King Rat Read Online Free PDF

the stinking figure pace out of the room. Saul listened.
    His head was flat against the other’s back. The smell of dirt and animal suffused him. He heard a very faint whine as the door was pushed further open. He closed his eyes. The light of the police-station corridor shone red through his eyelids.
    King Rat’s thin shoulder dug into Saul’s stomach.
    Through the flesh of his belly he felt King Rat pause, then pad forward without the slightest sound. Saul kept his eyes shut tight. His breath came in starts. He could hear the low hubbub of people nearby. He felt the wall press into him. King Rat was hugging the shadows.
    From somewhere in front of them came footsteps, brisk and inexorable. The wall scraped along Saul’s Page 17
     
    side as King Rat swiftly sank into a crouch and froze. Saul held his breath. The footsteps came closer and closer. Saul wanted to shriek his guilt, his presence, anything to break the unbearable tension.
    With a tiny breeze and a moment of warmth, the footsteps passed by.
    The grey shape moved on, one arm coiled tight around Saul’s legs. King Rat was weighed down under Saul’s motionless body like a grave-robber.
    King Rat and his cargo passed silently through the halls. Again and again footsteps approached, voices, laughing. Each time Saul held his breath, King Rat was still, as people passed by impossibly close, near enough to touch, without seeing him or his burden.
    Saul kept his eyes closed. Through his lids he could see changes in darkness and light. Unbidden, his mir drew a map of the station, rendering it a land of the stark and sudden oppositions. Here be monsters, thought, and felt ridiculously close to giggling. He became acutely aware of sounds. The echoes he hea aided his helpless cartography, waxing and waning the rooms and corridors through which he was carrie grew and shrank. Another door creaked open, and Saul was held still.
    The echoes hollowed out, changed direction. The bobbing of his body increased. He felt himself born upwards.
    Saul opened his eyes. They were on a narrow flight of grey stairs, musty and sterile and badly lit.
    Muffled sounds came from above and below. His rescue carried him up several flights, past floor after floor filthy windows and doors, eventually coming to res and ducking his body for Saul to dismount. Saw struggled off the bony shoulder and looked about him.
    They had reached the top of the building. On his left was a white door through which the tapping of keyboard could be heard. There was nowhere else to go. On all other sides was dirty wall.
    Saul turned to his companion. ‘What now?’ he whispered.
    King Rat turned back to face the stairs. Directly in front of him was a big greasy window, high above the little entresol where the stairs had changed direction.
    As Saul stared, the grey figure cocked his head, sniffed the expanse of air between himself and the window ten feet away. In a burst of feverish motion he locked his hands onto the banister and sprang astride it, right foot planted below the left, perfectly still and poised on the sloping plastic. He seemed to bunch up his shoulders, contracting muscles and sinews relentlessly one by one. He paused for a moment, the sharp, obscure face contorted in a grin or a grimace, then he burst forward in a silent flurry of limbs, for a moment filling the gap between mezzanine and ceiling. He flew through the air, grasped the handles of the window and set his feet on the edge of the tiny sill. And as suddenly as he had moved he was quite still, a bizarre shape spreadeagled on the glass. His trenchcoat was the only thing in motion, swinging gently.
    Saul gasped, clapped his hand over his mouth, glanced fearfully over his shoulder at the nearby door.
    King Rat was sinuously unwinding. His long limbs disentangled and his left hand scrabbled quietly at the window lock. With a click and a gust of cold, the window opened. His right hand still poised on the sill, the weird apparition twisted his