The Dark Symphony

lived here before the war and the Musicians, and we only occupy a minute portion of the tunnels that are usable. Aside from that, miles of tunnels have caved in and filled partially or completely with water, making them undesirable even if we did wish to use them. The rats run these unhampered. How many there are, we don't know, but it is easy to visualize hundreds of thousands of them. Occasionally —no, quite regularly, in fact—a small pack will break through into our section."
    "Why?"
    "For food," Strong said. "There's a limited supply of things down there to eat. Other mutated animals, that's about all. But up here—there's us."
    "What mutated animals?" Guil asked.
    "The war's radiation, maybe the Musicians' radiation— maybe both—have changed things like frogs, lizards, cats, dogs, snakes, some insects (especially the worm forms)."
    They're coming!" A cyclops Popular called.
    Guil looked through the fine but sturdy steel mesh. On the other side, a thousand red pinpricks glared, resolved into eyes that were followed by furry gray bodies that shuffled and jostled for the front ranks. They were a hideous army, more frightening than a man with a weapon could ever hope to be.
    "Here!" Strong said, handing them small, hand-sized crossbows designed to hold a clip of steel needles much like a machine gun bullet belt "Forty shots to a clip. And try to make every clip count. Though, with the net in the way, that's more of a meaningless cliche than an order."
    The cluttering of the rats grew louder.
    Tisha fired six shots in rapid succession. Three tangled in the net or bounced off the mesh onto the floor where they were equally useless. Three others sped through the loops in the net and brought down a trio of the beasts. It was not excellent marksmanship that accounted for this score, but the wall effect of the enemy. There were so many of the rats that one was assured of taking them out of action if the darts made it past the mesh.
    "You'll do fine!" Strong shouted.
    Then there was no time for talk.
    It seemed as if the hallway were too full of needles to allow even for the passage of air. Darts spun in glittering clouds, choked continually from the self-loading barrels of the crossbows. Rats fell by the hundreds as they leaped onto the net and tried to chew at the tiny links, to fray them away and gain passage to the delicious looking men who fired on them. And to the delicious looking girl with the dark mane of hair…
    At first, the beasts paused to tear at the corpses of other rats, rending the flesh from the bones in a bloody fury, satiating the hunger that drove them. Guil saw one rat holding the entrails of a dead comrade; the rodent turned and tried to fight the wave to get away with its prize, but it went down under the claws of the others. But cannibalism wasn't to last. The stampede had triggered something deeper than hunger, a psychological lemminglike drive that brought them straining at the net to the exclusion of all else, even the hunger pains that must be lacing them even as they rushed.
    It seemed as if they had once had a taste of human flesh and could never again be truly satisfied on any lesser diet.
    Darts sank into the gray fur.
    Blood spouted, drenched the net, filming the loops between the strands of mesh.
    Guil saw one of his own shivs lance an eye. The rat kept climbing the mesh for a moment as if completely oblivious of the fatal wound. Its body had been told to press forward no matter what, and it was still heeding that primary directive, even though its ability to function had been severely curtailed. Then, after a long and arduous struggle up the net toward the top where it must have fancied it would find a gap, it turned in dizzy circles and fell into the teeming hordes behind it.
    Clip after clip of darts…
    Blood gurgled beneath the net and stretched in rivers under their feet, curled into pools and lakes behind them.
    Guil thought of the arena while he fired the darts. The Musicians would enjoy this. There was so much horror. Ho realized that, while the Populars killed other living things out of absolute necessity, the Musicians killed frivolously for sheer delight And killed their own sons, not mere rats.
    Then the net went down…
    One rat, hidden in the shadows and concealed by the shiny film of blood that swathed the mesh, had climbed near the ceiling where the net was stapled the most haphazardly, had settled into its little nook, and had worried a staple loose from the