James Herbert - ‘48

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.

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.