James Herbert - ‘48

The wall here was nothing more than a wooden floor-to-ceiling partition separating the room from the corridor, painted cream and brown like the door, window frame and sill, and the mantelshelf (these days loaded with cigarette cartons) over the range. Deep brown, patterned linoleum covered the floor, almost worn through in places, and at the room’s centre, with barely enough space between it and the surrounding furniture, was a steel Morrison shelter substituting for a table, the wooden chairs around it pushed tight against the wire mesh sides. All I’d found on it when I’d first entered No 26 were a half-empty jar of furry lemon curd, a split packet of dried Weston Biscuits, a can of Keating’s bug, beetle and flea powder, and a yellowed copy of the Daily Sketch dated 24th March 1945, the very day the Blood Death rockets had fallen.

Mercifully, the house had been empty of corpses and it hadn’t taken long to collect those on the cobblestones outside and transport them to the stadium; as Tyne Street was to become an occasional home I figured this was the least I could do for its dead residents. After that I’d moved in with my own comforts and weaponry (the bedroom above was stashed with canned food and guns, as well as a few hand grenades I’d picked up from a depot not too many miles from there, just south of the river). I didn’t mind that this place didn’t have the comforts of my other refuges; fact is, its shabbiness made it less of a target for the Blackshirts – they’d never expect me to hole up in a shack like this – and I’d always felt pretty secure here.

I kept the front-door key on the inside sill of the ground-floor window, the window itself left open a couple of inches, so while Cissie propped Stern up by the door I went and got it. She didn’t make a sound as I pushed the long key into the lock, but I knew she was all in; even in the moonlight her face looked haggard, her eyes full of skittish nervousness and concern for the injured German.

Pushing open the heavy front door, I took Stern over my shoulder again and carried him straight to the end of the short corridor. The bare wooden stairs creaked and groaned under our weight, the sounds exaggerated in the close confines of the tall house. The bedroom door was open and moonlight streaming through the two windows helped me work my way through the boxes and stacked cans towards the bed. I laid him down carefully and even before I’d drawn the curtains and lit the oil lamp on the mantelpiece with matches lying next to it Cissie had removed Stern’s jacket and was unbuttoning his shirt.

‘I’m gonna boil some water,’ I said to her. ‘Use something to try and check the bleeding.’

She stopped me as I reached the bedroom door. ‘Hoke. The bullet…’

I tried not to think about it. ‘Yeah. It’ll have to come out. That’s why we need lots of hot water.’

‘You’ll do it?’

That’s what I hadn’t wanted to think about. ‘Unless you want to volunteer.’

She didn’t reply and I shrugged. ‘I’ll do what I can.’

I hurried downstairs and lit the camp cooker on top of the range. I’d never risked lighting a fire here, nor anywhere else unless out in the open, because chimney smoke could attract the wrong kind of attention, and I wasn’t going to light one tonight. After adjusting the circle of flames, I worked my way round the Morrison shelter and pulled the curtains tight together, then lit the lantern on the makeshift tabletop. The room brightened, but the shadows became more intense. I drew the pistol and laid it next to the lantern.

Pipes clanked before water gushed in spurts from the tap over the sink and I had to wait for a steady flow before filling a saucepan; the pressure was weaker than the last time I was here and it took a couple of minutes to fill the container to the brim. Once the saucepan was on the burner I washed my hands with a rock of carbolic soap from the sink’s drainer, repeating the process when I was done, and shaking them rather than use the stiffened rag passing itself off as a kitchen towel on a hook nearby. I needed a cigarette badly, but decided to wait

Cissie’s call came from over my head, followed by a loud thump on the ceiling.

Holding my hands close to my chest to keep them clean, I made my way back upstairs, glancing out the window opposite the tiny landing as I went by. There wasn’t much to see through the weather-stained glass, save for shadows and the odd shapes of stalls and trestles down in the bigger yard, but I was confident that no one had followed us here. As I turned away I stumbled on the last step to the landing and my shoulder bumped the opposite wall; like the partition downstairs, it was made of wood and the cracking sound that came from it was like a gunshot. Through the open doorway I saw Cissie react sharply and I mumbled an apology as I approached the bed.

‘Please help me with him,’ she pleaded, the lamplight catching the glistening of tears on her cheeks.

Stern was almost on the other side of the double bed, pushing himself away as if to escape her caring hands. She knelt on the mattress and tried to pull him onto his back, but her efforts were too cautious, too gentle. The German shouted something in his own language and his hand thrashed out, striking Cissie on the shoulder. I quickly joined her and, forgetting about dirtying my hands, grabbed his arm and turned him. I winced when I saw the sheets were drenched with his blood.

‘Take it easy,’ I told him uselessly as I pinned him to the bed with as little force as possible. But he twisted again and for the first time I clearly saw the blood bubbling from the wound in the back of his neck. It ran through puckered skin and livid burn scars that spread downwards from his hairline, across his shoulders and towards the halfway point of his spine. These were old markings though, and my attention returned to the fresh wound: I thought I noticed something embedded there, a slight, blackish protrusion under the slick coat of discharging blood. I touched my hand to it to confirm my suspicion and felt a hard lump that I knew wasn’t bone.

‘The bullet’s almost worked its way out,’ I said, more to myself than the girl. ‘At least it’ll make things easier.’

Next I examined the wound in his arm, close to the shoulder, and grunted when I realized there were two punctures, front and back. The bullet had passed clean through, taking tissue and muscle with it but, s’far as I could make out, without touching bone. Straightening up, I noticed the blood-soaked rag Cissie was holding in one hand.

‘His shirt,’ she said.

‘Christ. Okay, I’ll find you something else.’ I remembered the mildewed towels and sheets in a cupboard across the room; they weren’t ideal, but they’d have to do. ‘Keep him on his side, as he is. We’ll deal with the arm wound first, try to stop the bleeding, then I’ll get the bullet out of his neck.’

‘The pain’s too much. Don’t you have anything to give him?’

‘Pills’d be no good, even if he could swallow them. Tomorrow I’ll get to a hospital, find some morphine.’

It was something I should have done a long while ago, in case of accidents to myself, but I guess I’d been afraid of having easy access to any powerful opiates; heck, booze was a big enough problem for me. There was something else, also: I hated those kind of places – hospitals and churches – because they were nothing more than huge burial vaults, crammed with the bodies of Blood Death victims who’d fled to them to be saved, either by medics or the Lord Himself. No, I stayed clear of those kind of charnel houses.

‘I’ll get some proper dressings and bandages as well as the morphine, but tonight we’ll have to use what we got.’

‘We need something to soak up the blood now, then something to keep pressed against the wound.’