Part 5: Rat Regicide

Update 5: Rat Regicide



Once we'd bought a couple of drinks, Sajak was willing to talk about anything under the sun. Unfortunately I'd already heard about the nearby towns, traders, and jobs so I decided to shoot for unusual.



I really didn't want to hear about the bugmen or make anybody else think about them, and I knew about the hunter…although my personal opinion was that he might have just gotten cold feet. The RUS's and the walking sounded a bit more interesting.



"What the hell's a Corvega… you know what, never mind. What did you say about a walking spirit?"



"whistling kind of noises coming from there."

"I think you 'civilized folk have a really low bar for what constitutes scary."

"Oh? Why don't you go down there right now tonight and see for yourself then?"

"Because we be brave, not stupid. Dat spirit mebbe not de only ting dere."



The next day, since it was getting a bit dark, we went to explore the canyon. Whatever we'd expected, some kind of broken down maintenance robot that had gone on a homicidal rampage wasn't it.



The robot trundled toward me so slowly that I eventually lost patience and came to it. It wasn't hard to stay out of its reach, and the whole thing would have been over a lot sooner if Sulik had done anything other than stare at it in bemusement. I had to lure it over to to within arm's reach before he woke up and took a swing at it. Once it finally stopped moving the oil that spilled out looked almost like blood.



At the other end of the canyon there was some kind of crashed… thing… with a couple of bodies lying around it. It looked more like they'd been thrown out of the thing than escaped it, especially since one of them looked like he'd been nearly cut in half. There was a square of yellow plastic on his body, which I picked up because I'd never seen anything like it.



Since we'd solved the mystery of the walking spirit, the next stop was to head to the other side of town and check out the RUS's. Frankly I didn't believe they existed, but once I got a good look at trapper town I figured it was going to have a vermin problem.



The stories were getting out of hand, unless he was speaking metaphorically. In that case he was completely accurate. Eventually we found someone who seemed to know a bit about what was going on.



"Nice to meet you too, Slim. So… trapper town, huh? Know anything about geckos?"

"You're interested in trapping, huh? You don't look like the type, but if some money changed hands..."



"You'd better have a lot to teach me for that."

I really shouldn't have said that. He started talking, and he didn't stop for a long, long time. Sulik almost had time to take a nap.



"That's for all the tips, Slim, but I still think just smelling the scat is good enough. I was wondering what you could tell me about rats."

Observant readers will notice that we're now $50 richer than we were a few moments ago. Looks like somebody put a + instead of a -. This is repeatable if you want to build up some cash and your outdoorsman skill.



"At home mom just used to pan-fry them with a little butter. But I meant about the rat attacks I've been hearing about."

"We and I think they best baked in mud balls with the skin still on."

"Never tried that. Anyway, people been disappearing. Just them as are slow and sickly,for now. 'Course, they don't stop to cook their food like us. They just gnaw it into a few bloody clumps of hair and rags. Least that's all we find in the morning. I've even heard talk that there's some kind of giant rat god that tells 'em all what to do. We barricaded up the town, but I ain't seen the key in a minute."

"Maybe there is something to those rumors… I think we can work something out with that door."



Turned out that the key I got from the dog was the key to trapper town. We weren't more than 10 steps away from the door before we found our first rat, but I was more interested in the abandoned gun shop. Something that kept me out of arms reach of enemies sounded like a great idea.



Instead, all I found were a pair of old rubber boots and some spare ammo. I should have known better, in retrospect. Before the rats got out of control the people of Klamath had plenty of time to empty it out.



And when I said the rats were out of control, I wasn't exaggerating. As we walked through the nearby buildings they were so thick that you practically couldn't take a step without hitting one. I'd never seen anything like it, especially in the middle of the day.



Near the back of the building we found one of their victims that they hadn't gotten around to devouring, as well as a ladder leading down into their nest. The stiff had a knife, but it hadn't helped him very much.



I'd expected the hole in the ground to be a carpet of rats, but it was actually fairly empty and surprisingly roomy. The light coming down from the ladder and a few holes in the ground illuminated everything. There were even a few things tucked away in a desk.



Down another hallway we found what looked like somebody buried partially in a rock fall. The rats hadn't bothered to dig him out, with all the easy meals they had access to. It was sickening to think about what had happened to these people, and judging by the way Sulik was hammering away at every rat he found he agreed.



It only got worse the further in we went. The next body we found was stripped down to the bones, the useless crowbar it had been holding still among the pile.



A few barrels suggested that this had once been some kind of storage facility, as well as giving some kind of explanation as to what had happened to the rats. I was a bit fuzzy on the particulars at the time, but I knew that there was nothing good about the mark on those barrels.



Looping around in the tunnels Sulik and I eventually came to another ladder leading downward into the darkness. We'd already killed every rat we could find on the surface and on this floor, but the truth is that you'll never get them all and you won't even come close unless you go down to the bottom of the rat hole.



The rats were even worse down on the second level. I thought some of the village rats were huge, but within a few steps I found the biggest rat I'd ever seen and crushed its head into a pulp in sheer panic. Unfortunately, that size record only stood for about five minutes.



Coming around the corner I found myself face to face with the biggest rat that I've ever seen, even until this day. I'm not exaggerating when I say that it had to be upwards of 300 pounds and the size of a bear. If I ever see a bigger rat I'll know that the time of humanity has passed and bow down to our new rat overlords.



It was too fast to run away from, so I stood my ground and decided that if I was going to get killed by a rat then that rat would remember me as the most troublesome meal of its life. There was something wrong about that rat, about the shape of its head… almost like it was overfilled. When one of my wild swings connected the spikes on my knuckles dug in and its head exploded like an overripe melon. Sulik didn't even have time to do anything other than look surprised. I'd almost swear I heard it talk right before it died, although I try my best to forget that.



Killing the Rat God gives us 300 bonus experience points plus the 220 for actually killing him, which is enough to kick Luke up to level 4. Skill points go to Speech, Small Guns, and Unarmed. We're almost done with Speech for the time being, at which point our other skills can catch up some.



The Rat God's nest was full of bones and tattered bits of bodies, including some with pockets full of money that they'd never have a need for.



A short branch held a fresher body, and if I hadn't already had knowledge that Smiley the Trapper had headed out of town I'd have probably have broken Ms. Buckner's heart. Instead, I went through his pockets for loose change.



I wasn't disappointed in my search for loose change, and I was really not disappointed to find a working 10 millimeter pistol. I even had a handful of ammunition that I'd scrounged up in various places around Klamath. It was still a bit too precious to use shooting at rats.



A nearby ladder took us to another section of the upper floor of the caves, where I saw what would have been the biggest rat of my life. It was now the second biggest, displacing the first one I saw on the floor above. It was a bit confusing keeping track, but I was getting pretty handy at crushing their skulls.



The rats had either learned how to use lockers, or someone else had been using the caverns as a storage dump for medical supplies and money. They hadn't bothered to put their name on anything, so I helped myself.



The second most valuable thing I found down there outside of the pistol was a multi-tool that must have been around from before the war. They really built things to last in those days.



Eventually the tunnels reached a dead end with a locked door. I didn't think there would be a key either, but we were a bit luckier than that.



The universal key, explosives, was being stored on a shelf right next to the door. Luckily, Sulik was pretty quick on picking up the concept of running like hell when I dropped the dynamite.

It looks like this door is actually meant to be opened a bit later in the game, but I don't see any reason to wait. I've actually run characters with tagged lockpick up to near 100% to this point and failed to open this door after multiple tries.



Unfortunately, there wasn't anything too special on the other side of the door, other than an old car up on blocks with a part that somebody had been planning to install. It was still sealed and in the box, so I took it with us.



Oh, there was also a broken down fridge with some nearly cold beer. Sulik and I split it up and finished it off before going back to through the now empty rat caves and heading out of town. I think we'd earned it.