Douglas' stand.

[Zblugg]

This is what happens when Phoebe Friendly suddenly gets unfriendly and makes the boomrats go insane. Thanks, Phoebe Friendly. (Sorry if the English is weird in some places. 'Tis but my second language, yes it is!)

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"No. Don't."

It was Douglas, the latest addition to our ragtag group of surivors, who'd spoken, stopping Terry's leg from crushing the scarlet-furred animal.

"Don't touch the rats", he added, with what I perceived as a shiver, and eerily dilated pupils. Granted, the rats on this planet are huge, nothing like any rodent I'd seen before in my life, but I suspected that something other than the size of the rats was disturbing Douglas.

Douglas came to us almost dead. Took days to recover - his lower body was severely burned, most of his clothes barely hanging on, mostly charred remnants of a happier, cooler past. We took him in and had Head, our "doctor", take care of him best he could. his recovery lasted for days - eating sleeping, eating, sleeping, sleeping some more - until he eventually felt strong enough to help around the shelter. He had a thing for potatoes, he did, and we soon found ourselves not only well fed, but our stockpile grew full in no time.

Still, we saw that Douglas wasn't fully healthy yet. He went to bed earlier, slept longer than anyone, and every day, it seemed, Head would come back from checking on him and reported weird things the poor bastard was screaming in his sleep. He'd go on about the rats - again - and every once in a while, he'd let out a clear, strong "BOOM!", sitting upright in a flash before settling down and falling back to sleep, silently sobbing.

I asked Head to keep a close eye on him. I trusted Douglas, I think, but one could not take any chance. Until yesterday, he'd been quite handy in helping to feed the group and making the shelter an otherwise cleaner, healthier place.

Yesterday, though, it all changed.

It started early in the morning, when Terry found a rat in the comms room. She'd gone there to repair a segment of the wall that was threatening to fall on the communication console - can't have that happening, no sir.

Terry's scream startled pretty much everyone ("RAAAATS!"), but it was Douglas who made it to the comms room first, just in time to stop the woman's rat-crushing boot.

"Don't touch the rats", he'd said, his voice shaky, yet loud and clear. Then he proceeded to slowly, patiently shoo the thing outside, using his shirt he'd promptly taken off.

And then - then, I can't explain what it was - we all felt... "it". Like an airless wind blew right through us. I was left a little dizzy by the phenomenon, but thought no more of it - for a few seconds, at least - until the screaming started, outside. Well, not so much screaming as it was grunting and puffing, and it came from the one we'd gotten to call Dweeb. She called herself by that name, and I'm convinced it couldn't actually be her real name, I mean, who'd call their child Dweeb, really? So in the end, to make things easier, everyone agreed that she'd go by that. She's a grossly overweight girl, young, always smiling and amazing with plants of all kinds. She'd been the one harvesting all of the crops around the shelter, and she had a knack for finding the bushes with the biggest, juiciest fruit.

When Douglas came to us, Terry and I joked that he'd be the perfect match for Dweeb, what with the farming and cooking thing going on. I think there really was something between them. "Blessed be the simple minded", was it? Anyway, they got along, and things were fine.

Again, Douglas was the first to answer the distress call. We saw him run down the hall, splattering a full plate of that goop he'd cooked up in the machine Head built for us (supposedly to "sterilize" the potatoes - but are they really potatoes? - that grow here).

He hadn't reached the door that we heard an explosion outside, followed by a cry - Douglas' -: "RATS!"

He opened the door, and all hell broke loose. The red rodents were everywhere, outside. From behind Douglas, I could make out the round shape of Dweeb's body, lying motionless on the ground near the fields - the burning fields. In front of me, Douglas was blocking the exit, kicking furiously at the creatures, all the while screaming at the top of his lungs "Do not touch the rats! Do not touch the rats!"

I knew we had to get to Dweeb. If she was still alive, we had to save her. Head and Terry had begun excavating a new room in the face of the mountain, new living quarters, Head said, so we had a temporary entrance there. I ran as quickly as I could.

Approaching Dweeb's inert shape, I noticed two things: first, Douglas was still fighting off the rodents on his own, and every time he'd kick one, he'd wince, as if he'd expect some kind of retaliation from the rodent, other than the biting and scratching. Second, there was the smell of burning flesh emanating from Dweeb's body. The poor girl was covered in smoking rags. She was still, but her heavy chest heaved - she breathed.

I gestured back at Head, who was checking on the situation from the opening in the rock face, and he ran over to help me carry the young woman back to the shelter. As we were about to get in, I saw Douglas smile at me and close the door to the shelter, still kicking and flailing at the rats - at least a dozen of them. Then he stopped kicking and started trying to stomp on them. A few tries ended in failure, provoking the rodents rather than hurting them, and Douglas' legs were bleeding by now. But all at once, it ended.

One fateful boot crushed one unlucky rat's head, and... and there were no more rats. The first one to die... exploded, causing a chain reaction. A dozen explosions, in quick succession. No more rats. No more door. No more Douglas.

Or rather, Douglas everywhere.

It took days to get things straight.
Terry was hurt - she'd been trying to open the door from inside, to no avail, until the explosions made good work of said door.
I was in shock for a while. Chunks of rats, door and Douglas reached the spot where I was standing. Head was already inside, while Dweeb, halfway in through the gap in the rock, was unconscious. Lucky for her.

Whatever Head and I could find of Douglas' remains, we buried in a grave, east of the shelter. Dweeb goes there every single day at sunrise.

There's more of us, now - twelve as of yesterday. It's been weeks since Douglas died, but his memory lives on. Since that day, none of us has even come close to touching the rats - "boomrats", as Dweeb now calls them. We spot one, we shoot the bastard. From a safe distance.

I'm not taking any more chances. I'm not losing anybody else.

[RedStorm58]

EPIC. Nuff said.

[Zblugg]

Why, thanks! 

[RedStorm58]

This is by far the best story i have seen here so far!!

[Untrustedlife]

This was a neat story

[CodyRex123]

Aww. I rember i had a same guy by that name and the exsact thing happened DX. Kool any ways