James Herbert - ‘48

A suit of bones sat slumped on a high stool inside the ticket booth, the skull with its leathery skin and empty eye sockets resting sideways on the narrow counter in front of it, thin, mummified hands stretched towards the small pay-window as if reaching for fare money. Long strands of greyish hair hung loose from the tan-coloured head and yellowed dentures lay on the shelf at the entrance of the open mouth, this itself guarded by the few remaining teeth, exposed and gumless, like crooked tombstones before a black vault. I was glad the light was poor, everything muted, hard to see.

I’d expected the stench to be worse, but I guess the corruption had run its course long before, the smells of that decay slowly fading, escaping through the ticket window and vents, until only a staleness remained, unpleasant, cloying, but no big deal. I’d say this ticket clerk had been one of the lucky ones: the Blood Death had hit him fast, killing him where he sat while others fled around him, so that the booth had become his personal mausoleum, his solitary, unviolated sepulchre. His mouldering had been his own private affair.

It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for. I knew the clerk would have kept a flashlight or lamp close at hand for emergencies and, of course, the Blackout itself. It was a heavy chrome flashlight and I found it in a small corner cupboard just inside the door. I wasn’t surprised when I flicked it on and nothing happened. Okay, new batteries. I started pulling out drawers, opening more cupboards, and soon found a whole box of unwrapped Ever Readys. It took only seconds to eject the old ones from the flashlight and push in the new, and I held my breath as I switched on. A dim circle of light appeared at the other end of the ticket office and I let my breath go in a quick sigh of relief, the batteries were weak, but they’d do. I was out of the booth and shoving the flashlight into the German’s hand in an instant.

In the street outside I could see the Bedford truck, Blackshirts jumping down into the road from its back.

‘Gimme the gun,’ I barked at Stern and for a second he pulled away, holding the Colt out of reach, the flashlight in his other hand.

‘It’s not loaded, for Christ’s sake!’ I grabbed it from him.

By the time the first Blackshirt had reached the kerb just yards from the entrance I’d inserted a new clip and fired off a warning shot. The Blackshirt, and the others following him, ducked instinctively and changed direction, spreading out to take cover behind the walls beside the entrance. Because the Underground station was on a corner there were two accesses, and I hoped they wouldn’t have the sense to use the second, smaller one to our right. Two flanks I didn’t think I could handle.

‘Take the girls down!’ I shouted, indicating the escalators behind the barriers. ‘Get ‘em in the subway and wait for me there.’ I gave the Blackshirts another blast to keep them occupied.

‘Come with us,’ begged Cissie as Stern began pushing her and Muriel towards the escalators.

‘Soon as I can!’ I shouted back, then dodged behind the booth to fire off another couple of shots. The Blackshirts started to return fire, but they weren’t taking time to aim, afraid of exposing themselves for more than a split second. Funny thing when you’re living on borrowed time, as these goons outside were – life becomes even more precious. I knew they weren’t going to rush me, that I could hold ‘em there for a while; but sooner or later they’d figure a way to flush me out

I took some well-spaced potshots, just enough to keep their heads down without wasting ammunition, giving the German and the girls time to get downstairs (hoping they’d have the nerve to carry on once they realized what they were descending into). After that I’d have my own problem: making a break for it with no one to cover me.

Well, that problem kind of solved itself.

It happened fast, and it happened without warning. One minute the Blackshirts were keeping out of sight, taking turns to spray bullets my way, filling the ticket hall with thunder, the next the black Humber Estate was roaring through the entrance, hurtling towards me, guns blazing from its side windows like in one of those gangster movies.

I backed away fast, firing from the hip, turning when the Humber crashed into the ticket office and limping towards the barriers, leaping over the nearest rail, using my left hand for support, barely breaking stride on the other side. The Humber had lurched sideways when it hit the solid booth, swinging round and throwing its passengers against one another. Its bodywork hid me from more Blackshirts pouring through the entrance after it, giving me time to reach the top of the frozen stairways.

I didn’t need to look to know what lay on those stairs – I’d used another subway as a means of escape almost three years ago and had never wanted to repeat the experience. I also knew the Blackshirts wouldn’t follow me down there – they didn’t have the balls for it. But the human debris that littered the escalator – all those dead, rotted corpses of men, women and children who’d tried to flee the Blood Death, thinking that the disease, the toxins, the chemicals, the goddamn visitation, whatever it was that Hitler had sent over in his revenge rockets, would never reach them in the tunnels beneath the city – I knew they’d be blocking the stairways, that they’d perished as they ran, and their skeletal limbs would now snag me as I went by, their heaped bodies would bar my way, forcing me to stumble through or to climb over them, giving the gunmen above time to find me in the darkness with a lucky bullet, or a hail of lucky bullets, and slow me down for good. So I forgot about taking the stairs.

I leapt up onto the centre ramp between the escalators and slid down on my butt, kicking aside any stiffs slumped over the rail as I went, gliding down like a kid on a sleigh, slowing myself by grabbing the middle lamp columns, controlling the descent just enough to keep me from taking a tumble.

Below I could see the dim light of the flashlight, the others waiting for me, the German having horse sense enough not to direct the beam at me. Glass from one of the dead lamps exploded as I swept by, showering me with fragments, and the light at the bottom of the stairs instantly vanished. I hoped Stern hadn’t been hit (I had my own plans for him), but had taken the two girls into the safety of one of the platform entrances. I lost control then, plummeting faster than I could cope with, my trunk trying to overtake my legs so that I began to turn. More bullets split the air, keeping me company, but I must have been just about invisible as I slid further into the blackness. The automatic was back inside my jacket holster, where I’d shoved it before the ride, and I clamped a wrist against it as I began to spin off the ramp. The next thing I knew I was falling, toppling off the slide and onto the stairs, soft (but brittle) things there breaking my fall, cushioning the rest of my uncontrolled descent.

Probably I cried out – I don’t recall – as I tumbled down, rolling onto things that seemed to collapse at my touch, until I arrived at the bottom in an avalanche of corpses.

I lay there, breathless and dizzy: and horrified. Something scratchy brushed against my cheek and I didn’t like to guess what. The thought came to me anyway and I panicked, thrashing out at the darkness, pushing the dried husk away and kicking at anything within kicking distance. The smell whacked me then, and I choked, gagged, fought back the swelling nausea. Until I realized it was all in my mind.

Sure, the air down there in that huge mausoleum was foul, but it had more to do with staleness than rotting bodies. The corruption had run its course, you see, and the corpses had deteriorated as much as they ever would under these dry and stagnant conditions. When I’d first ventured into one of these places it had been in the early months after the holocaust and the dead were still decomposing, the stench unbearable; I should have understood by now that once the organs and internal body tissue have putrefied and finally disintegrated, there’s little else that can happen – the body can only become a mummified shell. No, the stench had been in my mind, what I’d expected. And the horror was not in the atmosphere, but in the presence of so many cadavers gathered together in this black void.