Chapter 33 - Rat Race

"Can you at least explain what we're going to do first before you talk about kidnapping babies!" complained Yurika.

"Oh, right…" Gray said then proceeded to explain his plan. To them, the real threat were the two adult rats. The babies, although as large as wolves, would be much less dangerous and thus the primary targets would be the big ones. First, Yurika will need to spread a trail of fuel along most of the edge of the crater and have as much burnable materials along it since the Napalm would not burn long by itself. About 30 degrees would be left bare for them to stand on and fire down into the crater. To attract the rat parents, they were going to have to use the peanut butter bait to lure a baby away and drug it with the sedative from the field surgeon kit Caleb had with his medic gear. The crater was around 50 meters in diameter so the timing would be very tight.

"Ketamine? Will that even work on rats?" asked Geoff.

"The syringe uses 50 mg injections for a human that can expect to keep them unconscious for 30 minutes up to an hour usually. It will still take 1 to 5 minutes to take effect though." Said Caleb.

"These things are about the size of wolves so their body weight should be less than us, can we use a larger injection?" asked Gray

"No, but you can do multiple injections, the problem is the gun controls the dosage speed so it will need about 2 seconds of contact to give it the full dosage." Said Caleb.

"Can't we just knock it out with a rock or something?" asked Yurika

"No, that's just movie crap, if you hit someone hard enough with anything to knock them out you have approximately a 25% chance of killing them." Said Caleb.

"We're trying to kill them aren't we?" countered Yurika

"Yes, but I actually want it to cry for the parents a little first to get them to chase me." Said Gray

"Gray, I should warn you, the top speed of normal rats may only be around 8 mph, but these rats are around 50 times larger than a normal rat. The rats are probably significantly faster than us, probably even faster than cheetahs, but this should only apply in a straight line" warned Caleb.

"Give me a few extra grenades then and I'll chuck them behind me as I'm running." Said Gray.

"While carrying a rat the size of a large wolf?" questioned Stacia

"Eh, it'll work out." Said Gray confidently.

"Not to ask the obvious question, but why not just shoot them, you know, with our guns." Said Geoff

"Have you even seen the movie Jurassic World? Those guys had way more guns than us and couldn't even take out a few small dinosaurs." Said Gray. "Plus rats are skittish and cowardly, we can't expect them not to run without giving them a reason to stay."

"Fair point… also that movie was great, well, the first one was at least, but the rest sucked except for the fifth one when they put weapons on the dinosaurs and rode them in to battle against the neo communists that had built machine dinosaurs to take over the world!" said Geoff excitedly.

Gray nodded in agreement as he was of the same opinion of the franchise, but the rest were clueless as they had stopped after how bad the 2nd one was.

As they had no other option and Gray actually volunteered to do this, Caleb handed Gray the medic syringe and the 250 mg vial of ketamine. Stacia peanut buttered up 2 chunks of giant corn kernels and considered taking a nibble of one but changed her mind after thinking about what sort of toxins or mutation caused the corn to get so large in the first place. Yurika finished trailing the fuel around the edge of the crater while Geoff tried to put as much burnable materials nearby it as possible. As the sun started to get low, they had finally finished their preparations for the kill box.

"Ok guys, wait near the edge of the crater and light the fuel when you hear me shout on the comm, I will lure out one of the babies and bring it here." Said Gray.

Everyone nodded and took their places on the clear spot as Gray walked towards the location of the nest again. He got within sight of the nest but was unable to see any rats.

"Crap, I bet the explosion scared them off. Might have to wait for a bit." Gray said to himself.

"Guys, the explosion scared the rats away for now, stay alert." Said Gray through the communicator.

Gray sat down behind a fallen stalk with his back to the nest and pulled a hand mirror out of his pocket and used it to watch the nest without sticking his head up. Eventually Gray was rewarded for his patience when he saw what looked like a furry Volkswagen Jetta and Beetle return to the nest. The babies were nowhere in sight but Gray noticed what appeared to be the female was walking kinda strangely. The male looked around as the female lumbered her way into the nest and then rolled on her side, the babies had apparently rode on their mom's belly similar to some marsupials. While Gray found this interesting, he was more worried about how to get one out of their since the mother had brought them deep into the nest. It would be dark in about an hour so the rats would become very active then so Gray was hoping that the babies might be adventurous now that they were woken up early again, first from the bear and now from the explosion.

After the mother rat laid down again, the babies detached themselves from her and some started to feed while others started to wander. The Dad rat laid down next to the mother rat and closed his eyes. To Gray's delight, 2 baby rats had decided to walk around outside of the nest, but still too close to the nest to try and catch. Gray only had 2 kernel chunks of peanut buttered corn so he had to be careful with it.

Trying to stay out of direct sight of the nest, Gray would only move closer when the wind blew hard enough to make the stalks rustle. He was near the edge of the nest when he spotted the few bits of remains of the bear. He was feeling slightly grossed out looking at yet he couldn't stop looking at it for some reason. Gray was brought out of his trance when he heard a rustling nearby and saw a pink snout and two squinting eyes looking in his direction.

Frozen in place, one of the baby rats had gotten close enough to wander in to where Gray was hiding. Gray slowly reached out with one of peanut butter covered kernel chunks and put it on the ground in front of him while backing away slowly. The baby rat sniffed the chunk and the tiny whiskers on it twitched excitedly as it investigated the peanut butter covered kernel. The baby rat appeared to gather its courage as it finally took a bit out of it. As the rat nibbled on the bait a chirping noise came from it, and suddenly another baby rat poked its head out of the foliage to where Gray was.

Gray started to get extremely worried that this might attract one of the adults so he picked up the kernel that the first rat had taken a chunk out of and threw it hoping to get it behind the nest and attract the attention of the adults instead of where he was now. The rat that knew how good it was chased after the kernel but the second rat still stayed so Gray pulled out the second one to try and bribe this one. Gray used his knife to cut the chunk in half and tossed it to the baby rat which proceeded to eat after seeing his littermate eat the other one and chirp in satisfaction.

Gray started to back away slowly again and after about 50 meters the rat stopped following him. Gray hoped this was close enough as he heard very loud chittering from the nest which sounded like a parent scolding a child. Gray placed the last bit of the kernel chunk on the ground and then backed away slightly while holding on to the syringe gun loaded with ketamine.

Gray crouched down then remained motionless when the baby rat started to eat the chunk, gathering his courage, he slowly moved towards the baby rat.

Gray thought to himself "This is gonna suck." Gray pounced on to the back of the rat and tried to use his weight to hold it down while he injected it with the ketamine. The baby rat let out a hiss as it felt Gray land on him then started to squeal when Gray injected it with the ketamine. He was able to maintain the gun against the baby rat long enough to inject the first 50 mg perfectly, using his teeth he pulled back the plunger on the gun to try and give it another dose. The baby rat started to wiggle around as it desperately tried to get out from under Gray while Gray attempted to inject it a second time. The baby rat knocked into a thick stalk as it tried everything it could to get away managing to knock the syringe gun out of Gray's hand before he could finish the 2nd injection.

Suddenly Gray heard a hiss that sounded more like a roar from what Gray assumed was probably one of the adult rats. The baby rat became weaker and weaker and Gray was finally able to pick it up and slung it over his shoulder as he started to run as fast as he could through the thick forest of stalks. Loud crashing noises could be heard behind him as the two adult rats started to give chase.

"Should've taken the @#$% patrol mission!" Gray thought to himself as it was now a life and death race between him and 2 giant rats.