…it’s a rumble in the forest!
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The Doclopedia #1,800
Rats: The Kaiju Rat Of Sumatra
One of the “lost” Earth 2-S Sherlock Holmes stories, this one was suppressed by Holmes & Watson on the grounds that it would cause worldwide panic.
Oddly, this was one of the very few casually mentioned cases that Doyle actually had a very rough outline for. Although notes make it clear that he wrote the notes in jest, it still is cited by some Holmes scholars as a legitimate attempt at a sequel to “The Giant Rat of Sumatra”, the only Holmes story that featured an appearance by Professor Challenger from Doyle’s Science fiction works.
According to Doyle’s notes, the adventure would have taken place two years later and would find Holmes and Watson in Japan at the same time as Challenger, who had captured another of the 100 pound rats and was touring the East with it. The rat would then be given a mysterious substance by a Japanese agent of Professor Moriarty, grow to “twice or three times the size of an elephant”, then go on a rampage.
As of the current year, 1995, the Doyle estate has yet to allow anyone to write this story.
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The Doclopedia #1,801
Rats: The Doomrat
So, yeah, we called it “The Doomrat”. Her real name was Iris and she was a special rat indeed. Not only could she carry the HumanEx 9 virus, she could pass it on to her first two litters. They could pass it on to their first two, but at half the infection rate. Same thing with the next generation. After that, they were virus free. But, you know, since Iris and her first two litters were carrying the 99.99% infection and death rate, humanity was seriously fucked anyway. Airborne virus, rats conditioned to spread out away from each other except to mate…yeah, we had cooked up a great Doomrat.
95% of the human population is dead. Seven of us from the lab survived because we were in the vaccine room when the earthquake hit. A fucking 6.7 quake in fucking Kansas due to fracking, man. The seven of us shot up all the vaccine before the fire got going full blast. We made it out and headed to the command post, which the quake had pretty well destroyed.
Anyway, took them 2 hours to get the place sealed, by which time Iris was probably 5 miles away, despite being pregnant. They spent a week going through the rubble checking dead rats, but never found her, 12 weeks after the quake, people started getting sick in small towns. After that, well, you know the rest.
Part of me kind of hopes Iris had a good life. It wasn’t really her fault that she was the Doomrat.
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