But someone was in there with her.
She could hear breathing.
A harsh, short breath and the candle was out. Acrid smoke from the expired flame. A scuffing sound against floor tiles. A quavery sucking in of air. The stale smell of another body.
A hand touching her face.
Her scream was cut short as strong fingers covered her mouth. Another arm reached around her, enclosing her ribs. The expired candle fell to the floor as a head pressed against her own.
‘Don’t struggle,’ came the urgent whisper. ‘I’ll hurt you if you do.’
It was then she knew the intent.
She panicked, her legs kicking empty air as her body was lifted. Sharon tried to scream again, but the grip over her lips was too tight. She bit down hard and tasted blood.
The man who had followed her from the cinema, the man who had covertly watched her through the traumatic weeks of their forced internment, who knew that civilization was at an end, that there was only death awaiting them all, who knew there was no law to punish him, nothing left to prevent him taking what he wanted, cried out in pain, but did not relax his hold.
One of Sharon’s feet touched the edge of the washbasin and she pushed backwards with all her strength, sending them both crashing back into the cubicle she had just left. The man grunted as they went down, his head cracking against wall tiles. Yet still he clung to her.
The girl struck him with her elbows, squirming her body in an effort to wriggle free. His hand had left her mouth and his forearm was locked around her throat, squeezing her windpipe, frightening her even more.
‘Please don’t . . .’ she managed to beg, the sound wheezing, the words barely audible. ‘Please . . . don’t . . . kill . . . me.’
His other hand was fumbling beneath her sweater, reaching for her uncupped breasts. Fingers closed around one risen nipple and the pain was excruciating as he squeezed. That same pain galvanized an instinctive reaction.
Their two bodies were half-slumped against the toilet wall, the back of Sharon’s head against her assailant’s chest. Her heels pressed hard against the floor, sending her body upwards and back in a violent motion, the top of her head cracking against the man’s jaw, sending his head snapping backwards to hit the wall yet again. He howled and his grip loosened.
Sharon slid away, slithering along on her back, brushing off his clutching hands. She turned, was on her knees, her hand reaching out to feel a wall for guidance, the total darkness confusing, adding to the terror. Her fingers curled around the edge of a urinal and she pulled herself forward, making for where she knew the main door had to be.
She screamed loudly as his weight bore down on her.
He had landed on her legs and was slowly crawling up the length of her body, using his weight to pin her against the floor. She felt his hands on her back, on her shoulders, fingers now curling in her hair, pulling her head back. Then down, her nose bursting against the hard floor tiles. And again, her senses reeling with the blow. Resistance momentarily left her, although her arms still flailed limply. His hot breath was against her neck, his staleness smothering her. He pulled her round to face him and her nails tore at his eyes. He slapped away her hands and pulled at her sweater, exposing her body though it was unseen in the impenetrable blackness. She screamed again and a fist squelched against her already bloodied nose. Sharon groaned as invisible hands groped at her clothing.
Neither of them heard the scratching at the door.
The man lowered his head and his teeth found the soft flesh of her stomach. He bit her and she shrieked. His mouth left a sticky trail of saliva across her skin as his lips sought her nipples. A hand pulled at the button of her jeans and they opened, the zip descending halfway. Trembling fingers pushed it further. The same hand probed and she tried to squeeze her thighs together, but his leg, thrust between her knees, thwarted her. A new pain as the rough fingers entered.
In the darkness behind them, the door leading into the foyer slowly opened under the gathered pressure of the black-haired creatures. A sleek, hump-backed body crouched low against the floor, eased its way through the gap. Others, excited by the fragrance of sweet, running blood, pushed from behind. The corpses on the far side of the foyer, their curtain shrouds torn away, their white bodies covered with smaller, moving shapes that chewed and gnawed their rotting flesh, were now forsaken for something more alluring, a sustenance the vermin were becoming familiar with: the moist freshness of living organs.
The man had raised himself to his knees and was tearing at his own clothing, ripping off buttons, shoving underpants and trousers down over his hips in one movement, the total darkness stimulating him to an even greater frenzy, his mind creating the image that lay beneath him, his touch realizing its substance.
Sharon’s eyes were closed, though it made no difference in the absence of light, and blood flowed into her mouth. She heard his movements above her, his grunts, the murmured animal sounds. And part of her was aware of the draught that tickled at her scalp.
The man began to lower himself and she felt his warm, dribbling penis settle against her stomach. She moaned and turned her head away from his foul breath, her cheek scraping against his rough beard.
‘Please . . . don’t . . .’ It was almost a whisper, a last desperate pleading. Briefly, and in a distant area of her mind, a place where situations can be considered with detachment, aloofness its own protection, she wondered why she cared after all that had happened. With so many hundreds of millions dead, why should her single feeble body be sacrosanct? The answer was obvious, and she knew it before the question was really begged. Because it was hers! They could kill off the whole fucking world, but her body belonged to her!
As the tip of his penis pushed against the tender opening between her thighs, one hand grabbed at his hair and yanked, twisting his head round; the stiffened fingers of her other hand jabbed wildly for his eyes. She felt sickened when the untrimmed nail of her index finger sank into something soft and movable.
He lurched away, his turn to scream, his pulped eye popping from its socket as the girl’s finger withdrew. The eye lay on his cheek, hanging there by the threads of its retaining muscles. He fell into the space beneath the wash basins, hands reaching for the dangling eyeball.
But the rat reached it first.
The muscles were severed by a clamping of jaws and a rapid shaking of the vermin’s head, and the eye was swallowed virtually unscathed. The creature, whose natural habitat was darkness and shadows, lunged with barely a pause for the opening from which bloody juices streamed. It buried its pointed snout deep into the empty socket.
Sharon thought the man’s screams and thrashings were because of the injury she had caused him. She kicked out at his body, not realizing she was striking other, scuttling forms. Sobbing, she pulled at her jeans, tugging them back over her hips, her back against the smooth floor. Something sharp snapped at a leg and she thought he had bitten her again. Her other foot struck out and connected with something solid. Her leg was released.
She staggered to her feet, a urinal giving her support. Blindly, she hurled herself towards the door, praying she was moving in the right direction. The man’s screams filled the small toilet, bouncing off the walls and ceiling, amplified in the tiled chamber, and she felt no remorse for the injury she had dealt him. Through her own sobs and his screams she failed to hear the squealing.
She tripped against something low to the ground, imagining it was one of his flailing limbs, and her head struck the edge of the half-open door. Only momentarily did she wonder why the door was still open, for her main thoughts were on reaching the safety of the cinema where the other survivors would protect her, where Margaret would comfort her, would rock her soothingly to and fro just as her own mother had done when she was little and helpless.
But her mind could no longer ignore the squirming, wriggling creatures beneath her feet, the high-pitched squealing, the sharp, tearing pain as daggers ripped at her legs.
She saw light, for the cinema doors had been opened by those inside who had heard the terrible screams, who were now screaming themselves as a thick, black-running river poured into the small theatre.
Sharon staggered over the flowing bodies, running with the rats, all control completely gone, not knowing what else to do, just flowing with the stream.
And when she toppled over the top stair of the steeply-tiered theatre, the jaws of one creature clamped around an arm, another clinging to her back, teeth and claws entwined in her hair, it was like cresting and plunging with a small but forceful waterfall.
A black, consuming waterfall.
11
The weight of the .38 Smith and Wesson Model 64 strapped inside its holster was uncomfortable against the side of his chest, but then Culver was unused to carrying such a weapon. Dealey had informed him it carried six bullets rather than the five its predecessor, the Model 36, had carried. Culver saw no reason for his having to fire off even one bullet: the war had already been fought and there could be no enemy and surely no victor. Dealey had agreed but had added that the dangers would be from within. Culver felt disinclined to pursue the point.
He shone the flashlight ahead, its beam reflecting goldly off the water-dripping tunnel walls. The others – Bryce, Fairbank, and the ROC officer, McEwen – waded behind him through the knee-deep water, wary eyes constantly seeking out cracks or niches in the curved brickwork where dark creatures could lurk.
Mercifully, the murky water covering the Underground railway tracks also hid the rotted remains of those who had been slaughtered near the shelter’s secret doorway. It had been unfortunate that Fairbank had accidentally kicked something loose beneath the surface, for white bones had risen like ghosts from a liquid grave. The four men’s steps had been more careful after that, each one pushing from his mind the thought of skeletal hands reaching for them from the dirty, flowing water.
Despite their trepidation, however, it was a relief to be beyond the confines of the shelter. In the four weeks they had been trapped inside, morale had sunk even lower and attitudes had varied between deep despair and sluggish apathy. Until the past few days, when a bitter tension had replaced both moods.
Many of the engineers and exchange staff resented Dealey’s refusal to allow them to leave, particularly when Bryce had admitted that the extraordinarily heavy rainfall that had not ceased for a moment since it had begun weeks before, should have all but washed away the worst of the fallout.
Yet Alex Dealey had insisted that everyone should remain where they were and wait for the all-clear sirens. If the unremitting downpour could be heard by means of the air shafts, then so would the sirens. But Culver sensed there was more to the Ministry man’s objections, almost as though giving way to the mob meant relinquishing not just his own self-given authority, but the power of government rule itself. And only chaos would take its place.
As yet, retention of command had not quite become an obsession with Dealey, but it had certainly developed into a capricious objective. Perhaps, too, this pursuance of a familiar and orderly regime was a way of saving himself from complete despair, for it seemed that each survivor, prisoner to the holocaust, strove to find some semblance of their old existence in this new world. It showed in various ways: Dr Reynolds practised her profession with dedicated care, even though her attitude at times seemed cynical; Farraday worked at his machines, keeping them running, urging his staff to help him make the breakthrough in communications, even issuing a work rota so that no engineer had a completely idle day; Bryce constantly checked the stores, the weaponry, consulted emergency documents, even maps as though they would provide a sensory link with other survival stations; Kate helped Clare Reynolds, helped Farraday, helped Bryce, helped Dealey, kept herself constantly busy, a personal assistant to all of them.
Culver did not think too much of the past. But even he did not change into the other clothes provided from the shelter’s stores; he kept his torn jeans and worn leather jacket.
The idea of the reconnaissance was to boost morale a little, possibly to dissipate some of the tension, rather than just an attempt to make contact with the outside world. Culver realized it was too soon for the latter, that if there were survivors above, they would still be in a state of shock. And many would be dying. Yet he was glad to go. Before, when the idea had first been mooted, he was reluctant and might even have refused if a decision had had to be made there and then; but now the Exchange, huge though it was, was like a prison to him. It was the same for many others, for there had been no shortage of volunteers for the mission. Dealey had been selective, using Bryce as representative of authority, McEwen almost in a military role, Fairbank as worker delegate, and Culver as a neutral, perhaps even an intermediary. It was a nonsense to Culver, but he was prepared to go along with Dealey’s little games if it meant breaking free of the shelter for a short while. In fact, the group’s time limit was two hours, and if the ionization instrument carried by McEwen registered an unhealthy amount of radiation still around, then their return to the Exchange was to be immediate.
Yet their departure had not raised the spirits of the other survivors as much as Dealey and his closer associates had hoped. Culver had felt uneasy as he prepared to leave and had studied the faces of the engineers and workforce as they gathered round to wish the departing team good luck. They showed interest but little excitement. Perhaps there was some dread in their gaze.
In Kate’s eyes there had been fear, and the fear had been for him alone.
‘I think I can see the station!’
It was Fairbank who had called out, jerking Culver from his thoughts. All four men shone their flashlights straight ahead.
‘You’re right,’ Culver said, his voice low, not reflecting Fairbank’s excitement. ‘I can make out the platform. Let’s get out of this water.’
Their pace quickened and the tunnel echoed with splashing sounds. In his eagerness to be free of the overwhelming darkness and the sluggish, black water that was a tangible part of it, Bryce tripped over a concealed track, going down heavily, but just managing to keep his torch above the surface. Culver and Fairbank waited as McEwen, nearest to him, helped the Civil Defence officer to his feet.
‘Take it steady,’ Culver warned them. ‘No point in busting something before we even see daylight.’
They proceeded more cautiously, walking single file in the middle of the flowing stream, keeping between the unseen rails. The stench in the tunnel was foul and the other three had no wish to take a similar ducking. Culver only moved to the side when the platform was close. He paused, climbed up and shone his light along the platform while the others waited. The station appeared to be empty.
He turned to the others and found he had nothing to say. It was Bryce who suggested they move on.
Culver helped each one onto the platform and they did not stop again until they had reached the opening leading to the escalators. The only sound was that of flowing water, a disturbed hollow gushing that echoed eerily around the tiled walls. They turned their lights on posters announcing new films, the finest whisky, the prettiest stocking-tights, and felt acutely saddened for things past. An Away-day was now a journey beyond existence, not a trip to another town, another county.
Culver remembered the screams, the panic cries, of just a few weeks before and his chest ached as though there was pressure from within. He had half expected the platform to be filled with bodies, perhaps even one or two survivors among them; the emptiness was somehow more frightening. The sudden thought that possibly there had been survivors who had returned to the surface, who had already begun to adapt, had even begun to rebuild some kind of life, cut into his fear; not decisively, but enough to raise his hopes just a little. That barely formed optimism lasted but a few fleeting moments.
‘Oh my good God!’
They turned to see McEwen standing by the corner of the small exit archway. He was aiming his torch towards the escalators beyond. The three men approached McEwen slowly as his h
and began to rise, the torch beam travelling up the stairway. Fairbank moaned aloud, Bryce sagged against a wall, Culver closed his eyes.
Bodies were sprawled on the stairways as far as the light would reach. There were more, many more, piled up at the bottom of the three stairways, dishevelled bundles, decomposing, stains of dark blood, dry and crusted, spilling like frozen lava from the heaped forms. And even from where the four survivors stood they could see the corpses were not intact and that their mutilation had little to do with rotting flesh.
Limbs did not decompose before the rest of the body. Surface organs – noses, ears and eyes – did not just fade away. Stomachs did not split as though intestines had broken free from dying hosts.
Bryce had begun to vomit.
‘What happened to them?’ Fairbank asked incredulously. ‘There’s no bomb damage down here, nothing to cause those inj . . .’ He broke off abruptly, realizing what the others already knew. ‘No, it couldn’t be! Rats wouldn’t attack this many people.’ He stared wildly at Culver. ‘Not unless they were already dead. That has to be it! The radiation killed the people first and the rats fed off them.’
Culver shook his head. ‘There’s dried blood everywhere. Corpses don’t bleed.’
‘Sweet Mother of . . .’ Fairbank’s knees began to sag and he, too, leaned against a wall. ‘We’d better get back to the shelter,’ he said quickly. ‘They may be still around.’
McEwen was already backing away towards the platform. ‘He’s right, we’ve got to get back.’
‘Hold it.’ Culver grabbed his arm. ‘I’m no expert, but by the look of them, these people were attacked some time ago. If the rats were still around I think there’d be a lot less left of the corpses. They’d be . . .’ he fought down his own nausea ‘. . . a regular food supply for the vermin. My guess is that they’ve moved on, maybe searching for fresher food.’