Giant Black Rat
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Giant black rats are a fictional species of ferocious radiation spawned rodents featured in James Herbert's Rats Trilogy (The Rats, Lair and Domain) his graphic novel The City and the 1982 film Deadly Eyes. The species is portrayed in both the novels and the film as being extremely aggressive and adaptable, having developed a powerful enmity toward mankind.
According to Herbert himself, the inspiration for the rats came from memories of his childhood. Born in the East End of London shortly after The Blitz, the ruined and neglected streets of Herbert's infancy were overrun with large rats which haunted his trips to the cellar and sometimes fought with the family cat. The monster rats featured in his novels are not just homages to his past, but also symbols of urban decay allowed to spread by an incompetent government and economic system more focused on covering its mistakes than dealing with them. The rats radiation based genesis and subsequent post nuclear war domination can also be seen as allegories to the cold war.
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[edit] Castes
Image:Hunter Rats.JPGImage:Mother Rat.JPGImage:Rat Humanoids.JPG Though seemingly chaotic in their frenzied attacks, the giant black rats do possess a strict hierarchy comparable to that of hive based insects. Though it hasn't been explicitly stated by James Herbert himself, it is possible the inspiration of the rats' eusocial nature is derived from the naked mole rat.
- Hunters;
Superficially, they resemble enlarged black rats, measuring over 3 feet in length including the tail, along with powerfully hunched hind quarters and proportionately larger brains. The most notable difference however is in the animals dietary habits which unlike that of the ordinary black rat, is primarily carnivorous. The hunter caste is highly aggressive, finding enough confidence in sufficient numbers to attack animals many times their own size, devouring them alive whilst oblivious to any casualties they themselves may suffer in the process. When the mutants first appeared, the survivors of rat bites, unless immediately treated invariably died within 24 hours due to an agonizing disease described as a hideous distortion of Leptospirosis. Though the rats later lost this deadly ability, their numbers and ferocity still marked them as a genuinely serious threat.
- Guards;
Similar to the hunters, only larger, much rarer and seemingly immune to the ultrasound lures which defeated the species in their first outbreak. They are viciously protective and will not hesitate to maim or kill even members of their own species that venture too closely to their deformed ruler.
- Mother rats;
The ruling caste of the mutant rodents, they are huge, hairless creatures, crippled by their own grotesque obesity. The most notable feature of a mother rat is the presence of a second head which begins as a cancerous growth in infancy. Mother rats are extremely secretive and live in specially constructed lairs of straw and bones where the complete darkness saps them of pigmentation and eyesight. They live in a form of symbiosis with their smaller, more brutish cousins; the mother rats using their superior intelligence to guide their servants in their attacks, whilst the hunters in turn provide food for their totally helpless masters. Though no reason is given, mother rats seem to feed exclusively on human brains.
- Humanoids;
This species appeared later on in the series following a devastating nuclear attack on all major cities in Britain, allowing the giant rats to thrive as they did in their radiation soaked homeland. As their name suggests, they are of a humanoid form, yet with conspicuously rat-like features like tails, claws and prominent incisors. It is unclear whether or not they are an advanced mutation caused by the radiation or in fact true human-rat hybrids seeing as later on in the series it is shown that both humans and giant rats are giving birth to them. Unlike the other castes, they do not seem to serve a specific function. In fact, were it not for the protection of the mother rat, the first generation of humanoids would have been slaughtered by the hunters who despised and feared them for their human appearance. They are hostile and feral, shown by the series conclusion to be little more than bandits, looting and murdering all those who encroach upon their turfs.
[edit] History
[edit] The Rats
Origins
The rats originated on an unnamed island near New Guinea which had been used as a nuclear testing site during the cold war. Though it is never established exactly what species they were before the tests took place, it is clear that rather than perish from the massive amounts of radiation bombarding the island, they thrived off it. The radioactivity accelerated their evolution, greatly enhancing their size and intelligence. It wasn't long before rumours of the mutants' existence reached the ears of an old London Zoologist named William Bartlett Schiller.
The Beginning
Professor Schiller along with his wife, travelled to the island where the alleged sightings of mutant rodents originated from. After staying there for several years, the Schillers left for England, taking with them an illegally smuggled living specimen. The couple began to live as recluses, keeping the creature in their cellar and feeding it pre-paid groceries and powdered milk as they studied it. At one point in his experiments, Schiller mated it to an ordinary black rat, resulting in the creation of the first hunters. Eventually though, Schiller died due to a mysterious tropical disease (possibly from a rat bite), thus leaving his wife to continue his work. The ordeal of containing the quickly growing numbers of shrieking mutants grew too much for the old woman's sanity, leading to her incarceration at a mental institution. Meanwhile, the trapped rats soon grew numerous enough to overcome their prison, starving and aggressive enough to attack the nearest living thing, an unfortunate vagrant who gave the mutants their first taste of human blood.
London Outbreak
After escaping their captivity, the mutant rats with their greater size and intellect inevitably dominated the native vermin, eradicating the brown rats and subjugating the ordinary black rats, adding to their already considerable numbers. At first the rats attacked sporadically, picking off straying children and vagrants. After learning that humans were indeed easy prey, they became bolder in their onslaughts, assaulting public places like schools and tube stations. Survivors who were bitten would later die from an agonising disease carried in the rats' saliva. The government's response was to create a pathogen to infect the rats and ultimately wipe them out. Using infected puppies as bait, the plan worked for a while. There was a mass exodus of mutant rats to the surface to die. However, the surviving strain quickly developed an immunity to the virus, though losing the toxicity of their bites in the process. After a mass evacuation of Londons inhabitants, the rats were finally defeated when a plan was formulated to lure the rats out with ultrasound and gas them. At that same time, the lair of their repulsive leader was discovered, ultimately leading to its death.
However, a single rat survivor, confined to a grocery store cellar and unable to follow the ultrasound lures gave birth to a new litter, including a new mother rat.
[edit] Lair
Escape
The new rats matured fast, sustaining themselves on the contents of the cellar. When the owners returned and unwittingly released the rats, they were devoured. Knowing that they were too few in number to wage another war, the new mother rat led its horde out of the city, using their now aged mother and stragglers as sustenance for the journey. Travelling through railway tunnels, the mutants soon came across the outskirts of Epping Forest. There, they would relocate and adapt, remaining unseen for four years. Life in the forest changed the rats, for now they shunned their arboreal black rat heritage in favour of being burrowers to better hide from the human enemy.
The Siege of Epping Forest
As their numbers grew, the rats soon proved themselves to be ecological menaces of the worst kind. They devoured all animals within their claimed territory and it wasn't long before their ancestral craving for human meat proved too strong to ignore. Not content to simply dig up bodies from graveyards, they began killing the forest's human occupants, as with the first outbreak initially going for isolated individuals before attacking en masse a mobile home site. Realising that the rats were too intelligent to be fooled by ultrasound lures a second time, the government decided to exterminate the rats by trapping them in their burrows and gassing them with cyanide. Though this action resulted in the deaths of thousands of rats, it was proven to be futile seeing as attacks on the local fauna continued as before. Plus, searches for the body of the mother rat proved fruitless. It seemed that the rats killed underground were merely reserves, the real force being located somewhere else. The creatures had in fact taken refuge within the cellar of an abandoned estate where the mother rat had begun to spawn more members of her own kind. Though they had so far avoided the retribution of their human adversaries, their numbers had been severely depleted and an unrest began to culminate among the hunter caste. Tiring of the subservience which almost drove them to extinction, the hunters attacked the helpless mother rats. The brute strength of the guard caste proved ineffective against the hordes of hunters and were killed along with their masters. At this point however, the lair had been discovered and in a brutal display of firepower, it was raised to the ground by helicopters. Though many rats trying to escape were killed by flamethrowers, four managed to escape. After days of hiding and depriving themselves of food, the rats left the forest which had once been their home and made their way toward the city where for the next several years, they would remain undetected.
[edit] Domain
The Nuclear Holocaust
For years, the mutants took refuge in London's subway, venturing out to the surface only at night to scavenge on the waste of mankind. After two defeats that nearly ended in their extinction, the rats grew even more cunning and never took enough food to arouse suspicion. This passive life of foraging ended in the span of a day when the balance of power was abrubtly tilted to their favour. Due to disputes in the Middle East over oil and a Soviet invasion of Iran, the cold war had suddenly erupted into a full scale conflict. With little warning given, London and all other major cities in Britain were reduced to rubble after a nuclear warhead strike. Some of the populace managed to escape in the subway, only to be greeted by the rats who now sensed that their great enemy had been severely weakened. Not even the privileged few who possessed bomb shelters were able to hold out for long seeing as the rats soon found out how to enter them via the water wells, ironically turning the structures meant to offer protection into mass tombs.
The Next Mutation
Shortly after the attack, something began to change in the mother rat's mutant physiology. It began experiencing a new pain as its bloated body began to gestate a new breed of tainted offspring. Upon finally giving birth, the hunter caste seemed on the verge of dissent, for the young creatures of the new generation bore striking similarities to human children. The authority of the mother rat and the aggression of the guards prevented the hunters from killing the humanoids. However, a sudden outbreak of pneumonic plague struck the rats, severely weakening them and depleting their numbers. Left vulnerable, the mother rat and her young were killed in an attack by human survivors, though the rats were far from beaten. All major cities in Britain now lay in ruins, reaking with the same radiation that first birthed the rats and humanity was now fragmented and beaten. The rats now had nothing to oppose them in the conquest of their new domain.
[edit] The City
The New Order
After an undetermined amount of time after the war, the degredation of humanity had now been completed with the advancement of the rats. It seemed that the pneumonic plague had been adapted to, as had all the diseases and chemical weapons used against the rodent hordes in the past. The rats had now evolved further, entering a near semi-sentient state, though this had in no way diminished their bloodlust. Now the rats exploited humans other than for food, some rats even going as far as using the beaten and broken people as beasts of burden. Nesting in what was once St. Paul's Cathedral, the new mother rat had given birth to more humanoids, this time with nothing to hinder their survival. Though more intelligent than their ancestors; being capable of tool use and assimilating language, the humanoids proved to be no less malicious. They roamed the ruined city in bands, hunting and preying on defenceless vagrants, stripping them of their possessions whilst at the same time avoiding contact with their more bestial brethren.
The Traveller
The rats' rule over London's skeleton had remained completely unopposed until the arrival of an unusual stranger. Covered in head to toe with armour and accompanied by a pair of robotic dogs, the stranger known only as The Traveller was unlike the humans the rats had now grown accustomed to. He was no battered and demoralised wreck, he openly defied the rats, plowing through their countless hordes with a vast array of weaponry. Though the rats succeeded in killing his canine companions, they were unable to stop his advance toward the cathedral and burning the occupants inside, including the mother rat itself. The vengeful rat army pursued the traveller to the London Bridge where they were unaware that a trap had been set. Once the traveller reached the other side, the bridge was detonated, the rats still on it perishing.
The future of humanity and the rats remains to this day uncertain.
[edit] Movie Portrayal
The species was given its first and so far only screen appearance in the Canadian 1982 film Deadly Eyes. Though their characteristic size and lust for human flesh in the first novel was kept for the obvious purposes of a horror film, their origins had been completely changed. No more were they radiation spawned vermin imported to London from the tropics, but Toronto based sewer rats that grew in size after ingesting grain laced with steroids.
The social order and caste system shown by the rats in the novels is completely overlooked in the film.
The rats were brought to life through a mixture of hand puppetry and dressing up Dachshunds in rat suits.
