Post Apocalypse Barbie: The Rats

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

T.S. Eliot -- The Hollow Men


The rats.

I know I mentioned it before, and just kind of avoided talking about it completely. I guess the idea of it is so laughable, that I sometimes tell myself, "You're dreaming, Barbie. This is one bad dream you're going to wake up from. And no more eating right before you go to bed."

The rats are real. And I guess you want to know why.

That's the curse of our race, you know. Why. It goes all the way back to Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel. "Don't eat this apple, Eve."
"Why?"
"Don't kill your brother, Cain."
"Why?"
"Don't sell Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, Judas."

The curse of being human is the curse of expectation.
I think our downfall isn't our own fucked up nature, which is to kill ourselves, but our downfall can be summed up in that one word. Why.

Why rats? The story I heard is that rats make the best test subjects. We test new medicines on rats, we test surgery procedures, we test the 'why' on them.

In this particular case, it was some new fertility medicine. Because, the longer we live, the more we mess with things, the less likely we are to reproduce. Maybe God is trying to tell us something, folks.

Anyway, the fertility medicine worked like a charm. The rats that took the drug were able to have litters of hundreds. But that's where it stops being good and starts getting really bad.

Because the side effect of that particular drug was particularly nasty. The litters of the rats wouldn't die. And worse, they became full blown adult rats within about an hour.

So, picture eighty test rats, each pregnant with a hundred babies. In one hour, eight thousand test rats, pregnant with a hundred babies. And eighty thousand rats pregnant with eighty thousand babies. Keep going, until you see the big picture. The one where the end of the human race is the only picture playing at the movies. But there's nobody in the audience, folks. Unless you count the rats.

The side effect of the fertility drug was some strange kind of immunity, where the rats were able to eat just about anything (including poison) and survive.

Entire cities were eaten alive by a wall of rats, rats invading, destroying, conquering.

Pretty grim.

I did mention that there is one thing that kills the little fuckers. I imagine God is upstairs laughing his ass off at this one, because this whole thing is brought to you by an act of pure human fuckery.

Cocaine.

That's right. Probably one of the only things that we humans haven't tested on the little bastards.

So, picture the Vegas you used to know, the one with the lights and the showgirls, hell, picture your favorite sin, live and available twenty-four hours.

Now, picture Vegas without lights, without power, without running water.

We've gotten together, we've huddled together at the MGM Grand, and on the tables where blackjack dealers were more than happy to let you spend your rent, your mortgage, your children's college funds, on that green felt, now turned white, is where your salvation lies.