at the moment. Sounds like a Hitchcock horror movie, doesn't it?"

The pace has picked up.

A frog infestation of the capital, the amphibians preferring to take their chances on the street rather than hang around downstream to be eaten by foraging rats.

The Stilton's dog - hi, Snoopy! - is bitten on the nose by the now rabid three-legged laboratory invader.
A spate of mysterious disappearances among household pets.

A coroner's inquest reveals that Green the ganger "died of fright."

A six year old girl dies of Weil's disease.

A rat gnaws through a power cable, causing a City wide black out. The corpse of the culprit is recovered from the fuse box. And STILL the authorities pretend nothing is amiss.

Canny blighters, these rats. Not for them the gung-ho, up-and-eat-'em kamikaze attacks of the James Herbert vermin army. These fellows favour a cautious approach. We're long past page 100 before luckless Joshua Stoddart succeeds night security Mr. Ricketts at the Wembley Lane incinerator. He foolishly leaves his cabin to investigate a rustling among the garbage piles.

After a cursory investigation into his disappearance, Stoddard's name is added to the 'missing persons' file and forgotten about.

In other news, Fleming is still getting it on with the insatiable Melons, much to the distress of his sensible secretary, Samantha, who has romantic designs on him.

[dem bones]

IT COULD HAPPEN

"As the hours passed the rat-hunters job became a nightmare. In the continued absence of official news, rumours flourished. There were grisly stories that two men had been eaten alive by rats at Harrow and that the bones of three 'winos', stripped of all flesh, had been found in a derelict warehouse in the disused Royal Docks. Other reports claimed that thousands of rats were seen in Oxford Street, that supermarkets in a dozen town centres had been broken into by marauding rats, and that four cases of rabies had been reported in Croydon."

The Prime Minister's response is to make a frank public broadcast, acknowledging the crisis, mourning the dead, sorting fact from fiction, and to appoint a Minister for Rodent Control. so far, so commendable. Unfortunately, he promotes ruthless self-serving Rufus St. John Masterton to the post, granting him 'emergency powers' to ride rough shod over anyone who knows what they're talking about. Masterton is blessed with a flair for the photo-opportunity, a can-do attitude, and zero comprehension of the very real threat to human lives posed by the rat menace, or the difficulties in destroying them without poisoning the drinking water. "You've told me all the gloom and doom, what's the good news? People don't want to hear a load of depressing statistics." He gets very upset if anyone suggests that rats are intelligent creatures. Curse these bloody scaremongering experts and their infernal knowing things!

IT COULD HAPPEN

Stinton, bitten by Snoopy, who has since gone AWOL, falls desperately ill, with nobody to inform a doctor. Wife Mary, like so many, has moved out of the Capital to stay with a relative until things settle back to normal. It might be best if she decides against returning home early ....

Hunger forces the rats from the sewers at night.

Massacre in Hampstead as three of the 'Reservoir Inn' darts team stagger home in the early hours after celebrating victory over their bitter rivals from 'The Stag.' Jim Fleming, driving home from a nightclub with the luscious Melons, spots what's left of one of the victims bleeding into the road. On closer inspection, he throws up. Furious, he deliberately crushes scores of the vermin army beneath his wheels, reversing back and forth ... until the motor gives out, whereupon the smaller rats begin wriggling through the radiator .... A police car pulls up alongside, but can the brave bobbies rescue the two terrified civilians before they're eaten alive?

The honeymoon period for the Minister of Rodent Control is already well and truly over, but still he blusters his 'I've got everything under control' mantra. He finds an unlikely ally in Miss Edwina Hayden who deftly deflects blame onto those whose warnings she ignored, sparking the usual media witch-hunt.

IT COULD HAPPEN

At last a breakthrough. Millions of rats are sealed in the Rotherhithe tunnel and destroyed by ultra-sound. Masterton modestly takes credit for saving the day. If only the so-called 'experts' had listened to him sooner! Three cheers for Masterton! Rufus for PM! Etc.

Next day, a black Labrador eats a little boy's face in Windsor Great Park. The cops put Snoopy out of his misery. The several cases of rabies and rat-bite fever can no longer be covered up.

Saturday afternoon. The vermin legion attack Kings Road shoppers and football supporters heading for Stamford Bridge. A Chelsea fan falls from his bike to be eaten alive, one of four deaths in the ensuing panic. The army wade in with flame-throwers, causing more damage to shop fronts and parked cars than retreating rodents.

And then, the one we knew was coming, just as certain as we anticipated the obligatory tramp casualties. A baby is eaten in its pram.

Even Masterton struggles to put a positive spin on that one.

[dem bones]

"Masterton was a bit aggressive this morning, Fleming thought. Perhaps the job was proving more of a task than he anticipated. Perhaps he arrived with the preconceived notion that all that was required was a man of decision to shake the bureaucrats out of their lethargy and get things moving. The reality was vastly different. Masterton's own suggestions for action had been demolished one by one as being impracticable or even impossible ...."

He needn't worry. The author's stint as editor of The Londoner evidently soured him toward politicians, as this is a novel where those whose political opportunism and criminal negligence contributed hugely to the crisis come up smelling of roses.

James Herbert's The Rats taken at sedate pace with additional then-trendy rabies deaths and less sadistic gloating.

[kooshmeister]

Dec 20, 2019 18:49:54 GMT dem bones said:

"Mmm, this is some tasty jam!"