Prologue
Port Autonome de Lomé, Lome, Togo
As it is with most rats, the rat was hungry. From the darkness of the small drainage pipe, the rodent watched as tons of food was loaded onto the large ship. At dock level, a large door had been opened on the side of the vessel. A forklift was busily making trips back and forth, from the truck to the ship, delivering pallet after pallet of wonderful smelling food that the rat would just love to sink its tiny yellow teeth into.
Bright light was the rat’s enemy. The little mammal lived within the confines of the night and rarely made an appearance in brightly lit areas. Many of the rat’s friends and family had been cornered within the light, and had paid for this transgression with their lives, typically by the hand of a human with a long stick or broom, or even a gun, in less populated areas of the country of Togo. Just running around at night, had its own associated risks. There were many animals such as hawks, eagles, kites, harriers and Old World vultures that preyed on vermin. There were also 91 snake species, representing 10 families, that would love to have a fat rat for supper.
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The area around the large ship was well lit. It was so bright, in fact, that to the rat’s little brain, it almost resembled day light; a time when it was typically sleeping in its cool underground burrow.
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The rat stuck it’s furry head out of the drain pipe and lifted its little wet nose into the air. It took in a whiff and salivated at the smell. Seafood, produce, meat, and many other flavors wafted through the air. The rat considered making a break for the open door of the ship, but deep down, it knew that it would never make it. One of the men responsible for the loading of the ship, would see it, and make some type of violent action, which would result in the rat’s death.
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Now, the truck driver had closed the big vehicle’s back doors and walked around to the driver’s door to climb inside. A moment later, the food truck drove out from under the dock’s sodium vapor lights. No more than a minute later, it had been replaced with a dirty garbage truck. The garbage truck was equally as tantalizing to the rat. Maybe even more so. Once again, the rat stuck it’s nose into the air and was rewarded with smell of stall and rotting food remnants. Most of it was sitting in the open doorway of the ship. The fork lift picked up the first load of trash that had been compacted into a massive rectangle and strapped together with bailing wire. The machine delivered the first block of trash to the huge truck, and then returned for the next. It made several more trips, loading more trash blocks that the rat would so love to crawl inside and dine upon.
Alas, the driver of the garbage truck closed the backdoors of the big vehicle, and just like that, the garbage truck disappeared into the night as well. By this time, the rat was going out of its little rat mind. So much food, both in wonderful fresh form, and spoiled block form, going to waste right in front of its eyes and nose.
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A loud sound of metal on metal, broke the silence of the night and startled the rat. The doors of the big ship were closing. Feeling that’s it’s opportunity was slipping away, the rat darted out from the protection of the drainage pipe and began running along the edge of the dock, looking for a way to get onto the ship.
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As it scurried along, doing its best to stay within the shadows, it was mindful of humans or animals that might do it harm. After several terrifying moments of scampering forward, that rat came upon a thick rope that connected the huge ship to the dock. The rat had tried to use this method of boarding ships in the past, only to discover that someone had placed a disk on the rope that acted as a barrier to keep vermin from crawling up the rope and onto the ship. But to the rat’s amazement, this rope, this bridge to all the food the rat could eat, didn’t have any type of blockade affixed to it. Maybe the human’s had forgot to add the disk? Maybe they didn’t mind rats eating all their food? But none of that really mattered, because the rat had already ascended fifty feet up the rope.
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Looking down, the rat didn’t see any further activity on the dock below. The trucks were gone and everything below was very still. Both happy and excited, the rat continued on up the rope, slowing when it reached the top. Ten feet ahead, was the wide opening in the ship, the area where the rope exited the great vessel like a giant’s umbilical cord. There faint light emanating from the opening. The rat could also here peculiar sounds; human sounds it had become accustomed to hearing during its life on the docks. An engine was running. Water was running through pipes. Tools were tinging off of metallic implements. And just at the periphery of the rat’s hearing, someone was whistling. None of these sounds particularly concerned the rat. They were not gun shots, or humans yelling, or the sound of people jumping up onto chairs, which were sounds that always made the rat flee in horror. That light coming out of the hole was very dim, and it gave the rat a measure of confidence. Very slowly, the rat walked up the rest of the rope.
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As the rat crossed through the threshold of the hole and entered the ship, it unknowing broke an invisible laser beam. Over the top of the rat’s head, a plastic flapper came down and knocked the rat off the rope. For an instant, the rat didn’t’ t have a clue what was happening to it. It flailed out helplessly and let out a loud rat squeak, believing that a human had hit it with something, maybe a broom (which was common to the rat), maybe something a little harder. But now, the rat was falling, tumbling down a wide pipe and picking up speed. The rat’s sharp claws did nothing to abate its fall. It cried out loudly as it scratched helplessly against the sides of the pipe.
Three seconds later, the rat came to a stop, landing softly on something that felt alive. The rodent not only heard movement, it actually felt movement, as the floor beneath its body began to undulate. A second before its death, the rat realized that it had made a horrible mistake and had landed in the very worst place in the world.
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At the bottom of the Hail Nucleus cargo ship, was a tank writhing with thousands of snakes.