I took the oil lamp from him, a red thing with four windows and a stiff hook at the top to hold it by. It must’ve belonged to a station guard or someone who used the place as a regular shelter during the war, and the question was, would it still function or was it dry and useless? Although charred a dark brown, the wick looked okay, and I gave the lamp a shake close to my ear, listening for oil. Liquid slurped around inside.
Okay. No time to try it now, but it’d come in handy later. Stern had joined us and as I returned the lamp to him the station brightened and sharp, fresh heat washed over us. We all ducked, but the flare-up was short, as if maybe one of those portable cookers had exploded, adding to the conflagration. The smoke went crazy for a while, billowing down the curved walls in murky waves, swirling around us so that Muriel and I were left blinded and reeling around in its choking thickness.
Something caught hold of me and started pushing, and it took a moment for me to realize it was either the German or Cissie, both of them protected from the worst of the smoke by their gas masks. Bent double and half-suffocated, I allowed myself to be led. We staggered into the tunnel, using the rails at our feet as guides, the hand at my elbow firm, supporting, keeping me upright when I stumbled, dragging me onwards when a coughing fit threatened collapse. From the strength of the grip I guessed it was the German holding on to me and would’ve shrugged him off if I hadn’t been too busy retching.
Then the smoke thinned out and I could see again. I rubbed my eyes and realized it was darker, much darker here, and cooler too. We were well inside the tunnel and up ahead it was so black we could have been on the slip road to Hades. It was damp too, as if water was seeping through the old, neglected brickwork, the dank, musty smell strong enough to compete with the drifting smoke and fumes from the station.
I leaned on my knees and coughed up the dust I’d swallowed, blinking my eyes to get rid of the sting, wishing I had a gallon of beer to soothe my raw throat.
‘Are you ready to walk on?’ The German had removed his mask once more and was squinting anxiously at the tunnel’s arched entrance and the advancing flames beyond.
‘Sure, I’m okay,’ I said, running a sleeve across my mouth, no gratitude implied.
Cissie ceased tending her friend for a moment to say something. She, too, took off her mask when she realized we hadn’t understood a word, and tried again.
‘I said, where does this tunnel go to?’
‘What the hell does it matter right now?’ I replied. ‘You think we should wait for the fire?’
The light was shining right on her and I watched her lips tighten, her eyes blaze.
‘Who the –’ she began.
‘Cissie, he’s right. We must keep going.’ Muriel was still sagging slightly, one hand on Cissie’s shoulder for support. She held a tiny handkerchief, not much bigger than a Wills cigarette card, to her mouth, and she was still shaking, little cough-spasms hunching her shoulders.
Cissie clamped her jaw tight, but the annoyance was still there in her eyes. When she spoke again, she barely parted her teeth. ‘All right. But, mister, you and me are falling out fast.’
I couldn’t help it, it wasn’t the time, but I grinned back at her. She looked good and mad, her face all sooted up, big hazel eyes glaring, but I saw now she was young, maybe twenty, twenty-one, and at that moment she had the angrystern look of a mother whose kid was gonna get one hell of a beating when she got him home. I guess my grin got her more riled, because she stomped off into the shadows ahead without waiting for any of us.
Muriel threw me a reproving look and set off after her. The German followed without comment, lamp in one hand, mask in the other.
My shrug was for my own benefit – there was no one else around – and I limped after them, shining the dismal light into the darkness ahead to help them find their way. I was soon in the lead again, warning the others of the ‘obstacles’ laid between and across the tracks whenever I came upon them. The atmosphere this far along wasn’t healthy, but it was breathable, and I assumed some of the smoke was escaping through airshafts that we couldn’t see. The ground began to dip and it wasn’t long before we were treading through puddles, and then what felt like a shallow, stagnant pool, the water filthy black and oily in the light from the flashlight A lot of these tunnels had been flooded during last year’s awful winter and I guess we were lucky most of the water had drained away from this one. In the distance behind us we could hear the muted rumple of the fire, but when I looked back I could only see a dull, reddish tinge to the darkness, a soft kind of hue that pulsated almost benignly; somewhere along the way we had rounded a slight curve in the tunnel.
Abruptly, the flashlight dimmed even more, revived, then settled at a weaker level than before. The batteries were fading fast. I brought my little troop to a halt.
‘Let’s take a look at that lamp,’ I said to the German.
‘By all means.’ Stern came forward and passed me the square-shaped oil lamp. ‘And perhaps you will now tell us where this tunnel leads to and how long our journey will be.’
His English was almost perfect, but the will sounded like vill and the where like vare – he spoke like Conrad Veidt in one of those Nazi spy propaganda movies – and it steamed me up plenty. I held tight though, biding my time.
Lifting one of the glass windows at the side of the lamp I shone the light directly at the wick inside. It looked okay, enough there to burn. As I passed the flashlight over to Stern and searched for my Zippo with my free hand, I told them about the tunnel and where it would take us.
‘And how do you know these people who chased us will not be waiting there for us to emerge?’
Vaiting there. My jaw muscles clenched.
Cissie surprised me by speaking up. ‘They wouldn’t know which tunnel we took. Plenty of Tube lines run through Holborn – we could come up anywhere.’
‘She’s right.’ I found the lighter and flicked it on. ‘Besides, they probably think they got us with the fire.’ I held the small flame up to see their faces. Muriel looked about ready to fold.
‘But how long is this tunnel?’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘I don’t know if…’
‘You’ll make it. It’s the shortest route we could’ve taken.’
‘For a Yank you seem to know your way around.’ There was still some resentment in Cissie’s voice, as well as some breathlessness.
‘I had a good guide once. Someone who was proud of her city.’
Silence then from the girls; I guess they’d caught something in my tone. But the German was becoming agitated.
‘Then, as you say, we must keep moving. This place is not good.’
I ignored him, tilting the lamp and touching the lighter flame to the wick. Before it had the chance to ignite, faint sounds came to us, too distant to make out what they were. The sounds were growing louder though.
We all looked in the direction of the fire.
I’d heard this kind of noise in the past, but couldn’t remember where or when. The volume was turning up, as if the source was drawing closer. A hand closed around my arm and I found Muriel beside me, body tensed rigid, the whites of her eyes shining dully in the gloom. Then it came to me, where I’d heard such a racket before.
Although there were fewer animals kept in the London Zoo during the Blitz years of the war, the more dangerous kind even being put down in case they escaped while an air raid was in progress, Sally had taken me there more than once when I was on leave, enjoying the sight of some of those exotic creatures more than I did, I think. One time we’d wandered into an aviary and something had set the birds off – a low-flying aircraft, as I recall. The explosion of noise was incredible, all those different species of bird splitting the air with their gabble – a bedlam medley of panic, anger, fright, and maybe just plain comfort calls to their partners, who knows? We’d clamped our hands over our ears, but the hullabaloo had still come through, so we ran out of there laughing – we laughed at a lot of things in those days – leaving the bi
rds to their riot. Even from a distance we could hear them, kicking up hell, screeching their tiny lungs out
And that was the kind of sound I was hearing now. Not the same, because birds didn’t live in underground passages, never did, never would. No, these sounds were similar, but different. Someone ran an ice cube up my spine.
Muriel pressed against me and I felt her draw in a sharp breath. Cissie moved closer to the both of us.
Squealing, that’s what it was. Not birds’ chittering. Squealing. Like high-pitched screams. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of them.
The light down the tunnel grew brighter. Fluttered, kind of. And then the first few appeared.
Small fireballs coming our way. Little units of run-amok blazes. Lighting the darkness as they came.
4
‘WHAT ARE THEY?’
Muriel’s hold on me was painful, but I ignored it.
‘Move back!’ I yelled, following my own advice and dragging the girl with me. It was hard to take our eyes off the fiery horde – there was something mesmeric about these miniature infernos, some of them rising up the walls and falling back when they got so far, others spinning in the air to land on the tracks where they burned like tiny beacons, but most streaking towards us as if launched from some ancient war machine – and soon we were tripping over the human remains hidden in the darkness. That’s when we wised up and ran like hell, with Cissie and the German in the lead. An anxious backward glance told me it was a race we could never win – the fireballs were nearly on us. I’d thought we could outrun ‘em, that they’d be consumed by the fires that rode their backs long before they could catch up with us, but I was wrong, they kept coming and we kept running.
Dirty water splashed at our feet as high-pitched squeals mocked our flight. In the unsteady and almost useless light of the flashlight carried by the German I could see shadows here and there along the tunnel walls; it didn’t take long for me to figure out they were safety recesses used by Underground workers to slip into whenever a train went by. Stern had noticed them too; he suddenly stopped and threw himself into one.
It would have left us almost blind if the other lights hadn’t closed in on us. I reached forward for Cissie, caught hold, and pushed both her and Muriel into the nearest opening, crowding in with them and pressing them against the back wall. I could feel them trembling, and Christ, I was shaking some myself.
The little burning creatures sped by, screeching their agony, the water they rushed through too shallow to douse the flames on their backs. Some of them rolled over so that steam and smoke hissed from their hides; they squirmed in front of us, shrieks echoing around the brick walls, until their roasted bodies gave up and lay still, the occasional twitch nothing more than their final death-throes. Muriel turned away and Cissie buried her head into my shoulder when they both realized what these creatures were.
But I took pleasure in watching the rats burn. I may have even smiled there in the flickering shadows as their fire-ravaged bodies writhed and their thin screams tore through the darkness, and their sharp, ugly snouts stretched and their jaws yawed, exposing razor teeth, and their clawed limbs quivered until they crisped and flamed and became twisted, blackened stumps. Yeah, I’m sure I smiled, and I remembered too, remembered what these surviving scavengers had done, what they’d fed on all these years…
Some died in front of us, others scurried onwards, still aflame, dying as they ran, lighting the tunnel ahead as if showing us the way. I kicked out at one that came too close, sending it toppling backwards, flames turned to smoke by the black water, but extinguished too late to save it. The rat spasmed, twitched, and I wanted to blast it with the Colt – I wanted to blast all of them – not out of mercy but out of revulsion, loathing, hating the creature in the way I hated the German, both of them species of the same kind, vermin who’d lost the right to walk this earth.
But I held still, closing down my emotions. It wasn’t easy – it never had been – but I coped.
Pretty soon the rats’ death-wails became fainter, faded altogether, and their thrashing lessened, finally stopped. Their bodies lay scattered along the tracks, small funeral pyres that slowly dimmed, burning themselves out until only a few feeble blazes sputtered there in the dusk. We could still hear the distant sounds of those which had fled further into the tunnel, but eventually only the stink remained. Hell, the air down here was foul enough, all ventilation systems long since quit and no trains left to push out the staleness as they passed through; now, with drifting smoke and the stench of cooked meat, the atmosphere was almost unbreathable.
I felt Muriel sobbing behind me, the sounds suppressed but the body jerks uncontrolled, and the other one, Cissie, lifted her head from my shoulder and leaned back against the side of the alcove.
‘It’s all right, Mu,’ she said, rubbing her friend’s back with a comforting hand. ‘We’re safe now, it’s all over.’
There was no point in persuading her otherwise.
The German stepped back into view, the flashlight in his hand not much more than an orange orb, its beam barely penetrating the darkness. I heard him coughing and watched as the dull ball of light danced in the air.
Joining him on the track I fumbled for the Zippo, found it and crouched, balancing the lamp on a rail as I did so. I lifted the lamp’s glass side and flicked on the lighter.
‘We cannot linger here,’ the German said between coughs. ‘We shall be overcome if we do not find a way out soon.’
‘There’s only one way, and that’s straight ahead,’ I answered, putting flame to wick. It didn’t catch at first, so I held the lighter there, concentrating hard, as if serious contemplation would encourage the waxed cord to kindle. Eventually the flame took and the light grew bright. I grunted, glad that something was going my way; it’d been an untidy day so far.
The sound of Muriel’s weeping distracted me and I held the lamp towards the nook where the two women still sheltered. Cissie was holding her weeping friend in her arms, patting her back soothingly and murmuring comforts.
‘Please tell them there is no time for this.’
The German obviously believed they would take more notice of an ally than a foe. Probably – I wanted to think so – he was right.
‘Listen,’ I said, calmly as I could, ‘we gotta go. The fire might not reach us here, but smoke’s gonna draw through the tunnel like a chimney, despite any unblocked airshafts along the way. It’s not far to the next station – twenny minutes’ walk at most, I figure, maybe less – so let’s get going and save the bawling for later.’
I hadn’t meant that last remark to sound harsh – really – but I guess it came out that way. Cissie fixed me with a stony look.
‘Can’t you see she’s had enough?’ she said to me and I nodded in agreement.
‘Lady, the whole goddamn world’s had enough, but still it goes on. Now you can decide for yourselves – stay here and choke to death, or follow me. ‘S up to you.’
I turned away and stepped over a smouldering rodent in the water at my feet, passing by the German, who stood there, stiff-faced and hard as rock. I soon heard his footsteps splashing after me.
‘You bastards.’
It was coldly said, no anger and scarcely a trace of resentment in Cissie’s voice. Just a statement of fact, I suppose you’d say, and not far wrong at that.
I kept going, holding the lamp high, eyes fixed on the way ahead, or at least as far as I could see. There were still small flames moving away from us in the distance, some of those vermin refusing to lay down and die, and I couldn’t help wondering how many of these creatures had survived the Blood Death, living on to enjoy the easy pickings of the aftermath. The medics and scientists had known the blood groupings of animals were not the same as humans, yet still the death rate was comparable to that of mankind’s; some research on our differences might have helped, but there’d been no time, no time at all.
I snapped back into the here and now when I heard the two women plodding through the water
behind us. To my relief the sobs had stopped and Cissie was keeping her opinions of me and the Kraut to herself. The flashlight finally gave up the ghost, its light fading to nothing, and Stern tossed it away with a muttered comment that was probably a curse in German. The clatter the metal flashlight made as it bounced off the wall caused us all to jump and although the thought of shooting him there and then was appealing, I kept the Colt tucked inside the jacket holster and waded onwards.
Pretty soon the water level had dropped away and only separate puddles spread before us, but the atmosphere itself had become even more foul. Smoke had been with us all the way but in the main had stayed close to the roof; now it was curling downwards, even coming back at us as if something was blocking the tunnel up ahead. It became harder to breathe and I told Stern to give his gas mask to Muriel, advising Cissie to put hers on too.
‘I lost it back there,’ she informed me stiffly as though really it was none of my business. ‘I don’t think they help very much anyway,’ she added, just to let me know she felt no remorse.
Well, they were pretty handy when we were in the station, I thought, but I wasn’t going to argue. I didn’t have the energy.
Stern waited for Muriel to catch up, then handed her his mask. ‘If the smoke becomes too much…’ he said, and she nodded gratefully.
I looked to the front again and had gone no more’n a couple of yards before I saw what was blocking the tunnel. Some of the smoke was rising over the top of the train, more seeping around its sides; but a lot of it was coming straight back at us.
Waving a hand in front of me in a vain attempt to clear the way a little, I told the others about the blockage. It took a few seconds to reach the train and I stood on tiptoe to peer up into its closet-sized cab, debating whether or not to climb inside and use the carriages themselves to travel through the next part of the tunnel. The others gathered behind me and I went round to the side, holding the lamp high enough for me to see into the windows.