Strange Highways

have we made them just intelligent enough so they can understand that we're their masters - and resent it? Whatever the reason, they're aggressive, fierce. A few researchers were badly bitten. Sooner or later someone would've been killed if we hadn't taken extreme precautions. We handled them with heavy bite-proof gloves, wearing Plexiglas face masks, suited in specially made Kevlar coveralls with high, rolled collars. Kevlar! That's the stuff they make bulletproof vests out of, for God's sake, and we needed something that tough because these little bastards were determined to hurt us."
     Astonished, Ben said, "But why didn't you destroy them?"
     "We couldn't destroy a success," Acuff said.
     Ben was baffled. "Success?"
     "From a scientific point of view, their hostility wasn't important because they were also smart. What we were trying to create was smart rats, and we succeeded. Given time, we figured to identify the cause of the hostility and deal with it. That's why we put them all in one pen - 'cause we thought their isolation in individual cages might be to blame for their hostility, that they were intelligent enough to need a communal environment, that housing them together might - mellow them."
     "Instead it only facilitated their escape."
     Acuff nodded. "And now they're loose."

    6

HURRYING ALONG THE HALL, MEG PASSED THE WIDE ARCHWAY TO THE living room and saw Tommy struggling up from his chair, groping for his crutches. Doofus was whining, agitated. Tommy called to Meg, but she didn't pause to answer because every second counted.
     Turning at the newel post, starting up the stairs, she glanced back and could see no rats following her. The light wasn't on in the hallway itself, however, so something could have been scurrying through the shadows along the baseboard.
     She climbed the steps two at a time and was breathing hard when she reached the second floor. In her room, she took the shotgun from under the bed and chambered the first of the five rounds in the magazine.
     A vivid image of rats swarming through the cabinet flickered across her mind, and she realized that she might need additional ammo. She kept a box of fifty shells in her clothes closet, so she slid open that door - and cried out in surprise when two large, white rats scuttled across the closet floor. They clambered over her shoes and disappeared through a hole in the wall, moving too fast for her to take a shot at them even if she had thought to do so.
     She had kept the box of shells on the closet floor, and the rats had found it. They had chewed open the cardboard carton and stolen the shells one at a time, carrying them away through the hole in the wall.
     Only four rounds were left. She scooped them up and stuffed them into the pockets of her jeans.
     If the rats had succeeded in making off with all the shells, would they then have tried subsequently to find a way to remove the last
five rounds from the shotgun's magazine as well, leaving her defenseless? Just how smart were they?
     Tommy was calling her, and Doofus was barking angrily.
     Meg left the bedroom at a run. She descended the steps so fast that she risked twisting an ankle.
     The Labrador was in the first-floor hall, his sturdy legs planted wide, his blocky head lowered, his ears flattened against his skull. He was staring intently toward the kitchen, no longer barking but growling menacingly, even though he was also trembling with fear.
     Meg found Tommy in the living room, standing with the aid of his crutches, and she let out a wordless cry of relief when she saw that no rats were swarming over him.
     "Mom, what is it? What's wrong?"
     "The rats ... I think ... I know they're from Biolomech. That's what the roadblock was all about. That's what those men were looking for with their spotlights, with the angled mirrors they poked under the car." She swept the room with her gaze, looking for furtive movement along the walls and beside the furniture.
     "How do you know?" the boy asked.
     "I've seen them. You'll know it too, if you see them."
     Doofus remained in the hall, but Meg took small comfort from the warning growl he directed toward the kitchen. She realized the dog was no match for these rats. They'd trick or overpower him without difficulty, as soon as they were ready to attack.
     They were