‘Onto the catwalk, quick!’ He grabbed Kate and pushed her ahead of him, wading through what had now become a wild bubbling waterway.
Fairbank noticed the rats – three, four, five, oh Christ, six of them! – swimming from the gap. Had he looked up he would have seen many others crawling through the wires and machinery behind them. He raced after Culver and the girl, taking big strides in the current, arms outstretched to maintain his balance.
Kate reached the metal ladder leading up to the catwalk and Culver, with a brusque push, urged her to climb. He looked to see if Fairbank was with them and drew in a breath when he saw the closely-packed group of rats bearing down on the engineer.
Clinging to a lower rung of the ladder, Culver stretched out his other arm towards Fairbank. ‘Hurry! ’ he yelled.
The engineer must have seen the warning in Culver’s eyes, for he made the mistake of turning his head to look behind. He staggered when he caught sight of his pursuers.
A deluge of water surging from the opposite direction saved him.
Culver realized that someone, in an effort to escape the flooding shelter, had opened the door to the railway tunnel allowing more floodwater to pour in. Now they did battle with the contraflow, a fresh sweeping tide that met and pushed back at an opposing force, creating a violent meshing, a rolling turbulence.
He just managed to grab Fairbank’s outstretched hand before the tidal wave submerged him. The vermin were swept back, twisting and squealing in the foam, kicking out frantically with useless paws as they were smashed into machinery and tossed like flotsam along the wide corridor.
Culver tugged at the dead weight, its pull nearly wrenching him from the ladder. Water cascaded over him, taking his breath away, blurring his vision. Resolutely he drew the floundering engineer towards him while Kate watched helplessly from above. Fairbank half swam, half waded towards the ladder, his feet constantly slipping from beneath him, but aided by Culver’s firm grip. He gratefully grabbed a ladder rung when he was within reach and hauled himself forward until he was able to cling there without Culver’s help. Bald patches showed through his soaked hair and there were deep lines in his face that had never been evident before. There was a bulbous quality to his eyes that registered shock, yet still he managed a panting grin. He uttered something that Culver couldn’t catch and pointed with his eyes to the top of the ladder.
‘You first!’ Culver yelled and Fairbank did not argue.
Kate, already on the catwalk, helped him up the last few rungs. He lay there, gasping for breath, like a floundering fish just hooked from the river.
Culver watched as other bodies were swept past, their impetus too great for him to reach out and pull them in. The floodwater wasn’t too deep yet – perhaps just below chest level – so they would have a chance provided they were not knocked unconscious by unyielding objects. The waters should settle down to a degree once both flows had ceased to fight against each other. The big question was, how flooded would the underground shelter become? Would it be completely filled, or would the level gradually subside? He wasn’t keen on waiting to find out.
He climbed the ladder, perching on the edge of the opening for a few moments to catch his breath. Looking back, he saw the water still raged along the corridor from the section where the tunnel door was housed. Anything loose was flowing with it, and that included more bodies. Culver clambered to his feet and pushed his arm through the jacket sleeve that was still hanging loose.
The catwalk was narrow, just wide enough to take one person at a time, the railing on the outside single and frail-looking. The grilled walkway beneath them trembled with their weight.
Fairbank was already up, but still gasping. He squeezed past Kate and began to make his way along the catwalk, heading in the direction of the Operations Room. Culver wiped strands of hair away from the girl’s frightened eyes, then nodded after Fairbank. She moved, clutching at the railing with one hand, her fingers never losing contact with it. Culver followed, gently urging her along, his eyes constantly alert. He shouted a warning when he saw the creeping thing on the conduits above Fairbank’s head.
The rat dropped, but the engineer was ready. He caught the creature in mid-air, its weight sending him back against the wall of instruments, slashing teeth just inches away from his face. Fairbank heaved the abomination from him, his strength gained from sheer fright, and the rat hurtled over the railing into the waters below.
There were more dark shapes crawling through the pipe network and wires in the ceiling, and the three bedraggled survivors wasted no more time in moving along the thin, precarious platform. Ahead, they heard the sound of machine-gun fire.
Dr Clare Reynolds had just finished her third cup of coffee and fourth cigarette when the water had poured into the canteen. Sick and tired of reasoning with the rebel engineers, who were now adamant about leaving the refuge despite the dire warnings, dismayed at the continuing duplicity of Dealey – a small example of this was his insistence that there were ample drugs and medicines to provide for virtually any situation, any illness or epidemic that might break out among them, all of which was blatantly untrue; yet he had persuaded her to keep quiet over the inadequacies of the medical supplies ‘for the good of all’, as he put it – Clare had forsaken her rigid rule of cigarette rationing for the moment. What the hell, if the shelter was abandoned, there would be a glut of tobacco among the ruins upstairs and never enough people to smoke it all. She supposed it wasn’t much of an example for someone in her profession to be setting, but that had never bothered her in the past, so why now? The message would have to read differently from this point on: DANGER: GOVERNMENT HEALTH WARNING: CIGARETTES AND RADIATION CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH. And hydrogen bombs can burn you from existence, disease and malnutrition can give you time to think while you fade. She had stubbed out half of her cigarette and lit another.
The powdery ash in the small dish before her seemed symbolic of all that was left. She stirred it with the glowing tip of her cigarette and it was insubstantial, a miniature pulverized waste. Like her own shattered life.
It was funny how people seemed to dismiss the personal emotions of certain professions – an airline pilot was supposed to think only of his passengers’ lives in a crisis, never his own; a priest wasn’t allowed to brood on personal problems, only on those of his parishioners – and the medical profession (vocation, some would call it) evoked a similar regard. A doctor was not a machine, but they functioned on a level higher than normal human emotion. Or were supposed to. The attitude could be even more outrageous: a doctor would never catch leprosy through treating lepers, would never develop lung disease by helping sufferers of pulmonary tuberculosis, would never catch a cold from a sneezing patient. They were supposed to be immune. She allowed a small ironic smile as she remembered one or two doctors she had known who had succumbed to mild doses of herpes.
Physically and mentally they were meant to be a race apart. But—
(How many psychiatrists had mental breakdowns? Plenty.)
(How many priests committed grievous sin? Enough.)
(How many lawyers despaired at court injustices? Well, there were always exceptions.)
People failed to see beyond the robes of office, the professional façade. Few cared to – they had their own problems, which was usually why they came in contact with the other professions anyway. Only one person in the shelter had concerned herself with Clare’s personal loss, and that was Kate Garner. In fact, more than once they had cried on each other’s shoulders. No one else had even asked.
She huffed steam onto her spectacles and wiped them with a piece of tissue. There were others in the canteen, but an empty coffee cup and a half-filled ashtray on the yellow Formica table top were her only companions. Still, that was of her own choosing. Although there was a high degree of casualness in her medical manner, she retained a studied measure of aloofness, a mild authority that forbade disintegration on either her part or those around her. It was a role she played to
the hilt, a beautiful performance by any standards – Olivier’s or Kazan’s – but one that was slowly, ever so slowly, beginning to crumble, her dreams the sly and guileful wrecker. For the dreams sent Simon to her, presenting him as whole, complete, approaching in his own easy, restful way, brushing aside with casual waves of his hand each gossamer veil that was somehow not of material but of hazy smoke layers, speaking her name softly, lovingly, and sometimes reproachful that they had been apart for so long, and he would draw nearer; yet she could not move towards him, could only reach out with her arms, her hands trembling and eager, tingling with anticipation, fingertips sending forth an aura that only the Kirlian process could register, strands of loving magnetic energy drawing him inescapably closer to her, until just a few veils drifted between them. In the dreams, his figure, his mutilated body, would grow sharper, its abnormalities focused, the empty eyes where small things glutted, the fleshless grin that was only a grin because the lips were not there to give expression, for they had burned away with other parts of his body, gone with tissue, muscle, leaving bones that were charcoaled black, his clothes tattered and gaping, still hanging loosely from his frame, an incongruous ball-point pen protruding from his lapel pocket, tie dangling like a limp noose from around the bones of his neck as though he had just been cut down from the gallows. And the hand, the skeletal hand that had so casually brushed aside the veils of atomic vapour, would reach towards her, palm outstretched to take her hand, bones clicking – rattling – with the movement. The faceless skull that had his hair, although there were only thin, windblown strands left, but they were his colour red, his laughingly carroty red, swaying before her, the mouth opening as if in greeting, the bugs that fell from the widening jaw—
Clare’s glasses fell with a clutter onto the yellow table top. Others in the canteen looked around in surprise and resumed their own conversations when she quickly donned the spectacles and tapped her cigarette into the ashtray.
Her eyes blurred behind the lenses and the gesture of fiercely inhaling cigarette smoke enabled her to keep some control. Simon, her husband, her constant friend and never-failing lover, was dead. The cruel dream only confirmed what she already knew, for there was a hurting loss inside her that transcended any need for evidence. It was intuition based – and she had to face it – on a pretty conclusive presumption. Simon, who was – had been – a surgeon, a saver of lives, a giver of hope, a cutter-away of malignancy, had been on duty at St Thomas’s on the day of the bombs, and she knew, she positively knew, he would have had no chance. The initial shockwave would have demolished the building totally. God rest you, Simon my love, I pray it was instant.
When she had woken screaming from the first nightmare, Kate had been there to hold her, to rock her in her arms until the shaking had calmed and the corpse image had retreated to the shadows just beyond her own rationality. Others had stirred in the small dormitory the few women survivors shared, but nightmares and screams in the night were commonplace; they turned on their sides and went back to sleep. She and Kate had shuffled their way down to the canteen where lights were always kept burning (others in the shelter worked on dimmers to conserve energy, and were kept to a minimum during the sleeping hours) and coffee always on the boil. They had talked for hours, Clare laying her particular ghost for that night, not then knowing it was to return on other occasions. Kate’s sympathy and her understanding were something to be cherished, their role-reversal a switch that Clare needed and appreciated. Tomorrow she could be stolid, unbreakable (if a little cynical) Dr Reynolds once more; that night she was a frightened, lonely woman who required a shoulder to cry on, a friend to listen.
It had been – how long? Four weeks? – trapped inside this sterile sanctum, an eternity of minutes and seconds, of vacuous moments, of torment-filled hours. Perhaps they were right in wanting to leave. Could life outside – could death – be worse than this limbo?
A man at a table nearby (she knew all their names, but couldn’t for the life of her remember his at that particular moment) was leaning forward and stroking the hand of a woman opposite. The woman, who had previously worked in the Exchange’s large switchboard area, smiled secretly at him, a plain smile that at another time would have held little lure for any man; things were different now, the balance had altered. Any female body was a prize, no matter how awkward, heavy or even advanced in years. The situation had caused jealousies to spring up, rivalry to rear. Its very explosiveness had had much to do with the mutiny – no, mutiny was too strong a word, assertion was better; the assertion of the masses (ha! funny word under the circumstances) over figurehead authority – for it had increased tension, set the men on edge.
The man nearby was running his fingers lightly up and down the fleshy part of the woman’s arm in an overtly sexual manner, and Clare turned her head away, not in disgust, or envy, but because the gesture inspired certain thoughts that she had tried to ignore. Thoughts that concerned her own sexuality.
The relationship between Simon and herself had been fulfilling on many levels, aesthetically and physically. He had never been a marvellous lover in certain terms, never a superstud, a cocksman, but he had been consistent and warming, and rarely, hardly ever, selfish. Their mutual professions were exhausting and demanding (and all-consuming, hence the lack of little Reynoldses) but they had their moments together, and oh such wonderful, giving moments. She had enjoyed their sex, but in the days, the weeks, following the disaster, she had not even thought of her physical needs, for nothing had stirred inside, not even in the loneliness of the sleepless nights, no hunger had caused any secret moistening, no breast tingle. Except in the dreams.
In the nightmares.
When her dead husband had come for her, had raised his skeletal hand to take hers, his body was burnt away, the parts not seared from his bones eaten by the squirming things that moved around inside him. Nothing left—
Except his genitals, the proud and erect penis that pushed from the tattered clothing and was the only part of him that was alive, that was not gristle, was not bitten into. The only part that throbbed with pulsing, life-giving blood.
She pushed the vision away, unnerved, more unsure, more vulnerable than at any other time. It was there in all the dreams, but never realized, until that small discreetly carnal gesture at the nearby table had released it. Oh God, it wasn’t that important, it wasn’t that important!
Clare knew that human survival instincts roused such feelings, that imminent death inspired procreation in the living, but why now, why had it taken this long? Because certain body appetites had eventually to be nourished, and particular tensions released. But that did not explain the obscenity of her dreams.
And then she understood, or at least thought she did. The world itself had become an obscenity, the things she loved and cherished destroyed or marred, somehow made impure. Contaminated. What was left to respect in the human race when you knew it had pulled the trigger on itself? What satisfaction from a work of art when it was reduced to ash? What joy in a cool breeze when killer particles floated with it? What sustenance from another body when it was cold and rotting? Yet the need was still there, subconsciously stimulated by the annihilation above. They said Jewish couples made love in the tightly-crammed railway carriages on their way to Auschwitz, perhaps their subliminal way of attempting to cheat Death. Roman noblemen had encouraged their gladiators in sexual activities the night before arena combat, those old-time voyeurs confident that the preceding evening’s sport would be as exciting as the following day’s, so rampant would their fighters be. And hadn’t snuff movies been the latest turn-on?
Clare tapped ash once more. She had even examined a corpse, impossible though it should have been, with a healthy erection.
She had to smile wryly at her own maudlin thoughts. Hell, why was she inventing excuses for her own naturally reviving horniness? She had gone a long time without and even grief could not hold it down forever. Ask any widow. Unfortunately, there was no man in the shelter she felt in
clined to sleep with. None at all. For, simply, she did not want a penis. She wanted warmth, loving, and touching. But not fucking.
A slight, though not alarming, bewilderment. A small amount of confusion in her emotions as she realized the only person she wanted for that warmth, that loving – and yes, that touching – was Kate Garner. The implication did not startle her although it troubled her a little, for lesbianism barely entered her thoughts – at least, it did not taint them. It was solace and caring she sought, and physical gratification played a minor, although integral, part. Doctor Indomitable, as she knew she had been dubbed, had her flaw (if it could be termed as such) and had at last exposed it to herself. She craved – no, too strong a word again – she wished, for comfort.
Sadly, she doubted it would be forthcoming, at least not wholly. Kate would provide comfort, but Clare was sure it could only be emotional, not physical. She smiled grimly; c’est le holocaust.
She stubbed out the cigarette, breaking it at the filter. Enough of this, Dr Reynolds. Others need your professional services. Time to close tight the self-scrutiny bottle; you can take a few snorts later, in private. Alistair Bryce needed checking again (oh God, how he would soon be suffering!) and there were one or two who needed their nightly sedation (perhaps on this particular night, she would allow herself a couple of pills). Luckily, the dosimeter badges of the three men who had returned from their venture into the grave (some joke, some pun!) new world had not registered any severe radiation, so Bryce’s wounds, if not his condition, should be controllable. If not, she held no reservations about helping him ease his way out. She would prescribe her own ‘Brompton Cocktail’, a euphoric killer made up of heroin, cocaine and gin. Her medical supplies lacked the cocaine, but there were other ingredients that could take its place. No, if there was no choice, she would not let Bryce die in agonizing pain. And then there was still some convincing of others to be done, explaining further to certain stupid individuals the wisdom of remaining insi—