RAT MAN.

Lurking on /x/, i made this short tale, please, enjoy!

RAT MAN.

Craven woke up with the burning Sun on his tiny rat eyes. Small and scared eyes, constantly seeking food or danger, like everything else on Craven, they looked more suitable to a rodent than for a man. But maybe because he was such a “man-rat” he was alive.

When all the rest where dead.

Every single one, dead. Dead. Dead.

He felt sorry for himself, was horrible to be alone in such horrible world, cursed the others for dying, and enjoyed a cruel pleasure thinking that his “enemies” were all dead too, from bullies to bosses. Scum.

Scum.

He dragged his tiny thin body to the ledge and looked down: His “rat nest” was nothing but a concrete slab, unreachable to most, dangling over the ruined city.

Cowering like a vermin, he peeked: No movement, everything clear.

They could be awaiting down there.

With great dexterity he slipped his body all the way down to the street, and without a noise landed on the cracked sidewalk.

Then he runned, from shadow to shadow, corner to corner, playinga one-man hide and seek, till he found a store: Global HiperMarket.

After hours gathering cans of food he decided to run back home, when he heard a noise: someone dragging foots outside the store.

*

A coward, Craven decided not to investigate. Better run, he thought with his tiny rat brain, and sprinted to the back door.

Again on the dead streets, he saw them. They found him, again.

Half a dozen of decaying, stiff corpses, some grayish, others dark, all dragging their bodies... in his direction. Tall and short, man and women, even child, they were there, monsters hunting him.

-NOOO! S..Stay away!

Stuttering curses and tripping on his own feet he tried to fled, with the undead on his heels.

One was a woman, with a rotting round face, fat, using a apron and spiting a dark mucus from her mouth as she tried to scream something:

-Ungrateful...

-No! You monster, I... I am not ungrateful!

Other zombie, older, decrepit, his lower jaw nothing more than bones and maggots growled with anger:

-You coward, you sissy...

-Shut up,  SHUT THE FUCK UP NOW! YOU ARE DEAD I AM NOT!

He trip on a rock and felt, twisting his ankle and dropping the cans he gathered before. Hands and knees bleeding, unable to stand, he scream and cry.

*

-Wimp, always...crying...-A tall strong undead mocked with a grin.

Ashamed of his own tears, furious with the mockery, he try to reach one of the cans, but instead he grab something soft, dead, rot. A little girl’s ankle. She stand there, with piercing eyes, at her side a woman, her mother. He know it.

-Liar. And assassin.

He gasp losing any control he had over himself:

-No! No! I just wanted to stay alive! I had to do it...!I’TS NOT MY FAULT!

He feels the strong cold grasp of two large hands on his shoulders, and as he look up to his capturer, he recognize a man from his past.

-Craven, you always try to dodge responsibility. Craven, the Rat Man.

The sinister mob repeats:

-Craven! The RAT man! RAT man!

The old woman talk again:

-Ungrateful son, I feed you, I lived for you, but when you got big enough, you did nothing but stealing and beating me. In the end, you thrown me from the stairs, all to sell the house I lived in.

Again the mob cried in one voice:

-Craven! Ungrateful rat man!! RAT man!

The other zombie looked at him with disgust:

-Wimp...Coward... and a Sissy. That’s what you are. No, not my grandson, since small, only stealing, only backstabbing. You are no good!

-Craven! You are no good! RAT man!

*

-Wimp... Never accomplished nothing, always afraid of everything... pretending to be a poor nice person, before biting the hand that helps you. I remember those false tears. I saved you that day, took care of your lazy ass, and during my sleep, you cut my throat...Traitor!

-Craven! Traitor! Rat man!!!

He tried to brake free, but only felt on the middle of the group of undead, dozens of them. Now was the woman with the little girl who spoke:

-Liar. And assassin. We found you in the waste lands, and we brought you to our house. But how you paid us back? You put rat poison in our food. Treacherous murder...Killed for nothing more than a blanket and a gallon of rain water. Scum!

-CRAVEEEN!!! SSSSCUM!! RAT MAN SCUM!!!

-NO!!

The last zombie, the taller and stronger of them all picked one of the cans that were laying on the floor:

-You are like a rat carrying the plague, kill everyone you touch. A liar, a coward, a murderer. The last man on earth. Night and day you give yourself a little tap on the back, because you outlived society, and even justice. But deep inside, you know that no one can escape justice.

And the large zombie throw the can in his head, cutting his scalp.

-That’s why you create us: Your past, back from the dead, to haunt you. To punish you. To make justice to the last man on Earth.

Some zombies threw rocks, other cans, other delivered kicks, punches, bites. As the day become night, he screamed, in the dark, were his mind gave him...a death worth of a rat.

Fin.