"‘48" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert James)

3

MURIEL WAS WATCHING ME as the others turned in the direction I was pointing. Our eyes locked and a faint line appeared in her otherwise smooth brow. There was a question in her gaze.

It was Cissie who put the question though. ‘The Underground? You want us to go down there?’

Stern was looking puzzled too.

‘They’ll never follow us,’ I said, already moving towards the entrance.

‘Of course they will,’ Cissie snapped back. ‘And then we’ll be trapped.’

I paused, taking in all three of them. ‘Believe me, they won’t come after us.’

A crash of metal against metal as the Bedford barged past a black Austin, tearing off the little car’s white-painted fender in the process.

‘If you want to stay alive, get moving!’ I yelled, and I guess the urgency – and the fear – in my voice convinced them. A single gunshot from the approaching truck was the only other encouragement they needed. They ran, following me.

Although limping slightly, I was in no serious pain, and was soon inside the cool, twilight ticket hall of Holborn Underground Station. I let the others pass me and took a peek out into the street. The army truck was only twenty yards or so away, now pulling to a screeching halt.

I ducked back into the shadows and made my way towards the ticket office, stepping over dark shapes lying there in the half-light, ignoring them and hoping my new acquaintances were doing the same. The ticket office was a solitary booth erected in front of the opening to the escalators and as I reached for the door I called out: ‘Grab a mask each. You’re gonna need ‘em.’

The two girls just gawked at me as I yanked open the door, but Stern had caught on; he’d already picked up a small cardboard box from the floor and was busy opening it. He pulled out a gas mask and handed it to Muriel. As I went into the booth he was looking around for more.

A suit of bones sat slumped on a high stool inside the ticket booth, the skull with its leathery skin and empty eye sockets resting sideways on the narrow counter in front of it, thin, mummified hands stretched towards the small pay-window as if reaching for fare money. Long strands of greyish hair hung loose from the tan-coloured head and yellowed dentures lay on the shelf at the entrance of the open mouth, this itself guarded by the few remaining teeth, exposed and gumless, like crooked tombstones before a black vault. I was glad the light was poor, everything muted, hard to see.

I’d expected the stench to be worse, but I guess the corruption had run its course long before, the smells of that decay slowly fading, escaping through the ticket window and vents, until only a staleness remained, unpleasant, cloying, but no big deal. I’d say this ticket clerk had been one of the lucky ones: the Blood Death had hit him fast, killing him where he sat while others fled around him, so that the booth had become his personal mausoleum, his solitary, unviolated sepulchre. His mouldering had been his own private affair.

It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for. I knew the clerk would have kept a flashlight or lamp close at hand for emergencies and, of course, the Blackout itself. It was a heavy chrome flashlight and I found it in a small corner cupboard just inside the door. I wasn’t surprised when I flicked it on and nothing happened. Okay, new batteries. I started pulling out drawers, opening more cupboards, and soon found a whole box of unwrapped Ever Readys. It took only seconds to eject the old ones from the flashlight and push in the new, and I held my breath as I switched on. A dim circle of light appeared at the other end of the ticket office and I let my breath go in a quick sigh of relief, the batteries were weak, but they’d do. I was out of the booth and shoving the flashlight into the German’s hand in an instant.

In the street outside I could see the Bedford truck, Blackshirts jumping down into the road from its back.

‘Gimme the gun,’ I barked at Stern and for a second he pulled away, holding the Colt out of reach, the flashlight in his other hand.

‘It’s not loaded, for Christ’s sake!’ I grabbed it from him.

By the time the first Blackshirt had reached the kerb just yards from the entrance I’d inserted a new clip and fired off a warning shot. The Blackshirt, and the others following him, ducked instinctively and changed direction, spreading out to take cover behind the walls beside the entrance. Because the Underground station was on a corner there were two accesses, and I hoped they wouldn’t have the sense to use the second, smaller one to our right. Two flanks I didn’t think I could handle.

‘Take the girls down!’ I shouted, indicating the escalators behind the barriers. ‘Get ‘em in the subway and wait for me there.’ I gave the Blackshirts another blast to keep them occupied.

‘Come with us,’ begged Cissie as Stern began pushing her and Muriel towards the escalators.

‘Soon as I can!’ I shouted back, then dodged behind the booth to fire off another couple of shots. The Blackshirts started to return fire, but they weren’t taking time to aim, afraid of exposing themselves for more than a split second. Funny thing when you’re living on borrowed time, as these goons outside were – life becomes even more precious. I knew they weren’t going to rush me, that I could hold ‘em there for a while; but sooner or later they’d figure a way to flush me out

I took some well-spaced potshots, just enough to keep their heads down without wasting ammunition, giving the German and the girls time to get downstairs (hoping they’d have the nerve to carry on once they realized what they were descending into). After that I’d have my own problem: making a break for it with no one to cover me.

Well, that problem kind of solved itself.

It happened fast, and it happened without warning. One minute the Blackshirts were keeping out of sight, taking turns to spray bullets my way, filling the ticket hall with thunder, the next the black Humber Estate was roaring through the entrance, hurtling towards me, guns blazing from its side windows like in one of those gangster movies.

I backed away fast, firing from the hip, turning when the Humber crashed into the ticket office and limping towards the barriers, leaping over the nearest rail, using my left hand for support, barely breaking stride on the other side. The Humber had lurched sideways when it hit the solid booth, swinging round and throwing its passengers against one another. Its bodywork hid me from more Blackshirts pouring through the entrance after it, giving me time to reach the top of the frozen stairways.

I didn’t need to look to know what lay on those stairs – I’d used another subway as a means of escape almost three years ago and had never wanted to repeat the experience. I also knew the Blackshirts wouldn’t follow me down there – they didn’t have the balls for it. But the human debris that littered the escalator – all those dead, rotted corpses of men, women and children who’d tried to flee the Blood Death, thinking that the disease, the toxins, the chemicals, the goddamn visitation, whatever it was that Hitler had sent over in his revenge rockets, would never reach them in the tunnels beneath the city – I knew they’d be blocking the stairways, that they’d perished as they ran, and their skeletal limbs would now snag me as I went by, their heaped bodies would bar my way, forcing me to stumble through or to climb over them, giving the gunmen above time to find me in the darkness with a lucky bullet, or a hail of lucky bullets, and slow me down for good. So I forgot about taking the stairs.

I leapt up onto the centre ramp between the escalators and slid down on my butt, kicking aside any stiffs slumped over the rail as I went, gliding down like a kid on a sleigh, slowing myself by grabbing the middle lamp columns, controlling the descent just enough to keep me from taking a tumble.

Below I could see the dim light of the flashlight, the others waiting for me, the German having horse sense enough not to direct the beam at me. Glass from one of the dead lamps exploded as I swept by, showering me with fragments, and the light at the bottom of the stairs instantly vanished. I hoped Stern hadn’t been hit (I had my own plans for him), but had taken the two girls into the safety of one of the platform entrances. I lost control then, plummeting faster than I could cope with, my trunk trying to overtake my legs so that I began to turn. More bullets split the air, keeping me company, but I must have been just about invisible as I slid further into the blackness. The automatic was back inside my jacket holster, where I’d shoved it before the ride, and I clamped a wrist against it as I began to spin off the ramp. The next thing I knew I was falling, toppling off the slide and onto the stairs, soft (but brittle) things there breaking my fall, cushioning the rest of my uncontrolled descent.

Probably I cried out – I don’t recall – as I tumbled down, rolling onto things that seemed to collapse at my touch, until I arrived at the bottom in an avalanche of corpses.

I lay there, breathless and dizzy: and horrified. Something scratchy brushed against my cheek and I didn’t like to guess what. The thought came to me anyway and I panicked, thrashing out at the darkness, pushing the dried husk away and kicking at anything within kicking distance. The smell whacked me then, and I choked, gagged, fought back the swelling nausea. Until I realized it was all in my mind.

Sure, the air down there in that huge mausoleum was foul, but it had more to do with staleness than rotting bodies. The corruption had run its course, you see, and the corpses had deteriorated as much as they ever would under these dry and stagnant conditions. When I’d first ventured into one of these places it had been in the early months after the holocaust and the dead were still decomposing, the stench unbearable; I should have understood by now that once the organs and internal body tissue have putrefied and finally disintegrated, there’s little else that can happen – the body can only become a mummified shell. No, the stench had been in my mind, what I’d expected. And the horror was not in the atmosphere, but in the presence of so many cadavers gathered together in this black void.

‘Hoke. Can you hear me? We are over here.’

It sounded like the German’s voice, but it was muffled, distorted by the gas mask the speaker was wearing. The light, dim and comfortless, was coming from a passage not far away.

‘Are you hit?’

Ignoring him, I picked myself up and, still crouched, peeked over the curved stair rail at the light from the top of the escalators. Bright flashes and ear-deafening explosions sent me scrabbling towards the light, the sounds amplified by the tiled walls. Vague heaps on the floor did their damnedest to trip me as I went and other bundles I knocked into, carcasses locked tight in sitting or kneeling positions, toppled over to lay there in those same attitudes of rapid death. Bullets ricocheted off walls or found softer targets around me and, with only a few feet to go, I took a desperate dive into the passageway where the German and the two girls were hiding. I lay there sprawled and gasping bad air and would have stayed that way a lot longer if Cissie hadn’t knelt beside me and pulled at my shoulder. She said something, but it was difficult to understand because of her mask. She tried again and I shook my head.

‘No, they didn’t hit me,’ I told her. I heaved myself up and the effort seemed to be getting harder each time I made it.

The light, weak though it was, hurt my eyes and I pushed the flashlight away. In its beam I could make out more bodies filling the passageway and I wondered if the girls would have the nerve to journey among them. Even though the stench was nowhere as bad as I thought it would be, I decided not to tell them they didn’t need the masks. Their vision would be restricted through the lenses, especially in this poor light, and the gas masks might even make them feel insulated from what lay around them. I had no idea if my thinking was correct, but what the hell, it didn’t matter.

‘Let’s get away from here, fast as we can,’ I said to Stern, taking the flashlight from him. Like before with the gun, there was some resistance, but it was minimal and quickly over.

‘Are they following us?’ he asked, his mask, with its stubby filter unit and big circular eye-pieces making him resemble a creature from another world.

‘No, they won’t come down here,’ I said, looking at the two girls.

‘How can you be sure?’ His voice was distant behind the mask, but his anxiety was plain enough.

‘Maybe they’re afraid of ghosts,’ I replied. Stupid. The girls clutched each other. ‘Come on,’ I added hastily, ‘let’s get away from the noise.’

In fact, the Blackshirts had already given up shooting, although we could hear their shouts, hollow and mocking, drifting down and finding us where we hid. I moved on, the others in tow, negotiating a passage through the tangled heaps and ignoring the noises from behind us. We soon came to a steep stairway, more bodies strewn over the steps.

‘Where are we going?’

The question might have come from Muriel, but it was difficult to tell with the masks. Besides, I was ahead of them, concentrating on finding space for my feet on the steps. For the moment I didn’t want to answer her.

When I reached the bottom I shone the light back at the trio, keeping it at their feet so they could find a way through. A leathered head, shrunken and brown, seemed to follow their passing with empty eye sockets; an arm, only remnants of dried gristle clinging to its hand and wrist, slithered down a step or two, disturbed by their progress, a single grey finger pointing the way. I tried to keep these sights from them, but they needed the low light so they wouldn’t trip, wouldn’t fall headlong into the human garbage around them.

Cissie was in the lead, sensible flat-heeled, crêpe rubbersoled shoes shifting through the debris, arms raised and fists clenched for balance. For the first time I noticed she was wearing dark slacks – blue, I think – and that while not as slim as the other girl, her figure was trim enough, attractive even. Jesus, I had been too long on my own – this was hardly the moment for that kind of appreciation. I guess I must have lost concentration, because the light wavered and Cissie lost her footing. With a tiny yelp she came toppling towards me.

I caught her easily and held her there in my arms until her panic subsided. She held on to me too and seemed reluctant to let go.

She touched my face. ‘Why aren’t you wearing a mask?’ she asked, voice muffled and eyes vague behind the misted glass of her own mask.

I made a decision. It’d be tougher for them, but we’d all make better headway if they could see more clearly. ‘You can take your gas masks off,’ I said, pulling her aside so that I could direct the beam back onto the stairs. I still held on to her with one arm.

‘What did you say?’ Muriel was frozen there in the light.

‘I said you can take off the masks,’ I repeated more loudly.

‘But the…’ Cissie shook her head.

‘It isn’t so bad. These bodies decomposed a long time ago.’

She pulled off her mask and stiffened when she breathed in the stale, tainted air. The snood at the back of her hair had come loose with the mask and she pulled it away entirely, shaking her head so that her locks swung free around her face. By the time Muriel joined us, Cissie had become more used to the atmosphere; or at least, had become less tense. Fortunately, beyond the circle of light from the flashlight it was too dark for her to take in very much. Muriel tugged off her mask as well and I watched her face wrinkle as she gasped in the air.

‘Some light would be helpful.’ The German, his gas mask already removed and hanging by his side, was watching us from midway down the stairs. He came down swiftly when I swung the beam in his direction.

Close to me, he said: ‘What is your plan? Do we wait here until they are gone?’

His English was almost perfect, but again that v instead of a w, so aggravatingly consistent, had the muscles in my chest tightening, my anger boiling towards eruption. I barely held it in check.

But it wasn’t only hatred for this German, this relic of the Master Race, that kept me silent. I didn’t want to make decisions for these people. I was too used to being on my own, making choices for myself (Cagney was of an independent kind of nature). I didn’t want anyone depending on me.

‘Hoke, come on, tell us what we should do.’ Cissie was tugging at my jacket.

I mentally cursed them for coming into my life, even though they’d saved it. ‘We could wait them out,’ I said finally, ‘or we could go into the tunnels.’

‘No!’ Muriel’s reaction had a lick of hysteria to it. ‘We can’t go any further. I won’t. The platforms…’

We all knew what she meant.

‘I’m with her,’ Cissie agreed. ‘God, this is bad enough, but what else could be in there?’ She indicated the platform entrance.

Only plenty more of the same, I was about to say when something happened that took away any choice. From a distance, up the stairs and back along the passageway, there came the sound of breaking glass instantly followed by a kind of muffled whoomph. Then another: same sound, smashed glass followed by that shushed explosion of air. As soon as a bright orange glow lit up the top of the stairs I knew what those sounds were.

‘They’re using gasoline bombs,’ I said almost to myself.

The Blackshirts had tried to flush me out before with these home-made bombs of bottles filled with fuel, a rag stuck into the neck, then set alight, but I’d always been lucky – and too fast. They’d either made them quickly, scavenging bottles from the street or shops, syphoning off gasoline from fuel tanks of vehicles, or they’d brought the cocktails ready-made with them. I thought I heard their taunts, their voices carrying easily down the funnel of the stairway, but the fire had already taken on its own life, passing from one dried husk-like body to the next, incinerating each one as it went along, its muffled roar coming our way. Popping sounds reached us, sharp, explosive reports, as bones cracked and gases ignited. The fire had an abundance of fuel to feed on, a trail of kindling that led directly to us.

‘Okay, there’s your answer,’ I told them. ‘We can’t stay here.’

‘But where can we go?’ Cissie wasn’t fooling anybody – we all knew where.

‘Like I said, into the tunnels.’

I turned away, tired of the argument It was their decision now.

A huge billow of black smoke swept down the stairs towards us and as I glanced up I saw the flames were not far behind. Reflections flickered on the walls and waves of heat washed over us. Almost as an afterthought I checked the big enamel route map at our backs, the flashlight hardly necessary, and it told me what I needed to know. The girls began coughing as more smoke spilled down the stairway, rolling off the ceiling and curling down the walls.

‘Put your masks back on,’ I ordered, and they did as they were told, following me as I backed out onto the platform. But the German had dropped his mask on the stairs and instead of finding another – there were plenty of masked corpses around us – he went back to retrieve it. A few strides took him halfway up the stairs, and as he grabbed it the first real flames appeared above him. Bodies around him appeared to twitch and flinch in the unstable light, as if the advancing firestorm was making them uneasy. An illusion, though; macabre, and scary, but no more than a trick of the light. Their clothes began to smoulder.

I gave Stern a warning shout, but it was already too late. As he straightened, pulling on the gas mask as he did so, there was an explosion of fire behind him, trapped gases and flammable material joining forces to give the inferno a special boost. I’m not sure if the German jumped instinctively, or the blast of scorching air threw him forward, but suddenly he was airborne, arms outstretched, back arched.

He was lucky – the flames never got the chance to engulf him completely. He landed on the floor, his jacket alight, and I rushed forward to roll him over, pinning him against the tiles and smothering the flames. Stern didn’t struggle; he seemed to know exactly what I was doing. If he hadn’t been a Kraut, I might have admired his nerve.

The heat from the stairs was unbearable as I dragged him over bodies out onto the platform, the flames above us spreading under the roof, rolling down like a raging river of fire, the ceiling its bed, its torrent of boiling yellows and reds and blacks fierce enough to scorch the eyeballs. It had a kind of terrifying beauty as it hit the wall at the bottom of the stairs and curled to the floor, devouring the dead things lying there before rearing up again in a huge fireball that ballooned outwards.

‘Get back!’ I yelled, and we all hit the deck together as the flames poured out at us.

I felt my hair crackle as I sprawled among the corpses filling the platform. Smoke created its own menace, blinding and choking, billowing from the opening as the flames retreated for the moment, falling back to consolidate, to feed before progressing. Now it was Stern helping me, pulling me up and away from the worst of the smoke, his mask giving him the advantage. I was retching, lungs filled with the black stuff, eyes streaming, and I felt other hands grab me.

A gas mask was tugged over my head and, although still coughing smoke dust, I caught the faint whiff of old disinfectant under the stink of rubber. I blinked my eyes rapidly and saw the blurred image of Cissie standing in front of me. She was pointing down the platform, her other hand on my arm, and I nodded in an exaggerated way, bowing my shoulders as well as my head. We moved off awkwardly, me still limping, going as fast as we could, like survivors of a subterranean battlefield, the conflict long over, only smoke and the dead left behind. We passed by cots pushed close to the curved platform wall, and bedding laid out on the concrete floor itself. Among those rumpled rags, filling every space, was all kinds of domestic stuff kettles, fold-away chairs, suitcases, books, even a wind-up gramophone. A small wooden clotheshorse still stood, its hanging rags once a screen for some modest family and probably, like other carefully placed items along the platform, a marker for regular users of the shelter, a sign of territorial claim. A kid’s doll, eyes wide as if still terrorized by the carnage around it. A crushed bowler hat, a single boot lying on its side, a pair of spectacles, lenses still intact. There were even one or two tiny portable gas or paraffin cookers, the kind used for ‘brew-ups’ or warming babies’ bottles, smuggled in by families who enjoyed their home comforts. An accordion propped up against a cot bed, a baby’s gas mask, oversized and ugly, like a deep-sea diver’s helmet, lying empty on a blanket next to it. Newspapers strewn across huddled bodies, faded headlines as irrelevant as the advertisements for gin or Brylcreem they shared the page with.

And the corpses. Avoiding them, stumbling over them, pulling them aside when they blocked our way. Thousands of them it seemed, there in the flickering light. Empty shells that had once been living beings, most of these people fleeing here when the rockets fell from the skies and others around them – in the streets, the cafés, the offices, the buses and trams and cars – started dying before their eyes. A good many had probably neither seen nor heard the vengeance weapons fall, but the Blitz had conditioned them to seek shelter whenever the sirens sounded. Yet when they did, when they sought refuge in the street shelters, the park trenches, and even deep down in the subways, the Blood Death had followed, hunted them out, touching every one and poisoning their life’s flow so that it hardened, congealed, became like concrete in their veins.

Only a special few escaping. Others living on, but for a limited time; succumbing, just taking longer to do so.

We hurried through all this, each of us holding on to our emotions, following the dim white safety lines painted along the platforms, four feet and eight feet from the edge, all of us observing but cold to the horror, more than just panic overriding our compassion. Skull faces, eyes long since liquefied, the skin tight and dark like stretched parchment, torn in places – we saw it all, but quickly learned to focus on nothing.

I led the way, never allowing the weak flashlight beam to linger in one place too long, moving it away from the worst sights, finding a path through the slaughter, always aware that the fire was stealing up on us, progress helped by the body heaps. Its advance scout, foul, swilling smoke, threatened to overwhelm us despite our gas masks and I quickened the pace, aware that the train tunnel was not far. The smoke would follow us into the tunnel, but there would be fewer corpses to slow us down (and less material to burn). The flashlight showed more bodies lying on the tracks below and I quickly gave up the idea of using that level as an easier route.

Right about then a scream grabbed my attention.

I turned, swinging the flashlight around, and found Muriel on the floor, body stretched out but head and shoulders raised, supported by her elbows. She wrenched off her mask and began to scream even louder.

I was an idiot, but I guess it was a natural reaction: I shone the light on the cause of her hysterics.

The small body was lying beside a suitcase – I think the case must have concealed the child as I’d walked by, Muriel’s outstretched arm knocking it over when she fell – and only tattered rags still clung to what was left of it. It was easy to tell that the little girl’s eyes had been pulled out rather than dissolved, because hard ridges that were the remnants of tendrils trailed down her sunken cheeks; and where her belly should have been there was only a gaping, empty hole, all the organs gone, and although I didn’t look too hard or too long, I couldn’t help but notice that other parts of her were missing too, only stained bone left behind. I closed my eyes for a second or two, but the sight was replaced by a memory – a terrible, sickening memory – and I opened them again.

Oddly – Jesus Christ, bizarrely – Muriel reached forward to touch the long dull, hair that lay around the remains of the child’s face, as if to stroke it, a gesture of pity and regret, I guess. But the hair came away in Muriel’s hand and that was when her screams became wilder and her body began to shudder.

Taking her by the arm, I eased her away, lifting her so that Cissie could hold her, comfort her, and as the cries echoed around the Underground station I tore off my mask and quickly ran the light over the mounds of human remains nearby. I saw what I had dreaded.

Partially consumed corpses were nothing new to me, yet revulsion – and yeah, hatred, sheer bloody hatred for the scavengers who’d done this thing – filled my gut and set my own body shaking. I controlled it though, controlled my emotions and my shivering limbs, despite what lay around us, despite those torn and mutilated victims, their wounds - their ruptured skins and absent parts – not at first obvious in the altering light of the fire and swirling smoke, so easily missed among the shifting shadows.

Shifting shadows…At first I thought that’s all they were. Little movements among the human remains and the litter. But they were too furtive, sometimes too brisk. And here and there tiny bright reflections shone back.

‘Come on, we can’t stay here!’ I shouted at the others, jerking the light away, aiming its beam towards the end of the platform. ‘D’you hear me? The fire’s getting closer! Let’s move on!’

I grabbed Muriel’s wrist and pulled her away from Cissie, leading her onwards, not gentle at all, but let’s say determined, channelling my horror into anger. I held the flashlight high, keeping its light off the floor, stumbling through the wreckage, but still catching those little, scurrying movements in the corners of my eyes. The girl was limp, so I had to drag her along until Cissie caught up with us and supported her, making the going easier. Soon the smoke was blurring my vision, its acrid smell scraping at the back of my throat. Behind me, Muriel was choking, her body bent over, but I wasn’t gonna ease up, I wasn’t gonna hunt around in that mess for more gas masks.

I threw a hasty look over my shoulder, but there was too much smoke and my eyes were too teared-up for me to see any more than a blustering hellfire filling the station. By then we were nearly at the end of the platform and obstacles were fewer. Dense smoke curled against the facing wall, but I could see the black hole of the tunnel next to it, a ramp leading down. Letting go of Muriel I wiped my eyes with the grimy fingers of one hand, then squinted into the dark. There were bodies blocking the ramp, more of them lying between the tracks below.

‘Help me with her,’ I shouted at Cissie as I stood at the platform’s edge. I shone the weak light into her face for a moment, and beyond the windows of the mask her eyes widened. I thought hysteria might overwhelm her too, but she just nodded, steering Muriel closer to the tracks, then holding her there. Hand on the platform’s lip, I hopped down, trying not to land on anything mushy, wincing when I landed on my damaged leg. There was less smoke at that level and, before reaching up for Muriel, I aimed the beam into the tunnel. The light didn’t stretch very far, enough only to reveal more victims scattered there, dim heaps that were more rags than human remains.

Cissie guided Muriel into my upstretched arms and I lowered her onto the tracks. She leaned against me, her slim body racked by coughing, as I turned back for Cissie, who followed without hesitation, first sitting on the platform and swinging her legs over before dropping down next to me. The German was crouched on one knee, looking even more alien behind his mask, and he held something towards me, something he’d found among the platform clutter.

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 birds 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.