James Herbert - ‘48

Hubble was among the group holding us up, his ever-faithful goon, McGruder, by his side, supporting him. Hubble took an unsteady step forward, McGruder careful to go with him, making sure his leader didn’t stumble.

‘Don’t make another move!’ Hubble shouted in that weak, high-pitched way of his. ‘If you do, this man will be killed instantly.’ He pointed a shaky, dark-stained finger at Potter. The blade at the warden’s throat pressed into the soft flesh, not enough to draw blood, but enough to make a furrow. ‘His is old blood anyway and we’d prefer the younger, more healthy kind,’ Hubble said, as if we’d appreciate his reasoning. ‘Your kind, Mr Hoke. And your companions’. Good, vibrant blood.’

How long was it gonna take the mad bomber to make his turn and get back over target? He wouldn’t let an opportunity like this go by without dropping every last bomb and incendiary on board. No, he’d douse those glowing lights with fires of his own making, and then he’d spit on the wreckage as he headed home to the Fatherland. C’mon, Fritz, knock this place out, gimme a chance.

I pulled Cissie behind me and scanned the immediate area for fallen weapons. Okay, the Blackshirts would go for non-fatal wounds, tricky for any marksmen. And they’d have to try for the kind that didn’t bleed too much; off hand, I couldn’t think of any. So: Dive for the nearest gun before they cut the legs from under you. Already tense, I tensed some more.

‘Kill Hubble first,’ I told Stern.

‘No!’ Cissie tugged at my arm. ‘You can’t do that, Hoke, they’ll kill Albert.’

‘They’ll kill us all anyway,’ I replied, still searching the floor. ‘Do it, Stern, do it now.’

The German turned his head towards me, then looked back at Hubble. Something crashed in the foyer, beyond the wall of flame.

‘Hoke, I cannot-’

‘None of it matters!’ I snapped, at last finding what I was searching for, a pistol lying close to an upturned chair on the littered floor. ‘Shoot him now and let’s finish it.’

‘You’re insane,’ said Cissie over my shoulder.

I felt myself grin. ‘Yeah,’ I agreed as I judged the distance between myself and the fallen weapon.

Stern levelled the Sten at the Blackshirt leader, who suddenly looked less sure of himself. But the German lowered the submachine gun, then dropped it onto the carpet.

‘It is senseless,’ he whispered, as if to himself. It was as if not just his energy, but his spirit too, had drained from him. Then, to me: ‘There has been too much killing. We must reason with these -’

A number of things happened before he’d completed the sentence: Hubble nodded at the goon with the long knife, who neatly slit Potter’s throat; the lights surged, then fell almost to nothing; I went down, rolled forward and came up with the German’s discarded Sten gun, finger already tightening on the trigger.

I’D FIRED TOO WILD and too soon, because McGruder pulled Hubble to the floor before I could take proper aim at him. The bullets caught a couple of Blackshirts who weren’t quick enough to duck, while others in the group blocking our way scattered, some diving for the floor, others just scooting off, heading for cover. A mirror shattered on the far wall and splinters flew from a marble column. The lights brightened again as the generator below ground revived and I had the chance to pick out Hubble with the Sten gun. He was crouched on the floor, his loyal henchman’s beefy arm thrown over his shoulder for protection, and he was watching me like a paralysed rabbit. His time was up sooner than he’d figured, and I was the gun-packing Reaper, both counts pretty hard for him to take.

I pulled the trigger and nothing happened.

Tried again, but it was useless. The gun was jammed or empty, God knows which, but it was all the same to me. I threw it away and went for the pistol I’d spotted earlier.

But even as I hit the deck it seemed to rise up beneath me, slamming into my body so that I turned over from the shock. The blast – heavy, thunderous, like nothing I’d heard before – overwhelmed all other noise, and the shell of the building juddered so violently I thought it must come tumbling down on us all. The Bomber King had completed his turn and was back over target. I guessed he’d dropped his whole bomb-load in his determination to blot out the beacon below. A great wind from the foyer swept through the lounge, carrying with it lethal shrapnel and fireballs, and I hugged carpet, pressing my body into its softness, riding the reverberations, sparks and burning cinders scorching my naked back and arms, pellets of masonry and splinters of wood raining down on me. My hands were over my head, but I heard more crashing sounds, then screams, shouts, and the floor beneath me continued to tremble. Although there were more close-set explosions, I decided it was time to be up and running again.

The broad stairway leading to the foyer and main entrance was totally engulfed in flames by now, and I knew everything beyond it – the reception area, reading lounge, and the staircase to Harry’s Bar – would have been completely destroyed. Powdered glass and dust filled the air with thick smoke as other chandeliers broke loose from their fittings and hurtled to the floor, while whole ornamental mirrors fell from the walls and more pillars fissured as they shifted under the strain of the collapsing ceiling. But I was on my feet, looking round for Cissie and the German, swiping at the smoke with my hands as though it were concealing veils.

I soon found them both behind me. Stern was pulling bright red cinders from Cissie’s smouldering hair, his face covered in blood. Cissie’s nose was bleeding and I saw her lips were moving; she was shouting at me and pointing, but I couldn’t hear a thing – my ears, and probably theirs too, had been deafened by the explosions. As Stern flicked away the last cinder, smothering the smouldering strands with his other hand, Cissie touched my face. Her fingers came away stained with blood and she showed them to me. I wiped my face with my own hands and felt no wounds or embedded glass and shrapnel, so was sure all I was suffering was a nose-bleed from the blasts and, from the look of her, that was Cissie’s only problem too. Stern, though, had a deep cut over his brow and blood was streaming down into his eyes; he kept clearing it with his sleeve so that he could see, but still it poured out, blinding him each time. His clothes were ripped and I wondered if he’d shielded Cissie from the worst of the blasts, because her dress was relatively untouched.

Taking them both by the arms, aware they couldn’t hear a word even if I screamed at them, I pulled them towards the opening we’d been heading for. I took time out to kick over a Blackshirt who was lumbering to his feet in our path and, although he went down fast enough, there were others all around, dark shapes looming up in the smoke mists like spectres in a graveyard. Something brushed my cheek, a sharp arrow of air, and even though I hadn’t heard the gunshot, I knew someone had recovered enough to take shots at us. Pushing the girl and Stern on ahead, I paused only long enough to lift an upturned coffee table from the floor and hurl it at the murky forms closing in on us. Then I was running again, quickly catching up to the other two, who had almost reached the passageway, and it was weird, unreal, rushing through that silent chaos, slow-moving figures around us, the fires bathing everything orange, even the smoke, old corpses beginning to smoulder with the advancing heat. Then my ears suddenly popped and the full horror hit me with its sounds. Shots were being fired, people were yelling and screaming, and a terrifying low rumbling-grinding was coming from the building itself.