‘Surely all the doors aren’t electronically controlled,’ said Kate.
‘I’m afraid they are.’ Dealey still did not look up. ‘Don’t you see? This was a top-secret establishment, the most critically restricted place in the country; exit and entry had to be centrally controlled.’
Ellison had become even more agitated. ‘There have to be other doors jammed open. Some of the people down here must have escaped, they couldn’t all have been killed.’
‘Escape into what? Into the radiation outside?’
‘I still don’t understand why the lighting still works,’ said Kate.
‘Light was the most valuable asset down here, the most protected by back-up systems. Imagine this place in total darkness.’
They tried not to.
Dealey went on. ‘The headquarters has four generators, each of which is designed to take over should the others malfunction. If number 1 fails, 2 automatically comes into operation; if 2 then fails, 3 takes over and so on to 4. It’s unlikely that all should shut down at the same time.’
Fairbank secured the axe in his belt more tightly. ‘I’ve got no faith in “unlikely” any more. And I think we’re wasting time here; let’s move on and out.’ He looked directly at Culver.
‘You know the place, Dealey,’ the pilot said. ‘Just how do we get out?’
‘There may be other blocked doors, as Ellison said. If not, we’ll have to go back the way we came.’
Kate shrivelled inwardly at the idea, for she had no wish to retread those same abhorrent corridors.
‘Let’s start looking, then,’ said Fairbank. ‘This place is troubling my disposition.’
They passed on and suddenly the foul mélange of smells became almost overpowering. Kate actually staggered at the noxious fumes and Culver had to reach out and steady her as he fought down his own nausea. It was Fairbank, grubby handkerchief held to his nose and mouth, who called them forward. He was peering into a wide opening from which came the now-familiar thrumming noise.
‘Take a look at this!’ he shouted, and there was both fear and excitement in his voice. ‘It’s bloody-well unbelievable.’
They approached, Culver taking the unwilling girl with him. He covered his face with a hand, nearly gagging when he drew close to the opening; the others were undergoing the same discomfort. He looked inside with considerable consternation, he, too, reluctant to witness more horror, and his eyes widened, his mouth dropped. His spine went rigid.
The ceiling of the generator room was high, accommodating the four huge machines and the largest diesel oil tank Culver had ever seen, its top disappearing into the roof itself. Overhead was a network of pipes, wiring and catwalks. The walls were uncovered brickwork with only piping and mounted instrument-gauges to break up the monotonous pattern. The lighting here was dim; several areas had their own individual sources of light, most of which were switched off. It was uncomfortably warm inside there, a factor that added to the putridness of the atmosphere.
The spacious floor area was an ocean of stiffened, black fur.
Kate reeled away, falling, but instantly scrambling to her feet, ready to run.
‘They’re dead!’ Culver shouted and she stopped. Still afraid, she went back to the four men.
It was an eerie and ugly sight. And, even though the piled bodies were those of a mortal enemy, a strangely pitiful one. The rats lay sprawled against and over each other, hundreds upon hundreds, many with jaws open, bared yellow incisors glinting dully, others with half-open eyes glaring wickedly, although glazedly, at the human intruders. Still more had managed to crawl along the rafters, the piping that networked the ceiling, and lay there as if ready to leap; but those, too, were lifeless, menacing only in appearance.
‘What the shit happened to them?’ said Ellison in a low breath.
The others were too stunned to reply. Slowly Culver walked into the generator room until he was at the very edge of the great mass of inanimate fur. A rat stared up at him with a rictus grin, taut-curled claws just inches away.
Fighting his repulsion, Culver kneeled close. Again, he saw dried blood staining the lower jaw. Culver rose, quickly scanning the humped-back shapes, as Dealey stood by his side.
‘I don’t understand,’ Culver said.
‘I think I do,’ the other man replied and Culver looked at him curiously.
‘They’re diseased,’ said Dealey. ‘The blood is from their saliva. They’ve been wiped out by some illness, a plague of some sort. With luck it’s killed them all.’ He leaned over to prod the nearest rodent with the tip of his gun barrel.
‘What kind of plague?’ A different wariness was disturbing Culver.
‘Impossible to tell. I could hazard a guess, though.’
‘I can take it.’
‘Possibly anthrax.’ He eased the carcase he was prodding over onto its back and made a small grunting sound. ‘No pustules, and this chap hasn’t any swelling of the abdomen, so I’ll guess again. I’d bet on it being pneumonic plague.’
Culver quickly stepped back.
Dealey straightened, but there was no overt concern in his expression. His shoulders were still slightly stooped as though the savage intrusion upon his sacred citadel, the surviving bulwark of his own authority, had finally dispirited him, made him realize just how fragile and ultimately vulnerable that authority had been. The destruction of the city had not shaken his faith, but the annihilation of those in power, his overlords who were to rule from this surrogate National Seat of Government, had devastated him. It was, to him, the loss of his own potency.
‘I thought only humans could catch pneumonic plague,’ said Culver, slowly backing away.
Dealey wearily shook his head. ‘No, animals too. They catch it from their own disease-carrying fleas.’
‘Then we . . .?’ Culver left the question unfinished.
‘We have yet another reason to leave immediately,’ Dealey said, nodding.
‘Bastards!’ Ellison suddenly screamed from the doorway. He raised the Sterling submachine gun to chest level and began firing into the mass of stiff-furred bodies, the brick-walled chamber erupting into a cauldron of explosive sounds. Black bodies leapt into the air as though still alive. Culver and Dealey hastily jumped to one side, while Kate clasped her hands to her ears, dropping the gun she had been holding. Unable to restrain his own fury, Fairbank joined in with Ellison, the small Ingram, its firing not as loud as the Sterling, bucking in his hands with its rapid recoil.
Culver let them spend their anger and hatred, watching the vermin’s dark bodies twitch and jump, their flesh torn open by the frenzy of bullets. Small limbs were severed, heads exploded. A two-foot long tail scythed into the air like a tossed snake. Ellison’s weapon emptied before Fairbank’s and he let it clatter to the ground in disgust. Fairbank ceased firing, a strange, icy grin on his face. The sudden silence was as startling as the thunder preceding it.
Culver walked back to them while Dealey stood and shook his head as if to clear it of echoes. ‘If you’re finished, let’s—’ the pilot began to say when Kate screamed.
‘They’re moving! They’re still alive!’
She was pointing over his shoulder and Culver whirled, his eyes searching the heaped bodies.
He saw no movement.
And then he did.
Parts of the dark ocean were shifting, black shapes slowly disengaging themselves from the whole, creeping forward, slowly, painfully. Resolutely. Yellow eyes glittered. Hissing sounds came from cruel mouths.
Dealey turned and began to retreat when he saw the converging shapes. Kate backed away to the other side of the hallway.
The creatures were dying, some stirred by the shattering noise, others by the bullets themselves thudding into their bodies. The nearest had reached the edge of the mass, was sliding over corpses onto the floor, its long, pointed head weaving from side to side, jagged teeth bared and bloodstained. Others slid down behind it.
Culver raised the Ingram and split the first
creature in two with a quick burst of bullets. The others came on, pushing themselves across the floor, sliding smoothly through the spreading blood of their companions. He fired again, the impact scattering the crawling vermin, and Fair-bank joined him, aiming his gun into the mass.
They stopped. Watched.
Still there were shapes moving forward.
‘What’s keeping them coming?’ yelled the engineer.
Culver’s reply was grimly calm, although he felt anything but. ‘Hate,’ he said. ‘They hate us as much as we hate them. Maybe more – they’re the ones who’ve always had to hide. Thank God there’s hardly any strength left in them.’
‘Let’s thank God from the outside, huh? They may be dying but they still want to get at us.’
They let one more burst rip into the undulating bodies, then hurried through the door.
‘I don’t want to waste time looking for doors that may not be open,’ Culver told the others. ‘So let’s just head back the way we came. Agreed?’
The others nodded assent and he took Kate by the wrist. ‘They can’t reach us,’ he assured her. ‘They’re dying, weak; we can easily outrun them.’
She gratefully leaned against him and the five of them began their journey back through the maze of corridors, Dealey in the lead, anxious to put as much distance between themselves and the plague-ridden vermin as possible. They closed their minds to the terrible sights they had to face once more, their tiredness gone for the moment, overcome by coursing adrenalin, and tried not to think of the deadly disease they had just come into contact with. Through the War Room they went, not pausing for a second, almost oblivious to the macabre scene around them. The mutant rats had been diminished, rendered helpless, but still they felt their deadly threat. They yearned to breathe clean, fresh air again, to empty their lungs of death’s odours; they needed to see the open sky, to feel a natural breeze brush their skin. They hurried, breaking into a run whenever a clear stretch of corridor, uncluttered by human remnants, presented itself. Through the shelter’s central core, slipping into the opening created by the two unfortunates who had jammed the door, into the various sections, stumbling here and there, but never stopping, never pausing to draw in breath.
Finally they reached the decontamination area. They sped through and found themselves in the vast vehicle pool.
Culver brought them to a halt. ‘Torches! We’ll need torches.’
‘And I know where I can find some.’ Fairbank dashed off, weaving between the strange-looking parked tanks and vehicles, heading for the small glass cubicle at the far end of the chamber by the doors.
‘You know, some of the survivors may have had a chance if they weren’t too panicked,’ Culver commented as they watched Fairbank disappear.
‘How?’ asked Dealey.
‘Inside these machines. They could have easily shut themselves in and waited out the rats.’
‘And then escaped into the tunnels?’
Culver shrugged. ‘It’s possible.’
‘But as we said before: the atmosphere would have been thick with radiation, especially if the attack took place at the very beginning.’
‘It was just a thought.’
Fairbank was returning with two heavy-duty flashlights of the kind that had been kept in the Kingsway complex. ‘Here you go,’ he said, handing one to Culver. ‘I spotted them earlier. Guess they kept them handy for emergencies.’
The group moved towards the wide door leading to the corridor, which in turn led to the smaller outer door to the underground bunker. Culver remembered how sickened they had all been on finding the headless corpse still clinging to the green metal door; the sight barely stirred them now. He allowed Fairbank to go through first, both men switching on the flashlights. The last to enter the dark, concrete corridor, he kept his hand on the door.
‘Do I close it, or not?’ he said to the others. ‘If I do, there’s no getting back inside.’
Ellison said, ‘If you don’t, any rats left alive can follow.’
Kate shuddered. ‘No matter what, I’m not going back inside that slaughterhouse.’
Culver looked at Dealey and Fairbank.
The former gave a small nod of his head and the engineer said, ‘Shut the fucker.’
He closed the door.
The corridor was bright with the flashlights, water on the floor reflecting the beams. The coolness of the atmosphere hit them like an incorporeal wave, turning perspiration into icy droplets; air-conditioning inside the shelter had kept the temperature low, but the difference in the outside tunnels was substantial. Each of them shivered. It was a relief to be away from the grim sight of the human massacre and the dead and dying creatures who were the perpetrators; but the chill darkness that surrounded them created its own sense of ominous menace.
Dealey broke the uneasy silence. ‘I suggest we use the first upwards outlet we come to, rather than look for the ladder we came down on.’
‘We don’t need a vote on it,’ said Fairbank, already leading the way down the corridor. He moved fast and was soon well ahead of the others.
‘Don’t get too far ahead!’ Culver called out. ‘Let’s stick together.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll stop at the first ladder,’ came the hollow-sounding reply.
Kate kept close to Culver, striving to keep her mind free of the day’s terrors, not contemplating what the rest of it might bring. They trudged down the dank corridor, splashing water, the noise they made amplified around them, the tenseness a shared, unifying sensation. They heard trickling water and passed over the drain they had discovered on their way into the shelter. Ellison’s breathing was coming in short, sharp gasps; with every step it felt like someone was jabbing his ribs with a knife. He needed to rest but, although he was sure the worst was over, he refused to consider the possibility while still in the confines of the damp passageways. Perhaps when they reached the next level they could take a break. Perhaps not. Dealey was last in line, constantly casting his eyes around the pitch blackness behind as though expecting the shelter door to be flung open and hordes of squealing rats to burst through. His imagination, thoroughly aroused by now, conjured up further, grotesque visions: in his mind’s eye he saw the corpses inside the shelter stirring, gathering up their scattered pieces, moulding them back into grotesque, barely-human forms, rising, many without heads, for they were lost forever, stumbling through the complex, bumping sightlessly into one another, scrabbling their way to the exits, humps of rotted flesh falling from them, staggering out into the dark corridors fringing the underground bunker, searching for those who still lived, seeking revenge for their own deaths on those who had survived . . .
He moaned aloud and tried to wipe the fatigue-induced visions from his mind with shaking hands. He had never thought it possible to experience a nightmare while still awake, for a dream to come so alive when one’s eyes were not closed. Sometimes, though, reality created the worst living nightmares.
Running footsteps ahead, coming towards them. A blinding light, freezing them in its glare like fear-struck rabbits paralysed by on-coming headlights.
Fairbank almost ran into Culver.
The engineer leaned against the wall, shining the light back in the direction he had come. He was gasping for breath. ‘They’re ahead of us,’ he managed to say. ‘I heard them squealing, moving around. They’re above us, too, take a listen!’
They waited and the noise grew. Slithering sounds. Scratching. Squealing. Coming from the corridor ahead of them. And then, just faintly, they heard similar noises overhead. They became louder, exaggerated by the acoustics of the passageways.
‘Back!’ Culver said, pushing at Kate to make her move.
‘Back where?’ Ellison shouted. ‘We can’t get back into the shelter! We’re trapped here!’
Culver and Fairbank, shoulder to shoulder in the narrow confines, pointed the Ingrams and flashlights into the tunnel ahead, waiting for the first sighting. It soon came.
They swarmed from the
darkness just beyond the range of the beams, a squealing thronging multitude of black-furred beasts, scurrying forward into the glare, eyes gleaming. The vermin filled the corridor, a flowing stream of darkness.
Culver and Fairbank opened fire at the same time, bringing the rush to a sudden, screeching halt. Rats twisted in the air to land on the backs of others, who were themselves in death-throes. Yet more took their place, more advanced, bodies snaking low to the floor, powerful haunches thrusting them forward. Culver stopped firing for a moment to yell at the two men and the girl.
‘I told you – move back!’
They did, slowly, still watching over Culver’s and Fair-bank’s shoulders.
The advance stopped momentarily and the two men rested their weapons. Bloodied creatures wriggled on the floor no more than fifty yards away.
‘Steve!’ Kate was near to breaking. ‘There’s nowhere to go! It’s hopeless!’
‘Find the drain,’ he said to them. ‘It can’t be far behind us. Find it quickly.’
More shadows rushed forward and the two men opened fire again. Bullets ricocheted off the walls, showering sparks, creating a bedlam of flashes and leaping animals.
‘Give us one of the lights!’ Ellison was screaming in panic.
Without pausing, Culver handed his flashlight over. Ellison grabbed it and stumbled away, aiming the beam into the puddles at their feet. The shooting stopped. The group continued their retreat.
‘Here they come again,’ Fairbank warned. The rats were relentless in their attack, jumping over the backs of their injured companions, only the narrowness of the passageway itself preventing the group of survivors from being overwhelmed. Both Culver and Fairbank had the same question in mind: How much ammunition did they have left?
‘It’s here, I’ve found it!’ Ellison called out.
The rats were still huddling together in the full glare of the torches, hemmed in by the rough walls, neither retreating nor advancing. Culver told Fairbank to raise the beam above ground level for a moment. The two men drew in sharp breaths when the light travelled over the quivering humped backs, for the black creatures stretched far away into the tunnel, well beyond its curve.