"‘48" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert James)4‘WHAT ARE THEY?’ Muriel’s hold on me was painful, but I ignored it. 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 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 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. Nothing should have shocked me by now – three years of living among sights that were the stuff of nightmares should have conditioned me – but the skull-head that returned my stare, with its black hollow eyes and gaping grin, made me jump back in fright. Stupidly, I’d expected the train to be empty. Of course passengers had been travelling on the Underground network all over the city when the disease had struck, the Blood Death drifting down into the tunnels, seeking out its victims like some predator roaming the burrows of the earth, and the Dead Man’s Handle had jammed on as soon as the train driver had slumped over, cutting the circuit so that the carriages had come to a halt, to remain locked there in the darkness as one by one their occupants keeled over. How many had escaped? I wondered. How many of the ABnegs – if there’d been any on board – had managed to crawl out into the tunnels and make their way back to the surface, only to wish they’d died with their fellow travellers below? The skull resting against the window still wore a driver’s cap, its peak tilted by the glass to a rakish angle so that, with its unrestricted grin, the skeleton appeared to have kept its sense of humour. I didn’t get the joke though, and was ready to unravel as I went back to the others. I was about to tell ‘em to keep their eyes low when they passed by the carriages, but I never got the chance. The flash that swept through the tunnel was like sheet lightning, its glare bleaching everything white before blinding us with its brilliance, the thunderclap that followed a split second later shaking the walls and deafening us all. Searing air blasted around us, but we were protected by the carriages we cowered behind, only our legs feeling a deflected part of the heat. The world may have become silent to us as we fell to our knees, but it continued to spasm and shake, causing us to sprawl between the tracks, bodies stretched, hands over our heads. I’m not sure if I felt or sensed the train lurch, but an instinct sent me scrabbling forward onto the girls, using my weight to hold them still until the wheels shuddered to a stop. As I blinked to clear my dazzled eyes, I became aware that the air was suddenly cleansed, the smoke and filth pushed back by the blast; but even as I rubbed at my eyes and my hearing began to return, grime and dust, along with brickwork, started to fall from the ceiling and walls. Head still reeling, senses floating, I guessed what had caused the explosion further down the Tube line, but now was not the time to mull it over – although we’d been shielded from the full force of the blast, we were now in a worse predicament than before. And unfortunately our chances of survival were getting slimmer by the second. I staggered to my feet, grabbing the fallen but still-burning lamp as I rose, then swung round to squint into the flickering shadows behind us. The shadowy figure of the German was leaning against the train, his head jerking from left to right as if he were trying to shake some sense back into it; and beyond him the train itself was burning, the flames further along the carriages contained by the walls and ceiling of the tunnel, but spreading fast towards us. Stern was swiftly lost from sight as great clouds of smoke swept between us. The very air felt scorched, dried out, and suddenly it was hard to draw breath. I pushed the girls, herding them away from this new threat, and Stern wasn’t slow in figuring it out for himself. He was soon alongside us as we staggered through the smoke and falling dirt. He held Muriel’s arm while I hung on to Cissie, and as a tight group we stumbled back along the track, not thinking ahead, fear and heat forcing the retreat, the thick, choking smoke swilling around us, increasing our panic, until it was exhaustion, not common sense, that slowed us after a hundred yards or so. Muriel dropped to her knees first and Cissie followed her down. Stern attempted to drag Muriel up again, but she was bent double, gagging on fumes, her body a dead weight. I crouched close to Cissie. ‘Come on, we’ll choke to death if we stay here.’ Even to me my voice sounded faint after the explosion, kind of trapped inside my own head, but I think she heard me. She tried to tug herself free. Her voice was distant too, but I caught what she was saying. ‘Where can we go?’ she asked. ‘We’re between two fires, you bloody fool, and it’s your fault. You made us come down here.’ She had a point. But hell, what other choice had there been? I looked around, up the tunnel, down the tunnel, and wasn’t encouraged. Out of the fire and into the inferno, I told myself. Some days were like that. The German, his back against the wall, was coughing so violently I thought his gut might burst, and Muriel’s arched figure was heaving, her throat rasping as she fought to draw in poisoned air. Back there the whole tunnel was alight, clouds of rolling smoke softening the blaze, and in the other direction, towards the station, even more smoke tumbled towards us, a thick, curling torrent of it, so dense it looked solid. I hauled myself up, but my legs barely supported me. My energy was sapped and my head was dizzy from lack of pure oxygen. A veil seemed to be drawing over my mind, and it wasn’t unpleasant; no, it seemed like an escape, a retreat from the horror all around us in this black stormy hell. I fought it though, because fighting against things that were not right, legal and fair was in my nature, always had been. That was why I’d gotten into the stinking rotten war before most of my compatriots in the first place. Sure, I was a fighter – life, and death, had made me that way – but this looked like the final battle. I raged against it, even lifted a weary fist in defiance, but I knew I’d lost. There were no options. Like the girl said, I’d led them into a trap of my own making, and the price of that foolishness was death. We were gonna die alongside the scorched vermin. And as the black smoke closed in and that flimsy veil floating across my mind thickened, something happened that sent a last reserve of adrenaline rushing through me. |
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