James Herbert - ‘48

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.

‘Back!’ I managed to squawk, but I doubt any of the others heard me.

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.

EVEN THROUGH THE SMOKY mists this new light was bright enough to dazzle. It seemed to come straight from the tunnel wall itself, only a few yards away, and it swept over us, taking us all in, its beam defined by the smoke. The speaker was invisible behind the glare, but his voice was clear enough.

‘You’re a sorry sight, the lot of yer.’ The voice was low, gruff, a little peppery, as if the guy wasn’t excessively pleased to find us. ‘You’d better get yourselves inside,’ it went on in that growly way, ‘unless you want to choke to death. Come on, in ‘ere, ladies first.’

The German was on his feet, but the two girls remained sprawled across the tracks, heads raised and looking towards the light. I figured we were being offered sound advice so I dragged Cissie up by her armpits, croaking out to Stern to help Muriel at the same time. Every muscle in my body ached and my shoulder stung from the nick it had taken earlier, but I managed to haul Cissie over to the light source, the lamp I’d been using left by the tracks. We must have looked quite a sight, covered in filth, clothes a mess, faces blackened and tear-stained, all of us coughing so much smoke we could hardly speak. Blasts of heat swept over us in waves and we could hear the sound of popping glass as the train’s windows fractured. There were other noises too – the roof over the train falling in, old brickwork crumbling with the heat, and a deep rumbling, like an earthquake, going on way below our feet. Between coughing fits, the girls were crying out, floating ash and smoke creating a storm around us, and I swallowed hard before lending my own voice to the racket by shouting at the man behind the light to quit blinding us.

When we didn’t seem to be getting any closer I realized the light was pulling away, its spread becoming confined and outlining a doorway in the tunnel wall. I realized the door must have been in shadow when we passed it before and we’d been too busy running from those fireballs to notice. Possibly it’d been locked from the inside anyway, so it would have been useless even if we had spotted it None of that mattered now though: the door was open and this surly guardian angel was inviting us in.

The light retreated along a bare-bricked corridor and we tumbled after it, collapsing inside the doorway in a tangle of bodies, too exhausted and overwhelmed by our escape to move another inch. As we lay there gasping air like decked flounders I felt something, someone, shuffling around us, back towards the entrance. I caught a glimpse of baggy, dark-coloured overalls before the iron door clanged shut behind us.

Although there was still a faint rumbling somewhere off in the distance and a weak vibration running through my hands and knees from the concrete floor, it suddenly became quiet, peaceful, as though the mayhem had been left far behind. I could barely move, and thinking was too much effort; I just wanted to lay there and convalesce. The others were coughing up smoke, their breathing scratchy and difficult, and I wasn’t much better off. my throat was raw and my thoughts were disassembled. It took a great effort of will to roll over from my knees and press my back against the wall so that I could look around.

The corridor was long and narrow, and at the end of it was a stone flight of stairs leading upwards. A softer light than the one carried by our guardian angel came from a paraffin lamp set on the second step, and when the flashlight switched off I turned my attention towards the door and the man standing before it.

I guessed him to be in his late fifties, maybe sixty even, a stocky little guy wearing dark blue overalls and a flat, white tin helmet with a large black W painted on it. It was the uniform of an Air Raid Precautions – ARP – warden, and I wondered why nobody had bothered to tell him the war had ended three years ago, back in ‘45. His face was kind of flabby and hard at the same time, a working-man’s, used to fresh air and tough labour, a network of purple veins colouring his jowly cheeks; bushy eyebrows, stubby nose and small, gimlet eyes completed the picture. He looked us over and didn’t appear happy with what he saw. He gave a disapproving shake of his head.

‘All right, you lot,’ he said, ‘on yer feet. I don’t know what you’ve gone and bloody well done, but even this place ain’t safe any more.’